“I don't think she should nurse the baby. It takes too much out of her. She's just exhausted.” The doctor had warned her that that would happen, and Liz wasn't impressed when Bernie told her he thought she'd recover more quickly if she gave up nursing.

“You sound just like your mother.” She scowled at him from her bed. After four weeks, she was still in bed most of the day. “Nursing makes all the difference in the world to the baby. They get all the immunities they need …” She gave him the party line of the nursing enthusiasts, but he still wasn't convinced. His mother had worried him about how tired Liz was, and whether or not it was normal.

“Don't be so California.”

“Mind your own business.” She laughed at him and wouldn't hear of giving up nursing the baby. The only thing that really bothered her was that her hips still hurt, which surprised her.

He went to New York and Europe in May, after his parents left, and Liz was still too tired to go with him, and wouldn't consider weaning the baby. But he was upset when he found her just as tired when he got back, and even more so at Stinson Beach that summer. And he thought she was having trouble walking, but she wouldn't admit it to him or the doctor.

“I think you should go back to the doctor, Liz.” He was beginning to insist. Alexander was four months old, and a strapping baby with his father's green eyes, and his mother's golden curls. But Liz was looking pale and wan, even after two months at the beach, and the final straw came when she refused to go to the opening of the opera with him. She said it was too much trouble to go in and pick out a dress, and she didn't have time anyway. She had to start teaching again in September. But he knew just how exhausted she was when he heard her make arrangements with Tracy to sub for her part-time until she felt better.

“What was that all about? You won't go downtown to pick out a dress, and you won't go to Europe with me next month”—she had turned that down too even though he knew how much she had loved Paris when she went with him before—“and now you only want to work part-time. What the hell is going on?” He was frightened, and that night he called his father. “What do you think it is, Dad?”

“I don't know. Has she been to her doctor?”

“She won't go. She says it's normal for nursing mothers to be tired. But he's nearly five months old for chrissake, and she refuses to wean him.”

“She may have to. She might just be anemic.” It was a simple solution to the problem, and Bernie felt relieved after he had spoken to him but he insisted that she go to the doctor anyway and he was secretly beginning to wonder if she was pregnant.

Pretending to grumble all the way, she made an appointment the following week, but her obstetrician couldn't find anything wrong with her gynecologically She wasn't pregnant again at any rate, and he sent her to an internist for some simple tests. An EKG, some blood tests, an X ray, and whatever else he thought was indicated. She had an appointment with the internist at three o'clock in the afternoon, and Bernie was enormously relieved that she was doing it. He was leaving for Europe in a few weeks, and he wanted to know what was going on before he left, and if the doctors in San Francisco couldn't figure it out, he was going to take her to New York and leave her with his father, and see if he couldn't find someone to figure out what was wrong with her.

The internist who checked her out seemed to think she was all right. He did several ordinary tests. Her blood pressure was fine, the electrocardiogram looked good, her blood count was low, so he ran a few more elaborate tests, and when he listened to her chest, he suspected she might have a mild case of pleurisy.

“And that's probably what's been wearing you out.” He smiled. He was a tall Nordic man with large hands and a big voice and she felt comfortable with him. He sent her to a lab for a chest X ray and at five-thirty she got home, and kissed Bernie, who was reading Jane a story as they waited for her. She had left both children with a sitter that afternoon, which was rare for her.

“See …I'm fine … I told you so.”

“Then how come you're so tired?”

“Pleurisy. He sent me for a chest X ray just to be sure I don't have some weird disease, and other than that I'm great.”

“And too tired to go to Europe with me.” He still wasn't convinced. “What's this guy's name anyway?”

“Why?” She looked at him suspiciously. What was he going to do now? What else did he expect her to do?

“I want my father to check him out.”

“Oh, for chrissake …” The baby was crying to be nursed and she went to his room to pick him up while Bernie wrote the check for the babysitter. Alexander was fat and blond and green-eyed and beautiful and he squealed with delight the minute she approached and burrowed happily at her breast, patting her with one hand as she held him close to her. And later when she set him down to sleep again, she tiptoed out of his room, and found her husband standing there waiting for her. She smiled at him and touched his cheek, looking up at him. “Don't worry so much, sweetheart,” she whispered to him. “Everything is fine.”

He pulled her into his arms and held her tight. “That's how I want it to be.” Jane was playing in her room, the baby was asleep, and he looked down at his wife, but she looked too pale to him, and there were circles under her eyes that never went away anymore, and she was much, much too thin. He wanted to believe that everything was fine, but a gnawing fear inside him kept saying that it was not, and he held her for a long time, and then she went to cook dinner, and he played with Jane. And that night, as Liz slept he looked down at her fearfully. And when the baby woke at four o'clock, Bernie didn't wake her up, but made up one of the bottles with the supplement he took, and held the baby close to him.

Alexander was satisfied with the bottle and cooed happily in Bernie's arms as he smiled at the child, changed his diapers eventually, and then set him down again. He was becoming an expert at that sort of thing, and that morning it was Bernie who answered the phone when Dr. Johanssen called. Liz was still sleeping.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Fine, please.” The voice was not rude, but curt, and Bernie went to wake her up.

“It's for you.”

“Who is it?” She looked at him sleepily. It was nine o'clock, on Saturday morning.

“I don't know. He didn't say.” But he suspected it was the doctor, and it frightened him as Liz read the fear in his eyes.

“A man? For me?”

The caller identified himself as quickly to her and asked her to come in at ten o'clock. It was Dr. Johanssen.

“Is something wrong?” she asked him, glancing at her husband.

But the doctor took too long to answer. It couldn't be. She was tired, but not that tired. She glanced at Bernie involuntarily, and could have kicked herself.

“Can it wait?” But Bernie was shaking his head no.

“I don't think it should, Mrs. Fine. Why don't you and your husband come in to see me in a little while?” He sounded much too calm and it frightened her. She hung up the phone and tried to make light of it for Bernie's sake.

“Christ, he acts like I have syphilis.”

“What did he say it is?”

“He didn't say. He just said to come in an hour from now.”

“Okay, we will.” He looked terrified while trying to pretend that he was not, and he called Tracy for her while she got dressed. Tracy said she'd be over in half an hour. She'd been doing some gardening and she was a mess but she'd be happy to sit with the kids for an hour or two. She sounded as concerned as he felt, but she didn't ask any questions when she arrived. She was cheerful and business-like and sped them on their way.

They barely spoke at all on the way to the hospital where they were meeting the doctor, and they found his office there easily. He had two X rays clipped to a light box when they walked into the room, and he smiled at them, but the smile wasn't cheerful enough somehow, and suddenly, feeling a hand of terror at her throat, Liz wanted to run away and not hear what he had to say to them.

Bernie introduced himself and Dr. Johanssen asked them to sit down. He hesitated for only an instant, and then did not mince words with them. It was serious. Liz was terrified.

“Yesterday when I saw you, Mrs. Fine, I thought that you had pleurisy. A mild case perhaps. Today, I want to discuss it with you.” He swiveled in his chair and pointed the tip of his pen at two spots on her lungs. “I don't like the looks of these.” He was honest with her.

“What do they mean?” She could hardly catch her breath.

“I'm not sure. But I'd like to reconsider another symptom you mentioned yesterday. The pain in your hips.”

“What does that have to do with my lungs?”

“I think a bone scan may tell us more of what we want to know.” He explained the procedure to them, and he had already made arrangements for her at the hospital. It was a simple test, involving an injection of radioactive isotopes to show lesions in the skeleton.

“What do you think it is?” She was feeling panicked and confused, and she wasn't sure she wanted to know. But she had to.

“I'm not sure. The spots on your lungs may indicate a problem elsewhere in your system.”

She could barely think all the way to the hospital, absent-mindedly clutching Bernie's hand. All he wanted was to get away from her to call his father and there was no way he could leave her. He was with her when they administered the injection. She looked gray and terrified and it was only moderately painful. But it was terrifying as they sat and waited for the doctor to talk to them about his findings.

And his findings were profoundly depressing. They believed that Liz had osteosarcoma, cancer of the bone, and it had already metastasized to her lungs. It explained the pain she had had in her back and hips for the past year, and the frequent breathlessness. But all of it had been attributed to her pregnancy. And instead, she had cancer. A biopsy would have to confirm it, the doctors explained, as Liz and Bernie held hands tightly, and tears rolled down their cheeks. She was still wearing the green hospital gown, as Bernie reached out and took her into his arms, and held her with a feeling of desperation.