The cab stopped in front of the hospital, and Sam paid for it and grabbed her small tote bag. She had brought only a few things, in the hope that Sam would be right, and it wouldn't be a long stay. And he could bring her the rest of what she'd need if she had to stay longer. But packing her tote had reminded her of when she'd gone to the hospital to have Annabelle. It was a happier time, and it seemed only moments ago, although she was almost four years old now.

They followed the arrows to the registration desk, but Alex had preregistered, when she'd gone in for her blood work and chest X ray the day she saw Dr. Herman. They gave her a slip to take upstairs, and gave her a room number on the sixth floor, and a little plastic tub that held a toothbrush and a cup, soap, and toothpaste, and just holding it depressed her. She felt suddenly like an inmate in a prison.

They went silently upstairs, amid the hubbub of the hospital, and Sam looked uncomfortable and pale, and Alex looked terrified as they got off the elevator, and walked past two people with IVs, asleep on gurneys. The nurses at the nurses' station told her where to go, and they walked into a small ugly room, painted in pale blue, with a poster on the wall, and a hospital bed that seemed to eat up the entire room. Nothing about it was pretty, but at least she was alone and didn't have to talk to anyone, except Sam, who was making idle chitchat about the view, and how incredibly expensive hospitals were getting, and how socialized medicine wasn't working at all for Canada or the U.K. She wanted to scream at him, but she knew he was making a frantic effort to cope, even if he wasn't helping. He was too unnerved himself just from being there even to try to help her.

A nurse hurried in to make sure she'd had nothing by mouth since midnight the night before, and an orderly shoved an IV pole into the room, and tossed a gown on the bed for her, and said he'd be back in a minute, and suddenly as she stood there, Alex started to cry helplessly. This was awful. And Sam took her in his arms and held her there, wanting to tell her he was sorry.

“It'll all be over soon. Just try to forget about it. Think about Annabelle, about going to the beach next summer … or Halloween …and before you know it, it'll be over.” She laughed at what he said, but even the thought of Halloween with Annabelle wasn't enough to block out the terror she was feeling.

“I'm so scared,” she whispered as he held her.

“I know …but you're going to be okay … I promise.” But he couldn't promise that, no one could. It was up to God. And she wasn't sure what He had planned for her. But for the moment she was scared stiff, and she looked it.

“It's so weird …we're both so powerful in our own ways. We're strong people, with good jobs, we move a lot of people around, make a lot of decisions that affect money and people and corporations …and then you get hit with something like this, and you're powerless. You're suddenly at the mercy of everyone, people you don't even know, and fate, and your own body.” She felt like a child, totally helpless to stop the nightmare in which she was living.

The nurse appeared at the door again, told her to undress and put on the gown, and someone would come in to start her IV in a minute. There was no time, no sympathy, no interest.

“Is that supposed to be good news?” Sam teased. “Like they're coming back with a four-course breakfast?”

“Nothing about this is good news,” Alex said, drying her eyes again, wishing she weren't there, or that she'd decided to ignore the shadow on her mammogram, but she knew she couldn't. Maybe Sam was right. Maybe it all was a lot of nonsense to keep the medical profession in business. She hoped so.

The nurse came back into the room then, while Alex changed, and she had her lie down so she could start the IV. It was just saline solution so she wouldn't be dehydrated. “And then we've got a line in, in case we need to give you anything else. You're going to be having a general today,” she said, like a stewardess announcing that they were going to be flying over St. Louis.

“I know,” Alex said, trying to sound like she was in control again, like she was part of it, and had made the decision, but this woman didn't care. That wasn't the issue for her, who had decided what or why. This was a body factory, a warehouse for bodies in disrepair, and she had to get them moving as fast as they could, to make room for the next ones.

The IV burned as it went into Alex's arm, but the nurse said that it would stop in a few minutes. She took Alex's blood pressure, listened to her heart, made a notation on a chart, and flipped a switch that turned a light on in the hallway. “They'll know you're ready to go now. I'll call upstairs. They should be taking you to the O.R. in a few minutes.” It was already eight-thirty, and her biopsy was scheduled for nine. She had been there since seven-thirty.

“Any calls you want me to make while I'm waiting for you here?” Sam asked casually as she lay there, watching her IV and looking unhappy, as a nurse came in with a clipboard.

“No, thanks. I think I've got everything pretty much taken care of at the office,” she said as she glanced at the paper the nurse handed her to look at and sign. Alex had spent the whole week before, preparing to be away for the next two weeks, just in case, and there was nothing left to do now. The paper the nurse had handed her was the consent form she had already discussed with Dr. Herman. She only read a few lines, which explained that anything up to and including a radical mastectomy might be performed, though he had already told her that he rarely did anything more than modified radicals anymore, which meant that he took, along with the breast, the tissue high up in the arm, the minor pectoral muscles, and not the majors. The major ones made reconstructive surgery impossible. With only the minor pectorals gone, you could still do reconstructive work, and add implants, and there was no greater danger to the patient in leaving the major pectorals intact. She couldn't bear reading any farther. She signed and looked up at Sam with tears in her eyes, trying not to think of what was going to happen to her, as she handed the nurse back her clipboard.

“Then don't forget to call Annabelle at lunchtime, in case I'm still asleep,” … or still in surgery, please God, no … she said, wiping her tears from her cheeks with trembling fingers, as he took one of her hands in his own.

“I'll call her. I'm having lunch at La Grenouille with Simon's Arabs and his assistant from London. He's got some woman with an Oxford econ degree coming in. He says our Harvard B School guys don't hold a candle to the kids from Oxford.” He smiled at the snobbism, trying to distract her, just as two orderlies appeared in the doorway, like black angels with a gurney between them. They wore green pajamas and blue gowns, with shower caps on their heads, and what looked like shower caps on their shoes, and it was obvious that they had come for Alex.

“Alexandra Parker?”

She wanted to say no, but she knew that wouldn't help as she nodded. She was too choked to speak, and she started to cry again once she lay on the gurney and looked up at Sam. Why had this ever happened?

“Hang in there, kiddo. I'll be right here. And tonight we'll do something to celebrate. Take it easy.” He leaned down to kiss her and she spoke in a strangled whisper through her tears.

“I just want to go home with you and Annabelle, and watch TV.”

“That's a deal. Now go get this thing over with, so we can forget all about it.” He tweaked her boob then, and she laughed. She wanted desperately for this to be over. And maybe he was right not to get excited about it, but for her, it was impossible not to. And she tried not to remember that he had never told her he would love her, even with her breast off.

They rolled her inexorably down the hall, and into a large elevator where people stepped aside and stared at her, wondering what was wrong with her, and why she was there, and pretended not to look at her. Her bright red hair lay across the pillow, and two men glanced at her, thinking that she was very pretty.

They reached the surgical floor then, and there was an overwhelming smell of antiseptics, and electric doors snapped open and closed, until suddenly she found herself in a small room that was filled with chrome and machinery and bright lights, and she recognized Peter Herman.

“Good morning, Mrs. Parker.” He didn't ask her how she was, he knew, as he touched her hand and tried to reassure her.

“We'll have you asleep very shortly, Mrs. Parker,” he said gently, which surprised her. He seemed right in his element here, and he seemed kinder to her than he had before. Or was it only that he had won, and he was doing what he wanted? Was Sam right? Was she wrong? Were they all crazy? Were they lying to her? Would she die? Where was Sam? …and Annabelle …her head was reeling as they stuck another needle in her other arm, and she thought she tasted garlic and then peanuts, and someone told her to count backwards from one hundred. She only reached ninety-nine, and then everything went black around her.





Chapter 6

Sam paced around the small claustrophobic blue room for almost an hour, until nine-thirty. He called his secretary, returned some calls, confirmed his lunch date with Simon. They had meetings with their attorneys that afternoon too. Simon was joining their partnership, bringing with him all his important connections, and very little money. His would be a limited partnership, and he would have a smaller percentage in the firm than Sam, Tom, or Larry. But he seemed satisfied with that for now. He said he could always buy in for more later, once he'd proven himself, and the business had grown as a result of his connections.