Foreign Body

Chapter 12

October 16, 2007

Wednesday, 1:15 a.m.

New York, USA

“Jack!” Laurie called. “Wake up!”

Laurie had turned the bedroom lights on but for Jack’s benefit had kept them at their dimmest. Since she’d been on the computer in the fully illuminated study, it seemed exceptionally dark.

“Come on, dear,” she continued. “Wake up! We have to talk.”

Jack was on his side, facing Laurie. She had no idea how long he’d been asleep, maybe almost two hours. Their usual evening routine was a light dinner after Jack’s run on the basketball court. While they ate, they watched half a DVD for an hour or so, the rest the next night, before tidying up. At about nine they generally moved into their double study that looked out over 106th Street and the neighborhood basketball court and the rest of the small park that Jack had paid to have renovated and lighted. At about ten Jack would invariably begin yawning, give Laurie a peck on the top of her head, and supposedly retire to bed to read. But in reality, not much reading ever got done. No matter what time Laurie might poke her head in, he’d invariably be asleep, sometimes with a book or a medical journal precariously propped on his chest and his bedside light ablaze.

“Jack!” Laurie called again. She knew it was going to be hard to wake him, but she was determined. She began to nudge his upper shoulder until she was shaking it. Still, he stayed asleep. Laurie had to smile. His sleeping ability was of Olympic caliber. Although in some situations she could find it frustrating, generally she found it a trait to envy. Laurie was a light sleeper until the morning hours, when she had to get up. Then she slept soundly.

Laurie gave a final good shake to Jack’s stocky shoulder and called out his name sharply. One eye, then the other, popped open. “What time is it?” he asked in a gravelly voice.

“It’s around one-fifteen, I think. We need to talk. Something has come up.” Initially, after Laurie had gotten off the phone with Jennifer, she wasn’t going to bother Jack. She assumed he was asleep, as he proved to be. What she’d done was go on the Internet to learn what she could about traveling to India, and she’d learned a lot.

“Is the house on fire?” he asked, with his usual sarcasm.

“No! Be serious. We have to talk.”

“It can’t wait until morning?”

“I suppose it could,” Laurie admitted. “But I wanted to give you a heads-up. You’ve warned me you don’t like surprises. Especially big surprises.”

“Are you pregnant?”

“I wish! But good guess. No, I’m not pregnant. Just a few moments ago I got a call from that young woman who’s graduating from UCLA medical school this coming June, Jennifer Hernandez. Do you remember her? She came to our wedding. She wore a luscious red dress. Can you picture it? She has one of the world’s best figures.”

“Jesus H. Christ,” Jack mumbled. “It’s almost midnight, and you woke me up so you can quiz me about what someone wore to our wedding? Give me a break!”

“The dress doesn’t matter. I’m just trying to get you to remember this medical student. She’s the one who spent the week at OCME when she was twelve, and also the one my mother and I got a scholarship for the same year.”

“Okay, I remember her,” Jack said, making it apparent he was lying. He was clearly much more interested in going back to sleep.

“She called me an hour or so ago from India. She’s there because her grandmother died after having surgery in New Delhi. The hospital is pressing her to decide how she wants to deal with the body.”

Jack lifted up his head, and his eyes opened wider. “India?”

“India,” Laurie repeated. She then told the whole story to Jack as Jennifer had related it to her. When she got to the end she added, “I don’t know if you’ll remember, but Maria Hernandez was my nanny until I was thirteen, and the only reason she stopped was because my own mother became too jealous. I was crushed at the time. I preferred Maria’s opinion to my mother’s, like with clothes and things. I loved that woman. She was a mother to me for a lot of crucial years. I used to sneak over to Woodside, Queens, to visit her.”

“Why did she go to India for her surgery?”

“I don’t know for sure. Probably mostly financial.”

“Do you really think there is some conspiracy here?” Jack asked in a skeptical tone.

“Of course not. I was supporting Jennifer because she seems to think so. If there’s a problem at this hospital, it’s undoubtedly some systems error. As far as the hospital putting pressure on Jennifer, I’m certain they are. The body has been in the cooler since Monday night, but it’s not even a mortuary cooler. It sounds like mostly an overflow storage cooler for the cafeteria.”

“You mean there’s food in with the corpse?”

“That’s the story. And it is the other way around. It’s more accurate to say the corpse is in with the food and some medical supplies. But it’s sealed food, which sounds worse than it is. Anyway, Jennifer is thinking there might be some sort of conspiracy involved.”

“That’s crazy! I think Ms. Jennifer Hernandez might be in a tiny bit over her head and a touch paranoid because of it.”

“I couldn’t agree more, which is one of the reasons you and I hopefully will be heading over there tonight.”

“Come again?” Jack asked. He thought he’d heard but wasn’t sure.

“First thing tomorrow morning I’m going to head into Calvin’s office. What I’m hoping is that this emergency will justify him giving us a week or so off together. If he gives the green light, I’ll go directly over to the organization that handles Indian visas, then I’ll pay for our tickets, which I have already reserved online. Then I’ll—”

“Wait a sec!” Jack said. He sat up and drew the blankets around his waist. The eyes were wide open now. “Hold your horses. Have you already committed us to this journey halfway around the world?”

“If you mean have I told Jennifer we’re going to make every effort to come, then the answer is yes. I told her we had to get clearance from Calvin.”

“Because a grieving young girl has become paranoid under stress is hardly justification to fly umpteen thousand miles to hold her hand.”

“Giving Jennifer our support is not the only reason we are going,” Laurie responded, her ire rising.

“Run by me another reason!”

“I told you!” Laurie spat. “Maria Hernandez was like a mother to me for twelve years. Her passing is a true loss.”

“If it’s that much of a loss, how come you haven’t seen her since God knows when?”

Laurie saw red and for a second didn’t say anything. Jack’s comment made the growing confrontation much worse, as it effectively fanned Laurie’s guilt. It was true she hadn’t visited or even talked with Maria for a very long time. She’d thought about it and meant to do it but hadn’t.

“I’m on a deadline about my research paper,” Jack said. “And we have a neighborhood b-ball game on Saturday that I’ve been anticipating for weeks. Hell, I helped arrange it.”

“Shut up about the stupid basketball,” Laurie roared. She gritted her teeth and snarled at Jack. Like a volcano, all the resentment bubbling below the surface about the stress of infertility treatment emerged like a pyroclastic explosion. She also hated the fact that he continued to play basketball, which she thought was a dangerous game.

Jack was the first to remember that Laurie was currently undergoing daily injections of hormones, and although he actually had no inkling Laurie had been harboring resentment about his attitude, which he had had the delusion was fine, he had already experienced a number of surprising hormone-induced outbursts from Laurie, which she was plainly having at the moment. Recognizing this reality, he raised his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry,” he said, trying to sound sincere. “I forgot about the hormones.”

For a brief moment Jack’s comment made things worse. Irrationally, Laurie thought Jack was merely trying to blame the current disagreement on her. But as she thought more about it, she could see the similarities between her current state of mind and when she’d torn into the eightysomething grandmother at the checkout counter at Whole Foods. A second later, the insight caused her to burst into tears.

Jack moved over to the side of the bed and put his arm around her. For a moment he didn’t say anything. From past trial-and-error experience, he knew it was the best thing to do. He had to wait for her to calm herself.

After a minute or so Laurie reined in her tears. Her eyes were bright red and watery when she looked at Jack. “You really haven’t been supporting me with this infertility stuff!”

Jack had to fight to resist rolling his eyes. From his perspective, he’d tried to do everything, and there wasn’t anything else for him to do except provide the sperm when required.

“When I get my period each cycle, you are so damn blasé,” Laurie said, choking back tears. “You just say, ‘Oh, well, maybe next time,’ and that’s it. You make no effort to mourn with me. For you it’s just another cycle.”

“I thought I was helping by making an effort to be nonchalant. Frankly, it would be easier to express despondency. But I never imagined that could be a help. I distinctly remember Dr. Schoener saying so herself. Hell, it’s the indifference I have to manufacture.”

“Really?” Laurie questioned.

“Really,” Jack said, as he brushed some strands of damp auburn hair away from her forehead. “And about India. I have nothing against you going, I don’t know Maria Hernandez or her granddaughter, Jennifer. For me, flying halfway around the world just doesn’t make sense for the time or the money, but mostly the money. Of course, I’ll miss you, and I would go if you needed me.”

“Are you just saying that?” Laurie questioned.

“No. If you needed me, I’d go. That’s for certain but—”

“I do need you,” Laurie said, with sudden enthusiasm. “You are indispensable.”

“Really?” Jack said. His bushy eyebrows knitted together questioningly. “I can’t imagine how.”

“The cycle, silly,” Laurie said excitedly. “Yesterday Dr. Schoener thought it would only be four or five days before I give myself the stimulating shot and follicular release will occur. At that point it will be your turn at bat.”

Jack exhaled fully. In his mind the infertility issue had not meshed with the proposed trip to India.

“Don’t look so glum. Maybe we should count on dispensing with the turkey-baster part and do it the real way. But I’ll tell you something, with the effort and stress involved, I’m not going to have you sitting here and me in India when this current crop of follicles bursts. Dr. Schoener is particularly optimistic because the left ovary fronting my good fallopian tube is the one that’s going great guns this time around.”

Lifting his arm from Laurie’s shoulder and sitting back against the headboard, Jack said, “Looks like we’re in for a quick trip to India, provided our fearless second-in-command lets us go. Maybe I can bribe him to say no!”

Laurie playfully swatted Jack’s thigh through the covers as she got up. “I just had a good idea. Since I’m going to need an ob-gyn consult to follow my follicles and do my blood work, maybe I can find one in the same hospital, the Queen Victoria. It might be helpful with Jennifer’s problem if we had a friend on the hospital staff.”

“Could be,” Jack said, as he shimmied down under the covers and then pulled them up around his neck. “A question about logistics: If we need visas, we’ll be needing passport photos.”

“In the morning we can use that all-night shop with the photo section up on Columbus Avenue.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Jack said, after taking a deep breath and letting it out noisily.

“Are you going back to sleep?”

“Of course I’m going back to sleep. What else am I going to do after midnight?”

“I wish I could sleep like you can. The problem is, now I’ve gotten myself all worked up.”