She settled the bottle back on the desk, her eyes growing narrow.
"Since you say his 'nurse' or assistant or whatever she was gave you
this, I suppose there's always the chance she made an innocent mistake.
But still, what's he doing with this stuff at all? They manufacture it
down in Mexico, and also, I've heard, somewhere in Central America, but
it's not approved in the U.S. Anybody who dispenses this to a patient
is putting their license at risk." She paused to give me one of those
looks. "Assuming Alex Goddard even has a medical license. These
'alternative medicine' types sometimes claim they answer to a higher
power, they're board-certified by God."
"I don't for a minute think it was an 'innocent mistake.' " I was
beginning to feel terribly betrayed and violated. I also was getting
mad as hell, my fingertips tingling. "But why would he give me these
drugs at all? Did he somehow--?"
"I think you'd better ask him," she said passing me a bagel piled high
with cream cheese and sturgeon.
She bit into her own bagel and for a while we both just chewed in
silence. I, however, had just lost all my appetite. Alex Goddard who
might well be my last chance for a baby, had just dispensed massive
doses of illegal drugs to me. Which, my longtime ob/gyn was warning me,
were both unnecessary and unethical.
"What do you think I should do?" I asked finally, breaking the silence
but barely able to get my voice out.
She didn't say anything. She'd finished her bagel, and now she'd begun
wrapping up the container of cream cheese, folding the wax paper back
over the remaining sturgeon. I thought her silent treatment was her way
of telling me my brunch consultation was over. She clearly was
exasperated with me.
"Let me tell you a story," she said finally, as she carefully began
putting the leftover sturgeon back into the Zabar's bag. "When I was
eight years old all the Jews in our Polish ghetto were starving because
the Nazis refused to give us food stamps. So my father bribed a Nazi
officer to let him go out into the countryside to try to buy some eggs
and flour, anything, just so we could eat. The farmer came that
Saturday morning in a horse-drawn wagon to pick up my father. At the
last minute, I asked to go with him and he let me. That night the Nazis
liquidated our entire ghetto, almost five thousand people. No one else
in my family survived. Not my mother, not my two sisters, not anyone."
Her voice had become totally dispassionate, matter-of-fact, as though
repression of the horror was the only way a sane person could deal with
it. She could just as easily have been describing a country outing as
she continued. I did notice, however, that her East European accent had
suddenly become very prominent, as though she was returning there in
her thoughts.
"When we learned what had happened, my father asked the farmer we were
visiting to go to a certain rural doctor we knew and beg him to give us
some poison, so we could commit suicide before the Nazis got us too.
The doctor, however, told him he had only enough poison for his own
family. He did, however, give him a prescription for us. But when my
father begged that farmer to go to a pharmacy and get the poison, he
and his entire family refused. Instead, they hid us in their barn for
over a year, even though they knew it meant a firing squad if the Nazis
found us." She glared at me. "Do you understand what I'm saying? They
told us that if we wanted to do something foolish because we were
desperate, we would have to do it without their help."
It was the first time I ever knew her real story. I was stunned.
"What, exactly, are you driving at?" I think I already knew. The long,
trusting relationship we'd shared was now teetering on the brink. By
going to see Alex Goddard--even if it was partly a research trip to
check him out--I had disappointed her terribly. She'd lost respect for
me. She thought I was desperate and about to embark on something
foolish.
"I'm saying do whatever you want." She got up and lifted her coat off
the corner rack. "But get those drugs out of here. I don't want them
anywhere near this office. I tried everything legal there was to get
you pregnant. If that wasn't good enough for you and now you want to go
to some quack, that's your affair. Let me just warn you that combining
gonadotropin and HMG Massone at these dosages is like putting your
ovaries on steroids; you get massive egg production for a couple of
cycles, but the long-term damage could be severe. I strongly advise you
against it, but if you insist and then start having complications, I
would appreciate not being involved."
Translation: If you start fooling around with Alex Goddard, don't ever
come back.
It felt like a dagger in my chest. What was I going to do? One thought:
Okay, so these drugs aren't the way, but you couldn't help me get
pregnant. All I did was spend twenty thousand dollars on futile
procedures. Not to mention the heartbreak.
"You know," I said finally, maybe a little sharply, "I think we ought
to be working together, not at cross-purposes."
"You're welcome to think what you like," she bristled. "But I have to
tell you I don't appreciate your tone."
I guess I'd really ticked her off, and it hurt to do it. Then, finally,
her own rejection of me was sinking in.
"So that's it? You're telling me if I try anything except exactly what
you want me to, then just don't ever come back."
"I've said all I intend to." She was resolutely ushering me toward the
door, her eyes abruptly blank.
Well, I told myself, going from anger to despair, then back to anger,
whatever else I might think about Alex Goddard, at least he doesn't
kick people out because of their problems, even a sad soul like Tara.
Still, what about these illegal drugs? There I was, caught in the
middle--between an honorable woman who had failed, and Alex Goddard,
who'd just lived up to my worst suspicions. Heading down in the
elevator, alone, I could still hear Hannah Klein's rejection, and
warning, ringing in my ears. Maybe she had just confirmed that still,
small voice of rationality lecturing me from the back of my mind.
I marched out onto the empty Sunday streets of upper Broadway, and when
I got to the corner, I stood for a long moment looking up at the
pitiless blue of the sky. The sun was there, but in my soul I felt all
the light was gone.
Finally I opened the first bottle and then, one by one, I began taking
out the gel-caps and dropping them into the rainwater grate there at my
feet, watching them bounce like the metal sphere in an old pinball
machine before disappearing into the darkness below. When both bottles
were empty, I tossed them into the wire trash basket I'd been standing
next to.
The next time I saw Alex Goddard, he was going to have a hell of a lot
of explaining to do. Beginning with why he'd given me a glimmer of
hope, only to then cruelly snatch it back. I found myself hating him
with all my being.