Book 16: Handle With Care

• A short synopsis
• Read an excerpt

Synopsis:

When Charlotte and Sean O’Keefe’s daughter, Willow, is born with severe osteogenesis imperfecta, they are devastated – she will suffer hundreds of broken bones as she grows, a lifetime of pain. As the family struggles to make ends meet to cover Willow’s medical expenses, Charlotte thinks she has found an answer. If she files a wrongful birth lawsuit against her ob/gyn for not telling her in advance that her child would be born severely disabled, the monetary payouts might ensure a lifetime of care for Willow. But it means that Charlotte has to get up in a court of law and say in public that she would have terminated the pregnancy if she’d known about the disability in advance – words that her husband can’t abide, that Willow will hear, and that Charlotte cannot reconcile. And the ob/gyn she’s suing isn’t just her physician – it’s her best friend.

explores the knotty tangle of medical ethics and personal morality. When faced with the reality of a fetus who will be disabled, at which point should an OB counsel termination? Should a parent have the right to make that choice? How handicapped is TOO handicapped? And as a parent, how far would you go to take care of someone you love? Would you alienate the rest of your family? Would you be willing to lie to your friends, to your spouse, to a court? And perhaps most difficult of all – would you admit to yourself that you might not actually be lying?

When Charlotte and Sean O’Keefe’s daughter, Willow, is born with severe osteogenesis imperfecta, they are devastated – she will suffer hundreds of broken bones as she grows, a lifetime of pain. As the family struggles to make ends meet to cover Willow’s medical expenses, Charlotte thinks she has found an answer. If she files a wrongful birth lawsuit against her ob/gyn for not telling her in advance that her child would be born severely disabled, the monetary payouts might ensure a lifetime of care for Willow. But it means that Charlotte has to get up in a court of law and say in public that she would have terminated the pregnancy if she’d known about the disability in advance – words that her husband can’t abide, that Willow will hear, and that Charlotte cannot reconcile. And the ob/gyn she’s suing isn’t just her physician – it’s her best friend.

Handle With Care explores the knotty tangle of medical ethics and personal morality. When faced with the reality of a fetus who will be disabled, at which point should an OB counsel termination? Should a parent have the right to make that choice? How disabled is TOO disabled? And as a parent, how far would you go to take care of someone you love? Would you alienate the rest of your family? Would you be willing to lie to your friends, to your spouse, to a court? And perhaps most difficult of all – would you admit to yourself that you might not actually be lying?

An excerpt from Handle With Care:

February 2005

Amelia

My whole life, I’ve never been on a vacation. 
I’ve never even left New Hampshire, unless you count
the time that we flew to Nebraska – and even you have
to admit that sitting in a hospital room for three days
watching really old Tom and Jerry cartoons while you get
your Pamidronate infusion is nothing like going to a beach
or SeaWorld or the Grand Canyon.  So you can imagine how
excited I was when I found out that my family was planning
to go to Disneyworld.   We would go during February school
vacation.  We’d stay at a hotel that had a monorail
running right through the middle of it.  
	Mom began to make a list of the rides we would go on. 
It’s a Small World, and Dumbo’s Flying Circus,
Peter Pan’s ride.  
	“Those are for babies,” I complained.
	“Those are the ones that are safe,” she
said. 
	“Space Mountain,” I suggested.
	“Pirates of the Caribbean,” she answered.
	“Great,” I yelled.  “I get to go on
the first vacation of my life, and I won’t even have
any fun.”  Then I stormed off to our room, and even
though I wasn’t downstairs anymore, I could pretty
much imagine what our parents were saying:  There Amelia
goes, being difficult again.  
	It’s funny, when things like this happen (which
is, like, always) Mom isn’t the one who tries to iron
out the mess.  She’s too busy making sure you’re
all right, so the task falls to Dad.  Ah, see, there’s
something else that I’m jealous about:  he’s
your real Dad, but he’s only my stepfather.  I
don’t even know my real dad; he and my mother split up
before I was even born, and she swears that his absence is
the best gift he could ever have given me.  But Sean adopted
me, and he acts like he loves me just as much as much as he
loves you – even though there’s this black,
jagged splinter in my mind that constantly reminds me this
couldn’t possibly be true.
	Meel, he said, when he came into my room (he’s the
only one I’d ever let call me that in a million years;
it makes me think of the worms that get into flour and ruin
it, but not when Dad says it), “I know you’re
ready for the big rides.  But we’re trying to make
sure that Willow has a good time too.”
	Because when Willow’s having a good time,
we’re all having a good time.  
	He didn’t have to say it, but I heard it all the
same.
	“We just want to be a family on vacation,”
he said.
	I hesitated.  “The teacup ride,” I heard
myself say.
	Dad said he’d go to bat for me, and even though
Mom was dead set against it – what if you smacked up
against the thick plaster wall of the teacup? – he
convinced her that we could whirl around in circles with you
wedged between us, so that you wouldn’t get hurt. 
Then he grinned at me, so proud of himself to have
negotiated this deal that I didn’t have the heart to
tell him I really couldn’t care less about the teacup
ride.
	The reason it had popped into my head was because a few
years ago, I’d seen a certain commercial for
Disneyworld on TV.  It showed Tinkerbell floating like a
mosquito through the Magic Kingdom over the heads of the
insanely cheery visitors.  There was one family that had two
daughters, the same age as you and me, and they were on the
Mad Hatter’s teacup ride.  I couldn’t take my
eyes off them – the older daughter even had brown
hair, like me; and if you squinted the father looked a lot
like Dad.  The family seemed so happy it made my stomach
hurt to watch it.  I knew that the people on the commercial
probably weren’t even a real family – that the
mom and dad were probably two single actors, that they had
most likely met their fake daughters that very morning as
they arrived on set to shoot the commercial – but I
wanted them to be one.  I wanted to believe they were
laughing, smiling, even as they were spinning out of
control.
    ·   ·   ·   ·   ·   ·
  Pick ten strangers and stick them in a room, and ask them
which one of us they feel sorrier for – you or me
– and we all know who they’ll choose. 
It’s kind of hard to look past your casts and the
funny twitch of your hips when you walk and that part of
your right arm that’s supposed to be straight curves
in a half-circle.  I’m not saying that you’ve
had it easy.  It’s just that I have it worse, because
every time I think my life sucks, I look at you and hate
myself even more for thinking my life sucks in the first
place.
	Here’s a snapshot of what it’s like to be
me:
	Amelia, don’t jump on the bed, you’ll hurt
Willa.
	Amelia, how many times have I told you not to leave your
socks on the floor, because Willa could trip over them?
	Amelia, turn off the TV (although I’ve only
watched a half hour, and you’ve been staring at it
like a zombie for five hours straight).
	I know how selfish this makes me sound, but then again,
knowing something’s true doesn’t keep you from
feeling it.  And I may only be eleven, but believe me -
that’s long enough to know that our family isn’t
the same as other families; and never will be.  
	Case in point:  what family packs a whole extra suitcase
full of Ace bandages and waterproof casts, just in case? 
What mom spends days researching the hospitals in Orlando? 
It was the day we were leaving; and as Dad loaded up the
car, you and I sat at the kitchen table, playing Rock Paper
Scissors.   “Shoot,” I said, and we both threw
scissors.  I should have known better; you always threw
scissors.  “Shoot,” I said again, and this time
I threw rock.  “Rock breaks scissors,” I said,
bumping my fist on top of your hand.  
	“Careful,” Mom said, even though she was
facing in the opposite direction.  
	“I win.”
	“You always win.”
	I laughed at you. “That’s because you always
throw scissors.”
	“Leonardo da Vinci invented the scissors,”
you said.  You were, in general, full of information no one
else knew or cared about, because you read all the time, or
surfed the net, or listened to shows on the History Channel
that put me to sleep.  It freaked people out, to come across
a four year old who knew that toilets flushed in the key of
Eb, or that the oldest word in the English language is town,
but Mom said that lots of kids with osteogenesis imperfecta
were early readers with advanced verbal skills.  I figured
it was like a muscle:  your brain got used more than the
rest of your body, which was always breaking down; no wonder
you sounded like a little Einstein.
	“Do I have everything?” Mom asked, but she
was talking to herself.  For the bazillionth time she ran
through a checklist.  “The letter,” she said,
and then she turned to me.  “Amelia, we need the
doctor’s note.”
	It was a letter from Dr. Rosenblad, saying the obvious: 
that you had OI, that you were treated by him at
Children’s Hospital.  It was in the glove compartment
of the van, next to the registration and the owner’s
manual from Toyota, plus a torn map of Massachusetts, a
Jiffy Lube receipt, and a piece of gum that had lost its
wrapper and grown furry.  I’d done the inventory once
when my mother was paying for gas.
	“If it’s in the van, why can’t you
just get it when we drive to the airport?”
	“Because I’ll forget,” Mom said, as
Dad walked in.
	“We’re locked and loaded,” he said. 
“What do you say, Willow?  Should we go visit
Mickey?”
	You gave him a big silly grin, as if Mickey Mouse was
real and not just some teenage girl wearing a big plastic
head for her summer job.  “Mickey Mouse’s
birthday is November 18th,” you announced, as he
helped you crawl down from the chair.  
	Mom frowned over her list one last time.  “Sean,
did you pack the Motrin?”
“Two bottles.”
“And the camera?”
	“Shoot, I left it on the dresser upstairs
–“ He turned to me.  “Sweetie, can you
grab it while I put Willow in the car?”
	I nodded and ran upstairs.  When I came down, camera in
hand, my mother was standing alone in the kitchen turning in
a slow circle, as if she didn’t know what to do
without Willow by her side.   She turned off the lights and
locked the front door, and I bounded over to the van.  I
handed the camera to Dad and buckled myself in beside your
car seat, and let myself admit that as dorky as it was to be
eleven years old and excited about Disneyworld, I was.  I
was thinking about sunshine and Disney songs and monorails
and not at all about the letter from Dr. Rosenblad.
	Which means, in the long run, that everything that
happened was my fault.
    ·   ·   ·   ·   ·   ·
  	We didn’t even make it to the stupid teacups.  We
had just gotten through the front gates of the theme park
and onto Main Street USA – Cinderella’s Castle
in full view – when the perfect storm happened.  You
said you were hungry and we turned into an old-time ice
cream parlor.  Dad stood in line holding your hand while Mom
brought napkins over to the table where I was sitting. 
“Look,” I said, pointing out Goofy, pumping the
hand of a screaming toddler.  At exactly the same moment
that Mom let one napkin flutter to the ground and Dad let go
of your hand to take out his wallet, you hurried to the
window to see what I wanted to show you, and you slipped on
the tiny paper square.  
	We all watched it in slow motion, the way your legs
simply gave out from underneath you, so that you sat down
hard on your bottom.  You looked up at us, and the whites of
your eyes flashed blue, the way they always do when you
break.
    ·   ·   ·   ·   ·   ·
  	It was almost like the people at Disneyworld had been
expecting this to happen.  No sooner had Mom told the man
scooping ice cream that you’d broken your leg than two
men from their medical facility came with a stretcher.  With
Mom giving orders, the way she always does around doctors,
they managed to get you onto it.  You weren’t crying,
but then, you hardly ever did when you broke something. 
Once, I had broken my pinky playing tetherball at school and
I couldn’t stop freaking out when it turned bright red
and blew up like a balloon; but you didn’t even cry
the time you’d broken your arm right through the skin.
 
	“Doesn’t it hurt?” I whispered, as
they lifted up the stretcher so that it suddenly grew
wheels.  
	You were biting your lower lip, and you nodded.
	It was Saturday night, and the people coming into the
emergency room were much more interesting that the TV
program that was playing.  There were two kids who looked
like they were the right age for college, both bleeding from
the same spot on their foreheads and laughing every time
they looked at each other.  There was an old man wearing
sequined pants and holding the right side of his stomach,
and a girl who only spoke Spanish and was carrying screaming
twin babies.  
	Suddenly, Mom burst out of the double doors to the
right, with a nurse running after her, and another woman in
a skinny pinstriped skirt and red high heels.  “The
letter,” she cried.  “Sean, what did you do with
it?”
	“What letter?” Dad asked, but I already knew
what she was talking about.
	“Mrs. O’Keefe,” the woman said,
“please.  Let’s do this somewhere more
private.”
	She touched Mom’s arm, and – well, the only
way I can really describe it is that Mom just folded in
half.  Dad wrapped himself around her, and the nurse led
them to another empty room, a smaller one, with a tattered
red couch and a little oval table and fake flowers in a
vase.  There was a picture on the wall of two pandas, and I
stared at it while the woman in the skinny skirt – her
name was Donna Roman, and she was from the Department of
Children and Families - talked to our parents.  “Dr.
Rice has some concerns about Willow,” she said. 
“Apparently, this wasn’t her first break?”
	“Willow’s got osteogenesis
imperfecta,” Dad said.
	“I already told her,” Mom answered.
“She didn’t listen.”
	“Without a physician’s statement,” the
woman said, “we have to look into this further. 
It’s just protocol, to protect children –“
	“I’d like to protect my child,” Mom
said, her voice sharp as a razor.  “I’d like you
to let me get back in there so I can do just that.”
	“From what I understand, Dr. Rice is trying to
reach your daughter’s physician.  But since it’s
Saturday night, he’s having trouble making contact. 
So in the meantime, I’d like to get you to sign
releases that will allow us to do a full examination on
Willow ---”
	“Ms. Roman,” Dad interrupted. 
“I’m a police officer.  You can’t really
believe I’d lie to you?”
	The woman just blinked at him.  “I’ve
already spoken to your wife, Mr. O’Keefe, and
I’m going to want to speak to you too…but first
I’d like to talk to Willow’s sister.”
	My mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out of it. 
Mom was staring at me as if she was trying to do ESP. 
“You must be Amelia,” the woman said. 
“Why don’t we take a walk?”  	She took
me to the candy machine at the far end of the emergency room
hallway.  “What would you like?” she asked. 
“Me, I’m a chocolate fiend, but maybe
you’re more of a potato chip girl?”
	She was so much nicer to me when my parents
weren’t sitting there – I immediately pointed to
a Snickers bar.  “I guess this isn’t quite what
you’d hoped your vacation would be, huh?  Does this
happen a lot?”
	“Sure,” I said.  “Willow breaks bones
all the time.”
	“Where does it usually happen?”
	“At home, mostly.”
	“And who’s home when it happens?”
	“My parents,” I said.  It was a stupid
question – one of them was always with you. 
	“Who was with Willow this time?”
	I thought back to the ice cream counter, to Dad, holding
your hand.  “My father.”
	“Was he upset?”
	I remembered his tight face as we sped toward the
hospital. His fists, balanced on his thighs as we waited for
word about Willow’s latest break.  “I guess
so.”
	“Do you think he did this because he was angry at
Willow?”
	Suddenly, I realized what she thought I’d meant. 
“My dad wasn’t mad at Willow,” I said. 
“It was an accident!”
	She sighed.  “Accidents like that don’t have
to happen.”
	“You don’t understand –“
	By now she was walking back toward the room where my
parents were.  “Mr. and Mrs. O’Keefe,”
Donna Roman said, “we’re putting your children
into protective custody.”
	Mom threw her arms around me.  “Protective
custody?”
	With a firm hand – and the help of the police
officer – Donna tried to peel her away from me. 
“We’re just keeping the children safe,”
she said, “until we can get this all cleared up. 
Willow will be here overnight.”  She started to steer
me out of the room, but I grabbed at the door frame.  
	“Mommy,” I yelled.  
	“Where are you taking my daughter?” 
	“Come on, sweetheart,” Donna Roman said, and
she pulled at my hands until I had to let go, until I was
being dragged out of the hospital kicking and screaming.  I
did this for five minutes, until I went totally numb.  Until
I understood why you didn’t cry, even though it hurt: 
there were kinds of pain you couldn’t speak out loud.
    ·   ·   ·   ·   ·   ·
  	I’d heard the words foster home before, in books
that I read and television programs I’d watched.  I
figured that they were for orphans and inner-city kids, kids
whose parents were drug dealers -- not girls like me who
lived in nice houses and got plenty of Christmas presents
and never went to sleep hungry.  As it turned out, though,
Mrs. Ward, who ran this temporary foster home, could have
been an ordinary mom.  I guess she had been one, from the
photos that plastered every surface, like wallpaper.  She
met us at the door wearing a red bathrobe and slippers that
looked like pink pigs.  “You must be Amelia,”
she said, and she opened the door a little wider.
	I was expecting a posse of kids, but it turned out that
I was the only one staying with Mrs. Ward.  She took me into
the kitchen, which smelled like dishwashing detergent and
boiled noodles.  She set a glass of milk and a stack of Oreo
cookies in front of me.  “You’re probably
starving,” she said, and even though I was, I shook my
head.  I didn’t want to take anything from her; it
felt like giving in.  
	My bedroom had a dresser, a small bed, and a comforter
with cherries printed all over it.  There was a television,
and a remote next to the bed.  My parents would never let me
have a television in my room; my mother said it was the Root
of All Evil.  I told Mrs. Ward that and she laughed. 
“Maybe so,” she said, “but then again,
sometimes The Simpsons are the best medicine.”  She
opened a drawer and took out a clean towel and a nightgown
that was a couple of sizes too big.  I wondered where it had
come from.  I wondered how long the last girl who’d
worn it had slept in this bed.
	“I’m right down the hall if you need
me,” Mrs. Ward said.  “Is there anything else I
can get you?”
	My mother.  
	My father.
	You.
	Home.  
	“Are my parents…are they in a foster home
too?”
	She hesitated. “Something like that.”  
	“I want to see Willow.”
	“First thing tomorrow,” Mrs. Ward said.  
	I lay down, and tried to remember the useless bits of
information you’d rattle off before we went to sleep,
when I was always telling you to just shut up already: 
Frogs have to close their eyes to swallow.  One pencil can
draw a line thirty-five miles long.  Cleveland, spelled
backward, is DNA level C.
	I was still hungry, or empty, I couldn’t tell
which.  After Mrs. Ward had gone to her own bedroom I
tiptoed out of bed.  I turned the light on in the hallway
and went down to the kitchen.  There, I opened up the
refrigerator and let the light and cold fall over my bare
feet.  I stared at lunch meat, sealed into plastic packages;
at a jumble of apples and peaches in a bin; at cartons of
orange juice and milk lined up like soldiers.  When I
thought I heard a creak upstairs, I grabbed whatever I
could:  a loaf of bread, a Tupperware of cooked spaghetti, a
handful of those Oreos.  I ran back to my room and closed
the door, spread my treasure out on the sheets in front of
me.
At first, it was just the Oreos.  But then my stomach
rumbled and I ate all the spaghetti – with my fingers,
because I had no fork.  I had a piece of bread and another
and then another and before I knew it only the plastic
wrapper was left.  What is wrong with you, I thought,
catching my reflection in the mirror.  Who eats a whole loaf
of bread?  The outside of me was disgusting enough –
boring brown hair that frizzed with crummy weather; eyes too
far apart, that crooked front tooth, enough fat to
muffin-top my jean shorts – but the inside of me was
even worse. I pictured it as a big black hole, like the
kinds we learned about in science last year, that suck
everything into their center.  A vacuum of nothingness, my
teacher had called it.
Everything that had ever been good and kind in me,
everything people imagined me to be, had been poisoned by
the part of me that had wished, in the darkest crack of the
night, that I could have a different life.  The real me was
the kind of disgusting person who imagined a life where you
had never been born.  The real me had watched you being
loaded into an ambulance and had let myself wish, for a half
a second, that I could stay at the theme park.   The real me
was could eat a whole loaf of bread in ten minutes and still
have room for more.
I hated myself.
I could not tell you what made me go into the bathroom that
was attached to my room and stick my finger down my throat. 
Rats can’t throw up, you’d told me once; it
popped into my head now.  With one hand holding up my hair,
I vomited into the toilet, until I was flushed and sweating
and empty and relieved to learn that, yes, I could do this
one thing right, even if it made me feel even worse than I
had before.  
Weak and wobbly, I stumbled back to my borrowed bed and
reached for the television remote.  My eyes felt like
sandpaper and my throat ached, but I flipped through the
channels.  Suddenly that old Disneyworld commercial came on.
 It felt like a punch in the gut: there was Tinkerbell,
there were the happy people; there was the family that could
have been us on the teacup ride.  
	What if my parents never came back?
	What if you didn’t get better?
	What if I had to stay here forever?
	When I started to sob, I stuffed the corner of the
pillow deep into my mouth so Mrs. Ward wouldn’t hear. 
I hit the mute button on the television, and I watched the
family at Disneyworld going round in circles.
 
Sean

It’s funny, isn’t it, how you can be one hundred
percent sure of your opinion on something until it happens
to you.  Like arresting someone – people who
aren’t in law enforcement think it’s appalling
to know that even with probable cause, mistakes are made. 
If that’s the case, you unarrest the person, and tell
him you were just doing what you had to.  Better that than
take the risk of letting a criminal walk free, I’ve
always said, and to hell with civil libertarians who
wouldn’t know a perp if one spit in their faces.  This
was what I believed, heart and soul, until about an hour ago
when I was carted down to the Lake Buena Vista PD on
suspicion of child abuse.  One look at your x-rays, at the
dozens of healing fractures, and the doctors went ballistic
and called DCF.  Dr. Rosenblad had given us a note years ago
that should have served as a Get Out Of Jail Free card
– and as far as I know, Charlotte’s always
carried it around in the minivan, just in case.  But today,
with everything we had to remember to pack for the trip, the
letter was forgotten, and what we got instead was a police
interrogation.
	“This is bullshit,” I yelled.  I’d
been alternating between playing good cop and bad cop, but
as it turned out, neither worked when you were up against
another officer from an unfamiliar jurisdiction.  I
hadn’t seen Charlotte since they’d brought us to
the station to be questioned – in cases like this,
we’d separate the parents so that they had less of a
chance to fabricate a story.  The problem was, even the
truth sounded crazy.  A kid slips on a napkin and winds up
with compound fractures in both femurs?  You don’t
need nineteen years on the force, like me, to be suspicious
of that one.  
	“Mr. O’Keefe,” the detective said.
“Let’s go through this again.”
	“I want to see my wife.”
	“That’s not possible right now.”
	“I want to make a phone call.”
	“You’re not under arrest,” the
detective said.
	I laughed.  “Yeah, right.”  
	He gestured toward the phone in the middle of the desk. 
“Dial nine for an outside line,” he said, and he
leaned back in his chair and folded his arms, as if to make
it clear that he wasn’t giving me any privacy.
	“You know the number for the hospital where my
daughter’s being kept?”
	“You can’t call her.”
	“Why not?  I’m not under arrest,” I
repeated.
	“It’s late. No good parent would want to
wake his kid up.  But then you’re not a good parent,
are you, Sean?”
	“No good parent would leave his kid alone at a
hospital when she’s scared and hurt,” I
countered.  “I’m not saying another word until I
talk to her.  Give me that number and I’ll tell you
what really happened today.”
	He stared at me for a minute, then picked up the phone
and dialed.  He asked for your room, and talked quietly to a
nurse who answered.   Then he handed the receiver to me. 
“You have one minute,” he said.
	You were groggy, shaken awake by that nurse.  Your voice
sounded small enough for me to carry around in my back
pocket.  “Willow,” I said.  “It’s
Daddy.”
	“Where are you?”
	“We’re coming back for you, honey. 
We’re going to see you tomorrow, first thing.” 
I cleared my throat.  “Tell me something I don’t
know, baby.”  
	It was a game between us.  Honestly, I’d never
seen a kid absorb information like you.  Your body might
betray you at every turn, but your brain picked up the
slack.  
	“A nurse told me that a giraffe’s heart
weighs twenty-five pounds,” you said. 
“That’s huge,” I replied.  How heavy was
my own?  “Now, Wills, I want you to
	lie down and get a good night’s rest, so that
you’re wide awake when I come get you in the
morning.”
	“You promise?”
	I swallowed.  “You bet, baby.  Sleep tight,
okay?”  I handed the phone back to the detective.
	“How touching,” he said flatly, hanging it
up.  “All right, I’m listening.”
	I rested my elbows on the table between us.  “We
had just gotten into the park, and there was an ice cream
place close to the entry.  Willow was hungry, so we decided
we’d stop off there.  My wife went to get napkins,
Amelia sat down at a table, and Willow and I were waiting in
line.  Her sister saw something through the window, and
Willow ran to go look at it, and she fell down and broke her
femurs.  These three breaks would be her twenty-fifth,
twenty-sixth, and twenty-seventh.  She’s got a disease
called osteogenesis imperfecta, which means her bones are
extremely brittle.  One in twenty thousand kids are born
with it.   What the fuck else do you want to know?”
	“That’s exactly the statement you gave an
hour ago.”  The detective threw down his pen. 
“I thought you were going to tell me what
happened.”
	“I did,” I said.  “I just didn’t
tell you what you wanted to hear.”
	The detective stood up.  “Sean
O’Keefe,” he said, “You’re under
arrest.”
    ·   ·   ·   ·   ·   ·
  By seven AM on Sunday morning, I was pacing in the waiting
room of the police station, a free man, waiting for
Charlotte to be released.  The desk sergeant who let me out
of the lockup shuffled beside me, uncomfortable. 
“I’m sure you understand,” he said. 
“Given the circumstances, we were only doing our
job.”
	My jaw tightened.  “Where’s my older
daughter?”
	“DCF is on their way here with her.”
	Suddenly a door opened, and I could see Charlotte
– dazed, pale, her brown curls tumbling out of her
ponytail elastic. She was blistering the officer escorting
her:  “If Amelia isn’t back here before I count
to ten, I swear I’ll –“ 
	God, I love your mother.  She and I think exactly alike,
when it counts.
	Then she noticed me, and broke off.  “Sean!”
she cried, and ran into my arms.  
	She smelled like apples and suntan lotion.  She’d
made us all put it on before we even left the Orlando
airport.  To be safe, she’d said.  
	There was cry from the doorway, and we both looked up in
time to see Amelia barreling toward us.  “I
forgot,” she sobbed.  “Mom, I forgot to take the
doctor’s note.  I’m sorry.  I’m so
sorry.”
	“It’s not anyone’s fault,” I
said, pointedly looking at the desk sergeant. 
“Let’s get out of here.”
	The desk sergeant had offered to drive us to the
hospital in a cruiser, but I asked him to call us a cab
instead.  “To the hospital,” I told the driver,
and I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the
padded seat.
	“Thank God,” your mother said.  “Thank
God that’s over.”
	I didn’t even open my eyes.  “It’s not
over,” I said. “Someone is going to pay.” 


Charlotte

Suffice it to say that the trip home wasn’t a pleasant
one.  You had been put into a spica cast – surely one
of the biggest torture devices ever created by doctors.  It
was a half shell of plaster that covered you from knee to
ribs.  You were in a semi-reclined position, because
that’s what your bones needed to knit together.  The
cast kept your legs splayed wide so that the femurs would
set correctly.  Here’s what we were told:
You would wear this cast for several months.
Then it would be sliced in half, and you would spend weeks
sitting in it like an oyster on the half shell, trying to
rebuild your stomach muscles so that you could sit upright
again.	
The small square cut out of the plaster at your belly would
allow your stomach to expand while you ate.
The open gash between your legs was left so you could go to
the bathroom.
Here’s what we were not told:
You wouldn’t be able to sit completely upright, or lie
completely down.
You couldn’t fly back to New Hampshire.
You couldn’t even lie down in the back of a normal
car.
You wouldn’t be able to sit in your wheelchair.
Your clothes wouldn’t fit over the cast.
Because of all these things, we did not leave Florida
immediately.  We rented a Suburban, with three full bench
seats, and settled Amelia in the middle.  You had the whole
rear bench, and we padded this with blankets we’d
bought at Wal*Mart.  There we’d also bought
men’s t-shirts and boxer shorts – the elastic
waists could stretch over the cast and be belted with a hair
scrunchie if you pulled the extra fabric to the side, and if
you didn’t look too closely, they almost passed for
shorts.  They were not fashionable, but they covered up your
crotch, which was left wide open by the position of the
cast.
	Then we started the long drive home.
You slept; the painkillers they’d given you at the
hospital were still swimming through your blood.  Amelia
alternated between doing word search puzzles and asking if
we were almost home yet.  We ate at drive-through
restaurants, because you couldn’t sit up at a table.  
Seven hours into our drive, Amelia shifted in the back seat.
 “You know how Mrs. Grey always makes us write a short
story about the stuff we did over vacation?  I’m going
to write about you guys trying to figure out how to get
Willow onto the toilet to pee.”
“Don’t you dare,” I said.  
“Well, if I don’t, my short story’s going
to be really short.”
	“We could make the rest of the trip fun,” I
suggested at one point.  “Stop off at
Graceland…or Washington D.C …”
	“Or we could just drive straight through and be
done with it,” Sean said.
I glanced at him.  In the dark, a green band of light from
the dashboard reflected like a mask around his eyes.  
“Could we go to the White House?” Amelia asked,
perking up.
I imagined the hothouse of humidity that Washington would
be; I pictured us lugging Willow around on our hips as we
climbed the steps to the Air and Space Museum.  Out the
window, the black road was a ribbon that kept unraveling in
front of us. “Your father’s right,” I
said.
    ·   ·   ·   ·   ·   ·
  People ask all the time how I’m doing; but the truth
is, they don’t really want to know.  They look at your
casts – camouflage or hot pink or neon orange.  They
watch me unload the car and set up your walker, with its
tennis-ball feet, so that we can slowly creep across the
sidewalk while behind us, their children swing from monkey
bars and play dodge-ball and all the other ordinary things
that would cause you to break.  They smile at me, because
they want to be polite or politically correct; but the whole
time they are thinking, Thank God.  Thank God it was her,
instead of me.
	Your father says that I’m not being fair, when I
say things like this.  That some people, when they ask,
really do want to lend a hand.  I tell him that if they
really wanted to lend a hand, they wouldn’t bring
macaroni casseroles – instead they’d offer to
take Amelia apple-picking or ice-skating so that she can get
out of the house when you can’t; or they’d rake
the gutters of the house that are always clogging up after a
storm.  And if they truly wanted to be saviors, they’d
call the insurance company and spend four hours on the
phone, so I wouldn’t have to.  But Sean says I’m
being a martyr.
	Sean doesn’t realize that most people who offer
their help do it to make themselves feel better, not us.  To
be honest, I don’t blame them.  It’s
superstition:  if you offer assistance to the family in
need…if you throw salt over your shoulder…if
you don’t step on the cracks…then maybe
you’ll be immune.  Maybe you’ll be able to
convince yourself that this could never happen to you.
	I suppose I used to think that too, but then I’d
look at you, sleeping semi-upright in this spica cast, or
stifling the urge to scratch the itch underneath the
plaster.  The last time you broke your leg, you were just as
brave.  I remember you inched one foot in front of the
other, your teeth caught your lower lip in concentration. 
You forced yourself to learn to walk again after each fall. 
How could I ask any less of myself?
    ·   ·   ·   ·   ·   ·
  	Sean

On my first day back at work, I came into the department to
find a doctored WANTED poster on my locker.  Written across
the photo of my face, in bright red Sharpie marker, was the
word APPREHENDED.  “Very funny,” I muttered, and
I ripped down the flyer and crumpled it int a ball.
	 “Sean O’Keefe!” said one of the guys,
pretending to hold a microphone in his hand as he held it up
to another cop.  “You’ve just won the Super
Bowl.  What are you going to do next?”
	Two fists, pumped in the air.  “I’m going to
Disneyworld!”
	The rest of the guys cracked up.  “Hey, your
travel agent called,” one said.  “She’s
booked your tickets to Gitmo for your next vacation.” 
	My captain hushed them all up and came to stand in front
of me.  “Seriously, Sean, you know we’re just
pulling your chain.  How’s Willow doing?”
	“Okay,” I said.  “She’s
okay.”
	“Well, if there’s anything we can do,”
the captain said, and he let the rest of his sentence fade
like smoke.
	I swallowed, pretending that this didn’t bother
me; that I was in on the joke, instead of being the
laughingstock.  “Don’t you guys have something
constructive to do?  What do you think this is, the Lake
Buena Vista PD?”
	At that, everyone howled with laughter and dribbled out
of the locker room, leaving me alone to dress in my uniform.
 I smacked my fist into the metal frame of my locker, and it
jumped open.  A piece of paper fluttered out – my face
again, with Mickey Mouse ears superimposed on my head.  And
on the bottom:  It’s a Small World After All.
	My ears were hot, my collar too tight.  I pulled at it
as I navigated the hallways of the department to the
dispatch office and yanked a telephone book from a stack
kept on a shelf.  I looked for the ad until I found the name
I was looking for; the one I’d seen on countless late
night television commercials:  Robert Ramirez,
Plaintiff’s Attorney:  Because you deserve the best.
I do, I thought.  And so does my family.
So I dialed the number.  “Yes,” I said. 
“I’d like to make an appointment.”
    ·   ·   ·   ·   ·   ·
  I was the designated night watchman.  After you girls were
fast asleep and Charlotte was showered and climbing into
bed, it was my job to turn off the lights, lock the doors,
do one last pass through the house.  With you in your cast,
your makeshift bed was the living room couch.  I almost
turned off the kitchen nightlight before I remembered, and
then I came closer and pulled the blanket up to your chin
and kissed your forehead.  
Upstairs, I checked in on Amelia and then went into our
room.  Charlotte was standing in the bathroom with a towel
wrapped around herself, brushing her teeth.  In the mirror,
our eyes met.  I’ve always wondered whether she sees
what I do, when I look at her.  Or for that matter, whether
she notices the fact that my hair’s gotten thinner on
the top.  “What do you want,” she said.
“How do you know I want something?”
“Because I’ve been married to you for nine
years?”
I followed her into the bedroom.  “I need you and
Willow to come somewhere with me tomorrow,” I said. 
“A lawyer’s office.”
Charlotte sank onto the mattress.  “For what?”
 “The way we were treated,” I said.  “The
arrest.  These things, you can’t just let them get
away with it.  Because then it could happen to someone
else.”
She stared at me. “I thought you were the one who
wanted to just get home and get on with our lives.”
I sat down beside Charlotte, hesitating.  “They took
my family away.  I was in that cell, thinking about you and
Amelia and Willow, and all I wanted to do was hurt someone. 
All I wanted to do was turn into the person they already
thought I was.”  
Charlotte lifted her gaze to mine.  “Who’s
they?”
I threaded my fingers through hers. “Well,” I
said, “that’s what I hope the lawyer will tell
us.”
    ·   ·   ·   ·   ·   ·
  The walls of the law offices of Robert Ramirez were papered
in the cancelled settlement checks that he’d won for
former clients.  I paced with my hands clasped behind my
back, leaning in to read a few.  Pay to the Order of. 
$350,000.  $1.2 million.  $890,000.  Amelia was hovering
over the coffee machine, a nifty little thing that let you
put in a single cup and push a button to get the flavor you
wanted.  “Mom,” she asked, “can I have
some?”
“No,” Charlotte said.  She was sitting next to
you on the couch, trying to keep your cast from sliding off
the stiff leather.  
“But they have tea.  And cocoa.”
“No means no, Amelia!”
The secretary stood up behind her desk.  “Mr. Ramirez
is ready to see you now.”
I pulled you onto my hip and we all followed the secretary
down the hall to a conference room enclosed by walls of
frosted glass.  I kept my eyes on Ramirez; I wanted to see
his reaction when he saw you.  “Mr.
O’Keefe,” he said, and he held out a hand.
I shook it.  “This is my wife, Charlotte.  And my
girls, Amelia and Willow.”
“Ladies,” Ramirez said, and then he turned to
his secretary.  “Briony, why don’t you get the
crayons and a couple of coloring books?”
From behind me I heard Amelia snort – I knew she was
thinking that this guy didn’t have a clue; that
coloring books were for little kids, not ones who were
already wearing training bras.  
Ramirez gestured toward  a woman standing nearby. 
“I’d like to introduce you to Marin
Gates…she’s an associate here.”
She looked the part.  With black hair pulled back in a clip
and a navy suit, she could have been pretty, but there was
something off about her.  Her mouth, I decided.  She looked
like she’d just spit out something that tasted awful. 

“I’ve invited Marin to sit in on this
meeting,” Ramirez said.  “Please, take a
seat.”
Before we could, though, the secretary reappeared with the
coloring books.  She handed them to Charlotte, black and
white pamphlets that said Robert Ramirez, Esquire across the
top in block letters.  “Oh look,” your mother
said, shooting a withering glance in my direction. 
“Who knew they made up personal injury coloring
books?”
Ramirez grinned.  “The Internet is a wondrous
place,” he said.  “How can we help you, Mr.
O’Keefe?”
“It’s Officer O’Keefe, actually,” I
corrected.  And I told them.  About your OI, and
Disneyworld, and the ice cream, and how you fell. I told her
about the men in black suits who led us out of the theme
park and arranged for the ambulance, as if the sooner they
got rid of us the better.  I told her about the woman
who’d taken Amelia away; about the interrogations that
went on for hours at the police station; about the way no
one believed me. I told her about the jokes that had been
made about me at my own station.
“I want names,” I said.  “I want to sue,
and I want to do it fast.  I want to go after someone at
Disneyworld, someone at the hospital, and someone at DCF.  I
want people’s jobs, and I want money out of this to
make up for the hell we went through.” 
	Robert Ramirez nodded.  “The type of case
you’re suggesting is very expensive, Officer
O’Keefe.  I can tell you right away that even though
you’re seeking a money judgment, you’re not
going to get one.”
	I blinked at him.  “Those checks in the waiting
room…”
	“…were for cases where the plaintiff had a
valid complaint.  From what you’ve described to us,
the people who worked at Disneyworld and the hospital and
DCF were just doing their jobs.  Doctors have a legal
obligation to report suspicions of child abuse.  Without the
letter from your hometown doctor, the police had probable
cause to make the arrest in the state of Florida.  DCF has
an obligation to protect children, particularly when the
child in question is too young to give a detailed account of
her own health issues.  As an officer of the law, I’m
sure if you step back and remove the emotion from the facts
here, you’ll see that once the health care information
was received from New Hampshire, your kids were turned over
to you; you and your wife were released…sure, it made
you feel awful – but embarrassment isn’t a just
cause of action.”
	“What about emotional damages?” I blustered.
 “Do you have any idea what that was like for me?  For
my kids?”
	“I’m sure they were nothing compared to the
emotional burden of living day in and day out with a child
who has these particular health problems,” Ramirez
said, and beside me, Charlotte lifted her gaze to his.  The
lawyer smiled sympathetically at her.  “I mean, it
must be quite challenging.”  He leaned forward,
frowning a little.  “I don’t know much about
– what’s it called?  Osteo…”
	“Osteogenesis imperfecta,” Charlotte said
softly.
	“How many breaks has Willow had?”
	“Twenty-seven, including the new ones,” I
replied.  
“How was Willow conceived?”
	“Ugh,” Amelia said – until then,
I’d forgotten she was with us –
“that’s totally gross.”  I shook my head
at her, a warning.
	“We tried in vitro,” Charlotte said. 
“Three cycles.  But it didn’t take.  And
we’d pretty much given up when I found out I was
pregnant.”
	“Grosser,” Amelia said.
	“Amelia!”  I passed you over to your mother,
and pulled your sister up by the hand.  “You can hang
out in the waiting room,” I said under my breath.
When I entered the conference room again, Charlotte was
still talking.  “…but I was thirty-nine years
old,” she said.  “You know what they write on
your charts, when you’re thirty-nine?  Geriatric
pregnancy.  I was worried about having a Down syndrome child
– I never had even heard of OI.”
“Did you have amnio?”
“No.”
I remembered it vividly – Piper had wanted Charlotte
to have the test so that she could put her mind to rest
about Down syndrome.  I thought it was an unnecessary risk,
since there was a slight chance of miscarriage.  The way I
saw it, no matter what, we were going to have that baby and
love that baby.  So what could the amnio results tell us
that would make any difference at all?
“OI can’t be flagged with amnio,”
Charlotte said.
“So you didn’t know Willow would be born with
OI?” Ramirez asked.
“Not until the second ultrasound showed a bunch of
broken bones.  Look, are we about done here?  If you
don’t want this case, I’m sure I can find
–“
“Well, there was that one weird thing,”
Charlotte interrupted.  “During the 18 week
ultrasound, the tech had to keep repeating the scan, because
the picture she was getting of the brain looked too
clear.”
“There’s no such thing as too clear,” I
said.
Ramirez and his associate exchanged a glance.  “And
what did your OB say?”
“Nothing.”  Charlotte shrugged.  “No one
even mentioned OI until we did another ultrasound at
twenty-six weeks, and saw all the fractures.”
Ramirez turned to Marin Gates.  “See if it’s
ever diagnosed in utero that early,” he ordered, and
then he turned to Charlotte.  “Would you be willing to
release your medical records to us?  We’ll have to do
some research on whether or not you have a cause of action
–“
I reached for you, leaving your mother’s hands free. 
“I thought you said we didn’t have a
lawsuit.”
“You might, Officer O’Keefe,” Robert
Ramirez said, looking at you as if he was memorizing your
features.  “Just not the one you thought.”

Marin
	As soon as we finished showing the O’Keefes out of
the law office, I rounded on my boss.  “There is no
way I’m doing this,” I said.
	“Well,” Bob agreed, “that’s
entirely possible.  Or, alternately, we might wind up with
the biggest wrongful birth payout in New Hampshire. Depends
on what her medical records turn up.”
	A wrongful birth lawsuit implies that if the mother had
known during her pregnancy that her child was going to be
significantly impaired, she would have chosen to abort the
fetus.  It places the onus of responsibility for the
child’s subsequent disability on the OB/GYN.  From a
plaintiff’s standpoint, it’s a medical
malpractice suit.  For the defense, it becomes a morality
question:  who has the right to decide what kind of life is
too limited to be worth living?
	Many states had banned wrongful birth suits.  New
Hampshire wasn’t one of them.  There had been several
settlements for the parents of children who’d been
born with spina bifida or cystic fibrosis, or in one case, a
boy who was profoundly retarded and wheelchair-bound due to
a genetic abnormality – even though the illness had
never been diagnosed before, much less noticed in utero.  In
New Hampshire, a parent was responsible for the care of a
disabled child their whole life – not just till age
eighteen – which was as good a reason as any to seek
damages.  There was no question Willow O’Keefe was a
sad story, with her enormous body cast, but she’d
smiled and answered questions when the father left the room
and Bob chatted her up.  To put it bluntly:  she was cute
and bright and articulate – and therefore a much
tougher hardship case to sell to a jury.  
	“If Charlotte O’Keefe’s provider
didn’t meet the standard of care,” Bob said,
shrugging, “then she should be held liable, so this
doesn’t happen again.”
	  I rolled my eyes.  “You can’t play the
conscience card when you stand to make a few million from
the lawsuit, Bob.  And it’s a slippery slope –
if an OB decides a kid with brittle bones shouldn’t be
born, what’s next?  A prenatal test for low IQ, so you
can scrap the fetus that won’t grow up and get into
Harvard?”
	He clapped me on the back.  “You know, it’s
nice to see someone so passionate.  Personally, whenever
people start talking about curing too many things with
science, I’m always glad bioethics wasn’t an
issue during the time polio, TB, and yellow fever were
running rampant.”  We were walking toward our
individual offices, but he suddenly stopped and turned to
me.  “Are you a neo-Nazi?”
	“What?”
	“I didn’t think so.  But if we were asked to
defend a client who was a neo-Nazi in a criminal suit, could
you do your job – even if you found his beliefs
disgusting?”
	“Of course,” I said immediately.  “But
this is totally different.”
	Bob shook his head.  “That’s the thing,
Marin,” he replied. “It really
isn’t.”

Piper
	 
“You look like hell,” I said to Charlotte, as I
came into the house.  “When was the last time you
slept?”
“Gee, Piper, it’s really great to see you
too,” she answered tartly.  
“Is Amelia ready?”
“For what?”
“Skating?”
She smacked her forehead.  “I totally forgot. 
Amelia!” she yelled, and then to me:  “We just
got home from the lawyer’s.”
“And did they tell Sean he’s nuts?”
Your mother was my best friend in the world, but your father
could drive me crazy.  He got an idea in his head, and that
was the end of that – you couldn’t budge him. 
The world was utterly black and white for Sean, and I guess
I’ve always been the kind of person who prefers a
splash of color.
“I suppose if you forgot about skating, you forgot
about the bake sale too…?
Charlotte winced.  “What did you make?”
“Brownies.  In the shape of skates.  From scratch. 
The rest of the moms already blacklisted me because I missed
the spring show for a medical conference.  I’m trying
to atone.”
“So you whipped these up when?  While you were
stitching an episiotomy?  After being on call for thirty-six
hours?” Charlotte said, as she opened her pantry and
rummaged through the shelves, finally grabbing a package of
Chips Ahoy and spilling them onto a serving platter. 
“Honestly, Piper, do you always have to be so damn
perfect?”
With a fork, she was attacking the edges of the cookies. 
“Whoa – who peed in your Cheerios?”
“Well, what do you expect?  You waltz in here and tell
me I look like crap, and then you make me feel completely
inadequate—“
“You’re a pastry chef, Charlotte. You could bake
circles around --what on earth are you doing?”  
“Making them look homemade,” Charlotte said. 
“Because I’m not a pastry chef, not anymore. 
Not for a long time.  I’m just the skating
club’s resident dysfunctional mom.”
I moved the platter away.  “Charlotte.  Are you
okay?”
“Let’s see.  I was arrested last weekend; my
daughter’s in a full cast; I don’t even have
time to take a shower – yup, I’m just
fantastic.”  She turned to the doorway, and the
staircase upstairs.  “Amelia!  Let’s go!”
“Emma’s gone selectively deaf, too,” I
said.  “I swear she ignores me on purpose. Yesterday,
I asked her eight times to clear the kitchen counter
–“
“You know what,” Charlotte said wearily.
“I really don’t care about the problems
you’re having with your daughter.” 
No sooner had my jaw dropped – I had always been
Charlotte’s confidante, not her punching bag –
she shook her head and apologized.  “I’m sorry.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me.  I
shouldn’t be taking this out on you.”
“I didn’t even notice,” I lied.
Just then the older girls clattered down the stairs. 
“Don’t forget your skates,” Charlotte
called, as they skidded past us in a flurry of whispers and
giggles.  
I put my hand on Charlotte’s arm.  “You’re
not dysfunctional,” I said firmly. 
“You’re the most devoted mother I’ve ever
met.  You’ve given up your whole life to take care of
Willow.”
She ducked her head and nodded before looking up at me. 
“Do you remember her first ultrasound?”
I thought for a second, and then I grinned. “We saw
her sucking her thumb. I didn’t even have to point it
out to you and Sean; it was clear as day.”
“Right,” your mother repeated.  “Clear as
day.”

Charlotte

What if it was someone’s fault?
The idea was just the germ of a seed, carried home in the
hollow beneath my breastbone when we left the law offices. 
Even when I was lying awake next to Sean, I heard it as a
drumbeat in my blood:  what if, what if, what if.  For four
years now I had loved you, hovered over you, held you when
you had a break. I had gotten exactly what I so desperately
wished for:  a beautiful baby.  So how could I admit to
anyone – much less myself – that you were not
only the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to
me…you were also the most exhausting, the most
overwhelming?  
Three weeks after we first went to Robert Ramirez’s
law offices, they called to set up another appointment. 
They wanted to just run something by us.  This time, Amelia
was in school, but we still had to bring you.  And this
time, they were ready:  beside the coffee machine were juice
packs; next to the glossy architectural magazines were a
small stack of picture books.  When the secretary brought us
back to meet the lawyers, we were not led to the conference
room. Instead she opened the door to an office that was a
hundred different shades of white:  from the pickled wood
floor to the creamy wall paneling to the pair of pale
leather sofas. You craned your neck, taking this all in. 
Was it supposed to look like Heaven?  And if so, what did
that make Robert Ramirez?
The lawyer shook Sean’s hand, and mine.  “I
thought the couch might be more comfortable for
Willow,” he said smoothly.  “I’m sure
you’re wondering why we asked you to come
back…my associate’s been doing a great deal of
work these past two weeks.  Does the name Marcus Cavendish
ring a bell?”
	Sean and I looked at each other and shook our heads.  
	“Dr. Cavendish is Scottish.  He’s one of the
foremost experts on osteogenesis imperfecta in the world. 
And according to him, it appears that you have a good cause
of action of medical malpractice against your obstetrician. 
You remembered your eighteen-week ultrasound being too
clear, isn’t that right, Mrs. O’Keefe? 
That’s significant evidence that your obstetrician
missed.  She should have been able to recognize that your
baby was suffering from osteogenesis imperfecta back then,
long before the next ultrasound, where the broken bones were
visible.”
	My head was spinning; and Sean looked utterly confused.
“Wait a second,” he said.  “What kind of
lawsuit is this?”
	“It’s called wrongful birth,” Ramirez
said.
	“And what the hell does that mean?”
	“A wrongful birth lawsuit entitles the parents to
sue for damages incurred from the birth and care of a
severely disabled child.  The implication is that if your
provider had told you earlier on that your baby was going to
be impaired, you would have had choices and options as to
whether or not to continue with the pregnancy.”
	I remembered snapping at Piper:  Do you always have to
be so damn perfect?
	What if the one time she hadn’t been perfect was
when it came to you?
	I was as rooted to my seat as you were; I couldn’t
move; couldn’t breathe.  Sean spoke for me: 
“You’re saying my baby never should have been
born?” he accused.  “That she was a
mistake?”  
	As he stood up, so did Robert Ramirez.  “Officer
O’Keefe, I know how unpalatable it sounds.  But the
term ‘wrongful birth’ is just a legal one.  We
don’t wish your child wasn’t born –
she’s absolutely beautiful.  We just think that when a
doctor doesn’t meet the standard of care a patient
deserves, someone ought to be held responsible.”  He
took a step forward. “It’s medical malpractice. 
Think of all the time and money that’s gone into
taking care of Willow – and will go into taking care
of her in the future.  Why should you pay for someone
else’s mistake?”
	Sean towered over the lawyer, and for a second, I
thought he might swat Ramirez out of his way.  But instead
he jabbed one finger into the lawyer’s chest. 
“I love my daughter,” Sean said, his voice
thick.  “I love her.”
	At this, you lifted your face.  “Well,
Daddy,” you said, so simply, “I love you
too.”
	He pulled you into his arms, but too fast – the
grape juice box you were holding tumbled onto the leather
and then the floor, a rapidly spreading puddle as dark as
blood.  “Oh,” I cried, digging in my purse for a
tissue to blot the stain.  That gorgeous, creamy leather; it
would be ruined.
	“It’s all right, Mrs. O’Keefe,”
Marin murmured, kneeling beside me.  “Don’t
worry about it.”
	“No, no – we made the mess –“
	“Charlotte,” Sean said, “let’s
get the hell out of here.”  
	He was already striding down the hall, volcanic, as I
mopped up the juice.  I realized that both lawyers were
staring at me, and I rocked back on my heels.  “Um,
thank you…for all the time you spent with us,”
I faltered.  
	“Charlotte!” Sean’s voice rang from
the waiting room.
	“I’m really sorry that we bothered
you…” Slowly, I stood and crossed my arms. 
“I just…there’s one thing…” 
I looked up at the lawyers and took a deep breath. 
“What happens if we win?”