Chapter 8
N
orell went into the hospital on Wednesday. Vic brought her in, and she had a vague recollection of him watching her with concern etched on his face when she was wheeled out of the OR after a thorough exploration of her reproductive system.
Afterward her abdomen felt like someone had dropped a twenty-pound weight on it. She also had the added stress of having Vic hovering over her like an anxious old lady. “Why don't you go to work, honey?” she suggested. “I'm so sleepy... . There's no point in you sitting here listening to me snore. Even Doctor Patel won't be back with the results until the morning. I'm too tired to talk to him now anyway. Go on, Vic. I promise I'll be right here when you come back.” She started to chuckle at her little joke, but the action caused movement in her abdominal area, and her face quickly contorted with pain.
Still, she managed to convince Vic that she was all right. He kissed her cheek and promised to be back by six. Norell closed her eyes and was asleep within minutes. She dreamed she was being wheeled into the delivery room, and later, that she was holding an infant. Her infant.
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Her doctor showed up early the morning after her surgery. Even as he asked her how she felt, Norell could tell the news wasn't good. Dr. Patelâshe always joked that name must be Hindi for “Smith” because it was so commonâwasn't smiling.
“I'm sore as hell,” she replied. “So,” she continued in the brightest tone her discomfort and fear would allow, “what'd you see down there?”
“There was no evidence of the blockage we saw on the scan,” Dr. Patel said. “You might have had a spasm at the time we did the testing. But I did see extensive scarring on your fallopian tubes, which I'm afraid will make conception highly unlikely.” He paused to let his words sink in.
“Oh.” Norell closed her eyes for a moment. “I guess the doctor who did my D&C six years ago scarred up my tubes. That has to be it. I've never had any infections or any other surgical procedures.” She named her former gynecologist. “I'm sure you know him, or know of him. I thought he looked a little old to still be practicing. He's probably working to support a gambling problem. Or maybe he drinks.”
Dr. Patel nervously chewed on his lower lip.
“Yes, yes, I know. You don't want to speak out against one of your colleagues,” she said. “And it's not like I can prove he messed me up, anyway, not after all this time.”
“I know it's disappointing, Norell, but it's not the end. There's always ZIFT.”
He talked a little more about ZIFT, a variation of the in vitro fertilization process, where one of her newly fertilized eggs was inserted into fallopian tubes with the hope that it would follow nature's course and travel on its own to her uterus. She nodded. “Yes. I'll talk to my husband about it. I guess we'll go from there.”
When the doctor left she lay still, the tears rolling down her cheeks.
Norell relayed Dr. Patel's news to Vic when he came in shortly afterward. He immediately sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her close. “I'm so sorry, baby,” he said. “But don't throw in the towel just yet. There's still a chance. I'll let them test me, and if everything checks out we'll try that procedure the doctor suggested.”
She shut her eyes tightly. What an immeasurable comfort to know at last that he was in her corner. For a while there it looked like she was in this on her own. But a couple of things niggled at her relentlessly, and she couldn't keep them to herself anymore. “Are you sure you want to do this, Vic?” she asked, pulling away so she could see his reaction. “You're not just saying it because you know how disappointed I am?”
“I'm sure. I know I haven't been very supportive. I was just being selfish. I know we talked about having kids before we got married, but when you didn't get pregnant I began to get used to the idea of having you all to myself, and I liked it. I'm sorry, Norell.”
She sighed. “I'm glad you saw the light. But I'll be honest with you, I'm not sure if I want to go on with it myself.”
Vic's surprise appeared genuine. “You're not? Why?”
“Because I'd so hoped I'd be able to get pregnant the natural way. But your showing no interest in my problem hurt almost as much as not getting pregnant month after month. You never said anything about getting tested until just now, although you've known about it for weeks.”
Vic placed a hand on her thigh. “I'm sorry I hurt you, Norell.”
“I know.”
He looked at her thoughtfully. “You've got something else on your mind. Tell me.”
“I'm thinking about how you've already invested in CDN for me. And I'm wondering what the price tag will be for this new thing Doctor Patel wants to try. I know we're comfortable, Vic, but it's an awful lot of output.” She sighed. “I'd like to meet with Doctor Patel and find out more about both the chance of success and the cost. We probably should determine what we're going to do before you even go in for an exam. I'd hate for you to jack off in a cup if you don't have to,” she said with a wan smile.
“Whatever you want, baby.”
She lay her head back, her hand in Vic's. “Then that's what we'll do. In the meantime I've got CDN to keep me busy, so at least I won't be thinking about babies all the time. Not that that's an issue right now; this pain takes precedence over everything.” She smiled weakly, then pressed the button of her analgesia dispenser and gave herself another dose of Demerol.
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Norell went home the next day. She spent the next week mostly resting, with only minimal activity. Dana and Cécile came over to cheer her up and discuss a little business. The news was exciting. Dana had met with Patricia Fairfield about purchasing five of her clients to transfer to CDN on the fifteenth of the month. They discussed Pat's asking price and agreed to it. “Of course, this is contingent on the clients agreeing to have their accounts transferred,” Dana cautioned. “They'll be paying the same amount they were before, but sometimes people are funny. I'll be prepared to meet with all the office managers next week to assure them about how qualified we are.”
“How about the quality of the accounts?” Norell asked. “A lot of the girls are complaining that their pay has gone down because some of the dictators are so difficult to understand and require more time.” At-home transcriptionists were traditionally paid on a production basis for work they actually completed, so they couldn't do their laundry or their grocery shopping while on the payroll. “How do we know Pat isn't giving us her worst accounts?”
“I'm familiar with the five we're buying now, and they aren't bad,” Dana said. “A couple of English-as-a-second-language docs, a couple of mumble-mouthed Americans, but we'll have the people we got from Pat continue to work on them. They'd prefer to work on familiar accounts rather than something new.”
“I think it's good that we're waiting an additional two weeks to start with Pat's clients,” Cécile said. “It gives us time to take care of any bugs in the sports-medicine clinic and in Dana's clients. Besides, you never know. After Dana's hand and Norell's surgery, it might be my turn to have to go to the ER or into the hospital!”
The next weeks were filled with hiring staff, meeting with their computer consultant, and training. During that time Dana's hand completely healed, and Norell, too, was given medical clearance to return to work. Somehow it all got done, and CDN Transcription went live on May first, as planned.
To celebrate, Dana, Cécile, and Norell went out to dinner. Norell suggested they go to a restaurant in San Marco that had become popular with the African-American corporate crowd.
Dana hadn't known of this fact, and she looked around curiously at the patrons who had arrived while they were eating. “There's a lot of us here, aren't there?” she remarked. “You generally don't see that in this part of town. Is something special going on?”
“Oh, I think they have a deejay or something,” Norell said innocently.
Dana's eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Oh? This social atmosphere wouldn't have anything to do with why you chose this particular restaurant, would it?”
“I'm not interested in dancing,” Norell said, suddenly sounding weak. “I just had surgery three weeks ago, remember?”
Dana didn't point out that Norell had since gotten the green light from her physician to proceed with her normal activities.
“The food is awfully good here,” Cécile said, her words a bit mumbled because she spoke through a mouthful of Mediterranean salad. “This is such a huge salad. I'll probably want to take a nap after I finish.”
Dana was accustomed to Cécile's lustful eating habits, but she wondered if Cécile noticed that she looked heavier these days, like she'd gained back the fifteen pounds or so she'd lost and then some. Probably all those gummi bears she downed. “Are you all right, Cécile?” she asked, concern in her voice. “I've called you a couple of times in the last week or so, and you've been sleeping. What you said the other week about going to the hospital was supposed to be a joke. You haven't taken on too much, have you?”
“Oh, I'm all right. I just need to stop eating so much, that's all.”
“Maybe you're pregnant,” Norell said, laughing. They all remembered Cécile going in for a tubal ligation after she gave birth to her youngest, Eleith.
Dana and Cécile joined in laughing at the joke, and while Dana was glad to see Norell laughing about a pregnancy after receiving bad news about her own chances for conception, she still suspected her friends had an ulterior motive in selecting this particular restaurant on this particular night. She knew what it was, too. Norell and Cécile wanted her to meet a man.
“Listen, girls,” she said. “I think it's sweet of you to think about me the way you do, like insisting that our company pay me two hundred dollars a month for providing an office headquarters and meeting space, but this is too much. I'm not interested in dating. I've got too much on my plate already.” During the last few weeks spent preparing to launch CDN, Dana had begun working full-time as an at-home MT for a large nationwide service, through which she would receive health benefits. The cost of medical and dental insurance through her new employer would be less than half of the check she wrote each month for private insurance for herself and Brittany. She'd taken the final step in her financial plan. She felt rather proud of her accomplishments, or at least she did when she wasn't tired from her demanding schedule.
“We're not trying to get you to date, Dana,” Norell said. “That would be awfully frivolous of us. It's not like we don't have problems of our own, is it, Cécile?”
“Absolutely.”
Dana didn't doubt it, but she decided to let the matter drop. She agreed with Cécile; the food here was tasty. She cut off a piece of crab-stuffed flounder and raised it to her mouth.
They were almost finished eating when Cécile exclaimed, “Look, there's my sister! Yoo-hoo, Michie!”
Micheline turned at the sound of her name, her hair bouncing with the movement of her head. She immediately headed toward their table. “Hi, Sis,” she said, bending gracefully to kiss the air near her sister's cheek. “Hello, Dana,” she said after she straightened, then smiled at Norell.
“I'm Norell. It's nice to meet you. I've heard about you from both Cécile and Dana.”
“Nice to meet you, too. Are you here for Wild Wednesday?”
All three women laughed. “No, we're just having dinner,” Cécile answered. “Our company officially began today. The doctors are dictating, the MTs are transcribing, and everything is working fine. We felt we deserved a reward, so here we are. We're just about finished, but why don't you join us?”
Micheline pulled out the fourth chair at the table and sat down. “I don't get it,” she said. “If your company is up and running, why aren't you girls at home typing?”
Norell's attempt at a chuckle came out sounding more like a grunt. “Our contractors do the transcribing,” she replied dryly. “As the owners, we do mostly proofreading and QA. The idea is to have a staff do most of the everyday work.”
“And for us to get paid,” Cécile added. “Dana and I only work part time for CDN, even though we're full partners.”
“Oh, I see,” Micheline said flippantly. Anyone could tell she didn't really care. “Hey, I hope you guys plan to stick around a bit after dinner. You've got a great table, close to the action.”
Norell spoke up before Dana could reply. “I guess it won't hurt to see what goes on. Maybe for an hour or so.”
“I have to pick up Brittany,” Dana protested.
“She's fine at my house, and she's certainly no trouble for Michael,” Cécile said. “With six kids, what's one more?”