As if every bit of breath had been sucked out of his body, he visibly sagged back into the thin comfort of his easy chair. Izzy had the distinct feeling that her father had been possessed in these moments, that someone else was speaking through him. It didn’t make her love him more, but it made her understand him just a little, which was maybe all that was left in her family. She looked at him, her own father, and felt her heart constrict around the thought of what could have been.
She stood up and walked back into her room, where the papers were still waiting for her. She could not figure out why she was hesitating, other than the nagging suspicion that, once she signed the papers, she would never know if she could have done it on her own. She had a strange, unspoken pride that she could handle anything; she’d felt this way since her mother, the one person who truly loved her, had died. Ever since then, she believed that if she tamped down her emotions enough and made herself resistant to all pain, she would never need anyone’s help and could be left entirely alone. To enter into this project, it felt like all of her bones would have to be broken and reset. She took a pen from her desk and, with an unsteady signature that could have been any name, she signed each and every page without reading it again, initialed where needed, and then collected the documents, shoved them into her bag, and tossed the bag under her bed. She retrieved her baby journal from the nightstand, dutifully filled out the information, and then read the question for that day. What one thing do you want to be sure your baby has that you didn’t? She was too tired, too scared to even think about this question. She was past this kind of worry or contemplation now, was already drifting into some kind of dream that would take on the correct dimensions and shape as she lived in it. She wrote, in all caps, EVERYTHING and then put the book away and fell dead asleep.
The next morning, she drove to the hotel where Dr. Grind was staying and sat in the lobby while she called him on her cell phone. He answered and she told him to meet her downstairs.
“Hello, Izzy,” he said when he walked out of the elevator, that easy smile on his face that seemed so genuine, as if the world was worthy of being loved.
“I talked it over with my dad,” she said, letting the doctor believe the project had actually been discussed in detail. “I thought about it myself. I looked at the papers. I want to do it.”
Dr. Grind’s expression of patient kindness broke for a split second and was flooded with what looked like relief, as if he’d just defused a bomb but didn’t want to make a big deal about it. “I am so happy to hear that,” he said.
“Here’re the contracts; I signed everywhere that it said to.”
“Did you go over them? You can still have time to look at it and make sure you’re satisfied with—”
“I’m sure about it,” Izzy said. “I’ve decided.”
It seemed that Dr. Grind either had too much to say or nothing else, and he stood there, looking at her with great interest. He finally took the documents from her hands and then he said, “I’m so pleased. You won’t regret this.”
“I’m used to regret,” she said, “so it won’t be a huge deal.”
He laughed and then gestured to the breakfast bar in the corner of the lobby. “Are you hungry?” he asked. “I was just going to get something to eat. I’d love the company, if you can spare the time.”
She nodded and they walked across the lobby, two people about to eat breakfast, the most normal thing in the world. Izzy had signed over her child to a scientific study, had entered into something that she could not explain to normal people without seeming slightly crazy. She would not think about that now, or ever again. She was moving forward into the new future that she had made, and she was ravenous.
chapter eight