“It won’t kill you,” he said.
She picked up a spoon. “You’re sure about that?”
“Yes.”
She dipped her spoon in the fig-balsamic sundae. “Is this part of my official treatment?”
“Yes.”
“Does insurance cover it?”
“You don’t have insurance. You pay cash,” he replied. “Though I doubt you paid cash for that.” He gestured to her chest. “I’m beginning to wonder if you’re an escaped prisoner from Cambridge Springs.”
“How about you don’t ask me about my insurance, and I don’t ask why you have all this free time to take patients for ice cream.”
Something came over his face. Not anger, or resentment, or even embarrassment, but something else. It was like a veil being lowered. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be,” he replied. He held out his hand. “It’s a deal. Now take your medicine.”
They shook hands. She took a tentative bite. It was pretty good.
“Look,” he said. “You’re not dead.”
“Give it a few minutes,” she said.
“Give it enough minutes and we’re all dead.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you have an excellent bedside manner?”
“Here, try the other one.” He slid the mint-chip sundae toward her. She took a bite. Also delicious.
“That one,” he said, pointing to the yuppie, “is made with vegan ice cream. No saturated fat. The other one.” Here he popped a bite of mint chip into his mouth. “Is your classic ice cream. Both are delicious. In moderation, both are fine.”
“Except this one is full of cholesterol!” she said, pointing to the mint chip, picturing the ice cream slipping down her esophagus and detouring straight to her arteries. She pushed the sundae away. “I’ll never be able to just eat ice cream again like a normal person, will I?”
“Maybe. Consider it a worthy goal.” He pushed the mint-chip sundae back toward her.
She took a small bite. She tried not to think about occluded arteries, which meant she thought even more about occluded arteries. Maybe she could take a double dose of her statin tonight.
“You know what I can’t help wondering?” she asked.
“What’s that?”
“What would’ve happened if I hadn’t already been going to the doctor that day? Would I have just carried on blithely eating ice cream and then had another heart attack and dropped dead?”
He shrugged. “Not necessarily. Your chest pain might’ve resolved and you wouldn’t have had another incident. Your chest pain would’ve worsened and you would’ve eventually gone to the ER. Or the chest pain would’ve worsened or not worsened and you would have a potentially serious repeat event and, as you say, dropped dead.”
“There’s that excellent bedside manner again.”
“You don’t strike me as someone who wants to be coddled.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I do want to be coddled,” she said. “Just not lied to.”
“Sometimes those are mutually exclusive.”
She nodded. “My dad, my adoptive dad, had no idea he had any arterial disease, and then one day he had a stroke and went into a coma, and two weeks later he died. I don’t know which is better, to have it hanging over you or to be blissfully unaware until the day you die.”
She expected him to say that it was better to know. It was his bread and butter, after all, letting people know, fixing things if they went wrong. But instead he said this: “I imagine it’s like most things in life. You sacrifice something for the knowledge, be it peace of mind, a sense of your invincibility, or something less quantifiable.”
“The truth will set you free but first it will make you miserable,” she said, reciting the one inspirational poster from high school that she could remember.
“Exactly.”
24
The next day, at the library, Maribeth logged on to BurghBirthParents .org and clicked on the Find Your Birth Parent tab. There was a questionnaire, basic information, name, date of birth, religion, adoptive parents’ names, contact details.
As she filled in the form, it felt like filling in any online form, to register the twins for a class, or to buy diapers in bulk.
When the contact information boxes appeared, she input her new cell phone number but hesitated before listing her old e-mail address. She had not logged on to that account since she had left. Now, she imagined the pages of messages awaiting her—howlers from Jason, carefully crafted notes of concern from Elizabeth, sanctimony disguised as caring from the parents in the twins group, not to mention the usual clutter from BrightStart and the various groups and e-mail lists she subscribed to—and shuddered. She could not go back to that. She left that part of the form blank.
She paused for a moment, her finger hovering over the submit button.
“You really don’t want to find her?” Jason had asked her in college, when his own parents were divorcing. He asked it again after one of his good friends flew to South Korea to reunite with his birth siblings. He asked it yet again after the twins were born. “You really don’t want to find out about your family?”
“You’re my family,” had been her standard reply.
She wondered if that was true anymore.
She clicked submit.
25
Maribeth knocked on her neighbors’ door, feeling nervous. She had debated texting the invitation but that felt too informal. Which was ridiculous. She was not inviting them to a Yule Ball. Just to dinner.