A thought came to mind. Had he gone through with the procedure?
The thought of her ex-husband never fathering another sweet baby girl like their Grace pierced straight through her. He’d been a wonderful daddy—once he’d got over his initial fears of inadequacy. He’d loved their daughter in a way that had made her go all gooey inside—had made her hot for him and him alone. No other man could touch what she’d once felt for Tucker.
Watching as that pristine white casket was slowly lowered into the ground had changed him, though.
It had changed both of them.
Gone had been the days of frantic lovemaking. Of being unable to wait to get each other’s clothes off. In fact, Tucker had moved into another bedroom soon afterward, cutting himself off from her completely.
The difference between them was that Kady had never completely let go of hope. Even in the aftermath of Grace’s death.
It took two recessive genes coming together to cause Tay-Sachs. He could have had children with someone else and not had a problem. Although since neither of them were of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, it had never dawned on them that they could be carriers until it was too late. What were the chances? Enough to land them with a horrific diagnosis.
Any future children they’d produced would have had a one in four chance of having the same deadly genetic imprint.
But there were other ways to have kids. Adoption. Even genetic selection of embryos, although that thought made her stomach swish sideways.
The last panelist finished and not one of them had spoken about genetic abnormalities, which she found odd. Unless there was a dedicated workshop just focusing on screening. She would have to look at the schedule and avoid any such session like the plague.
The moderator opened the floor to questions—the moment she’d been dreading the most.
The first one came from a female audience member and was directed at Tucker. “How many fetal surgeries have you done? And what are the most common things you’ve corrected? The last question goes along with that. Have you ever had a case that you knew was hopeless?”
The long seconds of silence that followed the query would have made any librarian proud. Only Kady knew exactly what had caused it. And why.
A thousand pins pricked the backs of her eyelids and she had to steel herself not to let them take hold. Instead, she clasped her hands tightly together and willed him the strength to get through the question.
“I’ve done a few hundred surgeries, although I don’t have an exact number. The most common procedures I’ve run into have been neural tube defects. And, no, I’ve never had a case where I’ve given up without at least exploring every available option.”
That answer jerked her head sideways to stare down the line at him. He most certainly had. The fact that he could sit there and let that answer fall from his lips made the pendulum swing from sympathy back toward anger.
Only this time he didn’t look her way, so her mad face was useless.
Two questions later, someone asked Kady what her toughest case had been.
“That would be my divorce.” She laughed as if it was all a big joke, even though that barb had been sent straight toward the hunk to her left. “Sorry. No, my toughest case was a mother who came in at six months carrying quadruplets. She’d had no prenatal care and was seizing—in full eclampsia.” A whisper of gasps went through the audience. Kady waited for it to die down, knowing the worst was yet to come. That case had made her cry, and had almost, almost made her quit medicine completely. But they needed to know the realities of what they would face.
She forced herself to continue. “Only one of those babies survived. That was hard. I can’t stress enough the need for early intervention and care, and you should stress it to your patients as well. Knowledge really is power in cases like this one. If she’d been followed from her first trimester, we probably could have given her a good outcome that ended with four live births.”
Even as she said it, she knew—from experience—there were some conditions that no amount of care or intervention could fix.
An hour later, the questions had been exhausted and people filtered from the room, leaving her to stuff her papers back into her bag and plan her escape. The moderator handed her a note. She glanced at it and frowned. The head of maternal-fetal surgery at Wilson-Ross wanted her to stop by his office when she had a chance.
Why? Unless it had something to do with the conference. She made a mental note to swing by the hospital as she dropped the slip of paper into her purse. Her fingers brushed across the IVF clinic’s letter, and she couldn’t stop herself from glancing at it. It was a huge decision. But maybe it was the best one for her.
“I didn’t realize you were going to be here.” Someone settled into the vacated chair next to her.
She snatched her attention from the letter, jerking the edges of her handbag closed.
Get real, Kady. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.
“I could say the same thing about you.” She hadn’t meant that to come out as surly as it had.
His glance traveled from her face to her hand, making her realize her fingers were still clenched around the opening to her bag.
“The difference is,” he said, “I work here.”
“I was a last-minute substitution. Your administrator asked me to come.”
“Ah, so you’re taking Dr. Blacke’s place, then. I’d wondered who they got.”
“Is he traveling?”
“No. He found out he has pancreatic cancer last week.”
Up came her head, her eyes finding his. “Oh. I’m so sorry, Tucker. I had no idea. Does he have a good prognosis?”
“Unfortunately no, although all of us have seen hopeless cases turn around completely.”
“And sometimes they don’t.” She forced her fingers to release their death grip on her purse, afraid he’d read some kind of telling emotion into the act.
Ha! As if there wasn’t.
“You’re right. Sometimes they don’t.” He studied her for a few seconds before continuing, “Our divorce was the toughest thing you’ve ever handled?”
“It was an icebreaker. It was supposed to be funny.” Especially since they both knew the correct and not-funny-at-all answer would have been Grace’s death. “None of them know we were ever married, much less divorced.”
“And yet we’ve been both.” His mouth tightened slightly. “Maiden name?”
“Easier, don’t you think?” If he could do short, concise questions, so could she. Especially as her heart was beginning to set up a slow thudding in her chest that spelled danger. She needed to get out of there.
“Easier? Possibly.”
Possibly? That drew her up short. How did that even make sense? Of course it was easier.
“I think it is. People won’t automatically see the last names and wonder if we’re brother and sister. Or something else.”
One side of that mouth quirked again. “Oh, it was definitely something else.”
The thudding became a triplet of beats. Then another. How was it that he could still turn her knees to jelly with the single turn of phrase?
“Tucker...” She allowed a warning note to enter her voice.
He leaned back in his chair. “So how are you?”
“Fine.”
Sure she was. Right now, she was anything but fine. Why had she let herself be talked into this stupid trip?
He