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I bent down close to Jill. “We’re going to be with you,” I said.
“Don’t leave me,” she said, and held my hand.
“You can’t get rid of us that easily.”
“Homicide Chicks, right?” Jill murmured with a tight smile.
They eased her onto the gurney. Claire and I helped. A bloody towel fell limply onto the floor of her spotless office.
“It’s going to be a boy,” Jill whispered, letting out a pained breath. “I wanted a boy. I guess I can admit it now.”
I folded her hands gently on her lap.
“I just didn’t want it badly enough,” Jill said, and then she finally started to sob and couldn’t stop.
Chapter 65
WE RODE IN THE BACK of the EMS truck with Jill to the hospital, ran alongside the gurney as they wheeled her up to obstetrics, and waited as her doctors tried to save the child.
As they moved her into the OR, she gripped my hand. “They always seem to win,” she murmured. “No matter how many of these bastards you put away, they always find a way to win.”
Cindy had rushed down, and the three of us hung there waiting to see Jill. About two hours later, her husband, Steve, hurried in. We exchanged some awkward hugs, and part of me wanted to tell him, Don’t you fucking realize this baby was for you? When the doctor came out, we let them be alone.
Jill was right. She had lost the baby. They called it a placental abruption, made worse from the stress of the job. The only good news was that the fetus had been removed surgically. Jill hadn’t had to deliver it.
Afterward, Claire, Cindy, and I filed out of the hospital onto California Street. No one wanted to go home. There was this Japanese place nearby that Cindy knew. We went there and sat around drinking beer and sake.
It was hard to accept that Jill, who worked tirelessly at the office, who rock-climbed at Moab and biked the rough terrain in Sedona, had twice been denied a child.
“The poor girl’s just too damn hard on herself.” Claire sighed, warming her hands with her sake cup. “We all told her she had to ratchet it down.”
“Jill doesn’t have that gear,” said Cindy.
I picked up a California roll and turned it over and over in the sauce. “She did it to please Steve. You could see it on her face. She keeps that impossible schedule. She doesn’t give anything up. And he’s running around the country wining investment bankers.”
“She loves him,” protested Cindy.
“They’re a team.”
“They’re not a team, Cindy. Claire and Edmund are a team. The two of them, they’re in a race.”
“It’s true,” Claire agreed. “That girl always has to be number one. The girl can’t fail.”
“So which one of us is any different?” Cindy asked. She looked around. Waited.
There was a moment of protracted silence. Our gazes met with contrite smiles.
“But it’s deeper than that,” I said. “Jill’s different. She’s tough as nails, but in her heart she feels alone. Any of us could be where she is now. We’re not invincible. Except you, Claire. You have this mechanism that just keeps it together, you and Edmund and your kids, like that fucking battery rabbit, on and on and on.”
Claire smiled. “Someone has to provide the balance around here. You saw your dad last night, didn’t you?”
I nodded. “It went pretty well, I guess. We talked, we got some things out.”
“No fisticuffs?” Cindy asked.
“No fisticuffs.” I smiled. “When I opened the door, he had on a catcher’s mask. I’m serious.”
Claire and Cindy laughed out loud.
