Patriot games - Tom Clancy [214]
"I'm not going there today. I got stuck with a seminar at the Academy. I'm afraid the department is a little miffed with me." He kept looking in the minor. Her eyes were closed now. Screw the department "God, I love you!"
"Tonight, Jack."
"Promise?"
"You've sold me on the idea, okay? Now I-" She reached up to grab his hands, pulled them downward, and pressed them against the taut skin of her belly.
He-the baby was definitely a he, insofar as that was what they called him-was wide awake, rolling and kicking, pushing at the dark envelope that defined his world.
"Wow," his father observed. Cathy's hands were over his, moving them about every few seconds to follow the movements of the baby. "What does that feel like?"
Her head leaned back a fraction. "It feels good-except when I'm trying to sleep or when he kicks my bladder during a procedure."
"Was Sally this-this strong?"
"I don't think so." She didn't say that it wasn't the sort of thing you remember in terms of strength. It was just the singular feeling that your baby is alive and healthy, something that no man would ever understand. Not even Jack. Cathy Ryan was a proud woman. She knew that she was one of the best eye surgeons around. She knew that she was attractive, and worked hard to keep herself that way; even now, misshapen by her pregnancy, she knew that she was carrying it well. She could tell that from her husband's biological reaction, in the small of her back. But more than that, she knew that she was a woman, doing something that Jack could neither duplicate nor fully comprehend. Welt, she told herself, Jack does things I don't much understand either. "I have to get dressed."
"Okay." Jack kissed the base of her neck. He took his time. It would have to last until this evening. "I'm up to eleven," he said as he stepped back.
She turned. "Eleven what?"
"Counting the ways," Jack laughed.
"You turkey!" She swung her bra at him. "Only eleven?"
"It's early. My brain isn't fully functional yet."
"I can tell it doesn't have enough of a blood supply." The funny thing, she thought, was that Jack didn't think he was very good-looking. She liked the strong jaw, except when he forgot to shave it, and his kind, loving eyes. She looked at the scars on his shoulder, and remembered her horror as she'd watched her husband run into harm's way, then her pride in him for what he had accomplished. Cathy knew that Sally had almost died as a direct result, but there was no way Jack could have foreseen it. It was her fault, too, she knew, and Cathy promised herself that Sally would never play with her seat belt again. Each of them had paid a price for the turns their lives had taken. Sally was almost fully recovered from hers, as was she. Cathy knew it wasn't true of her husband, who'd been awake through it all while she slept.
When that happened, at least I had the blessing of unconsciousness. Jack had to live through it. He's still paying that price for it, she thought. Working two jobs now, his face always locked into a frown of concentration, worrying over something he can't talk about. She didn't know exactly what he was doing, but she was certain that it was not yet done.
The medical profession had unexpectedly given her a belief in fate. Some people simply had their time. If it was not yet that time, chance or a good surgeon would save the life in question, but if the time had come, all the skilled people in the world could not change it. Caroline Ryan, MD, knew that this was a strange way for a physician to think, and she balanced the belief with the professional certainty that she was the instrument which would thwart the force that ruled the world-but she had also chosen a field in which life- and-death was rarely the issue. Only she knew that. A close friend had gone into pediatric oncology, the treatment of children stricken with cancer. It was a field that cried out for the best people in medicine, and