Side Effects by Michael Palmer Page B

relax herself and to heighten her concentration, she focused the lenses and her thoughts on the cells, now magnified a thousand times. Her efforts were less successful than usual. Thoughts of Sandy and Ellen, of Jared and the discussion they had had following her return from the hospital the previous night, continued to intrude.
    She had come home late, almost eleven, after meeting with Tom Engleson, interviewing Beverly Vitale, examining the frozen section of her ovary, and finally spending an hour in the hospital library. Her expectations had been to find the former roommates in the den, comatose or nearly so, with the essence of a half a case of Lowenbrau permeating the room. Instead, she had found only a somber and perfectly sober Jared.
    "Hi," he said simpjy.
    "Hi, yourself." She kissed him on the forehead and then settled onto the ottoman by his chair. "When did Sandy leave?"
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    "A couple of hours ago. Did you get done whatever it is you wanted to?" Kate nodded. His expression was as flat and as drained as his words. No surprise, she realized. First his wife stalks out of the house with no real explanation; then he has to listen to the agonies of the breakup of his best friend's marriage. "I ... I guess I owe you an apology for the way I acted earlier. Some sort of explanation."
    Jared shrugged. "I'll take the apology. The explanation's optional."
    "I'm sorry for leaving the way I did."
    "I'm sorry you left the way you did, too. I could have used some help--at least some moral support."
    "Sorry again." The three feet separating them might as well have been a canyon. "Anything decided?"
    "He went home to tell Ellen and to move out, I guess. It got awful quiet here after you left. Neither of us was able to open up very well. We each seemed to be wrapped up in our own bundle of problems."
    "Three I'm sorries. That's my limit." She unsnapped her barrette, shook her hair free, and combed it out with her fingers. The gesture was natural enough, but at some level she knew she had done it because it was one Jared liked. "After what happened this morning--in the car, I mean--I couldn't listen to Sandy just brush off Ellen and their marriage the way he did. I mean, here I am, scrambling to do a decent job with my career and to be a reasonably satisfying friend and wife to you, and there's Ellen able to do both of those so easily and raise three beautiful, talented children to boot, and ..."
    "It's not right what you're doing, Kate."
    "What's that?"
    "You're comparing your insides to Ellen's outsides, that's what. She looks good. I'll give you that. But don't go and cast Sandy as the heavy just because he's the one moving out. There are things that are missing from that relationship. Maybe things too big to overcome. What's that got to do with our discussion this morning, anyway?"
    "Jared, you know perfectly well what it has to do.
    Having children is a major responsibility. As it is, I feel like a one-armed juggler half the time. Our lives, our jobs, the things we do on our own and together ... Toss in a baby at this point, and what guarantee is there I won't start dropping things?"
    "What do you want me to say? I'm almost forty years old. I'm married. I want to have children. My wife said she wanted to have children, too. Now, all of a sudden, having children is a threat to our marriage."
    "Christ, Jared, that's not what I mean ... and you know it. I didn't say I won't have children. I didn't say it's a threat to our marriage. All I'm trying to say is there's a lot to think about--especially with the opportunities that have arisen at the hospital. It's not the idea I'm having trouble with so much as the timing. A mistake here and it's a bitter, unfulfilled woman, or a neurotic, insecure kid, or ... or a twenty-six-year-old stewardess. Can you understand that?"
    "I understand that somewhere inside you there are some issues you're not facing up