her head, and the bib of her overalls slips to one side, showing her cupcake breast under her tight black shirt. Down, boy.
“Okay.” Paul clears his throat. “Can I get you a coffee from vending?”
“Really? That would be great. Regular, lots of cream and sugar. I think I’m going to be up awhile.” She glances at the couple by the counter.
Paul watches as Chloe steps into the hallway to use her cell phone. It’s not the right time to be thinking about this, but he always got the sense that there was a little something—low-voltage, but something—between him and the social worker. Hard to know if what she liked about Paul had anything to do with him as a man, or the fact that they were great bait for potential birth mothers. The chances of him ever knowing exactly are slim. After tonight, he thinks, he’ll probably never see her again. He is wrong.
With his good hand, Paul feeds wrinkled bills to the vending machine and gets them two coffees, grabs a pile of creams and sugars. Chloe is talking to the pregnant couple at the triage station.
“Do you want me to come with, or are you all right?” Chloe asks, her hand resting gently on the woman’s upper arm.
“We’re okay.” The man speaks for the first time, his voice gravelly. “You aren’t leaving, are you?”
“Um, no…,” Chloe says, and Paul checks his watch. Jesus, it’s almost four thirty. Here’s to hoping Eva doesn’t go into labor before he gets a decent night of sleep under his belt.
“Good.” The birth mother nods. “If we don’t get admitted, we’ll need a ride home. One of the neighbors is with the kids, but I’ve got to get to Kohl’s in an hour. Black Friday.”
“Okay. I called the Byrnes and told them what’s going on. They want to know if they should come in; they’re worried about you.”
“Not yet,” the man says firmly. “Tell them don’t come yet.”
When he has gone back with the nurse and the birth mother, Chloe sits down next to Paul, punching numbers in her cell. She nods thanks and takes the coffee from him.
“Hi, Angela, it’s Chloe. I just spoke to Dwight, they’re going back to see the doctor now, but he says he doesn’t think you need to come yet…. No, no, I think everything’s fine…. No, I’m staying right here, don’t worry. I’ll keep you posted, I promise, the second I hear…Well, if it makes you feel any better, I won’t sleep either.” She laughs softly. “Really, it’s no problem. It’s an honor to be a part of this.”
IT WAS EXACTLY WHAT she had said to Paul and Eva when they met at the agency picnic almost two years ago, that it was “an honor to be part of such an intimate and important part of people’s lives, the creation of a family.”
Following their New Year’s resolution to pursue other options, Eva and Paul had borrowed five thousand dollars from her brother Magnus toward adoption agency application fees and attended an informational picnic for the Chosen Child. They arrived at the park near the Sandy River, a risky choice for January, but it was brilliantly sunny and mild, a warm Chinook wind blowing. Balloons bobbed, and flags representing the international adoption options snapped in the wind.
“A good sign,” Paul had said encouragingly to Eva, who was still bleeding from her twelfth miscarriage.
Within the first five minutes they’d been cornered by Francie McAdoo at the dim sum cart under the China flag.
“You’re new,” she pounced. “Against my better judgment, I’m going to introduce you to Chloe Pinter.”
“Why against your better judgment?” Paul had asked with a polite smile.
Eva explained it later: She and Paul were twenty-eight and thirty, physically fit, attractive, in love, and childless. They were a birth mother’s dream—and stiff competition to every desperate forty-and fifty-something couple milling around the domestic adoption booth, inhaling hot dogs and stuffing information packets into their purses.
Eva and Francie exchanged infertility war stories (Francie and John: seven failed rounds of in vitro, six figures in specialists) and e-mail addresses. Francie also got Eva hooked on the message boards: Oregon Open Adoption, TTC (Trying to Conceive), and Infertility and Loss.
As promised, Francie introduced Eva to Chloe, praising the program, even though the McAdoos had not been chosen in two years. Bitterness hung yellow-green around her like mustard gas.
Paul had remarked to John as they watched Chloe and their wives talking, “Does she have to look like that too?”
“What?” John seemed