pause that followed, Helen Seras walked into Jane’s room accompanied by a photographer and a journalist from the Seattle Times . Helen lifted her eyebrows enough to signal that she was all PR mode now, so Charlotte took the number and hung up the phone.
“A moment?” Helen asked, though it was more a statement than a question. “They’re running an article about our Jane Doe.”
For the next twenty minutes Charlotte fielded questions for which she had few answers—at least not any answers that made the reporters go away. She vacillated between hoping publicity might find out who belonged to Jane (or vice versa), and suspecting these people were niggling her only for some lurid headline to sell more papers. When the photographer focused his camera on Jane, Charlotte grabbed at his arm, startling both of them, and he hesitated, embarrassed, until Charlotte raised her eyebrows and held her hands up in a plea for respect. She whispered, “She’s here, you know”—she nodded her head at Jane—“in this room with us.”
“So . . . you’d like her to sign a waiver?” the photographer asked, only half sarcastically.
Helen stepped in and said, “They have my permission, Dr. Reese. Drop by my office when you have a minute?”
When she had a minute she certainly would, Charlotte thought. Fortunately, she knew her day would be packed.
—
The plan was for Charlotte to meet Eric at Flying Fish at seven. He had long ago learned to bring a newspaper or even his laptop with him; he didn’t want to add up all the hours he’d spent sitting at the bar with a beer and shooters while Charlotte finished rounds at the hospital. He had learned to make the waiting an exercise in mindfulness—a pocket of uncommitted time to read, to watch the crowd. To be present. It didn’t always work—tonight being a case in point. He took a seat at the end of the bar and ordered a beer, but before the bartender turned away, Eric changed it to a manhattan. He skimmed the first few pages of the Seattle Times , but his own writing was too much on his mind and every headline seemed either connected or contradictory to his research. Twice he stopped to send an e-mail to himself with a note about the manuscript. The topic of this, Eric’s fourth book, was organ donation and transplantation and he’d believed, or fooled himself into believing, that if he mapped out the structure well enough in advance, it should practically write itself. But every time he thought he had broken the damn thing’s back, it got away from him again. It had started much like his other books and articles, as an engaging, narrative explanation of a scientific subject for a lay audience, filled with plenty of personal stories so readers could forget they were being educated while they immersed themselves in someone else’s drama, sending up thanks to God their own life might be bad but it would unlikely ever be that bad. The deeper he explored this current topic, though, the more he became both fascinated and alarmed by the tangled and potentially malicious influences of money over medical ethics and law. He had finally retitled the book Buy This Body: The Billion-Dollar Business of International Organ Donation . His publisher loved it. But while Eric was an increasingly lauded travel and science writer, he was jittery about venturing closer to political journalism and understood this book could change the course of his career—not for the better if he blew it—and the sheer awareness of consequence undercut his focus.
The restaurant was filling up, and he remembered it was Friday and that people, who worked in offices with cubicles and managers, who could take Saturday off because someone told them to stay home and weed their gardens or coach their kid’s T-ball games—these people knew work as a thing that could be separated from other parts of their life. The work of a writer was too portable sometimes, giving him the freedom to work anywhere anytime,
“A moment?” Helen asked, though it was more a statement than a question. “They’re running an article about our Jane Doe.”
For the next twenty minutes Charlotte fielded questions for which she had few answers—at least not any answers that made the reporters go away. She vacillated between hoping publicity might find out who belonged to Jane (or vice versa), and suspecting these people were niggling her only for some lurid headline to sell more papers. When the photographer focused his camera on Jane, Charlotte grabbed at his arm, startling both of them, and he hesitated, embarrassed, until Charlotte raised her eyebrows and held her hands up in a plea for respect. She whispered, “She’s here, you know”—she nodded her head at Jane—“in this room with us.”
“So . . . you’d like her to sign a waiver?” the photographer asked, only half sarcastically.
Helen stepped in and said, “They have my permission, Dr. Reese. Drop by my office when you have a minute?”
When she had a minute she certainly would, Charlotte thought. Fortunately, she knew her day would be packed.
—
The plan was for Charlotte to meet Eric at Flying Fish at seven. He had long ago learned to bring a newspaper or even his laptop with him; he didn’t want to add up all the hours he’d spent sitting at the bar with a beer and shooters while Charlotte finished rounds at the hospital. He had learned to make the waiting an exercise in mindfulness—a pocket of uncommitted time to read, to watch the crowd. To be present. It didn’t always work—tonight being a case in point. He took a seat at the end of the bar and ordered a beer, but before the bartender turned away, Eric changed it to a manhattan. He skimmed the first few pages of the Seattle Times , but his own writing was too much on his mind and every headline seemed either connected or contradictory to his research. Twice he stopped to send an e-mail to himself with a note about the manuscript. The topic of this, Eric’s fourth book, was organ donation and transplantation and he’d believed, or fooled himself into believing, that if he mapped out the structure well enough in advance, it should practically write itself. But every time he thought he had broken the damn thing’s back, it got away from him again. It had started much like his other books and articles, as an engaging, narrative explanation of a scientific subject for a lay audience, filled with plenty of personal stories so readers could forget they were being educated while they immersed themselves in someone else’s drama, sending up thanks to God their own life might be bad but it would unlikely ever be that bad. The deeper he explored this current topic, though, the more he became both fascinated and alarmed by the tangled and potentially malicious influences of money over medical ethics and law. He had finally retitled the book Buy This Body: The Billion-Dollar Business of International Organ Donation . His publisher loved it. But while Eric was an increasingly lauded travel and science writer, he was jittery about venturing closer to political journalism and understood this book could change the course of his career—not for the better if he blew it—and the sheer awareness of consequence undercut his focus.
The restaurant was filling up, and he remembered it was Friday and that people, who worked in offices with cubicles and managers, who could take Saturday off because someone told them to stay home and weed their gardens or coach their kid’s T-ball games—these people knew work as a thing that could be separated from other parts of their life. The work of a writer was too portable sometimes, giving him the freedom to work anywhere anytime,
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