Read Online Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jodi Picoult
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never would have been able to enjoy that expansive teak deck, that mountain view. “Let’s go over your family
medical history,” my doctor said, and I gave my standard answer: “I’m adopted; I don’t know my family medical history.”
Even though I turned out to be fine—the abnormal results were a lab error—I think that was the day I decided to search for my birth parents.
I know what you’re thinking: wasn’t I happy with my adoptive parents? Well, the answer was yes—which is why I hadn’t even entertained the thought of searching until I was thirty-one. I’d always been happy and grateful that I got to grow up with my family; I didn’t need or want a new one. And the very last thing I wanted to do was break their hearts by telling them I was mounting a search.
But even though I knew my whole life that my adoptive parents desperately wanted me, somewhere in my mind, I knew that my birth parents didn’t. My mom had given me the party line about them being too young and not ready to have a family—and logically I understood that—but emotionally, I felt like I’d been tossed aside. I guess I wanted to know why. So after a talk with my adoptive parents—one during which my mother cried the whole time she promised to help me—I tentatively waded into the search that I’d been toying with for the past six months.
Being adopted felt like reading a book that had the first chapter ripped out. You might be enjoying the plot and the characters, but you’d probably also like to read that first line, too. However, when you took the book back to the store to say that the first chapter was missing, they told you they couldn’t sell you a replacement copy that was intact. What if you read that first chapter and realized you hated the book, and posted a nasty review on Amazon? What if you hurt the author’s feelings? Better just to stick with your partial copy and enjoy the rest of the story.
Adoption records weren’t open—not even for someone like me, who knew how to pull strings legally. Which meant that every step was Herculean, and that there were far more failures than successes. I’d spent the first three months of my search paying a private investigator over six hundred dollars to tell me that he had turned up absolutely nothing. That, I figured, I could have done myself for free.
The problem was that my real job kept interfering.
As soon as we finished showing the O’Keefes out of the law office
I rounded on my boss. “For the record? This kind of lawsuit is completely unpalatable to me,” I said.
“Will you still say that,” Bob mused, “if we wind up with the biggest wrongful birth payout in New Hampshire?”
“You don’t know that—”
He shrugged. “Depends on what her medical records turn up.”
A wrongful birth lawsuit implies that, if the mother had known during her pregnancy that her child was going to be significantly impaired, she would have chosen to abort the fetus. It places the onus of responsibility for the child’s subsequent disability on the ob-gyn. From a plaintiff’s standpoint, it’s a medical malpractice suit. For the defense, it becomes a morality question: who has the right to decide what kind of life is too limited to be worth living?
Many states had banned wrongful birth suits. New Hampshire wasn’t one of them. There had been several settlements for the parents of children who’d been born with spina bifida or cystic fibrosis or, in one case, a boy who was profoundly retarded and wheelchair-bound due to a genetic abnormality—even though the illness had never been diagnosed before, much less noticed in utero. In New Hampshire, parents were responsible for the care of disabled children their whole lives—not just till age eighteen—which was as good a reason as any to seek damages. There was no question Willow O’Keefe was a sad story, with her enormous body cast, but she’d smiled and answered questions when the father left the room and
medical history,” my doctor said, and I gave my standard answer: “I’m adopted; I don’t know my family medical history.”
Even though I turned out to be fine—the abnormal results were a lab error—I think that was the day I decided to search for my birth parents.
I know what you’re thinking: wasn’t I happy with my adoptive parents? Well, the answer was yes—which is why I hadn’t even entertained the thought of searching until I was thirty-one. I’d always been happy and grateful that I got to grow up with my family; I didn’t need or want a new one. And the very last thing I wanted to do was break their hearts by telling them I was mounting a search.
But even though I knew my whole life that my adoptive parents desperately wanted me, somewhere in my mind, I knew that my birth parents didn’t. My mom had given me the party line about them being too young and not ready to have a family—and logically I understood that—but emotionally, I felt like I’d been tossed aside. I guess I wanted to know why. So after a talk with my adoptive parents—one during which my mother cried the whole time she promised to help me—I tentatively waded into the search that I’d been toying with for the past six months.
Being adopted felt like reading a book that had the first chapter ripped out. You might be enjoying the plot and the characters, but you’d probably also like to read that first line, too. However, when you took the book back to the store to say that the first chapter was missing, they told you they couldn’t sell you a replacement copy that was intact. What if you read that first chapter and realized you hated the book, and posted a nasty review on Amazon? What if you hurt the author’s feelings? Better just to stick with your partial copy and enjoy the rest of the story.
Adoption records weren’t open—not even for someone like me, who knew how to pull strings legally. Which meant that every step was Herculean, and that there were far more failures than successes. I’d spent the first three months of my search paying a private investigator over six hundred dollars to tell me that he had turned up absolutely nothing. That, I figured, I could have done myself for free.
The problem was that my real job kept interfering.
As soon as we finished showing the O’Keefes out of the law office
I rounded on my boss. “For the record? This kind of lawsuit is completely unpalatable to me,” I said.
“Will you still say that,” Bob mused, “if we wind up with the biggest wrongful birth payout in New Hampshire?”
“You don’t know that—”
He shrugged. “Depends on what her medical records turn up.”
A wrongful birth lawsuit implies that, if the mother had known during her pregnancy that her child was going to be significantly impaired, she would have chosen to abort the fetus. It places the onus of responsibility for the child’s subsequent disability on the ob-gyn. From a plaintiff’s standpoint, it’s a medical malpractice suit. For the defense, it becomes a morality question: who has the right to decide what kind of life is too limited to be worth living?
Many states had banned wrongful birth suits. New Hampshire wasn’t one of them. There had been several settlements for the parents of children who’d been born with spina bifida or cystic fibrosis or, in one case, a boy who was profoundly retarded and wheelchair-bound due to a genetic abnormality—even though the illness had never been diagnosed before, much less noticed in utero. In New Hampshire, parents were responsible for the care of disabled children their whole lives—not just till age eighteen—which was as good a reason as any to seek damages. There was no question Willow O’Keefe was a sad story, with her enormous body cast, but she’d smiled and answered questions when the father left the room and
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