“The cycle, silly,” Laurie said excitedly. “Yesterday Dr. Schoener thought it would only be four or five days before I give myself the stimulating shot and follicular release will occur. At that point it will be your turn at bat.”

Jack exhaled fully. In his mind the infertility issue had not meshed with the proposed trip to India.

“Don’t look so glum. Maybe we should count on dispensing with the turkey-baster part and do it the real way. But I’ll tell you something, with the effort and stress involved, I’m not going to have you sitting here and me in India when this current crop of follicles bursts. Dr. Schoener is particularly optimistic because the left ovary fronting my good fallopian tube is the one that’s going great guns this time around.”

Lifting his arm from Laurie’s shoulder and sitting back against the headboard, Jack said, “Looks like we’re in for a quick trip to India, provided our fearless second-in-command lets us go. Maybe I can bribe him to say no!”

Laurie playfully swatted Jack’s thigh through the covers as she got up. “I just had a good idea. Since I’m going to need an ob-gyn consult to follow my follicles and do my blood work, maybe I can find one in the same hospital, the Queen Victoria. It might be helpful with Jennifer’s problem if we had a friend on the hospital staff.”

“Could be,” Jack said, as he shimmied down under the covers and then pulled them up around his neck. “A question about logistics: If we need visas, we’ll be needing passport photos.”

“In the morning we can use that all-night shop with the photo section up on Columbus Avenue.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Jack said, after taking a deep breath and letting it out noisily.

“Are you going back to sleep?”

“Of course I’m going back to sleep. What else am I going to do after midnight?”

“I wish I could sleep like you can. The problem is, now I’ve gotten myself all worked up.”

Chapter 13

Chapter 13

OCTOBER 17, 2007
WEDNESDAY, 11:42 A.M.
NEW DELHI, INDIA

Jennifer felt totally frustrated. Despite how exhausted she was, even to the point of being slightly nauseated, she could not fall asleep. She’d drawn the heavy lined draperies, so the room was dark enough. The problem was that she was overtired and excited at the same time. The idea that Laurie might come was almost too good to be true and had her mind buzzing. Finally she thought, Screw it, and climbed from beneath the covers.

Dressed in only her panties, which was the way she’d gotten into bed, she went to the window and reopened the draperies, flooding the room with urban India’s hazy sunshine. Absently, she wondered how much hotter it would have been outside had all the pollution not blocked out a significant portion of the sun’s rays.