“Talk soon,” I said.
When I got to the general hospital, the first person I ran into was the doctor who delivered Ava. “Dr. Petersen!” I said. “How’s it going?”
“Hey, if it isn’t mama extraordinaire, Harper Dawson! You know, I read your piece in the Globe, the one about the kidnapping. What a horrible story—happy ending, but a horrible story. But you wrote it so well. As a mother myself, I could really empathize with that poor woman.”
I grinned and ducked my head. “Thanks,” I said. It was still always flattering to find out that people were actually reading my articles. I knew, objectively, that people were, but it was another thing to have people unexpectedly comment on them like this. I didn’t go into journalism with the aim of getting famous, but I did appreciate a little recognition sometimes.
“What are you doing over here anyway?” Dr. Petersen asked. “Don’t tell me; you’re pregnant with the second one?”
“Oh no,” I said, shaking my head. “Ava is more than enough at the moment.”
“She in the terrible twos still, or is it the tricky threes by now?”
“Neither!” I said. “I mean, she’s three, but she’s been perfect. I’m afraid that one day, she’s going to be an absolutely terrible teenager.” Dr. Petersen laughed. “I’ve got some pictures, if you want to see,” I continued, pulling out my phone.
“Isn’t she just the cutest,” Dr. Petersen said, shaking her head. “But if you’re not here because you’re pregnant, what are you doing here? Everything’s okay with both of you, isn’t it?”
“It is, it is,” I told her, nodding. “It’s been a long week, and I’m ready for the end of it, but I’m just here to interview the new head of the pediatric oncology department.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful. You’ll have an interesting take on her, I’m sure.”
I glanced at my watch and realized I didn’t have time to ask Dr. Petersen what she meant by that comment. Of course, I would try to write the article from an interesting perspective; that was all I ever did. I really wanted people to come alive for my readers, whether it was SEALs in Kuwait or doctors in Boston public hospitals.
But the comment made sense once I met Sandra Michaels. She was like me in a lot of ways. A professional go-getter, a black woman surrounded by white people on all sides. I tried to ask about the hardships of her job, though, and she gave me ordinary, run-of-the-mill hospital problems: funding, bureaucracy, human error. There was no chip on her shoulder. She was really well-spoken and serene.
She didn’t act like she harbored any lingering attitude about having to work twice as hard as some of her colleagues to get into that position.
I frowned. It really made me think. In the journalistic field, I’d often been frustrated by the boy’s club nature of it. The work I’d done over in Kuwait had been big, and I’d turned out some of the best pieces that I’d ever written. I knew that they had resonated with a number of people. But I hadn’t even gotten a nod toward a promotion, let alone a Pulitzer.
I’d resented that. And I’d wondered whether it wasn’t partly due to the fact that I had come home early. Maybe they thought I couldn’t cut it over there, that I was just having “women troubles” and needed to come back home.
Maybe it hadn’t been that at all. I’d still been so young while I was over there. And even though I knew that the pieces I’d written had been good, maybe I’d needed a little more experience prior to tackling something so huge. Maybe if I went back now, knowing what I did, I’d write some of those stories differently.
Maybe there was no reason for the chip on my shoulder.
I thought about it the whole ride home. I tried to remember the last time I’d had an incident where I had been made to feel less. But I couldn’t pinpoint one. I did have to deal with a lot of men who felt like they could be rude or press their advances. The kind of men who just didn’t seem to understand the word no. But that wasn’t because of who I was or what I looked like or how hard I worked. That was just because I was a woman and they were entitled.
I frowned, thinking harder. I could feel the chip on my shoulder start to loosen. I wanted to write good pieces, really good pieces, even if I couldn’t disappear to Kuwait for six months at a time anymore, not now that Ava was in the picture.
But there was still a way to make each of these small, local pieces meaningful. And that was all I could do. I became a journalist because I wanted to share some of those big-picture stories with the world, but what about turning the small-picture story into the big picture?
The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. The less I blamed myself for leaving early from my trip to Kuwait. Everything had worked out the way it needed to. I had a be
autiful daughter, and my daughter’s father was somehow in my life again.
I smiled to myself.
When I got home that night, there was just a little light left. “Can we play outside?” Ava asked immediately, bounding up to me with her favorite stuffed dog.
“Sure thing,” I said, giving her a quick hug. “Just let me say hi to Maisie and get changed.”
“Okay!” Ava said, trotting off to amuse herself in the meantime.
“How was she?” I asked Maisie.
“A perfect little angel, as always,” Maisie said.
“Great,” I said, sighing in relief.