A/N: my gratitude as always to Jan, Barbara, and Alison for their wonderful beta work.

Chapter 6

On Monday morning, Lizzy was all ready to go when Elena arrived a few minutes before 8 o'clock. Mom and baby had been awake since 6 o'clock and had already nursed twice, changed Emma's clothes twice due to a leaky damn cloth diaper, and changed Lizzy's clothes once for the same reason. Fortunately, it was Emma's diaper, not Lizzy's. But at this rate she might have to go shopping again because she didn't have ten new suits. Will had managed to wake up sufficiently to sit semi-comatose holding Emma while Lizzy took a shower. Then he took his turn in the shower while Lizzy, Emma on her hip, double-checked the list of things she needed to take to work. Briefcase, check. Laptop, check. Purse, check. Pump with bottles and all the tubes, shields, and gear, check. There had to be a better way to consolidate all of these things into a smaller number of bags. She still had the feeling from the night before that she'd forgotten something.

Emma in her arms, Lizzy greeted Elena at the door, and they walked into the living room together.

"I'm going to head out now, and Will will leave a little after. He's always a bit slow getting out the door," Lizzy told her.

"Would you like me to take her while you finish getting ready to go?" asked Elena, as Lizzy looked around frantically for her shoe.

"Oh...yeah, thanks," Lizzy said as she hopped on one foot while feeling under the sofa with the other, balancing Emma on her hip at the same time. Elena came over and took Emma, and Lizzy got down on her hands and knees to look around for the shoe.

From her spot on the floor, she said, "How are you doing this morning? I just fed Emma and changed her. She doesn't usually nurse again so soon, but she wanted to eat a second time this morning. She'll probably be ready for a nap in about an hour. Did I show you where the laundry basket is?" She found her shoe under the coffee table and stood back up again, her hair sticking out all over her head.

Elena was rocking Emma and making funny faces at her. Calmly, she said, "She can probably tell that you're worried about something this morning, so she wanted to be close. I bet that's why she's nursing so much."

Lizzy suddenly realized she was indeed strung rather tightly at the moment. Between Emma's constant nursing and her own nerves, she hadn't slept much the night before, and she felt almost dizzy with exhaustion and excitement. She let out a big whoosh of air to get herself to relax. "Yeah, I'm pretty hyper this morning. I hope she's not too jazzed up for you."

"Don't worry, we'll be fine," Elena smiled.

Will came into the living room, his hair still wet from the shower.

"Hi, Elena. It's good to see you again." They hadn't met since the first interview, many months before.

"Hello, Mr. Darcy," Elena said.

"Please, call me Will," he replied, all business, before turning to Lizzy. "Are you doing all right? You seem kind of, um, frazzled."

"Yeah, it's sort of like the first day of school. I'm excited to go back, but I'm also kind of nervous."

Will took her by the shoulders and stroked her arms. "It's going to be all right. You know what you're doing at work. It's just like riding a bike."

"Yeah," Lizzy gave a laugh with only a slight edge to it, "only now I'm wearing giant clown shoes and riding the bike on a tightrope 25 feet in the air."

Will laughed, too. He gestured at himself and Elena. "Well, you also have a great safety net right here." He put his arms around her and held her close. He whispered, "You can do it. You'll do great."

Lizzy slid her arms around his waist and stood with him for a moment, until she heard Emma fuss. Then she looked up and saw that Elena had turned away to give her and Will some privacy. Another change to get used to: someone new in the house, witnessing their most intimate moments. OK, maybe not the most intimate, but still pretty intimate. She had long ago reconciled herself to the house cleaners' familiarity with her hygiene routine and kitchen habits, and to other people very literally knowing all about her dirty laundry. But this was different, a much more personal relationship, where she could actually see the reaction to her sloth or indifference or inadequacy. Well, there was nothing she could do about it. That's how it was. She could embrace it or fight it, and she decided right then that embracing it was the only thing that made sense.

She kissed Will, just a quick, chaste kiss on the lips and whispered "Thanks. I love you," in his ear. Then she stepped away and walked over to Elena and Emma.

"OK, I'm going to go now." She leaned over and kissed Emma's head. Suddenly she almost burst into tears. She hadn't realized she was so close to losing it.

Emma could sense her distress, and she started to cry. She reached out her arms toward Lizzy.

"Shhh, it's OK," said Elena, to Lizzy as much as to Emma. "I've got you. Give Mommy a kiss, and then she's going to go off to work. She'll see you very, very soon."

Her eyes stinging, Lizzy kissed Emma's hair again, and her cheek, and her little mouth, and one of her hands.

Elena said, "You can call any time. Why don't you call me when you get to work? You'll see, she'll be fine."

"I know. I know she will. Thank you. I really, really...thank you. I know she'll be fine."

Lizzy waved goodbye and picked up all of her bags. Will walked her down the hall to the closet by the front door, where she pulled out her overcoat. He kissed her goodbye and stood in the doorway watching her walk down the hallway, the sound of Emma's crying ringing in her ears. She surreptitiously wiped her eyes with the back of her hand as she pushed the button for the elevator. Good thing she'd remembered to wear waterproof mascara today, the first time she'd had any makeup on in two months. She waved goodbye, stepped into the elevator, and was off on her new adventure.

Lizzy decided to take the subway to work, just to feel like things were really back to normal, like she was a real, normal, working person. Her balance was off going down the steps to the station, so she had to grab onto the handrail as she descended. She realized she was used to leaning backwards a little to compensate for Emma's weight on her chest. Of course she had lots of other heavy things to carry, but they weren't in the same place, that empty, bereft space on her belly. Was Emma OK? Had she been crying uncontrollably since Lizzy had walked out the door?

At the same time, she thought, standing on the crowded subway platform and jostling against all the other commuters, it was pretty great to be here again. The familiar fetid subway air, her slightly sweaty body under her coat now that she was down out of the early winter chill, the rush to get to work and begin something important: these were all old friends that she hadn't even known she was missing once she'd been run over by the Emma steam roller. She would have two hands free at all times. She could go hours without a strange little creature sucking on her. She would have a whole day without changing a single diaper. It was going to be heavenly.

But then no trains came for a long time; this wasn't surprising since there were still frequent delays following Hurricane Sandy. The platform got even fuller. There was also a new and revolting post-Sandy stench in the station, probably coming from the only recently drained subway tunnels. Her bags seemed to be getting heavier and heavier. This had been a very stupid idea. She should just have taken a taxi. That's definitely what she would do tomorrow. She started to worry about Emma again.

After the train finally came and she was swept out onto the platform at her stop, Lizzy pulled out her iPhone and dialed Elena's number as she climbed the stairs to the street, bags swinging.

"She's doing great," Elena said. "We're just playing with the baby gym. I'll put her down for a nap in a little while. After that I think we'll go to the park. Do you want to switch over to FaceTime?"

"Um...OK, just a quick peek, maybe, please?" Lizzy squeezed up tight next to a newsstand so she wouldn't block the path of all the people storming down the sidewalk in their mad stampede to work.

The video of Emma popped right up on the screen. She was lying on her back batting at a toy giraffe hanging down over her. There, see? Everything was fine.

After thanking Elena and hanging up, Lizzy slipped the phone back into her bag and took a deep breath. Then she put her head down and joined the stampede up the block toward the HRI offices.

Walking into the office after so long away was like stepping out of a cool, air-conditioned building into a blazing hot, humid August day. It snapped her head back and sucked the air right out of her lungs, and she was sure that if she had been wearing her glasses they would have fogged up so she couldn't see.

"You're back!" effused Gina, her staff assistant, standing up behind her desk. "Hi! We're so glad to see you. Do you need anything? You have some meetings a little later, like we talked about, but I'll give you the details after you settle in."

"Hi! You're back! It's so great to have you with us again!" said Kyle, coming out of his office. "I left some papers on your desk. Whenever you can get to them is fine. We have a staff meeting at 10, as usual. See you then."

A couple of other heads popped up out of their cubicles, and they all said the same thing: "Hi! You're back!" and then they told her a bunch of stuff they needed her to do whenever it was possible, no rush, but preferably in about three seconds.

Well, yes, she was back. Lizzy went into her office and closed the door, seeking quiet. This was going to be interesting.

Dumping her bags on the floor next to her desk, she picked up her phone and called Will. "Hi, sweetie. Are you at the office? Can you talk?"

"Hi. No, I'm in the car. Everything OK?"

"Uh-huh. I checked in with Elena. Emma is doing fine."

"I knew she would. And how about you?" he asked.

"Yeah, it's weird, a big change. Kind of a shock to the system."

"I know you'll do great. Go get 'em." She heard a car door slam, and heard him say goodbye to the driver.

"OK, well, sounds like you have to go. Love you."

"Love you, too."

Lizzy pulled two framed photos of Emma out of her computer bag. She put one on her desk, next to a photo of her and Will on Mt. Kilimanjaro. Moving away from her desk, she took down one of the pictures hanging on the wall, a photo of her and her team with the plaintiffs in the first important case she'd had at HRI. She hung Emma's portrait in its place.

For the last eight weeks, she realized, her attention had been entirely focused on that one single little creature, trying to figure out what she wanted and needed, without any words at all. The whole universe had narrowed down to that one tiny point, Emma, and what she needed to survive. Now, suddenly, Lizzy was back out in the big, wide, chaotic, noisy world, where there were lots of words and lots of people who all needed to discuss and negotiate and get her signature. Wow. It kind of hurt her ears.

At the same time, it was also a relief to be back. This was something she knew how to do. Unlike when she was taking care of Emma, this was her area of expertise, her comfort zone. She could do this.

She sat down in her chair, took a deep cleansing breath, and prepared to lean in.(1)

After the 10 o'clock staff meeting during which her staff filled her in on their activities during the last two months and updated her on the status of some of their big projects, Lizzy headed back to her office and closed the door. After a minute, she opened the door again and stuck a big sign saying "Do Not Disturb" in magic marker on the outside. It was time to pump.

As she was sitting down to set up her equipment, she called Elena on FaceTime to see how they were doing. The short answer was, not great. Emma was screaming her head off. Her face was fire-engine red and screwed up into her fiercest angry-baby expression.

"Well," said Elena calmly, "we've been having a little disagreement about whether she's going to take the bottle. I say she is, but she says no." She was holding Emma on the nursing pillow in her lap, soothing her, and offering her the bottle.

"Oh, God. I was afraid this would happen. Do you want me to come home and feed her?" Lizzy asked frantically.

"No, honey. No need. I know it's hard to believe right now, but she and I will work this out. We'll try some different bottles, and different milk temperatures, and different places, and she'll find the one she likes."

"Hearing her cry like this...I just...I can't..." Lizzy could feel herself tensing up tighter and tighter, the wild, desperate mommy in her straining, trying to bust out of her chest like the alien crashing out of John Hurt in that movie. What was it called? Oh, yeah. Alien.

"I know, honey. It's tough when you're the mommy. Please trust me. She's a good little girl, just stubborn." Emma started thrashing around, and Elena said, "It looks like I need both hands right now. Let's talk again in about half an hour, OK?"

Lizzy said, "OK. OK. You can call me when you're ready, is that all right?"

"Yes, talk to you soon. Please don't worry. Bye."

As Elena hung up, Lizzy could hear Emma's wail—her most piercing, angry, hungry cry—as it hit a new, operatic, glass-shattering high. And just like that, very suddenly, the alien in her chest won the fight and Lizzy's milk let down with a big whoosh. Milk gushed out of her breasts; she could feel it dripping down her stomach and see it blooming on her chest like two perverse flowers in a stop-action nature film.

Shit. That's what she had forgotten to bring: nursing pads, and a back-up blouse. Damn it.

She dried her tears, again, cleaned herself up as best she could, and set up the pump. She got everything all put together and turned on and trussed in place, and fired up her computer to start looking over some urgent documents related to the Al-Harazi case. OK, she could do this. Everything else might be up in the air, but this, she could do.

Then, bam bam bam, she heard good ol' boy Andrew, who was the assistant to the executive director and whose office was nearby, knocking on her door as he was opening it. Simultaneously he craned his head around the edge, saying, "Hey, Bennet, I heard you were back. What's that thumping sound? You got a jackhammer in here or something?"

His priceless look of shock, dismay, and horror as he took in the scene in her office almost made up for her own feelings of embarrassment, dismay, and horror when she saw him peering in.

It was pretty horrifying, she thought, if you looked at it objectively. She was hooked up to a double pump using a black lycra pumping bustier. Altogether the ensemble appeared to be a cross between bondage gear and a terrifying mad scientist's apparatus, with weird Dr. Frankenstein-ish tubes shooting out of her nipples and bottles dangling down and filling with milk as if they were robbing her of her very soul. Tiny streams of milk were shooting out against the clear plastic breast shields in a rhythmic and oddly mesmerizing way. How did they do that, anyhow?

She glared up at Andrew. "What part of 'do not disturb' do you not understand, exactly?" she asked him coldly. "And, I'm expressing breastmilk. Do you want to see how the pump works?"

Andrew quickly averted his eyes and visibly winced when he heard the word "breast," turning bright red and mumbling as he rushed to close the door, "No, no, no, I'm sorry, sorry, really, I was just..."

Lizzy called Gina at her desk in the outer room and told her about the do not disturb sign, and the weird sounds she might hear emanating from the office sometimes. It was OK to transfer in a phone call during those times, she explained, but no visitors, please. Gina was all right with that. She'd been amused by Andrew's shrieks as he had sprinted down the hall to find a place to hide from the crazy boob lady and her freaky machine.

Lizzy made a mental note: Always lock door while pumping.

When Lizzy talked to Elena about 40 minutes later, Emma had taken her bottle and fallen asleep. She apparently just hadn't wanted to eat in their usual nursing spot on the sofa, and had reluctantly agreed to the third kind of nipple Elena had offered her. Everything was fine. Fine, that is, except that Lizzy had to wear her overcoat for the rest of the day to hide her ruined blouse.

Lizzy felt a little better. She turned back to the tall pile of papers and calls to be returned, all of them marked "Urgent."

Later that afternoon, she tightened the belt on her overcoat a little more firmly and went to the break room to make herself a cup of peppermint tea. Of course she would have much preferred a nice strong cup of joe, but no caffeine was allowed. How was she going to make it till the end of the day?

When she walked in, she saw Andrew fiddling with his own cup of coffee, tipping in a couple of packs of sugar. When she saw him reach over to open up the precious bottle of breastmilk that she had spent half an hour expressing and dump half of it into his coffee, she reached toward it and spluttered, "No! Wait! Don't! That's not— "

"What?" he said, turning to look at her innocently as he took a sip.

"It's just...that's breastmilk."

Naturally, Andrew spewed his mouthful of coffee all over the break room.

"What? Eeew! What the hell are you doing putting that in the fridge with food? Oh my God! I can't believe—" He gagged a little and moved to lean over the sink.

"It is a naturally occurring substance, Andrew, not some kind of poison. And what the hell are you doing using other people's milk in your coffee?"

She grabbed the bottle and put it back in the fridge, snagged a tea bag, and stalked out of the room. There was another source of hot water on the bottled water dispenser down the hall. That jerk!

Really, she should have known better, though. Andrew was notorious for pilfering other people's food from the common fridge, which was, in any case, a breeding ground for dangerous and probably antibiotic-resistant microbes. She made a second mental note to buy a mini-fridge for her office. And a label-maker.

When Lizzy returned home a few minutes before 6 o'clock, Elena was there at the door with Emma in her arms. Emma grabbed at her and started rooting around and making desperate sucking noises before Lizzy had even had a chance to put down all her bags and take off her coat.

"Hi, Elena. How did you two do today?" she asked, taking Emma. To Emma, she said, laughing, "Yeah, I know, I'm glad to see you, too, baby." They sat down in the living room for a long nursing session.

"It was a good first day," replied Elena. "It will take us a little while to figure each other out. But we're off to a good start."

Lizzy looked up from Emma to say, "Thank you, Elena, for everything today. I want you to know how much I appreciate what you are doing for our family, and for me, personally."

Elena smiled, "Well, it's my job. But I also like to do it. How could I not love this sweet little girl?"

"Yeah, she is pretty sweet," said Lizzy, watching Emma's look of concentration as her little jaws moved up and down. "I was really amazed at what you did with her today, how you got her to take the bottle. I tried it a few days ago, but she wouldn't have anything to do with it."

"No, it's nothing." Elena shook her head.

"No, it's not. I know an expert when I see one."

Elena laughed self-deprecatingly. "No, no. But please let me know if I do something you don't like. You're the mommy."

Then they moved on to the short daily briefing on Emma's excretory performance, milk consumption, and developmental progress. The pooping, eating, and smiling report, basically.

After Elena left for the evening, Lizzy thought over their conversation. It was interesting. What was their relationship? Employer-employee? Family? Personal? Business? Neither? Both? There didn't seem to be quite the right words to describe it. But of course the most important thing was that Emma was getting the care and love that she needed. That was the prize they needed to keep their eyes on.

It was 6:45 before Emma finally stopped nursing and Lizzy was at last able to change her own clothes. She had called for some pasta to be delivered while Emma was nursing, and that was on the table by the time Will came home, a little early, at 7:30. She told him about what had been going on at HRI in her absence, and humorously regaled him with a roundup of all the indignities of the day: her ruined blouse, Andrew's appearance during her pumping session, and the coffee incident later in the break room.

Will laughed, too, and said it sounded like she had it all under control and was taking the little bumps along the way in stride. He told her about the latest on the Copenhagen project and said that things were not looking good in Hong Kong.

It was nice to have these conversations again, thought Lizzy, where she had something to share with Will besides just a recitation of the shape, color, and consistency of Emma's bowel movements.

Lizzy still had some work that needed to be done that evening, preparation for a meeting the next day. She lay down on the bed with Emma to nurse her to sleep at 10 o'clock. By 10:30, she had managed to creep away without waking Emma, and went into her office to turn on her laptop.

Will stuck his head in the door. "Still have some stuff to take care of?" he asked.

"Yeah, just a little. I'm feeling pretty tired, though, so I'll probably pack it in shortly."

"OK. I guess I'll just watch TV till you're done, then."

She nodded and turned her attention to the computer screen.

At midnight, Will came in to wake her up so she could nurse Emma, who was crying in the bedroom. Lizzy had fallen asleep at the computer, her head tucked into the crook of her right elbow on the desk, and her left hand on the keyboard. All she had managed to write that evening was "snerttttttttttttttaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasdggggggggg ."

Footnotes:

(1) Lean in: Of course this is referring to the book published in the fall of 2012 by Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook. In her book she argues that one crucial reason women still face a glass ceiling is that they lack commitment to their jobs. If they really want to advance their careers, when they have children they need to lean in and commit even more to work instead of pulling back and retreating into family life.

If you like, please snerttttttttttttttaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasdggggggggg just below.