"You should have stayed home on her check day. If she could have reached you when she heard the news—" He brushed invisible specks from his spotless uniform and walked out of the apartment.
Greg led his wife to the sofa and sank down beside her. Check day. He stared at her with disbelief.
"I'm sorry," she said in a whisper, not looking at him. "You never could remember anniversaries or dates, and I didn't want to worry you." She started to quiver again.
"How bad is it?" Greg fought for words, blinking to try to drive away the haze before his eyes.
"It isn't serious at all," she said, raising her head and looking at him for the first time. "They said that the operation will take only a few minutes. They said cancer wouldn't ever be dangerous if they always found it as quickly as this time. We—I'm really very lucky, they said."
"But you should have told me that this was your check day. I was worried about the Patagonian case, and I just—"
Then Greg stared straight at his wife, trying to pierce the strangeness that covered her eyes. He realized in a flood of terror the full implications of this day.
"Dora—do they let you have the child if you're pregnant when they find cancer? I don't remember...."
She sat erect and pushed the hair away from her eyes, suddenly the stronger of the two. "Of course, I can have the child," she said. "And please don't worry about today. I was silly, and fainted when they brought in the report, and when I came to I tried to pretend that I'd suffered amnesia. It was foolish because they could have identified me from their records, but they told me that lots of women get the same idea, so maybe I'm not so terrible after all."