- -
- 100%
- +
“I’m a doctor,” he called into the car. “What’s the problem?”
“She’s having a baby,” the first woman said without looking up, “And it’s in a hurry to arrive.” She placed a folded blanket behind the woman’s head and eased out of the car, crawling backward across the seat. “You’re a doctor, huh?” she said when she was back out on the freeway again.
“Right.”
Her expression registered a brief battle between distrust and relief.
He met her eyes, but said nothing. If he’d stepped out of a Mercedes wearing a three-piece designer suit, he thought, he would have had no trouble convincing her of his profession.
“Hey, take over,” she said finally, apparently deciding to take him at his word. “Her water broke. She’s having contractions. Someone called the highway patrol, but it looks as though the kid will get here before they do.”
He heard a moan from the car and crawled inside. Conflicting thoughts raced around in his brain. If he stopped to help her, he’d be more than just a few minutes late for the presentation, and the highway patrol would have an air ambulance dispatched, he reasoned, so she was in no real medical danger. As he considered what to do, the woman screamed and her body went rigid. He looked at his watch and noted the time. Three-ten. Right now he should be well into the presentation. He blocked the thought, waited for the contraction to subside and surveyed the interior of the car. Packing cartons and boxes were jammed into the back seat, clothes on and off hangers piled to a height that all but obscured the rear window.
“Right, then, I’m going to help you.” He looked at her. A sheen of perspiration covered her face. Fine lines around her eyes and mouth put her age close to forty. “Martin Connaughton,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Rita.” The woman bit her lip and her eyes filled with tears. “Hodges. You’d think I’d know better after four kids, wouldn’t you? I figured this one wasn’t due for another two months.”
“Have you seen a doctor?” he asked, but he’d already guessed the answer.
She shook her head. “My husband and me just got out here from Tennessee. He’s got the other kids. I was supposed to be checking out some apartment in Downey, then this happens… Oh God—” her face contorted “—here comes another one.”
Her scream filled the car, ricocheted off the windows.
He checked his watch again. Three minutes since the last one. Outside, the crowd of onlookers, faces up at the glass, jockeyed for a better view. Anytime now, he thought, there’d be vendors hawking soft drinks.
“You’re the star of the Long Beach Freeway, Rita.” He caught her in an awkward embrace and maneuvered her around until she was stretched across both seats. Then he tented the gray blanket over her knees. “Everyone wants a look.”
She grinned weakly. “Yeah, a look up my crotch. Jeez, I hope they don’t flash it on TV.”
It wouldn’t surprise him, he thought as he checked the make-shift delivery set-up. Since she occupied both seats, there was no room for him inside the car so he climbed out and stood on the asphalt. Like an old-time photographer covered by a black cloth, he peered into the tented area between her knees. Sweat trickled down his back.
“Okay, Rita, let’s see what’s going on here.” A routine task under normal conditions, the examination seemed surreal against the backdrop of freeway activity. He listened for a police siren, an air ambulance.
The air in the car grew stifling. Sweat dripped into his eyes. Wiping his face, he tried to remember the last time he’d actually delivered a baby. Eight years at least. In New Guinea or Ethiopia, he wasn’t sure. All he remembered was that everything had been fine. Mother and baby okay.
Rita screamed again and pushed. A head appeared, black and slick as a seal. He heaved a sigh of relief.
“How’s it going?” He emerged from his blanket tent and smiled at her, playing the combined role of coach and obstetrician. “Doing okay? Almost over. A couple more pushes and we’re there.”
She moaned. Her abdomen rose and tightened up into another contraction and she moaned again, a slow ascent into a full-pitched scream. The veins in her face and neck bulged. She screamed and pushed some more.
“Come on, Rita,” he urged. “Now. You can do it. Now.”
She gave one last shrill cry and a baby girl emerged. The crowd at the car window, larger now, drawn by Rita’s screams and the unfolding drama, broke into applause.
Martin looked up to a sea of grinning faces and waving hands. He took a deep breath, trying to slow his heart rate to something approaching normal.
With one glance at the baby, he realized that his relief, like the infant, was premature. About twenty-eight weeks, he guessed. A little over two pounds. Viable in that sense. Her dusky color wasn’t good though, neither was her muscle tone. Less reassuring still was her single weak cry. As he cut the umbilical cord, he felt a prickle of fear. The feeble sound was hardly a declaration of life.
Where the hell was the air ambulance? He cleaned out the infant’s nose and mouth as best he could and handed her to Rita.
“A daughter.” He forced a smile and a note of reassurance to his voice. “Hold her tight against you, inside your clothes. All right? Make sure she stays warm.”
Rita looked from him to her new daughter. A range of expressions played across her face. She fumbled with the buttons of her shirt, got it open and yanked her bra away from her breasts. “Is she okay? She’s not crying much. My others all yelled their heads off.”
“We need to get her to the hospital.” He pulled the edges of her shirt together so that they covered the baby. “The ambulance should be here any minute.”
Fervently hoping he was right, he watched for a moment, then returned to the tented canopy. As he reached up inside her for the placenta, his hand caught a tiny foot. He released his grip, felt around again. No doubt, it was a foot. He shook his head. This couldn’t be happening. Exploring, he found what had to be the shoulders of a third infant.
“Holy Mother of God.” For a moment he couldn’t move, his grip frozen on the tiny limb. Rita’s scream galvanized him into action. “Where the bloody hell is the highway patrol,” he yelled over his shoulder. “Tell them…”
A second, louder scream interrupted him.
CHAPTER THREE
“JOSH GILLESPIE, right.” Catherine cradled the receiver between her ear and shoulder and consulted the scrawled jottings on her notepad. “Eight years old,” she said, reading from a sheet of yellow paper. “Life-Flighted here about seven this morning. Hit by a car as he was crossing the road. We need a condition report for the media.” She hesitated a moment. “A couple of reporters want to speak to the parents.”
“Josh is in surgery.” The voice of the nurse in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit was abrupt. “He’s—” She stopped, a hint of suspicion evident now. “Who did you say you were?”
“Catherine Prentice. Public Relations.”
“I don’t know your name.”
Catherine drew a square around the boy’s name. If she’d sounded more confident, would the nurse have questioned her? She pushed the thought away. Her head ached, her stomach felt as if she’d swallowed a lump of lead. And the Professional Match producer had called again. Now she’d have to go plead with Martin Connaughton to see if she could get him to change his mind. Which might have been easier if she hadn’t called him Scrooge. All of this when what she really wanted to do was go and pick up her kids, start a new life somewhere where Gary and Nadia would never find them.
“I’ve just started working here,” she told the nurse. “You can call me back to verify if you want.”
“I’ll take your word,” the nurse said. “He’s critical. On life support. The mother’s here, but—” she lowered her voice “—she’s pretty hysterical. Try back in an hour or so.”
After she’d hung up the phone, Catherine stared at the small framed picture of Peter and Julie on her desk, wondered how she’d cope if anything happened to either of them. A sudden superstitious dread washed over her as though she’d tempted fate by even contemplating the possibility. She touched the picture: first Peter’s face, then Julie’s.
Like a tornado, the divorce had hurled her around, ripped away the sheltering protection of domesticity, battered her confidence and self-esteem. In the aftermath, she’d looked at the transformed landscape and recognized nothing at all that was familiar. Even now, she couldn’t get rid of this image of herself, standing Dorothy-like on a Kansas plain, her two children sheltering under her skirts. Winds whipped around her and, off in the distance, was another tornado just waiting to strike.
She shook her head to dislodge the image and dialed the NICU. Connaughton was off-site, the clerk told her, so she left a message for him then called Professional Match to say she was still working on getting someone. After she hung up, she tried to focus on another project, but her thoughts kept drifting to Gary’s demand for custody.
What she didn’t know was just how far he would go. He had a habit of threatening her just to keep her a little concerned and insecure. Like the time when Julie was two months old and he’d gone on a white-water rafting trip with a couple of his buddies. He’d complained that he was unhappy and stifled, that she’d let herself get fat, that she cared more about the children than him. Without the trip to restore his spirits, he would walk out of the marriage, he’d said. The third time he used the same threat, she’d called his bluff, forcing him to find new material.
Office noises drifted around her. The low hum of conversation in the next room, the whoosh of a file drawer sliding shut, a burst of laughter from the reception desk. In the coffee area, a microwave oven pinged its readiness and, seconds later, the whiff of hot popcorn filled the air. In her first week at Western, she had decorated her office with pictures of the children, a couple of trailing green plants, a small amber lamp and a glass bowl which she kept constantly replenished with jelly beans. It was her thing, creating nests.
She stared at the computer screen, tried to think of a snappy lead for the release she was working on, but nothing came to mind. Somehow it was difficult to concentrate on promoting a bunch of wealthy, golf-playing doctors when she was worried about losing her kids. A movement in the doorway made her look up and she saw Derek, cellular phone in one hand, a bran muffin in the other.
“Forget about Connaughton,” he said around a mouthful of muffin. “The producer called me just now, they’ve found someone else.”
“Derek, I’m sorry, he just refused—”
“What about the kiddie on the trike?”
“Bike.” Catherine corrected. “He’s in surgery.”
“There’s a TV crew camped outside the E.R.,” he said. “See if you can get mommy to talk.”
“I already tried,” Catherine said. “The nurse said to call back later.”
“The nurse isn’t on deadline.” He finished the muffin, crumpled the paper wrapping into a ball and aimed it at her trash bin. It missed. “Reporters are. That’s why you’re here. Never mind, I’ll take care of it.” As he walked away, his cell phone rang and he grabbed a pen and yellow pad from her desk and started scribbling notes. Moments later, he clicked the phone shut and looked across the desk at her, an expression on his face she couldn’t quite discern.
“Big media event. One of our docs delivered triplets on the Long Beach Freeway this afternoon. He stayed until the air ambulance arrived then took off like a bat out of hell. Said he was in a big hurry.” He glanced at his notes. “Babies and mommy are on their way here. Security says the press are already swarming all over the lobby. I’m going to get them corralled in one of the conference rooms. Once the kids are stabilized, we’ll arrange for some pool footage.”
Catherine followed him out of the office, eager for an opportunity to redeem herself. “Do you want me to put some background stuff together?”
“Later. Right now, everyone wants to talk to this guy. What I need you to do is find him and get him down to the conference room, pronto.”
“Sure,” Catherine agreed. “What’s his name?”
“Martin Connaughton,” Derek said. “And don’t drop the ball this time.”
SHE GAVE HERSELF a pep talk as she made her way up to the NICU. You can do this. You will overcome Connaughton’s resistance. You will prove Gary wrong about Nadia being the only reason you got this job. And tonight, to celebrate, you will take the kids out for pepperoni pizza without thinking about the calories. Then after they’re in bed, you will have a bubble bath and, maybe, a glass of wine, because you will have deserved it. Go do it, girl.
Outside the unit, a dark-haired reporter with glossy red lips and a tightly fitting suit in matching crimson, flashed Catherine a smile that appeared and disappeared as precisely as if a button had been pressed.
“Selena Bliss,” she said. “I’m looking for Dr. Martin Connaughton.”
“Connotun.” Catherine smiled as she corrected the reporter’s pronunciation. “I’m looking for him, too.” Not sure how Selena and her cameraman had managed to escape both security and Derek’s corral, she figured that if you looked like Selena Bliss, a lot of things might be possible. “You need to be in the conference room,” she said. “In a few minutes we’ll be giving a briefing.”
“I’d rather wait here for Dr. Connaughton,” Selena said.
“I’ll bring him down to the conference room.” She maintained her smile. “That’s where he’ll be doing the interviews.”
The reporter glanced at the cameraman standing nearby, then looked at Catherine. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am.” The smile began to feel forced. “Ready?”
“Maybe you’re not aware of it, but that’s not the way I work.” Selena Bliss smiled again. “Derek Petrelli said I could have an exclusive with Dr. Connaughton.”
“Derek never mentioned an exclusive to me,” Catherine said. “But I’d be glad to check it out with him. If that’s the case, we can set something up. For now though, if you’ll go down to the conference room—”
“I’m not hanging around a conference room waiting,” Selena said. “I’ll wait here.”
Struggling for a way out of the impasse, Catherine heard a voice behind her and turned to see Nate Grossman, chief of pediatric neurosurgery. Ignoring Catherine, he stuck out his hand to the reporter, his face a beam of delight.
“Selena Bliss! Do I have a story for you! Have you heard about the new surgical technique that we’ve perfected here at Western to—”
“Actually, I’m here to interview Dr. Connaughton,” Selena said.
“Connaughton?” Grossman’s face darkened. “Why would you want to talk to him?”
“He’s quite the hero of the hour.” Selena summarized the freeway rescue. “So we want to talk to him about what he did. How he felt at the time. How the babies are doing, that sort of thing.” She smiled. “It’s a really nice heart-warming story.”
“Tell you what,” Grossman said. “How about I take you into the unit and let you get some shots of the babies? Meanwhile, I’ll fill you in on the new procedure. It was written up in the New England Journal—”
“Excuse me, Dr. Grossman.” Catherine felt the situation slipping out of her control. “We wanted to avoid having camera crews in the unit, so we’ve arranged for pool footage of the babies.”
“Oh, Selena doesn’t want pool footage.” Grossman winked at the reporter as if to say he knew her lingo. “Come with me, I’ll have someone get you a gown.” He looked at Catherine. “If anyone complains, tell them to talk to me.”
Selena gave her a triumphant little smile and followed Grossman into the unit. May you go on the air with lipstick on your teeth, Catherine thought as she tied on a protective cotton gown and made her way down to the end of the unit where Grossman was holding forth for the benefit of the camera.
“The tall one is Connaughton.” He pointed to a figure in scrubs whose hair and lower face were covered by a surgical cap and mask. “Right now he’s putting in a breathing tube. He’s already wired up the other two.”
“Everyone seems kind of tense.” Selena looked at him. “Is the procedure complicated?”
“No, but it’s kind of tricky—like threading a needle, but a lot more exacting. The baby can’t breathe while it’s being done and the heart slows down.” He chuckled. “There’s always the risk you’ll get ’em properly tubed, but dead.”
Posturing idiot. Angry, Catherine saw Selena’s eyes widen, saw her scribble something else in her notebook. “Of course, that sort of thing doesn’t happen here at Western,” she added quickly.
“Of course it doesn’t,” Grossman agreed. “That was just a little joke. In our intensive care unit—” he tapped the reporter’s notebook “—we care intensively. You can quote me on that.”
God, this guy was truly insufferable. Catherine saw Connaughton look up and stare at the camera, then turn his attention back to the baby.
“Heart rate dropping,” a voice said from the cluster around the bassinet. “Heart rate sixty—fifty.”
The cameraman began filming.
“Heart rate forty.” The voice was urgent. “Come out now.”
Catherine saw a hand whisk something from the baby’s face. Someone else started pumping a black rubber bag. Moments later people began moving away from the bassinet. Connaughton said something to a nurse, then pulled his mask around his neck and walked over to where she stood with Selena Bliss and Grossman.
The cameraman followed with his lens.
“Dr. Connaughton.” As she moved toward him, Catherine felt the blood rush to her face. “Catherine Prentice. I met you this morning. I, uh…is the baby okay?”
“Turn that damn thing off.” He gestured at the camera. As he wiped his forehead with his mask, he looked from the reporter to Catherine. “The baby’s fine.” His face darkened. “What the hell is going on here?”
“You’ve created quite a stir.” She smiled at him. “There’s a whole conference room full of reporters downstairs all waiting to talk to you. Including—” she nodded toward Selena still standing with her microphone outstretched “—this reporter here—”
“Perfect opportunity for a nice little plug for Western,” Grossman said. “I’ve been telling Selena about some of the work we’re doing.” He winked at her. “Including, of course, some of our state-of-the-art neurosurgery—”
“Excuse me, Dr. Grossman.” Catherine looked from the surgeon to Connaughton and saw the strain of the past few hours evident in his eyes. Empathy vied with demands of the job. She motioned Selena Bliss and her crew to stay put and drew him aside. “Are you okay?”
“Okay?” With a glance at the reporter and cameraman clustered out of earshot on the other side of the unit, he stared at her as though he’d forgotten why she was there. “Sorry?”
“You look kind of…” Self-conscious, she decided to take a different approach. “How are the babies?” It wasn’t an idle question, she really wanted to know, but nerves made her plow on. “And the mother? I hear she’s up on postpartum. God, what an ordeal. Lucky for her you were there.” His eyes, a dark blue, were fixed on her, but she sensed his mind was elsewhere. Across the room, Selena Bliss pointedly glanced at her watch. “Look, I’m sure talking to the press is the last thing you want to do, but—”
“The press?”
“Every reporter in town wants to talk to you.”
“Tell them I have nothing to say.”
She smiled, although something told her he wasn’t joking. “Dr. Connaughton, I realize that you probably thought the request this morning was, uh—”
“Frivolous?” The faintest flicker of a smile crossed his face. “Well, I suppose you’d expect Scrooge to think that way, wouldn’t you?”
“Ah.” She tried to smile. “About that. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it.”
“It’s hardly the most damning thing I’ve ever been called.” He pulled off his surgical cap, ran his hands through unruly reddish-brown hair. “Look, I can’t discuss this now.” He started off down the corridor at a fast clip. “I missed an important meeting.”
“Okay then.” She ran along beside him. “When would be more convenient?”
“Never.” He reached the door to the emergency stairwell, pulled it open and started up the stairs. “Nothing’s changed. I don’t talk to the press.”
“Look, Dr. Connaughton…” She tried another tack. “What you did this afternoon, delivering those babies, was a wonderful, humanitarian gesture. People are really interested in that sort of thing. And with the babies here at Western, it’s really great public relations.”
“That’s what you said about Professional Match.”
“Right.” She thought quickly. “I know I did, but that was kind of fun PR. This is different. It’s terrific exposure for Western’s NICU. We could spend millions and not get better advertising.”
“I’m sorry.” He took the stairs, two at a time, glanced back at Catherine who trailed a step or two behind. “I don’t want to do it. Humanitarian gesture or not, had I known that helping would create all this attention, I’d probably have stayed in my car.”
“Just a minute, Dr. Connaughton.” She reached him on the top landing. “People want to know how the babies are doing. Can’t we at least do a brief condition update?”
“Two of them should be fine. I’m very concerned about the smallest one.” He pulled open the stairwell door and headed for administration. “If you want to relay that on my behalf, feel free to do so.” With that, he disappeared through the polished wooden doors into Paul Van Dolan’s office suite.
“HOW THE BLOODY HELL can he be tied up?” Martin looked from the chief financial officer’s secretary to the clock on her desk and tried to banish the image of Catherine’s dismayed expression. Surely it was his right not to talk to the press? “It’s five past four,” he told the secretary. “My presentation was at three. It was supposed to last for two hours. If I’d been there, we’d be right in the middle of it at this moment—”
“But you weren’t there, were you, Dr. Connaughton?” The secretary bared her teeth in a tight smile. “So Mr. Van Dolan made another appointment. He’s a very—”
“Busy man. I know, you already told me.” Later, he would stop by Catherine’s office and apologize, he decided. Explain that he’d been under pressure. “When is he available?” he asked the secretary.
“He’s tied up with budget meetings for the next two weeks.”
“All I need is half an hour, forty-five minutes.”
“He’s tied up with budget meetings for the next two weeks.”
“Are you telling me that from the time he comes in to the time he goes home, he doesn’t have thirty minutes to spare?”
“Dr. Connaughton.” The secretary sighed. “Mr. Van Dolan is a very busy man.”
“Did you check his calendar?”
“It isn’t necessary, he’s tied up with budget meetings for the next two weeks.”
After he left the administrative suite, Martin used a phone in the hospital lobby to call Van Dolan’s secretary.
“Afternoon, ma’am,” he drawled. “I’m Randolph Manwell with the Mallinkamp Foundation. As you know, Western’s a top contender for the medical humanities grant—”
“Yes, Mr. Manwell—”
“Just flew in from Houston and ah know it’s kinda last minute an’ all, but ah sure would like to have a few minutes of Mr. Van Dolan’s time this afternoon.”
He heard a rustle of paper
“You’re in luck, Mr. Manwell,” the secretary said. “Mr. Van Dolan had a cancellation. If you could be here at, say, four-forty, he could talk to you for a few minutes.”
“Why, thank you, ma’am, ah sure am obliged to you.”
He hung up, called the NICU and asked for Tim Graham, another neonatologist.
“Is it all clear up there, Tim? No more bloody reporters?”
Graham laughed. “For now, but I’d take the back stairs if I were you. You’ve suddenly become a celebrity. Everybody’s talking about what you did.”
“Listen, Tim.” He hesitated. “If that woman from public relations, Catherine her name is—”
“Long braid? Stacked?”
“I, uh…right. Anyway, if she stops by, tell her…never mind. I’ll tell her myself.” On the way back to the unit, a woman called his name.