by Judy Baer
He flopped onto the chair. “We were scheduled to leave Madrid tomorrow but I was lucky to catch an early plane back.”
His wife was mumbling under her breath. I didn’t tell him that she was muttering things like “should have stayed in Spain” and “you’ll never touch me again.” That’s another wonderful thing about childbirth. It’s energetic, strenuous, exhausting, painful—and completely forgettable once you have a baby in your arms. He would be back in her good graces again when they heard that first beautiful cry.
Within moments of Brenda’s husband’s appearance and her wishing a plague upon his head—which many women seem to do in the last stages of birth—Dr. Reynolds arrived.
He entered so regally and with so much confidence that I almost stood up and saluted.
I’ve always thought a doctor in a tie and lab coat is attractive, and Dr. Reynolds is no exception. In fact, he may be the standard to which other docs should aspire. His tailored trousers were navy, his shirt white, crisply starched. His dark hair has a natural curl but was combed into submission except for a naughty cowlick at the crown of his head. His eyes are a deep, devastating blue and fringed with short black lashes. A charming smile, too. It’s no wonder women drive many miles to his office. The scenery alone is worth the trip.
Then my attention fell on his tie. I blinked twice, thinking my eyes were deceiving me. But no, there was actually a sea of little faces staring back at me.
Brenda noticed, too. “Your tie, it’s…full of babies.”
He glanced down at his chest. “My former nurse made it. She used to give me one for Christmas every year. It’s a collage of pictures of babies I’ve delivered. She had the photos transferred onto fabric.”
Aww… How can I be upset with a man who loves babies enough to wear a tie like that?
“I see things are progressing nicely.”
Brenda stared fixedly at the lollipop and panted heavily. “Nicely for who?” she muttered through gritted teeth. I turned away to hide the grin teasing the corners of my mouth.
Grant reached out to pat his wife’s hand. Her eyes widened. “Don’t touch me,” she snapped. “Only Molly touches me.” It wasn’t so much a statement as a snarl.
I winced as everyone’s attention turned to me. So much for staying in the background and not causing trouble.
Those blue eyes were suddenly cold as the polar ice cap.
“So this is the doula.” Dr. Reynolds’s voice was flat and hostile. He might as well have said, “So this is the virus you’ve been talking about.”
“Ms….” He waited for me to fill in the blank.
Our previous encounters hadn’t even registered with him. Maybe I can dislike a guy secure enough to wear babies on his tie.
“Cassidy, Molly Cassidy. How do you do, Dr. Reynolds. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Yes, I suppose it is.” He looked at me frostily. “Well, just as long as you stay out of the way.” Then he dismissed me completely despite the fact that Brenda was hanging on to my hand for dear life.
That went swimmingly, I thought, and turned back to Brenda, praying that not only would this birth be smooth and successful, but also that the chilly Dr. Reynolds wouldn’t toss me out on my ear.
“Why is this taking so long?” Brenda whined a half hour later. Everything seemed to have ground to a halt laborwise. “Doesn’t this child have any sense of time?”
“They usually don’t come out with a degree in time management,” Dr. Reynolds said calmly. “Or even a wristwatch.” He’d remained surprisingly close to the labor room, even staying to talk football with Grant and baby names with Brenda.
“Make something happen, will you?” Brenda, like many lawyers, was not accustomed to letting nature takes its course.
“It is happening,” Reynolds said with composure as he studied the printout from the fetal monitor. “Just more slowly than you’d like.” His unruffled presence spoke volumes. Even though he didn’t want me here, I felt better knowing that Brenda was in his hands. He is an approach/avoidance kind of guy—babies on his tie and fire in his eyes.
She cast her gaze around the room and it landed on me. “Then you do something, Molly.”
“I can read to you.”
Brenda’s expression grew peevish. “Sing.”
“You have got to be kidding!” her husband, Grant, bleated, but she stared him down.
Dr. Reynolds turned away and I could see the smirk on his otherwise gorgeous features.
“Show tunes.”
My mouth worked but nothing came out.
“Brenda,” I finally managed, “I don’t know any show tunes.”
“You’re a doula,” Dr. Reynolds interrupted. “I thought you do ‘anything’ for a client.”
“That’s not what I meant….”
They both stared at me. Brenda looked expectant; Reynolds, maddeningly amused.
If I did it, I’d make a fool of myself. If I didn’t, well, Brenda would be unhappy and Reynolds would have more fuel for the fire.
Never let it be said I don’t stand up to a challenge. Unfortunately I’ve never been one to actually memorize all the words to any song except for a couple, and they weren’t show tunes.
“‘The farmer in the dell, the farmer in the dell, hi-ho, the dairy-o…’”
Later, Lissy and I recapped the delivery.
“You mean he actually said that? ‘Stay out of the way?’ What did your client think of that?” Lissy slathered peanut butter onto a stack of buttery crackers and ate them one by one.
“She had a lot more to worry about than my feelings. She was the star of the show and performed heroically. Anyone who gives birth to a ten-pound, one-ounce baby boy rocks in my book.”
“Still, ‘Stay out of the way,’ just like that? What a—”
“Don’t say it,” I warned. “Just because Reynolds doesn’t like doulas, it doesn’t mean he isn’t a good doctor. Frankly, after watching him in action, I think he’s a great doctor. He has so much compassion for his patients that it practically oozes out of every pore. He was gentle, kind, patient, encouraging and supportive, all necessary things when a mother is giving birth to a baby the size of my bowling ball.”
“You’re defending him?”
“He didn’t kick me out of the hospital.”
“I’ve heard he’s campaigning with the hospital board to limit the number of people in a birthing room. Everyone reads that to mean that he doesn’t want birthing coaches or anyone but spouses or the very closest family involved.”
“Maybe I showed him that it can be a good thing.” I cleared my throat. “Unless he didn’t like my singing.”
“Your singing? I thought you were at a birth, not the opera.”
“It was totally embarrassing,” I admitted, “but Brenda heard me humming once and told me I had a pretty voice. I never dreamed she’d demand that I sing to her during delivery.”
“No kidding? You sang this baby into the world?”
“If I’d been that baby, I would have hung on to my mother’s rib cage and refused to come out after listening to me for five minutes. My repertoire is limited. My mind went blank, and all I could remember was the theme song from The Brady Bunch, ‘Farmer in the Dell,’ ‘Jesus Loves Me’ and ‘How Great Thou Art.’ Brenda enjoyed it, but Dr. Reynolds’s jaw was twitching by the fourth or fifth time through ‘and the mouse took the cheese.’” I shrugged. “But whatever a client wants, including distraction, she gets.”
“When I have a baby I want you to be my doula,” Lissy said. “And I want you to start learning words to new songs right away. I would not deliver a baby to the theme song from The Brady Bunch. Do something more contemporary, will you? Or show tunes like the soundtrack from Les Mis or Phantom.”
Lissy washed down her peanut butter crackers with milk from my refrigerator and started to dig in my cupboards for candy. She’s as comfortable here as she is in her own home. Lissy and I have known each other for years. We met in an exercise clas
s and bonded because we were the only two that had actually come to exercise and not to meet men. She and I in our ponytails and sweats had stood out in a room full of beautiful women in Danskin with full face makeup and hairdos sprayed so as not to move even during tae bo. After class, while all the others mobbed the instructor, a hunky guy with protruding veins and bulging muscles, to ask questions and to get a closer look, Lissy and I went to the juice bar and drowned our sorrows in chocolate-banana smoothies. We’ve been friends ever since.
Lissy is a nurse at Bradford Medical Center and the one who actually told me what a doula was and suggested that I should become one.
“What do you think makes him that way?” I asked.
“Dr. Reynolds, you mean? I don’t know. It’s his particular hangup, I guess, the nobody-but-medical-people-present-during-birth thing. Too bad you’re on the opposing team. I guess he can be really nice when he wants to be.”
“Tell me about him.” I didn’t really care, but I didn’t want Lissy to go home, either.
Two months ago I broke up with a fellow I’d been dating from church. To be truthful, the relationship was more serious on his side than it was on mine, but I do miss his company. Nights are longer without him to talk to on the phone or drop by.
It was for the best. Hank Marcus has a plan for his life. It includes a wife, which could have been me had I said yes, and a fast track in his business. He’d begged me to marry him and come with him to Mississippi where his company is opening a new plant. That was a huge part of the problem. My life plan does not currently include marriage or Mississippi. Although I miss Hank, I’m not devastated without him, either. When I marry, it will have to be to a man I refuse to live without. And that, I’m learning, may take some time to find. The prospects are dim right now, but I’m so busy it doesn’t really matter.
“I don’t know much about him. No one does. He keeps to himself. He’s well respected in the medical community and when he speaks, people listen. The board is giddy with joy at having him here, of course. His patients love him and the nurses are scared of him because he is so meticulous and exacting. He spends almost no time in small talk with anyone. He leaves immediately after his work is complete and doesn’t ever tell anyone where he is going or what he is doing. I’ve heard he has a child, a little boy. He’s great with kids. I’ve seen him with the brothers and sisters of new babies. I’ve never heard anything about a wife, but who knows? He’s certainly not telling.”
“For not knowing anything about him, you seem to have quite a bit of information,” I observed. I dug into the bag of chocolate chips Lissy brought to the table.
“People talk, I listen.” Then she grew serious. “Listen, Molly, I really think that since you are the first doula ever to darken Dr. Reynolds’s doorstep, so to speak, you should tread very carefully if you want him to give you his stamp of approval. He’s got a lot of influence in this hospital.”
“How did he get so powerful, anyway?”
Lissy looked at me, shocked. “You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Bradshaw Medical Center. Dr. Everett Bradshaw?”
“Sure. He funded the hospital forty years ago. He was a relatively young man at the time. His picture is hanging in the front lobby where no one can miss it.”
“Exactly. Dr. Reynolds is Clay Bradshaw Reynolds. His grandfather funded this hospital. If it weren’t for the Bradshaw family, this facility wouldn’t exist. When he moved here to be on staff, the buzz was that when he spoke, everyone was to listen.”
My heart sank. He really could put the kibosh on my idea for a fledgling doula program at this hospital.
“He hasn’t been as demanding as everyone expected,” Lissy continued, “but he is fanatical about what happens to what he calls ‘his’ mothers. All I can say is, watch your step.”
His mothers? And all along I’d thought they were my mothers.
Chapter Two
“How’s my favorite Irish lassie?” Tony DeMatteo grinned at me and dangled a Snickers bar in front of my nose. “Want to share?”
“Of course I do, but only if you promise to quit calling me a lassie. I feel like you’re talking to a dog every time you say it.” I took a swipe at the candy bar, and he pulled it neatly away.
“That’s the last thing you are, Molly.” His dark brown eyes twinkled with warmth. “But a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
Tony is the only male nurse on the ob-gyn floor, a Shakespeare buff and an incorrigible romantic. Combine that with his unquenchable enthusiasm for living, passion for good food and lots of fun and Tony is virtually irresistible. All the single women in the hospital are, or have been at one time or another, madly in love with Tony. He has a knack of dating and breaking up with women and leaving them still loving him. He is a professional bachelor and masterful at it. At one end of the spectrum, Tony is the ultimate charmer. Dr. Reynolds, according to the hospital rumor mill, is the other. The men at Bradford Medical Center run the gamut.
I love Tony, too, but as a friend. I might have succumbed to his charms myself if I hadn’t watched him sweep woman after woman off her feet and then, after a few weeks or months, let her down gently. It was easier, I decided, to go directly to friendship with Tony. I’m glad I did. He might have been harder to resist than Hank had he decided to propose to me and move to Mississippi.
“I have Almond Joys in my locker,” he whispered seductively. “An entire unopened bag of miniatures. Want to go to the cafeteria with me and eat them with whole milk?”
“What are you trying to do, make me fat?” It’s a joke around the hospital that Tony can eat anything and not gain an ounce. That’s another reason I’ve avoided a romance with Tony. The women who date him usually gain ten to fifteen pounds during their relationship.
“Why don’t you ever fall subject to my charms?” he asked conversationally as we walked toward the lunch room.
“You’re a slippery slope, Tony. I just don’t get too close to the edge.”
He looked at me thoughtfully. “But you could be coaxed a little nearer, couldn’t you?”
I glared at him. “Don’t get any ideas in your head about romancing me, big guy. I’ve got your number. You love women and you love dating. You just hate committing.”
“Commitment. Such a problematic word.” He sounded put-upon just saying it.
We entered the cafeteria and picked out our lunch. Cottage cheese and a pear for me, three slices of pizza, a strawberry shake and a Dove bar for Tony. Oh yes, and several Almond Joys—with milk.
“I just haven’t found the right one yet, that’s all. Once I do…” He gazed thoughtfully toward the large aviary outside the cafeteria’s glassed windows. “‘Journeys end in lovers meeting, every wise man’s son doth know.’”
“What’s the Shakespeare stuff, anyway? Why do you always quote it?”
He grinned. “I figured out by the time I was fifteen that girls love romantic junk, poetry, flowers, candy. I could get ‘older’ women, the seventeen-and eighteen-year-olds, to date me with that stuff.”
It probably didn’t hurt that you looked like a young Adonis, either, I thought.
“The unexpected part was that, while I was researching good pickup lines, I discovered I liked it—Shakespeare, Byron, Keats, Shelly.” His eyes twinkled again. “Better yet, I found I couldn’t go wrong with those guys.”
“You are an incorrigible, totally irredeemable, unmitigated flirt.”
He leaned back to look at me and put his hands behind his head. The fabric of his white uniform stretched tight over a great set of pectorals. “I know. Ain’t it grand?”
Tony’s gaze flickered from me to something just over my shoulder. I turned to see what had attracted his attention.
It was what—or rather, who—was attracting everyone’s attention these days. Dr. Clay Reynolds.
“Have you worked with him yet?” I asked.
“He’s a perfectionist,” Tony said, “and a control freak d
uring delivery.”
“I just had my first experience with him.”
“How’d it go?”
“I didn’t feel very welcome. It probably didn’t help that my client kept telling Dr. Reynolds that she wouldn’t have been able to get through the delivery without me. She didn’t exactly praise him for his part in it all. In fact, I think she included him with all the other men in the world who should be shot by a firing squad. You know how touchy these mothers get when they’re dilated to nine. The birth went well, though.”
“Maybe you’ll grow on him,” Tony said encouragingly. “You help with Lamaze classes here all the time, and the volunteer program at the free clinic would fall apart without you. He’ll get used to you.”
I could hardly disagree with Tony. He’s fought some uphill battles himself as a male nurse in the utterly feminine obstetrics ward. His competence and professionalism ultimately win people over. I had to do the same.
Of course I’m hopeful for a little more than that, like a good working relationship and a shot at starting an agency and clearing house for doulas right here at Bradshaw General.
It was late by the time I got home. My German shepherd, Hildy, was standing, legs crossed, by the front door dying to get out. We took a quick run through the streets of my neighborhood, a quiet little area that is slowly and inexorably being absorbed into the city. It is still, however, a quaint and quiet haven for me to retreat to and regroup after a long, intense labor with one of my moms.
I live life simply. Home, family, friends and faith are what is important to me. Someday I want a family of my own, but until that happens, I live vicariously through my clients bringing new life into the world. Oh, yes, and animals. I adore animals.
Hildegard, Hildy for short, led me on a circuitous route through the neighborhood to sniff at fire hydrants, shrubs and a popular squirrel hangout before bringing me back to my front door. I put out her dog food and fresh water and walked through the house to my bedroom.
Knowing I wasn’t alone in the house, I went looking for my other roommate. Geri usually hangs out in the sunroom when I’m not home. I found her there, looking out the window, dressed in her glitzy denim jacket studded with rhinestones.
