by Judy Baer
I was in my car and on my way to the hospital in less than five minutes. As I drove, I ticked off the things in my bag of tricks, trying to remember if I’d included my new music CDs and birthing ball as well as massage tools, essential oils, cold and hot packs, hard candy, a mirror and a hand fan. I also include candy bars for me in case I don’t get to eat. I also carry a package of red licorice twists—just because.
Of course, I probably wouldn’t need any of it tonight. It would be amazing if the baby hadn’t already arrived by the time I got there.
Two a.m. The entrance was empty and the halls silent as I made my way to the obstetrics ward. The mirror in the elevator told me that I hadn’t had any success containing the havoc that was my hair. Worse, the pillow creases were going nowhere. As I erupted from the elevator, a nurse pointed me in the direction of Mandie’s room.
“Molly!” She was already hooked up to a fetal monitor. Mandie reached out to me like a passenger on the Titanic to an empty lifeboat and began to cry.
That was the scene that met Dr. Reynolds when he strode into the room—a frantic, nearly hysterical young mother being tended by a woman who put herself together in two minutes and looked like it. I glanced down at my shoes. There were two shoes all right—one black dressy flat and one brown loafer.
“You?” I squeaked. “But Mandie’s doctor is…”
“I’m on call tonight. Her doctor has been notified, and he’s on his way, but we can’t wait for him. This baby wants to be born.” He moved into the room with complete authority and ease. This was his territory, his body language said, and no one was going to second-guess his decision here.
Mandie made a guttural sound and gripped my hand so tightly that the tips of my fingers began to throb.
When Dr. Reynolds moved toward her she began to scream. Not just a small, oh-I’ve-seen-a-mouse kind of scream, but an I-can-see-your-tonsils-and-you’re-breaking-my-eardrum kind of scream. And she wouldn’t stop.
Dr. Reynolds halted as though he’d hit an invisible shield.
“I want my own doctor!” Mandie clutched my hand. “And I want Molly.” She turned to me, panic in her eyes. “I don’t know him, Molly. I don’t want him to touch me.”
Now, I thought, was not the time to become modest.
“He’s a wonderful doctor, Mandie. This is Dr. Clay Reynolds. He was the chief of staff at a large hospital in California until he came to Bradshaw. In fact, he’s great!”
“I don’t know him,” she reiterated and gripped my hand even more tightly. “I’m scared, Molly. I don’t want a stranger—” Her words were cut short by another contraction.
Reynolds took a step closer. Mandie’s eyes grew round and through gritted teeth she said, “No!”
Clay looked at me. “We don’t have time to—”
“She’s frightened, can’t you see that?”
“I can, but the baby doesn’t know a thing about it. It just wants to make an entrance into this world and it’s not going to wait for the two of us to have tea and crumpets and get to know each other.”
“Let us have just one second, will you? Please?”
I think that for the first time in his life, Clay actually did what someone else asked in a delivery room. He backed out.
As he did so, I pulled out all the charm, blarney, hardheadedness and dogged persistence that I could muster. The last thing I ever thought I’d be expected to do was to make Clay Reynolds sound like Prince Charming, Sir Galahad and Dr. Schweitzer rolled into one glorious medical package, but I did.
Just in time, too. Mandie’s daughter, Justine Molly, was born at 2:55 a.m., announcing her presence to the world with vocal cords that rivaled her mother’s.
“Don’t you just love Molly, Dr. Reynolds?” Mandie glowed like a Christmas candle as she held the tiny bundle in her arms. “She’s helped me so much. I couldn’t have done this without her.”
I patted her arm, hoping to stop her gushing chatter. Dr. Reynolds looked rather peevish as it was.
“I think a doula is every bit as important as a doctor,” Mandie concluded firmly. “Maybe more so because she’s been with me through everything and my own doctor didn’t even get here on time.”
Not wanting to hang around and hear Dr. Reynolds’s reaction to that, I backed quietly toward the door and escaped into the hall. Thinking it might be a fine time to disappear, I headed toward the hall leading into another wing.
“Is the coast clear?” Tony peered around the corner, his eyes darting in both directions.
I jumped, holding my hand over my thrashing heart. “You nearly frightened me to death! What are you doing sneaking like that? I almost had a coronary!”
“Sorry. Wanda’s off duty and patrolling the halls for me. Rumor has it she plans to ask me out on a date. I’ve got to hide.”
“It’s three in the morning and no time for games. Why don’t you just go out with the woman, have a nice time and tell her that you aren’t interested in getting serious about anyone right now? Honesty is the best policy and all that.”
“Wanda is selectively hard of hearing. She only pays attention to what she wants to. No isn’t a word she accepts, at least not from me.” Coast clear, Tony leaned against the wall and tipped his head back until it rested on the painted surface. “How’d I ever get myself into this, anyway?”
“By being cute and charming,” I told him. “Serves you right.”
“Thanks, I think. I’m on break. Want to go for a coffee?”
“Might as well. I’ll be up for the rest of the night, anyway.” I told him about Mandie, her reaction to Dr. Reynolds and what she’d said to him about doulas being just as important as doctors.
Tony whistled. “I’ll bet he took that well.”
“I don’t know. I got out of there as fast as I could. I’m only hanging around until he leaves so I can go back to the room, get my bag and tell Mandie good-night.”
We reached the cafeteria and Tony put coins in the coffee vending machine. “Decaf or real? Cream or black? Sugar?”
“Real and black. I need all the fortification I can get.”
“I’d hoped that you and the good doctor could learn to get along.”
I thought of the day Clay and I had met at the lake. “We can ‘get along,’ Tony. The problem is that we will never agree on the things that are most important to us. He doesn’t respect what I do. My passion means nothing to him.”
“But…”
“He’s the one standing in the way of the doula program. Several people had seemed open to it until Clay arrived. Now everyone has cooled off. No one here is going to go against the ideas of a Bradshaw grandson, especially with a reputation like Clay’s. I’m just being realistic, that’s all.”
“So here we are. I’m tiptoeing around Wanda and her designs on me, you’re butting heads with the most powerful doc in the hospital and Lissy is no doubt stewing about another one of her seriously bad dates. What’s happened to us, Molly? We had so much potential.” Tony sank into a chair and stared at the ceiling.
“We have so much potential. We’re at a bumpy spot right now. You should have a serious talk with Wanda, and Lissy should stop going out on dates until she figures out what it is she wants.”
“I’ll do that as soon as you and Dr. Reynolds lay down your swords.”
I didn’t respond but I already knew that the only way to do that was to quit taking clients who planned to deliver at Bradshaw Medical.
Why not? Just do it, I told myself as I returned to Mandie’s room to get my things. I’m welcome everywhere else. I’d even be welcomed here if it weren’t for Dr. Reynolds’s old-fashioned ideas. I don’t need him, I reminded myself. I don’t even want to be around him! What, I began to wonder, am I doing here, anyway?
I walked slowly and thinking so hard that I forgot to look up until I ran face-first into the tall, white-coated figure of Clay Reynolds.
“Trying to run me over?” He looked down at me with amusement mingled with frustration.
“That’s like a tricycle tangling with a bulldozer,” I commented grumpily. “Excuse me. I wasn’t looking where I was going. I need to get my things from Mandie’s room.”
“They are at the nurses’ station.”
“You don’t even want me to say good-night to her?” I was suddenly furious.
“Actually, she was so exhausted that she couldn’t stay awake. She told me to tell you ‘thank you’ and that you should come by in the morning.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Shame on me for jumping to conclusions.
“She also couldn’t quit raving about how wonderful and kind you’ve been to her.”
“It’s been a privilege to work with her.”
He looked surprised at my curious choice of words.
“I know you think what I do is superfluous and a nuisance but to me it’s an honor. I don’t know how you feel about God, but He’s the guiding force in my life and I believe He wants me to be doing what I’m doing. I’m to be a servant to these mothers, to show them His love and to help them keep the faith—or to discover it for the first time.”
“So you proselytize?”
“Preach? No. Sometimes I never say a word about my faith, but I do witness. I want people to see Jesus in me, not just hear about Him through my lips.”
He looked at me as if I’d just said that I have a space alien that accompanies me while I work.
“Don’t you believe?” I said softly. “If not, I’m sorry.”
His eyes darkened until they were flat, blackened stones. “Let’s just say I used to believe.” His voice faltered. “Sometimes I still miss it. Good night, Molly. And congratulations on your deep connection with Mandie. It got her through tonight.” He turned abruptly and strode away, his back straight and his head held high.
The invincible Dr. Reynolds. I stared after his receding back.
Let’s just say I used to believe.
So he doesn’t believe anymore?
If I understood what he’d meant by that I’d know a good deal more about the baffling enigma that is Dr. Reynolds.
When I got home, I hugged Hildegard so tightly that she whined. Then I scratched Geri behind the ears until she went into piggy ecstasy. Finally I filled my palette with paint and, even if it was nearly morning, I vented my frustration on canvas. I like painting with a palette knife because it’s a lot like buttering bread. I pressed the blade flat into the paint, relishing the ridges it created.
Perhaps I should dedicate this piece to Dr. Reynolds. He’s the cause of the turbulent feelings going into this work. He’s also the reason it’s turning into something very different from my usual painting. This time it is in control of me rather than me of it.
Chapter Twelve
“How’s the doula business, sis?” Liam spooned another helping of chicken and rice onto his plate. “I heard that you ran into some choppy waters this week.”
“Does Hugh tell you everything?” I asked peevishly. I should know better than to stop at my parents’ house and have dinner with the family. My brothers can hear Mom’s dinner bell from miles away, and there are usually a couple of them putting their size-twelve boots under her table for a meal. Tonight it was my brother Liam and the caboose of the clan, Kevin, two of my family’s rusty-headed clowns.
Hugh would probably find his way here for dessert. There was a peach pie cooling on the kitchen counter, and as soon as he was downwind from it, he’d follow the scent.
“Give him a break,” Kevin chided. “He hasn’t got much of a life right now. If your life is more interesting than his, let him talk about it.”
“My life is not lived for the benefit of your conversations, Caboose,” I snapped. “I know that might surprise you, but…” It hadn’t been a great week for me, thanks to Clay, and my temper was frayed.
“Now, children,” Mother said with a sigh, her round, cheerful face creasing with the familiar frustration my brothers always generated in her. “I thought I’d be able to quit treating you all like babes by now, but no such luck.” She pointed the serving spoon she had in her hand in Kevin’s direction. “And don’t sass me, young man.”
“What is Hugh’s problem these days?” My father inquired.
“He broke up with his girlfriend.”
“Didn’t you just break up with a boyfriend, Molly? The one who didn’t like pigs?” It always surprises me how Dad keeps up with all of our lives. “You kids should be like your mother and me. Married at twenty and it has lasted forty years.”
“They don’t make women like our mother anymore,” Liam pointed out.
“After her, they threw out the mold.” An agreeable voice came from the doorway. Hugh stood there, his red hair tufted and messy, his eyes bright and his smile easy.
“Hardly,” Liam interrupted. “Look at Molly. She’s one of a kind, too.”
“Yeah, but we don’t know what ‘kind’ that is. Besides, we don’t want to date Molly.” Kevin shivered at the thought.
It isn’t flattering to make your own brother’s blood run cold.
“Is that peach pie I smell?” Hugh sniffed the air. He sauntered to the table, hugged each of us and gave our mother a fond peck on the cheek.
My brother, though short in stature, has the world’s biggest heart. He’d give someone the shirt off his back—and he has. I should know; I was there. We were serving at a mission food kitchen when a fellow came through the line wearing the most ragged, filthy shirt I’d ever seen. He’d washed his hands and face, though, before coming through the line and there was a dignity about the fellow that his clothing denied. Hugh had seen it, too.
When it was time to leave, my brother disappeared for a few minutes and came back wearing only his white Fruit of the Loom on his back. When I tried to question him, he just shrugged, but outside the mission I saw the ragged fellow smiling widely and standing a little straighter—and wearing Hugh’s Joseph Abboud shirt, cuff links and all.
After dinner we all adjourned to the living room where the card table was spread with a work-in-progress thousand-piece puzzle. This one was of a mass of Labrador puppies, feet, tails and tongues everywhere. There is always a puzzle going at Mom and Dad’s place. And an eternal Monopoly game that no one has won in three years. Growing up, Solitaire was not a solitary card game. There were always two or three people hanging over the player’s shoulder giving advice—most of it bad.
Then Caboose turned up the boom box on the counter, and Irish folk songs rattled the rafters. The music is always loud and the food plentiful here, and this worn but cozy home holds the heartbeat of our family. It is no wonder that we still migrate here whenever we can. Even the next generation of Cassidys has started. My sister Debbie and her family came from Massachusetts for a visit recently and her redheaded—naturally—baby, Cullen, started to squeal the moment he came through the door.
“How is your nemesis?” Hugh asked as he pounced on the puzzle piece I was going for and tucked it neatly into place.
“I didn’t know Molly had one of those,” Liam commented. “Doesn’t everyone love Molly?”
“You had to bring it up, didn’t you?” I glared at Hugh, who ignored me for another puzzle piece.
“Do you want me to punch him out?” Liam offered cheerfully.
“Behave,” my mother said absently, so accustomed to keeping her kids on the straight and narrow she wasn’t going to stop now, even if Liam was on the far side of twenty-five.
“My nemesis is fine, thank you very much.”
“What has he done lately?”
“Give it up, Hugh. I don’t want to talk about him. I’m sick and tired of having to prove myself to that man.”
Unfortunately, I’m having to do it more and more. Dr. Reynolds’s reputation is spreading quickly through the pregnant-mother community, and more of my clients are planning to give birth at Bradshaw because of him.
“The man is a meticulous, exacting control freak. He has a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality. Sweet as pie toward his patients and
little kids who don’t know any better than to like him, yet a vulture ready to pounce on me.”
“I find that odd,” my mother said quietly. “People usually don’t act that way unless they have a reason.”
“I told you. His reason is that he’s a meticulous, exacting control freak.”
“Don’t be so quick to judge,” my mother, ever the conciliator, advised. “Now tell me, Molly, do you want ice cream with your pie?”
I hadn’t been quick to judge, I thought, as I drove home later. I’d given Clay the benefit of the doubt a number of times, and he’d failed me every time. Clay Reynolds was stomping so hard on my dream of having a doula center in Bradshaw that it was no longer anything but dust.
Help me not to be resentful, Lord. Help me remember that You’ve called me to do this and You will provide what’s good and right. And I pray for Dr. Reynolds. There’s a burr under his saddle somewhere. Amen.
Sometimes my prayers are pretty cryptic, but I know God understands. I’m grateful someone does.
Lissy, who’d let herself in, met me at my front door. She was eating a Popsicle. Her hair was in pigtails, her feet barefoot and she was wearing a pair of cutoff bib overalls. She looked like a blond Pippi Longstocking.
“Now if guys could see you like that instead of all dolled up in high heels and makeup, you’d find the right one.” I threw my things onto the table by the door. “This is the real you.”
“Who’d be interested in a woman who looked like this? Little Jack Horner who sat in a corner? Or candlestick Jack of Jack be nimble, Jack be quick? Or Jack of Jack-and-Jill-went-up-the-hill fame?” She paused. “Do you realize how many guys are named Jack in children’s stories? Is that weird, or what?”
“Until you are just yourself and quit attracting the wrong kind of guy, you’ll never find the right man.”
“Who says I always find the wrong kind of guy?” she said indignantly. “Some of them are pretty nice.”
“Think about it, Lissy. One guy you dated had so many facial piercings he looked like he’d fallen headfirst into a tackle box.”
“Okay, so he was a little strange.”
