The Doctor Delivers

by Janice Macdonald

  Catherine felt the day slip down another notch. This time a year ago, the most complicated thing she’d had on her mind had been Christmas shopping and what kind of cookies to bake for the PTA bake sale. Now she was dealing with outlaw doctors and contemplating custody battles. Her left temple throbbed.

  “But don’t let him intimidate you,” Petrelli said. “Professional Match is the most popular morning show in this area and it reaches the audience we want. Getting Connaughton on would be worth God knows how much in advertising. Be firm with him. I’d do it myself, but I’ve got a meeting downtown.”

  “And if he does refuse?” She thought of the unanswered calls she’d made to the unit. “Should I try to line up someone else?”

  “Connaughton’s too tough for you to handle?”

  “No, I didn’t mean that.” The paper cup had started to crumple, and she tossed it in the trash. “I just meant—”

  “You’ve been with Western for how long? Two months?”

  “Nearly three.”

  “Still on probation though.”

  “Well, yes.” Her stomach did its familiar flip-flop thing. “I, uh…is there a problem?”

  “Mmm.” Derek examined the paper cup he held as if it were an object of great interest. “Well, that’s the whole theory behind probation, isn’t it?” He turned the cup, peered inside, inspected the pattern of holly berries around the rim. “Wait and see how things go. Ask me in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, work on getting Connaughton for Professional Match.” He drained the contents and smiled up at her. “Imagine your job riding on it. That should get the adrenaline flowing.”

  DR. MARTIN CONNAUGHTON leaned his head back against the seat of his battered black Fiat and closed his eyes. He’d had to get out of NICU before he lost it. An hour earlier, the Washington baby had died, and one of the residents had said it was probably a good thing.

  “Some make it. Others don’t,” the resident had said. “I never really believed that kid was salvageable though.”

  Martin listened to the dry rustle of Santa Ana winds in the eucalyptus trees, smelled the heated air through the car’s rolled-down windows. He hated the word salvageable and had yelled at the resident for using it, but he couldn’t mourn Kenesha Washington’s death. What haunted him was her short cruel life.

  After a moment, he opened his eyes. Through the windshield, he watched the pink and white blossoms on the oleander bushes tremble in the wind. A strip of eucalyptus bark whipped across his line of vision. In the arid air, his eyes and mouth felt parched, the skin on his face dry and stretched taut across his skull.

  One of the E.R. physicians claimed that the number of attempted suicides rose when the Santa Ana winds blew. Martin believed it. He was from Northern Ireland, more accustomed to enveloping mists and soft rain. California’s hot, roaring winds with their banshee-like howls seemed sinister, full of dangerous energy. They made him tense and edgy, as if he’d offended a malevolent presence who would soon exact revenge.

  He ran his finger under his collar—unsettled by the Santa Anas, by thoughts of Kenesha Washington and by the knowledge that today marked the fifth anniversary of his wife’s death. Five years. Enough time that it was no longer Sharon he really mourned, but what had happened to his own life in the years since her death. Somehow it had drifted so far off course that he’d started to wonder about the direction in which it now seemed headed.

  In the next week, he had to make a decision. A medical team, leaving to set up a pediatric hospital in Ethiopia, had invited him to join. It was a two-year commitment, similar to other expeditions in which he’d participated, with doctors he knew and respected, yet for some reason, he couldn’t commit.

  “But we were counting on you,” the group’s leader said when Martin had asked for more time to decide. “Most of us have family considerations, mortgages, all that stuff. We’re not as footloose and free to wander as you are.” He’d laughed. “Don’t tell me, you’ve settled down.”

  Martin had laughed too, but the laughter was hollow. He could leave without creating a ripple. At thirty-eight, he had few possessions. The Fiat, the sloop he lived on in the Long Beach Marina, some books and an eclectic collection of music that leaned toward Celtic traditional. Back in Belfast, his family, or what remained of it—was far removed from his life.

  After a week of sleepless nights searching for reasons not to go to Ethiopia, he’d finally come up with just one. The WISH program. He ran his hand across his jaw, seldom smooth even when he took the time to shave closely, and felt the coarse stubble of his beard.

  WISH was about Kenesha Washington. Kenesha, the tiny junkie. Shaking, sweating, born in need of a fix. He stared down at the medical journals that littered the Fiat’s floorboards. Kenesha, who had never seen the sun or the sky. Never known anything but the brightly lit world of the NICU and people who did painful things to her.

  With a sigh, he unfurled himself from the Fiat and started across the parking lot. Wind whipped at his hair, blew gritty dust into his eyes. At the edge of the lot, he stopped at a brightly painted mobile home covered with images of pregnant women, smiling under banners that read: WISH— Women, Infants, Staying Healthy.

  He unlocked the back door, climbed inside. Dust motes swam in a beam of sunlight, settled on boxes of charts and folding chairs stacked against the walls. Until a week ago, the camper had rolled through the streets and housing projects of Long Beach providing free medical services to crack-addicted mothers. Now it sat idle in the lot, the prognosis grim.

  His reaction to the news that Western’s executive committee had essentially pulled the plug on WISH had prompted Edward Jordan, the hospital administrator, to suggest, once again, that Martin consider taking an anger-management course. Jordan apparently saw nothing amiss with the idea of packing the indigent off to other facilities, or with turning the vehicle into a mobile cappuccino bar.

  Filled with a dull anger that demanded an outlet, Martin began sorting through manila folders in one of the packing boxes. Maybe it was him. Maybe he lacked the insight to see that two-dollar lattes were a better reflection of the up-scale image Western’s public relations department wanted to project. And maybe it really was time for him to move on.

  Which he would. After he gave WISH one last chance. In a couple of hours he was scheduled to make a presentation to the executive committee. The prospect of going to them, hat in hand, galled him but if he could prevent one child from going through what Kenesha Washington had, the effect would be worthwhile.

  A knock on the side of the van broke into his thoughts, and he turned to see Dora Matsushita, one of the social workers in the unit, peering through the open door.

  “I thought that was you I saw loping across the parking lot.” She held up a bag of oranges. “From my tree. It’s a bribe.” She winked. “I need a few minutes of your time.”

  “Ah, sure, I can always be bought with oranges.” With a grin, he bent to take the bag and help her into the van. Dora had a bit of the rebel about her, a quality he admired. When they first told him to phase out WISH, he’d ignored the injunction, rounded up a small volunteer staff and taken the van out himself. Dora had been behind the wheel. A small, spare, fiftyish woman, she was a shrewd assessor of character, as quick to set straight a muddleheaded administrator as a young father.

  “I want to talk to you about this little fifteen-year-old girl,” she said.

  He listened, frustration building. Twice that week he’d been warned about admitting new patients, told that one more infraction would result in his dismissal. That threat didn’t trouble him as much as the knowledge that WISH would almost certainly die without his involvement.

  “I’d like to, Dora. I’m not sure I can. We’ll know later this afternoon.” He told her about the upcoming presentation. “It’s the last hope we have. I’ve got all the supporting data, all the clinical documentation—”

  “Oh, Martin.” She shook her head. “Facts and figures aren’t going to do it. Show some emotion.
There’s a rumor up in the unit that you’ve got two temperatures, ice cold or—”

  “Boiling over.” He shrugged. “I know, I’ve heard it all. So what should I do then, break into a chorus of ‘Danny Boy’?”

  “WISH is your baby.” She ignored his attempt at humor. “Your passion. No one who didn’t care would put all the effort you’ve put into it. Let it out. Let yourself feel. Show the committee how important the program is to you.”

  He turned away and stared through the dusty window and out to the windswept parking lot. An image of Kenesha’s face, contorted in a silent scream, filtered through his brain. Dora might be right, but emotional expression wasn’t his specialty. He turned to look at her again, shifted uneasily under her steady gaze.

  “I was just thinking,” she said after a moment. “About these girls that come through WISH. By the time we see them, they’re usually right on the edge. They can go one of two ways—completely destruct, or get their lives together and find some peace.”

  She paused and in the beat of silence, he heard the distant wail of an ambulance. He rolled the manila folder into a cylinder, unrolled it, tapped it against his chin. Without moving his head, he raised his eyes up at Dora. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, her expression impassive.

  “Before they can find that peace and move on, they have to drop all the baggage they came in with,” she said. “Let go of who they thought they were and what they thought they knew.” She waited a moment. “I suppose, in a sense, you might say that something old has to die for something new to be born.”

  DORA’S WORDS still rang in his ears as he walked into Western’s main lobby, but the sight of all the fake snow momentarily distracted him. Piles of it, flocking the branches of a massive Christmas tree, piled in drifts upon window ledges, heaped upon the roof of the Santa’s cottage. Streamers of sunlight shone like a benediction, filling the lobby with tropical warmth. Underneath his lab coat, the scrub top stuck to his back.

  Unbidden, a memory of that last Christmas in Belfast surfaced. Sharon had wanted snow, and late on Christmas Eve, the rain had turned to a sleety mix that frosted the rooftops.

  A voice beside him broke into his reverie, and he turned to see a tall, green-eyed woman with a glossy plait of brown hair. She had a wide, sensuous mouth and the fresh pink complexion of a child. Something about her seemed familiar, but he couldn’t place where he might have seen her. He saw her eyes widen as she read the name embroidered above the pocket of his lab coat, but as she started to speak, the employee choir, cued by a visibly perspiring Santa, broke into a loud rendition of “Frosty the Snowman.”

  His mind back on WISH, Martin started to move away, but she caught his arm. Tiny charms hung from the thin silver bracelet she wore: a baby’s rattle, a gingerbread house, children’s toys. Her nails were short and unpolished.

  “Dr. Connaughton.” She brought her mouth closer to his ear to be heard above the music. “Catherine Prentice. From Public Relations. Lucky coincidence, huh? I’ve paged you a whole bunch of times, left messages up in the unit and suddenly here you are.”

  “And here I am.” He looked directly into the light green eyes of Catherine Prentice from Public Relations. “Will wonders never cease?”

  Her face flushed pink. Arms folded across her chest, she returned his level stare.

  “Actually, you mispronounced my name.” Even as he corrected her, he wondered why it mattered. “It’s Connotun not Connaughton. There’s no accent in the middle.”

  “I’ll remember that.” A flicker of a smile. “Dr. Connaughton.” This time she pronounced it correctly. “That’s an Irish province, isn’t it? Connaught?”

  “It is,” he said, surprised she knew of it, “Connacht in Gaelic. It’s in the west. A bit of a barren place. Have you been there then?”

  “No, but my grandfather’s from County Sligo. He used to tell me all these stories. He said Connacht was so rocky and desolate that Oliver Cromwell’s men gave prisoners the choice of death or exile there.”

  “To hell or Connacht,” he said, inordinately pleased by the exchange. “That was the term.” Her eyes weren’t exactly green, more of an aqua. Unusual color. And there was something different about one— He realized he was staring.

  “Anyway…” With one hand, she flipped the long braid of hair back over her shoulder. “You didn’t get any of my pages?”

  “I did, but I ignored them.”

  “Shame on you.” She fixed him with a reproving look. “People like you make my job very difficult. Consider yourself lucky I’ve got the holiday spirit.” As she brushed a strand of hair from her face, the silver bracelet slid down her arm, lodged at her wrist. “The thing is, I’ve also got a producer breathing down my neck. Do you have a couple of minutes?”

  “No, I don’t.” If this had something to do with the press, he wanted no part of it. His one-and-only encounter with reporters still gave him nightmares, and he had no desire to repeat the experience. “I need to check on a new admission and after that I have to be somewhere else. Sorry.”

  Before she could respond, he plunged into the crowd and bolted for the elevator.

  CHAPTER TWO

  MARTIN LET the white noise of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit wash over him, waiting for it to restore some degree of equanimity. All around him, the sounds and sights of technology. The gadgetry brought in to rescue when the natural process went awry. The hiss and screech of ventilators. Machines that pumped and pulsed and calibrated. Electronic monitors with their waves and spikes and flashing signals. Delicate, intricate and complex all of it, but a damn sight easier to deal with then human emotions.

  Martin gazed at the jumble of lines that snaked in and out of the baby boy in the incubator, a 28-weeker who weighed slightly more than a carton of eggs, and tried to put the scene in the lobby out of his mind. He couldn’t. What the hell was wrong with him anyway? If he’d deliberately set out to antagonize Catherine Prentice, he couldn’t have succeeded more completely.

  A voice broke into his reverie and Martin saw the baby’s teenage father, his face anxious under a baseball cap turned backward.

  “So, like, what are all those wires and stuff?” The boy looked from Martin to the baby.

  “Well, this blue one in his mouth is the ventilator,” Martin said. Then, seeing that the boy was on the verge of tears, he glanced around for one of the other physicians on the unit. He was all right explaining the technical side of things, not so good with the emotional side.

  “So what does it do?” the boy asked.

  “It’s attached to a computer that regulates how fast he breathes, and how much oxygen he gets.” As he looked up at the gangly kid, Martin thought of the responsibilities facing the boy, enough to daunt someone twice his age. He tried to think of something reassuring to say. Or do. Put your arm around his shoulder, for God’s sake, he thought. Instead, he launched into an explanation of the various tubes and lines that he could see by the boy’s dazed expression meant nothing.

  “So do those IV things hurt?”

  “Only for a second,” Martin said. “After that, no.”

  “How come he’s got those things over his eyes?”

  “To protect them from those lights.” Martin pointed to the bank of bright lights over the baby’s warmer. “See how yellow he is? That’s because his liver isn’t working properly. Those lights will help lower the bilirubin.”

  “Kind of looks like he’s sunbathing, huh?” The kid gave a nervous laugh. “So is he, like, gonna make it?”

  “Probably. He’s got some problems, but they’re all fixable.” Arms folded across his chest, he watched the boy watching the baby. Minutes passed, the years rolled away and it was a younger version of himself. The day he’d learned Sharon was pregnant. The image faded, and he looked up to see Catherine Prentice.

  “Poor kid,” she said after the young father had left. “He looks scared to death.” Her bottom lip caught in her teeth, she shook her head as though clearing the image.
Then she shot him an accusatory look. “How come you just took off like that? You didn’t even give me a chance to tell you what I needed.”

  “I’m not really here.” He started for his office next door to the unit. She followed him. “What you’re seeing,” he said as he moved over to his desk, “is an illusion.”

  “Tell you what then. Why don’t I pretend you’re there and explain what I need?”

  “Make it quick then.” Despite himself, Martin suppressed a grin. A quick comeback always appealed to him. But he wouldn’t be distracted. Head bowed, he searched through a stack of folders on his desk, looking for the report he wanted to use in his presentation. “What is it you need?”

  “An attractive, unmarried doctor.”

  His head snapped up. Then he saw the amusement in her eyes. Her reply had thrown him as she obviously knew it would, and he’d reacted just as she’d intended him to. Challenged, he let his gaze travel to her left hand, now on the doorjamb, linger on her bare fourth finger.

  “Not for me.” She looked him straight in the eye, but a faint blush colored her face. “For Professional Match. Every week they match up single men and women representing different professions. This week it’s medicine. You’ve seen the show, I’m sure.”

  “Actually, I don’t watch TV.” He scribbled a note. $60 a day for the WISH program v. $2,000 a day for a crack baby in NICU, then looked up at her. It occurred to him that she was attractive. He liked the long, thick braid of hair and she did have a great mouth. No lipstick that he could tell, but an almost crushed look to her lips. The way a mouth that had been kissed for the better part of the night might look. What the hell was he thinking? He began to dig through the papers again. “I don’t even own a TV.”

  “That’s very admirable of you, Dr. Connaughton.”

  “Thank you very much.” He met her eyes. Mocking him, he could see. Probably saw him as a stiff, humorless workaholic. Probably right too, but what did he care? “If you’re going to ask me to be on the show though, the answer is no.”