The Doctor Delivers

by Janice Macdonald

  Martin walked away before he heard more. He’d suspected Hodges of pocketing donations meant for the babies. It made the idea of Western picking up the tab—and his own participation in the news conference—even more of a farce. When he was with Catherine, he could ignore the twinge of conscience. Away from her, the doubts set in. He moved to examine one of the new admissions. As he put the stethoscope to the baby’s chest, he heard the child’s breath, like the squeak of a rubber toy.

  “Sounds like he’s snorting.” Graham came up beside him.

  “He’s got a leak around his tube. It’s not one of his better days either.” Martin took his stethoscope off, folded it and stuffed it in his pocket.

  “Not to add to your burdens,” Graham said, “but Rita Hodges is looking for you.”

  Martin found Rita drinking black coffee in the parents’ lounge. For a moment, he stood in the doorway watching her. She sat on the edge of an orange vinyl couch, head bowed, shoulders hunched, knees close together as though trying to take up as little space as possible. She wore a navy parka, jeans, tennis shoes and sunglasses.

  “Rita.” He leaned against the jamb. “Dr. Graham said you were looking for me.”

  “Eddie’s real mad at me.” She stared at him. “We got into this big fight.”

  “About Holly?” He came into the room, sat on the arm of one of the chairs. “Was it about the surgery?”

  “Yeah. Dr. Grossman wants to do it Thursday, and I haven’t signed that consent thing yet…” She looked down at her hands, red with short, bitten nubs of nails, and started to cry.

  “Rita.” Struck by a sudden suspicion, he crouched on the floor beside her. “Take off your glasses.”

  She hesitated momentarily, then removed them. One eye was purple and swollen shut. A bruise ran across the top of one eyebrow. She met his eyes for a minute, then her face crumpled.

  “Did Eddie do this?”

  She nodded and dabbed her eyes. “I’m sorry, Dr. C.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just…I don’t know who to talk to. You know how we talked about surgery and everything? I got so confused about what to do and I got this medical book from the library and when Eddie saw it last night he went into this rage—”

  Martin got up and began pacing the small room.

  “He starts saying all this stuff about how I’m a bad mother and I don’t love Holly, then he starts hitting me.” She looked at him through her tears. “It’s not true, Dr. C. I love Holly. I love all my kids, I just want to do what best for them.”

  He looked at Rita’s bruises, thought of Eddie’s posturing for the TV cameras and imagined sinking a fist into the man’s face. Not trusting himself to speak, he stared up at the ceiling, counting acoustic tiles until he’d calmed down.

  Rita blew her nose. “So anyway, when I get here this morning, Dr. Grossman comes up to the NICU and says he wants to talk to me. He asks me if I’ve had breakfast and I said no and he takes me across the street to Hoff’s Hut.” Her eyes widened. “I couldn’t believe it, this big important doctor taking me to breakfast—”

  “What did he say, Rita?”

  “Well, he starts talking about this surgery that Holly needs and how she won’t survive without it. He said it would be this medical milestone because she’s so little, and that if I was a responsible mother I’d want her to have it.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  Her face clouded. “See, that’s the bad part. I mean first there’s Eddie and the way he is, then Dr. Grossman says all this stuff and then he says that if I didn’t agree, the hospital could get a court order and I could lose Holly.” She bit her lip and tears welled in her eyes. “He said if that happened I could lose the other kids, too.”

  Anger coursing like an infection through his blood, Martin was on his way to confront Grossman when he ran into Petrelli coming out of the administrative suite. With a brief nod, Martin brushed past the public relations manager.

  “Oooh, whoa there.” Petrelli held out an arm to stay him. “Someone’s in a tearing hurry. Are we all ready to meet the press?”

  “No, we’re not. As a matter of fact, we’ve changed our mind.”

  “Dr. Connaughton—” Petrelli’s expression was quizzical “—please tell me you’re not serious.”

  “I’m not doing the damn thing,” Martin struggled to keep his temper under control. “I’m not even sure I still want to work for this bloody hospital anymore. I’m on my way in to see Grossman and—”

  “Dr. Grossman had an emergency meeting to attend in San Francisco today. I just spoke with his secretary.” Petrelli looked at the leather folder he held in his hands. “All the arrangements for the press conference have been made, Dr. Connaughton. May I ask what’s happened to make you change your mind? Is there something I can help you with?”

  “Is it public knowledge that we coerce parents into agreeing to surgery? Is the press aware of our policy?”

  “Coerce?” Petrelli frowned. “The standard accepted care for Holly’s condition is to close the lesion immediately. That’s our policy. Dr. Grossman merely explained this to the baby’s mother—”

  “It’s also our policy to allow parents the choice of whether they want surgery, something Grossman apparently failed to mention.”

  Petrelli rocked on his heels. “I’m quite sure Dr. Grossman fully explained the situation—”

  “And I’m equally sure he didn’t. Furthermore, I’m not participating in this bloody charade of a press conference—”

  Petrelli frowned again. “I really wish you would reconsider. I know that Mr. Jordan and Dr. Grossman have tried very hard to make you understand the value of good public relations to Western—”

  “They have, and I’m not a convert.”

  “That’s really too bad.” He looked at Martin for a minute, his eyes flat and expressionless. “Because your refusal could make things rather difficult for Ms. Prentice.”

  Martin said nothing.

  “Public relations assistants are a dime a dozen, you see.” He stared down at his polished loafers for a moment. “Her demeanor at the administrative meeting alone would be ample reason to dismiss her. So…” He gave Martin a level look. “Let me just say that if you don’t do the press conference, I will find it necessary to terminate her employment.”

  AT NOON, Martin sat before a bank of microphones in the administrative conference room listening to Ed Jordan explain why Western had decided to absorb the cost of Holly’s surgery. On the lectern in front of him Petrelli’s sheet of approved responses lay facedown.

  A pulse in his temple throbbed. He searched in vain for Catherine. Petrelli, he suspected, had her occupied elsewhere. Jordan took a few questions from the press, then attention turned to Martin.

  “Dr. Connaughton. How is Holly doing?” a female reporter asked.

  “She’s a fighter,” he said. “She’s hanging in there.”

  The reporter frowned. “Has her condition improved?”

  “As I said, she’s a fighter. She’s extremely fragile, but we’re doing all we can for her. Under the circumstances, she’s as well as can be expected.”

  “Do you expect her to be discharged any time soon?”

  Martin looked at the woman. “Not before Christmas.”

  “Christmas is a week away, Dr. Connaughton.” Her tight smile did not suggest amusement.

  “Dr. Connaughton—” someone waved a notebook “—this surgery that’s planned for Holly? Will it allow her to lead a normal childhood? Ride a bike, play ball, that sort of thing?”

  “Nothing is certain in medicine.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  Martin stared down at his hands and imagined answering truthfully. With surgery, Holly’s prognosis is poor. Without it, poorer. Either way, she’ll have problems with respiration. She has significant hydrocephalus or water on the brain. She also has a malformation at the base of her brain that will cause her neurological problems. With
or without surgery she’ll probably have no bladder or bowel function. In fact, she’ll probably do little more than just vegetate. His stomach tensed as he searched for something positive to say. “The surgery is palliative.” He paused. “It will make Holly more comfortable.”

  Uncomfortable with the lie, Martin barely heard the next question. He wanted to be somewhere else. Far away. As he considered possible avenues of escape, he saw Petrelli walk up to the podium and tap at his watch, signaling to the audience that the conference was over. Eddie Hodges left the podium, trailed by Rita. Ed Jordan followed on her heels. All three were soon surrounded. Martin took the steps on the opposite side and almost collided with the first reporter who had questioned him.

  “Dr. Connaughton—” she caught his arm, stood so close to his face, he felt her breath “—I have some follow-up questions. Look, this kid is in pretty bad shape, isn’t she?” She glanced at a sheet of paper in her hand, and without waiting for his response, reeled off a list of Holly’s medical problems. “Most experts I’ve talked to say she’s not likely to recover.”

  Martin shrugged. “Nothing is ever completely certain.”

  “But you yourself said last week you weren’t optimistic.”

  He studied her face. The crimson lips, the heavily mascaraed eyes. He felt her waiting, poised to capture the pronouncement that would become the twenty-second sound bite. “At the moment,” he said, unable to maintain the charade any longer, “I’m not particularly optimistic about anything.”

  FOLLOWING THE press conference, Martin sat through an interview with the Tribune reporter that did nothing to restore his mood. If he showered for a week, he couldn’t wash away the soil that seemed to have seeped through every pore in his body. He thought of his responses, the platitudes he’d spouted, and cringed. Happy Christmas, Holly. I’ve sold you out.

  Back in the NICU, he heard Catherine call his name and turned to see her coming toward him, a green gown over her street clothes.

  “Hi.” She smiled at him, slightly breathless, face flushed, glossy brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. “God, what a crazy day. You took off so fast after the news conference, I didn’t even see you leave.”

  “I’d had all I could take.” He rubbed the back of his neck, found it difficult to meet her eyes.

  “I could tell, just watching you. I came in just as you started taking questions.” She studied his face for a moment. “Listen, Martin, I’m really sorry about what happened this morning, I had no idea Derek would pull something like that…” Her smile faded slightly. “Hey, are you okay?”

  “Fine.” He flipped through a chart. “Were you happy with the way things went?”

  “Reasonably. We had all the major TV stations. A couple of radio stations. The Tribune. Derek was pleased with the way it went, Jordan, too.”

  “Well, that’s the important thing, isn’t it?” He put the chart down. “Listen, we’re getting a couple of new admissions—”

  “Hey.” She looked at him, her eyes puzzled. “What’s wrong? You seem kind of, I don’t know, distant. Do you feel badly about the way the press conference went?”

  “It’s over,” he said with a shrug. “So let’s forget it, all right?”

  “But it’s still bothering you, and I feel responsible.”

  “You’ve no reason to,” he said. “It was my decision to do the thing.”

  “And now you wish you hadn’t, right?” She touched his arm. “Look at me, Martin. Think about it for a minute. I know your feelings about Holly’s surgery, but what if you had said what you really thought? I mean, what if you’d said, ‘Oh yeah, this is all a farce. We shouldn’t be treating this kid.’ The hospital’s not going to back down so what difference would it have made?”

  “Other than you having to explain to your boss what went wrong? I don’t know. Maybe it would only matter to me.”

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing. Forget it.” On the other side of the unit, the transport team wheeled in a new admission. Martin pointed to the green scrub-suited figures. “Any minute now they’re going to come and get me…”

  “What’s happened since last night?” Her face was troubled. “I feel as though I’ve done something, and I don’t really know what it is.”

  He shifted his weight, looked at her, looked across at the transport team, back at her. “Forget it.”

  She stared at him for a minute. “Look, I just want to understand what’s going on, okay? You’re acting like a stranger. What is it?”

  He said nothing. His thoughts were like tangled yarn, hopelessly raveled. He knew what he wanted. Catherine. With her he’d seen beyond the black void of loneliness. Still, he couldn’t escape the image of Rita Hodges’s bruised face. What he wanted came with a price and he wasn’t sure he could live with himself if he went on paying it. Weary suddenly, he just wanted to retreat.

  Catherine stood with her arms at her sides, looking up at him. Her eyes softened. “I care about you,” she said quietly. “A lot. If something is wrong, or if things have changed for you, then tell me, okay? I might not like it, but I’d rather know. Don’t shut me out like this.”

  Across the unit, someone called his name. He signaled he’d heard. “I don’t know what to tell you, Catherine. It’s everything. Nothing. I don’t know.”

  “Maybe you need a break from Western,” she said. “I’m taking the kids ice-skating tonight. Want to join us?”

  “Thanks.” With his foot, he hit the seat of a chair, watched it spin for a moment. “But I don’t think I’d be very good company.”

  “Dammit.” Her eyes bright with anger, she clutched at her hair. “This kind of thing makes me want to scream. Clearly something is wrong. Why can’t you just tell me what it is? Have I done something?”

  “No. It’s me.” He ran his hand across his face, wanted just to end the exchange. “I need to go, I’m sorry.”

  “Fine.” She studied his face for a moment. “But the next time you tell someone you’re in for the long haul, I’d suggest you think about what that really means.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “MOMMY.” Julie rapped on the bathroom door. “Peter called me a weirdo.”

  “Well, she stuck her dumb Barbie in my face,” Peter said.

  “She was just giving you a little kiss.” Julie giggled. “She said you’re her boyfriend.”

  Catherine heard Peter’s howl of indignation. “Listen you guys, just be good for a little while, okay? I’ll be out in five minutes.” She lay in the tub, her hair pinned in a knot on the top of her head, her body submerged in scented aqua water. All evening she’d managed to keep her emotions in check. Hand in hand with the kids, she’d skated around the rink, smiling, refusing to admit thoughts of Martin. But now, even as she willed herself not to think about him, she realized her ears were tuned to the phone.

  “Mom.” Peter rapped again. “I’m hungry. When are you coming out?”

  “Five minutes, Peter, I just told you.”

  She wanted to sit in the tub and cry. Wallow in her misery. Analyze what had gone wrong. Analyze. She threw her sponge against the wall. Who was she fooling? He’d changed—literally overnight. Convinced her they had something special and shown up the next day acting like a distant stranger. The answer was so damn obvious. He’d gone from her to another woman. She just didn’t want to see it. The way she hadn’t wanted to see Gary’s affair with Nadia.

  She slowly soaped her breasts and arms, looked down at her body in the steaming water. Recalled the feeling of Martin’s mouth on hers. The graze of his stubble against her cheek. His body hard against her own. Desire pulsed through her, tugged at her stomach. Needs, denied out of necessity after Gary’s rejection, clamored now to be met. Damn him. He’d walked out on her, just as her father had, just as Gary had. What made it worse, she’d actually believed he might be different.

  “Mommy,” Julie called. “When are you coming out?”

  “Now, sweetie.” Catherine c
limbed out of the tub, dried herself with a rough towel, dressed and pulled on jeans and a sweater. She started to dry her hair then realized she wouldn’t be able to hear the phone over the noise of the drier, so she turned it off. Then, furious with herself, she turned it on full blast. Not loud enough to drown out the phone though. When it rang she bolted into the living room. Please, please, please, she muttered under her breath.

  The ringing stopped.

  “D’you get it?” She looked at Peter, stretched out on the floor in private communion with a Nintendo game.

  He nodded, his eyes fixed on the game.

  “Who was it?”

  “I don’t know. It was a wrong number. Mom, what’s for dinner?”

  “Chicken.” Disappointment rose like a lump in her throat. “Peter, look at me for a minute. Are you sure it was a wrong number? Was it a man or a woman?”

  “A man.”

  “Did he ask for me by name?”

  “Jeez, Mom.” He shot her an exasperated look. “It was some guy who wanted to speak to a Jose Gonzalez, okay? What’s with you anyway?”

  What was with her? She looked at her son, waiting for dinner while his mother obsessed over a man she hardly knew. Good question. She’d gotten her priorities confused. That’s what was with her.

  “MY EX OWNS a chain of gourmet markets.” The blonde smiled at Martin across the flickering candles on the table of the Newport Beach restaurant. The light from the flames glanced off her diamond earrings. “They’re in all the up-scale areas. Merchant Michael’s. You may have heard of them?”

  Martin shook his head, struggled to keep his mind from drifting. As he’d left the unit, Tim Graham had reminded him about a blind date arranged weeks ago that Martin had completely forgotten. The meeting he might have used as an excuse had been canceled. Too late to back out, he’d reluctantly let himself be dragged along, but his thoughts were elsewhere.