The Doctor Delivers

Admirable, but it didn’t make her job any easier. She punched the elevator button. With any luck, she’d get back to her office and fix her makeup without running into anyone. After that she’d figure out what to do about Connaughton.

“Catherine,” a voice behind her said.

Nadia. Even before she turned, she recognized the voice. Why wouldn’t she? She and Nadia went way back to junior high school where they’d both been in love with Brett Malley. Things cooled between them after Catherine started dating Brett, then got downright icy when Nadia stole him away. But they’d made up and, in the years since, had supported each other through various emotional upheavals including Nadia’s divorce from her first husband. In turn, when Catherine’s marriage had crumbled, she’d cried on Nadia’s shoulder. And, when she’d needed a job, Nadia, who headed Western’s marketing department, had recommended her for the public relations position. Unfortunately, she hadn’t learned about Nadia and Gary’s year-long affair until after she’d started working at Western. Encounters with Nadia were definitely one of the downsides to the job, but she was determined to stick it out. If only to prove that, although strings had been pulled to get her the job, she could keep it on her own merits.

“Gary said you were kind of upset when he called this morning.” Nadia smiled and reached to touch Catherine’s arm. “He can be such a brat sometimes, I told him not to spring things on you but he just had to get it off his chest. Are you okay? I mean you’re not mad or anything?”

Nadia had a breathy, little-girl voice, guileless blue eyes and a cloud of wispy blond curls. Even in the strappy high heels she favored, she was barely five feet. Next to Nadia, Catherine felt like a lumbering ox. Now, as she looked at Gary’s new wife, in her pale blue cashmere sweater and matching skirt, she imagined locking her fingers around Nadia’s tiny neck, just above the heart-shaped locket Gary had undoubtedly given her, and squeezing very hard.

“You know what, Nadia? I don’t intend to discuss this while I’m at work. And I especially don’t intend to discuss it with you. Anything I have to say about my children, I’ll say directly to their father.” She forced a tight smile. “Understood?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Nadia agreed. “You should talk to Gary, I’ve tried to stress that, but…” She smiled as if to say, What can you do? “Anyway, what I really wanted to talk to you about was that Professional Match show. We’re trying to get our ducks in a row for the marketing campaign, and Derek said you were working with Dr. Connaughton. She smiled. “Lucky you. He is such a doll. So is he all excited about being on TV?”

HE’D NEVER BEEN KNOWN for sunny optimism, but as he headed for the executive committee meeting where he was to make his last-ditch effort to save WISH, Martin tried to think positive thoughts. It wasn’t easy. He steered the Fiat north on Pacific Coast Highway. Past the taco stands, the auto-salvage yards and pawnshops, past the pink stucco apartment blocks where barefoot children spilled out onto threadbare patches of green. WISH territory, but a summons to Ed Jordan’s office just as he was leaving the medical center had temporarily eclipsed thoughts of WISH.

The administrator had wanted to hear Martin’s version of the altercation he’d gotten into with the teenage son of Western’s chief of pediatric neurosurgery two days earlier. He’d caught the boy making a drug deal in the parking lot. Enraged, he’d grabbed him by the collar, hauled him up close then recognized his face.

“My dad’s going to hear about this,” the boy had said.

“I hope he does,” Martin retorted. “There are babies up there fighting for their lives because of idiots like you.”

“He’ll get your ass.”

“I’ll look forward to it.” He’d held him suspended for another moment, then let go so suddenly that the kid had staggered backward against a Mercedes. “You’re lucky I’m giving you a chance,” he’d told the boy. “It’s a damn sight more than a lot of others get. Now take off before I call security and have you picked up.”

The kid had mumbled something under his breath, then climbed into the Mercedes and drove off. Martin knew they’d never touch the kid, his father was too influential. According to Jordan, Nate Grossman was responsible for bringing in more patients to the medical center than any other surgeon on staff.

Sun beat down on the Fiat’s canvas top, heating the car’s interior. Mid-December and it had to be eighty degrees. In the three years he’d spent in California, he hadn’t managed to overcome the feeling of strangeness at Christmastime. The merriment seemed as contrived as the artificial frost that glazed Western’s lobby windows, only partially concealing the swaying palms outside.

A pulse in Martin’s temple tapped a staccato beat, the familiar throb of anger. If the situation wasn’t serious, the irony would make him laugh. While he tried to convince administrators to keep funding an antidrug program, the chief surgeon’s son was out in the parking lot drumming up business.

Figure out what was making you so angry, Jordan had said. It wouldn’t take long. Overprivileged punks selling crack in the parking lot; the kind of skewed priorities that poured money into salvaging infants but cut it off for prevention. And then, thinking again of Catherine Prentice, money lavished on fripperies like public relations.

It should have been easy to dismiss the exchange, but the memory of her standing there lodged in his brain like the fragment of a song. Something elusive about her, something he couldn’t name. She reminded him of someone. A fleeting expression, the way she held her head.

Stifling in the Fiat’s cramped quarters, he rolled down the window. A symphony of freeway sounds poured in. Latin rhythm from the low-slung cruiser to his left, a jangle of jazzed-up Christmas music from an adjacent Toyota. Buses, big rigs, all trumpeting out their presence. Acrid, coppery-smelling air filled his lungs. Ahead of him, a tan station wagon made an abrupt lane change, then, as Martin pulled into the gap, the car darted back. He slammed on the breaks and hit the horn, then noticed the sticker on the station wagon’s bumper: Mean People Suck.

Jordan had actually suggested he apologize for roughing up the kid. Martin loosened the tie he’d worn especially for the presentation and wondered whether Jordan had actually been serious.

He switched on KNX, the all-news radio station. Someone had thrown a bomb through a living-room window in Northern Ireland, killing three residents. It had happened half a mile from the flat where he and Sharon had lived. He switched the radio off. Ireland was a distant memory. A faded picture in an album he seldom opened anymore.

A quick lane change brought him up behind a gravel truck. Pebbles, like buckshot, smattered the Fiat’s windshield. With a glance over his shoulder, he changed lanes again. Red taillights began to wink on. He rubbed the back of his neck, readjusted his lanky frame in the car’s cramped interior and flipped the radio back on. The traffic report told him something he already knew: the northbound Long Beach Freeway was jammed.

Two fifty-three. His presentation was scheduled for three. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. The traffic had ground to a complete halt. Up ahead, he saw a helicopter circling slowly, a metallic vulture above the sluggish body of traffic. He craned his neck out of the window, peered up into the grimy primrose sky. A second bird had joined the vigil, the call letters for a local TV station painted on its side.

Two fifty-five. Martin slammed his palm on the steering wheel, then, unable to tolerate the inactivity, pulled onto the shoulder, got out and started along the line of stationary cars. Traffic was completely immobilized on both sides of the freeway. He ran back to the Fiat and grabbed the medical bag he kept there. Maybe there’d been an accident.

Half a mile or so ahead of him, a crowd had gathered around a large beige clunker. As he drew closer, he saw a woman in a gray sweatsuit emerge from a Toyota. Carrying what appeared to be folded blankets, she made her way to the beige car and disappeared through the driver’s-side door.

He pushed his way through the crowd, squatted on the asphalt next to the car’s passenger door and looked inside. A woman, in her mid-to-late thirties, he judged, lay sprawled at an awkward angle across the seat, a blanket draped across her lap.

“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.