The Doctor Delivers

“Publicity shy,” he said. “I couldn’t stand the thought of screaming mobs of fans chasing after me.” Rita gave him a look that suggested she half believed him. “Actually, I’m glad I caught the two of you without any press around.” He looked from Rita to Eddie. “I wanted to talk to you about the babies.”

Eddie consulted his watch. “The news is gonna be on in ten minutes.”

“I won’t take long.” Martin shoved his hands into the pockets of his lab coat, briefly described each baby’s condition. “I think two of them will do fine,” he said. “Frankly, though, I’m very concerned about the smallest one.”

“Her name’s Holly.” Eddie seemed undaunted by the medical news. “We got all their names picked out. The other two are Berry and Noelle.”

“Seeing as they’re practically Christmas babies,” Rita added with a wavering smile. “That reporter gal just had a baby herself, but it was a boy. She said if it’d been a girl, she was going to call it Holly Noelle.”

“So she said we could have the names,” Eddie grinned. “Pretty cool, huh?”

“About Holly though, Dr. C.” Rita looked up at him. “She’s going to make it, isn’t she? I mean, she’s not going to…”

“It’s too soon to tell.” Up close now, under the makeup, he saw the dark smudges beneath Rita’s eyes and wished he had more encouraging words for her. “We’ll know more in a day or two.”

“She’ll be fine,” Eddie Hodges looked again at his watch. “I feel great about all of them. They’ve got my genes, if you get what I’m saying. And they’re all going to make it. Holly, too.”

Martin rubbed his hand across his jaw, refrained from comment.

“See, Dr. C., I’m real big on positive thinking. Me and Rita’s been kind of down on our luck lately, but what I’m saying is, that’s all changing. Things are looking up. It’s going to be like those Siamese twins with agents and commercials and everything. What we don’t need is negative energy, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say nothing else about Holly not making it.” He smiled. “Okay?”

“Got it.” He decided that he wasn’t at all keen on Eddie Hodges. If the next few days went as he expected them to, Rita was going to need a lot of emotional support. It was doubtful that she’d receive much from her husband.

“So that’s dad, huh?” Tim Graham had come in at the end of the conversation. “I caught him on the news tonight. You’d have thought he pulled the whole thing off single-handedly.”

“He sees the triplets as a ticket to financial freedom, I think,” Martin said. “Doesn’t want reality to mess up his rosy picture.”

“Could be trouble.” Graham dropped onto one of the chairs that stood around the bank of desks at one end of the unit. “Speaking of which, I guess you missed your WISH meeting, huh?”

Martin nodded, then recapped the less-than-productive meeting with Van Dolan.

Graham removed his glasses and rubbed them on the pocket of his scrubs. “You know something?” he said after a minute. “As much as I understand the need for programs like WISH, you can kind of see why administration isn’t falling all over themselves to fund it.”

Martin just stared at him.

“Think about it. Western depends on services like intensive care for revenue. Administration considers NICU a cash cow, for God’s sake. Every time WISH succeeds in preventing an admission, Western loses another paying customer.” Yawning, he flipped the carousel where messages for staff were written on pink notes and filed under each individual’s name. “Let’s see if Christie Brinkley or Demi Moore have been trying to reach me. Nope. I guess they finally took no for an answer.” He gave the device another twirl. “Two love notes for you though.”

Martin glanced at the slips of paper. Both were from Catherine Prentice in Public Relations. The last, marked Urgent, was sent nearly two hours earlier at 5:00 p.m. He crumpled the slips into a ball, tossed them in the trash.

“Press still hot on your heels, huh?” Graham shook his head.

“You’d think it was the Second Coming, wouldn’t you? I’m a doctor, for God’s sake. I just stopped to help out.” Martin rubbed the heels of his palms into his eyes. “I should do a bait and switch,” he said in jest. “Tell Catherine Prentice I’ll talk to the press and then start yammering on about WISH and the need for prenatal care. That would thrill administration.”

Graham laughed. “Try it. What do you have to lose? Actually, you could probably catch her at the holiday party tonight.” He looked at the clock on the wall. “Right as we speak, the Harbor House is full of milling, fun-loving Western employees and doctors. Just apologize profusely for ignoring all her messages and tell her you’ve seen the light.”

Martin pulled up a chair, swung the seat around and sat down, his arms around the backrest. “You think she’d be there?”

“Sure. She’s in PR. Those people always hang out at social functions,” Graham said. “They’re social animals. Party people. It’s their thing.”

“WHAT WAS THAT, sweetie?” Catherine stood in the lobby of the Harbor House Hotel, the receiver jammed up against one ear, her palm flattened against the other, straining to hear what her daughter was saying. Behind her, sounds of revelry poured out of the ballroom where Western’s holiday party was in full swing.

“Daddy called,” Julie announced in her child’s singsong voice. “Twice. He said if you don’t have time to get my ballet dress, he and Nadia would take me to get it. He said they saw a real pretty one in the Little Ballerina shop. And Nadia’s going to get me some new tights because mine have holes in them. And she’s going to get Peter a new jacket because his old one is yukky.”

Catherine’s fingers tightened around the receiver. A rush of adrenaline made her pulse race. So this was going to be Gary’s tactic. Keep the pressure on until she broke. “Listen, Julie.” She tried to keep her voice slow and steady. “If Daddy calls again, tell him I said not to worry about it.” Tell him to stay the hell away and stop trying to buy you. “We are going to get your dress, okay? Just you and me. I promise.”

“Tonight?”

“No. Not tonight.” Catherine closed her eyes. A band had struck up in the ballroom, the bass notes seemed to reverberate through her body. “I’m going to get away as soon as I can, but the stores will be closed by the time I get home. You’ll be in bed, but we’ll go tomorrow, okay?” Silence on the other end. “Julie, sweetie, I know you’re disappointed, I am, too. If there was any way I could have got out of this thing, I would have.” More silence. “Tell you what, kiddo. How about we make tomorrow really special? We’ll get your dress then go get a hot-fudge sundae? Brownie sprinkles, whipped cream, the whole works.” She heard Julie’s slightly mollified assent. “Good, now let me talk to Grandma, okay?”

She told her mother about the a tuna casserole in the freezer, tried not to snap as her mother launched into a rambling account of the dangerous things microwave rays could do to food, reminded her to be sure Peter took his asthma medication and, in a slightly wheedling voice, asked if she would mind very much just running an iron over the blue dress Julie wanted to wear for school tomorrow.

When her mother complained that stooping over an ironing board aggravated her back, Catherine urged her not to bother, she would do it herself in the morning. With a final reminder to be sure all the doors were locked, she hung up. Tomorrow night, she thought as she headed down the corridor to the rest room, she’d do the pot roast for dinner. Before she took Julie to Little Ballerina and thwarted Gary by spending money she didn’t have.

Inside the rest room, she squinted in the bright white light, frowned at her reflection in the mirrored walls. Pale, drained and a little disheveled. Definitely not a thing of beauty. With everything else there was to juggle, how the hell did single mothers manage to date? Some of them did, she’d overheard a couple of nurses in the cafeteria discussing how soon it was okay to let a boyfriend sleep over. One of them said she always had sex at his house, never at her own if the kids were there. The other said she didn’t bother about it, sex was a fact of life. Kids adjusted.

She leaned over the washbasin, splashed her face with cold water. Sex and dating were the last things on her mind, especially now that Gary had started this custody thing. A man in her bed would be all the ammunition he needed.

Swept by a stew of emotions—fatigue, anger, frustration, self-doubt, she grabbed a paper towel from a dispenser, held it tight against her face. Life felt like one huge compromise. Worrying about finding Connaughton while she scrambled eggs for the kids this morning, standing in some stupid hotel bathroom when she wanted to be home, reading a bedtime story to Julie, helping Peter with his homework.

For a moment, the disillusionment and anger seemed to engulf her. She took a few deep breaths and splashed more cold water on her face. Tomorrow, she’d do something really special for them. Exactly what, she didn’t know yet, but something. And then she would work on Dr. Martin Connaughton.

Five minutes later, she pushed her way through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd in the ballroom looking for Derek. At one end, a small forest of bleached, tumbleweed Christmas trees twinkled with tiny white lights. In the middle of the room, dancing couples swayed and grooved to “Jingle Bell Rock.” Administration reportedly spent big bucks on the annual holiday party and this year was obviously no exception.

She spotted Derek at one of the buffet tables, paper plate in one hand, a plastic glass of wine in the other. He had changed into black linen slacks and shirt and his hair was combed straight back off his forehead.

“Gawd, what a day it’s been.” He speared a piece of bacon-wrapped shrimp. “One damn thing after another. D’you reach Connaughton yet? Selena Bliss paged me twice tonight. Says I owe her a favor and she has to talk to him, or she’ll never give us any decent coverage again. What are these things?” He gestured at a silver chafing dish. “Alpo balls?”

“Swedish meatballs, I think.” Catherine piled some celery and carrots on her plate, doused them with a scoop of diet ranch dressing. “No luck with Connaughton. I’ll go up to the unit first thing in the morning. The babies should have all stabilized by then, so maybe he’ll be more receptive.”

“Good.” He ladled meatballs on his plate then stopped to inspect a silver tray. “Keep trying. There’s been a new development, and we need to be sure Grossman and Connaughton are singing out of the same hymnbook.” He lowered his voice. “There’s no love lost between the two of them.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Grossman thinks he’s God and so does everyone else at Western, except for Connaughton. Now Grossman wants to try this new surgery that’s never been tried on a kid this size, but Connaughton thinks the kid’s too sick and he’s not making any secret of it.” He dug a toothpick into a meatball. “The problem is, I want to promote this teamwork concept and…what are these little numbers?”

“Rumaki.” Catherine dipped a carrot stick in dressing. “Teamwork concept?”

“Exactly.” Derek winked at a passing reveler in formfitting black leather pants. Face flushed with wine, he poked a toothpick into a wedge of cheese. “What was I saying?”

“Teamwork.”

“Right. The Freeway Triplets and Western’s team of miracle workers. Connaughton who delivers them, cares for them in our state-of-the-art NICU. Grossman who performs this miraculous, life-saving surgery. Fabulous PR. Jordan loves it.”

Catherine watched a conga line form a few feet away. A man she recognized as one of the lab techs, motioned her over to join him. She shook her head, then leaned closer to hear Derek’s voice over the noise. A wave of wine-scented breath forced her back.

“What makes this whole triplet thing particularly timely—” Derek brought his face closer “—is that Ned Bolton has been nosing around lately—”

“Ned Bolton?” Catherine frowned. “The medical writer with the Tribune?”