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“You can stay,” Mellette said. “We were just … You know, sister talk.” She glanced over at her sister, who was glancing out at the carpenter. “About silly things. You and Amos are welcome to join us out here for lemonade.”
Amos Picou, an old Bergeron family friend, stepped past Justin and hurried down the steps. A direct descendent of African lineage, he was a part of the local legend, a friend to all and an all-round good man. “Sorry, ladies, but I’m off to catch me some crawdads for a nice gumbo Justin’s going to be fixing later on. Gotta hurry since he’s got to get that gumbo on to simmering pretty soon, but later, after I get back, that lemonade will sure hit the spot.”
Maggie’s eyes opened wider. “Did I hear someone say gumbo? And did I hear an invitation to dinner to help eat some of that gumbo?”
“I’ll bet Justin will fix enough for one more, if you want to go over and ask Mr. Tool Belt to join us,” Mellette said.
“I’m not going to go ask Mr. Tool Belt anything!” Maggie said, almost too defensively.
Mellette smiled and poured a glass of lemonade. “Just give this to him. Ask him if you want to, or don’t.” With that, she hurried inside, then watched her sister from the front window.
They were watching him. Probably talking about him. The fact was, he hated lemonade. Had hated it all his life, hated it yesterday when the looker had brought him some, and would hate it just as much this time she brought him a glass. But it was a kind gesture, and he didn’t want to seem ungrateful. After all, they’d given him work and, as it turned out, he needed work. He had living expenses to meet and his own house to renovate. Although he was finding it tough working at a medical clinic, being that close to medicine again.
When he’d answered the ad, it had read that this was to be a room addition. He’d assumed a house, as the ad had said to apply at Eula’s House. So if he’d known … actually, he’d have probably applied, anyway. But at least he’d have been prepared to spend his days around doctors and nurses. That was the tough part, being around them and not being part of them.
Well, money was money. And lemonade was lemonade. “I appreciate it, ma’am,” he said to Maggie, as she handed the glass to him.
“There’s more, if you want it,” she said. “Up on the front porch. Help yourself. And tell the other workers to help themselves.”
“I’ll tell the others, but I think one will hit the spot for me, thanks.”
“My name’s Maggie Doucet, by the way,” she said, smiling at him.
“And I’m Alain Lalonde,” he replied.
“You’re from around here, aren’t you? I can tell from the drawl.”
“Just moved back from Chicago.”
“Chicago? Really? That’s where my sister’s husband was living when she met him. Justin Bergeron. You’ve met him, haven’t you? He’s the doctor on call here.
“Yes, ma’am, I’ve met him,” he said, handing her back the empty glass after downing the lemonade in nearly one gulp, like it was bad medicine. “Now, if you’ll excuse me …”
He turned his back and started to walk away. But Maggie called out to him, “Alain, would you care to stay for gumbo tonight? As your drawl indicates you’re from around here, I think you’ll appreciate a good gumbo for what it is, and my sister’s husband is making enough to feed an army.”
“Appreciate the invitation, ma’am, but I have other plans.” Said politely, because he was grateful for the offer, but he wasn’t in a social mood and he didn’t want to drag the others down with his attitude. In other words, he knew he’d throw the proverbial wet blanket on the party and he didn’t want to do that. “Maybe another time.”
“Well, if you change your mind, you’re always welcome …”
“Again, thanks. Look, I’ve got to get back to work, ma’am. The job foreman isn’t paying me to stand around and talk. Thanks for the lemonade.”
Well, that went badly, Maggie thought as she walked away. Talk about a polite dismissal.
“So?” Mellette asked, even before Maggie was inside the clinic.
“So, what?”
“What did he say?” Mellette asked. “I saw you two talking, so what was it about?”
“He didn’t ask me out, if that’s what you mean. In fact, I asked him to gumbo tonight and he turned me down.”
“Seriously, you asked him to dinner after you told me you wouldn’t?”
Maggie shrugged. “I was trying to be friendly. That’s all.”
“There are six other men on the job site. Did you ask them all, too? Or did you just single out Mr. Tool Belt?”
“His name is Alain Lalonde, and he’s the only one I asked. And that’s the end of the conversation, as far as I’m concerned because—” she glanced down at the floor “—have you looked at how swollen your ankles are? I want you to go sit down, elevate your legs and leave my love life to me.”
“So you’re thinking about Alain in terms of your love life?” Mellette teased on her way to her favorite chair.
“I don’t want a love life!” Maggie retorted. “Let me repeat myself. I don’t want a love life. I have work, I have school, I have my volunteer work here. I have a pregnant sister who needs me to help her. That’s enough. No love life!”
“Yes, right,” Mellette said, as she changed her mind and headed to the stairs, deciding to go to one of the two bedrooms on the second floor for a real rest. “Oh, and Billie Louviere will be here in half an hour for her three-month checkup. Pregnancy’s normal, she’s doing fine. Justin’s available if you need him, but if you don’t, tell her hello for me. Oh, and keep an eye on her blood pressure. It hasn’t been high but something tells me she might be a candidate for hypertension the further she gets into this pregnancy.”
“Her first?”
“After a couple of miscarriages. She’s pretty nervous.”
“And I’m pretty nervous about your swollen ankles. So go put them up, and call me if you need anything.”
“Like lemonade,” Mellette teased.
“Leave the lemonade out of this.”
Once back outside, Maggie tried not looking for Alain Lalonde, but that was nearly impossible as all the building activity was directly in her line of sight as she sat on the porch. “Okay, so he’s good to look at,” she said as she poured herself another lemonade. Good to watch, good to turn into a little midday fantasy. After all, there was no harm in looking, was there?
After Billie Louviere’s checkup, a couple of walk-ins presented themselves at the clinic, and by midafternoon Maggie had actually seen enough patients that she was getting tired. Not exhausted, but with just the right amount of weariness setting in that she really felt she’d done a good day’s work. It was time to go home, though. Eat a quick bowl of gumbo and head on back to town.
Even though she was taking the summer off from school, she still had casework for a couple of legal clients to go over this evening, and she did want to read a chapter in one of her law textbooks, if she stayed awake that long.
“Time to get up,” she called down the hall to Mellette, who was still napping in Justin’s former bedroom. While no one actually lived at Eula’s House anymore, named for Justin’s grandmother, they kept the upstairs as a residence, hoping that one day it might be turned into a very small hospital ward. The downstairs had been converted into a clinic that maintained a portion of Eula’s herbal practice, as well as a proper medical clinic. To outsiders it might seem a confused mishmash of traditions, but to the people of Big Swamp it was where they could seek medical help in whatever form they chose.
“Come on, Mellette. We need to eat, then I’ve got to get out of here. Go home, go over some case files.” She pushed open the bedroom door to look in on her sleeping sister. Then gasped. Her ankles were puffier than before. So were her hands, and even her face, especially around her eyes, looked puffy.
“You okay?” she asked as she approached the bed.
“Headache,” Mellette said. “A little nauseous. Think the heat’s done me in.” She started to sit up, but Maggie gently nudged her back down.
“Stay there. Don’t get up yet.”
“Why?” Mellette asked. Mellette, a nurse herself, had worked in emergency medicine at New Hope, where their mother, Zenobia, was chief of staff.
“Because you’re tired, and tiredness and pregnancy aren’t a good combination. I’m going to go downstairs and get you a drink of cold water, so don’t get up. Hear me?”
“Hear you,” Mellette said, as she dropped back into her pillows and shut her eyes.
Two minutes later Mellette had a blood-pressure cuff strapped to her sister’s arm, and two minutes after that she was on her way back downstairs to find Justin.
He was outside, talking to Mr. Tool Belt. “Something’s wrong with Mellette,” Maggie interrupted, not beating around the bush for a more tactful way to approach it. “I don’t do obstetrics so I can’t tell for sure, but she’s awfully swollen, her blood pressure is on the high end of normal and—”
“Where’s she swollen?” Alain Lalonde cut in.
Both Justin and Maggie gave him an inquisitive look. “Feet, ankles, eyelids …” Maggie answered, not sure why she was giving a symptom list to the carpenter.
“Urinary output normal?” Alain went on.
Maggie shrugged, quite surprised by the carpenter’s line of questions. “I didn’t ask her.”
“Nausea, vomiting, headache?” Again from Alain.
“Nausea and headache.” More than surprised, she was confused.
“Onset?”
“This afternoon,” Maggie said. “Why do you care?”
“Alain was probably the best high-risk obstetrician in Chicago,” Justin answered.
“You knew?” Alain asked. “And you didn’t ask why I’m here, doing carpentry?”
“A man has a right to his privacy. I didn’t want to invade yours.”
“So Mellette … I think it may be preeclampsia. If it is, we caught it in time. But I think you’d better be getting your wife to her obstetrician pretty damned fast.”
Justin turned to run to the clinic, then paused and signaled for Alain to accompany him, leaving Maggie outside to wonder what had caused a doctor to quit and become a carpenter. Not that there was anything wrong with being a carpenter, because there wasn’t. But why had Alain put himself through so many years of medical training just to quit? It made no sense, especially as he was so highly regarded, according to Justin.
So what made a doctor give it up to come to Big Swamp and bang out a clinic expansion? It was a question for which she had no answer. And it was a question for which she was going to find an answer, especially as this man was about to touch her sister. Darned straight, she was going to find an answer.
Instead of going upstairs to Mellette, Maggie went straight to the computer in the office and entered the name Alain Lalonde into a search engine. The first thing that turned up was a headline about a wounded army doctor who saved the lives of his men and women. They had been under siege and he’d drawn the fire away from his escaping crew and patients. Had been shot in the leg in doing so, spent several weeks in the hospital in rehab. Received a medal.
“Amazing,” she said, as the second thing that turned up was of an obstetrician accused in a malpractice suit. Something about performing a Caesarean when it hadn’t been necessary. The article said he’d gone against orders from the woman’s personal physician and performed an emergency C-section when a normal delivery would have worked.
“And someone sued you for that?” Maggie whispered. It didn’t make sense to her as long as the baby had been healthy, which it apparently had been. Was it the lawsuit that had made him quit, or had he just burned out?
“Who are you?” Maggie whispered as she clicked out of the articles. “Alain Lalonde, just who are you? And why are you working as a carpenter and not an obstetrician?”
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_c8bc9d82-4bc5-5a93-a583-83880d8e4d16)
“HOW FAR ALONG are you?” Alain asked as he checked Mellette’s blood pressure.
“Twenty-four … no, twenty-five weeks now.”
“And when did your symptoms start?” He pumped up the blood-pressure cuff and deflated it slowly.
“A couple of days ago, but only swollen ankles. I honestly didn’t think anything about it because of the heat.”
“In this heat, swollen ankles are common.”
“How high is my blood pressure?”
“One-forty over ninety. Not extremely high, but I wouldn’t want to see it going any higher.”
Mellette gasped. “And the baby?”
“I don’t have anything here to do any tests, but I heard the heartbeat, and it was strong.”
Justin and Maggie, who’d finally joined them, sighed in relief.
“Look, you need to be in the hospital at least for the night so your doctor can get tests done. I think you have a mild case of preeclampsia, which can be controlled by drugs and lots of rest, but we need a blood panel, and most of all we need to get a fetal monitor on you. The problem is, the trip out of here is rougher than I want you to take.” He looked up at Maggie. “Is there any way to get a helicopter in here?”
“No!” Mellette gasped.
“It’s for your own good, Mellette,” Alain said. “But most of all it’s for the baby’s safety.”
Mellette shut her eyes and a tear squeezed out the side and trickled down her cheek. Immediately, Justin was at her side, pulling her into his arms. “Alain’s a good doctor,” he said. “If he thinks we need to evacuate you by air, that’s what we’ll do.”
Even before Mellette had a chance to agree, Maggie was on the phone, making the arrangements. “Thirty minutes?” she questioned. “We’ll get her down to the pickup spot as fast as we can.”
“Already?” Alain asked, clearly impressed.
“Done deal. We need to get her down to the grocery in Grandmaison where an ambulance will take her out to Flander’s Meadow where she’ll be picked up. The ambulance will be there in half an hour, so I’d suggest we get going. If that’s okay with you?” she asked Alain.
“Perfect plan.” He gave her an admiring glance as she helped Justin bundle up his wife for the trip.
“Please,” Mellette said, “I can walk down the stairs.”
“And I can carry you down just as easily,” Justin said.
“I want you to come along, as well,” Alain said to Maggie. “I don’t anticipate anything happening, but I want you to keep watch on her blood pressure while I drive.”
“I can do that.”
“It’s going to be that proverbial bumpy ride.”
Maybe it was, but Maggie was glad with everything inside her that Alain was there taking charge. No matter what the article said, she trusted him.
Maggie stared up into the sky as the helicopter lifted off, carrying Justin and Mellette. She’d already called her parents, who would be at the other end when it landed. And she’d called her sisters, as well as Pierre Chaisson, Mellette’s brother-in-law from her first marriage, who would watch Leonie when everybody else was at the hospital. “You never think in terms of a pregnancy having difficulties when the mother is in such good shape. I mean, prenatal problems are for other people.”
“They’re for everybody, Maggie. Sometimes they can be predicted, sometimes they can’t, sorry to say. I mean, Mellette doesn’t seem to carry any of the risk factors, but you see the results on someone who’s perfectly fine. It’s frustrating for everybody.”
“But Mellette’s going to be okay, isn’t she?”
“Once they get her blood pressure stabilized she’ll be much better. The thing is, she’s really going to have to be careful now, because she’s not far enough along to deliver. But we have our ways of taking care of these problems, lots of new drugs and techniques, and odds are your sister is going to do just fine and deliver a healthy baby at the end of her pregnancy.”
“Wish you could make guarantees,” Maggie said on a sigh, as Alain slipped an arm around her shoulder. “Or promises.”
“Wish I could, too. But the one thing I can guarantee is that you did a good job, catching it quickly and responding the way you needed to. A lot of women think all that pregnancy puffiness is just part of the course. Mellette got lucky.”
