The Doctor Delivers

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.”

She looked surprised. “Why not? They’ve got doctors from three other hospitals, and we need someone to represent Western. All you have to do is answer a few questions, get in a plug for us. You’re going to be really fabulous, I know. The women will love your accent. You might even meet the woman of your dreams.” She smiled as though it were all settled. “Okay, it’s tomorrow morning at ten. I can either drive you down myself or meet you at the studio.”

“No thanks.” Martin rose, walked around the desk to where she stood, signaling—he hoped—that the matter was closed. “I’m really busy and…”

“And?”

“And to be perfectly honest…” he hesitated, then decided to let her have it. Maybe this was one way to get rid of her. “I think this sort of thing…this puffery, is ridiculous. Empty-minded drivel. Rubbish. It has no place in medicine.”

“Other than that, though,” she said with a straight face, “you kind of like it?”

He resisted the urge to soften what he’d said with a joke or a crack; even to his own ears he’d sounded self-righteous. So what? He didn’t care what she thought. He had more important concerns. “I believe I explained. I’m trying to get ready for a presentation. I haven’t time for this.”

“Western is right in the middle of a huge marketing campaign, Dr. Connaughton, and Professional Match has just the demographics we’re trying to reach. It would be a perfect tie-in to have you on the show.” She flashed another bright smile. “And besides, it’s the holiday season. Goodwill to men and all that stuff.”

“Yes, well…look, I’ve already explained my feelings.”

“I know. But I wish you’d reconsider.”

“Sorry.” He looked at her. “And I do have work to do.”

“Hmm.” She frowned and bit her lip. “There’s nothing I can say to change your mind?”

“Nothing.” He leafed through a stack of papers.

“Well, sorry I wasted your time.” Her smile gone now, she turned to leave, then, as though struck by another thought, took a step back into the office. “Since you don’t have a TV, you probably read a lot, huh? Ever read Charles Dickens, Dr. Connaughton?”

“Of course,” Martin looked at her, puzzled. “Why?”

“I was just thinking that there’s a character in A Christmas Carol that you’d probably recognize.” A tight little smile, a flutter of her fingers and she was gone.

Moments later the phone on Martin’s desk rang. A secretary informed him that Edward Jordan, Western’s president and chief executive officer, would like to see him. STAT.

GOD, WHAT WAS WRONG WITH HER? Face burning, Catherine left Connaughton’s office and ducked into the nearest rest room. Scrooge. She’d called him Scrooge. Her hands on the washbasin, she stared at her reflection. You are definitely losing it.

You…oh please. Tell me this is a bad dream. Tell me I didn’t…forget to put makeup on one eye.

Yep. Gary had called that morning just as she was brushing on mascara. By the time she’d finished telling him that it would be a cold day in hell before he got the kids, she’d been so rattled she couldn’t see straight. Grhhhhhhhhhhh. Now her mirrored self stared back at her. One eye wide and perky, the other…not. No wonder Martin Connaughton had given her such a weird look. And now she’d called him Scrooge, which meant that even if he might have been a teeny bit inclined to do the show, which he obviously wasn’t, but if he’d had a last-minute burst of Christmas spirit, well, she’d blown it.

Imagine your job riding on it. She left the rest room and started across the hall to the elevator. Derek couldn’t really mean that. He couldn’t fire her just because some surly, stubborn Scrooge of a doctor didn’t want to be on a stupid TV show. And it was a stupid show. In a weird way she kind of admired Connaughton for turning it down. The other two doctors had practically kissed her they were so happy to be chosen. Not Connaughton.

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.