Джеймс Паттерсон - The Midwife Murders

“How long has this been going on?” I ask.

“About three years,” he says.

Then Bobby jumps in: “But the investigation from the AG’s office has only been going for ten months. Even so, the evidence is there.”

“And how long have you personally, privately, secretly known about this?” I ask Blumenthal.

“Exactly four days,” he says. Anticipating my anger, he adds, “And that’s the absolute truth. This Katz guy is best buds with half the big shots in New York, and those big shots include the mayor and the commissioner, plus some of Gramatan’s biggest and most important donors.”

“I believe you,” I say. I do believe Blumenthal, but what pisses me off is that Sarkar never mentioned any of this to me, not even when I saw Katz leave the hospital with what I now realize was a police escort. I should have insisted that Sarkar tell me what was happening. But—a big but —he should have offered up the info without my asking.

I nod my head slowly, and with an appropriately small smile, I say to Blumenthal, “Maybe NYPD should have set up a whole special unit just to deal with crime at Gramatan University Hospital.”

“Could be a job in it for you,” Blumenthal says with an equally small smile.

Before I can invent a wiseass response, my cell phone begins ringing. It’s Troy.

“What’s up?”

“I’m back at the hospital,” he says. “I thought you’d want to know.”

“I told you to go home and rest,” I say.

“I was going to, and I was just about to leave from here, to go home, but then that Bella Morabito woman showed up. She’s in labor, and the other backup midwife hasn’t shown up yet. The Witten woman showed up, but she’s up to her neck in mothers-to-be.”

Shit. Bella Morabito is a forty-three-year-old immigrant from Sicily. She has a fifteen-year-old daughter and a history of three miscarriages. She is also just about the nicest woman on earth—warm, funny, friendly. But I’m not looking forward to this delivery. This one could turn out to be very difficult. Like some of Bella’s previous birthing experiences, it may not turn out at all.

“Stay with Bella, Troy. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

CHAPTER 65

I WALK INTO BELLA’S birthing room and see so many people that it actually takes me a moment to find Bella on her bed. Her teenage daughter, her husband, her mother, Troy, two trainees in the midwife program, plus three other women, who are presumably Bella’s friends or more relatives.

Bella is groaning significantly, but I recognize it as the healthy groaning of a healthy woman in healthy labor. A small speaker sits on the side table next to a laptop. From the speaker comes a song accompanied only by a guitar. The tune is easily recognizable. The Beatles. “Let It Be,” sung in Italian.

Quando mi trovo in momenti difficili

Madre Maria viene da me

“How are we doing here?” I ask.

Bella grabs both my hands and says, “Signora Lucy, please make it all good.”

“We’ll do our best,” I say.

“No,” she says. “You must do better than that. You must make this happen right.”

Troy gives me an update: all is well, blood pressure normal, temperature normal, baby in good position, fetal monitor is happy-happy, dilation has grown to nine centimeters.

“I think we’re ready,” I say.

“I think we’re very ready,” says Troy.

Then I say, “I didn’t notice, Troy, are there guards and officers on the floor?”

“You sure didn’t notice,” says Troy. “We got one NYPD woman and one rent-a-cop right outside this door.”

Things move quickly, and I advise Bella to steady her breathing. She does. She’s with the plan.

Then I ask that we clear the room of unnecessary personnel. Apparently nobody in the room believes himself or herself to be unnecessary. So nobody leaves. I’m not going to argue. All I can do is tell Bella’s husband, Marco, to move closer to the bed.

Only occasionally does Bella let out an “Ooh” or an “Oof” of pain. It all happens quickly.

“Whoa, mama,” says Troy. “This is happening faster than they do it on TV.”

Troy’s referring to a GUH midwives joke that every birth on the British television show Call the Midwife requires about two minutes of labor before the baby arrives.

Back to work.

Here it comes. The baby’s head crowns, a perfect little yarmulke of jet-black hair. We’re ready to go. Troy gives the “Little breath, little breath, big push” order, and Bella does her best. A pause, and when Troy says so, Bella pushes again. Almost all of the head is out. Good, very good.

Troy asks for “One more big push.” Bella gives it. Then again. Then a pause. Then again. Then a push. Nothing. Bella is crying out now. Then she yells, “Spegni quella maladetta musica!”

“What’s she screaming?” asks Troy.

Bella’s husband translates. “She says ‘Turn off that damn music.’” Marco slaps the laptop closed. The Beatles are gone, but the baby is simply not moving out of Bella.

I put my fingers inside. As I feel around, I realize exactly what’s happening. I tell the assembled that “the baby’s shoulders are just too big for delivery.”

I ask for everyone except the husband and midwife team to leave the room. I urge Bella to extend her legs out from her body, which Marco and Troy help her with. Then we move her onto all fours. But after these less intrusive methods, the baby still won’t budge. I’ve got to perform a “significant” episiotomy. Just like before, nobody moves to leave, but I have more important things to do than police a crowd dispersal.

“Get them out, Troy,” I say. He opens the door. Friends and some family leave. The door closes. An unpleasant nervous silence falls over the room.

After Troy and Marco help Bella onto her back again, I begin cutting, carefully but quickly. Nothing’s moving except the scalpel. The baby’s shoulders are really wide. “Who have you got inside there? A Green Bay Packers linebacker?”

I cut as far as I can sensibly go. There’s some bleeding. I’m not worried, but we can’t cut any more.

“Call obstetrics and pediatrics,” I say, just short of yelling. “We’ve got shoulder dystocia.”

“What is dystocia?” Marco asks.

Troy has an answer for him. “The baby’s shoulders are stuck in your wife’s pelvis.”

Two minutes later Dr. Sarkar appears.

CHAPTER 66

THE FIRST THING SARKAR says to me when he enters the room is this: “You’re in charge. I’m just here to help. That will be our understanding and the manner in which we will proceed.”

Somehow I believe him, I trust him. He is, after all, first and foremost a doctor, a doctor involved in one of doctoring’s most precious events. Of course he’s also a colleague and friend who failed to give me an honest update on Dr. Katz.

“I can’t incise the episiotomy any larger, and it’s bleeding pretty significantly as it is,” I say, as if he couldn’t see this already.

“Let me take a closer look,” he says as he reaches down and pushes his way through the layers of bloody gauze. He turns to one of the midwife trainees and says, “I need a huge amount of pressure right where my hand is.”

He sees the frightened look on the young intern’s face and reacts. “For God’s sake, if you’re too nervous to do what you’re told, you’d better become a ballerina or a waitress.” I have never seen or heard Sarkar so angry or sarcastic before.

I say, “Let me do it.”

Then the intern says, “No, I’ll do it. Really. I can do it.”

“Very good,” says Sarkar. Then he turns to me and says, “What do you think? Should we get her in for a C-section?”