Джеймс Паттерсон - The Midwife Murders

I have a strong opinion, and I don’t mind sharing it. “No. I’d rather try to get the baby out right now. How do you feel about a clavicular fracture?”

“I’ll do whatever you want. There are pluses and minuses for each approach.”

“Fracture, then,” I say.

In spite of the trainee’s intense pushing, the bleeding has not stopped much. Troy removes saturated gauze and replaces it with new gauze.

Sarkar scrubs and puts on gloves. Then he turns to Marco, Bella’s husband, and says, “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. Since your baby’s shoulders are not coming out, and we cannot open your wife any farther, what we’re going to do is this: I will go in and gently break the baby’s collarbone.”

Sarkar correctly anticipates Marco’s shock at this information.

“Gently break the shoulder?” Marco says.

Sarkar responds calmly. “It sounds far worse than it actually is. I’ve done it before. The infant’s bones are very, very flexible. They’re not rigid and brittle like our bones. They’re rubbery. The collarbone may not even break. It may actually just bend.”

Now it’s my turn to act. I have three pages of consent forms that Marco must sign. The very fact that I have them and that they must be signed seems to contradict Sarkar’s reassurances. Marco signs them. As soon as Marco dots the i in Morabito, Sarkar turns and leans into Bella.

He places his hands just below the baby’s chin and then inserts his thumbs inside Bella. Sarkar pushes for a few seconds. Then he yells, “Push hard, madam. Big push. Big push.” Then he yells, “Done!”

The baby, a wrinkled, screaming boy with a full head of black hair, is delivered. Immediately Sarkar begins suturing Bella, who is crying and laughing and asking that the music be turned back on.

Sarkar looks at me and says, “Lucy, you’ll please finish the stitching.”

“Doctor, you know that a midwife isn’t allowed to sew. It’s against the rules.”

“You made the cut, which is not against the rules. You can sew the cut, which is not against my rules.”

I take over. I’ve actually done it before—whatever the rules. Sarkar removes his gloves. Troy tends to the newborn, cutting the cord, binding the cord, wiping away meconium from the baby’s eyes, nose, and mouth.

“I’ve got to say it, Doctor—” I begin.

But Sarkar interrupts and says, “Rudi, please, Lucy. You must call me Rudi.”

“Okay,” I say. “I’ve got to say it, Rudi. It was a complete joy having you here.”

He smiles and takes the swaddled baby from Troy. He hands the boy to Marco, who places him on Bella’s chest.

I say, “I’m thinking Bella may just have given birth to the first Rudra Morabito in history.”

I also cannot help but think what I always think: It’s the only miracle that God lets us in on.

Sarkar seems as happy as the parents. He reaches in and takes the baby. “I’ll take him over to Pediatrics. Neonatal ICU is the best place for me to tape those giant shoulders. Come down and see him whenever you feel strong enough. Tomorrow he’ll be staying in this room with you.”

A big beautiful chorus of grazie s fills the room.

CHAPTER 67

“ONLY ONCE BEFORE IN my lifetime have I seen somebody use that clavicle-cracking method,” Troy says.

“I’ve actually never seen it,” I say. “But like Dr. Sarkar said, sometimes they don’t even have to break it. That’s how elastic a baby’s bones can be.”

Troy and I are standing outside the birthing room. It’s only been about forty-five minutes since the delivery. We sip some pretty awful coffee from the electric coffee pot at the nurses’ station.

“This stuff tastes like piss,” says Troy.

“I can’t agree or disagree,” I say. “I don’t have the faintest idea of what piss tastes like. But I assume this coffee is lousy enough to beat piss at its own game.”

“No word from Tracy Anne?” Troy asks.

“Nothing yet,” I say. “Let’s head down to the nursery.”

“Yeah, good idea,” Troy says.

Then I say, “And by the way, don’t think for a minute we’re not going to have a real long conversation about you and Tracy Anne and why you kept that information from me. I may not have looked angry, but—”

“Yes, ma’am,” Troy says. Then he takes both our cups of coffee and pours the contents of them into a huge potted plant in the corridor.

“What the hell are you feeding that plant?”

“Don’t worry, Lucy. These plants are designed to withstand everything—arsenic, motor oil, rat poison—”

“Yeah, but you just gave it something more lethal than any of those. You just fed it some GUH coffee.”

We arrive at the nursery, and I am really pleased to see that three NYPD officers have been posted outside the nursery near the viewing window.

“See that woman over there, the one in the burgundy pantsuit?” Troy asks.

“I can’t miss her,” I say.

“I know her. She’s a plainclothes cop. Her brother Peter is a good friend of mine.”

“That is music to my ears. An undercover cop in the nursery itself.”

I say hello to the nurses at the desk outside the nursery.

“Has the Morabito baby been put into his brace yet?” I ask one of them, a very sharp nurse by the name of Keesha.

“Yes, ma’am. Dr. Sarkar brought the baby down here just a little while ago. He had some other doctor with him. That woman just snapped the brace on the baby in two seconds. Baby Morabito is sleeping happily.”

“We’re going to go take a look at him,” I say.

“Go right ahead. He’s in crib number four, second row on the aisle,” says Keesha.

I’m frightened—for a second or two—that we’re about to find an empty crib.

“I know what you’re thinking,” says Troy.

“Yeah, well, then you’re thinking the same thing as me,” I say.

We follow the aisle to crib number four. It’s clearly marked BABY MORABITO. I bend over the sleeping baby, adorable, pudgy, serene, everything you want your baby to be. I reach in and lift his tiny arm and read his tiny wristband: MORABITO, 5 LBS, 4 OZ.

“I’ve never even seen one of those braces that they got on him,” says Troy.

“Me neither,” I say. “But it can’t hurt very much. He’s sleeping soundly.”

“Do you think they gave him like a teeny-tiny drop of Xanax or something?” Troy asks.

“Are you crazy?”

“I was only joshing with you, Lucy,” Troy says as he laughs.

“One never knows with …” Then I pause. I dip into the crib once more and read the wristband. Yes, it does say MORABITO, 5 LBS, 4 OZ.

Then I yell. “Jesus Christ, Troy. This is not the same baby we delivered.”

“Are you joking, too, Lucy?”

I walk a few feet to the emergency buzzer and press it fiercely, over and over and over. The NYPD officers enter. The nurse at the far end of the nursery, who’s been bottle feeding one of the newborns, rushes toward us. Keesha enters.

“What’s going on?” Keesha says.

“This is not the Morabito baby,” I shout at Keesha.

“Of course it is,” she says, almost more amused than angry at the accusation. “Just read the electronic wristband.”

“It may be electronic. And it may say ‘Morabito.’ But somebody’s fucked with it. The alarm didn’t go off. And this sure as hell isn’t the Morabito baby.”

“No, she’s right,” says Troy. He realizes the hideous deception. “Our baby had lots of black hair. This here baby has lots of hair, but not nearly as much as our baby. And this baby’s hair is definitely brown, dark brown, but brown isn’t black.”

Alarms sound throughout the floor, throughout the hospital.