Janice Macdonald - The Doctor Delivers

(1) Your ex called to remind you he needs a decision pronto. He said you’d know what he meant. (2) Your daughter wants to remind you that you’re supposed to go shopping for her ballet-recital dress tonight. DON’T BE LATE!!!

IN THE CORRIDOR outside the NICU, Martin pushed some coins into the vending machine. Two Snickers bars, a package of cheese and crackers and an orange. Lunch and dinner. The day before, one of the dietitians had caught him having a similar meal and hinted that a more balanced diet might improve his disposition.

Doubtful. Although he’d made it in to see Van Dolan, he could have saved himself the trouble. Essentially, he’d been told the chances of WISH funding were slim to nonexistent, which pretty much resolved the Ethiopia question. Tomorrow he would tell the group to count him in. Why stick around?

He watched a young couple walk hand in hand past the nursery windows, the girl in a cotton hospital gown stretched tight over her extended belly. As though it were yesterday, he saw his wife’s heavy, late-pregnancy walk, the baggy blue cardigan of his that she’d worn because he’d still been in medical school and they couldn’t scrape up the cash for maternity clothes, the way she’d smiled when…a thought flashed into his consciousness.

Catherine Prentice reminded him of Sharon.

STRUCK BY the realization, Martin leaned back against the wall, playing images of his wife’s face against those of Catherine’s. It explained why he’d reacted to her as he had. As Catherine had stood in his office smiling at him, the resemblance was strong enough that he’d been angry with her for not being Sharon. Which, he thought as he finished the orange, was as good a reason as any to leave Western.

The loud ping of the elevator interrupted his thoughts. Martin watched as the doors opened and a stocky man with closely cropped hair emerged, pushing a woman in a wheelchair.

“Dr. C.” The woman waved to him. “Just the person we were looking for.”

Martin stared blankly at the woman before he recognized Rita Hodges. With her hair brushed and caught up in a pink ribbon and her mouth outlined in matching color, she bore little resemblance to the bedraggled woman he’d assisted earlier in the day. The man with her grinned widely, revealing a mouthful of even white teeth.

“Eddie Hodges, Rita’s husband.” He pumped Martin’s hand. “The triplets’ dad. Nice to meet you, Dr. Connor.”

“Connaughton.” Martin felt his hand caught in the man’s vigorous grip. Short, but powerfully built, Eddie Hodges had blue eyes, so pale they seemed almost opaque. His tight black jeans were topped by an equally formfitting red polo shirt. The cream-color cowboy boots added a good two inches to the man’s height. Martin imagined Eddie Hodges selling time shares of dubious market value.

“Just took Rita here to see our girls,” Eddie said. “Now we’re going back to the room to catch the whole thing on the tube.”

“How come you weren’t on TV tonight, Dr. C.?” Rita asked. “You did all the work.”

“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.”