Choices (47 page)

“Okay, okay so I was more than a little cocky.
I was on the third shift at Collier County Hospital that night when a young couple came into the hospital. God, they were so young, so young. She was a beautiful girl, Jenny I think her name was, really beautiful that I remember, even at the end of second stage labor when things were starting to get hard. I quickly glanced at her chart again that the intake nurse filled out. I was positive I was completely thorough and asked about her records from her ob/gyn. She said she didn’t have one and I remember asking her if she had any prenatal care at all during her pregnancy and she said no. Well, that was unfortunate I told her, but I also told her I would take good care of her and everything would be fine, and I meant it. I examined her, took her vitals and everything was progressing beautifully. She was really close and I figured I had about an hour. I decided to get some rest. It was just a matter of time. God, I was so tired. Bonnie was having a hard time coping with the long hours, I wasn’t around and I was distracted because of it, thinking how I could make things right by her. I told Jenny she was past the point of pain medication and was she prepared to go natural. She paled of course but gritted her teeth through another contraction and shrugged her shoulders, ‘like I have a choice now at this point’ she said.” He was pacing again, muttering to himself, ‘I did everything I could, everything, it wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my fault.”

“What wasn’t your fault George, tell me.” I stayed rooted to my spot as if glued to the floor. I was taking the chance of startling him and he was talking freely now, I didn’t want to stop the flow.

“About an hour later, the baby was going into distress. Jenny was being to suffer. Her heart was failing and I had to make a quick decision. I had to perform an emergency C-section but I had waited too long. The baby was already in the birth canal. If I knew what I should have known, I would have performed the C-section right away. Her heart failed, for someone so young, her heart failed. I tried everything I could within my power and knowledge to save her but I couldn’t. I waited too long. If I had known about the cardiomyopathy…if I had caught what the intake nurse wrote in her chart I wouldn’t have waited so long. Everything seemed so normal but waiting was too much stress on her heart and she died right after the baby was born.  Her husband was so distraught he didn’t even look at the baby. He took off running down the hall and I never heard or saw him since. The baby was placed in the nursery and I went on about my evening’s business. There was no other family to inform, I had absolutely no records or information to follow up on and we decided to wait to see if her husband would return.” He took a deep breath, got up off the floor and paced around the room again. I was riveted to my spot, not taking my eyes off him. I wanted to be prepared in case he attacked or I gained an upper hand and was somehow able to escape. The sweat from my riotous curls was snaking its way down my face and darkening my scrubs. I was beginning to feel a little woozy again but I refocused my concentration on George once I noticed he was talking again.

“Sharon
, who was the intake nurse and the L&D nurse on duty confronted me in the doctor’s lounge about an hour later. This was new territory for me. I hadn’t lost a patient before. She was,” he gulped audibly; “she was my first one and so young, so very young.” He had a glazed look in his eye, remembering, transporting himself back to Collier County Hospital.

“I know where you fucked up, George. I know what you did wrong.
She threw the girl’s chart in my face and highlighted the preexisting condition of dilated cardiomyopathy. I remember feeling numb, shaking my head no, no, that can’t be. It wasn’t there before. It wasn’t there. I wouldn’t have missed something like that. I was angry and afraid….that’s what she said, what you did wrong. The only person I ever told was Bonnie but I told Bonnie that the young couple’s baby died, just to throw her off, so she wouldn’t suspect anything and figured the sad situation was over, but I told her to not mention it to anyone. Then I told her a few weeks later that I wanted a change and maybe we should move up North. She told me about her accident at the cooking school and we both figured it was a good idea to move up North.” He was mumbling now, almost inaudibly and looking down at his shoes. I sat there listening, knowing what was going to come next. “I never did anything wrong, especially when it came to medicine. I was tired, Bonnie and I just got engaged. She was giving me a lot of grief about the long hours. She wasn’t coping well. I told her she just had to get used to it, take more cooking classes, find more hobbies. We were moving to a larger house. I told her to decorate the house, anything to fill up the time and the loneliness. I got it. I understood but I couldn’t do it for her. She had to figure it out. I was on for sixteen hours straight. The attending physician was called away for another emergency. I did everything, I…” He rushed toward me and grasped me by my arms and lifted me off the floor and shook me hard for emphasis with each word that exited his mouth.

“Laurel, you have to understand! I did everything I could. Once I realized what I had done, I tried…” George swallowed, “I tried to save her. I did everything I could. Everything. I called the time of death and walked out into the doctor’s lounge and threw up in the bathroom.
I was freaking out, trying to get control of myself. I had witnesses, Jesus Christ, witnesses! People who could divulge information to the board and put an end to my career before it even got started. I just laid on the floor of the men’s room in the lounge for about an hour when I heard the door open and someone come in. It was Sharon.

“George, listen to me. I know where you fucked up but, listen to me I won’t dime
you out if you help me. She looked at me tentatively with big questioning eyes and I shook my head for her to go on.” George dropped my arms now and was smoothing my hair back and rubbing my arms. “I’m so sorry, Laurel, really I am, and I’m not an evil person. You must think I’m the devil incarnate.” I raised my eyebrows questioningly and lifted a shoulder. “Yeah, I know you do but you would do the same thing, if you’re career and freedom was at stake.” I thought about responding even opened my mouth to do so and for once I listened to the inner voice inside my head that said
don’t do it, just shut up for once and don’t speak.

“So I let her continue,” George said as he
looked pleadingly in my eyes, begging for understanding.

“
My neighbor is in the hospital and she’s just lost her baby and she overheard us arguing in the hallway and she’s going to tell the authorities and call our supervisors if we don’t help her. So here’s what we’re  going to do; since you just killed that young mother and the father split and the baby boy lays parentless in the nursery…she looked at me and raised her eyebrow. I was so confused. I didn’t understand what she was saying at first. She raised her hand and shook my shoulder. I can still hear her voice, ‘C’mon George, you idiot do I really have to spell it out for you?’ She hissed at me when I nodded my head yes. I remember her rolling her eyes and muttering under her breathe, ‘men’, and shook her head. ‘Listen to me very carefully’, she continued speaking to me like I was a child, very slowly, spelling it all out.”

“So you switched the babies” I interjected. He looked startled at me as if he was surprised I knew what happened.

“How did you know?”

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out! Sharon blackmailed you into switching the babies, falsifying birth and death certificates, saying that Jenny and Todd’s baby was really Joanna Phillips’s baby.”

“How did you know Joanna’s…” His voice trailed off and backed away from me and reached into his pocket. “Of course you would! You were being a whore with her son and cheating on Paul.” Oh, it took everything I had to keep calm and stay focused and in control of myself. I learned that being feisty was just going to set him off and I didn’t know what was in his pocket that he was reaching for.

“Those who haven’t sinned should cast the first stone, huh, George? Whaddya think about that? I’d be careful if I were you!”
He nodded. “I struggled at first. I couldn’t concentrate but Sharon coached me through everything. I filled out the paperwork and let Sharon do the rest.”

“Except you weren’t careful.”

“No, you see, Laurel, that’s where you’re wrong, sweetheart. I am careful, very careful, in fact, so careful that no one even noticed or suspected that I was involved in Emily’s abduction too.” He smirked as if this latest development was enjoyable for him. It sent icy fingertips down my spine and the last of what little air was left was sucked completely out of the room. My knees buckled and he watched as I slumped to the floor again.

“Jesus Christ, George, Emily? Why?” He waited a few minutes for me to put two and two together before he spoke. All sorts of things were swirling through my head, but mainly all I could think of was Kristy’s pain, which weighed on my chest with a crushing force.

“You helped Jo again, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” he sighed heavily and looked up at the fluorescent lights. “Yes, I helped her again.
This time it was easy.”

“Easy?” I tried to stand up but thought better of it and took a deep breathe to steady myself and sat back down.

“Yeah,” He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders and gave me a nonchalant glance. “Yeah, it was easy. I am a doctor after all. I just had to walk into the nursery with my official doctor’s coat, grease a few palms, which is easy to do now too and scoop up the baby and walk out. Done. Scary, really when you think about it.” He scrubbed his scruffy jaw and shrugged his shoulders again.

“Why?” I was
rubbing my chest, trying to alleviate the crushing pain of sorrow and disbelief. Then it clicked.

“You had to help her!
” He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.

“What could I do? She was blackmailing me too
, threatening to expose me. She wanted to get back at you so desperately. Jo wanted you to hurt as badly as she did and she needed insurance that you weren’t going to tell Brandon anything.”

“Insurance?
I let Brandon go, dammit! She made me feel so guilty and ashamed of my relationship with Brandon that I let him go, which was exactly what she wanted! What more did she want?” My memories that haunted my dreams as intangible formless beings coalesced into living and breathing humans in my frontal lobe, dragging me back to that horrible and miraculously beautiful night on the floor in front of the fireplace at the farmhouse.

“Her insurance would be that you would be so preoccupied with the loss of Kristy’s baby that you would have no interest in her or Brandon anymore, focusing all your attention on Kristy and her family.
Really the plain and simple truth is that you stole her Brandon. She couldn’t live with the fact that he grew up and wanted his own life.” He cocked an eyebrow and stood in front of me again then squatted down to look me in the eye.

“You see, Laurel, I had to do it and you would have to
o.” I shook my head no.

“No, George, no, I’m not a monster.”

“Yeah, easier said than done, honey, easier said. Yes, Laurel, you would have done it too.” He looked at me earnestly. I was still shaking my head no. He placed his hands against my weary head and stopped me from shaking.

“Yes, Laurel, you would have and you know why?” I shook my head no again.

“You know why honey, because if your career and everything you spent your entire life to build, your family, your friends, your home, your marriage, if all that was threatened to be taken away from you, you would have fought tooth and nail to stop it.” I laid my hands against his hands which were still placed on either side of my face and looked him deep in the eye.

“My life was taken from me, George, but I had faith that I would get it back, that I would rebuild. I made the right choices and protected my family without hurting anyone in the process
. I would not have done what you did, ever.” My voice was a harsh whisper and I infuriated him now. He knitted his eyebrows together and placed one hand in his pocket and kept the other tightly on my shoulder, holding me down, holding me in place.

“You think you’re better than me, you bitch!” He quickly pulled his hand out of his pocket and jammed the hyp
odermic into my arm and everything went black.

So back in the hospital I found myself. Jesus, I hope this wasn’t going to be habitual. I was getting pretty damn tired of waking up in strange surroundings. The only good thing was this time I awoke to a mop of wavy, bronze colored hair laying atop my bed with a large, very heavy, warm h
and laying gently over my womb.

“Hi.” I managed to croak out.

“Laurel! Oh, thank God, you’re awake! Are you okay? Are you in any pain? You took a nasty hit to the head it looks like and you were unconscious when that maintenance man found you, not to mention tied up. Jesus, Laurel, what the hell happened? My God, I was so scared. No one knew where you were or what happened and Ebony was so upset. She said she should have never let you go down to the basement. She knew how scared you were and…” I held up my hand to stop him and gave him a quick kiss to slow his roll. He was going to need his strength once I shared my knowledge of his parentage.

“Jerome.”

“Huh? Who’s Jerome?”

“Jerome is the name of the maintenance man who found me. Where are the kids?” I shot up like a bullet out of a gun when I realized that the kids weren’t there and it had been about two days since I’ve seen them.