Fertile Ground (42 page)

“They know it’s someone having twins! They know the babies are due soon, that you’re her doctor. It was on the radio news about an hour ago, a special report. Didn’t you hear it?” he demanded angrily, as if Lisa were responsible for this, too.

“No. No, I didn’t.” Damn Jean Elliott for releasing the information. Or had the Wrights done it? “Naomi says the media will be camped out at the hospitals, waiting for anyone having twins to check in. They have scouts, you know. And they know who you are. Dr. Brockman. They’ll be watching for you, and when they see you, they’ll know.”

“Baruch, I don’t give a damn about the media or the Wrights. Neither should Naomi. My first concern is your wife and your babies. You have to convince her to go to the hospital.”

“I agree with you! But she says she wants a home delivery.”

“Absolutely not. I won’t do it. What if she needs a cesarean? You know that’s a possibility. What if there are complications?” She heard a moan in the background.

“I have to go to her,” Baruch said.

“Is she doing her breathing exercises?”

“She was trying, but she’s too agitated, because of the news report.”

“Make her do the breathing,” Lisa said firmly. “Do it with her. And get her to the hospital. That’s your job, do you understand me?”

“She won’t go!” He sounded frantic.

“Put her on the phone. Right now!” She paced across the dining room while she waited.

“You don’t understand. Dr. Brockman,” Naomi cried when she got on the line a minute later. “The media—”

“Listen to me, Naomi. I’m not about to jeopardize your health or the health of your babies. Baruch is going to take you to the hospital right now. I’ll meet you there.”

“I can’t. Dr. Brockman! The Wrights will be there, I know it! Other people have home deliveries. Why can’t

I?”

“Because twins are a high risk. You know that.” She softened her voice. “Naomi, you’ve tried for all these years to have a baby. Are you willing to risk the life of one or both of your babies because you’re a coward?”

“No, of course not. I’d die before I let that happen,” Naomi whispered fiercely.

Give me children—otherwise I am dead. That was what Rachel had told Jacob, Lisa remembered. Was that what Naomi had told Baruch?

Traffic was heavier on her way back, or maybe it just seemed so because Lisa was rushing. She was changing lanes more often than she liked to, driving faster than she normally did, praying that a cop wouldn’t stop her. At the downtown freeway maze she hesitated-the Santa Monica or the Hollywood?—and by the time she decided to take the Hollywood, it was too late, and she was westbound on the Santa Monica.

She’d already alerted Cedars. She hoped no one from the hospital staff had called the media, but she couldn’t worry about that now. She phoned the Hoffmans and was relieved when no one answered. That meant Naomi hadn’t changed her mind.

A few minutes later she passed Vermont, then Western. She found it hard not to think about Grace, about what she’d said. There were questions she still wanted to ask her. She switched the radio on and turned the volume up high to drown out her thoughts and push them into a recess of her mind where she could examine them later, after the Hoffman babies were born.

She phoned the hospital and learned that Naomi had been admitted and taken to one of the third-floor labor rooms. Lisa waited while a nurse checked on Naomi’s status.

“Her water broke. Dr. Brockman,” the nurse reported a few minutes later. “She’s five centimeters and completely effaced. She wants to know when you’ll be here.”

If there were media lurking in the hospital corridors, Lisa didn’t see them. She took the elevator to the third floor and stopped at the nurses’ station for an update on Naomi’s condition. She was relieved to hear that an ultrasound had shown that both babies were still head down.

Baruch was sitting on a chair at his wife’s bedside. He sprang up when Lisa entered and hurried over to her. She avoided looking at him directly, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“The contractions are three minutes apart,” he said in a low, tired voice. His face glistened. “They’re really bad, Dr. Brockman, but she doesn’t want an epidural. Can’t you help her?” He ran a hand across his mouth, wiping away the sweat.

“It shouldn’t be much longer, Baruch.” She went over to Naomi’s bed, took her hand, and smiled warmly at her. “How are you doing? Ready to have some babies?”

“I’m so glad you’re here!” Naomi exclaimed softly, squeezing Lisa’s hand. She looked pale and exhausted, and the skin beneath her eyes had a bluish cast. She attempted a smile. A second later she placed her hands on her abdomen and started breathing in short, staccato bursts, exhaling on every fifth breath.

“You’re doing fine.” Lisa checked her watch and scanned the printout from the fetal monitor. The babies’ heartbeats were steady.

Naomi’s face had reddened and was pinched in concentration; she was only exhaling now in rapid pants. When the contraction was over, she moaned and leaned back against her pillows. “That was a hard one,” she whispered.

“Almost ninety seconds. Looks like you’re in transition.” Lisa smiled encouragingly and moistened Naomi’s lips with a wet washcloth, then walked over to the cabinet against the wall, took a pair of latex gloves, and slipped them on. “I want to examine you during your next

con traction, Naomi. Okay?” Prom the corner of her eye she could see that Baruch had turned away.

“How am I doing?” Naomi asked anxiously a few moments later.

“Great.” Lisa peeled off the gloves and tossed them in a waste basket. “You’re at ten centimeters, and the baby’s head is crowning. We’re going to move you into a delivery room.” Ordinarily, patients stayed in the labor delivery suite, but with twins there was always the possibility of complications, especially with the second birth. A nurse had attached an IV to Naomi’s hand for the same reason.

“Now?” Baruch looked stunned.

“Now.” Lisa smiled again and paged the nurses’ station.

She had always loved the drama of birth, the finely choreographed movements in the delivery room. This time was no different. Surrounded by two nurses, the anesthesiologist, a pediatrics resident, and Baruch, she felt a heady excitement as she coached Naomi, telling her when to bear down, when to stop; she’d forgotten all about Grace and Chelsea and murder and custody.

She eased the baby’s head out and suctioned mucous from its nose and mouth. Pushing down gently, she cleared the anterior shoulder; she pulled gently and eased out the posterior shoulder.

The baby slipped out.

“It’s a boy!” Baruch cried.

“Is he all right?” Naomi whispered, craning her neck to see. “He’s perfect.” Lisa smiled broadly. She clamped the cord and cut it, then placed the baby on his mother’s abdomen.

She would have left him there longer, but she had to deliver Baby B. She did the one-minute APGAR, observing the newborn’s heart rate, respiratory effort, reflex irritability, color, and muscle tone. Then she signaled to one of the nurses, who took the newborn and placed him

in a wanner, where she dried him and wrapped him in a blanket.

Lisa checked Baby B’s fetal monitor—the heartbeat was steady at 145. Good variability. No decelerations. She did an ultrasound and a manual exam to make sure the head was still in the vertex position. Then she carefully broke the amniotic sac. The baby’s head settled into the birth canal.

Five pushes later, the head was out, and Lisa repeated the dance of birth.

A girl.

Baruch was weeping and thanking God and saying “It’s a miracle, isn’t it?” and “I love you” and “You’re so beautiful” to Naomi. Her dark brown hair was matted;

her face was gleaming with sweat. She was crying and smiling and shaking involuntarily from the aftermath of labor.

Lisa placed another blanket on top of Naomi to warm her, then checked the babies. She did the one-minute AP GAR on the newborn Hoffman girl and a second, five minute APGAR on her brother.

“Do you want to breast-feed your babies?” one of the nurses asked Naomi. “They’re both so beautiful. I think they both look just like you, Mrs. Hoffman.”

Turning quickly. Lisa cast an anxious look at Naomi, but the new mother was in her own world, oblivious to worry. So was Baruch. She spoke with the pediatrician, did the five-minute APGAR on the Hoffman girl, then discarded her cap and gown. She checked the babies again, marveling at their perfection, overwhelmed with sudden, stinging sadness as she wondered how long Naomi would be able to hold on to this fragile happiness.

She was about to open the delivery room doors when Baruch called her name. She tensed instantly but pulled her lips into a smile before she faced him.

“My parents and Naomi’s parents may be waiting right outside,” he said in a low, anxious voice. “They don’t know that Naomi may have received donor eggs.”

What else didn’t they know? “I won’t say anything,” Lisa assured him. Turning quickly before he could read

from her face the turmoil she was feeling, she pushed open the doors and stepped into the hall.

She searched to her left, then to her right. No grandparents in sight. She sighed, enormously relieved, because she wasn’t a very good actress, and was heading down the hall toward the waiting area when she was accosted by a barrage of popping flashlights.

“Dr. Brockman! Can you tell us … ?”

The male reporter who had been at the clinic on that first terrible day was here now, accompanied by the ponytailed minicam operator.

“Are these Chelsea Wright’s babies?”

“Is it true Chelsea’s parents will get custody of one of the babies?”

Gina Franco was here, too. She smiled at Lisa, almost apologetically. Lisa ignored her and the rest of the reporters and, turning around, walked quickly to the doctors’ lounge.

She didn’t realize how exhausted she was until she was in the delicious privacy of her apartment, lying in her tub. The tension, and with it all her energy, had started seeping out of her as soon as she sank into the steaming water. She felt listless, weighted down with the heaviness of her bones; she wanted to stay here forever, in the womb like comfort of the silky, rose-scented waters that glided over her.

She didn’t want to think about anything. Not Matthew. Not Sam or Norman or Nestle. Not even the Hoffman babies, though she was thrilled and relieved that they were fine. With her eyes shut, she took long, deep, evenly-spaced breaths and tried to focus on the soothing sounds of the Beethoven sonata tinkling from her radio, but her mind betrayed her, and she was back in the small dining room in Mary Rick’s house, heard again the nurse’s abject cries.

‘ 7 couldn’t bear to see the look on Dr. Gordon’s face when he found out I let him down! “Dr. Cantrell was stupid for blackmailing someone who killed two people.”

“She told me she wasn’t eighteen when she donated the eggs last July!”

The ringing of the front doorbell jarred her. She considered ignoring it, then wondered if it was Barone. Maybe he had more information about Ted or Nestle. But if it was Barone, should she repeat what Grace had told her? Should she tell him she suspected that Chelsea had confronted Baruch Hoffman about the eggs she’d donated, the eggs Naomi had received? What if she was wrong?

What if she was right?

The bell rang again. With an effort, she pushed herself up, away from the clinging embrace of the water, and stepped out of the tub. Grabbing the white terry-cloth robe from the hook on the bathroom door, she called, “I’ll be right there!” and hurried to the front door.

It was Sam. She stared at him through the privacy window.

“Can I come in?”

“Of course. Sorry.” She unlocked the door and opened it, her face still flushed from the heat of the bath.

“The way you’ve been acting lately, I wasn’t sure I’d be welcome.” He stepped inside and shut the door, then walked ahead of her into the living room and sat down on the sofa. “I’ve been calling you all day, leaving messages. You weren’t at Elana’s, so I figured I’d take a chance and see if you were here.”

“I’ve been out since the morning, Sam. I just came home a while ago.”

Sam nodded. “Some day, huh? First Ted is found dead—maybe a suicide, maybe killed. Then Norman’s arrested for murder.” He shook his head in disbelief, then glanced at her. “I guess you won’t be sleeping at the Presslers’ tonight, or over Shabbos, now that the police have Norman in custody.”

Sam sounded on edge, angry. “I guess,” she said, sitting at the other end of the sofa. The Presslers were sure to invite him for both Sabbath meals. She wasn’t looking forward to facing him; still, she was afraid of being in her apartment alone. Norman was in jail. Nestle wasn’t.

And she still didn’t know which person at the clinic was the obstetrician’s accomplice. Ted, who was now dead? Or someone else … “I have to tell you, I’m blown away about Norman,” Sam said. “I called you as soon as I heard, here and at the Presslers. Where were you?”

Not a casual question, she decided. More of a challenge. “Barone called me to the station in the morning-Norman wanted to talk to me.” She saw Sam’s brows rise in surprise. Quickly, she summarized her bizarre visit with the lab technician. “I’m not sure he killed anyone, Sam. He’s lost in his own world.”

“What does Barone think?”

“He says the investigation is focusing on Norman, but I don’t know what he really believes.” She was more certain than ever that there were two killers with separate motives: the person who had murdered Chelsea (Lisa refused to name him, even in her thoughts), and panicked the other person, either Nestle or his accomplice, who had then killed Matthew, and probably Ted. And had tried to kill her.

“Barone doesn’t confide in you? I thought you were buddies.”

She looked at Sam, uncertain what to make of his tone. She decided to ignore it.

“So what did you do the rest of the day?” he asked.

“Naomi Hoffman went into labor. I delivered the babies at Cedars a little over an hour ago—a boy and a girl. Both healthy.” Lisa couldn’t help smiling.

“That’s great.” Sam smiled, too, then frowned. “What about Chelsea Wright’s parents? Do they know the babies were born?”