Fertile Ground (7 page)

Now she didn’t know how she felt.

And she didn’t know where he was.

She had stopped praying a long time ago, but after being dismissed by Edmond, she closed the door to her office and, in the Hebrew that came back haltingly from memory, recited a psalm and asked God to keep Matthew safe.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” Selena said, entering Lisa’s office. “You looked so upset when you came back from seeing Mr. Fisk. I wanted to make sure you’re all right.”

“He said people think Matthew ran away to avoid being arrested for wrongdoings at the clinic.” Her lips trembled. She pressed them tightly together.

“Dr. Gordon? Never!” Selena approached Lisa, who was standing in front of the office window. “You haven’t heard from him?”

She’d tried him at home and in his car again; again there had been no answer. She turned around and shook her head. “Where is he, Selena?” She started crying quietly.

Selena put her arms around Lisa and rubbed her back in slow, small circles. “You’ll see, mi hija,” she whispered. “Everything will be all right. Trust in God.”

Lisa rested against Selena’s pillow chest, which smelled faintly of roses. It was so comforting. For a brief moment she closed her eyes and imagined she was with her mother; reluctantly she drew away. “Do me a favor?” She wiped her eyes. “Phone the highway patrol and find out if Dr. Gordon was involved in an accident. He drives

a black BMW, but I don’t know the license-plate number.”

“Right away.”

“Phone the area hospitals, too. And the police.” Lisa adjusted the clip on her hair. “I must look a mess. How many more patients today?” For the hundredth time she wished Ava were here.

“Six scheduled, five unscheduled. You can do it. And you look fine—just a few mascara streaks.” Selena handed Lisa a tissue from the pocket of her skirt and nodded approvingly as Lisa dabbed at her cheeks and under her eyes. “The Hoffmans are here, by the way. I put them in a room.”

Lisa frowned. “Naomi was here just yesterday. Is she having contractions?” Naomi was almost thirty-six weeks pregnant. It wasn’t unusual for someone carrying twins to go into premature labor, but Lisa wanted to delay delivery until Naomi had finished thirty-seven weeks and the babies’ lungs were well developed.

“She didn’t say she was. Actually, she left yesterday without being examined. I saw her in Reception, and I know she went to one of the examining rooms. But Dr. Cantrell said that when he went in to see her—you were with the detective, remember?—she wasn’t there. He was very annoyed.” Selena was rolling her eyes.

Lisa smiled in sympathy. “I’ll bet he let you know it, huh?”

“He threw Mrs. Hoffman’s file at me and yelled about my wasting his time.” She shrugged to indicate she didn’t care, but her face had reddened.

Lisa pursed her lips. “Do you want me to talk to him?”

“No, thanks. I can handle el doctor Cantrell.” She smiled grimly.

Not everyone could. Lisa had heard stories about the doctor’s tantrums. One of the two operating nurses refused to work with him. His nurse had quit a week ago, without notice, joining a long line of predecessors. Lisa had already seen her replacement in tears; she doubted that the young woman would last the month.

“Do you have any idea why Naomi left, Selena?”

“No. I should have been more on top of things. Sorry.” The color in her cheeks had deepened.

Lisa squeezed Selena’s shoulder. “Don’t be silly You know how emotional pregnant women are. And they do fixate on one doctor.” Especially women who have gone through a great deal to become pregnant. “Maybe she was tired of waiting. What room is she in?”

“Seven.”

That was another thing about Ted, Lisa thought as she walked down the hall to the examining room. He often kept patients waiting. Really, she didn’t know why Matthew tolerated him.

The thought made her stop short. Was that whom Matthew was contemplating firing? Ted Cantrell? Matthew always defended him. “Ted’s a genius at what he does, Lisa,” he’d respond whenever she related Cantrell horror stories. “And you know how high-strung geniuses can be.”

Had Matthew tired of the complaints?

Or had a staff member targeted by Cantrell threatened to sue the clinic for workmen’s compensation? Fisk would be annoyed, to say the least.

But Matthew had told her that if what he suspected were true, the clinic could be destroyed. Workmen’s comp suits were expensive, but they wouldn’t ruin the clinic. Unless there was an epidemic of suits…. But what about the media allegations about embryo switching? Had Matthew known beforehand about the charges?

And where was Matthew?

Naomi Hoffman, wearing a pale mauve cotton clinic gown, was lying on the examining table, her face hidden from view by the huge mound that was her swollen midriff. Her husband was standing in front of the large window that faced the velvety green clinic grounds, opening and shutting the slats of the gray miniblinds. At Lisa’s entrance, he turned and walked over to his wife.

They could have been brother and sister. They had the same dark brown

hair, hazel eyes, fair complexions. Baruch Hoffman was pleasant-looking, slender, and a little under six feet; Naomi was petite and fine-boned, with a delicate beauty Lisa found arresting.

She approached the examining table, Naomi’s file under her arm. “I’m sorry if you’ve been waiting. How are you feeling, Naomi? Any contractions?”

“No. Other than huge and ungainly, I’m fine.” She propped herself up on her elbows.

“You look beautiful,” her husband said, helping her to a sitting position.

“If you like Humpty-Dumpty.” Smiling, Naomi tugged on the bangs of her dark brown wig until they reached just above her eyebrows.

Many married Orthodox Jewish women covered their hair, some with wigs, some with hats or berets or scarves. When Lisa had met the Hoffmans, she’d known from the husband’s black velvet yarmulke that he was Orthodox, but she hadn’t realized at first that Naomi was wearing a wig. Out of practice, she’d thought wryly. Growing up in Brooklyn, she and her friends had been experts at detecting wigs and rating them according to how natural they looked.

As a child. Lisa had delighted in trying on her mother’s light brown wigs and parading in front of her parents. For her marriage she’d ordered two wigs that had exactly matched her own honey-blond hair. Asher’s parents had paid for the custom-made one; she’d returned it along with the other gifts. She assumed her mother had passed the other wig on to a needy blond bride.

“We heard the news. Dr. Brockman,” Baruch said. “It was on all the networks and radio stations. Frankly, I don’t understand how something like this could have happened.”

He sounded calm but disapproving, and he was frowning. Lisa braced herself for anger, recriminations. “Mr. Hoffman, nothing has happened. No embryos have been switched. We take precautions with every step of the fertility process to prevent something like that from happening.” She’d repeated the same information so many times today to so many patients and their spouses. She knew

she sounded tired. She hoped she didn’t sound rehearsed.

“If there’s no truth, why would the media publicize these charges?” Baruch’s voice, like his jaw, had taken on a hard edge.

“Baruch, please. We agreed we wouldn’t dwell on this, okay? It doesn’t concern us.” Naomi lay down on the table and placed her hands on her rounded abdomen. “We know these babies are ours. Thank God we had a shomer all the time, so of course nothing could have been switched.”

The shomer. The word meant a “guard.” Lisa had momentarily forgotten about the tall, reed like blond young man the Hoffmans had hired to supervise every step of the IVF process and verify that Naomi’s eggs had been joined with her husband’s sperm.

Lisa had sensed the Hoffmans’ initial awkwardness at having the dark-suited shomer, a man they didn’t even know, join them in the operating room during the harvesting of Naomi’s eggs. She herself had been acutely aware of his presence. But the shomer had been discreet and careful not to violate Naomi’s modesty. Naomi, anesthetized, had been oblivious to what was going on around her, and Lisa had quickly forgotten about him as she concentrated on the ultrasound images that guided her in aspirating the eggs from Naomi’s follicles into test tubes.

The shomer. Lisa recalled, had overseen the lab technician in the operating room as she’d transferred the eggs into labeled petri dishes, checked their viability under a microscope, and transferred them again into sterile test tubes—labeled with Naomi Hoffman’s name—which the shomer had initialed in Hebrew. He’d observed the removal, by microsurgery, of Baruch’s semen and the mingling of his washed sperm with Naomi’s eggs.

For three days the shomer had kept vigil in the lab, hovering over the Hoffman petri dishes every morning as a lab technician checked the fertilization progress. Finally, he’d been present while Lisa had implanted the fertilized embryos in Naomi.

Given the clinic’s precautions, Lisa had been annoyed

by what she’d deemed unnecessary complications. (Annoyed, too, she wondered now, by the intrusion of Orthodox rules into her world?) Yet she’d been defensive when Charlie had questioned the shomer’s presence in the lab. “Is he blessing the eggs, or what?” Charlie had asked. Lisa had explained. Charlie had shrugged and said, “It takes all kinds, huh?” and she’d wondered what he’d say if she told him that she and the shomer were the same kind, that they came from the same world.

Baruch was scowling. “That’s not the point, Naomi. What if we hadn’t hired a shomer7 Can you imagine the disaster we’d be facing now?”

“But we did have a shomer. Can we stop talking about this? Plea seT She turned her head. Her face was flushed from exasperation or embarrassment at her husband’s outburst, or both. Her lips were trembling.

There was an uncomfortable silence in the room. Then Baruch quietly said, “I’m sorry, you’re right. Please don’t get upset. It’s not good for the babies. Or for me.” His smile was strained.

So was Naomi’s. She faced Lisa. “By the way. Dr. Brockman, I’m sorry about leaving yesterday without telling anyone. I don’t know what got into me.” She laughed self-consciously.

“Must have been hormones.” This time Baruch’s smile was more relaxed. “She’s been moody lately. Doctor. I’m contemplating turning her in for a new model. What do you think?” he asked Lisa while gazing affectionately at his wife.

Lisa was relieved that the tempest was over. “I’d hold on a little longer,” she said, gratified to see the return of the tenderness in the way they looked at each other.

When Lisa first met the Hoffmans, they’d been trying to conceive for nine years. Naomi had undergone surgery to deal with endometriosis, then another surgery to open a blocked Fallopian tube. She’d taken Clomid, an oral fertility drug. When that failed to produce a pregnancy, the couple had tried artificial insemination using Baruch’s sperm, then IVF. Both procedures had failed, too. Finally, a friend had recommended the Westwood clinic.

During the first few appointments with the Hoffmans, Lisa had sadly noted anxiety, depression, self recrimination, tension, and desperate, tenacious hope—all so typical of couples frustrated and heartbroken and often financially strangled by their failed attempts to conceive a child. Adding to the Hoffmans’ pressure was the fact that Baruch was the only son of Sender Hoffman, a Torah scholar descended from a small rabbinic dynasty in Po land that spanned five generations. Baruch’s married sisters had children, Naomi had told Lisa, but he was expected to produce an heir who would continue the line.

The pressure had taken its toll. Though Naomi and Baruch had often expressed their unwavering faith in God and acceptance of His will, they weren’t stoic. Naomi had cried bitterly when the first cycle of fertility drugs failed to produce enough follicles to harvest her eggs.

Lisa was frustrated and heartbroken, too, each time she had to relay negative news. “Don’t identify so intensely with your patients,” Sam had warned her several times. “It takes a toll.” Matthew had said the same thing. Good advice, but she suspected that behind Sam’s jocularity and Matthew’s carefully maintained equanimity lay emotional involvement equal to hers. (In her mind she heard again the pain in Matthew’s voice when he had learned ofChel sea Wright’s murder. She wondered suddenly whether Detective Barone was making any progress in finding her killer.)

There was ego involved, too. A negative pregnancy test spelled failure not only for the couple, but for the doctor. And a positive result presented its own dangers. Lisa tried to keep fresh in her mind her mother’s soft-spoken comment: “It’s a wonderful thing you’re doing, Aliza. Just remember, only God creates babies. Doctors are there to help carry out His plans.”

It was an important reminder in the exciting world of assisted reproduction, where grateful patients were all too eager to deify their physicians. One wall in her office was filled with snapshots of her successes—many of them twins—here at the Westwood clinic, and earlier at the Manhattan clinic where she’d previously worked. On the

snapshots were handwritten messages from the infants’ parents: “Thank you for our baby.” “You changed our lives!” “You’re an angel!”

Naomi Hoffman had cried when she’d learned she was pregnant with twins. Then she’d thanked Lisa. “A double blessing,” she’d said, clutching Lisa’s hands. “God works miracles, doesn’t He?” And when Baruch had stepped out of the room, she’d whispered, half joking, “You saved my marriage!”

It was an awesome responsibility, one Lisa didn’t feel comfortable shouldering.

Now Naomi was just weeks away from giving birth. Lisa examined her and listened to the two distinct fetal heartbeats. “They both sound great.” She let Naomi and Baruch hear the heartbeats, then coiled her stethoscope. “Remember to let me know the instant you have a contraction, Naomi, no matter how small.”

“I will.”

She slipped Naomi’s chart back inside the green folder. “I’ll see you next week. Until then, continue to stay in bed as much as possible. No lifting, no housework, no—”

“No sex. I know.” Naomi flashed a quick, playful smile at her husband, whose face had turned pink. “Thanks again for seeing me today. Dr. Brockman. I know you’re swamped with patients because of the news reports. I hope you find out who’s behind all these horrible rumors.”