Nursery Crimes (23 page)

“We’re going to prep you for a section, Mrs. Applebaum,” he said in a soft but firm voice.

“I want a VBAC.”

“I’m afraid a vaginal birth after cesarean isn’t a good idea, given your injury.”

“How long have I been here?”

He looked at my chart. “About two hours.”

“Is the baby okay?” I asked.

“It’s fine. The fetal monitor shows a nice, steady heartbeat.”

“Is my leg okay?”

“Yes, it’s fine. The bullet passed cleanly through, and both the entrance and exit wounds have been cleaned and stitched. You’re on IV antibiotics now in case of infection.”

“So if I’m fine, and the baby’s fine, how come I can’t at least wait until my husband and my midwife show up?”

The doctor looked down at me and finally smiled. “I’ll tell you what. We’ll put in an internal fetal monitor, and if the baby remains in good condition, we’ll give you another hour before we do the surgery. That should give your husband time to get here.” He patted me on the foot and turned to leave. At that moment, Peter rushed into the room. As soon as I saw him, I burst into hysterical tears.

Peter crossed the room in two huge steps, leaned over the bed, and scooped as much of me as he could reach
into his arms. I couldn’t seem to stop crying as I nestled my head into his chest. Suddenly I felt a hot flash as he inadvertently brushed against my right leg.

“Ow! My leg!” I hollered.

“Oh, no,” he said, dropping me like a hot potato. “What hurts? What did I do? Oh, God, Juliet. What happened?” I could swear he was crying, too.

“It’s just my leg. My thigh. She shot me. Audrey shot me.” Then another contraction began and I couldn’t speak anymore.

I surfaced to hear Peter slowly murmuring my name. I felt his fingers in my hair, gently rubbing my scalp.

“It’s over,” I said.

“I know,” he whispered. “I can see it on the monitor.”

“How did you find me?” I asked. “Where am I? This isn’t Cedars Sinai.” I’d planned on delivering my baby at the plush hospital to the stars.

“You’re in Santa Monica Hospital,” a voice interrupted. I turned to see a nurse dressed in pink surgical scrubs standing on the other side of the bed, fiddling with the monitor. “The anesthetist will be here in a moment to put in your epidural.”

“I don’t want an epidural,” I said angrily. “I’m having natural childbirth.” Just then another contraction hit me. In the middle of it I turned to the nurse and said through gritted teeth, “Get that goddamn doctor in here right now. I want that goddamn epidural right now.”

She smiled and left the room. Within twenty minutes I had a tube the size of a single hair dripping blessed pain relief directly into my spine. It put me into the most wonderful, magical pain-free mood.

I turned to look at Peter and smiled.

“It’s working,” I said.

“Good.” He smiled back.

“So now tell me how you found me.”

Peter told me how he and Ruby had come home about an hour after I’d called. Ruby had gone straight to her room to find her Barbies, and, thankfully, had not heard my phone message. Peter had immediately called 911. The emergency operator directed him to the Santa Monica police dispatcher and from there to the fire department. Within fifteen minutes he had tracked me to Santa Monica Hospital.

“Where’s Ruby?” I asked, suddenly worried.

“At Stacy’s. That reminds me: Stacy and Lilly both left messages on the machine. Lilly said that there’s a space for Ruby at Beth El preschool. And Stacy said that a colleague of hers at the agency sits on the board of a nursery school called Robin’s Nest . . . or was it Bluebird’s Nest? . . . something’s nest. Anyway, a kid is moving to Europe or New York or somewhere and there’s a space for Ruby for next year.”

“Wow. Two schools. An embarrassment of riches,” I said.

“Should we go visit them?” Peter asked.

“You know what?” I said. “Let’s just toss a coin. I don’t think I have the energy for more than that.”

Peter smiled. “How ’bout we just send her to the Jewish school?”

“Really?” I asked. “That won’t make you uncomfortable?”

“Please. Of course not,” he said. “It’ll be nice. I’ll learn all about Hanukkah and . . . what’s that one where you eat in the hut?”

“Succot.”

“Yeah, all those holidays. It’ll be great. I’ll call the school tomorrow.”

“Thanks, sweetie,” I said. Meaning thanks for calling.
Thanks for letting Ruby go to a Jewish school. Thanks for finding me at the hospital. Thanks for marrying me.

“Let’s call Stacy and let her know I’m okay. She’s probably totally freaking out.”

Peter picked up the phone. “What’s her number?” he asked me. I told him and lay back on the bed, idly watching the fetal monitor.

“I’m having another contraction,” I told him.

He put his hand over the receiver. “Can you feel it?”

“No. I can see it on the display.”

“Hi. It’s Peter,” he said into the phone. “She’s fine. Long story, but everything’s fine now.” He turned to me. “Do you have the energy to talk to Ruby?”

I grabbed the receiver out of his hand.

“Ruby? Rubes? Baby girl?”

“Hi, Mama.” She sounded so tiny and sweet.

“Hi, honey.”

“Are you in the hostible?”

“Yes. I’m in the hospital, having Isaac.”

“Can I come, too?”

“Not right now, sweetie. But you can come tomorrow. How ’bout that?”

“Okay. Bye-bye.”

“Wait! Ruby, wait!” But she was gone.

“She hung up on me,” I said, handing the receiver to Peter.

The door swung open and Dorothy walked into the room, dressed in scrubs.

“Hello, folks,” she said in her soft voice with its touch of East Texas twang.

“Hi.” I said. “I’ve been shot.”

She smiled at me and walked over to the fetal monitor. “So I hear.”

She picked up the strip and looked at it carefully.

“I’ve been talking to the doctor.”

“And?” Peter asked, obviously worried.

“And I think this birth’s not going to be exactly what you had in mind,” she said.

“No kidding,” I answered.

“You know, Juliet, Peter, they never go exactly as we plan. Every birth is a surprise to me. Some more than others.” She sat down next to me on the bed and took my good hand in hers. “I know how much you wanted a VBAC, but I’m afraid that’s not the best idea right now.”

“Why not?” I asked, close to tears. “I’m fine. I don’t feel anything. My leg is fine. The baby’s fine. Isn’t he?”

“You’ve lost some blood, Juliet. Not a lot, but enough to make you weaker. Isaac’s doing okay, but he’s not as strong as we would like. You know I wouldn’t be saying this if I didn’t think it was for the best, but I think it’s time to get Isaac out of you and into this world.”

Peter and I looked at each other.

“Your call, sweetie,” he said, and kissed me softly on the forehead.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do the surgery.”

O
NCE
I’d agreed to the C-section, things went very quickly. I was shaved, swabbed with Betadine, and wheeled into the operating room in just a few minutes. Isaac Applebaum Wyeth made his entry into the world not long afterward. He was a little guy—only five pounds, four ounces—but considering that he was a full four weeks premature, the doctors were pretty happy about his size. They didn’t even make him stay in the neonatal nursery that first night. They kept him for a few hours, but then let him come to my room. I don’t remember much about the next couple of days. I was more tired than I’d ever been in my life, and when I wasn’t nursing the baby, I was sound asleep. Luckily, Isaac was a quiet baby at first—he pretty much slept and ate for those first few days. He was probably stoned on all the various painkillers he was taking in through my breast milk, but I was just happy to be getting rest.

At some point, after the surgery, Detective Carswell
came by, carrying, strangely enough, a blue, stuffed alligator. He stood awkwardly in the doorway and said, to Peter, “This is for you. I mean, for the baby. Is she strong enough to talk?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “They pumped me full of morphine and I’m feeling absolutely splendid. Itchy, but splendid.” I scratched my arm. One of morphine’s more unpleasant side effects is that it makes you feel like you’ve been attacked by hordes of mosquitoes. The pain relief was worth it, however.

“Can you tell me what happened?” he asked.

I told him the story of how Audrey had shot me.

“You know, when police officers are in their last trimester of pregnancy, we pull them off the street. We don’t send them out to get themselves shot,” Carswell said.

“Lucky pregnant police officers,” I said, gingerly shifting my thigh.

Carswell snapped his notebook shut. “You are one difficult lady,” he said.

“No kidding,” Peter interrupted.

“I may be difficult, but if it weren’t for me you’d still be looking for the driver who left the scene of an accident,” I said.

“I’m sure we would have ultimately come to the correct conclusions,” Carswell said, not sounding sure at all.

He paused.

“Thank you,” he said, and leaned over to pat me on the foot. He missed, and stroked the bed instead, but hey, it’s the thought that counts.

After he left, Peter asked me, “I wonder if they’ll find Audrey.”

“They will. They almost always do,” I said, and shut my eyes.

I was right. Audrey was arrested after using her mother’s credit card to fill up her tank at a gas station in Oakland. I considered getting in touch with her after her arrest, but something held me back. I don’t know, maybe it was that she had lied to me, manipulated me, and shot me. But I asked a friend, a very good criminal defense lawyer, to call her, and Audrey ended up hiring him. Luckily for her, she wasn’t tried as an adult, and was instead allowed to plead guilty in juvenile court. She was sentenced to spend the years until her twenty-fifth birthday in the custody of the California Youth Authority.

Daniel Mooney was released from jail and promptly brought an unsuccessful malicious-prosecution suit against the city of Los Angeles. I wasn’t surprised to hear that he also ended up in protracted litigation with the trustees of Abigail Hathaway’s estate. Seems he felt that since Audrey was barred by California law from benefiting from murdering her mother by inheriting her millions, all the money should go to him.

Strangely enough, while I never spoke to or saw him again, I did end up hearing from Nina Tiger. She E-mailed me more or less to say no hard feelings and to ask to hear my “side of the drama.” She was writing a memoir about the Hathaway murder titled, quite grotesquely, I thought,
From the Loins of a Closed Mind.
I politely declined to participate. I’ve never seen the book in bookstores and am grateful that the publishing gods were wise enough to keep that particular family saga out of print. So far.

Peter and I weren’t so lucky with Bruce LeCrone. Not long after the events surrounding the Hathaway murder, the studio executive ended up losing his job at Parnassus in the most Hollywood of fashions. He was phased out of his executive position, set up in a luxurious office suite on the studio’s lot, and given a multimillion-dollar production
deal. I like to think that his calling a pregnant woman a disgusting cow in front of two-thirds of the Hollywood establishment and the television cameras of
Entertainment Tonight
had something to do with it, but I doubt it. More likely it was the box office routs of Parnassus’ last few pictures that did him in. Before he left the studio he did manage, however, to tank a project of Peter’s that came across his desk. It didn’t end up being that big a deal, however. Paramount optioned
Ninja Zombies
and it sat around in development for a while, earning Peter a nice chunk of change and the revilement of every parent watchdog group that got hold of the script.

On my second day in the hospital, Peter brought Ruby to visit me. Her eyes grew wide as she walked in and saw me lying in bed. At first she seemed scared to come near me, but, Ruby being Ruby, she soon got over her shyness and within a few minutes was curled up next to me in bed, describing all the things she’d done with Stacy and her kids over the past few days.

I’d had the nurses take Isaac to the nursery so I could be with Ruby alone for a bit, but they soon brought him back for a feed. Ruby watched in uncharacteristic silence as the baby nursed. Finally, she turned to me and announced, derisively, “That baby is too little. He can’t play anything.”

Peter and I laughed. “That’s true, Sweet Petunia,” I said. “But you know what?”

“What?”

“He’ll grow pretty soon, and I bet his most favorite thing to do will be to play games with his wonderful big sister.”

“You mean me?”

“I mean you.”

She looked at Isaac suspiciously.

“Okay, big sister,” Peter interrupted. “Time to go home and let Mommy sleep.”

“Okay,” she said, and skipped over to plant a kiss on my cheek. “Bye-bye, Mommy.”

“Bye, honey. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Peter bent down over the bed and softly kissed me on the lips.

“I’m proud of you, honey.”

“For almost getting myself killed?” I asked.

“For figuring out that Audrey did it, for
not
getting yourself killed, and for giving birth to a wonderful baby boy.”

My eyes welled up with postpartum tears, and I kissed him back.

After they left, I lay thinking about Ruby for a while. It seemed to me that my ambivalence about being home with her had so overwhelmed me that I couldn’t simply relax and enjoy her. I had left work to be with my child and ended up resenting her for it. Surely she already sensed this; how long would it be before she ended up mirroring it? While I was pretty sure that Ruby would never do anything like the awful thing that Audrey had done, I realized that I had, like Ebenezer Scrooge, been given a glimpse of Christmas future, and an opportunity to change things before it was too late. Isaac gave a squawk and I leaned over his bassinet, thinking that I was going to have to figure out some way to be a good mother without losing myself in the process. But first I was going to have to figure out a way to talk one of the nurses into changing that stinky diaper.