Chapter One
Mind over matter, Rose Chance muttered to herself as she strode across the linoleum floor of Portland’s Pacific Crest hospital. She’d known in the shoe store that the Prada heels weren’t comfortable, but when she looked at herself in the mirror and admired the black and red pump with the ice pick heels, she decided they were comfy enough.
That was before she’d put in a twelve-hour day. She needed a large, chilled glass of white wine, a blister bandage and her feet up. Instead, she still had to check on her patient. Who knew Belinda Tate would birth three babies who all arrived ahead of schedule and that number four would be a dawdler? Which meant that instead of an easy day in the office breaking in her new shoes, she was going to be on her pretty but aching feet for some hours yet waiting for little Tate number four.
When she entered the birthing suite she paused just inside the door. Before she inserted herself into nature’s birthing process she liked to stand on the outside and watch the laboring mother, the interaction between her and her husband or partner or whatever helpers she brought in with her. She liked to see firsthand the relationship developing between the patient and the nurses assigned to her. Rose had helped birth enough babies to understand that during these crucial hours, mothers-to-be developed an important bond with the nurses who stayed with them and helped them through the process.
Belinda Tate was already a mother of three, so she knew the drill. Her husband, Charlie, sat on a chair by her bedside, holding her hand. Her other hand rested on the enormous mound of her belly. Anita, the nurse in charge of the patient, was refilling Belinda’s plastic water glass. She murmured something Rose couldn’t hear and Belinda laughed. This birthing team was a good one. Rose stepped inside the room. “How’s it going?”
Belinda glanced up and gave her a tired smile. “However many times you do this, it never gets easier.” She shifted her back against the pillows. “I was saying to Charlie that this is it for me. As soon as I get home, we’re scheduling him that vasectomy.”
Charlie jerked his hips back at her words, jamming his butt against the plastic chair. He was a big bear of a man, with shaggy hair and the kind of plaid shirt that passes for high fashion in Portland. “Now honey, you know you should never make big decisions when you’re in labor.” Rose couldn’t tell whether he really wanted more children or whether he was afraid of the vasectomy, but she agreed that this wasn’t the time for that discussion.
She wondered that anyone had four kids. After growing up in the noise and chaos of a household containing eleven children she had long ago decided she was never having kids. After assisting in nearly a hundred births and then treating the babies as they suffered through everything from ear infections to broken bones, she wondered why any woman ever had more than one child. She was an excellent doctor, however, and kids really took to her, so no one knew her true feelings. Well, she was fairly certain a couple of her siblings were on to her. They probably shared her horror of the chaos of their childhood.
“Do you mind if I examine you now?”
“How about after this contraction,” Belinda gasped. She grabbed the bed rail with one hand and tightened her grip on her husband’s hand with the other. She leaned forward, grunting.
“That’s right honey, you’re doing great,” Charlie said, rubbing his wife’s shoulder with his free hand.
Rose lifted her wrist and counted the time on the Cartier watch her last lover had bestowed on her while they enjoyed a skiing trip in the Alps. The watch had already outlasted him by a year and she suspected it would still be keeping perfect time long after she’d forgotten Jonathan’s name.
When Belinda fell back, sweat gleaming on her forehead, Rose calculated that the contraction had lasted fifty seconds. She turned to Anita. “How far apart are they?”
“Between three and five minutes. Not regular.”
She pulled on a pair of surgical gloves and settled herself on the stool at the bottom of the birthing bed. “Okay, let’s take a look.”
A quick examination indicated that things were progressing normally. “You’re almost 7 cm dilated. She peeled off the gloves, replaced the privacy sheet and patted Belinda on the knee. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you to try walking around, keep pushing that water, and try to relax as much as you can between contractions.”
“I will. Thanks, Rose.”
She conferred with Anita for a few minutes. In her thirty-year career, Anita had helped bring hundreds, if not thousands of babies into the world, and the nurse agreed with her initial assessment that they were several hours away from the birth.
She double-checked that Anita had her pager number and then decided to head down to the doctors’ lounge where she could grab a cold bottle of water and catch up on some paperwork. She contemplated running home to her condo to change her shoes, but, even though she only lived fifteen minutes away from the hospital, babies were far too unpredictable for her to take the risk.
* * *
Dr. Mattius Vasilopolous pulled his shoulder blades together, trying to ease the kink in his upper back. Four hours bent over a surgery table was hell on the spine. He reached the waiting room where the young wife of his latest patient sat, staring into space, an open magazine on her lap, an untouched cup of coffee from the machine beside her on the table. Her eyes were red rimmed and her posture was brittle.
When she caught sight of him her body seemed to stiffen even more, as though she were steeling herself for bad news. Thank God he didn’t have to deliver heartbreak. Not tonight. The thoracic aortic aneurism repair he’d done on her husband was a success.
He didn’t waste a second leaving her in suspense. “Melanie, right?”
“Yes.” She nodded. Got to her feet stiffly, the magazine tumbling to the ground. “My husband…?”
“He’s stable.”
“Oh, thank God.” She put a hand to her mouth.
He spoke again, because he never, ever gave false hope. “We were able to stop the bleeding and we’ve fixed the weak spot in his aorta with a graft, but he’s going to have to go on blood pressure medication, and he’s smoked his last cigarette.”
She nodded, weeping quietly. “When can I see him?”
“You can go in now for a few minutes.” The guy was out cold but Matt understood that loved ones who’d been afraid of the worst needed to see that their person was breathing before they could believe that they were going to live.
When he’d handed her off to a nurse, he headed for the doctors’ lounge. He needed a shower, he needed food, and he needed sleep.
