by JoAnn Ross
“They had only half a dozen patients during their last three hours,” Yolanda continued. “The last one was some guy who sliced his finger to the bone trying to put together a bicycle for his eight-year-old son. He was stitched up, given a tetanus shot, advised to pay the ten bucks to have the store do it next time and was leaving just as I was coming on duty.
“By the way,” she tacked on as an afterthought, “the baby Jesus is gone.”
“I noticed as I walked by the crèche.” Molly sighed. “I suppose it isn’t surprising. Putting a baby doll outside in this neighborhood is just asking to have it stolen, especially this time of year.”
Molly was of two minds about the theft. She found the act wrong, but she couldn’t help envisioning the joy on the face of whatever child received the doll on Christmas morning.
“Santa’s gonna be paying a surprise visit to some kid’s house,” Yolanda said. “Apparently from now on, the swaddled babe is going to be a bunch of rolled-up towels. The visual impact won’t be the same, but administration has decided it might last through the night.”
Molly wasn’t so certain about that, since clean towels were even more precious than baby dolls around there.
It was almost eerily quiet. There were no metal-bound triage charts in the racks, crisp white sheets covered the high-wheeled gurneys lined up in the hallway outside trauma area A and all the booths were empty, curtains pulled back in anticipation of patients. Molly was Irish enough to be vaguely superstitious of such calm.
“Where’s Reece?” Molly asked.
“Your handsome young brother-in-law is hiding away in waiting room A. Seems he’s got a hundred bucks’ bet with Dr. Bernstein on the Houston Rockets over the Bulls—it’s the third quarter, Jordan’s on a roll and he’s starting to get nervous that his bride is going to murder him when she finds out.”
“Lena would never murder Reece. She adores him.”
And rightfully so, Molly thought. Dr. Reece Longworth, Mercy Sam’s ER resident, was the nicest man she’d ever met. He was also her best friend.
“And he’s nuts about her. The guy lights up from the inside like a Christmas tree whenever she’s around.” Yolanda sighed. “If I could ever find me a man who looked at me the way Reece looks at your little sister, I’d marry him in a heartbeat.”
“Lena’s lucky,” Molly agreed. Lena had met Reece one night two years ago when she’d shown up unexpectedly to eat dinner with Molly in the cafeteria. Instantly smitten, Reece had proposed within the week. It had taken him six months to convince Lena to marry him.
Until Reece, Lena’s choices in men had been disastrous, eerily similar to their own mother’s. All of her lovers—and there had been many—had been carbon copies of their abusive, alcoholic father. Molly often thought that Lena hadn’t believed she was deserving of love, even though she’d been ravenous for it all her life. During those bad years, Lena had reminded Molly of a bottomless, fragile porcelain bowl—impossible to fill and capable of shattering at a touch.
Molly sat staring at the lights of the small artificial tree atop a filing cabinet at the nurses’ station thinking that Lena’s first Christmas Eve with Reece had probably been the only truly happy one she’d ever had. The lights blinked red, green and white, flashing gaily on yellowed and cracked plaster walls in the unnaturally quiet room.
Normally, Molly would never have questioned the rare peace. Emergencies came in spurts. But she could never remember it being as quiet as this.
“You know, this really is starting to get a little spooky,” she said thirty minutes later as she bit into a bell-shaped cookie covered with red sugar sprinkles. “So where are all the customers?”
She’d no sooner spoken than the dam broke—a drive-by shooting; an attempted suicide who’d washed a bottle of nitroglycerin tablets down with a fifth of Beefeaters gin, then burned the inside of his mouth trying to blow himself up with a Bic lighter; and a cop carrying a newspaper-wrapped bundle.
“One of the bums found her in a Dumpster,” he said, shoving the bundle into Molly’s arms.
Sensing what she was about to see, Molly gently placed the newspapers onto a gurney and carefully opened them up. The baby’s eyelids were sealed shut, its pale blue skin gelatinous. She was wet and so tiny, she reminded Molly of a newly hatched hummingbird.
Reece, who’d just finished the unenviable task of telling the shell-shocked parents of the thirteen-year-old honor student that he’d been unable to save their son, paused on his way to check out a lacerated scalp.
“Aw, hell,” he responded in his characteristically even tone that was faintly softened with the accent of the deep South. “Get a neonatologist on the line, stat,” he told the clerk. “Tell him we’ve got an extramural preemie delivery. And start arranging for a transfer upstairs to NICU, just in case.”
Unlike so many other physicians Molly worked with, Reece Longworth never raised his voice except when it was necessary in order to be heard over the din. Few had ever seen him get angry. Such a relaxed, informal demeanor helped calm the staff, as well as thousands of anxious patients. The fluorescent red plastic button he wore on his green scrub shirt reading Don’t Panic probably didn’t hurt, either.
“She’s so small,” Yolanda murmured as Reece managed, just barely, to put the blade of the infant laryngoscope into the baby girl’s rosebud mouth. “She could fit in the palm of my hand.”
“Probably another crack kid,” the cop muttered as he stood on the sidelines and watched.
While Reece slid the tube between the tiny vocal chords, Molly said a quick, silent prayer and checked for a pulse.
“Sixty,” she announced grimly. She did not have to add that it was much too slow for a preemie.
“Dr. Winston’s the neonatologist on call,” the clerk announced as Reece put in an umbilical line to start pushing drugs. “He wants to know how much the baby weighs. Because if it’s less than five hundred grams, the kid’s not viable.”
As soon as the line was in, Reece bagged the baby girl, forcing air directly into immature lungs through the tube. Molly wrapped a towel around the frail infant in an attempt to warm it.
“See if you can find a nursery scale,” Reece instructed Yolanda. “And round up an Isolette, too.”
When the baby suddenly kicked, Molly felt her own pulse leap in response.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Reece warned as they exchanged a look. “It’s only reflex. No matter what she weighs, we’re not even talking long shot here, Molly.”
“I know.”
Yet, even as she prepared for the worst, even as she saw the infant crumping before her eyes, Molly took the weak little kick as a sign of encouragement. Death was a frequent companion in her line of work, but Molly had also witnessed enough miracles to allow her to hang on to hope now.
Yolanda came back with the scale and a hush suddenly came over the room as Molly placed the baby girl on it.
“Four hundred and twenty grams.” Molly closed her eyes and heard the onlookers sigh in unison.
“Too light to fake it,” Reece said what everyone already knew.
The clerk passed the information on to the neonatologist still waiting on the phone. “Winston says to pull the plug. The kid’s FTD.”
Fixing to Die. Accustomed as she was to the term, Molly was irritated by it now.
As was Reece. “Easy for Winston to say,” he muttered. With an icy, controlled fury that was almost palpable, he marched the few feet to the phone and snatched the receiver from the clerk’s hand.
“As much as I appreciate your consult, Dr. Winston, we don’t throw terms around like that in my emergency department. She may be small, but she deserves the same respect we’d show your child, or wife, or mother, if they showed up down here.”
He hung up.
“All we can do now is make her as comfortable as possible,” he said. Every eye in the room was riveted on him as he turned off the line, pulled the plug from the baby’s lungs, wrapped the painfully tiny girl
up again and placed her in the Isolette.
“She’s still breathing,” Yolanda pointed out unnecessarily.
“She’ll stop.”
An aide popped her head into the room. “You’ve got a stab wound in treatment room B, Dr. Longworth.”
He turned to Molly. “I’ll need you to assist.” Without waiting for an answer, he cast one more quick, regretful look at the baby and left the room.
After asking the clerk to page Father Dennis Murphy, who she’d seen going upstairs to bring Christmas communion to Catholics on the medical wards, Molly followed Reece.
After stitching up the wound that had resulted from an argument over whether “Away in a Manger” or “Silent Night” was the Christmas carol most appropriate to the season, Reece stopped by to check the baby again and found her still breathing. They also found the cop still standing beside the Isolette.
“I’m off duty,” he said, as if worried they’d think he was shirking his work. “My daughter’s pregnant with her first. This could be her kid.”
Despite the tragedy of their situation, Molly managed a smile at the thought of a new life on the way. “I’ll add your daughter to my prayers.”
“Thank you, Sister.” Patrolman Tom Walsh, a frequent visitor to the ER due to his work patrolling the seediest parts of the city, managed a smile. “Someone needs to baptize her.”
“Father Murphy didn’t answer his page,” the clerk, who overheard his statement informed Molly. “The guard said he left about thirty minutes ago.”
“Looks like it’s up to you, Sister,” Walsh said. “How about naming her Mary?” he suggested. “That’s my mother’s name. And it is Christmas, so it fits.”
It took all Molly’s inner strength to grace him with a smile when she wanted to weep. “Mary’s perfect.”
The patrolman put his hat over his heart. Molly sprinkled water over the tiny bald head, wishing for the usual cries, but the infant didn’t so much as flinch. Even so, the hopelessly immature lungs valiantly continued to draw in rasping breaths of air like tiny bellows.
“Mary, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
Walsh exhaled a long breath. “Thank you, Sister. I feel a lot better.”
Molly was grateful that she’d managed to bring one of them comfort. With a no-nonsense attitude that had always served her well, she reminded herself that such emotionally painful situations came with the territory. She’d chosen to live out her vocation in the real world, where a sacred moment was when someone shared with you—like Thomas earlier, and Officer Walsh now. If she’d wanted her life to be one of quiet dedication contemplating holy mysteries, she would have joined an order of cloistered nuns.
Baby Mary fought on. Two hours later, when the flood of patients had slowed to a trickle, Molly slipped back into the room and took the swaddled infant who was no heavier than a handful of feathers out of the Isolette. She held her in her arms and felt the tiny, birdlike heart flutter in a last futile attempt to keep beating. Then it finally went still.
As a grim-faced Reece called the death for the record, and Patrolman Tom Walsh made a sign of the cross, Molly, who was suddenly having trouble breathing herself, escaped from the room.
Reece found her on the rooftop, looking out over the lights of the city.
“Repeat Longworth’s rules of critical care,” he said.
The rules—known as Longworthisms—were a joke around the ER. They were also right on the money.
“Number one—air goes in, air goes out,” Molly answered remotely. She didn’t feel like joking at the moment. “Number two—blood goes round and round. Number three—bleeding always stops.” She drew in a weary breath. “Number four—oxygen is good.”
“Very good.” He nodded his satisfaction. “But you forgot the most important.”
“What’s that?”
“Dr. Reece Longworth’s Rule Number Five. Patients always leave.” In an affectionate gesture more suited to a friend and brother-in-law than a physician, he skimmed his finger down the slope of her nose. “It’s a good one to keep in mind. Getting too involved can end up in a flame-out.”
“But it’s not fair. That was an innocent child, Reece, a little girl who’d never done anything but do her best to beat impossible odds. She was so tiny. And so brave.” Believing all life was a gift from God, Molly hated seeing such a gift not being honored.
“I know.” Reece sighed and put his arm around her. “Some days are harder than others,” he allowed. “But you’re still too softhearted for your own good. You’ve got to save a little of that caring for yourself.”
Molly knew he was right. Emergency room nurses—and doctors—burned out all the time. But she couldn’t just turn off her emotions like a water tap.
When she didn’t answer, Reece ran the back of his hand down her cheek in a soothing fraternal gesture that carried absolutely no sexual overtones.
“You know, I suppose the truth is, deep down, I don’t want you to change, either.” Both his expression and his tone were serious. “The patients are lucky to have you. I’m lucky to have you. But you’ve got to learn to let go.”
“I know.” She sighed. “But sometimes it’s difficult not to worry. When you care so deeply.”
It was Reece’s turn to sigh. A faint shadow moved across his eyes. “On that we’re in full agreement.”
Venice Beach was deserted save for a few couples walking their dogs along the strand. The full moon hanging in the sky created a glittering silver path on the jet water, but as she sat in the sidewalk café, Lena Longworth’s interest was not in the view, but on the woman across the table from her.
“You’ve been having problems at home,” the young woman, who looked a bit like a blond Gypsy, with her wild long spiral perm, floating gauze skirt and heavy sweater, announced.
“Not really,” Lena lied. The truth was, that although Reece was a man of uncommon tolerance, she knew her obsession with having a child had been straining his patience lately.
Although the woman smiled benignly back at her, Lena knew she wasn’t fooling her for a moment. She took a sip of her cola and wished it were something stronger. But she’d promised Reece that she’d never drink and drive. Having been forced to treat too many casualties of such reckless behavior in the ER, he was adamant on the subject.
A silence settled over them. A pregnant silence, Lena thought wryly.
“I have a friend who told me that your cards had predicted she’d have children. Even when the doctors said it was impossible,” she said finally. “Three months later, she got pregnant.”
“The cards are not some magical fortune-telling computer,” the woman who’d introduced herself as Ophelia, said. “I can’t make them give you the answer you’re seeking. I can only interpret them.”
“That’s a start.”
“Fine.” Ophelia smiled again. “Have you ever had a reading before?”
“No.” Lena refrained from mentioning that she’d always found such superstitious behavior foolish. She was a sensible woman. She had a degree in education. She taught kindergarten and was married to a physician. She didn’t need New Age mumbo jumbo to make her happy. But still…
Ophelia held out the deck of colorful cards. “Some readers prefer to shuffle the cards themselves. Personally, I believe it’s better if you instill them with your own energy first.”
Although she knew it was only her imagination, Lena could have sworn her fingertips tingled as she shuffled the cards.
“You can deal out your first card whenever you’re ready,” Ophelia instructed. “This will tell us your present position.”
Lena drew the first card from the shuffled deck. The image was of a young man, sitting in front of a tree. In front of him were three goblets; a hand coming out of the clouds was offering him a fourth, but his arms were folded in a gesture that suggested his unwillingness to accept.
“The Four of Cups.” Ophelia nodded. “You can see this is a very lucky man. Unfo
rtunately, he’s so caught up in his own despair he can’t see life offering him a great deal.”
Lena twisted her wedding ring and stared down at the cards. This was already hitting a bit too close to home.
Her marriage had been strained lately. But as soon as she got pregnant, that would change. All she wanted was a child. Someone all her own to love. Someone who’d love her back.
“Why don’t you deal the next card,” Ophelia suggested, her gentle voice breaking into Lena’s unhappy thoughts.
Lena nearly groaned as she looked down at the card depicting a woman sitting in bed, obviously in deep despair, her head in her hands as a row of swords hung ominously overhead.
“The Nine of Swords suggests the seeker senses impending doom and disaster,” Ophelia divulged, once again hitting unnervingly close to reality.
Lena wanted to jump up and run away, but she found herself spellbound by the sight of that anguished, sleepless woman. It could have been a self-portrait.
“As you’ll see, although she’s obviously caught up in her fears, the swords do not touch the woman.” The psychic’s dark eyes swept over Lena’s face. “Often the fear of disaster is worse than the reality.”
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself?” Lena muttered.
Ophelia remained unscathed by Lena’s sarcasm. “That’s often the case.”
Irritated and unnerved, Lena dealt another card. This time the woman was standing alone in a vineyard, a falcon on her arm, a manor house in the background.
“As you can see, the woman is at peace with herself. And her surroundings, which are quite lush and suggest material success. This is a woman who does not need to cling to past or even present relationships. A woman who does not need constant companionship to feel content.”
“So, the cards are saying I’m going to be alone?” Panic surged through Lena’s veins like ice water. One of the reasons she’d agreed to marry Reece was because he’d offered security and protection. If he were to leave…