Cherished Beginnings

by Pamela Browning

  Chapter 11

  There had not only been rooms in her house to be filled, but also rooms in her heart. Maura hadn't realized before how empty she'd felt. And now that emptiness was filled with so much warmth and happiness that Maura could not imagine how she had ever been able to get along without Xan.

  In the convent, the emphasis had been on God's love. But in her outreach midwifery practice, Maura had become accustomed to giving and receiving love from many kinds of people outside the order. That love gave her strength when it became clear to her that she must leave the convent. But it hadn't prepared her for the totality of her love for Xan, which permeated her whole life and her whole being.

  Kathleen had been stunned by the news that Maura was in love with Xan Copeland. "You're not!" she said, her eyes widening at the thought. "You can't be in love with him. Didn't I warn you? Didn't I tell you all about him?"

  "Wait a minute, Kathleen," Maura said impatiently. "It's different with Xan and me. He loves me. Really."

  "Other women thought he loved them, too," said Kathleen darkly.

  "Since Xan's fiancée broke their engagement, his practice and the hospital have been everything to him," Maura said. "He hasn't had time for serious relationships."

  "So how do you fit into his life? How does he fit into yours? You have different views about childbirth, and you both put your practice before everything else." Kathleen's eyes were worried.

  Maura's thoughts flew to the moment when Ginny Matthews's baby was born and she and Xan had shared a new and special understanding. She could only hope that somehow, some way, she and Xan could integrate their lives and their beliefs. She loved Xan Copeland, and she wanted to be with him as much as possible. She had no doubt that he felt the same way.

  "Anyway," she continued, "I'm going for an interview with Dr. Raymond Lyles, Quinby Hospital's chief of staff, sometime this week." Quickly she outlined the birthing-room concept.

  Kathleen was excited by the news that such a facility might soon be available at Quinby. "I know a lot of young married women here on Teoway," Kathleen told her. "Lots of them have babies. If they want to use a birthing room, they have to go all the way to Charleston. You can imagine how worried they get as their due date approaches, thinking that they might not be able to make the twenty-mile drive to Charleston in time for the baby's arrival."

  "Why don't they look into home births? I'm willing to serve any women who want a home birth, not just the Shuffletown women."

  "No, Maura," Kathleen said gently. "Can't you see that they think it would be even worse if they counted on a home birth and then at the last minute had to be transported the twenty miles to Charleston anyway? Home births will become popular on Teoway Island only when you have local medical backup at Quinby Hospital."

  More than she would have admitted to anyone, Maura was troubled about working in a hospital, but she was determined to go through with her discussion with Raymond Lyles for Xan's sake and for the sake of their relationship. It was the least she could do, especially when Xan seemed to be making an effort to modify his stance on childbirth. However, when she called Dr. Lyles's office at the hospital to make an appointment, his secretary said that Dr. Lyles was out of town for the day, but that he would call her when he returned.

  Except that it wasn't Dr. Lyles who called her about the appointment the next day. It was Xan. Sounding jubilant, he said, "Can you come over to the hospital? Raymond is back, and he's ready to see you."

  As always, Maura's heart lightened at the sound of Xan's voice. She longed to see him, since their separate schedules hadn't allowed them to be together in days. But the time was inconvenient, as much as she wanted to be with Xan and do what he asked of her.

  "I'm getting ready to teach an exercise class," she said reluctantly. "Must it be now?"

  "As soon as possible. Can't Golden take over your exercise class?" Xan's words were impatient.

  "Well—"

  "Maura, Raymond seems extremely enthusiastic. He visited a small hospital up in Yewville that recently began offering family-centered maternity care, and he liked what he saw."

  She made herself think. Xan sounded so excited about it all, as though he really believed in the birthing room and what it could provide. Maybe there was, after all, some way they could come to a meeting of the minds.

  "I can be there in about half an hour," she told him, rapidly figuring in her head how long it would take her to find something suitable to wear.

  "I'll meet you in the main lobby of the hospital," he told her. "And, Maura, I can't help but think that this is going to be a good thing."

  Maura didn't share Xan's confidence, but she hung up and explained the situation to Golden, who was willing to take over, and then she hurried to her closet, where she found an aqua linen dress that looked businesslike enough for this meeting. As she dressed, she realized how apprehensive she was about meeting this Dr. Lyles when she fumbled with the back buttons and dropped one of her simple pearl earrings so that it skidded across the hardwood floor.

  She was just scrambling to her feet after retrieving the earring when Golden appeared in the doorway to her room. "You look pretty," she observed, taking in the linen and the earrings.

  "Thanks," said Maura. "I just wish I felt more up to this." She finally managed to affix the earring to her right earlobe, where it felt anything but comfortable.

  Golden leaned against the door, regarding Maura with curiosity. "Why are you going to see Dr. Lyles, anyway?"

  Maura walked to the window and looked out at the wide field reaching to the horizon, biting her lip as she always did when she was in doubt about something.

  "It's only a chance to be a labor coach in his birthing room," she said. "I really don't want to coach someone else's patients, as I'm sure you know. That's what I was doing—before."

  "You still haven't answered my question," probed Golden. "Why, then, are you going to see Dr. Lyles about being a labor coach?"

  "I think I owe it to my patients," she said honestly. "They deserve to be able to go to Quinby for emergency care. And if this is the means to that end..." and her voice trailed off in uncertainty.

  "Well," Golden said doubtfully, "good luck." As the sound of female voices drifted upstairs, they realized that women were beginning to arrive for class. Golden started to leave, then stopped and peered around the edge of the doorway. "Are you sure," Golden said knowingly, not fooled a bit, "that you aren't about to give up everything you've worked for just so you can spend a little more time with Xan Copeland?" With that, she retreated down the stairs.

  At the hospital, Xan greeted her warmly with a kiss on the cheek. "You look as cool as a cucumber," he told her, seemingly delighted with her appearance.

  "But I feel like I'm going to be handling a hot potato," she confessed wryly.

  "Raymond is raring to go on the whole idea," Xan said as they strolled down the corridor to Raymond Lyles's office. "I'll let him tell you about it himself." He knocked on Dr. Lyles's office door, and a gravelly voice called out, "Come in, come in."

  Maura stood uncertainly in the doorway until Xan grasped her elbow reassuringly and urged her forward. She held out her hand to Raymond Lyles, and he stood and gripped it. His handclasp was strong and sure, and he stared at her piercingly from beneath thick gray eyebrows. Then he spared her an almost imperceptible nod and invited her to sit on the brown leather chair across from his desk.

  "I've told Maura about your idea for birthing rooms," said Xan, sitting on the chair next to hers.

  Dr. Lyles drew a folder from a drawer in his desk. "Xan tells me you've had experience as a labor coach."

  A quick glance in Xan's direction showed him to be smiling at her encouragingly. She cleared her throat. "I have," she said.

  "Here at Quinby," said Dr. Lyles, "I've always preferred traditional birth methods. The mother goes immediately to the labor room when she arrives at the hospital and is moved to the delivery room for the delivery of her baby. Well, you know the
drill."

  Maura nodded. She wished he'd get to the point.

  "With a birthing room, the mother would labor, deliver and recover in the same room. Her husband would be present for the delivery if he preferred, and the baby would be allowed in the room with the mother whenever she liked."

  As she listened, it seemed to Maura that Dr. Lyles's birthing room concept didn't go far enough. She knew that flowered sheets on a birthing bed and a midwife coach for labor could not approximate the comfort and reassurance of being with one's own family at such a stressful time as birth.

  "I'd like to see you go a step further," Maura said earnestly. "True family-centered care would involve allowing children to be present for the birth of their new brothers and sisters. At the parents' discretion, of course." She was thinking of Ginny and Joe Matthews's warm and happy experience.

  Xan stared at her. Clearly he hadn't expected her to say anything of the sort.

  Raymond Lyles drew himself up, all bluster. "I don't think we're ready for that at Quinby," he said. He lowered those grizzled eyebrows at her. "I don't think parents are ready for it, either. So tell me, are you interested in being my labor coach or not?"

  Unprepared for the sudden question, Maura blinked.

  "Well, are you? You wanted access to my delivery room. Surely you're not going to balk at coaching labor in my birthing rooms."

  Everything, Maura could see, at Quinby Hospital was referred to by Raymond Lyles as "mine." Looking at him across the broad shiny expanse of his big desk, his eyes riveting her with their challenge, she was reminded of other eyes in another place far away.

  The expression in this man's eyes was one of total authority, and the expression in those other eyes had been, too. Dr. Lyles reminded her of the mother superior—a painful memory, to say the least. Maura gripped the arms of her chair so hard that her knuckles turned white. Xan noticed, but he didn't understand.

  "Maura," said Xan quickly, seeing that he would have to intercede. "Why don't you give it a try?"

  Suddenly Maura stood up. "I'll think about it," she said, her voice low and troubled. "Dr. Lyles, I'll need time."

  "How long?" he shot back.

  "At—at least a week." And maybe more, though she didn't say it.

  "As long as that? I want to get on with this! Plus we need your hands-on guidance for what works and what won't." The redoubtable Dr. Lyles was annoyed.

  Something in her snapped. "Would you be willing to consider such enhancements as pressure point massage for the mother's relaxation? Aromatherapy? How about Jacuzzis in the birthing rooms?" She was sure that Raymond Lyles would be shocked and resistant to these accoutrements, which was why she took perverse delight in tossing them into the conversation.

  Xan looked from one to the other. His hopes, which he'd built up so high, began to tumble one by one.

  Dr. Lyles pressed his lips tightly together. "Touchy-feely, aren't you?" he said, and to both Maura and Xan's surprise, a muscle twitched at the corner of his mouth as if he were suppressing a grin. "If there's one thing I admire it's spunk," he added.

  Before a startled Maura could summon a reply, he said, "You have one week to make your decision. Be back here next Monday to let me know. Ten o'clock in the morning." Raymond Lyles sat back in his chair, pulling up the stern expression with which he'd started this interview.

  Maura, flabbergasted at the direction of their conversation, nodded. She flicked a look at Xan, an unreadable look. Then she bolted for the door.

  Xan took off after her. He caught up with her in the hospital lobby. "Maura, are you crazy? You should have grabbed the opportunity he's offering. Don't you know that he might get someone else?"

  Curious glances toward the two of them convinced Maura that they should remove this discussion elsewhere. "Who?"

  "An outsider, someone, anyone."

  "Come outside. I don't want to talk in here."

  Xan followed her to the door, but as they reached it, the PA system announced, "Dr. Copeland. Dr. Alexander Copeland, report to the delivery room at once."

  "I can't talk to you now. Listen, Maura, I don't understand you. First you want time because you don't know if you're ready for a relationship with me. Then I think it's all settled, and now you want time to think this over. What is it with you? Why do you always need time?" Xan seemed totally frustrated.

  "There are all these hospital rules I'd have to follow. You still haven't told me whether or not you'll be my supervising physician. And I've made it clear that I don't want to be a labor coach," she said tightly.

  "What you want and what it's realistic to want are two different things," he retorted angrily. Two frail elderly ladies dodged around them, and they had to move. Again the impersonal nasal clatter of the PA system broke in: "Dr. Copeland, please report to the delivery room. Dr. Alexander Copeland..."

  "Maura, you wouldn't have to give up your private practice, you know. This birthing-room labor coaching would only be part-time for those of my patients who request it. Why didn't you say yes?"

  "Dr. Lyles is so—so patriarchal," she said. "I'd have to knuckle under to him and submit to his authority. I don't want to do that." Maura's jaw was set in a stubborn line.

  "You've worked in the medical profession for a long time. You understand how it works. Quinby Hospital is no exception." Xan had learned to gauge Maura's reactions by assessing her micro expressions, and her present anguished expression told him that her emotions were in much more of a turmoil than the situation warranted. Why didn't she trust him enough to talk to him? He'd been as understanding as any man could be. What more could he possibly do?

  She looked up at him, pleading for understanding. "The way it is now, with my working at home births, I don't have to worry about submitting to anyone else's authority. I conduct birthings the way I see fit, according to my own intuition and skill. I'd feel constrained in a birthing room."

  "Aren't you forgetting that it would be a chance for us to work together?"

  Maura cringed inwardly at the ice in Xan's tone. "I'm not forgetting that at all." She lifted her chin a trifle, refusing to be manipulated into the decision Xan wanted her to make.

  Xan felt exasperated. When he'd first found out that Maura was a midwife, he had despaired that he would ever be able to incorporate her into his life. Now, when everything at last seemed to be on the right track, she was balking.

  "You don't understand," Maura began.

  "I think I do," said Xan, his eyes glittering with anger. "Every hospital has rules, and I can't imagine why something like a few rules would be so important to you. You just don't want us to work together. And you're unwilling to give up your highfaluting ideas about childbirth to stoop to working at Quinby Hospital."

  "But-"

  "You may have alienated Raymond Lyles to the point where he'll no longer consider your working here. As far as I'm concerned, Maura, you can take all your childbirth philosophies back to that farmhouse of yours and think about them until hell freezes over. There's no point in our discussing it further, now or ever." He bit off the words sharply, his chest heaving. Maura longed to reach out her hand and touch him gently on the cheek, but his forbidding expression precluded any display of affection.

  "Dr. Copeland, Dr. Alexander Copeland," rattled the PA system.

  With a last look of total fury, Xan clamped his lips together and strode purposefully away, disappearing between a set of swinging doors at the end of the corridor and leaving Maura standing there with tears welling up in her eyes.

  "Excuse me, miss," said a young man who was trying to maneuver a trolley of flowers past the heavy glass doors, and Maura turned and ran blindly from the lobby out into the warm summer afternoon.

  Xan was right. She was always asking for time. It was because she felt rushed pell-mell into things that other people took for granted as part of their lives. How could she explain? It was time to tell him everything, all about the convent and the rules she couldn't accept and her clash with authority. Her
past was part of her present, but she hadn't been willing to admit it until now.

  She'd thought she had come so far. Indeed, she had come a long way, but clearly not far enough. If she loved Xan, she should be able to open every part of her life to him. Now she knew that she should have told Xan the whole story. She should have told him she was an ex-nun and all the ramifications it had in her life. But what if she'd waited too long? The pit of her stomach felt heavy, leaden. She had planned to tell him in her own good time. That time had never arrived, and now maybe it never would.

  For Maura, this opportunity to coach labor in Quinby Hospital's new birthing room was shaping into a personal crisis of the highest magnitude. Xan thought he knew what the issue was, but he really didn't.

  Oh, Xan, Xan, she cried silently, tears streaming down her face as she stumbled toward the parking lot. What if I can never make you understand?

  Chapter 12

  "But, Maura, why don't you just tell Dr. Lyles that I'll be the labor coach in his birthing room? I'd like to, really I would." Golden's hazel eyes were earnest beneath the ragged old straw hat she wore to protect her from the hot Lowcountry sun.

  Maura stopped spading the rich black earth and wiped the perspiration from her brow with her kerchief. Golden had been taking on more and more responsibility within the practice lately. The good sense of Golden's suggestion almost bowled her over.

  "I never thought of it," she admitted ruefully. "I was so overwhelmed with my own concerns, my own problems. Of course," she said briskly, returning her attention to the row of herbs, "I'll suggest you, Golden. It'll give you additional experience, and it will provide Dr. Lyles with his midwife coach."

  "My presence will also leave the way open for further negotiations for the McNeill Birth Center to use Quinby Hospital for emergency backup care. Let's not forget that important angle." Golden smiled as she pulled off her gardening gloves and gazed at the herb garden with satisfaction. "The sage is coming along real fine, isn't it, Maura?"