I’ll speak to Dr. Townsend about it, she thought. His mind wanders, [346] but his heart’s in the right place. Let him do one last bit of good here before he retires.
Then she caught herself, remembering that Harry Townsend had retired. There had been a party, which she hadn’t been able to attend. But who had taken his place? She recalled hearing several names mentioned as possibilities, no one she knew. And hadn’t there been talk of luring over some big shot from Presbyterian?
She gave Alma’s hand a gentle squeeze, then handed her a tissue from the box on the enamel nightstand. The crack in Rachel’s heart widened as she watched Alma dutifully honk into the tissue. Was this how a mother felt? Wanting to give comfort, but helpless to do much more than dole out Kleenex?
A mother. Dear Lord, that’s exactly what I’ll be if I’m pregnant.
Her heart leapt for one wild moment.
If only she knew for sure.
Rachel took a deep breath. “Look, Alma, I know what you’re going through. Everything feels uncomfortable right now, and the last thing you want is a lot of doctors poking at you. But believe me, the only reason you’re here is so we can help you, and your baby. Now, try and get some sleep. I’ll be back with you first thing in the morning.”
Alma nodded, then snatched her hand, gripping it hard, as she was about to go. “Promise me, Doctor Rosenthal. Promise me no one else will deliver my baby. I don’t want anyone but you.”
Rachel paused, torn. How could she make such a promise? Nine chances out of ten, she would deliver Alma’s baby. But what if something happened, if she were detained ...
Rachel opened her mouth to reassure Alma, tell her there were other doctors who were good, maybe better. But the look of raw, anguished appeal on Alma’s face stopped her. To diminish Alma’s confidence now, when she needed it the most, might do the girl more harm than a promise that might not be kept.
“I promise,” she said.
She saw light showing under the door marked CHIEF OF OBSTETRICS AND GYNECOLOGY. Well, whoever had replaced Harry, he was a go-getter, staying this late.
[347] Rachel knocked lightly.
“Come in,” a voice called distractedly.
Rachel pushed open the door, and stepped in, eager to meet his replacement.
She saw a head bent over the desk, tousled blond hair gleaming in the hard circle of light cast by a tensor lamp, a pair of muscular forearms resting against an open folder, shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow. Then the head lifted, and Rachel found herself staring into a pair of weary green eyes.
Rachel blinked, thinking she must be overtired, imagining things. After all these years ... oh dear God, him.
David Sloane. A little older, a fair bit heavier, and still handsome ... but not pleasantly so. There were sags under his eyes, and an unhealthy bloated look to his face. Rather than aging gracefully, naturally, he appeared to be spoiling, like a fallen fruit left to rot.
She went cold for an instant, as if all the blood had been drained from her. Another David flashed across the screen of her memory, a younger one in a white jacket, holding a curette in his trembling hand.
But she quickly wiped away that image. Ancient history, she told herself. Now that they were both in the same field, sooner or later their paths were bound to cross.
Awkward situation, but I’ll just have to make the best of it.
She watched him push out of Townsend’s ancient swivel chair, and rise to greet her. “Well, hello there.” He switched on a smile as bright as a spotlight.
Rachel put out her hand, forced a smile, feeling oddly detached, as if she were standing outside herself, a puppeteer pulling strings, making her mouth move.
“Hello, David. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Last I heard, you were at Presbyterian. There was a rumor they were considering someone from there, but I never dreamed it was you.”
“Last I heard—” he tossed the ball back at her, “you were off in the jungle somewhere playing Dr. Schweitzer. Well, it’s nice to see you made it back in one piece. You look wonderful, Rachel.”
“So do you.”
Not true at all, she thought. He looks awful, like a caricature of his old pretty-boy self. Like Dean Martin on talk shows, [348] baggy-eyed and boozy, but ever the charming playboy. God, how could she ever have thought she was in love with this man?
“I’d invite you to sit down,” he said, “but as you can see ...” He gestured toward the half-filled cardboard cartons by the door. Messy stacks of books and folders were piled on every chair except his own. “I’m in the midst of cleaning house. Harry Townsend was quite a pack rat. Saved everything from matchbooks to twenty-year-old autopsy reports. Ran the department pretty much the same slipshod way. So it looks like I’m going to have my work cut out for me here.”
“Well, St. Bart’s is not exactly Presbyterian. But I’ve been around a while, my clinic is in the neighborhood, so if I can help with anything ...”
Won’t hurt to brown-nose a little. Stay on his good side. He could just as easily make it rough for me here.
“Tell you what,” he said, switching on again that klieg-light grin, “I was just getting ready to cash it in for the night. Why don’t we duck out for a quick drink somewhere? Give us a chance to catch up. Kick around any ideas you might have for airing out this morgue. What do you say?”
No, Rachel thought. The last place I’d want to be is with David in some bar, shooting the breeze.
But then, on the other hand, if she refused ... well, he might take it the wrong way. And the ugly fact was, she could not afford to alienate him. She was not on staff here, only surgical privileges. And privileges could be revoked. Besides, how much could it hurt?
“Love to,” she lied, “but I really will have to make it a quick one. I was expected home an hour ago.”
Already he was reaching for his jacket—suede, very expensive, hip—and hooking it one-fingered over his shoulder, as if he were James Dean. Rachel felt tempted to laugh.
“Home to hubby?” There was a snide edge lurking behind that smile, but she’d already decided to be diplomatic even if it killed her.
She arranged her face into what she hoped was a pleasant expression. “As a matter of fact, yes. And you? Married?”
“Who me? No, not yet. I still like playing it loose. A wife would just get fed up with me. Know what I mean?” He took her arm, guiding her out the door, and she had to struggle with herself to keep from snatching it away. “So, yeah, I guess you could say I [349] lucked out that way. I guess I must prefer hard labor to life imprisonment.” He chuckled a little at his own joke.
Rachel shriveled inside. She saw the light glint off something bright around his neck. A gold chain. Oh God, had she really agreed to have a drink with this creep?
There was something else, too, besides his macho humor, nagging at the back of her mind. Yes, something to do with Presbyterian. Her old friend Celia Kramer, an OB nurse on staff there, had mentioned something about David a while back. Some sort of scandal? But what? Oh well, it would come to her eventually.
She flashed the brightest smile she could muster. “Well, I guess we can’t all be lucky.”
“Just where is this place you’re taking me?” Rachel asked, her stomach tightening as their cab turned down yet another narrow Village street.
She was wishing now she had not let him talk her out of Gordo’s, the bar across the street from St. Bart’s. It was seedy, the TV sometimes got too loud, but she knew a lot of the regulars there.
“A quiet place,” David answered, “where we can talk. I get all the local color I can stomach at St. Bartholomew’s. Don’t worry, we’re almost there.”
Worried? Why should I worry? We’re just two colleagues going out for a drink after work. Sure, we dated once upon a time. And you knocked me up, but ...
The cab was stopping, David paying the driver, getting out. A nice neighborhood, she saw. Trees, a row of old brick houses with freshly painted trim, a nicely dressed couple out wal
king their dog. Houses, but no bars ...
“David ...” She turned back toward the cab, but a pair of transvestites in evening gowns were already climbing into it.
“I wanted to show off my new place,” David explained a little sheepishly. “Just moved in last month. I really scored, even if it is a walk-up. Come on, don’t look like that, it’s only two flights. And it’s quiet, we can talk.”
She felt reluctant, though she couldn’t exactly say why. “Okay, but really I can only stay a few minutes.”
More than an hour later, Rachel sat wedged in a corner of [350] David’s white leather sofa, her drink resting on one knee, forming a damp circle on the blue corduroy of her skirt. Twice she had already told him she had to leave, and each time David had insisted she stay and have just one more drink.
She hadn’t finished even one, but David, she observed, was now on his third tumbler of Scotch.
The way he looked, that glazed expression, and the way he was sitting, sideways on the couch facing her, one leg tucked up on the cushions, an arm hooked over the back, it was all wrong somehow. Yes, he looked ... as if he planned on settling in with her for the evening.
This apartment, all wrong too. Like a sample room in Bloomingdale’s, all done in shades of biscuit and oyster, the furniture all hard right angles, somehow soulless. David probably didn’t even know that etching on the opposite wall was an Icart. Some decorator probably had just picked it out to go with the table underneath.
David was talking about Presbyterian now, and she tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but her mind kept wandering. Brian should be on his way home now, she thought, if he isn’t there already. God, I wish I were home with him.
Now David’s voice was rising, petulant about something. Rachel tensed, her mind tuning in to him.
“... Yeah, sounds weird, but it’s true. My Princeton degree didn’t mean two shits at that place. You come from the wrong side of the tracks, and they don’t want you in their club. It’s all very genteel, they pretend that you can, then they snub you in little ways ... like always calling you by your full first name while they all have nicknames for each other ... and somehow there’s never an extra chair for you at their table in the cafeteria. And then those bastards set me up. I worked the hardest, a perfect record, too. I deserved Chief of OB. I was the best, far and away, no question.”
He was breathing heavily, face flushed. Rachel sensed that he might be on the verge of really losing his cool. She put her drink down on the coffee table, and started to get up.
“I’d love to hear the whole story sometime, David, but I really have to—”
His hand shot out, gripping her wrist like an iron manacle.
“Don’t go yet ... please, you haven’t told me anything about [351] you, what it was like over there in Vietnam. And you haven’t even finished your drink.”
David was trying to turn on the charm again, but it was slipping, like a mask coming loose. For some absurd reason she thought of Lon Chaney, the Phantom of the Opera. And suddenly she didn’t want to see what was underneath, didn’t want to know what was behind those bloodshot eyes, his manic grin.
He’s not letting go of my wrist. He’s not—
She sank down, her legs suddenly weak, rubbery. She rubbed her wrist, which prickled a little. But David couldn’t have meant anything. No, she was only imagining he might be dangerous. She was being silly. She’d come here to talk to him, about St. Bart’s, about Alma Saucedo. And, well, that’s what she’d do.
Then, when he calmed down, then she would get up, go over to the door, walk down the two flights, hail a cab ...
Ten more minutes tops, she promised herself. Then home.
“David, I’d like your advice about a patient of mine.” She began angling herself casually to be in line with the door. Then she gave him a run-down on Alma’s condition. “I don’t like the idea of starting her on Pitocin. The baby’s chances of survival would be less than fifty percent. On the other hand, if I wait ...”
“First day on the job I went over every department in the place.” David seemed to pull himself together. “Pediatrics is a joke, the others not much better. You’re talking fifty percent on the curve. I’d say forty, maybe a whole lot less, if you factor in a substandard Pediatrics ICU, and a sixteen-year-old nullip who’s probably been living off potato chips and Coca-Cola the past eight months.”
“That’s pretty pessimistic. I won’t argue that these are hardly the best circumstances, but Alma’s a bright girl. Straight A’s in school. She’s very aware of what’s going on, she’s been very careful.”
“If she’d been a little more careful, maybe she wouldn’t have gotten pregnant in the first place.”
Rachel felt as if she’d been struck. David was looking straight at her. Glaring at her. Oh God, she had not been imagining. He was out to get her.
She just sat there, paralyzed, watching David drain the two fingers of Scotch left in his glass in one long gulp.
“Examined her myself,” he went on, “couple two-three hours [352] before you popped up out of the blue. She didn’t look like she’d win a prize doing the tango, but I wouldn’t rush into anything if I were you. Give her a day or two before you zap her with Pit.”
So you were the one, she thought. I might have known. Still king of the assholes.
Rachel abruptly rose, bumping her knee on the coffee table. Her drink skittered away, leaving a wet skid mark along the polished blond surface. Pain shot through her leg. Shit. She’d have a bruise. But she didn’t care. Right now, all she wanted was to get out, get away from here.
“Thanks for the drink,” she said. “I really have to run. Listen, don’t get up, I’ll find my way out.”
But he was getting up, moving with clumsy purpose, blocking her exit a few feet from the door. Rachel’s heart began to beat very fast, and her stomach did a slow, sickening cartwheel.
“What’s your big hurry?”
She saw that he was flushed, the veins standing out in his neck, eyes narrowed.
“Seven years, goddamn it, I don’t see you in seven years, and all of a sudden you’re burning rubber to get to the door. I ask you, is that any way to treat an old friend?”
“Look, David, let’s not spoil things. It was great seeing you again, but like I said—”
“You got someone besides hubby waiting for you? A kid or two maybe?”
“No kids.” Even speaking those words hurt. Goddamn it, she didn’t need him of all people to remind her.
“You know, it’s funny, because I always thought you’d make a great mother,” he went on, slouching back against the door. “Take my own mother, for instance. Wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of me and my pop. Not even when he was beating the holy crap out of me. Now that’s togetherness for you. My old man and I, we were just like that.” He held up two fingers, pressed together. His hand, she saw, was trembling. “But I don’t hold it against him, and you know why? ’Cause she was the one. Selfish bitch. Nothing ever good enough for her, Always wanting things her way. She drove him to it. She just popped the fucking clutch and drove him right into that six-pack every night. And if little Davey happened to be in the way, well, that was just too damn bad.”
[353] “David, stop it.” She was scared now, her stomach in a tight knot. He didn’t even sound like himself anymore. Older, coarser ... the voice of a bitter man in janitor’s overalls, not the David she’d known, the charismatic young resident in a crisp white coat.
“Hey ... I’m just getting started. You know, seven years is a long time. A lot of thoughts come to a man in seven years. Like I never realized before how much you remind me of my old lady.”
His eyes, hard and fiery, fixed on her. Rachel felt a chill dart up her spine.
“David, you’re getting yourself all worked up. Look, why don’t you just try and relax, sleep it off. We’ll talk in the morning.”
She took a tentative step backwards, toward the door.
He shot forward,
grabbing her by the shoulders, roughly, fingers gouging. A scream stuck somewhere below her Adam’s apple, but she couldn’t get it out. She couldn’t move. She was frozen, as if in a nightmare.
His face inches from hers, the booze stink of his breath enveloping her like some noxious mist, now she was seeing what was under the mask. She was dealing with a madman.
“No!” he roared. “We’ll talk now. Now!”
“You’re crazy,” she said.
She struggled to free herself, but he swung her around, slamming her against the wall, pinning her there. She heard something slither past her ear, crash into her. A Roman candle exploded inside her head. A fountain of red sparks. She tasted blood. She’d bit herself. She felt like the time she’d fallen off her bicycle speeding down a hill when she was eight, numb, disoriented, even a little foolish. This couldn’t be happening to her. This couldn’t—
David brought his mouth down hard against hers.
Oh dear God, no ... NO ...
She felt his tongue, rough as sandpaper, thrusting into her mouth. Hurting her. She tasted blood. God ... oh God ...
“Feels good, doesn’t it, babe?” he panted. “Yeah, oh yeah, I remember when you used to scream for it. You want it now, don’t you? You want me to fuck you now just like the old days, make you scream. Isn’t that why you came here?”
She felt a hot rush of adrenaline spiraling through her. Now she was angry. She wanted to kill him.
“You bastard!” she screamed, lashing out with both fists, wildly, [354] blindly. She connected in a solid, bone-thumping hit that sent a jarring bolt through her arm. Good ... oh good.
He brought his forearms up, shielding his face to ward off her blows. And she saw, horrified, that his teeth were all bloody, and there was blood drooling out of the corner of his mouth. ...
She bolted for the door, scrabbled wildly for the doorknob. She felt as if she were struggling to move underwater, the air heavy, her limbs like lead.
I’m never going to make it. I’m never going to get out of here.
Then she found the latch below the doorknob, turned it, heard it click. The door was opening now. Thank God. Oh, thank—
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