by Kay Hadashi
Josh was on the couch in the living room watching TV, with all the lights on. Melanie went around the room turning most of them off.
“Feeling frisky?” he asked when she settled on the couch next to him.
“Saving money on the light bill.”
“Oh, so you’re not feeling in the mood?”
“I can barely move, Josh. What could you possibly expect?”
“I remember last time we made it work.”
“Because we were trying to induce. We’d heard some old wives’ tale about nookie bringing on labor. But right now, I’m trying to hold off one more week, then I’m letting my OB induce, and that’s after I’ve been admitted to the hospital and have my epidural put in, not a moment sooner.”
“Not that you’re an old wife, but that trick didn’t work last time, right?”
“No, nookie didn’t work. Neither did eating raw tomatoes with a spoon, going for a counter-clockwise walk on a moonlit night, pretending to sneeze while pinching my nose closed, or any of the dozen crackpot ideas we tried. It took a hurricane to get Tay out of me.”
“See? That means we’re okay if we fool around a little.”
“You’re serious?” she asked.
“No reason to get rusty.”
“Okay, buddy, you’re on.” She tried sitting up but couldn’t. “Just help me into the bedroom and I’ll make all your dreams come true.”
Just as he was getting her upright, a news item came on.
“Hey, they showed this a little while ago. It’s about what your county council meeting was about tonight, right? People stealing Hawaiian artifacts?”
Melanie turned up the volume while Josh took his glass to the kitchen. The report was on the local Maui news channel, one not always reliable when sourcing their news stories. She listened carefully anyway.
“The Maui Police Department is barely able to keep up with the spate of recent thefts from local cultural institutions. While Hawaii’s heritage is stolen and sold on the black market for pennies, the police and City Hall stand by doing nothing,” said the newscaster, Jenna Harkins.
“What?” Melanie said back to the screen as though it was two-way. “Police and City Hall had a strategy meeting about it this evening, you…”
“Hey, not so loud,” Josh said. He used the remote to flick off the TV. Tossing that down, he took Melanie’s hands and helped her up.
“What does she mean by that? The oldest theft is just three days old. We’re already setting up a task force. We have help coming from Honolulu, an expert in the theft of museum artifacts.”
Josh led her down the hall to their bedroom by the hand. “Yes, I know, but let’s not wake the kid over it.”
***
Melanie’s heart wasn’t into what Josh had on his mind. Once he was asleep, she got up again. Trying to keep her bathrobe around her, she went to the laptop computer on the small desk and logged onto the internet.
“What was that site name again? ArtifactsEmpire dot com, something like that.”
She waited for the results to come up, learning it was a new site dedicated to marketing ‘items of historical significance’. Typing in a few search terms, the kahili came up.
New! Red feathers, wooden handle, authentic, Maui region. Bidding now open to all collectors.
“Yeah, that must be it,” she mumbled. She looked at the numerous bids, which were anywhere from ten dollars to five thousand. “Ten dollars? This is a piece of Maui’s history, Mister Relic Collector, or whatever your real name might be. Spend your ten dollars on a bottle opener made in the Philippines.”
It took only five minutes to open an auction bidder’s account at their site. Going back to the sacred kahili that had been stolen from the local Maui museum, she made a bid offer that she hoped wouldn’t be refused. Wondering how long it would take before learning if her bid was accepted, she looked for the other items that had been stolen, the matching shark tooth clubs and the spear. The bids were fewer and much lower for those items than for the kahili standard. Doubling what had already been bid, she went back to check on the feather kahili.
It had a large red SOLD! sign across it. She hoped it was her bid that had got the attention of whoever the seller was.
“Now they have to ship it to me, but I don’t want it to come here. And if I’m lucky, I might even be able to figure out who the seller is, or at least where they are.” Checking on the other items, they were still available, with more bids coming in, creeping closer to hers, something of a bidding war starting. She got a pop-up request to fill out her personal background and shipping details. “I need to have this stuff shipped someplace secure. Maybe Auntie’s house?”
She started to type in her cousin’s address in Orange County but stopped.
“No, better idea.”
She typed in an address that had been her personal address for two years when she was a kid, and still had some pull there now, at her father’s old hacienda, what had been known as the Casa Blanca. Now, it was his Presidential Library, and just putting down the street address, the shipper wouldn’t know that.
“Hopefully, they won’t do a reverse address look-up to try and figure out who the property owner is. But the buyer is going to be Aiko Murata.” She finished typing, paid with her PayPal account, and waited for acceptance. She requested and paid for express delivery and insurance. It took barely ten minutes for the entire transaction to complete, with expected arrival date only three days later. “Look at that. I’m a trafficker in priceless relics stolen from a museum.”
Chapter Five
On Friday morning, when Melanie was done in her clinic, she had just enough time to make rounds before her OB appointment. Finding Harmon, they made rounds together.
“A week from today, right?” he asked as they went down a corridor.
Melanie checked her watch. “A week from right about now. I’m scheduled for noon on Friday.”
“How are you feeling about it?”
“You know, for the most part, I enjoy being pregnant. Except for the morning sickness that goes on forever, and all these symptoms toward the end. I don’t remember it being so bad with Thérèse.”
“Trinh said you were retaining a lot more water than usual. I have to agree with her,” Harmon said.
Instead of going into the ICU, she took him to the family waiting area, which happened to be empty right then.
“Harm, Trinh’s concerned that you might fool around behind her back again.”
“Nothing like cutting to the chase.”
“Are you? Because she’s seriously thinking of cancelling the wedding altogether.”
“And how is this your business?”
“She’s my best friend. You better believe her welfare and happiness is my business. You have to admit, your track record isn’t so good.”
“That happened several years ago, and barely anything happened.”
“The barely part isn’t as important as the happened part, Harm.”
“Is there anything I can say or do that will convince the two of you that I’m serious about her? Other than giving up my life in San Francisco and moving here to be with her?”
“Well, you need to let her know in no uncertain terms that it won’t happen again.” Having got that out of her system, Melanie turned on her toe to resume rounds but stopped when she saw the local daily newspaper on an end table. Picking it up, the headline told the story:
Local Museum Artifacts Sold for Profit
“Really? How can they say something like that?”
“Like what?” Harmon asked, looking over her shoulder.
“Oh, we had a county council emergency session last night about the thefts of historical artifacts from the museum and library. The TV news reported something just like this, implying there’s some sort of conspiracy by the county to sell off things to make money.” She tossed down the newspaper. “Just bad investigative reporting.”
Once they were done making rounds and Melanie handed over th
e reins to her practice to Harmon and Dr. Wellman, she went to her obstetrician’s office a few minutes early. Being in her early forties, she was the oldest woman in the waiting room, almost twice as old as a couple of them. One of the gals was full-term, as big as Melanie, while others were at various stages in their pregnancies. She watched as one young woman came out from the exam area and another was led in.
“You’re due pretty soon?” the over sized Filipina said.
“Next Friday.”
“I’m on Thursday. I can’t wait.”
“I know what you mean,” one of the others said. She was barely in her second trimester. “I hate being pregnant. Everything is swollen, my clothes don’t fit right, and my boyfriend doesn’t come near me anymore. I can’t wait to get this over with.”
“I kinda like it,” the Filipina said. “Never felt so much like this before.”
“Like what?” the grumpy one asked.
“A woman.”
Finally, it was Melanie’s turn. Needing help to get up onto the exam bench after changing into the peek-a-boo gown, she kept the paper sheet pulled up to her chin, waiting.
Five minutes later, Dr. Chapman came in. “Melanie, how in the world did you gain eighteen pounds since your last visit?”
“Eating a lot, no exercise, and I think some of it might be water.”
Dr. Chapman threw back the sheet to look at Melanie’s legs. “You’ve got water weight all the way to your knees.”
“I’ve been wearing Josh’s sneakers lately. None of my shoes fit anymore.”
Chapman listened to Melanie’s chest for a moment before doing the gynecologic exam. “What’s all that business I keep seeing on the news about the museum being broken into and the police don’t care?”
“Maybe it’s time for me to hold a press conference about it. They do care. They have a dedicated team working on it, doing a complete and thorough investigation. It’s that…ugh.”
“What?” Dr. Chapman asked.
“That Jenna Harkins. She’s been dogging me ever since I took office. She is such a little…”
“Okay, well, your pregnancy is perfect. We’re still scheduled for next Friday.”
“You make it sound like there’s a but,” Melanie said.
“But your legs are water balloons and your lungs sound like Niagara Falls. You’re a cardiothoracic surgeon. You didn’t notice anything?”
Melanie blushed. “I’ve been figuring it would all drain off after I delivered.”
“Well, I’m not waiting. You need a diuretic, and today.”
Melanie sighed. “Looks like I’m spending the afternoon walking back and forth from the living room couch to the bathroom.”
“No, I’m sending you to the outpatient treatment center. You’re getting IV Lasix, a catheter, and I want the nurses to monitor your vitals and fetal heart tones for the rest of the afternoon.”
“What? No, I can take the pills at home.”
“Melanie, you’re very close to being admitted to maternity, at least for the night.”
“I’m that bad?”
“Your blood pressure is almost twice normal, your heart rate is skyrocketing, and I’m a little concerned that if too much water drains off your circulatory system too fast, you’ll go into shock. I might be an obstetrician, but I still remember a thing or two about cardiodynamic shock. No, you need to be monitored. Now, do you want to spend the afternoon in outpatient, or stay overnight in maternity?”
“Nice trick, Petra. I’ll have to remember it for my stubborn patients.”
Dr. Chapman had one of the nurses bring a wheelchair. “I thought you’d see it my way.”
“I had plans for this afternoon,” Melanie complained, settling down into the chair for the ride out of the department.
“This is why I wanted you to take the last month off, but you took only a week. If you weren’t ordinarily so athletic, you’d probably be in crisis right now. Those long days of standing in surgery didn’t help you any.”
The browbeating continued until they got to the outpatient treatment center of the hospital. She was helped up onto an extra-wide stretcher, Chapman supervising the positioning, applying a fetal heart tone monitor belt around her waist, and writing orders. She gave Melanie one last warning to behave herself, with an ‘or else’ tone to it.
“Your monitor is hooked up to telemetry, so I’ll be able to monitor you from my office. If I see any signs of fetal distress, or if you start getting shocky, I’m inducing you today.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Don’t give me that ma’am nonsense. If we were still in the service, you’d outrank me by now. You want me to call Josh?” Chapman asked before leaving.
Melanie got her phone from the nurse that was stowing her clothes. “He’s not expecting to pick me up for a couple more hours. I’ll call once everything here is settled.”
The usual vital sign monitors were applied--blood pressure cuff, EKG leads, oxygen sensor on her finger--before the IV was started. She scanned the monitor readings, now seeing how out of whack her body really was.
“Okay, here comes the Lasix,” the nurse said. “It won’t take long for this to take effect.”
“How far is the bathroom?”
“You won’t have to worry about that. Doctor Chapman ordered a catheter for you.”
For the second time in an hour, Melanie’s cheeks flashed red. It was hard enough for her to be examined by a doctor she’d known for years, but having a stranger doing a personal procedure was almost too much.
“Okay, did you survive?” the nurse asked once the job was done. She hung the collection bag on the side of the stretcher.
“Barely.”
The nurse began jotting notes in the chart. “Wow, the Lasix is already working.”
Feeling a little demoralized by not having more control over what was happening, Melanie made a call. “Lai? I have to cancel my appointment again.”
“You okay? You sound down. Where are you?”
“I’m still at work. I just need to get some rest. I’ll be there in a couple of days.”
Melanie called Josh next, a call she really didn’t want to make.
“Why are you in the treatment center?” he asked after she explained twice what was going on.
She used a corner of the blanket to blot her eyes. “Can you just bring Tay in for a few minutes. You’ll figure it out when you get here, okay?”
“We’re at the pediatrician’s office. I think we’re next.”
“You got her in that quick?”
“Toss around the Kato name and they push you to the front of the line,” he said.
“I wish you wouldn’t have done that. She’s not that sick. You should’ve made an appointment for her.” While she’d been talking, her monitor lines and IV tubing had gotten tangled in her arms. “Look, things are a mess here right now. Just come in when you can.”
While she waited, she got the newspaper from the nurse, still curious about the headlines she’d seen earlier. There wasn’t much in the lead article, nothing more than what she’d been told the evening before by the detective. What caught her eye was another article at the bottom of page three, a filler item about a drowning. Only two paragraphs long, it was about the man who had been found the morning before, and the author of the article guessed it was a shark attack.
“Shark? He was run down by a boat while out surfing. Where do these journalists get their news? If they are serious about wanting to know what’s going on, why don’t they just come to county council meetings?”
An hour later, Josh and Thérèse came into the outpatient center, the girl leading the way. Once she spotted her mother, she made a beeline straight for her.
“Momma, you getting a nap?” she said, while climbing up onto the stretcher. She needed a push from her father.
“Getting some rest, anyway. What’re you and daddy doing?”
“We came here to see you!”
“And I’m glad you did. I see
you brought Mister Chowder with you.”
“Mister Crumpet. Momma, what’s all this stuff?” Thérèse asked, examining the IV in Melanie’s wrist.
“Oh, just some important things I have to wear for the rest of the day.”
“Yeah, what’s going on? You said something about Lasix? Isn’t that for racehorses?” Josh asked.
“It has a few other uses, too. For me, I’ve collected so much water in my tissues and it’s interfering with my circulation and breathing, so they’re draining off the excess. Probably from working a little too much, standing too long in the OR, and too much salty food lately.”
“But you’re always so healthy. You’re vegetarian and you were an athlete. You still swim and surf whenever you get the chance. Now I have to worry about you having a heart attack?”
“Not having a heart attack. The thing is, pregnancy does things to a woman’s body. Nature wants us to sit down and take life easy for a few months, but with my schedule, I don’t always get enough rest or eat right. Sorry, buddy. I’m not the Wonder Woman you thought you married. But a few hours of rest and some meds to drain off the excess fluid and I’ll be back to normal. Whatever normal is at nine months pregnant.”
“I don’t understand. Where does all that fluid drain to?”
“Hello? You have a science PhD, and have been married to a doctor for five years and you don’t know how Lasix works?”
“PhD in birds, not medicine.”
“It works in the kidneys, making them draw the extra fluid out of the blood. That fluid goes to the bladder, which turns into urine. After a while, my vital signs will reflect that loss in volume, which will make my heart pump more efficiently. Also, my lungs will be dryer, making it easier for me to breathe. The fetal monitor is there just as a precaution, or maybe to bill me for something extra. I’m never quite sure with gynecologists.”
“How do you go to the bathroom with all this stuff on you?” he asked. Thérèse was cuddled up next to Melanie, playing with her dinosaur.
“That’s being taken care of.”
“I don’t understand.”