Secrets at the Beach House

by Diane Chamberlain

  Orrin was younger than Cole had expected. Early thirties, he guessed, with jet-black hair that was silky and straight and gray eyes that matched Kit’s except for his thick black lashes.

  Orrin read the complaint. Cole ached when he pictured Peggy and John Carselli sitting with their lawyer, struggling to put the words on paper that might save their baby.

  He shook his head sadly. “They should be able to have the help they need.”

  Davies looked annoyed. “They can have it. In Boston.”

  He thought he’d better say no more.

  “You understand that they’re not after money.” Orrin looked at Cole. “What they want is an injunction ordering you to perform the surgery.”

  “How can a court order me to perform surgery?” Cole asked.

  “Under usual circumstances, they can’t. But there have been a few cases recently involving the rights of the fetus that have turned the entire legal process upside down.”

  “It’s impossible for him to perform that surgery,” said Davies. “We’re not set up for anything like that yet.”

  “That’s the kind of information I need to be able to put together an answer to this complaint.”

  Davies turned to Kit. “This absolutely must stay out of the press, young lady.”

  Kit’s expression held the proper blend of apology and pain. “Unfortunately it’s not within our control, Dr. Davies. Their lawyer can make certain it gets splashed throughout the media if he’s clever enough. What we need to do is prepare a rebuttal—a defense that doesn’t sound defensive—in case it comes to that.”

  Cole knew that she’d been calling people and reading articles most of the night to learn the angles of this suit. He was glad she was there.

  “You’re right.” Orrin smiled at Kit. He’d had his eye on her since he walked in the door. “But for now, let’s look at how we can answer this complaint. They didn’t specify the exact skills Dr. Perelle possesses that would be necessary to perform surgery on a hydrocephalic fetus, so we can respond in just as general terms that you don’t have them.”

  “But I do have them,” said Cole. “Wouldn’t it be more ethical to say that they haven’t been specific enough to answer?”

  Kit kicked him under the table and he looked at her.

  “It just seems as though we’re trying to find new ways of twisting words to our own advantage when the health of this fetus is at stake. What should be happening is that someone should be counseling them on how they can actually get some help instead of letting them beat a dead horse.”

  Orrin leaned back in his chair with a sigh and a smile. “Dr. Perelle, they’re not asking for guidance. They’re asking for the court to order you to perform surgery you are not authorized to perform. And that is what we need to address. The problem as they define it. And we have exactly thirty days to get our answer to them.”

  “Thirty days? That’ll make her”—he figured quickly in his head—“nearly twenty-six weeks. That doesn’t leave much time for them to play with. The surgery can’t wait much longer than that.”

  “That definitely works to our advantage, doesn’t it?” said Orrin.

  Cole leaned on the table. “I can’t go along with this,” he said.

  “Cole, you discussed the options with them.” Kit spoke quietly, and he guessed she was trying to keep him calm in front of Davies. “It’s their choice to proceed with this. They know the risk they’re taking. It’s out of your hands.”

  Davies coughed. “You’d better worry about your own skin, Perelle. This is no time for the bleeding heart routine.”

  Kit slipped a sheet of paper in front of him. Across the top she’d written, You’re absolutely right, but incredibly naive.

  He leaned back with a sigh. “Okay,” he said, ‘let’s get on with it.”

  “Bonnie?” He tested the name on the young girl in the bed, and she nodded. Either she was very polite or he’d hit the right one.

  He should have checked the chart. The names of these women were beginning to congeal in his head. Six deliveries in the past twenty-four hours. The annual September baby boom, and he was practically doing it alone. Kevin would be good in time, but he wasn’t ready to carry his share of the load yet.

  “Remember I told you if your pressure didn’t come down I’d have to do a c-section?”

  She nodded again. Her eyes were tiny black stones in her bloated face.

  “Well, it hasn’t responded to treatment at all. I wanted to let you know that I’ll be doing your c-section in about a half-hour and—”

  “No!” she wailed. “It’s too soon! My baby will die!”

  “Shh.” He took her hand. He was struck by how pulpy it felt in his own. “Your baby has a much better chance if we deliver him or her now.” And so do you, he thought. He stood up. “I’ll see you in a few minutes, okay?”

  She was sniffling, watching him with those button eyes. She needed something more.

  He sat down again. “Are you afraid of the c-section?”

  She shook her head. “No. I know what it’ll be like. You told me a hundred times, even though I never thought it would really happen. It’s just . . . my baby is too little.”

  “A special pediatrician will be right there. I’m going to call her as soon as I leave your room. Your baby has a good chance, Bonnie.”

  The second labor room was in a shambles. He had to duck when he walked in because Marion—was that her name?—threw her water glass at him.

  “This Demerol ain’t doin’ shit!” she screamed.

  He’d never seen her before today. Heroin addicts were notorious for avoiding doctors during their pregnancies. In a few hours she’d deliver a baby who would shake like a derelict with DTs, sucking the skin off its fingers and spitting up every feeding.

  “I need a fucking epidural!”

  He examined her and shook his head. “It’s too soon. It’ll slow you down.”

  She glared at him across the bed. “What’s your name?” she snapped. “Cole?”

  “Dr. Perelle.”

  “Well, Dr. Perelle, I’ve had babies before. I know what I need!” She cried out with a contraction, her bravado gone. She grabbed the sheet with clenched fists, and the veins on her arms stood out, stippled with track marks. She ended the contraction with a sob. “You just want to watch me suffer, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t. Not at all.” He moved toward the door. “I’ll see what I can do about switching you to something a little stronger.”

  He walked to his office after delivering Bonnie’s three-pound baby boy. She’d done very well, with no complications, but still he was running late. He was supposed to meet Estelle in the Research Department in five minutes to take her to lunch. He’d promised her Pierre’s, and maybe an hour or so in the hotel next door to the restaurant. Now he didn’t even have time for McDonald’s. He’d better tell her in person rather than use the phone. Let her see how harried he looked.

  He stopped at the reception desk in the Research Department.

  “Could you buzz Estelle’s office,” he asked the clerk.

  She grinned at him. “Oh, I think Estelle may be in the process of getting unemployed, Dr. Perelle.”

  “What?”

  The young woman laughed, tossed her head. “She’s in with Miss Hampton.” She nodded toward the director’s office. “Can I give her a message?”

  The women in the circular reception area were staring at him, he was certain of it. Not the way women usually looked at him, either. This group was smirking.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. He knew this receptionist. One of those women who gave all women a bad name.

  “I think it’s confidential,” she said. “But you could probably find out if you go down to the Emergency Room.”

  He didn’t have time for this. He turned on his heel and walked to the elevator.

  He walked casually into the ER, carrying a chart he could pretend to be working on while he tried to figure out what was going on. He
didn’t have to wait long. Rick, one of the Emergency Room nurses, nudged him from behind.

  “Your girlfriend’s a real animal, isn’t she?” He grinned.

  He didn’t know whether to return the grin or not. He wished he knew the rules for the game he was playing. “How is it going down here?” he asked.

  “I guess they’re sending Vicki home. She’s in there.” Rick nodded toward one of the treatment rooms.

  Vicki? Who the hell was Vicki? “How is she? Vicki?” he asked.

  Rick grinned again. “I didn’t think it was possible to lift a chunk of flesh out of somebody’s arm with a pencil. But there was lead in the wound so I guess it’s the truth. You didn’t see Vicki’s arm?”

  He shook his head, his stomach churning.

  The door to the treatment room opened, and a woman he recognized as one of the secretaries for the Research Department walked out, her forearm bandaged, her face red. She stopped when she saw him.

  “You should lock her up,” was all she said.

  He took the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator. He felt the eyes of the clerks on him as he walked toward Estelle’s door. Heads poked out of the other offices. Everyone knew what was going on except him. But he was beginning to figure it out.

  “Dr. Perelle?”

  He turned around. Agnes Hampton walked toward him. Dressed in black, as usual. He couldn’t remember ever seeing her in any other color. She had the sharp nose of a witch, and her long salt and pepper hair was pulled back in a bun. She looked as though she spent her nights with a statistics book.

  She locked her bony hand around his arm and pulled him aside. “I hope you can get her some help. It should be quite obvious after this that she needs it. Her temper is simply out of hand.”

  “I’m not her parent, Miss Hampton.”

  She ignored the remark. “You know, I’m sure that the Research Department would be at a loss without her. Perhaps it was an accident, so I’m giving her a second chance. But there’ll be no third chance, I can tell you that.” She let go of his arm. “Frankly,” she continued, “administration would have my head if I fired her. But something is radically wrong with her thinking.”

  “I’ll speak with her,” he said, wanting to get away from Agnes. She smelled like flowers at a funeral.

  Estelle was waiting for him just inside the door of her office.

  “Take me home, please?”

  He shut the door before he spoke. “What the hell is going on?”

  “They’re making a big deal out of nothing.” She sat down at her desk. She was wearing the beige silk dress he’d bought her in Paris and thick gold chains around her throat and wrists.

  “You stabbed the secretary with a pencil?” It sounded so bizarre that he laughed.

  “Vicki’s been telling me you had an affair while I was in France.”

  “That’s not true,” he said quickly.

  “I didn’t believe her at first, but she kept rubbing it in. She said it was some nurse on the eighth floor. She said that’s why you wanted to stay at the Chapel House, so you’d have some freedom to see this other woman.”

  “That’s bullshit.” He felt abused by rumors, touched in private places by strangers he had no control over. Yet he couldn’t help but wonder who this nurse was he’d been linked to.

  “Deep down I know it’s bullshit,” she said, touching his arm. The gold chains whispered against each other at her wrist. “But when I hear it over and over again, I go berserk.”

  “Tell me the truth, did you stab Vicki?”

  “It all happened so quickly. I wanted to hurt her, and my words didn’t feel like enough. But I didn’t actually stab her. Her arm and my pencil were just at the same point in space and time.”

  He looked at her quietly for a long time before he spoke. “Agnes Hampton’s an old prune, I’ll grant you that, but she suggested you see someone and I think it would be a good idea.”

  She looked insulted. “Why?”

  “Well, today’s fiasco aside, a few weeks ago you told me you were feeling desperate. I’m still not certain what you meant, but—”

  “Cole, I was in a peculiar mood that day. It was nothing.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you that you can’t get along with other women?”

  “I don’t need women.” She smiled at him. “All I need is you.” She leaned across the corner of her desk to kiss him, and he felt the weight of her breast on his arm. How long had it been since they’d made love in one of their offices? Two years? Three?

  He stood up. “I have to get back to the unit.”

  “What about Pierre’s?”

  He shook his head. “Not today. I’m swamped.”

  “You haven’t slept in two days.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “And now you had to get dragged into this. I’m sorry, darling.” She stood up and touched his cheek. Her fingers were cool and dry.

  It was March, early spring, and Paris still had a chill to it. Their breath turned to smoke as they walked across the piazza in front of the Pompidou after the Matisse exhibit. He had to admit his feelings about that building had changed, although he still found the architecture ugly. He turned to look back at it. Hideous, with its garish colors and exposed pipes. It reminded him of a baby he’d delivered once, with her bowels outside her abdomen.

  But inside it was paradise. He’d jumped at the chance to rent a tiny restored house close to the Pompidou, despite the cobblestone street that was taking a toll on the Renault. He and Estelle spent most of their free time inside that museum, taking advantage of all it had to offer.

  Estelle had no problem at all with the building. She loved it, inside and out. But on this evening in March she had something else on her mind.

  “It’s extraordinary, Cole. Wait till you see it.” She put her arm through his as they walked down one narrow street and into another. The dark river smell mingled with the aroma of baking bread, and they passed people walking home from work, baguettes clutched under their arms.

  She’d found a gallery the night before, while he was still at the hospital. And in it, she’d found the perfect painting for the living room of her condo. She’d kept him awake much of the night talking about it. Yet from her description, he couldn’t get an image of it in his mind.

  “It’s pale,” she’d said, eyes aglow. “It’s incredibly pale.”

  Now she steered him toward a doorway, then up a flight of crooked stairs, the walls close to their shoulders on both sides.

  “How did you ever find this place?” he asked.

  “Fate,” she said.

  The stairs sprang open into a large room, its wall covered with paintings, all of which Cole could have described as “pale”.

  “Can you guess which one?” Estelle asked.

  “Uh . . .” He laughed, looking from one nearly identical painting to the next. “No.”

  “Cole.” She pointed to a huge white square on the far wall. “That one. Won’t it look perfect above my lilac settee?”

  He smiled. “I guess.” He walked over to the painting. Once close enough he could see ice-blue brushstrokes in the lower third.

  Estelle stood back to look at it, framing it with her hands. “A lake,” she said. “Newly frozen. Dusted with snow. Do you see it, darling?”

  “I thought you liked the Matisse,” he said. “I thought you liked the colors.”

  “I love Matisse. But I need something pale for the condo.”

  A young woman appeared from a side door. She spoke to them in French. “Bonjour, Mademoiselle Lauren, you’ve come to take another look at the painting?”

  “I’ve brought my friend to see it.”

  Cole reached out his hand. “Bonjour, Madame. Je m’appelle Cole Perelle.”

  “Oh, English, please. I want to practice.” She shook his hand. “My name is Nicole Eduard.”

  “You don’t sound as though you need any practice,” he said. She had blond hair, shorter than his own, and a smile
far warmer than the paintings in her gallery.

  “I’d like to buy it,” said Estelle. She reached into her purse for her checkbook.

  “How much is it?” he asked Nicole.

  “Twelve thousand francs.”

  He wondered if she’d made a mistake in translation. “Douze mille francs?” he asked.

  Estelle gave him a warning look. “Twelve thousand, darling.” She leaned against the desk to write her check.

  “Do you work at the University Hospital, too, Dr. Perelle?” Nicole seemed anxious to use her English.

  “Yes. I’m doing some research on . . .” That would get too complicated. “I’m an obstetrician. Accoucheur.”

  She pumped him for information on his work, where he lived in the States, his family.

  “I’d like to pay for this now.” Estelle drummed the desk impatiently.

  Nicole reached for the check.

  “Are you a student?” he asked her.

  She nodded. “Music. The flute. I play in a cafe on the weekends.”

  “Really?” he asked. It would be fun to hear her. “Where?”

  She drew him by the arm to the window and began giving him directions. He heard Estelle strike a match behind him and turned to see her light a cigarette. She’d started smoking again since they’d been in Paris, although usually only when they were apart because he complained so much about the smell and the taste. It surprised him to see her lighting up here in this gallery. He turned back to Nicole.

  “The Refuge,” she said. “Do you know it?”

  Estelle had stepped next to them. “I’ve seen it,” she said. “A grimy little joint.”

  He looked sharply at Estelle, but Nicole seemed to have no idea she was being insulted.

  “And if you want an excellent dinner,” she continued, “there is—ouch!” She lifted her hand to her lips and looked at Estelle.

  Estelle wore a look of horror and remorse. “Oh, I burned you!” She dusted at the back of Nicole’s hands. “I’m sorry.”

  He lifted Nicole’s hand and looked at the fresh round burn, then at Estelle.