“You should pick the most serious audience, so it doesn’t seem exploitative. You know what would be great? If you could have a patient do it with you.”
“Maybe,” he said, thinking of who might be willing. He wasn’t at all averse to sharing the spotlight—or the butterflies.
Her face was suddenly serious. “Will you have some time to talk tonight?” she said. “About a topic we’ve been avoiding?”
“What’s that?” He was certain she meant Estelle. He’d thought of Estelle only twice in the last few months—when he received her card in the hospital and before that on the drive back from Watchung with the ring. In his mind that ring had always belonged to Estelle. And she’d known it was waiting for her. Once she’d asked him if she could have the diamonds reset in gold so it would match the rest of her jewelry. He’d laughed, thinking she was joking. Looking back, he wasn’t so sure.
But the moment Kit slipped the ring on her finger, he knew that was where it belonged. He watched it now as she unpinned the hospital ID from her lapel. “I want to sign the consent form to have my tubes tied.”
“Oh.” He was relieved. “You’re sure you want to?”
She picked up his coffee cup and rolled it between her palms. “Yes.” Her voice pleaded with him to understand. “I just couldn’t go through it again, Cole.”
“I’d never ask you to.”
“But I’m afraid you want children.”
He shrugged. “Estelle didn’t want kids and I got used to the idea of never having any. As a matter of fact, I should have a vasectomy rather than you—”
“No.” She looked upset. “What if we split up and you met someone who wanted children?”
“We’re not going to split up.” He didn’t like her to talk that way.
“What if I died?”
He took her hand, had to pry it away from the mug. “My desire for a child just isn’t that strong.” He wondered as he spoke if he was telling the truth.
“If I wanted children, you’d go along with having some, wouldn’t you?”
He thought carefully. Yes, of course he would. Babies that looked like Alison. Little girls like Wendy and Becky. His to tuck in at night and read stories to when he came home from work.
But how to answer her? She was trying to trap him. Make him admit he wanted a child so she could torment herself with guilt over not wanting to be a mother. It was one of her favorite pastimes.
He stood up, put his hands on her shoulders. “Listen, I’ll answer your question honestly. But first you have to tell me if you’re firm in your decision.”
“Completely.”
“Even if I said I was desperate for a child, you would still have a tubal?”
“Yes, but I’d feel terrible about it.”
He smiled at the warning in her voice. Please don’t make me feel terrible. She was so easy to read. Sometimes it amazed him that she had the political savvy she needed to do her job.
“The important thing to me is that I’m with you. I could enjoy being a father, but it’s not something that I need.”
She stood up and leaned against him, and he circled her with his arms.
“This is the world’s softest, sexiest suit,” he said.
“You’re changing the subject.”
“I thought we were through with that subject.”
She set her head on his shoulder. “Maybe we could make Wendy and Becky more a part of our lives,” she said. “They could spend weekends with us sometimes. It would give Corinne some time for herself.”
He was touched. “I’d like that.”
After she left he picked up his file on the patient in labor. He opened it but didn’t read a word inside. He was remembering the day the twins were born. He’d only been with Estelle a few months then. She wouldn’t go to the hospital with him to see Corinne. Didn’t want to see babies. The word alone made her blanch. “How can women do that to their bodies?” she’d said. He’d thought then that he could change her thinking. He would have to. Back then he couldn’t imagine his life without children. He remembered holding those babies, one in each arm. He loved the way they’d looked up at him even then as though he were someone special.
If only he’d held Alison. If only Alison had lived. Damn it.
He closed the file and stood up, felt in his pocket for his car keys. You are going to spend the rest of your life delivering babies without ever holding one of your own. He switched off his office light, and the darkness overwhelmed him. He hurried through the dark waiting room and breathed a sigh of relief when he reached the bright corridor of the Maternity Unit. He pushed open the double doors and stepped into the fresh air.
Then he smiled, catching on. Kit was not so easy to read after all. This had been her plan, the reason she’d pushed him. She wanted it to really sink in so he’d do his grieving now and not hold it against her later.
So he would have no children. No orthodontia bills, no bickering in the backseat of the car. No interruptions in the middle of the night. Except when Kit wanted to make love and couldn’t wait until morning to have him.
He sat on top of the big desk in the library and motioned Rennie into one of the leather chairs. He’d been looking forward to this moment all day. He’d asked Janni to let him be the one to tell her. Rennie knew something was up. She wore an expectant look on her face.
“The paperwork’s completed, Rennie,” he said. “You’re staying here.”
Her expression didn’t change. “Staying here? In the Chapel House?”
He nodded.
“I won’t have to go to some other foster family?”
“No.” He could almost see the cloud that had been hovering over her head disappear. But then she surprised him.
“What makes you think I want to stay here?”
“What?”
“I’m joking.” She grinned.
“Oh.” He smiled. “Well, I’m glad this is finally settled. I couldn’t stand the thought of you moving out, living with people you don’t know or don’t feel safe with.”
“I wasn’t going to. I was going to kill myself first.” She said it so matter-of-factly that he laughed.
“You’re joking again?”
“No. I hadn’t figured out how to do it yet, but I wasn’t going to go to another foster home, or worse than that, back to my mother and Craig.”
He felt his smile go flat. She was serious. “Rennie.”
“It’s okay now,” she said quickly. “I get to stay here and that’s really all I wanted.”
He leaned toward her. “If you ever, ever, feel that way again, you tell me. Understand?” He heard his voice rising. They could probably hear him in the living room. “How do you think we’d feel if you killed yourself, huh?”
She stood up. “Don’t yell at me!”
He looked at her in surprise.
“All my life I’ve been yelled at for things I didn’t do until I’m so confused I can’t figure out whether I actually did something wrong or not. But I know I didn’t do anything so terrible right now for you to be yelling at me.”
She was standing up to him. He resisted a smile. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Can I still stay here?”
“Of course.”
She left the room and he sat on the desk for a few minutes longer, looking out at the dark beach, smiling to himself.
The cafeteria was nearly deserted and he looked at the clock. Six-thirty. He’d been staring at the grilled cheese sandwich on his plate for fifteen minutes. He couldn’t eat it. Hadn’t been able to get a thing down all day and probably wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight, either. He’d never known this about himself, that he would fall victim to stage fright. He could perform the most delicate surgery with a steady hand, but he was terrified of facing Claudia Marks tomorrow. It was hard to believe. Tomorrow Claudia Marks herself would be interviewing him for her nationally televised talk show. He wondered now if he’d be able to utter a single coherent word.
“There you are.”
He turned to see Cheryl walking toward him. “Why are you still here?” he asked.
“I’m leaving in a minute. But I thought you’d want to know that the hydrocephalic baby you operated on back in August was delivered by c-section this afternoon.”
The Garry baby. He remembered that surgery, the only one he’d performed at Blair that was a clear-cut failure. He set his napkin on top of the sandwich. “Alive?”
She nodded.
He’d had nightmares about this baby. Its head must be swollen to the size of a melon by now. “Have you seen him?” he asked.
She nodded again. “Pretty sad,” she said. “He won’t last long.”
He left his grilled cheese untouched and walked over to the Intensive Care Nursery.
“Hi, Doc. You here to see the Garry baby?”
He didn’t recognize the nurse who greeted him, but she apparently knew who he was.
“If I may,” he said. He imagined the entire ICN team would be surrounding the baby. He probably wouldn’t be able to get near him. But after he’d scrubbed and gowned, the nurse led him to one of the small isolation rooms where the baby was the sole occupant. No one was working on him, not a soul. They knew better than to try to save this baby.
His head seemed to fill one end of his little plastic Isolate. Cole had never seen anything like it.
“Damn it,” he said quietly, shutting his eyes.
“You all right, Doc?”
“Yes. It’s a shock, that’s all.” He moved closer, determined to study this infant in the most clinical sense possible. He told himself he would feel nothing, not horror or revulsion, pity or guilt. Nothing.
Blue veins mapped the pale surface of the baby’s scalp. The facial features were off-center, dwarfed by a head larger than an adult’s. Cole swallowed hard. What had gone wrong with that surgery? This baby should be wailing in his mother’s arms right now.
He wouldn’t let Kit handle the PR on this. She mustn’t see this baby—it would tear her apart. He wanted her away from babies altogether for a while.
But Kit had other ideas. She met him at the front door of the Chapel House. “Dr. Davies called me,” she said. “He wants me to have a press release ready to go in the morning. He said a lot of people are waiting for something like this to happen to use as ammunition against fetal surgery.”
Cole shook his head. “No. Uh-uh. I don’t want you on this. Call someone else in the PR department to do it for you.”
She looked at him in surprise. “You don’t think I can handle the PR?”
“No, it’s not that.” She was by the far the best in the department. “I just think it’s too soon for you to have to deal with a dying baby. It would be too painful for you.”
She hesitated a moment before giving in. “All right,” she said finally.
He was relieved. He was never sure anymore where her pain left off and his began.
53.
All of her energy these last few weeks had gone into the plans for Cole’s interview today with Claudia Marks. Running was the only other activity she hadn’t allowed to suffer. It had actually been a relief to turn the Garry case over to Terri, one of her PR colleagues. She wouldn’t have time to handle a situation like that today.
The television crew arrived in Cole’s office at ten o’clock. She stood in the doorway watching them, fascinated. There were at least twenty people, each with his or her own sense of purpose. She was glad that everyone seemed to know exactly what he was doing. Her part of this job was nearly over. The arrangements, the diplomacy, the soothing of jittery nerves were behind her.
“You just relax,” she’d told Blair’s director that Monday. “You can sit back and watch Blair’s reputation grow as one of the most exciting and innovative medical centers in the country. On national TV.”
All she had to do today was take Claudia Marks to lunch and make sure everyone was in the right place at the right time. It was Cole who was carrying the nerve-wrenching responsibility now.
She found him in her office, pacing.
“They kicked me out of my office,” he said.
“I know. They told me.”
“I should have worn a suit.” He was wearing navy blue pants and a light blue shirt, open at the neck. They had told him to wear whatever he usually wore in his office. Taken from that perspective, he was a little overdressed.
“You look fine. You have that casual, it’s-all-in-a-day’s-work look about you.”
“Who’s handling the PR on the Garry baby?”
“Terri. Don’t think about that now, Cole. It’ll be fine.”
Claudia Marks was taller, more imposing in real life. They met in Kit’s office at eleven, and Claudia wanted a tour of the hospital before they went to lunch. Kit watched her with admiration as they traveled from unit to unit. Claudia had an eye for a story, and she riveted her attention on people and situations she could twist into something marketable. She spent so long watching the triage nurse in the ER evaluating the victims of an accident that it was past noon when they reached the restaurant.
“Dr. Perelle was in an accident himself a few weeks ago,” Kit said after the waiter had taken their orders. She cringed at the gleam in Claudia’s eyes.
“Kit, that’s exactly the kind of information I’m missing on this story. We know a great deal about Dr. Perelle as a physician and a researcher, but very little about the man himself. Was he badly hurt?”
She’d meant it to be small talk, not fuel for her program. “He was hospitalized for a few days with a concussion.” She made it sound unimportant, but Claudia was very hungry, for more than lunch.
“Were other people hurt? Whose fault was it?”
“He was riding in an ambulance with a patient, and some people were killed. You’d need to get the rest of the information from him, though I doubt very much that he’d want to talk about it.”
“He doesn’t need to talk about it,” Claudia said. “We can toss it into our narrative.” She lit a cigarette. “I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to be able to feature someone who’s a bright light in a scientific field and young and attractive at the same time. Not to mention eligible. The combination is hard to find and unbeatable in the ratings. He’s a local hero now, but just wait until the rest of the country gets a look at him. We’re planning plenty of close-ups, so those eyes of his can work their magic on the viewers.”
“I think he’d rather have the focus be on his work.”
“Oh, of course.” Claudia waved her cigarette in the air. “We won’t make an issue out of anything other than his professional endeavors. But the average viewer will be receiving a subliminal message through strategically placed tidbits about Cole Perelle as a person. It works every time. Is he gay?”
Kit laughed. “I beg your pardon?”
“Why is a good-looking man still unattached at the age of thirty-five?”
“He is attached.”
“Really?” A new spark in Claudia’s eye now. “To a female?”
“Oh, yes.”
Claudia leaned forward. “Tell me more.”
“I can’t, Claudia,” she said, as the waiter set a seafood salad in front of her. “I think any information about his personal life had better come from him.”
Five minutes into the interview, she knew he was starting to relax. She leaned against the door and tried to block out the camera crew from her vision to imagine how the interview would actually look on television. It was warm in the room and the lights bathed everything in a hot white glow. She wondered how Cole could stand them right in his eyes.
Claudia sat in one of the maroon leather chairs at the side of his desk, while he sat behind it. He was telling her why he’d become interested in fetal surgery. He was good at this. Why he got so nervous beforehand she didn’t know. He was smiling, his eyes sparkling in the lights, and the words he used were packed with emotion. Claudia looked ecstatic. He was turning out to be even more of a winner t
han she had anticipated.
“And now,”—Claudia Marks smiled into the camera—“we are very pleased to have with us a former patient of Dr. Perelle’s and her parents.” She turned to face the couple sitting on her left. The woman held a robust-looking baby in her arms. “This is little Megan Kelley,” Claudia murmured reverently. “Fran, tell us how you felt when you first learned there was a problem with the baby you were carrying?”
Claudia did a nice job of getting the Kelleys and Cole to describe the successful surgery Cole had performed on Megan’s blocked kidney. Kit could see with relief that the interview was drawing to a close. But suddenly Claudia’s questioning took a new direction. Her voice became that of an investigative reporter, calculated, probing.
“But fetal surgery is not always successful is it, Cole?” she asked.
Kit came to attention. What was she up to?
“There’s a baby some are describing as a ‘monster baby’ right here—today—at Blair Medical Center,” Claudia continued. “That baby is the result of fetal surgery you performed.”
Monster baby? Who was describing the Garry baby in those words? She watched Cole struggle with his anger.
“The surgery wasn’t able to improve the condition of the fetus,” Cole interrupted her, “but it did nothing to worsen it,” he said. “The baby would have been born with this problem whether I—”
“Is the baby going to die as a result of the surgery?”
Kit watched in disbelief. Manipulative bitch.
“No,” Cole said, with more control than Kit expected. “The baby will not die as a result of the surgery; the baby will die as a result of hydrocephalus.”
Claudia looked at the camera. “So, as you can see, there is no guarantee of a happy outcome with fetal surgery.”
The camera stopped rolling, and Kit saw Cole lean toward Claudia, hissing something at her under his breath. She would let him take care of Claudia. She had her own work to do. When this interview aired there would be reporters breaking down the hospital doors.
She left Cole’s office without speaking to him, before he’d have a chance to change her mind. She called Terri in the PR office.
Secrets at the Beach House Page 31