by Alice Ward
She shook her head. “I just want to lie down again. I’m feeling a bit dizzy.”
Holding onto her tighter, I asked, “When did you last eat? A real meal?”
She glanced up at me and sighed. “A couple days ago.” She lowered her voice. “I heard rumors of women, you know, pooping during labor. I wanted to clean out my system so it didn’t happen to me.”
It also explained why her full-term baby was so small. I gritted my teeth, wanting to kick her doctor and her husband in the balls. She’d probably been dieting the entire time in addition to working out like a fiend.
“Well, let’s get you back into bed, and I’ll talk to your doctor about adding some additional nourishment intravenously. You can’t eat right now, but some glucose could help. I’ll check your blood sugar once you’re settled.”
Once she was back in bed and I’d placed the monitors back on, I checked and she sure enough was hypoglycemic. Knowing her asshole doctor would want to know her delivery status, I lowered the head of the bed and warned the other two people in the room that I was ready to check her. The husband turned away, his eyes never leaving the computer monitor while the stylist looked on curiously.
“Heels together,” I instructed Mrs. HW5. “Let your knees drop to the bed.”
And… gush.
Amniotic fluid burst out in a sudden flood, the color darkened with the baby’s meconium. Shit. Literally.
Worse, a section of the umbilical cord presented itself from her vagina. Just like that, we’d gone from prima donna labor to full-scale emergency in an instant. I glanced at the monitor, and damn, the baby’s heart rate plummeted.
I made a promise to never criticize a doctor again, even though I knew that promise would last about half a minute.
Jumping on the bed, I jammed two fingers into the writhing, screaming woman, found the baby’s head where it was pressing on the cord and gently lifted, taking pressure off the life-giving cord. The heart rate increased, giving us some time.
“What are you doing?” the husband shouted, launching himself to his feet so fast his precious laptop crashed to the floor.
Ignoring him, I twisted around and jammed my other hand on the call button, then began lowering the head of the bed even farther, putting Mrs. Harlington-Worthington, the Fifth into the Trendelenburg position, hoping to decrease the pressure on the cord.
I needed to give her oxygen but couldn’t risk removing my fingers to reach for it, and because of the silk sheets, I kept sliding around, making my precarious perch even more precarious. I felt Mr. Worthington, the Fifth’s tight fingers on my shoulder. “Get off of her. I’ll have your job on a silver platter.”
I winced at the pain in my shoulder but didn’t stop holding the baby’s head off the cord. Carefully arranging my face into my calmest expression, I explained the emergency in simple terms. “The umbilical cord has prolapsed, meaning it has slipped out of the cervix ahead of the baby.” Mr. W5’s face went milky white, and he swayed a little to the side. With my free hand, I clutched at him, not needing a bleeding or concussed father to worry with too. “The baby’s head is compressing the cord. I’m holding the baby’s head up. We’re okay for the moment, but we’ll—”
“Can I help you?”
Relief flooded through me as I recognized Olivia’s voice float into the room. “UPC. Prep OR. Need O2. Stat.”
In seconds, the door burst open, and I yelled for someone to get Dad. Within a minute, the entire bed, me included, was being pushed down the hallway, my fingers growing numb from holding the baby’s head up as my knees slipped and slid on the sheets.
“What’s happening?” Mrs. HW5 cried out, and I gave her a gentle smile as I hovered above her. I explained the situation again as we raced down the hall.
“You’re going to be fine,” I soothed. “I can feel your baby’s head. I think little Marie Claire’s got lots of hair.” With the gloves on, I didn’t know that at all, but it gave me something to talk about during one of her most terrifying moments. “I bet she’ll be as beautiful as you.”
Mrs. HW5 smiled, just a little, tears shining in her eyes. “Do I look okay?” she asked and it didn’t even piss me off. I laughed and promised that she did.
We were lucky. An OR had just been cleared and cleaned after one of the traffic accident victims, so we were wheeled in immediately. I held my position as we moved to the operating table and the OR nurses covered me with blue sterile sheets.
Covered as I was, I couldn’t see anything, just listened as the anesthesiologist gave the go ahead, indicating she was asleep. The sound of the scalpel slicing through skin was shiver inducing, but still, I held my position, knowing my fingers were the only thing saving this precious little human at the moment.
Within minutes, the weight of the baby’s head was lifted from my fingers, and I could finally remove my hand, although it took a few moments to uncramp from the position it had been in for so long. I crawled off the table, my legs shaky beneath me as sweat dripped down every part of my body, and pulled off the gloves, tossing them in the trash.
Then, there was the cry, the sweetest sound in the entire world. It started out small, then grew stronger with each breath. I deeply hoped the meconium didn’t affect her too badly.
That sound was one of the reasons I loved this job so much.
“Great job, Scarlett,” Dr. Edmond said, glancing up from where he was delivering the placenta before going through the process of sewing the patient back up. Mrs. HW5 would probably have a hissy fit about the vertical scar, but it couldn’t be helped, and I hoped she would find beauty in it one day.
As I watched him stitch up the uterus that was still lying on the outside of the patient’s body, my hand went to my own scar, caressing the long line of puckered tissue that ran down my side.
Maybe I’d find beauty in my scar one day too.
CHAPTER TWO
Langston
“Langston, sweetheart, are you sure this is what you want to do?”
I looked into my mother’s honey-colored eyes and gave her a kiss on her soft cheek, inhaling the Clive Christian fragrance she favored. “Absolutely sure. The time will pass in a flash. I’ll call every week, I promise.”
She waved a hand in front of her face, as if she could wave the threatening tears back into her eye ducts, the growing pinkness from her nose. I bit back a groan and held the tiny but formidable woman to my chest. I loved my mother dearly and hated to see her genuinely sad.
I was a lucky son of a bitch. I’d hit the lottery at birth, had been given the golden ticket just by being born. Not just in wealth and privilege, but by also having a mother and father who adored me, who only wanted the best for me. And if they attempted to steer my life a little too much… it was a small price to pay to know that, no matter what, I was genuinely loved by at least a couple of people on the planet.
“I know,” she said with a delicate sniff as she reached into her sleeve for one of my grandmother’s antique handkerchiefs she kept there. “It’s just so surreal. You were away at school for so long, and then moved around so much. I thought for sure you’d finally move back home to take over your father’s practice. Then this…” She sniffed and blinked harder, but a tear escaped this time, sending a shot of guilt into my gut as she gently dabbed it away, careful not to distort the public persona she’d so carefully crafted over her fifty-eight years.
She was right. I had been away at school for a long time, but that had all been part of the master plan conceived by my parents long before my actual conception thirty-six years ago. To a letter, I’d followed their wishes. Well, for the most part, anyway. Four in the exclusive boarding school I’d been thrust into for my high school years. Then another four at my father’s alma mater, Columbia, then another four in medical school. That was followed by five incredibly grueling ones in the residency program, years that sleep deprivation had pretty much evaporated from my memory.
I only strayed from my parents’ path when I’d chosen a tw
o-year fellowship in a busy inner-city trauma surgery program instead of quietly stepping into my father’s established New York City surgical practice. I wasn’t yet ready to deal with the cushy but sterile life of treating high society gallbladder attacks and appendectomies. I wanted more action. That was what I loved. Getting my hands dirty while patching people back up, pulling them back from the brink of death, and giving them a few more years on this earth while riding the high of a stress-induced adrenaline rush.
Following the fellowship, I’d spent the past couple years as locum tenens, floating around the country, practicing wherever I was needed, moving between inner city and remote rural as necessary. After spending my entire life in practically one place, I’d enjoyed the variety of different cities and towns, mountains and deserts — and the lovely ladies with different accents was a bonus, especially the southern ones. But it still wasn’t enough. I wanted to explore the country a bit before settling down on the East Coast permanently. I wasn’t ready to plant myself in any one place. When I was approached by Doctors Beyond Borders, I’d jumped at the chance to spend more time away from familial obligations. Because I knew, once I took over my father’s practice, it would all be over.
The travel.
Freedom.
Flying under society’s radar.
All my life, I knew it was coming, but I’d hoped I would at least be forty before that noose slipped around my neck. At thirty-six, that deadline was looming close, then after that, there would be the pressures of settling down and continuing the family lineage, as my parents hadn’t been blessed with a spare to take that pressure off.
“I just miss you,” Mom said and straightened her face. “When I knew you were in the States, it was an easy flight to come visit. Now…” She shivered, and I knew she was envisioning wild animals and mosquitos and dirty conditions of living in huts with no running water. She wasn’t far off.
“Just think…” I said, trying to reassure her, “when I return after my time in Maiduguri, I’ll never want to leave the comfort of the carriage house again.”
Her eyes brightened, as I knew they would when talking about me actually having purchased a place in which to settle down, then she tapped her lips with a finger. I knew what was coming next. My mother, as delicate looking as she appeared, was a shrewd businesswoman and loved to “tinker” in real estate, as she called it, increasing her astounding inherited wealth exponentially over the past few decades.
“Are you quite sure you wouldn’t be happier with a Central Park view, darling? Sting’s penthouse is on the market and word on the street is that I could snap it up at fifty-two.”
It was hard not to roll my eyes. In my mother’s world, fifty-two million dollars was a bargain she could easily write a check for. I remembered how she’d just looked at me like I was some alien being zapped into her life when I purchased the 1903 carriage house and began the process of bringing the old building back to life. It wasn’t finished yet, but the contractor and decorator I hired came well recommended and promised to have it completed months before I returned from overseas.
“You should drop into the carriage house and see the work they’ve already done,” I said to distract her further. “They’ve pulled down the ceilings to find the most incredible beams. I can’t believe anyone in their right mind thought it was a good idea to plaster over them. And the floor will be the showcase of the entire building when they’re finished.”
The distraction worked, and Mom brightened, tucking the lace back into the sleeve of her twenty-thousand-dollar Versace gown. “Yes, I’ll do that. I’ll keep everything on track while you’re…” She sniffed again. Shit, the handkerchief was making a reappearance. “Gone.”
I was saved from the weepy look Mom gave me as a three-tier cake was wheeled into the room. I blew out a breath and forced a smile onto my face as the mayor clapped me on the back and a slice of the delicious cake was handed to me.
“The Big Apple is going to miss you, son,” the white-haired man said, and I set down the cake, knowing there would be no additional time to finish it. I shook his hand, then all the other hands that followed, saying the right things as the evening finally came to a close. My parents had thought it fitting to have me a “sendoff” party that had morphed from a small “intimate” dinner of twenty to a gathering of nearly two hundred in their expansive penthouse, or “city home” as Mom called it. The “country home” on King’s Point was simply too much of a drive.
“Can we leave yet?” Josh moaned as he handed me another whiskey. Best friend since boarding school, Joshua Latimer wasn’t impressed by this shindig either. Like me, he’d smiled pleasantly through many of them during his life.
I looked at my watch. “Half hour.”
“Thank the fuck.” He tossed the expensive drink back in one gulp and smiled as one of the supreme court judge’s daughters passed by, giving his tie a little tug. He winked at me. “See you in thirty.”
I snorted. “Five, if rumor is true.”
He flipped me off and followed the pretty blonde down the hallway, refraining to tell him she’d tugged my tie earlier. I hadn’t been interested. Hell, I hadn’t been interested in much of anything in the past couple months. The cottage house had been a nice distraction while I waited to step onto the plane and be gone from this place for a while. Truth be told, I was burned out. Or maybe I was just fucking tired and needed to sleep.
My last shift in the emergency room had been last night, and I hadn’t been able to save a little girl with three bullet holes in her abdomen and chest. She’d fought so hard. Just eight years old, she survived the ambulance ride and had been so brave. Even as tears streamed in rivers down the side of her face, she hadn’t been able to voice her fear, just beseeched me with big brown eyes to save her.
I tried. I failed. And the wails of her mother as I told her the shocking news still rang in my ears.
Tossing back the whiskey, I forced the thought away. Forced away the thoughts of all those who had died under my scalpel.
I couldn’t save them all. I knew that. And I hated it.
It was good that I was going away.
I needed to get away.
Away from the gangs who killed innocent young girls over a pair of shoes. Away from the victimization that had become America. The pointing fingers. The lawsuits. The expectations.
God. The fucking expectations that threatened to suffocate the entire world, including me.
Once, in a philosophy class I’d been forced to sign up for at Columbia, one of the students had learned who I was and the wealth behind my name. During an open discussion, the pretty little brunette had snarled at how pathetic I was to not, in her words, “Share your billions with the rest of America, with the world!” Leesa was of the even distribution mindset and wore the “money is evil” t-shirt above her expensive True Religion jeans that she’d purchased with her daddy’s credit card to prove it — in her mind, at least. I’d shut her up when I pulled out my wallet and fished a five and three one-dollar bills from it, handing the eight dollars to her.
“What the fuck is this for?” Leesa had snapped, crushing the bills in her fist, eyes blazing.
I lifted a shoulder and spread out my hands. “Your share of my wealth.”
Her eyes had narrowed as she tossed the eight dollars at my chest. I hadn’t bothered to catch them, just let them fall to the floor. “Do you think I’m stupid?”
“No.” There had been twenty sets of eyes on me at that point, but I hadn’t cared. Even back then, I was tired of the big-dreams-with-limited-thinking mentality that had surrounded me. “But I think your rose-colored glasses have caused you to be mathematically challenged.”
Leesa stomped her foot. “I’m very good at math.” Then she snarled, “Even for a girl.” She was trying to turn the argument into the dirty waters of sexism if she could. I’d seen it before. Women were like that, twisting and turning every damn thing you said until you couldn’t remember the original words.
&n
bsp; I hadn’t let her derail me from the point I was trying to make. “Terrific. How much money do you think I have in my trusts, investments, and accounts?”
She crossed her arms over her chest and huffed. “The internet said over…” her nose wrinkled like she smelled something bad, “a billion ridiculous dollars.”
“You might want to double-check your sources. If I sold all my assets and cashed out my trusts, it’s closer to two point five billion,” I told her, being brutally honest. No way in hell was I going to have her do some vengeful fact-checking and accuse me of lying later. “There are over three hundred and twenty million people in the United States. If I distributed my wealth equally to all of them, that…” I nodded to the crumpled bills on the floor, “is your share. I hope you enjoy your caramel macchiato with it.”
She’d huffed and puffed as she absorbed that reality, then tossed out, “You could at least give it to the poor.”
I’d been waiting for that argument and had already done the math in my mind. “Alright, let’s do that. With the forty-five million Americans living below the poverty level, how do you suggest they utilize the fifty-six dollars they’d each get from me? I’m sure they’re eager for your suggestions on how they could best stretch those dollars while they work two jobs trying to put food on the table for their kids.”
She’d yanked out her calculator and tapped away before lifting her chin in stubborn refusal to face the facts. “It’s still disgusting,” she shouted and stood, tears in her eyes, and stomped on the bills on the floor before rushing out of the room.
I’d fucked her that night, when she came to my dorm to apologize for her outburst. I’d actually fucked Leesa a number of times, up until she began hinting that we’d make beautiful babies together. Until I caught her poking a needle into the condoms in my nightstand.
The memory made me shiver.
That had been the moment I lost trust in women completely. I’d spent the next several weeks ratcheted with anxiety that I’d gotten the conniving little bitch pregnant, appalled that someone like her could possibly have my baby. I had nightmares of how she’d hold our child over my head, using him or her to manipulate me for the next eighteen years.