“Are you mad at me, Dr. Stone?” she asked. June snapped her head up from her chore, confused, but neither John nor Christina paid her any attention.
“Of course not, Christina. Just do as we tell you now, and try not to worry.”
“I’m so scared…. I’m so scared….”
“It’s okay, sweetheart, you’re going to be just fine. We’ll give you something for the pain. We’re going to have to do a cesarean section.”
“I wanted to see my baby born….” she whimpered.
“Not this time, honey. Not this time.”
June recognized the voice John used—the gentle father voice he usually reserved for Sydney. She finished with the catheter and drew the morphine to put into the IV. She draped the patient, propped her left hip and prepared a large, sterile bowl filled with lidocaine. She dropped a sterile syringe out of its package into the bowl, then drew spinal syringes full of everything she could think of.
“How long on that morphine?” John asked.
“Two minutes, tops.”
Elmer came back. “Charlotte’s on her way. Tom got her.”
“You’ve got the patient until the nurse arrives, and I hope she gets here fast because you’re getting the baby, Elmer. You’ll need a Narcan injection.”
For just a split second John stopped to stare at Elmer. Perhaps he was impressed by the way this seventy-two-year-old doctor calmly turned to the difficult task of preparing for this birth. He put out sterile sheets, towels, a suction bulb and drew a syringe of Narcan. Elmer didn’t tremble or stop to think. June smiled, her pride evident.
John wanted to get to the baby as quickly as possible. There was very little time; they could lose them both.
Christina made a weird, gagging sound and Elmer whirled around instinctively—the patient’s head was his area. He snatched a bowl from the cupboard with record speed, and leaned Christina over so she could vomit into it.
“I love it when we get that out of the way before we zonk her. Good girl. Doc,” John said to Elmer, “there’s no way we can intubate or ventilate her, so set up the suction nearby. Someone has to stay at her head in case she does that again and starts to aspirate. You’ll pass her off to Charlotte when she gets here so you can concentrate on the baby. Ready with that morphine, June?”
“Ready.”
“Take her down, nice and easy. Doc, watch that pressure.” John threw Betadine solution on the protruding mound that was the site of his operation.
“I don’t believe we’re doing this,” June whispered. “Morphine is running. Want to follow that with an antibiotic? Ampicillin?”
“Excellent idea,” he muttered, turning around to the countertop to quickly suit himself up in sterile gown, mask and new gloves.
Assisting in such a situation was far more exhausting and nerve-wracking than being the cutter. June was flying into cupboards, preparing the patient, catheterizing her, drawing up the syringes full of meds, tearing open and dropping instruments onto sterile trays, laying out sponges and supplies, stopping this to do that, stopping that to do this. She had no idea what sutures he’d call for and got out everything she had. Her hands moved like lightning, her mind racing ahead of John’s every request.
I can do a lot of things, but I couldn’t have done this, June thought. She knew she held people together pretty well, all things considered. But without John, she knew she wouldn’t have had a fighting chance of saving Christina and her baby. Even now, though she had confidence in John’s skill, she wasn’t sure they’d make it. She hoped Christina wouldn’t rise off the table from the pain; there was nothing to strap her down with. John turned his back to June and she tied his gown.
“Almost ready, Doctor?” John asked.
“Soon, soon,” she said. She reached for the tube of blood she’d drawn and quickly rolled it between her palms. “She’s clotting,” she said.
“Thank God for little favors. It’s show time, June. Shake a leg.”
June was literally out of breath, trying to get herself gowned and gloved. Suddenly Charlotte flew into the room, and with her, the dusky aroma of those extra long cigarettes. June glanced at the clock. Eight minutes. “Welcome aboard,” John said. “You going to faint or anything?”
“No way,” Elmer promised.
“You’ll faint first, young man,” Charlotte gruffly replied.
“Then let’s go,” John urged. “Here’s where we cut and pray.”
Without the tiniest briefing, Charlotte tied the back of June’s gown and replaced Elmer at the patient’s head. John took a spinal needle filled with lidocaine and he began injecting the local along a line from Christina’s naval to her pubis. “Doc, come under this drape and hold her thighs. And be ready for your precious burden, which is coming in about one and a half minutes, if I’m worth my salt.”
Christina began crying and muttering, either through narcotic-induced hallucination or pain. She sounded like an animal, forlorn and caught in a painful trap. “Don’t, please, don’t,” she sobbed. “I won’t do it again, I won’t…please…don’t….”
June knew Christina wasn’t begging her doctors to stop, but rather, was caught in some terrifying nightmare.
“We won’t tie off the bleeders on the way in,” John was saying. “Use sponges for retraction with your hands, June. And be sure to keep that lidocaine coming. Squirt it in, generously. We pour and cut, pour and cut….” His hands moved deftly and quickly. “Pressure?”
“Sixty over forty. Pulse, one-twenty and thready.”
No one heard Jessica enter the clinic, but her voice came from the doorway, clear and curious. “Holy smoke! I’m here if you need anything!”
“We’ll be okay, unless you happen to have an emergency helicopter in your purse.”
“Not tonight, John,” Jessica said. “Wow.”
“Just stay outside the door, Jessie,” he said. “Lidocaine. Pour it on. Her husband did this to her. Son of a bitch beats her.” June stopped moving and looked up. “Pour, I said.”
June accommodated him. Christina yelped in pain and began shaking. Elmer applied more pressure to her thighs and Charlotte held down her shoulders. Charlotte, as June had long suspected, had nine arms. She held the patient, watched the IV, kept track of the blood pressure and pulse, and softly crooned to Christina that everything was going to be okay.
“Get ready, Doc,” John said. Christina became still; perhaps she momentarily lost consciousness. Elmer eased away from holding her thighs and he turned to lift a sterile sheet from the counter. “Give me fundal pressure, June,” John instructed, and while June pressed down on the uterus from above, John slid the baby out.
“Hang on,” he told Christina, though she was just barely conscious. The baby, a boy, was lifeless and not breathing. “Here you go,” he said, turning to place the baby in Elmer’s capable hands. “Bring him back, Doc. Got your Narcan ready?”
“Got it,” Elmer said, and whisked the infant away.
From the door came another, “Wow!”
“I need twenty units of pitocin to the IV bag,” John ordered. June looked at Charlotte and directed with her eyes to the opened delivery kit. Like a flash, the sixty-year-old nurse moved.
“We’re not messing around with cord blood. No fringe benefits, no extras, no specials tonight. Come on, sweety, come on,” John murmured, massaging the uterus. He finally delivered the placenta manually. “Very nice,” he said, pleased with himself. “The placenta was roughly fifty-percent attached, which kept our baby alive. We have a Couvelaire uterus, and she’s responding to pitocin. We’ll be able to close here in a minute. Now that the hard part is over—how’s our baby?” he asked.
The sound of the suction was replaced by Elmer’s CPR, which mingled with Christina’s whimpering and Charlotte’s cooing. John stood frozen. Then, knowing he could not afford to wait for the baby to respond, he called for the first of a series of sutures. At last there was a feeble whimper from the baby. “Ahh,” John said, “gimme that suture, J
une, no horsing around here.”
John’s sutures were fast, neat and strong. Even under such harrowing circumstances he did a beautiful job. “Let’s tie off these bleeders. Stat, stat, stat, suture, suture, suture, scissors.” And then, remarkably, he started singing. “It must have been a beautiful baby, it must have been a beautiful child…stat, suture, scissors…I bet you drove the little girls wild….” Every time he tied off a bleeder, June cut the suture and removed the clamp.
The baby’s cries strengthened. They heard the helicopter overhead and glanced at the clock. “Opened and almost closed in twenty minutes, start to finish,” June said. “I’m soaked to the skin.”
John laughed. “What? You don’t do this all this time?”
“Here they come!” Jessica announced when the clinic door opened.
“Well, finally, our emergency team. What am I giving them, Charlotte, darling?”
“She’s stabilizing, Doctor. She has a bellyache.”
John laughed and continued with his sutures.
“Gorgeous,” June complimented. “He can join our quilting circle anytime, can’t he, Jessie?”
“Absolutin-tootin,” she said. June stole a look. Jessica leaned in the door frame, arms crossed over her small chest, and the light in her eyes was almost otherworldly.
“Her husband did this to her,” John said, using his 3-0 silk to make simple interrupted sutures. “I knew it the first time I saw her. She had bruises on her buttocks and thighs. She denied he beat her so I did a blood profile on her, ruled out all the bad stuff that might’ve caused bruises—leukemia, aplastic anemia… All negative. The little creep beats her. I want him locked up.”
“That’s why you did all the blood work,” June said, realization dawning.
“I’m sure I wrote it in the chart. It was the bruises.”
“Oh Jesus,” June muttered, getting his dressings ready. “How the hell did I miss that?”
“What do you mean, missed it?”
“John, Christina told me she didn’t want to see you anymore because she didn’t like the way you touched her. That’s what started all the trouble. That’s why I called the Fairfield Clinic to ask about you. Fairfield obviously told his daughter and…Jeez.”
The medical team from Ukiah came down the clinic hallway, gurney wheels squeaking. “Stay out there, please,” John shouted. “We’re almost ready in here. Doc, you can give them the baby if he’s stable enough for you. Yeah,” he said to June, “she didn’t like my touch, all right. I told her I knew she was getting knocked around, and if she wanted me to, I’d help her get away from her abusive husband. Otherwise, her pregnancy was in jeopardy. She said he never hit her in the stomach. Guess he forgot himself, huh?”
“Oh, John…” June moaned, fully and totally chagrined. “If only I’d talked to you in the first place…”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” he said. “I should have mentioned I had a case of spousal abuse—it’s your clinic. But we got so damn busy. And then I should have told you why Fairfield hates me. We could have saved ourselves some misery. But this? This amounts to attempted murder, as far as I’m concerned. I mean it, I want him locked up. I’ll press charges if she won’t.” He wiped the blood off his gloved hands with a sterile towel and applied a bandage to Christina’s sutures. “Charlotte, how’s she doing?”
“She’s 106 over 66 and pulse and respirations regular. She’s doin’ real good, Doctor. Real good.”
June stepped aside and did some very fast scribbling in the chart while the paramedics and doctor came in to transfer the patient. John briefed the M.D. quickly. “Sorry we couldn’t wait for you.”
“Ukiah radioed us that you did an emergency section here. That’s a first.”
“And a last, I hope. Given the circumstances, I’d say it was smooth. How’s the baby look?”
“He looks good, considering.”
“Christ a’mighty, who’s got cleanup tonight?” a paramedic asked.
“I think you’re looking at ’em. She’s stable and gonzo. June’s got it all in the chart for you. She’s all yours. Take her away.”
John snapped off his gloves. He held Christina’s hand and walked beside her as she was wheeled to the door. He murmured that she had a baby boy even though she was not fully conscious. June followed the team and the gurney out the front door of the clinic.
A number of people stood around. For Grace Valley, this was a dramatic and unusual sight—three bloody doctors in surgical garb, the police chief and Ricky and a helicopter taking away the patients. Everyone watched while the copter rose into the sky, lights flashing. It veered left and shot away. In moments, the chopper noise gradually gave way to crickets. Perhaps thirty people stood in a wide circle around the vacant space in the street where the helicopter had been only minutes before. John dropped an arm over June’s shoulder. “All this trouble, all the investigating and looking for references…? This was all about Christina Baker?”
“Yeah. She wouldn’t explain why you made her so nervous. All she ever said was that she didn’t like the way you touched her. I’m the dope who didn’t question the notation about bruises. I couldn’t imagine what she was referring to.”
“But you thought the worst,” he said.
“I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you somehow.”
“You already did. Good assist. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Well, I couldn’t have done it at all,” she admitted. “Ex-wife, huh?”
He sighed. “She can be found in Sausalito, standing over a cauldron, stirring—my bane and my pocket drain. I don’t pay alimony or anything—she’s a very successful surgeon. But she costs me anyway. I have to pay my lawyer every six months or so, get restraining orders, call off detectives, clean up messes she creates just to make my life a living hell. Like this mess. I’m sure she hoped I would eventually call that number she gave you, so I’d know it was her. She likes to know she’s made an impact. But never fear. Your county detectives will have no trouble verifying that the only thing I did wrong was to marry Dr. Carolyn Fairfield, daughter of the great Dr. Fairfield.”
There was an eerie stillness, a bizarre quiet. Spectators lingered and whispered to each other. They stood around in a night that had become suddenly calm and motionless.
“Quite a dramatic end, I’d say,” June said. “The thing about medicine that amazes me most is the frequency of coincidences. Had we not been at the clinic tonight, Christina and her baby would have died. Even with all your skill, John, if I’d called you from home to meet me here, you would have barely beaten the helicopter. ‘Another five minutes, and you wouldn’t have made it’—such a commonly uttered phrase in our line of work.”
Elmer stood facing John and June. “I can’t believe how much of this we let happen,” he said. “I apologize, June. Even I laughed at how often Pastor Wickham flirted and groped, and thought how funny it was when he was slapped. I never really thought about the harm he could do. I never approved of what Gus did to Leah, but I knew what he was doing…and we all might have done more than we did to help her. Still and all, even I might not have caught the fact that Christina was being battered! This is the country! Our women work hard—they get bruises!” He stepped toward John. “We’re awful lucky to have you here, son.”
“Thanks, Doc,” John said almost shyly.
First the growl of an engine and then the headlights of a battered truck came into view. Gary Baker screeched to a stop in front of the clinic, right behind the old Datsun in which his hemorrhaging wife had driven herself to find help. He jumped out and looked at the odd gathering in confusion. “My wife around here somewheres? Christina Baker here?”
“Why you little…” John lunged down the steps toward Gary. June grabbed at the back of his scrubs, but he tore away.
“John! No! Your hands!” June screamed, but she was too late. John was on top of Baker. He had him backed over the hood of his truck and was holding him there.
“You be
at her, didn’t you, you worthless little worm!”
“What? What?”
“You hit her, didn’t you?”
“Hit her? Naw. I might’a slapped her, maybe—”
June was tugging at the back of John’s gown, trying to pull him off Gary Baker, screaming at him to stop, when he pulled back his right arm high over his shoulder to smash Gary in the chops. Tom, fortunately, came up behind them and grabbed John’s arm, stopping him from throwing the punch.
With one hand Tom accomplished what June couldn’t do with both of hers and all her strength. “Ricky!” he called. “Get one of the boys to help you and come here!” Then in a gentler voice he said to John, “Can’t have you breaking your knuckles now, can we, Doc?”
“I want this little animal locked up,” John hotly demanded.
Tom kept a tight grip on him. Ricky jogged over with big old George in tow. “Good idea. Ricky, I think we need to keep Gary with us awhile.”
“What about my wife?” the young man demanded. “What about Christina?”
Ricky grabbed one of Gary’s arms while George took the other as if to escort him away. “Looks like she’s going to be all right, no thanks to you,” Tom told him, finally releasing John. “Medevac took her to Ukiah,” he added. He made no mention of the baby; Tom had his own way of punishing offenders.
“You takin’ me to Ukiah?” the young man asked Ricky as he was led away.
Gary Baker was neither large nor mature; he stood about five foot eight and was perhaps twenty years old. He’d been drinking and was totally confused about what had happened there tonight. He was only a tough guy when up against his petite, easily intimidated little wife. He went along with Ricky and George very docilely.
John could have killed him.
“We wouldn’t want that doctor hittin’ you, Gary,” George said.
“No way, man. What an asshole.”
“You hit that little wife of yours, didja?” Ricky asked.
“Might’a slapped her once. You don’t know her. Christina can be a real—”
Gary’s sentence was cut off by the sound of Ricky’s fist making contact with his jaw. His knees buckled and Ricky and George hoisted him upright again.