Attending Physician Read online

  “If you’ll excuse me ...,” she rose, “I’ll check on you in a bit.”

  I followed her out the door noting her broad shoulders and narrow hips.

  “Dr. Raven,” I called, as she began her long-legged stride to the nurses’ station. She about-faced, “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, Dr. Verity,” she saluted me. “I’ll be back, milady.”

  That time, I blushed. I am a lady, for real.

  I reversed back into the room to Rosie and Jase gazing at me.

  “She’s hot,” was Rosie’s opening salvo. Jase grinned in agreement.

  “Rosie!” I protested.

  “She is,” Rosie insisted. Jase bobbed his head.

  “So?”

  “So? Is she a dyke?” asked Jase.

  “I don’t know!” I justified. “I’m terrible at that. And, besides, it doesn’t matter anyway if she’s a dyke. I a/ do not go out with dykes, I go out with butches, and b/ am not going out with anyone anytime soon.”

  “Oh, bullshit,” said Rosie. “You just need the right butch.”

  “Don’t we all, baby girl?” I asked wryly.

  Bless Jase’s heart. “That’s me!” he crowed pounding his chest like our simian ancestors, and Rosie melted.

  Oh, Blessed Mother, I wanted to melt again sometime. Sometime soon. And that Dr. Raven, if she calls herself a butch, is definitely melting material.

  “Ow!” swore Rosie suddenly. “Ow! Ow! Ow! Dammit.” Our eyes were riveted to her. “Shooting pains,” she gasped.

  “Go get the doc, Verity!”

  I was out the door before he finished my name.

  “Where’s Dr. Raven?” I panted at the nurse in the central station.

  “Why?”

  “Rosie’s having shooting pains.”

  “I’ll get her.” She pushed three buttons on her phone console, and Dr. Raven materialized in front of me.

  She glimpsed my face and that hand landed on the small of my back again. “Tell me on the way,” she commanded as she steered me toward Rosie’s private birthing room.

  By the time we got there, Rosie was in active labor and everything seemed normal again.

  The doc had a curious affect on her face.

  As she left, I tracked her. “Dr. Raven?”

  “Hmm?”

  “What is it?”

  She snapped out of it. “What is what?”

  “I can tell something occurred to you in Rosie’s room.”

  “Yes. A possibility. I won’t say it till I know for sure, and yes, Dr. Verity, we’ll watch her more closely.” She patted my arm, and left tingles in the wake of her touch.

  I looked up at her, and we had a moment. Of what wasn’t exactly defined, but definitely a moment, and no question ours.

  “Thanks,” I said softly, “again.”

  “Of course,” she murmured, running her hands through that lush black hair. Oh what I might do given the opportunity ....

  Verity! Stop that!

  Why? I asked internally. Why? Rosie’s right, she’s hot.

  I picked up my duties as Labor Attendant.

  Chapter 4

  Truthfully, the more I watched Rosie, the more concerned I became. Not because I thought we had a problem but because she was on the verge of complete exhaustion. It’s no mistake that it’s called Labor. It’s a lot of work, and she was close to maxed out. I was doing everything I could to help her and so was Jase, but our combined efforts had flagged at this point as well. We were borderline toast.

  Then the baby’s monitor went off. Loud, and fast, and STAT, it said.

  Then, bizarrely, everything seemed to slow down. Way down. Way, way down.

  Ziesl came into the room.

  She stopped the monitor’s shriek.

  She read the data from the monitor.

  She murmured unintelligibly, if comfortingly, to us.

  She excused herself from the room.

  Rosie was wide-eyed. Jase was quiet strength. I was present.

  Dr. Lange and Ziesl returned to the room unhurriedly.

  The good doctor spoke. “Rosie, Jase, Dr. Verity, your baby boy has hit his stress limit and crossed into distress.” Before we erupted into questions, she raised her big hands, “Not bad distress, slight distress, but distress nonetheless. It’s time to talk options.”

  The tears started to course silently down Rosie’s cheeks. I reached to hold her. Jase grabbed my swollen right hand, at that point, so painful it had crossed into numb. For numb it hurt one hell of a lot.

  Dr. Raven’s eyes sparkled. She lives for this, I thought. Making her handsomer, I thought too.

  “Rosie,” she began, “you’re clocking forty-three hours of labor. We will monitor you much more closely, and I strongly suggest you consider a Caesarian.”

  Rosie snuffled against my collarbone.

  “When do we have to decide, Dr. Raven?” I asked in Rosie’s behalf.

  “Before he decides for you.”

  “Time estimate?” I pursued her.

  “There’s no standard, but likely no more than four hours.”

  Forty-seven hours of labor, I thought. Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

  I tilted my head and flashed my big green eyes Dr. Raven’s way. “I’ll take care of it,” I mouthed over Rosie’s weeping head.

  Dr. Raven bowed slightly at me, and made her exit. I caught a whiff of musky cologne.

  “Rosie, baby girl, listen. Let’s talk this through.”

  Jase handed her a real handkerchief. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose, then handed it back to him. That’s love. I wanted a butch to hand me her real handkerchief, and then gamely take it back without so much as a blink after I’d used it.

  “I think you need to meditate,” I began.

  “Good idea,” echoed Jase.

  “Meditate?” Rosie gaped at me disbelieving. “What? Between contractions?”

  “Yes, and during contractions.”

  “You’re better at meditating than I am, godmama.” She shook her head wryly.

  “Maybe,” I said. “I’ll meditate with you. I think we have to tune in to this prince of the realm, and see what he says.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” said Jase.

  “Nope. I’m not,” I assured him. “He’s closer to God than any of us. Your precious little guy’ll tell us what he needs.”

  “We’ll meditate—all three of us,” said Jase.

  “Cool,” said Rosie. “Go tell Ziesl, Jase, so she doesn’t interrupt.”

  Jase, obedient, went to do his lady’s bidding.

  “Verity?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Am I having a Caesarian?”

  “I think so, baby girl,” I confessed candidly. “What we need to know is why, and what you need to know—before we do it—is that it’s not a failure.”

  “I do,” she agreed.

  “Ziesl’s cool,” Jase informed us.

  We settled. Rosie in the bed. Jase behind her holding her and supporting her back, and me in the unusually uncomfortable chair at the bedside. We’d been flying—my word for meditating, because that’s what I do when I meditate—for ten minutes or so when Rosie cracked into gales of laughter followed so immediately by Jase that they couldn’t possibly have consulted one another beforehand. I opened my eyes.

  “He ... he ...,” Rosie hiccupped she laughed so hard.

  Jase couldn’t speak; he had tears flowing down his handsome face.

  “He doesn’t ...,” she got one more word out before she dissolved again.

  “...want ...,” added Jase.

  This was worse than Charades.

  “He doesn’t want what?” I pushed.

  “To have his head smashed,” they gasped out together as they continued to howl.

  I wrapped my brain around that, and asked, “It’s a vanity thing?”

  They guffawed.

  “Really?” I said. “Really?”

  Two hysterical parents-to-be of one accord.

&nb
sp; “Well I’ll be damned,” I beamed at them. “Good for him.”

  Ziesl came chugging in with her blood pressure cuff and stethoscope. Rosie and Jase howled through telling her. Guilt had vanished from Rosie’s energy field. She was utterly happy to prevent her first-born son from having his head smashed.

  Ziesl checked Rosie’s pressure; it was fine, and she checked the baby’s heart rate which had calmed to normal. “Good thing, too,” she spoke under her breath.

  “Why, Ziesl?” I asked.

  “Because Dr. Raven was called to do an emergency C-section.”

  “Is it okay to wait?” asked Rosie.

  “Yes,” said Ziesl. “Get some rest, Rosie. You’re gonna need it.”

  Whereupon, having received that perfect pink permission slip, Rosie fell sound asleep.

  Jase and I both exhaled. We weren’t the ones in labor, but we were, if you take my meaning.

  “Jase, you rest, honey,” I said as I rose from the chair. “You’re gonna need it, too. I’m going for a walk to shake out some of the tension.”

  He wrapped his long arms around me and kissed the top of my head. “Thanks, Verity. This would have been impossible without you.”

  “Oh, you’d’ve managed,” I said.

  “Yeah, but nowhere near as well.”

  “You’re welcome, darling,” I smiled tiredly. “My pleasure.”

  Chapter 5

  I walked for an hour, through the crazy maze of neutral halls, to the elevators, and then outside to the very late-night, full September moon on the deserted hospital campus. Things were quiet but not peaceful. We still hadn’t done what we’d come to the hospital to do, and the tension wouldn’t resolve until Rosie had had her baby, and all was well with the world.

  I had no idea what time it had gotten to when I slipped onto the OB ward like a sylph. My red curls were wild with the humidity of the night. I reached to pin them into some semblance of order when a deep voice from behind me said, “Don’t. It’s beautiful like that.” I never wear my hair down in public.

  I spun around to see a more tired Dr. Raven watching me. “Dr. Verity,” she said evenly.

  “Dr. Raven,” I copied her. “You look beat.”

  She scrubbed her hands over her face. “I am, but I still remember my name.”

  I gave her a quizzical glance.

  Dr. Raven laughed. “When I ran into you in the hallway, or rather, when you ran into me,” I blushed, “I had just washed my hands in cold, cold water and wiped my face with a dreadful sandpaper towel in an effort to remain lucid.” She tipped her wrist and checked her watch. “I’m close to the end of my second eighteen-hour shift.”

  I threw her a sympathetic glance.

  She continued, “There is a story that circulates on every OB ward about an intern doing a standard eighteen-hour rotation. It goes that he walked into a patient’s room one morning at the end of a shift, and introduced himself to a soon-to-be-new-mom, `How do you do? I’m Dr. ... um....’

  “The mother-in-waiting ... uh, waited ... for the doctor to say his name. When he didn’t, she asked gently, `Doc? Honey? How long has it been since you’ve slept?’

  “He checked his watch and mentioned some outrageous number of hours. She replied, `I don’t, as a rule, let doctors who don’t know their own names examine me. Go get some sleep and come see me later,’ whereupon she cajoled him kindly, but firmly, and bodily, out the door of her room.

  “Dr. Aesop’s Moral of the Story, `No matter how tired you are, always remember your own name.’”

  Dr. Raven and I laughed delightedly together.

  She continued, “I’ve got one more baby boy to deliver before I can go home.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “Me, too.”

  We smiled at each other. I blushed, unexpectedly shy with her. She was gorgeous. And hot.

  “Dr. Verity?” she said coming closer, close enough that I had a felt sense of the heat coming off her skin.

  “Yes?” I wished to curl into that warmth.

  “I’d like to take you out for dinner when we’re not so tired. May I?”

  Oooh, a butch with manners. And proper grammar. Be still my heart.

  “I think that might be arranged,” I said lightly, “if you were to ask me.”

  “Oh,” she twinkled at me, “I’ll ask you.” Her voice deepened, “I promise I’ll ask you.”

  I blushed again.

  She grabbed my left hand and pulled me along the corridor. Total change of subject. “Let’s go deliver a baby, shall we?” She didn’t wait for an answer.

  Rosie had, by then, been in and out of labor for forty-seven hours and both she and her son were done. D-o-n-e. Done. Not to mention her husband and me.

  So, for what it’s worth, operating rooms are pretty uh ... sterile. I guess they have to be, but sterile kind of rules out any sort of comfort, not to mention charm. In fact, charm not so much. Chrome and stainless décor with a side of latex. Awful.

  I suited up in over-sized teal scrubs over my clothes, booties over my shoes, a disposable shower cap-like thing over my rampant hair, (good thing teal was a good color for me), and I would have been wearing latex gloves if I hadn’t drawn the line. I needed to do healing work whilst I sat at Rosie’s head to make the procedure as painless and blood-free as possible.

  Rosie wore a dreadful, colorless hospital gown open to the back that covered her breasts but not much else. What is the rule that says hospital gowns need to be ugly? Can someone tell me that?

  A nurse we’d never seen before dumped freezing cold Betadine over Rosie’s belly. She yelped. Dr. Raven walked in as she did it, and spoke sharply to the nurse, “Darlene! You couldn’t have warmed it? C’mon.” She rubbed her warm hands over Rosie’s belly to spread the disinfectant. “This lovely lady’s been in labor for close to two full days.”

  “Sorry,” grumbled Darlene. She patently wasn’t.

  They’d started intravenous saline as S.O.P., which had already made Rosie chilly. The metal table was no help either. Nor was the clatter of metal instruments on the stainless surgeon’s tray as Darlene prepped the room. Nor were Rosie’s nerves, not to mention Jase’s or mine.

  “Can’t Ziesl help?” I asked Dr. Raven sotto voce.

  “She’s not an OR nurse,” she whispered under her breath, for my ears only.

  “Too bad,” said eagle-ears Rosie.

  “Yeah,” agreed Dr. Raven. “Rosie, you ready?” She waited till Rosie yessed her.

  “Jase?” He nodded.

  “Dr. Verity?” She met my eyes over her mask.

  “Yes’m,” I said.

  “Baby boy?” she asked. He kicked her. We cackled.

  Her gorgeous hands selected a scalpel, and made an incision low on Rosie’s belly. Jase shaded into celadon green. Rosie grabbed his beard and yanked. I sat doing energy healing for Rosie, Jase, and this new life soon to join us in the world.

  My hands were raised, palms open, covering the whole field of the table: Rosie, Jase, the baby, the cranky nurse, and Dr. Raven. My right hand was a sea of bruises. Tomorrow, or, actually, it was already tomorrow, it would be entirely aubergine.

  Rosie was thankful not to be going into labor anymore. Jase was thankful that the baby was on his way. The OR nurse was at the end of her shift—this was her last delivery of the night. Dr. Raven was completely, unadulteratedly focused on delivering this child. She was exquisite in her concentration.

  At one point, as she waited for something from Darlene, my raised hands drew her eye. Her eyes spanned my hands to my face with a quirked eyebrow as if to ask me what I was doing.

  “Healing,” I whispered. I saw her hear me, and then we were in Operating Mode. Healing—together.

  A Caesarian, without complications, takes very little time. Dr. Raven Lange delivered Rosie (and Jase) of a healthy baby boy at 12:34 AM. He weighed eight pounds, eight ounces, and was seventeen inches long. This child was a Virgo, born to two Aquarian parents. Wow, did they have a lot to teach one another
.

  Another nurse whisked him away to clear his nasal passages, do an Apgar test, and generally clean him up—birth is a messy business. Dr. Raven stayed the course, and finished the surgery. Rosie was big-eyed as the nurse laid her son gently on her breasts. Jase’s eyes streamed tears. “Welcome, Uriel Nathaniel,” said Rosie, “you’re beautiful.”

  Jase echoed his wife’s words, “Rosie, you’re beautiful.”

  I don’t know what makes husbands say those sorts of things at moments like these, but something does. Mine at the time did the same, and I was as far from beautiful as I’d ever felt.

  “Nate,” said Rosie, tucking his blanket under his chin, “meet your great godmother, Verity.”

  “Nate,” I said, “pleased to meet you.”

  Rosie added, “And relieved too, I bet.”

  “Yes, relieved as well,” I agreed.

  Hospital protocol doesn’t leave women in the OR for very long. Someone had come to take Rosie and Nate to her room. Jase walked with them.

  “I’ll be along in a minute,” I said.

  I checked various doors leading out of the OR until the broad shoulders of a tall, handsome doctor drew my eye through the window in one of them. I pushed through the swinging door.

  “Hey,” I said, putting my hand between her shoulder blades.

  “Your hand is hot,” she said.

  “Yes, usually,” I answered her, “and certainly when I’ve spent two solid days doing healing work off and on.”

  “Healing work?” she said, not moving except to press into my hand.

  I reached up with both hands to grasp her shoulders and squeezed. Her body begged for relief from her exhaustion and breathed out as I continued to squeeze her shoulders.

  “Shake your hands out,” I requested.

  “What’ll that do?” she chuckled.

  “It’ll release your shoulders.”

  “C’mon ...,” skepticism laced through her voice.

  “Do it for me, doc. Please,” I asked, “pretty femme please.”

  She froze and then she did it. “Da-yamn,” she said. “It worked.”

  “Of course it did. I’ve been a healer for more than forty years. I ought to know.”

  “Wow,” she said, slowly circling. “That was amazing. I feel terrific.”