Deep in the Valley (23 page)

“Well, hell….”

“The other piece of news might suit you better. I got a call back from San Francisco this morning. My contact there checked four Bay Area police departments. There is no record of charges of any kind ever being brought against John Stone. Nor lawsuits.”

June looked suddenly deflated. “I don’t understand,” she said. “He’s wonderful, then he’s suspect, then how can anyone think that, then the very woman who brought charges calls me, then—” She stopped talking as a BMW came up the street and pulled behind the clinic. “Speak of the devil.”

“You really should talk to him about this. Perhaps there’s an explanation.”

They could see the light in her office flick on.

“Wonder what he’s doing?” she thought aloud. “Well, no time like the present. I’ll go over there now, while Elmer and his cronies are stirring the pot. We can talk about this tonight, since we won’t be interrupted by patients.”

As she was leaving, she heard Elmer’s voice rise up in passion. “There’s a couple of things fundamentally wrong with this town lately, if a woman can’t defend herself against a violent man, yet we all sit in church and take spiritual advice from a womanizing preacher!”

“I vouch for that! It’s been wrong long enough,” someone said.

When the men as well as the women have had
enough of that, June thought, maybe the town will have the courage to change it.

She walked across the street to the clinic, ready to have this issue with John resolved once and for all.

J
une and Sadie walked across the street and went in the back door. John didn’t hear them enter because of the noise he was making while rifling through her desk drawers.

“Looking for something?” June asked.

He looked up in surprise and his face was rigid with anger. She actually jumped back at the sight. Indeed, had she ever seen that look before, she’d have been more worried, and much sooner. He slammed a hand on the desk. “What the hell are you trying to do to me, June?”

“What?” she asked dumbly. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, are you the one having me investigated, for chrissake? People from the Marin County Sheriff’s Department have been calling the house, asking about sexual assault charges against me, scaring poor Susan to death! What the hell’s going on here?”

“Shoot,” June said. “How’s that for discreet?”

“June?” he asked. “God, why are you doing this to me?”

“John, I got a call. First I talked to Dr. Fairfield, who
was less than complimentary. Way less, let’s be honest. And then, despite the good recommendations I got from others who had worked with you, I did get this call. This very damning call.” She cautiously moved around his side of the desk, opened the top drawer and pulled a piece of paper out of a small notebook. She unfolded it so that the name and number lay exposed. “From this woman, saying she had had you arrested for sexual assault.”

He frowned. “I don’t know this woman.”

“A surgeon? From San Francisco?”

“Feldtbrow? Is that some sort of Indian…” He scratched his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of—” He stopped. His frown deepened. Then he picked up the phone and dialed. The voice mail came on the line. “You have reached five-five-five…” He held the phone away from his ear, smirked, shook his head. “Jesus Christ,” he swore.

“What? You know her?” June asked.

“Oh yeah. Carolyn. My ex. Just when you think you can relax—”

“Your wife did this? But why?”

“My
ex-wife
created a circus at the time of our divorce! I left the practice because of the upheaval she put us all through, the pressure she applied to the other doctors to get rid of me. But I can swear to you that there were never any accusations like
that.
None! Have you talked to any of the other staff at the Fairfield Women’s Center?”

“Just one of the names you gave me,” she said. “And of course, Dr. Fairfield.”

“I
know
how Dr. Fairfield feels about me. Anyone else?”

There was a pounding at the front door of the clinic,
which had been left locked. “Someone must’ve seen the light and thinks we’re open for business. I’ll go see.” She started down the hall, John following. “Him being the founder and chairman of the clinic partnership, I figured Fairfield would—”

“He’s my ex-wife’s goddamn
father!
” John stormed. “I’d like to think I could have landed a partnership in a clinic that respected me without anyone’s help, but the fact is, Carol’s father headed the most prestigious OB-GYN practice in Sausalito. I
married
into it, for chrissake. And I divorced out of it.”

June was stunned. “No wonder Fairfield had bad feelings about you cashing out your partnership. It was divorce settlement angst!”

“Exactly! And they’re crazy besides. And obviously still pissed off.”

“John, I’ve never heard you swear so much.”

He dropped his chin, contrite. “We try not to…with Syd, you know. But Jesus, June, she makes me so goddamn furious with this—”

“Why would your ex-wife make trouble for you after all this time?”

“It’s her hobby, June. She’s obsessed. She’s hired detectives, leaked inflammatory lies to the press, tried to sue me for everything from fraud to breach of promise. She’s been restrained by the courts. And that’s just what she’s done to
me!
You can’t imagine how miserable she’s made Susan’s life. She has harassed us for seven years! She’s a spoiled, rich little psychopath who would do
anything
to—”

The pounding on the front door resumed, with Tom’s shout added to the mix.

“June!”

Tom’s cry of panic, something almost never heard, caused June to turn and struggle to get the door unlocked and opened quickly. Tom was supporting Christina Baker—the very patient who had refused to see John Stone because she found his examination “too personal.” She was barefoot, wearing a sundress or perhaps nightgown that reached midcalf. Her eyes were swollen, tears streaked her cheeks, and there was an impressive contusion on her forehead. Dark streaks of blood ran down her legs.

“Christina,” June exclaimed, joining Tom in supporting her. The young girl was trembling with fear, her small body vibrating.

“The bleeding,” she murmured weakly. “I hurt. This isn’t right. This isn’t…right….”

John muttered, “Dear God,” before he brushed June and Tom aside, swept Christina up in his arms and carried her to the back of the clinic.

“Get my dad and Charlotte, and take the dog to the café,” June ordered Tom. “Sadie! Go with Tom!” Then she went to the file cabinet, pulled Christina’s file and ran to catch up with John.

John took their patient directly to the treatment room rather than an examining room, anticipating an emergency delivery. June snapped on a pair of gloves and held a pair toward John, who accepted them before continuing, though he’d already been exposed to all that blood while carrying her.

Christina lay whimpering on the table. John had slapped a blood pressure cuff on her arm. He palpated her uterus and got her vitals while June pulled out the
emergency delivery kit kept in the treatment room and withdrew sterile sheets, gowns, gloves and other paraphernalia from the cupboards. Neither of them paused for even the seconds it might take to appreciate how well they worked together.

“Christina,” John asked. “Did anything happen to cause the bleeding? Did you get hurt?”

“Fell. I just fell. I drove myself here as soon as… I drove myself here when the blood started.”

John made eye contact with June, and for the second time that night, she saw fury there—but this time she didn’t understand.

“We need an IV here, angio catheter, sixteen-gauge, Ringer’s. And an ultrasound, stat.”

“We’ve got an ultrasound at twenty-six weeks,” June told him, flipping open her chart.

“That’ll do for me,” John said. “Emergency transport?”

“Fifteen minutes. One way.”

“Damn small towns,” he muttered. “Call. Tell them to put a doctor on, and a baby transport unit. First, the IV, then draw me some blood. We need to know if she’s in DIC.”

June immediately knew this wasn’t going to be an ordinary rushed delivery. John wanted blood drawn that would show, within ten minutes, if she was clotting. “Disseminated intravascular coagulation” was the blood’s inability to clot, not particularly rare in the case of placental abruption. The patient could bleed to death during an emergency C-section. John was prepared to open her up right here in the Grace Valley Clinic, where the most serious surgery performed was a simple lumpectomy.

June drew the blood and was hanging a bag of Ringer’s on the IV stand when the front door slammed. When Elmer appeared at the treatment room door, she shouted, “Call medevac and have them bring a doctor and a baby transport unit. Possible abruption.”

“Probable abruption,” John corrected. “Her pressure’s dropping and we have fetal distress. Baby’s heart rate is sixty. Where’s that ultrasound?”

June passed him the folder that held the precious record of Christina’s test. He took a very fast look at the report. June already knew it showed the placenta was not in the way of the birth canal.

“What have we got here for a surgical procedure?” he asked.

“Brevitol…”

“Nope. We can’t reverse the effects of Brevitol on the baby with a Narcan injection. What else?”

“Only morphine. It probably won’t knock her out but it will calm her down and help with the pain. Lidocaine, Narcan, surgical kit, emergency delivery kit, oxygen, the bare essentials.”

“Spinal needles?”

“Yep.”

“Hemostats? Clamps? Retractors?”

“Hemostats,” June repeated, cautiously opening the sterile kit. “Ten. Eight clamps. Four retractors.”

“We’ll be retracting with our hands for the most part. We going to get some help around here?” he shouted. “Drain the bladder and set her up. Throw a wedge under her left hip—a rolled up towel should do it.” He locked his hands on the hem of Christina’s
dress and gave it a rending tear. June lifted the patient’s knees and got to work on the catheter.

“Christina,” John said, his voice calm and confident and silky. “It looks like your baby is ready whether you are or not. We’re going to deliver the baby, Christina, and you’re going to have to be very still and brave. Hold on to these hand grasps, here, but don’t move or wiggle. Can you do that for me?”

“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?”