Thorns of Truth (50 page)

Iris wasn’t hurt, as Rachel had feared. But she was far from all right, either. Yet the thing for which Rachel had been least prepared was that somehow
she
was no longer responsible for her daughter. Drew, it seemed, had taken charge, with Iris’ consent, while Rachel—Mother, Healer, Saviour—had become little more than a bit player. At Eric’s suggestion, Drew had been in touch with the Meadows, a residential facility in Arizona that was well known, she was told, for treating people like Iris who’d been traumatized as children.

He and Iris had discussed it. And Iris had agreed it would be the best thing for her right now.

When Brian, who’d caught the first plane out of Cincinnati, arrived home, Rachel had even allowed herself to fall apart—just a little. He’d held her, stroked her, murmured all the right things. They’d been a united front, working in tandem to do whatever needed to be done. Health-insurance forms. Travel arrangements. Long conferences over the phone, both with Dr. Eisenger, and with the psychiatrist at the Meadows who would be evaluating Iris.

Getting their daughter off to Arizona turned out to be less wrenching, in the end, than Rachel had feared. Drew and Iris had decided together that he would go with her. And though Rachel had argued that it ought to be herself and Brian, Iris’
parents
, and had wept at the airport after seeing them off, she’d nonetheless come away feeling proud of her daughter for taking a stand, however small, concerning her future.

Maybe I’ve done TOO much for her
, Rachel had thought;
maybe that’s part of the problem.

Drew, she knew from talking to him, had reached the same conclusion—that his protectiveness, his constantly picking up the pieces, had ultimately done Iris more harm than good. He loved her and truly wanted the best for her, but he had his own life, too. Maybe someday they would get married. They’d have to wait and see.…

It makes sense,
Rachel thought wearily. In life, she had learned, there was no such thing as Happily Ever After. Look at Brian and her. Time-out had been declared—as it had been after Mama’s death—but nothing had been resolved. Not really.

Now, just two short weeks since their daughter had left, and they were back to tiptoeing around one another. Polite. Careful. Limiting their discussions mostly to Iris—the progress they’d been told she was making, what they might find when they flew out for family week. The atmosphere at home so strained that returning to work sooner than she really should have was a relief.

She’d cried out all her tears. She was like an empty bowl rinsed clean. Yet this didn’t stop her from aching inside—not only for what she’d lost, but for what remained to be taken from her.

Brian was going to leave her. Soon. She was almost sure of it. She could see it even in the thoughtful way he sifted through drawers—as if cataloguing the remnants of their life—and in the gentleness with which he spoke to her, as if there was no longer any point in raising his voice, or even being angry.

Rachel had thought all her capacity for pain and anxiety had boarded that plane along with her daughter, but still, oh God, it hurt. She almost wished she could go a little crazy, as she had in the midst of that horrible fire, and grab hold of what was so clearly slipping away. But it would do her no more good than if she’d been snatching at smoke. Nothing to hold on to. Not anymore.

The best thing was to seek comfort where she could. In her work.

But that, it turned out, had lost its capacity to make her forget everything else.

When Rachel, bent over a stack of files on her desk, heard her intercom beep, she assumed it was about the budget for the computer system that was being installed, or the director of Community Health Fund, to whom she’d put in a call earlier that day.

She couldn’t admit, even to herself, how desperately she hoped it would be her husband. The flimsiest excuse would do—dry-cleaning that needed to be picked up, a book or magazine at home that he couldn’t find, a phone number he needed. If Brian had asked, Rachel would have dropped everything and rushed home to show him where she kept an extra supply of Band-Aids.

Instead, when she punched the blinking line button, it turned out to be the last person in the world Rachel had expected to hear from.

“Sister Alice,” announced her secretary, in a hushed voice. “It sounds pretty urgent.”

The principal of Holy Angels, in fact, was in a panic. When Rose’s secretary put her through, it was several long moments before the old nun could get control of her labored breathing long enough to speak.

“One of my girls …” she gasped. “Asking for you … won’t let anyone else near her …”

“What’s wrong?” Rachel spoke more briskly than usual in an attempt to mask her astonishment.

“She’s … I think … in labor.…”

Rachel, her old strength flooding back as suddenly as if a switch had been flicked on, grabbed her medical bag and dashed out the door. When she arrived at Holy Angels, the hulking old brick building was humming—clusters of uniformed girls in the hallways, speaking in hushed whispers; worried-looking nuns halfheartedly attempting to shoo them into the chapel, without much success; the poodle-haired secretary Rachel remembered from the administration office actually wringing her hands, like a bad actress in some amateur production.

Sister Alice, gliding down the corridor to greet her on invisible greased tracks, was the biggest shock of all. The old woman seemed to have shrunk since the last time Rachel had seen her, her tiny proportions no longer reminding Rachel of a plaster saint but of some unearthly gnome. Her doughy face had sunk in on itself, with only her small wintry-blue eyes as sharp as ever. In Sister Alice’s tightly pursed mouth. Rachel saw that she was not at all pleased to have had to summon her, that she would not have done so except under the most dire circumstances.

“Thank you for getting here so quickly. Dr. Rosenthal. Come with me. please.” She gestured for Rachel to follow her.

The old toothpaste-green linoleum crackled faintly under Rachel’s shoes as she hurried after Sister Alice under the ceiling’s harsh fluorescents. At the far end of the corridor, the door to one of the classrooms stood open. Rachel stepped inside, glancing about. Nothing out of the ordinary here—rows of chairs with kidney-shaped desktops attached; a blackboard on which math equations were scribbled in slanting columns; a terrarium in one corner, in which, as far as she could see, nothing but algae was being cultivated.

Then she heard it. Coming from the cloakroom in back—the sound of someone moaning in pain. Once she entered the dim space, which smelled of damp wool and lunchboxes, Rachel had to blink several times before her eyes adjusted. While Sister Alice, behind her, groped for the chain to switch on the overhead bulb, Rachel knelt before the frightened girl huddled in one corner.

She couldn’t have been more than thirteen, fourteen. But unlike Elvie Rodriguez, this girl’s naturally heavy build had enabled her to mask her pregnancy well into her last month. Now there was no longer any hope of hiding it. She lay on her side, clutching her belly, her pale face clenched.

Rachel touched her shoulder, asking, “When did the pains start?”

The girl shook her head, unable to speak. She was unusually pretty in a Rubenesque sort of way, with a porcelain complexion and huge brown eyes. Yet Rachel was certain she’d never seen her before; she would have remembered. So why had this perfect stranger demanded that she come?

Perhaps noting her confusion, Sister Alice supplied, “Her name is Dolores Loyola. She’s one of our eighth-graders.”

“Dolores. Don’t be afraid. I’m here to help you.” Rachel pressed a hand to Dolores’ rounded belly. The girl seemed to relax slightly, but the noises coming from low in her throat were those made by nearly every woman in the last stage of labor; it meant there was no time to get this girl to the hospital. Her baby was going to be born right here in this cloakroom.

Rachel felt her years of training and experience kick in like the engine of a faithful old car that had been up on blocks for a while. She reached for her medical bag, barking over her shoulder, “Get me some clean towels. A sheet of butcher paper will do, if you have it. Hurry!”

To her credit. Sister Alice didn’t flinch. By the time she returned with a roll of plain newsprint and a handful of towels, Rachel had gotten Dolores onto her back, her underwear off, a folded coat supporting her head. Her water had broken earlier, it turned out. The poor girl had been too scared to tell anyone.

Minutes later, almost before Rachel had wriggled her hands into a pair of surgical gloves, Dolores began to push. Between her trembling legs, the baby’s head appeared—a half-dollar-sized crown of black hair, matted with blood and white vernix. As Rachel urged Dolores on, while at the same time gently rotating the baby’s head into position, a surge of adrenaline nearly lifted her off the floor. Oh, how she’d missed this! However crude the setting, however wrong that a girl so young be wrenched from innocence as suddenly and violently as this one, the miracle of new life could not be denied. Rachel, her hands now guiding the infant’s shoulders through the narrow perineal opening, was seized by a sense of primal wonder so powerful it was dizzying.

“You’re doing just fine, Dolores. That’s it, sweetie. Just a few more pushes,” she coached, astonished at the smoothness of this birth. Usually girls this young had insufficiently developed pelvises. But Dolores’ broad hips were to her advantage. “You can do it. This will all be over very soon.”

Dolores, her face contracted into a scarlet fist, heaved a massive grunt, and now came the baby’s torso and legs in a last, slippery rush. A girl. Rachel had to bite her lower lip to keep from uttering a joyous shout.

When Rachel rose, cradling the infant, wrapped in a clean towel, the old nun surprised her by reaching out to take it from her. An expression of grudging tenderness flitted across a face clearly unused to such emotions. Gazing down at the tiny pink face swaddled in white toweling, she observed in an odd, cracked voice. “Jesus was born in a stable.”

Rachel, who’d attended Hebrew school and, when she was Dolores’ age, celebrated her Bat Mitzvah, nodded solemnly. She and Sister Alice exchanged a long look—and in the nun’s wintry blue eyes, Rachel, just before she kneeled to attend to her patient, caught a spark of admiration.

Later, when she thought back on this afternoon, a sense of pervading wonder would remain with her like the afterglow of a bright light that’s been extinguished. Along with the baby that had arrived so unexpectedly, and unceremoniously, in this dreary cloakroom, Rachel felt as if something else had been brought to life as well—her own deep connectedness to the thing she loved most, the thing she’d been trained to do: practicing medicine.

Her heart full of gratitude for the gift she’d received as well as given, Rachel gazed down at the drawn face of the girl lying exhausted on a pallet of towels and coats. Smoothing away the strands of dark hair pasted to her sweaty forehead, Rachel soothed, “You were so brave. And your baby is fine. But, sweetie, why me? What made you insist on
me
?”

Dolores gave a wan smile, her expressive brown eyes lifting to meet Rachel’s gaze. In a small, quavery voice she replied, “My mother, she told me about you. The nice lady doctor. When I was born, Mami said it was
you
who delivered me.”

That evening, Rachel served a dinner she’d actually cooked. Chicken breasts marinated in white wine and rosemary, wild rice, a green salad. It wouldn’t win any culinary award, she knew, but it was homemade … and it had kept her hands busy while her brain churned on overload.

She had made up her mind about something, a life change so vital for her—and so crucial for them—that, if Brian’s reaction wasn’t what she hoped it would be, it would kill her. That was why she hadn’t told him sooner; too much was riding on it. If she didn’t say it just right … if he wasn’t in the mood to listen, or was simply too fed up with her to care …

I’ll tell him after dinner
, she thought, too nervous to do more than pick at her food.

She watched Brian across the table. She couldn’t tell whether or not he was enjoying the meal, though he ate in respectful silence, and she saw that he’d changed out of his jeans and flannel shirt. She couldn’t help noticing how unusually polite he was being, too. As if he were a guest at the table of a treasured but somewhat dotty aunt.

“I ran out of ideas by the time I got to dessert,” she apologized lightly as she was clearing away their plates. “I think there’s some ice cream in the freezer, though. Ben and Jerry’s,” she added, hoping to tempt him into sitting with her a bit longer.

Brian was leaving tomorrow, Minneapolis this time, to meet with an important independent bookseller. And she had the feeling that if she didn’t say something—
do
something now—when he got back, it would be too late.

“No. Thanks. What I’d really like …” Brian stood up, gently removing the stacked plates from her hands and placing them on the table. “… is to know what’s going on. All evening, you’ve been acting like a tiger in a cage. Is it something to do with Iris?”

Rachel hardly knew where to begin. When she told him, would he react the way she hoped he would? “It’s not Iris. I spoke with her counselor today. Doug says she’s making progress. We’ll know more when we go out there for family week.” She felt suddenly shy, but forced herself to meet Brian’s cool gray gaze; he was waiting for her to continue.
Slow and steady. Deep breaths. That’s it.
“I had a long talk with Kay this afternoon,” she began in a calm voice, her heart rearing up in her chest. “I asked her to take over as director of the clinic. And—she said she would. It’ll mean hiring someone to fill her old position … but with the money Mama left me, we can swing it.”

Except for the momentary surprise that crossed his face like headlights flaring on a dark road late at night, Brian’s flat expression didn’t change. He asked, “What will you do?”

“Practice medicine,” she told him. “At the clinic, of course. But no more administrative duties.”