“How are you doing with Professional Match?” he asked during a break in the choir’s offerings. Have you found anyone yet?”
“I’m still trying to reach Connaughton. That’s why I was late. I went up to the unit to see if I could find him. He hasn’t answered any of my pages.”
“Connaughton.” Amusement played across Derek’s face. “Uh-oh.”
“What?”
“I didn’t know that was who you’d lined up.”
“Personnel gave me his name. You don’t think he’s right for the show?”
Derek shrugged. “He’s telegenic enough and he has an accent of some sort, Irish, I think. A little detached and aloof at times, but he’s got that brooding quality women go gaga for. Supposedly, he and Valerie Webb are an item.”
“Valerie Webb? The pediatrician?” Catherine stared at Derek. “She’s Julie’s doctor.”
He grinned. “News flash. Physicians have sex lives.”
“I realize that, Derek…” She felt blood rush to her face. God, who ordered this day anyway? “Anyway, about Connaughton,” she said after a moment. “I told the producer he’d do the show. You think—”
“I think it might have been prudent to wait until you’d cleared it with Connaughton.” Derek paused to sip his cider. “The man is not exactly easy to work with. Either he’ll withdraw so you think you’re talking to the wall, or fly into a rage. When I had to turn down his request for publicity for that drug addict program he runs…” He rolled his eyes. “It wasn’t pretty. I didn’t dare tell him the thing is deader than a dodo. Of course, you didn’t hear that from me.”
Catherine sipped the cider. “Of course not.”
“Let me try and explain Connaughton.” Derek brought the rim of his paper cup to his lips, thought for a minute. “He’s a cowboy. A thorn in administration’s side. Never met a rule he couldn’t break. A brilliant doctor, which is one of the reasons they haven’t booted him out, but something of a law unto himself.”
Catherine felt the day slip down another notch. This time a year ago, the most complicated thing she’d had on her mind had been Christmas shopping and what kind of cookies to bake for the PTA bake sale. Now she was dealing with outlaw doctors and contemplating custody battles. Her left temple throbbed.
“But don’t let him intimidate you,” Petrelli said. “Professional Match is the most popular morning show in this area and it reaches the audience we want. Getting Connaughton on would be worth God knows how much in advertising. Be firm with him. I’d do it myself, but I’ve got a meeting downtown.”
“And if he does refuse?” She thought of the unanswered calls she’d made to the unit. “Should I try to line up someone else?”
“Connaughton’s too tough for you to handle?”
“No, I didn’t mean that.” The paper cup had started to crumple, and she tossed it in the trash. “I just meant—”
“You’ve been with Western for how long? Two months?”
“Nearly three.”
“Still on probation though.”
“Well, yes.” Her stomach did its familiar flip-flop thing. “I, uh…is there a problem?”
“Mmm.” Derek examined the paper cup he held as if it were an object of great interest. “Well, that’s the whole theory behind probation, isn’t it?” He turned the cup, peered inside, inspected the pattern of holly berries around the rim. “Wait and see how things go. Ask me in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, work on getting Connaughton for Professional Match.” He drained the contents and smiled up at her. “Imagine your job riding on it. That should get the adrenaline flowing.”
DR. MARTIN CONNAUGHTON leaned his head back against the seat of his battered black Fiat and closed his eyes. He’d had to get out of NICU before he lost it. An hour earlier, the Washington baby had died, and one of the residents had said it was probably a good thing.
“Some make it. Others don’t,” the resident had said. “I never really believed that kid was salvageable though.”
Martin listened to the dry rustle of Santa Ana winds in the eucalyptus trees, smelled the heated air through the car’s rolled-down windows. He hated the word salvageable and had yelled at the resident for using it, but he couldn’t mourn Kenesha Washington’s death. What haunted him was her short cruel life.
After a moment, he opened his eyes. Through the windshield, he watched the pink and white blossoms on the oleander bushes tremble in the wind. A strip of eucalyptus bark whipped across his line of vision. In the arid air, his eyes and mouth felt parched, the skin on his face dry and stretched taut across his skull.
One of the E.R. physicians claimed that the number of attempted suicides rose when the Santa Ana winds blew. Martin believed it. He was from Northern Ireland, more accustomed to enveloping mists and soft rain. California’s hot, roaring winds with their banshee-like howls seemed sinister, full of dangerous energy. They made him tense and edgy, as if he’d offended a malevolent presence who would soon exact revenge.
He ran his finger under his collar—unsettled by the Santa Anas, by thoughts of Kenesha Washington and by the knowledge that today marked the fifth anniversary of his wife’s death. Five years. Enough time that it was no longer Sharon he really mourned, but what had happened to his own life in the years since her death. Somehow it had drifted so far off course that he’d started to wonder about the direction in which it now seemed headed.
In the next week, he had to make a decision. A medical team, leaving to set up a pediatric hospital in Ethiopia, had invited him to join. It was a two-year commitment, similar to other expeditions in which he’d participated, with doctors he knew and respected, yet for some reason, he couldn’t commit.
“But we were counting on you,” the group’s leader said when Martin had asked for more time to decide. “Most of us have family considerations, mortgages, all that stuff. We’re not as footloose and free to wander as you are.” He’d laughed. “Don’t tell me, you’ve settled down.”
Martin had laughed too, but the laughter was hollow. He could leave without creating a ripple. At thirty-eight, he had few possessions. The Fiat, the sloop he lived on in the Long Beach Marina, some books and an eclectic collection of music that leaned toward Celtic traditional. Back in Belfast, his family, or what remained of it—was far removed from his life.
After a week of sleepless nights searching for reasons not to go to Ethiopia, he’d finally come up with just one. The WISH program. He ran his hand across his jaw, seldom smooth even when he took the time to shave closely, and felt the coarse stubble of his beard.
WISH was about Kenesha Washington. Kenesha, the tiny junkie. Shaking, sweating, born in need of a fix. He stared down at the medical journals that littered the Fiat’s floorboards. Kenesha, who had never seen the sun or the sky. Never known anything but the brightly lit world of the NICU and people who did painful things to her.
With a sigh, he unfurled himself from the Fiat and started across the parking lot. Wind whipped at his hair, blew gritty dust into his eyes. At the edge of the lot, he stopped at a brightly painted mobile home covered with images of pregnant women, smiling under banners that read: WISH— Women, Infants, Staying Healthy.
He unlocked the back door, climbed inside. Dust motes swam in a beam of sunlight, settled on boxes of charts and folding chairs stacked against the walls. Until a week ago, the camper had rolled through the streets and housing projects of Long Beach providing free medical services to crack-addicted mothers. Now it sat idle in the lot, the prognosis grim.
His reaction to the news that Western’s executive committee had essentially pulled the plug on WISH had prompted Edward Jordan, the hospital administrator, to suggest,