“I’m a doctor,” he called into the car. “What’s the problem?”
“She’s having a baby,” the first woman said without looking up, “And it’s in a hurry to arrive.” She placed a folded blanket behind the woman’s head and eased out of the car, crawling backward across the seat. “You’re a doctor, huh?” she said when she was back out on the freeway again.
“Right.”
Her expression registered a brief battle between distrust and relief.
He met her eyes, but said nothing. If he’d stepped out of a Mercedes wearing a three-piece designer suit, he thought, he would have had no trouble convincing her of his profession.
“Hey, take over,” she said finally, apparently deciding to take him at his word. “Her water broke. She’s having contractions. Someone called the highway patrol, but it looks as though the kid will get here before they do.”
He heard a moan from the car and crawled inside. Conflicting thoughts raced around in his brain. If he stopped to help her, he’d be more than just a few minutes late for the presentation, and the highway patrol would have an air ambulance dispatched, he reasoned, so she was in no real medical danger. As he considered what to do, the woman screamed and her body went rigid. He looked at his watch and noted the time. Three-ten. Right now he should be well into the presentation. He blocked the thought, waited for the contraction to subside and surveyed the interior of the car. Packing cartons and boxes were jammed into the back seat, clothes on and off hangers piled to a height that all but obscured the rear window.
“Right, then, I’m going to help you.” He looked at her. A sheen of perspiration covered her face. Fine lines around her eyes and mouth put her age close to forty. “Martin Connaughton,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Rita.” The woman bit her lip and her eyes filled with tears. “Hodges. You’d think I’d know better after four kids, wouldn’t you? I figured this one wasn’t due for another two months.”
“Have you seen a doctor?” he asked, but he’d already guessed the answer.
She shook her head. “My husband and me just got out here from Tennessee. He’s got the other kids. I was supposed to be checking out some apartment in Downey, then this happens… Oh God—” her face contorted “—here comes another one.”
Her scream filled the car, ricocheted off the windows.
He checked his watch again. Three minutes since the last one. Outside, the crowd of onlookers, faces up at the glass, jockeyed for a better view. Anytime now, he thought, there’d be vendors hawking soft drinks.
“You’re the star of the Long Beach Freeway, Rita.” He caught her in an awkward embrace and maneuvered her around until she was stretched across both seats. Then he tented the gray blanket over her knees. “Everyone wants a look.”
She grinned weakly. “Yeah, a look up my crotch. Jeez, I hope they don’t flash it on TV.”
It wouldn’t surprise him, he thought as he checked the make-shift delivery set-up. Since she occupied both seats, there was no room for him inside the car so he climbed out and stood on the asphalt. Like an old-time photographer covered by a black cloth, he peered into the tented area between her knees. Sweat trickled down his back.
“Okay, Rita, let’s see what’s going on here.” A routine task under normal conditions, the examination seemed surreal against the backdrop of freeway activity. He listened for a police siren, an air ambulance.
The air in the car grew stifling. Sweat dripped into his eyes. Wiping his face, he tried to remember the last time he’d actually delivered a baby. Eight years at least. In New Guinea or Ethiopia, he wasn’t sure. All he remembered was that everything had been fine. Mother and baby okay.
Rita screamed again and pushed. A head appeared, black and slick as a seal. He heaved a sigh of relief.
“How’s it going?” He emerged from his blanket tent and smiled at her, playing the combined role of coach and obstetrician. “Doing okay? Almost over. A couple more pushes and we’re there.”
She moaned. Her abdomen rose and tightened up into another contraction and she moaned again, a slow ascent into a full-pitched scream. The veins in her face and neck bulged. She screamed and pushed some more.
“Come on, Rita,” he urged. “Now. You can do it. Now.”
She gave one last shrill cry and a baby girl emerged. The crowd at the car window, larger now, drawn by Rita’s screams and the unfolding drama, broke into applause.
Martin looked up to a sea of grinning faces and waving hands. He took a deep breath, trying to slow his heart rate to something approaching normal.
With one glance at the baby, he realized that his relief, like the infant, was premature. About twenty-eight weeks, he guessed. A little over two pounds. Viable in that sense. Her dusky color wasn’t good though, neither was her muscle tone. Less reassuring still was her single weak cry. As he cut the umbilical cord, he felt a prickle of fear. The feeble sound was hardly a declaration of life.
Where the hell was the air ambulance? He cleaned out the infant’s nose and mouth as best he could and handed her to Rita.
“A daughter.” He forced a smile and a note of reassurance to his voice. “Hold her tight against you, inside your clothes. All right? Make sure she stays warm.”
Rita looked from him to her new daughter. A range of expressions played across her face. She fumbled with the buttons of her shirt, got it open and yanked her bra away from her breasts. “Is she okay? She’s not crying much. My others all yelled their heads off.”
“We need to get her to the hospital.” He pulled the edges of her shirt together so that they covered the baby. “The ambulance should be here any minute.”
Fervently hoping he was right, he watched for a moment, then returned to the tented canopy. As he reached up inside her for the placenta, his hand caught a tiny foot. He released his grip, felt around again. No doubt, it was a foot. He shook his head. This couldn’t be happening. Exploring, he found what had to be the shoulders of a third infant.
“Holy Mother of God.” For a moment he couldn’t move, his grip frozen on the tiny limb. Rita’s scream galvanized him into action. “Where the bloody hell is the highway patrol,” he yelled over his shoulder. “Tell them…”
A second, louder scream interrupted him.
CHAPTER THREE
“JOSH GILLESPIE, right.” Catherine cradled the receiver between her ear and shoulder and consulted the scrawled jottings on her notepad. “Eight years old,” she said, reading from a sheet of yellow paper. “Life-Flighted here about seven this morning. Hit by a car as he was crossing the road. We need a condition report for the media.” She hesitated a moment. “A couple of reporters want to speak to the parents.”
“Josh is in surgery.” The voice of the nurse in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit was abrupt. “He’s—” She stopped, a hint of suspicion evident now. “Who did you say you were?”
“Catherine Prentice. Public Relations.”
“I don’t know your name.”
Catherine drew a square around the boy’s name. If she’d sounded more confident, would the nurse have questioned her? She pushed the thought away. Her head ached, her stomach felt as if she’d swallowed a lump of lead. And the Professional Match producer had called again. Now she’d have to go plead with Martin Connaughton to see if she could get him to change his mind. Which might have been easier if she hadn’t called him Scrooge. All of this when what she really wanted to do was go and pick up her kids, start a new life somewhere where Gary and Nadia would never find them.
“I’ve just started working