“Hear you,” Mellette said, as she dropped back into her pillows and shut her eyes.
Two minutes later Mellette had a blood-pressure cuff strapped to her sister’s arm, and two minutes after that she was on her way back downstairs to find Justin.
He was outside, talking to Mr. Tool Belt. “Something’s wrong with Mellette,” Maggie interrupted, not beating around the bush for a more tactful way to approach it. “I don’t do obstetrics so I can’t tell for sure, but she’s awfully swollen, her blood pressure is on the high end of normal and—”
“Where’s she swollen?” Alain Lalonde cut in.
Both Justin and Maggie gave him an inquisitive look. “Feet, ankles, eyelids …” Maggie answered, not sure why she was giving a symptom list to the carpenter.
“Urinary output normal?” Alain went on.
Maggie shrugged, quite surprised by the carpenter’s line of questions. “I didn’t ask her.”
“Nausea, vomiting, headache?” Again from Alain.
“Nausea and headache.” More than surprised, she was confused.
“Onset?”
“This afternoon,” Maggie said. “Why do you care?”
“Alain was probably the best high-risk obstetrician in Chicago,” Justin answered.
“You knew?” Alain asked. “And you didn’t ask why I’m here, doing carpentry?”
“A man has a right to his privacy. I didn’t want to invade yours.”
“So Mellette … I think it may be preeclampsia. If it is, we caught it in time. But I think you’d better be getting your wife to her obstetrician pretty damned fast.”
Justin turned to run to the clinic, then paused and signaled for Alain to accompany him, leaving Maggie outside to wonder what had caused a doctor to quit and become a carpenter. Not that there was anything wrong with being a carpenter, because there wasn’t. But why had Alain put himself through so many years of medical training just to quit? It made no sense, especially as he was so highly regarded, according to Justin.
So what made a doctor give it up to come to Big Swamp and bang out a clinic expansion? It was a question for which she had no answer. And it was a question for which she was going to find an answer, especially as this man was about to touch her sister. Darned straight, she was going to find an answer.
Instead of going upstairs to Mellette, Maggie went straight to the computer in the office and entered the name Alain Lalonde into a search engine. The first thing that turned up was a headline about a wounded army doctor who saved the lives of his men and women. They had been under siege and he’d drawn the fire away from his escaping crew and patients. Had been shot in the leg in doing so, spent several weeks in the hospital in rehab. Received a medal.
“Amazing,” she said, as the second thing that turned up was of an obstetrician accused in a malpractice suit. Something about performing a Caesarean when it hadn’t been necessary. The article said he’d gone against orders from the woman’s personal physician and performed an emergency C-section when a normal delivery would have worked.
“And someone sued you for that?” Maggie whispered. It didn’t make sense to her as long as the baby had been healthy, which it apparently had been. Was it the lawsuit that had made him quit, or had he just burned out?
“Who are you?” Maggie whispered as she clicked out of the articles. “Alain Lalonde, just who are you? And why are you working as a carpenter and not an obstetrician?”
“HOW FAR ALONG are you?” Alain asked as he checked Mellette’s blood pressure.
“Twenty-four … no, twenty-five weeks now.”
“And when did your symptoms start?” He pumped up the blood-pressure cuff and deflated it slowly.
“A couple of days ago, but only swollen ankles. I honestly didn’t think anything about it because of the heat.”
“In this heat, swollen ankles are common.”
“How high is my blood pressure?”
“One-forty over ninety. Not extremely high, but I wouldn’t want to see it going any higher.”
Mellette gasped. “And the baby?”
“I don’t have anything here to do any tests, but I heard the heartbeat, and it was strong.”
Justin and Maggie, who’d finally joined them, sighed in relief.
“Look, you need to be in the hospital at least for the night so your doctor can get tests done. I think you have a mild case of preeclampsia, which can be controlled by drugs and lots of rest, but we need a blood panel, and most of all we need to get a fetal monitor on you. The problem is, the trip out of here is rougher than I want you to take.” He looked up at Maggie. “Is there any way to get a helicopter in here?”
“No!” Mellette gasped.
“It’s for your own good, Mellette,” Alain said. “But most of all it’s for the baby’s safety.”
Mellette shut her eyes and a tear squeezed out the side and trickled down her cheek. Immediately, Justin was at her side, pulling her into his arms. “Alain’s a good doctor,” he said. “If he thinks we need to evacuate you by air, that’s what we’ll do.”
Even before Mellette had a chance to agree, Maggie was on the phone, making the arrangements. “Thirty minutes?” she questioned. “We’ll get her down to the pickup spot as fast as we can.”
“Already?” Alain asked, clearly impressed.
“Done deal. We need to get her down to the grocery in Grandmaison where an ambulance will take her out to Flander’s Meadow where she’ll be picked up. The ambulance will be there in half an hour, so I’d suggest we get going. If that’s okay with you?” she asked Alain.
“Perfect plan.” He gave her an admiring glance as she helped Justin bundle up his wife for the trip.
“Please,” Mellette said, “I can walk down the stairs.”
“And I can carry you down just as easily,” Justin said.
“I want you to come along, as well,” Alain said to Maggie. “I don’t anticipate anything happening, but I want you to keep watch on her blood pressure while I drive.”
“I can do that.”
“It’s going to be that proverbial bumpy ride.”
Maybe it was, but Maggie was glad with everything inside her that Alain was there taking charge. No matter what the article said, she trusted him.
Maggie stared up into the sky as the helicopter lifted off, carrying Justin and Mellette. She’d already called her parents, who would be at the other end when it landed. And she’d called her sisters, as well as Pierre Chaisson, Mellette’s brother-in-law from her first marriage, who would watch Leonie when everybody else was at the hospital. “You never think in terms of a pregnancy having difficulties when the mother is in such good shape. I mean, prenatal problems are for other people.”
“They’re for everybody, Maggie. Sometimes they can be predicted, sometimes they can’t, sorry to say. I mean, Mellette doesn’t seem to carry any of the risk factors, but you see the results on someone who’s perfectly fine. It’s frustrating for everybody.”
“But Mellette’s going to be okay, isn’t she?”
“Once