He Missed the Delivery Room. I Married His Enemy Instead. novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Seventy Beats

Brigid takes Gwyneth's pulse in front of the ward and Davis leaves with her anyway; then Cornelia's lawyer suspends Brigid from Mercy and comes for Niamh's name.

"She's your daughter," I said. "That's who she is."

"Her name is Whitmarsh."

"Not on the form."

Davis laughed, short and thin, and glanced at the photographer.

The young man lowered his camera an inch.

"Keep shooting," Davis told him. "It's fine. She's tired."

Two nurses had stopped in the doorway with a med cart.

One of them was my charge nurse from the trauma floor, in her coat, a foil tray of something in her hands.

She'd come up on her day off to feed me.

She set the tray down on the cart and folded her arms.

"Davis," I said. "Read the card again. Out loud."

"Brigid."

"Out loud. For the camera."

He didn't.

So I did.

"Niamh Sheehan. Seven pounds two. Born at eleven forty-one p.m. Father not present."

The nurses hadn't written that last part.

I added it.

The photographer's camera clicked once, by reflex, and he flushed.

"You're doing this here?" Davis said through his teeth. "In front of staff?"

"You brought a photographer to my delivery room. You chose the audience."

I reached for my phone on the tray table.

My father had left something there at dawn, tucked under it.

A business card from the lawyer who'd handled his union's pension fight for twenty years.

I held it out to Davis between two fingers.

"Talk to him," I said. "Not to me."

Davis didn't take it.

He stared at it.

"You're divorcing me," he said. "The morning after. With a newborn. Do you hear yourself?"

"I heard you. On speaker. At nine centimeters."

"I was on a plane."

"You were at a bar. Gwyneth posted it."

Gwyneth made a small sound behind him.

Her hand went to her throat.

"Davis," she whispered. "I can't. I can't be in here, she hates me."

"Gwyn."

"I can't breathe."

She backed out into the hallway, one palm on the wall, and slid down it in a pool of cream cashmere.

She sat on the floor with her knees up and pulled in air in big, beautiful, audible gulps.

Davis was beside her in two strides.

"Somebody get a doctor," he called.

Every head on the ward turned to me.

I was the only doctor in the room.

My mother said, "Don't you dare get out of that bed."

I got out of the bed.

It hurt more than I'd tell anyone.

I put Niamh in my mother's arms and walked to the door in my hospital gown and socks, holding the IV pole.

The hallway had filled.

Patients in robes. A janitor. Two residents. The photographer, who'd followed Davis.

Gwyneth looked up at me with her eyes swimming.

I crouched slowly, one hand on the pole.

"Give me your wrist," I said.

She pulled back.

"I'm a trauma attending," I said, calm and loud enough for the hallway. "You're in distress on a hospital floor. Give me your wrist."

She had no way to refuse in front of thirty people.

She gave it to me.

I put two fingers on her radial pulse and looked at the clock over the nurses' station.

Fifteen seconds.

Her skin was cool and dry.

No sweat. No tremor.

Her pupils were normal size and tracking me with real hate.

"Seventy," I said. "Your heart rate is seventy, Gwyneth. Your skin is dry and your breathing is voluntary. You're fine."

The hallway went silent.

One of the residents coughed into her fist to cover a laugh.

My charge nurse didn't bother covering hers.

Gwyneth snatched her wrist back.

"She's humiliating me," she said to Davis. "After everything, she's humiliating me in public."

"I'm discharging you," I said. "Go home. Hydrate."

Davis stood up.

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he helped Gwyneth up by the elbow, the way he'd never once helped me out of a car.

"I'm taking her downstairs," he said. "She needs air. We'll talk when you're calmer."

"We'll talk through the lawyer."

"You're not well, Brig."

He walked her to the elevator.

The photographer hesitated, looked at me, and went with them.

The doors closed on the three of them and the pink balloons.

I made it back to the bed before my legs gave.

My charge nurse caught my elbow and swung me in.

"That," she said, "was the best thing I've seen in this building in seven years."

"Don't make me laugh. I'll pop a stitch."

She lifted the foil off her tray.

Baked ziti, still hot.

"Eat," she said. "Feed the baby. I'll stand at the door and bite anybody else."

I ate four bites.

Then someone knocked, and she didn't bite.

She stepped aside, because the man in the gray suit had a hospital badge clipped to his lapel.

He was sixty, silver-haired, with a leather folio.

I knew him.

He was the lawyer who sat at Cornelia Whitmarsh's right hand at every Mercy board meeting.

"Dr. Sheehan," he said. "Congratulations on your daughter."

"What do you want?"

He opened the folio and laid two documents on my tray, beside the ziti.

"The board has placed you on administrative suspension, effective immediately," he said. "Unprofessional conduct toward a visitor on a hospital ward, witnessed this morning by staff."

"I took her pulse."

"You'll surrender your badge pending review."

He tapped the second document.

"And Mrs. Whitmarsh's family has filed a petition with the probate court, regarding the child's name."

He said "the child" the way you say "the property."

"They intend to have it corrected."

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