Solemn Oath Read online

  A week later, on Monday morning, Lukas heard a squeal of car tires outside in the parking lot just as he was preparing for his first meeting with Mrs. Pinkley and the COBRA investigator. He glanced out the double glass doors of the waiting room and saw a man jump out of a late model Chevrolet with a small camcorder hanging from a strap around his neck. The man raced around the front of the car and opened the passenger door, then reached down to help a very pregnant woman out of the seat. An older woman emerged from the back, and the three of them walked toward the E.R. entrance.

  Halfway across the parking lot, the pregnant woman stopped and grabbed the man’s long, lanky arm with both hands. She bent over with a grimace of pain.

  “Judy,” he called to the secretary, “better get a wheelchair. Looks like we’ve got a patient for Labor and Delivery.” Even as he spoke, the older woman also doubled over, hands to stomach. “Judy, make that two wheelchairs. Where’s Lauren?”

  The slender secretary with short salt-and-pepper hair jumped up from the desk and rushed toward the wall where the wheelchairs and gurneys were parked when not in use. “I think she’s in the supply room helping Amanda restock.”

  Lukas took the wheelchairs from Judy and aimed them toward the door. “Would you get them both, please? Have them meet me out in the parking lot.”

  He managed to get both chairs out at the same time without breaking glass. Reaching the struggling man and two moaning women, he caught the pregnant woman just before she fell and eased her into the first wheelchair.

  “Is Labor and Delivery expecting you?” he asked, then looked up to find, to his amazement, that the man was backing away from the scene and focusing his camcorder.

  “Not yet.” The older woman grabbed the other wheelchair and sat down with a groan. She shot a wounding glance at the man. “Useless,” she muttered. “To him this is just one big movie scene.” She reached over and patted the younger woman’s arm. “Told you not to marry the nut. But I’m here for you, Melinda. Just hang on.”

  Melinda nodded, her face red and perspiring. She took a couple of deep breaths, then once more grabbed her abdomen and bent forward with another loud moan.

  Lauren and Amanda came running out, and Lukas straightened to meet them. He gestured toward Melinda. “We need to take this one to Labor and Deliv—”

  The older woman cried out and nearly fell out of the wheelchair. After a long, deep moan, she gasped. “Jeremy, get over here and help your wife before I choke you with the strap on that thing!”

  The man nodded. “Just one more second, Mom. I want a shot of them wheeling her in.”

  “Now!” Mom screamed loudly enough to awaken every patient in the hospital. She bent over again, eyes squeezed shut from the pain.

  Lukas helped Amanda push Melinda’s wheelchair onto the sidewalk, then turned back to Lauren. “Would you please take the mother to the E.R. She’s apparently in pa—”

  “Oh no you don’t!” the woman shouted. “I’m part of this package. This is my first grandbaby, and I’m not going to miss it. Ever heard of couvade? Jeremy, get over here!”

  Lukas nodded in understanding. Of course. Melinda’s mother-in-law was having sympathetic labor pains. It was a little unusual—usually if anyone suffered with couvade it was the husband—but other family members had been documented.

  Reluctantly, the son powered down his precious cargo, and Lukas walked toward him, relieved. “We’ll need you to provide some information for us over in the E.R., since our admitting office isn’t open yet. Who’s you obstetrician?”

  The man grinned. “Dr. Mercy. Can you call her for me?”

  “Hello, Mercy.”

  At the sound of Theo’s voice over the telephone, Mercy nearly spit out a mouthful of coffee. She swallowed instead, and it burned all the way down. Setting her cup on the counter, she looked over to see Tedi wandering into the kitchen in her pajamas, her tangled dark brown hair falling across her shoulders, her brown eyes muzzy with sleep.

  “I hope I didn’t wake you” came Theo’s voice as Mercy pushed a bowl of hot cereal across to Tedi’s place at the breakfast bar.

  Be nice. Don’t alarm Tedi. Keep it polite. “No, I’ve been up awhile.” Mercy poured some orange juice with extra pulp and placed it beside the bowl of cereal, then motioned for Tedi to sit down and start eating.

  “I was just getting ready to leave for work, and you probably are, too,” Theo said. “I wanted to apologize for barging in on Jarvis’s party. It took me this long to work up the guts to talk to you again.”

  Mercy frowned. There was no hint of sarcasm in his voice. He sounded sincere—but then, how many times had he fooled her and everyone else?

  Still…she’d been thinking about things, and Mom was right. If she kept putting him off, he could get mad and go back to court and demand visitation rights. She did not want that.

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  There was a shocked silence from the other end of the line.

  She reached down and pushed Tedi’s hair back from her face so it wouldn’t fall into the cereal. “Actually, I know there are some things we will need to discuss.” She heard a swift intake of breath over the line, and she felt her own heart beating faster. Was this a good idea? She still despised the man, but her own personal feelings were not as important as Tedi. “I’m still off on Thursdays. Do you suppose we could have a telephone discussion? Or we could meet—”

  “Yes. Anything. Name the time and I’ll be there. I’ve been putting in some overtime, and if I explain to my boss—”

  “That’s not necessary, Theodo—” Too late, she caught the slip. She saw Tedi drop her spoon at the sound of his name, saw her eyes widen. She sighed inwardly. “When is your lunch hour?”

  “I get off at eleven-thirty. I have thirty minutes, but I could take long—”

  “No, that’s okay. Little Mary’s Barbecue is next door. I’ll be there at eleven-thirty on Thursday.”

  “Would you make it eleven, please? I told my boss everything, and he understands how important this is to me.”

  Mercy rolled her eyes. Everyone in town knew about their situation. “Okay. Eleven.”

  “I’ll buy lunch.”

  “No.”

  There was a pause, then, “Thank you, Mercy.” She thought she heard a catch in his voice. “This means…so much. Thank you.” There was another pause. “You probably won’t believe me, but I’ve been praying about this for the past week.”

  Oh sure, and Billy Graham is a Hindu. “I’ll see you then.” She hung up and looked down at her wide-eyed, openmouthed daughter.

  “Mom, you’re going to see Dad?”

  “I need to talk with him.”

  “Can I go with you?”

  Mercy sank onto a stool at the breakfast bar. Had she lost her mind? What was she putting into motion with this meeting? Why was she even agreeing to talk to him? The fear of losing custody of Tedi still stalked her thoughts like a nightmare that wouldn’t go away.

  Tedi stepped over and took Mercy’s hand. “Mom?”

  Mercy sighed and drew Tedi forward. “Do you want to see him, honey?”

  Tedi stared at her with big solemn brown eyes for a moment, then nodded. “I think so.”

  The telephone rang again, and for an instant Mercy entertained the wild hope that it was Theo calling back to tell her it was all a mistake, that he was leaving the country, never to be heard from again.

  When she answered, it was the feminine voice of a stranger. “Hello? Is there somebody there by the name of Dr. Mercy?”

  “Yes, that’s me. May I help you?”

  “Well, I live over here on Monroe Street, and this huge, half-naked man just came and knocked on my door and asked to use my telephone.”

  Mercy caught her breath. Clarence.

  The woman continued, “Said his phone’s disconnected, and he needed to talk to you real bad. Well, this guy was so big I wasn’t about to let him in my house. I mean to say, this man is—”

 
“What did he say?” Mercy snapped. Did this woman think Clarence was contaminated or something? “Is he okay?”

  “He wanted me to call an ambulance, but I thought they might bill me for the call, and I don’t have extra money lying around for other people’s emergencies—”

  “For goodness’ sake, this is an emergency and they’re in danger. Just make the call!” She slammed down the phone and turned to Tedi. “Honey, get your clothes on now. We’ve got an emergency, and I’ve got to take you to Grandma’s.”

  In five minutes, Mercy and Tedi were out the door. The last thing Mercy grabbed as they left was her cell phone.

  The E.R. secretary hung up her phone in distress. “Dr. Bower, Dr. Mercy doesn’t answer at home. At first when I called, it was busy, and now I’m getting her answering machine.”

  “Try her work number. She’ll be around somewhere.”

  Lukas’s phone rang, and he picked it up. “Emergency room.”

  “Dr. Bower, could you please come down to Labor and Delivery?” It was Lauren, who had accompanied the soon-to-be mother. “This baby’s coming fast, and we need a doctor.”

  “How far apart are the contractions?”

  “Every one to two minutes.”

  “I’ll be right there.” He put down the phone and looked up to see Mrs. Pinkley walking into the E.R. with a grimfaced, silent woman with a briefcase. It didn’t look as if he was going to make his first meeting. Great first impression with the terminator. Mercy, where are you?

  He turned to Judy. “Do you have Dr. Mercy’s cell number?”

  “Yes. I’ll try it if she’s not at the office.”

  “Good, and meanwhile I’ll go down to see if I’m needed to catch a baby or run interference.” With a helpless shrug at Mrs. Pinkley and guest, he rushed out the door, leaving Judy to explain his departure.

  Using well-known shortcuts, Mercy delivered Tedi to Ivy’s house and drove across downtown Knolls in ten minutes. She reached the Knights’ dilapidated home, screeched the car to a halt in the driveway and grabbed her bag. Just as she reached the front door, her cell phone sounded in her pocket. She pulled it out and checked the calling number as she barged through the front door. A quick glance told her the number belonged to the E.R. desk. She flipped open the phone, gave instructions for an ambulance, acknowledged the news that she was needed for a delivery, but Lukas would have to take this one, then she disconnected.

  “Clarence? Darlene? Where are you?” she shouted, trying to keep the alarm she felt from her voice.

  “Doc!” came Clarence’s deep, frantic voice from Darlene’s bedroom. “In here. Hurry!”

  Mercy raced down the short hallway to Darlene’s tiny room, which was crammed with a twin-size bed and a chest of drawers on one wall, with a computer, desk and filing cabinets completing the cramped space. Clarence crouched in the tiny floor space between the bed and the closet door.

  He was battling valiantly to continue holding his massive arm up and balance his weight to keep from falling as he helped his gray-faced sister with her inhaler. He was losing the battle, and fear and pain covered his face like an open wound.

  Darlene was barely sitting up in bed, leaning back against the headboard, eyes closed. What Mercy noticed first was the silence. No wheezing, no breath sounds at all in the room except for Clarence’s loud, frantic panting. Darlene looked as if she hadn’t slept in two days.

  “Take it in, sis!” Clarence turned pleading dark brown eyes to Mercy. “I can’t help her. She won’t do it for me. Can you do it, Doc?” His arm gave out, and the heavy load it had balanced now slumped back against the closet door with a groan of wood. His gaze reverted back to his sister’s sagging form.

  Mercy stepped in and squeezed past the computer to the other side of Darlene’s narrow bed. She pulled the stethoscope from around her neck, but she knew what she would hear before she even placed it on Darlene’s chest and back. She pulled out her breathing equipment and set it up, then placed the pulse oximetry unit onto Darlene’s finger and waited for the O2 sat and heart rate readings to kick in.

  Nothing happened.

  She took Darlene’s pulse, and it was 125 BPM. To be expected. She removed the attachment from Darlene’s finger to her ear and watched for a tiny blip, blip of reading to jump on the screen. It was disappointingly low. Darlene had maybe a reading of 75, and normal was 95 or better for a nonsmoker.

  “What’s it say, Mercy?” Clarence asked, still huffing, beads of sweat dripping from his face.

  “Not good.” Mercy glanced over at him. “You okay?”

  He nodded. “Just take care of her, Doc. Please save her. Are they coming? Is the ambulance coming? I told the neighbor to call them.”

  “Just listen for the siren.”

  Scrubbed, gowned and gloved, Lukas entered the delivery room to find the mother-to-be and her attendants the unwilling stars of an amateur movie production. While the husband, Jeremy, focused his camcorder from a few feet away, the OB nurse and Lauren placed the patient on a fetal monitor. She was already draped with cloths on a delivery table and had an IV in her left arm. Lukas knew Mercy’s standing orders for blood work would have already been completed. An OB pack lay open on a metal tray beside the bed—cord clamps, forceps, scissors, baby towels, 4x4s, bulb syringes, tubes for drawing a cord blood and a cord gas. There was also an anesthetic for a midline episiotomy.

  “I can’t do this!” the patient said with a gasp, grabbing Lauren’s arm. “Please, you’ve got to give me something. Why isn’t Dr. Mercy here? She’d give me something for the pain.”

  Lauren glanced at Lukas. “Dr. Bower, she’s fully dilated.”

  Lukas stepped forward and quickly checked beneath the draping. She hadn’t crowned yet, but she would any time. “I’m sorry, Melinda, but it’s too late to give you anything now. We can’t risk respiratory depression with the baby.”

  The mother-in-law snorted from the reclining chair at the other side of the delivery table. “Melinda, you should’ve listened to me. I told you not to take the time to change your clothes after your water broke.”

  “Rats!” Jeremy cried. “I forgot to change the battery before we left the house. I’ll be just a second. Hold on.”

  “Are you crazy?” his mother shouted. “I can’t believe I raised such a…Get over here and help your wife before I take that camcorder and hit you over the—”

  Melinda cried out with another contraction. Lukas checked her again and instructed the OB nurse to prepare the anesthetic for the episiotomy. He checked the monitor and was relieved to find the heart rate holding well.

  The perineum stretched, and Lukas injected and cut.

  “Got it!” Jeremy shouted eight inches from Lukas’s right ear.

  Lukas gritted his teeth, held steady and completed the procedure.

  Just in time. The baby crowned. The nurses coached. The mother-in-law cried out in sympathetic agony, and Melinda moaned.

  “All right!” Jeremy said. “Keep it coming! Yeah! Come on, honey, you can do it!”

  Lukas watched the crowning head and gently coaxed it farther. “Okay, Melinda, good, the head’s out. Now stop pushing and breathe deeply for a moment.” He cleaned the baby’s pale face of the heavy coating of natural lubricant that resembled cottage cheese while the father jockeyed noisily for a better viewing position.

  “Doc, can you just move to the left a little? I want to see his face.”

  Lukas ignored him. “Okay, Melinda, now you can push again, but gently. We don’t want—”

  A loud moan, followed by a loud crash of metal came from directly behind him, where Jeremy had been avidly taping the whole scene.

  Melinda groaned again in pain. Her mother-in-law cried out and jumped up from the recliner and ran behind Lukas.

  “Okay, the movie producer’s out of the way for a moment,” the OB nurse announced. “Too bad we didn’t catch that moment on tape, Melinda. You’d have loved it. Dr. Bower, don’t back up. You’ve got a crowd behind you.
Lauren, I can take it from here if you want to check on the proud father.”

  As Lukas and the other nurse helped the new mother complete the birth, Lauren called for reinforcements with c-collar and backboard for Jeremy.

  Lukas reached out and caught the emerging slippery baby boy—like a football, just as he’d been taught. The tight little face scrunched and his mouth opened. No sound came out. Lukas flicked the feet with his fingers, grabbed a towel and rubbed the baby’s back, and felt a flood of relief when the cry came, strong and clear. He clamped and cut the cord and turned around with the baby—just in time to catch Lauren in the new little boy’s urine stream.

  Mercy’s cell beeped again as she continued to work on Darlene. Once more, it was the hospital, but she couldn’t do anything about it. She glanced at Clarence, whose puffy, bearded face betrayed his own physical pain. He had probably pulled one or two major leg muscles in his hurried trip to the neighbor to call for help.

  And that neighbor had refused to allow Clarence into her house. Mercy vowed that once this whole thing was over, she would personally go to that woman’s house and sock her in the mouth.

  But this wasn’t over, and as Clarence lay watching her with fear-filled eyes, Mercy realized that he and his sister were both getting worse. Darlene now had an irregular heart rate of 140. Her breath sounds, fast and shallow, were barely perceptible. She was failing.

  Mercy reached into her bag and pulled out an ampule of Brethine, a bronchodilator that should open Darlene’s bronchial tubes. Unfortunately, it could also increase the heart rate and drop the blood pressure even lower. But this was Mercy’s last play. She injected the drug and hovered over the woman, waiting.

  “I thought she was better until I saw her blue lips this morning,” Clarence said, his deep voice seeming to rattle the closet door against which he leaned. “She stopped wheezing yesterday. I thought that meant she was getting better, but she wasn’t, was she?”

  “We don’t know that for sure, Clarence.” Mercy placed her stethoscope over Darlene’s chest. Was that a slight wheeze she heard?