No Regrets

“One of the bums found her in a Dumpster,” he said, shoving the bundle into Molly’s arms.

Sensing what she was about to see, Molly gently placed the newspapers onto a gurney and carefully opened them up. The baby’s eyelids were sealed shut, its pale blue skin gelatinous. She was wet and so tiny, she reminded Molly of a newly hatched hummingbird.

Reece, who’d just finished the unenviable task of telling the shell-shocked parents of the thirteen-year-old honor student that he’d been unable to save their son, paused on his way to check out a lacerated scalp.

“Aw, hell,” he responded in his characteristically even tone that was faintly softened with the accent of the deep South. “Get a neonatologist on the line, stat,” he told the clerk. “Tell him we’ve got an extramural

preemie delivery. And start arranging for a transfer upstairs to NICU, just in case.”

Unlike so many other physicians Molly worked with, Reece Longworth never raised his voice except when it was necessary in order to be heard over the din. Few had ever seen him get angry. Such a relaxed, informal demeanor helped calm the staff, as well as thousands of anxious patients. The fluorescent red plastic button he wore on his green scrub shirt reading Don’t Panic probably didn’t hurt, either.

“She’s so small,” Yolanda murmured as Reece managed, just barely, to put the blade of the infant laryngoscope into the baby girl’s rosebud mouth. “She could fit in the palm of my hand.”

“Probably another crack kid,” the cop muttered as he stood on the sidelines and watched.

While Reece slid the tube between the tiny vocal cords, Molly said a quick, silent prayer and checked for a pulse.

“Sixty,” she announced grimly. She did not have to add that it was much too slow for a preemie.

“Dr. Winston’s the neonatologist on call,” the clerk announced as Reece put in an umbilical line to start pushing drugs. “He wants to know how much the baby weighs. Because if it’s less than five hundred grams, the kid’s not viable.”

As soon as the line was in, Reece bagged the baby girl, forcing air directly into immature lungs through the tube. Molly wrapped a towel around the frail infant in an attempt to warm it.

“See if you can find a nursery scale,” Reece instructed Yolanda. “And round up an Isolette, too.”

When the baby suddenly kicked, Molly felt her own pulse leap in response.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Reece warned as they exchanged a look. “It’s only reflex. No matter what she weighs, we’re not even talking long shot here, Molly.”

“I know.”

Yet, even as she prepared for the worst, even as she saw the infant crumping before her eyes, Molly took the weak little kick as a sign of encouragement. Death was a frequent companion in her line of work, but Molly had also witnessed enough miracles to allow her to hang on to hope now.

Yolanda came back with the scale and a hush suddenly came over the room as Molly placed the baby girl on it.

“Four hundred and twenty grams.” Molly closed her eyes and heard the onlookers sigh in unison.

“Too light to fake it,” Reece said what everyone already knew.

The clerk passed the information on to the neonatologist still waiting on the phone. “Winston says to pull the plug. The kid’s FTD.”

Fixing to Die. Accustomed as she was to the term, Molly was irritated by it now.

As was Reece. “Easy for Winston to say,” he muttered. With an icy, controlled fury that was almost palpable, he marched the few feet to the phone and snatched the receiver from the clerk’s hand.

“As much as I appreciate your consult, Dr. Winston, we don’t throw terms around like that in my emergency department. She may be small, but she deserves the same respect we’d show your child, or wife, or mother, if they showed up down here.”

He hung up.

“All we can do now is make her as comfortable as possible,” he said. Every eye in the room was riveted on him as he turned off the line, pulled the plug from the baby’s lungs, wrapped the painfully tiny girl up again and placed her in the Isolette.

“She’s still breathing,” Yolanda pointed out unnecessarily.

“She’ll stop.”

An aide popped her head into the room. “You’ve got a stab wound in treatment room B, Dr. Longworth.”

He turned to Molly. “I’ll need you to assist.” Without waiting for an answer, he cast one more quick, regretful look at the baby and left the room.

After asking the clerk to page Father Dennis Murphy, who she’d seen going upstairs to bring Christmas communion to Catholics on the medical wards, Molly followed Reece.

After stitching up the wound that had resulted from an argument over whether “Away in a Manger” or “Silent Night” was the Christmas carol most appropriate to the season, Reece stopped by to check the baby again and found her still breathing. They also found the cop still standing beside the Isolette.

“I’m off duty,” he said, as if worried they’d think he was shirking his work. “My daughter’s pregnant with her first. This could be her kid.”

Despite the tragedy of their situation, Molly managed a smile at the thought of a new life on the way. “I’ll add your daughter to my prayers.”

“Thank you, Sister.” Patrolman Tom Walsh, a frequent visitor to the ER due to his work patrolling the seediest parts of the city, managed a smile. “Someone needs to baptize her.”

“Father Murphy didn’t answer his page,” the clerk, who overheard his statement, informed Molly. “The guard said he left about thirty minutes ago.”

“Looks like it’s up to you, Sister,” Walsh said. “How about naming her Mary?” he suggested. “That’s my mother’s name. And it is Christmas, so it fits.”

It took all Molly’s inner strength to grace him with a smile when she wanted to weep. “Mary’s perfect.”

The patrolman put his hat over his heart. Molly sprinkled water over the tiny bald head, wishing for the usual cries, but the infant didn’t so much as flinch. Even so, the hopelessly immature lungs valiantly continued to draw in rasping breaths of air like tiny bellows.

“Mary, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”

Walsh exhaled a long breath. “Thank you, Sister. I feel a lot better.”

Molly was grateful that she’d managed to bring one of them comfort. With a no-nonsense attitude that had always served her well, she reminded herself that such emotionally painful situations came with the territory. She’d chosen to live out her vocation in the real world, where a sacred moment was when someone shared with you—like Thomas earlier, and Officer Walsh now. If she’d wanted her life to be one of quiet dedication contemplating holy mysteries, she would have joined an order of cloistered nuns.

Baby Mary fought on. Two hours later, when the flood of patients had slowed to a trickle, Molly slipped back into the room and took the swaddled infant who was no heavier than a handful of feathers out of the Isolette. She held her in her arms and felt the tiny, birdlike heart flutter in a last futile attempt to keep beating. Then it finally went still.

As a grim-faced Reece called the death for the record, and Patrolman Tom Walsh made a sign of the cross, Molly, who was suddenly having trouble breathing herself, escaped from the room.

Reece found her on the rooftop, looking out over the lights of the city.

“Repeat Longworth’s rules of critical care,” he said.

The rules—known as Longworthisms—were a joke around the ER. They were also right on the money.

“Number one—air goes in, air goes out,” Molly answered remotely. She didn’t feel like joking at the moment. “Number two—blood goes round and round. Number three—bleeding always stops.” She drew in a weary breath. “Number four—oxygen is good.”

“Very good.” He nodded his satisfaction. “But you forgot the most important.”

“What’s that?”

“Dr. Reece Longworth’s Rule Number Five. Patients always leave.” In an affectionate gesture more suited to a friend and brother-in-law than a physician, he skimmed his finger down the slope of her nose. “It’s a good one to keep in mind. Getting too involved can end up in a flame-out.”

“But it’s not fair. That was an innocent child, Reece, a little girl who’d never done anything but do her best to beat impossible odds. She was so tiny. And so brave.” Believing all life was a gift from God, Molly hated seeing such a gift not being honored.

“I know.” Reece sighed and put his arm around her. “Some days are harder than others,” he allowed. “But you’re still too softhearted for your own good. You’ve got to save a little of that caring for yourself.”

Molly knew he was right. Emergency room nurses—and doctors—burned out all the time. But she couldn’t just turn off her emotions like a water tap.

When she didn’t answer, Reece ran the back of his hand down her cheek in a soothing fraternal gesture that carried absolutely no sexual overtones.

“You know, I suppose the truth is, deep down, I don’t want you to change, either.” Both his expression and his tone were serious. “The patients are lucky to have you. I’m lucky to have you. But you’ve got to learn to let go.”

“I know.” She sighed. “But sometimes it’s difficult not to worry. When you care so deeply.”

It was Reece’s turn to sigh. A faint shadow moved across his eyes. “On that we’re in full agreement.”

* * *

Venice Beach was deserted save for a few couples walking their dogs along the strand. The full moon hanging in the sky created a glittering silver path on the jet water, but as she sat in the sidewalk café, Lena Longworth’s interest was not in the view, but on the woman across the table from her.

“You’ve been having problems at home,” the young woman, who looked a bit like a blond Gypsy, with her wild long spiral perm, floating gauze skirt and heavy sweater, announced.

“Not really,” Lena lied. The truth was, that although Reece was a man of uncommon tolerance, she knew her obsession with having a child had been straining his patience lately.

Although the woman smiled benignly back at her, Lena knew she wasn’t fooling her for a moment. She took a sip of her cola and wished it were something stronger. But she’d promised Reece that she’d never drink and drive. Having been forced to treat too many casualties of such reckless behavior in the ER, he was adamant on the subject.

A silence settled over them. A pregnant silence, Lena thought wryly.

“I have a friend who told me that your cards had predicted she’d have children. Even when the doctors said it was impossible,” she said finally. “Three months later, she got pregnant.”

“The cards are not some magical fortune-telling computer,” the woman who’d introduced herself as Ophelia said. “I can’t make them give you the answer you’re seeking. I can only interpret them.”

“That’s a start.”

“Fine.” Ophelia smiled again. “Have you ever had a reading before?”

“No.” Lena refrained from mentioning that she’d always found such superstitious behavior foolish. She was a sensible woman. She had a degree in education. She taught kindergarten and was married to a physician. She didn’t need New Age mumbo jumbo to make her happy. But still…

Ophelia held out the deck of colorful cards. “Some readers prefer to shuffle the cards themselves. Personally, I believe it’s better if you instill them with your own energy first.”

Although she knew it was only her imagination, Lena could have sworn her fingertips tingled as she shuffled the cards.

“You can deal out your first card whenever you’re ready,” Ophelia instructed. “This will tell us your present position.”

Lena drew the first card from the shuffled deck. The image was of a young man, sitting in front of a tree. In front of him were three goblets; a hand coming out of the clouds was offering him a fourth, but his arms were folded in a gesture that suggested his unwillingness to accept.

“The Four of Cups.” Ophelia nodded. “You can see this is a very lucky man. Unfortunately, he’s so caught up in his own despair he can’t see life offering him a great deal.”

Lena twisted her wedding ring and stared down at the cards. This was already hitting a bit too close to home.

Her marriage had been strained lately. But as soon as she got pregnant, that would change. All she wanted was a child. Someone all her own to love. Someone who’d love her back.

“Why don’t you deal the next card,” Ophelia suggested, her gentle voice breaking into Lena’s unhappy thoughts.

Lena nearly groaned as she looked down at the card depicting a woman sitting in bed, obviously in deep despair, her head in her hands as a row of swords hung ominously overhead.

“The Nine of Swords suggests the seeker senses impending doom and disaster,” Ophelia divulged, once again hitting unnervingly close to reality.

Lena wanted to jump up and run away, but she found herself spellbound by the sight of that anguished, sleepless woman. It could have been a self-portrait.

“As you’ll see, although she’s obviously caught up in her fears, the swords do not touch the woman.” The psychic’s dark eyes swept over Lena’s face. “Often the fear of disaster is worse than the reality.”

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself?” Lena muttered.

Ophelia remained unscathed by Lena’s sarcasm. “That’s often the case.”

Irritated and unnerved, Lena dealt another card. This time the woman was standing alone in a vineyard, a falcon on her arm, a manor house in the background.

“As you can see, the woman is at peace with herself. And her surroundings, which are quite lush and suggest material success. This is a woman who does not need to cling to past or even present relationships. A woman who does not need constant companionship to feel content.”

“So, the cards are saying I’m going to be alone?” Panic surged through Lena’s veins like ice water. One of the reasons she’d agreed to marry Reece was because he’d offered security and protection. If he were to leave…

“The cards don’t imply the woman is without relationships,” Ophelia stressed calmly. “Only that she’s at peace with herself. And her situation.”

Lena’s fear ebbed slightly, even as she glumly wondered if this meant that she and Reece were destined never to have children.

She dealt another card. The Wheel of Fortune.

“The Wheel teaches us that although our circumstances are predetermined, we remain responsible for our own destiny. When joy or sorrow come into our lives, what’s important is that we turn to face it. We’re all constantly being presented with decisions and choices to make. Learning to take responsibility for our own destiny is the most difficult of life’s lessons. But it’s well worth the struggle,” Ophelia said encouragingly. “And now the last one. Which will foresee your long-term future.”

Feeling again as if her fingertips were tingling, Lena dealt a fifth card and drew in a harsh breath as she viewed the evil half-goat, half-human figure holding a flaming torch toward a couple who stood naked and vulnerable, chains around their necks. “A devil?” she whispered feeling goose bumps rise on her flesh.

“Like everything in life, this card cannot be taken at face value,” Ophelia assured her. “The devil represents all energy, positive and negative. He teaches us that if we don’t accept both sides of our nature—the light and the dark—we can develop inhibitions. And phobias. In many cases, he represents the shadowy side of our psyches we prefer to ignore.”

Having taken an intro psych course in college, Lena recognized the Jungian shadow term. Although she’d received an A in the course, she’d never thought of the concept in relation to her own personality.

She stared down at the unappealing card for a long time, allowing another silence to stretch between them.

“Although it’s not wise to take the cards too literally,” Ophelia said quietly, “the devil often symbolizes the removal of fears and inhibitions that hinder personal growth.”

“Like not being able to love openly?”

“That could be an example. In the fifth position, this is a very good card. You’re facing a time of great growth. A time when much good could come from apparent evil.”

Lena knew a lot about evil. The trick was to somehow learn to accept the good.

“Thank you.” She reached into her purse and added more bills to the ones she’d already paid when she’d first sat down. “You’ve given me a great deal to think about.”

“It was your own willingness to open your heart and your mind to the message of the cards,” Ophelia reminded her.

Open your heart. The words reverberated over and over again in her mind as Lena drove away from funky Venice to the privileged enclaves of Pacific Palisades. That was something she’d never been able to do. Not since that long-ago Christmas Eve.

She’d tried to tell Reece that she didn’t have it in her to love him the way a wife should love her husband. Oh, she admired him, of course. And respected him without question, which wasn’t difficult since he was the most noble, honorable, caring man she’d ever met. And she was truly fond of him.

Her mind drifted back to that day, six months after they’d first met, when he’d taken her hand and led her to a secluded bench in Griffith Park.

“I love you, Lena.” His handsome face had been so earnest, so sincere, it almost made her weep.

She’d dragged her gaze from his to the children pouring out of the yellow school bus that had pulled into the planetarium parking lot. Dressed in a parochial school uniform similar to the one she’d once worn, they were laughing and obviously enjoying their field trip. Lena had been unable to remember a time while growing up when she’d felt even half as carefree as those children looked.

She’d been about to tell Reece yet again that she couldn’t marry him. But as she watched the children lining up in double lines, something inside her moved. The response to the children was as unbidden as it was unfamiliar. Perhaps, she’d thought, if she married Reece and had a child, she wouldn’t feel so empty.

She’d drawn in a deep breath and hoped she was making the right decision. “If you’re really serious…”

“Of course I am,” he’d answered in that calm, rational way she assumed he must have learned growing up in that mansion in North Carolina.

Feeling as if she were perched on the edge of a steep and dangerous precipice, she’d taken another deep breath and leapt daringly over the edge. “Then my answer’s yes. I’ll marry you.”

His joyous whoop had drawn the attention of the children, who’d laughed at the sight of the man picking the pretty woman up and twirling her around in his arms. What neither they, nor Reece had seen, was the shimmer of tears in Lena’s eyes.

The memory of that day, along with the knowledge of how unfair she’d been to the only man who’d ever loved her, made Lena’s eyes fill with tears all over again.

Open your heart. Dear Lord, how she wanted to do that! For Reece, and for herself.

As she turned onto the winding road leading up the cliff to their ocean-view house, Lena realized that unfortunately she had no idea where—or how—to begin.

Then the answer came to her, so bright and vivid, she wondered why it hadn’t occurred to her before.

Molly could help her sort this out. As she had every other problem in Lena’s life. Even before that horrifying night their daddy had gotten drunk and made them orphans.

She’d talk to her big sister first thing tomorrow, Lena decided. After Christmas dinner.

Although it had been a very long time since she could remember having anything to feel hopeful about, Lena was smiling as she pulled her Jaguar into the half-moon driveway.

Chapter Two

“Emergency department.” Impatience crackled in Molly’s usually calm and reassuring voice. She sighed and prayed, as she was so often forced to do, for patience.

“Hello?” There was a slight pause. “Is this Mercy Samaritan Hospital?” Molly thought the hesitant female voice sounded slightly slurred.

“Yes. You’ve reached the emergency department. How can I help you?”

“It’s my husband.”

Molly groaned inwardly, realizing this was going to be one of those calls in which she had to drag the information out one word at a time. Frustrated, she pushed a long jet curl that had come loose from the knot at the back of her neck.

“Has he been injured?”

“Not yet.” There was a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh. “Although I’m thinking about cutting his prick off with the electric carving knife.” The words were definitely slurred.

“I’d advise against that, ma’am. The police frown on such things. Meanwhile, if your husband isn’t hurt right now, I’m afraid we’re very busy and—”

“He’s got the clap. And he didn’t get it from me.”

Molly rubbed unconsciously at her temples where a headache hammered. “I see.”

“And now I have this goddamn rash, which is the only reason the son of a bitch confessed to screwing around in the first place. So, I guess I’d better come in for a test.”

“That would be my suggestion. You need to be seen by a doctor and get started on antibiotic treatment,” she told the caller. “You should also have an AIDS test.”

“You think I have AIDS?”

Molly heard the sudden panic in the woman’s voice. “I’m only suggesting the test as a precaution,” she said as soothingly as possible. “Since your sexual relationship with your husband was not the monogamous one you believed it to be—”

“I’m not taking any AIDS test.”

“It can be done confidentially, if you’re worried about—”

“If you have AIDS, you die. And if I’m gonna die, I damn well don’t want to know it. I’m also going to kill the bastard if he gave it to me.” That said, the woman slammed down the receiver.

Her ears ringing, Molly took a deep breath, said a quick prayer for both the philandering husband and his angry wife, then returned to the fray.

Her next patient was a two-year-old child who’d been nipped by the family’s new German shepherd puppy.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Molly soothed as she cleaned the puncture wound, gave the little girl a tetanus shot and advised the mother to keep the child away from the puppy until things quieted down after the holidays.

“I need a prescription for a seven-day course of penicillin,” she told Reece, when he paused at the desk to pick up the next chart. “It’s for a dog bite.”

He pulled a prescription pad from a pocket bulging with tongue depressors, a pen light and ampoules of medications.

“I wish people would listen when the Humane Society tells them this is the worst time of year to try to introduce a new animal into the home.” He scribbled the order onto the pad. “Was that a VD call I heard you taking?”

“You’ve got good ears.” Molly wondered how he could have heard anything over the din.

“Nah. I’m just nosy.” He ripped the script off and handed it to her. “So, have you heard the county health department’s new venereal disease slogan?”

“I don’t think so. What is it?”

“VD is nothing to clap about.”

Although it was a terrible pun, an involuntary giggle escaped her lips. “You’re making that up.”

“That’s the trouble with working with you, Sister Molly,” he said on an exaggerated sigh. “You make it impossible to lie. But it’s still pretty good, don’t you think?”

“I think I should have Dr. Bernstein come down for a consult.” Alan Bernstein was the psych resident. “No one should remain this upbeat at the twenty-fourth hour of a thirty-six-hour shift.” Before he could answer, she was off to meet another paramedic who was wheeling in a woman on a gurney.

The patient was dressed for a party in a thigh-high, formfitting red sequined dress and skyscraper heels, one of which had cracked in two. Her hair, the color of a new penny, had been fashioned in an elaborate upsweep and Christmas trees had been airbrushed onto each of her long, scarlet fingernails. Her dress had been torn up one side, and one sleeve had been cut open to allow for an IV drip.