Garden of Lies (20 page)

Rachel tried to imagine the lump inside her that was their baby, no bigger than the head of a

pin, and her vision blurred with tears. She half-stumbled, catching herself against the wall with its

fat red arrow pointing the way to Radiology.

It was so ironic. She’d always spoken out for abortion. She’d argued fiercely that it deserved to

be as basic a right as female suffrage. And she’d been for zero population growth, too. But,

dammit, this wasn’t just a rise on a population graph, this was a
life
growing inside her. A baby.

Her
baby.

The idea of having it scraped out of her, flushed away in some toilet bowl, drove a bolt of pain

through her stomach.

And yet, what was the alternative? Have the baby, and put aside everything she’d worked so

hard for?

The years of med school, feeling as if her brain were being squeezed in a vise. The

formaldehyde stink that wouldn’t wash off, her sleep haunted by nightmares of half-dissected

corpses coming back to life.

And yet she’d also loved it. Schwartz Lecture Hall, with its purple seats and permanent sweaty

odor, the droning pathology professor who invariably put her to sleep, Dr. Duberman with his

endless hematology quizzes. And then her third-year clerkship, working with real patients, people

needing her,
real
people, feeling for the first time what it was to be a healer.

And now she’d come this far, halfway through her internship.

Rachel remembered coming here for her interview. The long subway ride, almost an hour, into

the heart of Brooklyn, mostly black and brown faces crammed in beside her. Coming out onto

Flatbush Avenue, with its run-down stores and weary-looking people, then six blocks over

cracked and dirty sidewalk to this nondescript building, fourteen stories of sooty gray stone and

wire-mesh safety glass. Except for the fact that there was no fence surrounding it, it looked like a

prison, hardly a place where people came to get [111] well. But come here they did, she soon

learned, in droves, Barbadians, Haitians, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, blacks, people with no

insurance and no money, who needed medical care desperately.

Which was why she’d chosen Good Shepherd, despite her father’s badgering that she go to

Presbyterian or Mount Sinai. And she loved it here. If they accepted her, she wanted to stay on

for the OB residency. And now she was almost there, two more months, her ER rotation, and

she’d be finished with her internship. So how could she possibly leave, give all that up? She

couldn’t.

Turning right at the far end of the corridor, Rachel spotted a huddle of figures in white lab

coats outside Ward One. Faces still puffy with sleep, sipping coffee from paper cups. Others,

those who had been on call through the night, drooping with exhaustion, their eyes bright and

glassy. Under the fluorescent glare, they all looked cadaver gray.

But no sign of David yet, thank God. He fumed when anyone came late for rounds. And he

didn’t pull any punches when it came to her, either. They had agreed in the beginning, there

couldn’t be any special favors.

Joe Israel greeted her with a yawn. “You missed all the excitement. Twins. Lady just walked in

off the street at ten centimeters and dropped them like a litter of pups.”

Rachel looked up at Israel, tall, achingly thin, an acne-scarred face that reminded her of a pool

hall dart board. She liked Israel, but a litter of pups? Jesus.

Janet Needham gave him a withering look. “Have you ever thought about switching to

veterinary medicine, Israel?”

Janet was the only other female intern. Rachel had tried to like her. But it was hard. Janet

didn’t like herself. Overweight, her greasy brown hair pulled back with a rubber band, she wore a

perpetual scowl, suspicious of anyone who made a friendly overture.

Israel grinned at Janet, raising his coffee cup. “If I do, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Cool it, you two,” hissed Pink. His real name was Walter Pinkham. Rachel counted five pens

clipped to the breast pocket of his white coat today. He was the only intern she knew who carried

a briefcase.

Then Rachel caught sight of David striding toward them. He [112] looked so tall in his spotless

white coat, glowing with purpose, stirring the air, prompting the sleepy interns to straighten their

shoulders a little, stand taller themselves.

Her heart began to pound. Dear God, how did he have this effect on her? Sweaty palms,

adrenaline surges, the whole bit. Years of believing she was frigid, and she was afraid now it

might be just the opposite. Acute nymphomania.

Smiling to herself, she recalled what had crossed her mind at their introductory session:

Anyone that good-looking has got to be a shit.

Perfect casting for a doctor on television, with those go-light green eyes, and the sandy hair

that dipped boyishly over his forehead, JFK style.
Even, heaven help me, dimples, two on either

side of his mouth and one planted smack-Cary-Grant-dab in the center of his chin.

But little by little—and God only knows why he had chosen her—he had won her over,

courting her as if she were the starchy schoolteacher heroine in a Victorian novel, bringing her a

rose one day, a carnation the next, flowers no doubt salvaged from the rooms of patients who’d

checked out. Even a note once or twice in her locker, just like high school.

And now a baby,
she thought with bitter amusement.

“Good morning, doctors. Sorry I’ve kept you waiting. I had an emergency.” David was

breezing to a stop, his gaze was skimming over her, not meeting her eyes.

Rachel, fearing she meant nothing more to him than the others, felt a cold rush. Then sanity

quickly asserted itself. Stupid of her, he was just being discreet, as he had to be. Of
course
he

loved her.

But she was still so tense, holding herself stiffly, as if the pink lab Report in her pocket were a

letter bomb that might explode if she made any sudden moves.

She fell in with the group as they followed David onto the ward. A long room, painted a sickly

yellow-green, with rows of beds separated by dingy tan curtains. And hot, the old steam radiators

clanking and hissing. Why hadn’t anyone thought to crack a window?

David stopped at the first bed. A pale face framed by a tangle of dark hair blinked up. The

sheet drawn up to her jutting collarbone, in the hollow of which a tiny gold crucifix twinkled. She

looked so young it was pathetic. A mother already, and still a child herself.

David glanced at her chart, then at Gary McBride beside him. “Yours, I believe, Dr. McBride?

[113] Gary reminded Rachel of an overgrown Tom Sawyer, with his boyish looks and freckles,

his red hair complete with a cowlick. He was a good doctor, though. He cared about the patients.

Gary didn’t even glance at his notes. “Miss Ortiz. Sixteen. Primipara. She was admitted at two

o’clock this morning, four centimeters dilated. Blood pressure normal. But there was some

vaginal bleeding, and the fetal heart rate was slow. I consulted Dr. Melrose on it, and he ordered a

C-section.”

“How’s our patient this morning?” David inquired.

“Blood pressure a little low. Spiking a small fever. One-oh-one-point-two. She was

complaining about the pain, so I gave her Demerol.”

Rachel watched David peel back the sheet and lift Miss Ortiz’s gown, carefully removing the

square of Betadine-stained gauze covering her incision. Rachel stared at his hands, feeling such

awe. God, they were beautiful. The hands of an artist, a sculptor of living flesh. Broad square

palms with long, oddly delicate fingers that tapered into the flat pale half-moons of his nails.

Hands capable of performing miracles. She had watched him in surgery tie off the most friable

veins without shredding them, seen him draw blood from the scalp of a fetus by reaching into its

mother’s uterus, simply feeling his way.

And wasn’t it a kind of miracle, too, what he had made her feel?

She remembered, her face growing warm, their first night. Seduction, Hollywood style. His

apartment, champagne on ice and soft music (the theme song of “A Man and a Woman” stuck in

her mind), then tipping into bed, sheets smelling of English Leather aftershave. The contrivance

of it exciting her, and at the same time leaving her a little cold deep down, like a TV dinner that

hadn’t quite thawed out in the middle.

Then, in the middle of their lovemaking, he had stopped abruptly, propping himself up on his

elbows to look down at her with a bemused smile.

“You’re not enjoying this very much, are you?” he had observed.

Too startled by his candor to lie, she’d replied, “I don’t know how.”

She’d been with only three men in the years since Mason Gold. [114] And with each one she’d

felt more a failure than with the last. And now this. She’d wanted to cry.

Gently, David had withdrawn and moved down on the mattress until his head was nestled

between her rigid thighs. And then, oh God, the flick of his tongue. She had resisted at first, too

panicked and ashamed to feel anything. Then slowly, ever so slowly, strange fluttery sensations

began to creep through the walls of her defenses, sensations that were surely forbidden and yet

thrilling. His tongue was finding Secret spots of pleasure she hadn’t known existed. For hours it

seemed, playing her until she quivered, singing out finally in a crescendo so warmly exquisite,

she felt surely she would melt with the dazzling heat of it.

And then he was rising onto his knees, grinning down as he eased himself back into her. “All

better now?”

Was it that night?
she wondered now. Eight weeks would make it about right. And there was a

sort of poetic justice in it, if you believed in that kind of thing. Getting knocked up the first time

you discovered sex could be wonderful.

Rachel tore her gaze from David’s hands. She was half-afraid she would betray herself, start

having vapors, like a character in a Charlotte Bronte novel. She
did
feel a little faint, as a matter

of fact. Maybe because she hadn’t eaten breakfast. Or maybe it was because she was—

And then it struck her, not just a missed period, or words on a slip of pink paper, but the full

hard fact of it:
Pregnant. I am pregnant.

She watched as David palpated the scarred, deflated balloon of the patient’s abdomen. But she

watched with a new kind of fascination, totally unexpected. It was as if she had stepped outside of

herself for an eerie moment. No longer a doctor, simply a woman, being initiated into the age-old

secrets of motherhood.

Tears came to her eyes, blinding her for a second, as she imagined actually giving birth to this

child in her. A tiny miraculous being formed from her own flesh, after seeing the wonder of so

many belonging to others. Holding it in her arms, nursing it, her breasts heavy with sweet milk.

Wrong, all wrong,
she told herself. She had no right wanting it. She had no place in her life for

a baby. In a few years maybe. But not now.

[115] She furiously blinked her tears away, and tried to focus on the patient, at the same time

reviewing in her mind her own diagnostic presentations.

“How does that feel?” David asked the girl, who was making a face, biting her lip.

He beamed his brilliant emerald gaze at her, and immediately the girl grew very still, like a

child in school who’s been called on by the teacher.

Also part of David’s magic, Rachel thought, that look. A look that inspired utter confidence.

Dr. Kildare and Ben Casey rolled into one. Rachel was quite certain that if David had told Miss

Ortiz to get up and do fifty jumping jacks, she wouldn’t have hesitated.

“Does this hurt?” David asked, pressing a little harder.

“A little,” the girl whispered.

Rachel saw that she had turned even paler, but still didn’t move as David held her gaze and

continued probing with his hand.

David straightened and drew her gown down in one quick movement. He turned to face his

audience, addressing himself to Gary McBride.

“A little fundal tenderness there. Keep an eye on it. Could be septic. And I want a CBC stat,

and again this afternoon to see what her white count is doing.” He frowned at the chart. “I don’t

see the name of her attending doctor on here. Who took the patient’s history?”

“I ... I did,” Gary stammered. “She’s Doctor Gabriel’s patient, but I couldn’t reach—”

“I don’t care if he was on the moon,” David cut in. “I want his name on the chart, along with

everything else, even if you
do
find it irrelevant.
Doctor
.” He emphasized “doctor” sarcastically.

Rachel watched in dismay as Gary flushed bright pink, his freckles standing out in cartoon

relief, and she saw in his expression how he idolized David, and how devastated he was by

David’s disapproval.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Sloane. It ... it was inexcusable. It won’t happen again.”

Rachel ached to step in, to cry out,
No, David, not like that. You’re so much gentler than that.

She knew him, a side of him the others didn’t. She yearned to make them see what he was really