The Shadow Wife

“Can we give you a lift home, Lisbeth?” Carlynn asked.

“I was hoping to have the honor of driving Lisbeth home,” Gabriel said before Lisbeth could answer.

“I’d like that.” Lisbeth easily put her hand through Gabriel’s arm, and the two of them started walking down the wharf together, and this time Carlynn didn’t even notice that Gabriel’s face was not like any of the others.

21

MIDMORNING FOUND THE WOMEN’S WING BUSTLING WITH activity. Two sets of triplets had been born overnight in addition to twice the usual number of single births, one of them to the wife of a popular local sportscaster. Newspaper reporters and photographers clogged the corridor, where a security guard was doing his best to keep them from disturbing the patients. The nurses were frantic, and extra staff needed to be called in. Although it was nearing the end of July, the weather was still unseasonably hot for Monterey, and the air-conditioning in the Women’s Wing was not working properly. Engineers trying to fix the problem added to the mayhem in the hallway. Some of the rooms were ice-cold, the mothers and babies bundled in blankets. At the other end of the corridor, perspiration dripped from the new mothers’ foreheads as they nursed their nearly naked infants.

Joelle didn’t feel well. She had picked up a stack of twelve referrals from the social work office earlier that morning, and so far had managed to see only one of the patients on her list. That case had required her to make over a dozen phone calls, and as she leafed through the remaining referrals, she hoped the rest of them would not be so labor intensive. She really wanted to go back to her office, put her head on her desk and fall asleep.

For the past couple of days, she’d been having pain low in her belly. It was subtle at first, and she’d mentioned it to Rebecca the day before when they passed each other in the hall. Rebecca said it was most likely more of the same ligament pain that had been bothering her for the past month. “Don’t be concerned about it unless it gets worse,” she’d said. Well, it was getting worse, although Joelle wondered if it was the chaos in the Women’s Wing that made everything about this day seem unbearable. She was certain, though, that the pain had been sharper when she woke up this morning, tugging at her groin along her right side. Plus, she’d been unable to eat breakfast. She’d made her usual oatmeal and strawberries, but when she sat down at the counter in her condominium and looked into the bowl, she’d felt nearly overwhelmed by queasiness. She was supposed to have lunch with Carlynn that afternoon and would have to cancel with her once again if she didn’t start feeling better soon.

Leaning against the wall of the corridor, trying to stay out of the way of a guy with a newscam, she studied the next referral on the top of the pile. It was for a twenty-four-year-old woman who did not want to see her baby, and her room was, unfortunately, in the hot end of the maternity unit. Joelle started down the hall, trying not to limp or wince as she walked, but unable to find a gait that didn’t increase the pain in her side. Rebecca had probably been right. Every step would pull on the ligament, wouldn’t it? Still, she made a bargain with herself: if, after seeing this patient, the pain had not lessened, she would find Rebecca and have a discreet chat with her about it.

Stopping outside the patient’s room, she had to read the referral once again, despite its simplicity. Her brain felt foggy, and she’d already forgotten why she had to see the woman in room 23.

The woman was alone in the room, in the bed nearest the window. Her eyes were closed, her head turned toward the window, and Joelle stopped first at the foot of her bed.

“Hello, Ann,” she said. “Are you awake?”

The woman slowly opened her eyes and turned her head toward her. She was a striking young Asian woman, most likely Chinese-American, with long, straight black hair. The expression on her face was flat and lifeless, however, and the whites of her eyes were so pink they nearly glowed. Joelle recognized the look. She’d been in this business long enough to know that it meant one of two things. She glanced at the referral again, and saw that Ann’s baby was a girl. That fact alone was probably responsible for driving Ann into the depths of depression.

Joelle stepped around to the side of the woman’s bed and sat in the chair between the bed and the window, wincing as she did so from the cramping in her belly. Would ligament pain cause cramping? For the first time she wondered if something might be wrong with her baby.

“Hi,” she said again, trying to concentrate on the woman in front of her. “I’m Joelle D’Angelo. I’m a social worker here in the maternity unit, and your nurse asked me to visit you because she’s concerned about how sad you are.”

The woman turned her head away from her so that her perfect profile was sharp against the pillow. “You can’t help me,” she said in a voice that only hinted at a Chinese accent.

“I’d like to understand what has you so down, though,” Joelle said. “Sometimes new mothers feel terrible because of the hormonal changes that occur after pregnancy, and—”

“That’s not it.” Ann spoke into her pillow.

Joelle felt the nausea returning, rising up from somewhere low in her gut, washing over her slowly, the way it had when she’d looked at the bowl of oatmeal. It was so hot in the room. She wasn’t sure she could make it through this interview.

She licked her lips and tried again. “Your nurse told me you gave birth to a healthy baby girl during the night,” Joelle prompted, and she knew immediately she’d hit the real reason for Ann’s depression. The woman turned her face toward her, tears spilling down her cheeks.

“My mother-in-law will never forgive me,” she said. “It’s the second girl. My husband is so angry. He won’t even come in to visit me.”

Joelle barely heard her last words. She was going to be sick. Standing up quickly, she managed to say, “Excuse me, I’m sorry,” to the woman before fleeing from the room.

All she wanted was to make it to the restroom in the nurses’ lounge, halfway down the hall, but the colors and smells and motion in the corridor made her dizzy, and she knew she would never reach the lounge in time. Ducking into one of the patient rooms, she was relieved to see that the bathroom serving the two beds was free, and she managed to close the door behind her before vomiting into the toilet.

Flushing the toilet, she stood up and leaned back against the wall. What a lousy time to run out on that mother! What a horrible thing to do to the poor woman. But her thoughts quickly returned to her own pain, which was still there, burning and cramping, and the bathroom felt like a sauna. Could it be her appendix? she wondered, but the pain now seemed too high on her side for that.

Wetting paper towels with cool water, she pressed them to her forehead. Did she have a fever, or was it the lack of air-conditioning that was making her so hot? Either way, something was definitely wrong with her. A