'Might be retained water. Let me check your blood pressure.'
Heidi slipped a blood pressure cuff around Lisa's arm and set her stethoscope over Lisa's brachial artery. The pressure, ninety over sixty-five, was a bit lower than it had been, although still in the normal range for early labor. Heidi mulled over the change, then decided it was of no significance. She wrote the pressure down in her notebook and made a mental note to check it again in ten or fifteen minutes.
'Who's going to win the pool?' Lisa asked.
'Assuming it's today?'
'Oh, it's going to be today. You can count on it.'
'In that case, Kevin will be thirty dollars richer.'
Kevin Dow, a painter, was another of the residents of 313 Knowlton Street. There were ten of them in all. Most were artists or writers, and none of them made much money. They called their living arrangement a commune, and in that light shared almost everything. Lisa, who sold her pottery and occasionally refinished old furniture, had lived in the massive, gabled house for almost three years. And although she had twice slept with one of the men in the commune, she felt certain the child within her was not his and had made that clear to him from the outset, much to his relief.
In fact, who the father was, or was not, did not matter to Lisa one bit. The baby would be raised by her and her alone. He would be raised in simplicity, with love and patience and understanding, and without the pressure of expectations.
With Heidi's assistance, she stood and walked over to the window. Her right arm felt tired and heavy.
'Can I get you anything?' Heidi asked.
Lisa absently rubbed at her shoulder as she stared out at a squirrel that was leaping deftly along a series of branches that seemed far too pliant to hold it.
'Maybe some cocoa,' she said.
'Coming up… Lisa, are you okay?'
'I–I'm fine. I think another one's about to hit. How long has it been?'
'Five minutes, three seconds.'
'I think I'll do this one standing.'
Lisa leaned forward and braced herself against the sill. Then she breathed deeply, closed her eyes, and tried to send her mind inside her body. But nothing happened-no images, no sense of peace, nothing-nothing except pain. She was trying too hard, she thought. She had to be centered-that's what Dr. Baldwin had taught her-centered and prepared for each contraction. For the first time she felt a nugget of fear. Maybe she didn't know how bad it was going to get. Maybe she didn't have what it takes.
She gritted her teeth and stretched her arms and legs tightly.
'How long?' she asked.
'Forty seconds… fifty… a minute… a minute ten…'
The intensity of the contraction began to lessen.
'A minute twenty. You okay?'
'I am now,' Lisa said, backing away from the window and settling down on the futon. Her forehead was dotted with sweat. 'That one was a bear. I wasn't ready.'
Lisa swallowed and tasted blood. She probed with her tongue and found the small rent she had made by accidentally biting down on the inside of her cheek. The pain of the contraction was now completely gone, but the weird ache in her arm and shoulder persisted.
Heidi left the room and returned just in time for the next contraction. With Heidi's help and better preparation, Lisa found this contraction was much more manageable. Heidi slipped on the blood pressure cuff and once again took a reading. Eighty-eight over fifty, and even harder to hear than before.
'I think we should call,' she said.
'Is everything okay?'
'Everything is fine. Your pressure's fine. I just think it's time.'
'I want this to be perfect.'
'It will be, Lisa. It will be.'
Heidi stroked Lisa's forehead and then went to the phone in the hall. The drop in pressure was minimal, but if it was the start of a trend, she wanted Dr. Baldwin on hand.
Across the street, in front of 316 Knowlton, Richard Pulasky crouched behind his car as he disengaged the high-powered telephoto lens from his Nikon. He had gotten at least two good face shots of the girl, he felt certain. Maybe more. He pulled the frayed photo of Lisa Grayson from his pocket. The girl in the picture didn't look exactly like the woman in the window, but close enough. It was her, and that was that. Six months of work had just paid off big-time. Half the private dicks in town had taken a crack at finding the girl, but Dickie Pulasky had actually pulled it off.
Grinning to himself, Pulasky slid into his car through the passenger-side door. With any luck, he would be pocketing a fifteen-grand payoff within the week.
CHAPTER 2
Sarah secured her bike to the metal-frame bed in the obstetrics on-call room. Over her first two years of residency she had spent nearly as many nights in the narrow cubicle as she had in her own apartment-and none of them very restfully.
After changing from her Spandex into the maroon scrubs favored by her department, she paused by the chipped bureau mirror. She rarely wore makeup of any kind, but in honor of Changeover Day, she smoothed on a bit of pale-pink lipstick. Then, as she often did just before starting her workday, she studied herself for a few quiet moments. Using sun block religiously during her years in Thailand had been worth the effort. Her skin still had good tone, and just a few freckles at the tops of her cheeks. There were some faint creases at the corners of her eyes, but nothing drastic. Her dark hair-mid-back length for most of her life-was short now, and sprinkled ever so lightly with gray. On balance, she decided-especially considering two years of low-paying, hundred-hour work weeks, with no financial or emotional support from the outside world-the woman in the mirror was holding up pretty damn well.
As in past years, the kickoff for Changeover Day at MCB was a continental breakfast and a presentation to the staff and residents by hospital president Glenn Paris, several department heads, and a member or two from the board of trustees. What made this year's kickoff different were the security guards checking photo IDs at each entrance to the auditorium. Sarah caught up with Andrew Truscott just as he was being cleared.
'Planning to watch the show from the last row?' she asked. For years Truscott had staked himself a seat there at most conferences.
'Having seen ol' Paris's slides from that vantage for four years running, I thought I might try something a bit closer.'
'Fine by me,' she said as they made their way down the steeply banked aisle of the amphitheater to the second row. 'At our age we might as well begin learning how to deal with presbyopia and otosclerosis anyhow. Do you happen to know why the security check?'
Truscott thought for a moment.
'I'll bet they're searching for lunatics,' he said.
'Lunatics?'
'Anyone who would come to this affair who didn't absolutely have to.'
'Very funny.'
'Thank you. I have no doubt our fearless leader will address the heightened security-either before or after his yearly recounting of the history of our august institution.' He thrust his jaw out in a caricature of Glenn Paris. ' 'In 1951, at age fifty, Medical Center of Boston moved from the midcity to the outskirts in order to occupy the nine buildings which once comprised the Suffolk State Hospital, better known as the nut house. And although that
