The Shadow Wife - Diane Chamberlain [6]
Rolling onto her side, she thought of going to an out-of-town women’s clinic for an abortion. She knew many local obstetricians on a professional basis, since she was the social worker in the maternity unit at Silas Memorial Hospital in Monterey, but she didn’t dare go to anyone who knew her. Only eight weeks. It would be easy. Over in a snap. But how could she possibly have an abortion? How could she part with a longed-for child?
Getting out of bed, she walked over to the window and stared into the gray night fog, thinking through her options. Each of them was fraught with complications, some with the potential to hurt other people even more than herself. Eight weeks pregnant. She leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the window. There would be no sleep for her tonight. Only more staring into the fog, more tossing and turning in bed, as she struggled with the alternatives.
But beneath her worry and fear and uncertainty was a vague, yet alluring, hint of joy.
The maternity unit looked entirely different to Joelle when she stepped inside the Women’s Wing of Silas Memorial Hospital the following day.
As she did every morning, she walked toward the nurses’ station, past the open doors of the patients’ rooms. This morning, though, the sight of the women walking slowly through the corridor as they healed and the cries of babies from the rooms held a different meaning for her. In mere months, she could be one of these women. One of the crying, hungry, beautiful babies could be hers.
She found Serena Marquez at the nurses’ station and held out her arms to the head nurse.
“You’re back!” Joelle said, giving her a hug. “Do you have pictures?”
“Does she have pictures,” one of the other nurses said, wearing a grin. “I think she spent her entire maternity leave with a camera glued to her face. Hope you have all morning, Joelle.”
Joelle leaned on the counter, her hands outstretched. “Let’s see them,” she said to Serena.
“We should talk about your referrals first.” Serena was beaming, clearly anxious to hand pictures of her little boy over to an apt audience, but motioning instead toward the forms in Joelle’s hands.
Joelle took a seat on one of the stools, then read aloud the names on the forms, and Serena pulled the plastic binders containing each patient’s medical record from the turntable on the desk. Joelle studied the referrals: two requests for help at home for a couple of single mothers, one case of questionable bonding between mother and baby, one baby born to a cocaine addict, one father denying paternity, one stillbirth. It was a typical batch of referrals for the maternity unit, including the stillbirth. In Joelle’s line of work, where she was invited to see only the problems and rarely the joy, dealing with the family of a stillborn infant was all in a day’s work. It was never easy, though, and today in particular, when the pink and blue lines were still very much in her mind, she winced as she read through the woman’s chart. This was the woman’s second stillborn baby. She looked at Serena.
“How is she doing?” Joelle asked.
“Not too well,” Serena said. “Nice lady. Thirty-five. They lost the first baby and had been trying hard for this one, apparently.”
Thirty-five. If she were to have this baby, she, too, would be thirty-five when it was born.
“Why is she losing them?” Joelle asked.
Serena shook her head. “Unknown cause.”
“Poor thing,” Joelle said. “To go through this twice, with no answers…” She asked Serena a few more questions about the woman and her family, then reached once again for the pictures of the head nurse’s baby. She glanced from the pictures to Serena, as she sorted through them. Serena’s cheeks were pink, and although she had not lost all the weight she’d gained during her pregnancy, there was a radiance about her that Joelle envied. The nurse was twenty-eight, and this had been her first child. Joelle wondered if, while