All of her energy these last few weeks had gone into the plans for Cole’s interview today with Claudia Marks. Running was the only other activity she hadn’t allowed to suffer. It had actually been a relief to turn the Garry case over to Terri, one of her PR colleagues. She wouldn’t have time to handle a situation like that today.
The television crew arrived in Cole’s office at ten o’clock. She stood in the doorway watching them, fascinated. There were at least twenty people, each with his or her own sense of purpose. She was glad that everyone seemed to know exactly what he was doing. Her part of this job was nearly over. The arrangements, the diplomacy, the soothing of jittery nerves were behind her.
“You just relax,” she’d told Blair’s director that Monday. “You can sit back and watch Blair’s reputation grow as one of the most exciting and innovative medical centers in the country. On national TV.”
All she had to do today was take Claudia Marks to lunch and make sure everyone was in the right place at the right time. It was Cole who was carrying the nerve-wrenching responsibility now.
She found him in her office, pacing.
“They kicked me out of my office,” he said.
“I know. They told me.”
“I should have worn a suit.” He was wearing navy blue pants and a light blue shirt, open at the neck. They had told him to wear whatever he usually wore in his office. Taken from that perspective, he was a little overdressed.
“You look fine. You have that casual, it’s-all-in-a-day’s-work look about you.”
“Who’s handling the PR on the Garry baby?”
“Terri. Don’t think about that now, Cole. It’ll be fine.”
Claudia Marks was taller, more imposing in real life. They met in Kit’s office at eleven, and Claudia wanted a tour of the hospital before they went to lunch. Kit watched her with admiration as they traveled from unit to unit. Claudia had an eye for a story, and she riveted her attention on people and situations she could twist into something marketable. She spent so long watching the triage nurse in the ER evaluating the victims of an accident that it was past noon when they reached the restaurant.
“Dr. Perelle was in an accident himself a few weeks ago,” Kit said after the waiter had taken their orders. She cringed at the gleam in Claudia’s eyes.
“Kit, that’s exactly the kind of information I’m missing on this story. We know a great deal about Dr. Perelle as a physician and a researcher, but very little about the man himself. Was he badly hurt?”
She’d meant it to be small talk, not fuel for her program. “He was hospitalized for a few days with a concussion.” She made it sound unimportant, but Claudia was very hungry, for more than lunch.
“Were other people hurt? Whose fault was it?”
“He was riding in an ambulance with a patient, and some people were killed. You’d need to get the rest of the information from him, though I doubt very much that he’d want to talk about it.”
“He doesn’t need to talk about it,” Claudia said. “We can toss it into our narrative.” She lit a cigarette. “I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to be able to feature someone who’s a bright light in a scientific field and young and attractive at the same time. Not to mention eligible. The combination is hard to find and unbeatable in the ratings. He’s a local hero now, but just wait until the rest of the country gets a look at him. We’re planning plenty of close-ups, so those eyes of his can work their magic on the viewers.”
“I think he’d rather have the focus be on his work.”
“Oh, of course.” Claudia waved her cigarette in the air. “We won’t make an issue out of anything other than his professional endeavors. But the average viewer will be receiving a subliminal message through strategically placed tidbits about Cole Perelle as a person. It works every time. Is he gay?”
Kit laughed. “I beg your pardon?”
“Why is a good-looking man still unattached at the age of thirty-five?”
“He is attached.”
“Really?” A new spark in Claudia’s eye now. “To a female?”
“Oh, yes.”
Claudia leaned forward. “Tell me more.”
“I can’t, Claudia,” she said, as the waiter set a seafood salad in front of her. “I think any information about his personal life had better come from him.”
Five minutes into the interview, she knew he was starting to relax. She leaned against the door and tried to block out the camera crew from her vision to imagine how the interview would actually look on television. It was warm in the room and the lights bathed everything in a hot white glow. She wondered how Cole could stand them right in his eyes.
Claudia sat in one of the maroon leather chairs at the side of his desk, while he sat behind it. He was telling her why he’d become interested in fetal surgery. He was good at this. Why he got so nervous beforehand she didn’t know. He was smiling, his eyes sparkling in the lights, and the words he used were packed with emotion. Claudia looked ecstatic. He was turning out to be even more of a winner than she had anticipated.
“And now,”—Claudia Marks smiled into the camera—“we are very pleased to have with us a former patient of Dr. Perelle’s and her parents.” She turned to face the couple sitting on her left. The woman held a robust-looking baby in her arms. “This is little Megan Kelley,” Claudia murmured reverently. “Fran, tell us how you felt when you first learned there was a problem with the baby you were carrying?”
Claudia did a nice job of getting the Kelleys and Cole to describe the successful surgery Cole had performed on Megan’s blocked kidney. Kit could see with relief that the interview was drawing to a close. But suddenly Claudia’s questioning took a new direction. Her voice became that of an investigative reporter, calculated, probing.
“But fetal surgery is not always successful is it, Cole?” she asked.
Kit came to attention. What was she up to?
“There’s a baby some are describing as a ‘monster baby’ right here—today—at Blair Medical Center,” Claudia continued. “That baby is the result of fetal surgery you performed.”
Monster baby? Who was describing the Garry baby in those words? She watched Cole struggle with his anger.
“The surgery wasn’t able to improve the condition of the fetus,” Cole interrupted her, “but it did nothing to worsen it,” he said. “The baby would have been born with this problem whether I—”
“Is the baby going to die as a result of the surgery?”
Kit watched in disbelief. Manipulative bitch.
“No,” Cole said, with more control than Kit expected. “The baby will not die as a result of the surgery; the baby will die as a result of hydrocephalus.”
Claudia looked at the camera. “So, as you can see, there is no guarantee of a happy outcome with fetal surgery.”
The camera stopped rolling, and Kit saw Cole lean toward Claudia, hissing something at her under his breath. She would let him take care of Claudia. She had her own work to do. When this interview aired there would be reporters breaking down the hospital doors.
She left Cole’s office without speaking to him, before he’d have a chance to change her mind. She called Terri in the PR office.
“I’m taking the Garry assignment back,” she said. “It’s going to get very hot.”
“It’s all yours,” said Terri. “Have you seen that baby?”
“I’m going over there now.”
“Well,” Terri said, “steel yourself.”
She hung up the phone and walked to the nursery, wishing the route were longer. It had been months since she’d been in this hallway. She avoided it—it was too hard to tune out the crying. But she didn’t really hear it today. She had a task to do. She’d take a quick peek at this baby to see what all the fuss was about and to ready herself for the questions from the media. Then she’d prepare a press release. She’d beat Claudia Marks to the draw.
She scrubbed at the sink outside the nursery and let a red-headed nurse wrap her into one of the yellow gowns. She made idle chatter with the nurse, pretending this was all in a day’s work.
“He’s in the isolation room,” the nurse said, “on the warming table. He’s not doing too well today.”
The first thing she noticed was his face. It was a perfect face, as perfect as Alison’s. His eyes were open, and she thought he watched her as she slipped her finger into one tiny hand. His head was huge, no doubt about it, but God, what a face. His pale lips quivered with each raw-sounding breath. Kit bit her lip. It hurt him just to breathe.
“Do you want to hold him?”
She turned around to see the red-headed nurse behind her.
“May I?” Could such a delicate little thing be held?
“You’d better sit down.” The nurse pointed to a chair by the door. She carefully lifted the baby from the warming table and rested him in Kit’s arms. “His head is superheavy,” she said. “You have to give it lots of support.”
He was so warm. She smiled down at that wonderful little face, the eyes most definitely looking back into her own. “How long does he have?” she asked.
“He won’t make it through the night.” The nurse looked over Kit’s head toward the door. “Hi, Dr. Perelle.”
Kit turned to see him standing in the doorway, arms folded across his chest.
He sat down in the only other chair in the room. “Claudia Marks pulled a fast one there, didn’t she?” he asked.
“The nurse said he’s going to die tonight.”
Cole sighed. “I wish you hadn’t come over here to the nursery.”
“I had to. And I’m fine.” The baby wrinkled his nose for a second and squirmed in her lap. Her left arm shook from the weight of his head. “I’ve taken this assignment back from Terri, and what I need from you is a written explanation of the surgery in layman’s terms, including what went wrong with this little guy. I also want a simple description of hydrocephalus and some illustrations of the fetus and how the shunt’s inserted, et cetera. Do you have something like that?”
He smiled. “Yes.”
“Can I have it by five?” It was four now.
“I’d better get busy.” He stood up to go.
“And Cole?”
“Yes?”
She looked down at the fragile life in her arms. “I’m going to cancel my tubal,” she said.