Every rose take a chance.., p.1
Every Rose, Take a Chance, Book 4, page 1
EVERY ROSE
Take a Chance, Book 4
Nancy Warren
Ambleside Publishing
Chapter One
Mind over matter, Rose Chance muttered to herself as she strode across the linoleum floor of Portland’s Pacific Crest hospital. She’d known in the shoe store that the Prada heels weren’t comfortable, but when she looked at herself in the mirror and admired the black and red pump with the ice pick heels, she decided they were comfy enough.
That was before she’d put in a twelve-hour day. She needed a large, chilled glass of white wine, a blister bandage and her feet up. Instead, she still had to check on her patient. Who knew Belinda Tate would birth three babies who all arrived ahead of schedule and that number four would be a dawdler? Which meant that instead of an easy day in the office breaking in her new shoes, she was going to be on her pretty but aching feet for some hours yet waiting for little Tate number four.
When she entered the birthing suite she paused just inside the door. Before she inserted herself into nature’s birthing process she liked to stand on the outside and watch the laboring mother, the interaction between her and her husband or partner or whatever helpers she brought in with her. She liked to see firsthand the relationship developing between the patient and the nurses assigned to her. Rose had helped birth enough babies to understand that during these crucial hours, mothers-to-be developed an important bond with the nurses who stayed with them and helped them through the process.
Belinda Tate was already a mother of three, so she knew the drill. Her husband, Charlie, sat on a chair by her bedside, holding her hand. Her other hand rested on the enormous mound of her belly. Anita, the nurse in charge of the patient, was refilling Belinda’s plastic water glass. She murmured something Rose couldn’t hear and Belinda laughed. This birthing team was a good one. Rose stepped inside the room. “How’s it going?”
Belinda glanced up and gave her a tired smile. “However many times you do this, it never gets easier.” She shifted her back against the pillows. “I was saying to Charlie that this is it for me. As soon as I get home, we’re scheduling him that vasectomy.”
Charlie jerked his hips back at her words, jamming his butt against the plastic chair. He was a big bear of a man, with shaggy hair and the kind of plaid shirt that passes for high fashion in Portland. “Now honey, you know you should never make big decisions when you’re in labor.” Rose couldn’t tell whether he really wanted more children or whether he was afraid of the vasectomy, but she agreed that this wasn’t the time for that discussion.
She wondered that anyone had four kids. After growing up in the noise and chaos of a household containing eleven children she had long ago decided she was never having kids. After assisting in nearly a hundred births and then treating the babies as they suffered through everything from ear infections to broken bones, she wondered why any woman ever had more than one child. She was an excellent doctor, however, and kids really took to her, so no one knew her true feelings. Well, she was fairly certain a couple of her siblings were on to her. They probably shared her horror of the chaos of their childhood.
“Do you mind if I examine you now?”
“How about after this contraction,” Belinda gasped. She grabbed the bed rail with one hand and tightened her grip on her husband’s hand with the other. She leaned forward, grunting.
“That’s right honey, you’re doing great,” Charlie said, rubbing his wife’s shoulder with his free hand.
Rose lifted her wrist and counted the time on the Cartier watch her last lover had bestowed on her while they enjoyed a skiing trip in the Alps. The watch had already outlasted him by a year and she suspected it would still be keeping perfect time long after she’d forgotten Jonathan’s name.
When Belinda fell back, sweat gleaming on her forehead, Rose calculated that the contraction had lasted fifty seconds. She turned to Anita. “How far apart are they?”
“Between three and five minutes. Not regular.”
She pulled on a pair of surgical gloves and settled herself on the stool at the bottom of the birthing bed. “Okay, let’s take a look.”
A quick examination indicated that things were progressing normally. “You’re almost 7 cm dilated. She peeled off the gloves, replaced the privacy sheet and patted Belinda on the knee. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you to try walking around, keep pushing that water, and try to relax as much as you can between contractions.”
“I will. Thanks, Rose.”
She conferred with Anita for a few minutes. In her thirty-year career, Anita had helped bring hundreds, if not thousands of babies into the world, and the nurse agreed with her initial assessment that they were several hours away from the birth.
She double-checked that Anita had her pager number and then decided to head down to the doctors’ lounge where she could grab a cold bottle of water and catch up on some paperwork. She contemplated running home to her condo to change her shoes, but, even though she only lived fifteen minutes away from the hospital, babies were far too unpredictable for her to take the risk.
* * *
Dr. Mattius Vasilopolous pulled his shoulder blades together, trying to ease the kink in his upper back. Four hours bent over a surgery table was hell on the spine. He reached the waiting room where the young wife of his latest patient sat, staring into space, an open magazine on her lap, an untouched cup of coffee from the machine beside her on the table. Her eyes were red rimmed and her posture was brittle.
When she caught sight of him her body seemed to stiffen even more, as though she were steeling herself for bad news. Thank God he didn’t have to deliver heartbreak. Not tonight. The thoracic aortic aneurism repair he’d done on her husband was a success.
He didn’t waste a second leaving her in suspense. “Melanie, right?”
“Yes.” She nodded. Got to her feet stiffly, the magazine tumbling to the ground. “My husband…?”
“He’s stable.”
“Oh, thank God.” She put a hand to her mouth.
He spoke again, because he never, ever gave false hope. “We were able to stop the bleeding and we’ve fixed the weak spot in his aorta with a graft, but he’s going to have to go on blood pressure medication, and he’s smoked his last cigarette.”
She nodded, weeping quietly. “When can I see him?”
“You can go in now for a few minutes.” The guy was out cold but Matt understood that loved ones who’d been afraid of the worst needed to see that their person was breathing before they could believe that they were going to live.
When he’d handed her off to a nurse, he headed for the doctors’ lounge. He needed a shower, he needed food, and he needed sleep.
If there was one thing he’d learned as a cardio-thoracic surgeon it was how to get by on snatched naps. The irony was that, as a doctor, he knew how bad it was for the human body to function on periodic spells of sleep. But, he’d chosen this life, or perhaps it had chosen him. He wasn’t built for a suit or tie, and he couldn’t imagine spending hours of every day behind a desk or in a cubicle.
Plus, he got to save lives. Overall, he was okay with losing some sleep.
Shower first, he thought, heading for the doctors’ lounge. Check his email, grab a sandwich, and then crash in the call room here at the hospital until he was called for the next emergency. Because there was always a next emergency.
He was powering up his phone when the click of heels distracted him. Nobody working in a hospital wore heels, except one person. Tap, tap, tap. Because he was looking down, those shoes came into his line of vision first. They were black and red, the heels do-me-baby high. They stopped moving and his gaze traveled as though it had a mind of its own to meet shapely ankles, lean, sexy calves, and a black skirt. She could be wearing a black, skintight, sexy top that showed a lot of cleavage. She could be wearing nothing at all on top. Impossible to tell, since she wore a crisp, white lab coat that was either brand new or recently ironed. When his gaze reached her face, he found her looking at him with the slightly irritated expression she always wore when she looked at him.
“Dr. Chance,” he drawled. Even her makeup was perfect. Most of the women he worked with didn’t have time or energy left over for foolish things like lipstick, but this one always looked fresh out of the salon. “You look like you just stepped off a fashion runway.”
Her gaze traveled up and down his body, probably mimicking what he’d just done to hers, not that he meant to; he was simply too tired to control himself. “You look like you stepped out of a homeless shelter.”
There were a lot of responses he could make to that. He was trying to choose one from the tired jumble of his thoughts when his cell phone rang. Call display informed him that his best buddy was on the line. Normally he’d be only too happy to shoot the shit with Harvey but he had a bad feeling that his best friend wasn’t calling to chat.
He contemplated ignoring the call but Rose Chance was regarding him with a level gaze that gave him the eerie sensation she could read his mind and knew all his secrets. Also, he was glad of an excuse not to have to talk to her—he didn’t have the energy.
He clicked through to the call. “Hey man, what’s up?”
“What’s up yourself? You’re hard to get a hold of.”
“Oh, the usual.” He might’ve laid it on a little thick about the number of emergency cases he’d been dealing with lately, and his overwhelming caseload, but knowing Rose was listing to every word stopped him.
<
He cursed inside his head. When he’d agreed to be best man at Harvey’s wedding, he’d assumed that all he had to do was show up at the wedding, get the groom there on time, pass the ring, and make a speech. He’d had no idea that he would be called upon to organize a stag night.
“The stag. Yeah, absolutely. I’m on it.” It wasn’t that he’d forgotten the stag, he’d simply been swamped, and during the few snatched hours that weren’t devoted to working or sleeping he’d had other, more important or more interesting things to do.
Rose didn’t even pretend not to be listening. Those big, deep blue eyes widened slightly. She tapped across to the fridge, opened it, and bent, treating him to a great view of the line of her hip. She withdrew a bottle of water and leaned against the counter openly watching him squirm.
“Good. Great,” Harvey replied. “Not planning anything stupid, right? No strippers?”
Ah, so the call wasn’t only to check up that Matt was doing his job but to ensure he was doing it properly. Harvey was a promising young lawyer with his sites clearly set on politics. Having grown up in the age of social media, they both knew that strippers were out of the question. “No peelers, I promise.”
“Good. So? What are we doing?”
If only he wasn’t so tired. His back hurt like hell, and the only few words he’d spoken in the last few hours were curt requests for the next instrument he needed. He hadn’t powered up yet for social interaction. Or white lies. He rubbed his palm over his forehead as though he could massage the social part of his brain into action. “Well, obviously there’s going to be drinking involved.”
Rose shook her head, screwed the lid off her bottle of water and sipped as though it were a beer.
“Come on, dude. Tell me you’ve figured this out.” A trace of irritation came across. Now that Harvey was confident the stag night wouldn’t tarnish any future political career, he was all over the details.
“Of course I’ve got it figured out.” His gaze bounced around the lounge, searching desperately for inspiration. He was too tired to make something up without help. Rose, regarding his discomfort, sipped more water. He saw a Portland Now magazine someone had left on a chair. The headline on the front cover advertised an article about the many microbreweries and craft breweries in the area. His tired brain latched on to the notion. Microbreweries. Yes! He said, “We’re going on a pub-crawl. Check out a few microbreweries and craft breweries in the area.”
Rose glanced at the magazine and back at him. He really wished she would find business elsewhere. It was bad enough performing under pressure without her scrutiny.
“Okay. That’s cool. But a pub-crawl? That’s it?” He knew his buddy liked to be different, but not too different. On the edge but never over it.
Desperation gave him a second idea. Possibly a stupid idea but he was too fatigued to judge. He made a gun with his thumb up and two fingers outstretched, closing one eye and pretending to squint down the barrel of a rifle. He aimed his imaginary firearm at Rose’s heart. Her only reaction was to raise her eyebrows. “After we go shooting.”
“Shooting?” There was silence for a second. Rose shook her head at him. And then Harvey laughed. “Shooting? Like a rifle range?”
“Handguns.” He nodded, liking the idea. “We’ll shoot for a couple hours, and then we hit the pub-crawl. Your stag will be unique.”
“I gotta hand it to you, you came up with something perfect.”
“Hey, my best friend only gets married once.” Then he hesitated. “I hope.”
Harvey laughed. “Oh, yeah. A woman like Theresa doesn’t come along every day.” He didn’t have any more time to waste than Matt did. He said, “Thanks, bro. I’ll see you for basketball Tuesday.”
“You bet. Later.”
He ended the call and Rose said, “How long have you been planning this stag night?”
She knew he’d come up with those ideas in the last couple of minutes and he knew she knew. He said, “Weeks.”
Their gazes connected. There was something about this woman that always got under his skin. She wasn’t even in the hospital that much, but he always seemed to be bumping into her with her perfect coolness, her un-mussed beauty, and that sense she gave him that she thought he was beneath her.
He hailed from a Greek immigrant family. So what? Sure, his family never had any money and he’d worked as a waiter in a Greek restaurant to pay his way through school. She had blue blood pulsing through her veins. But no one knew better than a surgeon that when you get past the skin, blood’s pretty much blood.
After gazing at him coolly for another moment, she said, “My brother is a cop. If you need to find a shooting gallery he can probably help.”
He was so surprised he damn near dropped his new smartphone. First, because he’d imagined that if she had a brother he’d manage an investment firm on Wall Street or something rather than go into law enforcement. Second because she didn’t seem like the kind of woman who would rush to help a guy in a jam. “Why would you help me?”
She tossed the now empty water bottle into the recycling container. “One day I’ll need a favor. And you’ll owe me.”
Chapter Two
Rose returned to the birthing room an hour later to check on her patient. The atmosphere was less positive than the last time she’d been in. Belinda looked exhausted, her damp hair was plastered to her forehead and Charlie had the beaten-down look of a man who’s recently been yelled at.
“Okay,” Rose said, stepping into the room, “looks like things are coming along.” If she had to guess, she would say her patient was in transition, possibly the toughest part of labor when mentally the patient was struggling the most. To Rose, transition signaled that the final stage of labor was about to get underway.
“Let’s take a look,” she said, putting on a clean pair of surgical gloves and once more positioning the stool at the bottom of the birthing bed.
“This isn’t like the other times,” Belinda said. She was panting and Rose could hear distress in her tone. “It’s taking longer and I feel like something’s not working.”
“Every birth is different,” she said, speaking as soothingly as she could.
But her examination revealed that, in fact, Belinda hadn’t progressed very far, only another centimeter. “You’re at eight centimeters. Not much farther to go.” Belinda knew as well as she did that full dilation was ten centimeters. “Try walking around for a little bit,” she suggested.
“We tried that,” Belinda snarled at her. “I’ve trekked miles down this damn hospital corridor.”
“Okay.”
She glanced at Charlie. He said, “She’s been getting a lot of contractions. Hard ones. Something’s different.”
Anita came in at that moment with a student nurse in tow. “I’ve run a hot tub for you. Sometimes that can help.” At least it would give Belinda something to do, and the warm water should help relax her. “This is Tess, she’s going to help you into the tub. I’ll check on you in a few.”
Rose didn’t like the way this birth was more complicated than the previous three. She always listened to the mothers because they were the ones in touch with their own bodies. She was concerned that Belinda felt something was wrong. While Tess helped Belinda out of the bed and walked her slowly out of the room, Anita stayed behind to confer with Rose.
“What do you think?” Rose had learned a long time ago that astute nurses were among the best friends a doctor could have in the birthing room. There wasn’t much they hadn’t seen.
There was a crease of worry between her brows. “It’s like her body’s working so hard but the baby doesn’t seem to be budging.”
Rose nodded. “When she gets out of the tub, let’s put her on a monitor and see what’s going on with baby.”
According to the monitor, the baby was doing okay; it was simply taking its time.
“I’m so tired,” Belinda wailed.
“Our only other option would be a C-section.”
She already knew that Belinda and Charlie had strong feelings about birthing naturally, but she wanted to float the idea.
“No,” Belinda said. “Let’s see if we can do this naturally.”
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