“Anyway,” Sarkar says. “Here comes the favor request. Greta Moss has suddenly decided that she wants to deliver with a midwife, not an ob-gyn. She told me that she wants her baby to be born the way she herself was born: on a kitchen table in Copenhagen.”
“We’re all out of kitchen tables,” I say. “And look out the window. It sure isn’t Copenhagen out there.”
“Come on, Lucy. Please. Greta really wants this,” he says. “And I think the publicity for the hospital, for you, for the midwives, would be great.”
“Well, yeah, maybe, but it would not be good for my schedule or Troy’s schedule or Tracy Anne’s schedule. We are booked solid. When is Greta Moss due?”
“Any moment,” he says.
“As in any moment, even this very moment?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Forget it,” I say. “It can’t be done.” I’m also thinking, Damn it, this guy thinks he can waltz in here, ask for a favor, and I’ll do it. He thinks that just because he’s charming and just because I’m a midwife that—
A knock on the door. Tracy Anne’s head appears.
“Katra Kovac has gone into labor. Birthing room 3,” she says.
Rudi Sarkar squints his eyes in a fake-funny evil pose. “Did you have your colleague poised to come in here to show me just how busy you are?”
“Sure. Tracy Anne was listening at the door. There’s really no Katra Kovac. There’s really no scared, unmarried seventeen-year-old girl who’s going to give birth. No, there are only big shots like Greta Moss and Hank Waldren. Sorry, Rudi.”
“Oh, come on, Lucy. For me?”
But before he can say something like “Aw, c’mon, sweetie pie. Pretty please with sugar on it?” I say, “Gotta run. New member of the human race is on the way.”
CHAPTER 11
FENDING OFF RUDI SARKAR’S arrogant request was a small challenge compared to the problem waiting for me in birthing room 3. Tracy Anne and I move quickly toward the room. Even after years of delivering babies, I still always feel the happy anticipation when a mother is about to bring a new life into this world.
Katra Kovac has quite a few obstacles facing her in the next few hours—a young, first-time mother and recent immigrant, I think from Eastern Europe, and there’s no sign of the baby’s father. But Katra is strong, healthy, and enthusiastic, with the full support of her mother and father.
I follow Tracy Anne into the room. It’s empty. What the hell? No nurse, no other midwives, most alarmingly, no Katra Kovac.
“Tracy Anne, is this the wrong room number?”
“No, I’m sure this is the right room. We were assigned to birthing 3. Emergency Registration was bringing her up when I went out to get you.”
“Well, there’s some screwup,” I say, and I’m hoping that’s all it is—a simple screwup.
Tracy Anne and I head quickly toward the nurses’ station. I’m certain we’re both thinking the worst: have we escalated from missing babies to missing mothers?
My usual good luck: Nurse Charming, Deborah Franklin, is on duty at the central desk.
“Where’s the patient who’s supposed to be in birthing room 3, Katra Kovac? I can’t find her,” I say.
“Did you look in the bed?” Franklin says.
I’m in no mood for Franklin’s sarcasm right now. “Do you know where Katra Kovac is?” I say slowly and loudly. “Did you see her brought up from Registration?”
“I surely did. She was there a few minutes ago. In fact, one of your people was with her.”
“Who was it?”
“I wasn’t watching,” says Nurse Franklin.
I don’t have time for bullshit. I spring into action. “Let’s start looking, Trace,” I say.
Tracy Anne and I each take a side of the hospital corridor. We scurry unannounced into patients’ rooms, bathrooms, visitors’ lounges, even an archaic room with a small brass sign on it that says FATHERS’ WAITING ROOM. We look in custodian closets and the food storage rooms that hold the thousands of packets of peanut-butter crackers, Jell-O cups, and apple juice.
Now I’m a bit frightened. Okay, I’m really frightened.
“What should we do?” Tracy Anne asks.
“What do you think? We keep looking, and we call for backup.”
We rush to the nurses’ station. I tell Nurse Franklin to call Security.
“I already have,” she says. “They’re on their way.”
Two men from GUH Security appear almost instantaneously. I know these two guys, but I certainly do not know the other two people with them: a uniformed NYC female cop and a grumpy-looking guy in a rumpled gray suit. The woman looks ready to work. The guy looks just the opposite: sullen, tired. He has one of those slightly paunchy dad bods. He’s got to be the detective.
“I’m Detective Leon Blumenthal, NYPD.” Was I right or was I right? “This is Officer Cindy Hazard. Let’s get started.”
Apparently he doesn’t care to know our names. I don’t even try.
“Missing person is seventeen, dark blond hair, wearing hospital gown,” he says. “Let’s search this floor first.”
“We’ve already done that,” I say.
“And you are …?”
I guess he’s changed his mind. He does want an intro. “Midwife Lucy Ryuan.”
“And you found nothing and no one?”
“Well, we certainly didn’t find Katra Kovac.”
“Well, why don’t we just take one more crack at it. I already have a team moving hard through the hospital,” he says. “Let’s go.”
Forget paunchy and tired. I’ll call him arrogant as shit.
CHAPTER 12
WITHIN MINUTES, TRACY ANNE and I have joined the search with Blumenthal and his colleagues, or maybe they even forgot we were there with them. Either way, we’re tagging along with the crew through Adult Neurosurgery and ICU. I don’t exactly know what Blumenthal and company are doing that’s so different from what Tracy Anne and I were doing fifteen minutes ago. They pull open drawers and look under beds. They go into bathrooms and knock on stall doors. Could it be that their flashlights make them seem professional?
There aren’t many good places to hide in a hospital—no matter what you’ve seen on television. Sure, a supply closet, a visitors’ bathroom, an occasional doctor’s vacant office. But for the most part, the spaces are all very wide corridors and lots of rooms for patients.
“That’s a janitor’s closet,” I say as NYPD officer Cindy Hazard opens a janitor’s closet, the same one I’d opened fifteen minutes ago. Hazard and Blumenthal step into the closet.
Okay, moving right along.
We finish searching Adult Neurosurgery and ICU. We head for the Darlow Pavilion, a fancy area of the hospital with marble floors and dark wood-paneled private rooms. I explain to Blumenthal that the Darlow Pavilion was designed for super-rich patients willing to pay a lot of money for being sick in absolute privacy and luxury. Darlow is a cash cow for Gramatan, and most patients in Darlow are not used to being disturbed by anyone except their masseurs and stockbrokers. Blumenthal and his gang don’t seem to care. We look in. We move on. Now we’re running out of places to look.