couple, and they weren’t show tunes.
“‘The farmer in the dell, the farmer in the dell, hi-ho, the dairy-o…’”
Later, Lissy and I recapped the delivery.
“You mean he actually said that? ‘Stay out of the way?’ What did your client think of that?” Lissy slathered peanut butter onto a stack of buttery crackers and ate them one by one.
“She had a lot more to worry about than my feelings. She was the star of the show and performed heroically. Anyone who gives birth to a ten-pound, one-ounce baby boy rocks in my book.”
“Still, ‘Stay out of the way,’ just like that? What a—”
“Don’t say it,” I warned. “Just because Reynolds doesn’t like doulas, it doesn’t mean he isn’t a good doctor. Frankly, after watching him in action, I think he’s a great doctor. He has so much compassion for his patients that it practically oozes out of every pore. He was gentle, kind, patient, encouraging and supportive, all necessary things when a mother is giving birth to a baby the size of my bowling ball.”
“You’re defending him?”
“He didn’t kick me out of the hospital.”
“I’ve heard he’s campaigning with the hospital board to limit the number of people in a birthing room. Everyone reads that to mean that he doesn’t want birthing coaches or anyone but spouses or the very closest family involved.”
“Maybe I showed him that it can be a good thing.” I cleared my throat. “Unless he didn’t like my singing.”
“Your singing? I thought you were at a birth, not the opera.”
“It was totally embarrassing,” I admitted, “but Brenda heard me humming once and told me I had a pretty voice. I never dreamed she’d demand that I sing to her during delivery.”
“No kidding? You sang this baby into the world?”
“If I’d been that baby, I would have hung on to my mother’s rib cage and refused to come out after listening to me for five minutes. My repertoire is limited. My mind went blank, and all I could remember was the theme song from The Brady Bunch, ‘Farmer in the Dell,’ ‘Jesus Loves Me’ and ‘How Great Thou Art.’ Brenda enjoyed it, but Dr. Reynolds’s jaw was twitching by the fourth or fifth time through ‘and the mouse took the cheese.’” I shrugged. “But whatever a client wants, including distraction, she gets.”
“When I have a baby I want you to be my doula,” Lissy said. “And I want you to start learning words to new songs right away. I would not deliver a baby to the theme song from The Brady Bunch. Do something more contemporary, will you? Or show tunes like the soundtrack from Les Mis or Phantom.”
Lissy washed down her peanut butter crackers with milk from my refrigerator and started to dig in my cupboards for candy. She’s as comfortable here as she is in her own home. Lissy and I have known each other for years. We met in an exercise class and bonded because we were the only two that had actually come to exercise and not to meet men. She and I in our ponytails and sweats had stood out in a room full of beautiful women in Danskin with full face makeup and hairdos sprayed so as not to move even during tae bo. After class, while all the others mobbed the instructor, a hunky guy with protruding veins and bulging muscles, to ask questions and to get a closer look, Lissy and I went to the juice bar and drowned our sorrows in chocolate-banana smoothies. We’ve been friends ever since.
Lissy is a nurse at Bradford Medical Center and the one who actually told me what a doula was and suggested that I should become one.
“What do you think makes him that way?” I asked.
“Dr. Reynolds, you mean? I don’t know. It’s his particular hangup, I guess, the nobody-but-medical-people-present-during-birth thing. Too bad you’re on the opposing team. I guess he can be really nice when he wants to be.”
“Tell me about him.” I didn’t really care, but I didn’t want Lissy to go home, either.
Two months ago I broke up with a fellow I’d been dating from church. To be truthful, the relationship was more serious on his side than it was on mine, but I do miss his company. Nights are longer without him to talk to on the phone or drop by.
It was for the best. Hank Marcus has a plan for his life. It includes a wife, which could have been me had I said yes, and a fast track in his business. He’d begged me to marry him and come with him to Mississippi where his company is opening a new plant. That was a huge part of the problem. My life plan does not currently include marriage or Mississippi. Although I miss Hank, I’m not devastated without him, either. When I marry, it will have to be to a man I refuse to live without. And that, I’m learning, may take some time to find. The prospects are dim right now, but I’m so busy it doesn’t really matter.
“I don’t know much about him. No one does. He keeps to himself. He’s well respected in the medical community and when he speaks, people listen. The board is giddy with joy at having him here, of course. His patients love him and the nurses are scared of him because he is so meticulous and exacting. He spends almost no time in small talk with anyone. He leaves immediately after his work is complete and doesn’t ever tell anyone where he is going or what he is doing. I’ve heard he has a child, a little boy. He’s great with kids. I’ve seen him with the brothers and sisters of new babies. I’ve never heard anything about a wife, but who knows? He’s certainly not telling.”
“For not knowing anything about him, you seem to have quite a bit of information,” I observed. I dug into the bag of chocolate chips Lissy brought to the table.
“People talk, I listen.” Then she grew serious. “Listen, Molly, I really think that since you are the first doula ever to darken Dr. Reynolds’s doorstep, so to speak, you should tread very carefully if you want him to give you his stamp of approval. He’s got a lot of influence in this hospital.”
“How did he get so powerful, anyway?”
Lissy looked at me, shocked. “You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Bradshaw Medical Center. Dr. Everett Bradshaw?”
“Sure. He funded the hospital forty years ago. He was a relatively young man at the time. His picture is hanging in the front lobby where no one can miss it.”
“Exactly. Dr. Reynolds is Clay Bradshaw Reynolds. His grandfather funded this hospital. If it weren’t for the Bradshaw family, this facility wouldn’t exist. When he moved here to be on staff, the buzz was that when he spoke, everyone was to listen.”
My heart sank. He really could put the kibosh on my idea for a fledgling doula program at this hospital.
“He hasn’t been as demanding as everyone expected,” Lissy continued, “but he is fanatical about what happens to what he calls ‘his’ mothers. All I can say is, watch your step.”
His mothers? And all along I’d thought they were my mothers.
Chapter Two
“How’s my favorite Irish lassie?” Tony DeMatteo grinned at me and dangled a Snickers bar in front of
