Cherished Beginnings (2 page)

His eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled. "So you're here today for a physical exam," he said encouragingly. These mundane words were doubtless the tried-and-true phrase he used with all new patients. She wondered if he was used to having a physical effect on his patients, or if he even knew he did.

"Yes," she said as coolly as she could, forgetting that her original purpose for this visit transcended a mere physical exam. Now she was feeling more physical by the minute.

"Anything special you want us to check?"

She must have answered his question, although she had no earthly idea what she'd said, because he stood up and told her, "My nurse will show you to my examining room, and I'll be with you in a minute." He was still thoroughly professional and entirely circumspect.

Now, Maura,
she told herself sternly,
you're a medical professional. There's no reason for this man to create such havoc in you. Furthermore, you have no right to be thinking of shoulders in terms of broad or lips in terms of sensual.

While Maura was thus dismissing the words "broad shoulders" and "sensual lips" from her mental space, the nurse appeared and conducted Maura into another small room, where she instructed, "Take off all your clothes and wrap that sheet around you," before disappearing again.

Maura did as she was told, shivering into a mass of goose bumps in the blast from the air-conditioning vent. She wound herself in the sheet, slipped her shoes back on and then nervously slipped them off again, tiptoeing barefoot to the examining table. There was a stool there, and she stepped on it to boost herself onto the table.

She sat quietly for a moment before catching a glimpse of her distorted image in the shiny rectangular surface of the stainless-steel paper towel holder over the sink. Her abundant auburn hair faded to an unattractive shade of orange under the fluorescent ceiling light, and her tawny complexion seemed pasty and washed out. Clutching the sheet to her chest for warmth, knees pressed tightly together, she lay back on the hard, paper-covered table and waited, conscious as never before of her own skin and how much of it wasn't covered by the skimpy sheet.

And here it came again, the stealthily encroaching memory of the way Dr. Copeland had looked as he sat across the desk from her. A bronzed face, which according to the laws of probability meant he spent a good deal of time outdoors, and smooth dark eyebrows that looked as though they could quirk upward with humor. She had noted an awkwardness about his nose that she hadn't quite absorbed. His nose was straight, but there was something odd about it, too. A slight lump about halfway down the length of his nose, that was it! That one minor flaw kept him from being too perfectly formed, which was probably a good thing. There was certainly nothing wrong with the rest of him.

The minutes ticked by as she lay there, feeling increasingly defenseless in her nakedness. Her hipbones thrust rounded points upward beneath the sheet, which barely covered the curve of her thighs. Nervously she twitched the sheet downward, exposing the side of one shapely breast. She readjusted the fabric and forced herself to fold her hands modestly over her midriff.

Strange, but she'd never thought of herself as having a body before. Well, a body,
yes,
for eating and sleeping. But she had learned to dismiss physical discomforts as unimportant, and lying on this table, she felt distinctly uncomfortable.

She tried counting the holes in the acoustical ceiling but soon lost count. She didn't want to think about Dr. Copeland, but what else was there to think about? At least she could make an effort not to review his physical attributes.

She wondered about his position regarding midwifery. A long rivalry existed between the obstetrical and midwifery professions, each distrusting the other. Dr. Copeland was young enough to be open-minded, perhaps, but he was bound to be influenced by his traditional medical training. And then, without interrupting her flow of thought, she found herself thinking about the deep resonant timbre of his voice. It was low and melodious, the kind of voice you could listen to until you fell asleep beneath the caress of it.

The nurse came in. "Everything all right?" she asked brightly.

"Fine," Maura said to the ceiling, wondering if this could be counted as a lie. The nurse arranged assorted instruments on a tray and slipped out again, humming as she went.

Maura closed her eyes, but she couldn't keep Dr. Copeland's face out of her thoughts. It kept invading her consciousness, spreading itself across the inside of her eyelids like some wonderful new kind of wraparound visual effect. The vision transmuted itself into something closely approximating reality, a daydream and a half.

Soon, she thought dreamily, floating along with it, he would be standing above her, lifting aside the soft fabric of the sheet, his smooth fingers conducting their examination in a totally impersonal way. Her shoulders tensed forward protectively when she imagined his eyes sweeping her body. To her amazement and utter chagrin, her nipples stiffened beneath the sheet at the very thought of his strong hands, alien and so male, touching her skin.

Aghast at this unexpected and purely physical response, she sat up abruptly and slid off the table, tearing the paper beneath her in her haste. She had been taught to dismiss physical discomforts—and physical pleasures as well. But now it seemed that banishing either was impossible.

All at once, irrationally and with a touch of sheer panic, she knew beyond a doubt that she couldn't do it. She couldn't allow Alexander Copeland to see her body awakening to his touch. She wasn't ready to be touched by a very virile and desirable man. Maybe she never would be.

Swiftly, reacting solely from her own blind instinct, she tossed aside the sheet and pulled on her plain white cotton underwear, then the bright print blouse borrowed from Kathleen, then her own ordinary cotton skirt. She didn't want to take the time to put on panty hose, so she stuffed them in her handbag, not caring in the least whether they snagged or not.

Maura careered out of the examining room, almost knocking the sweet-faced nurse down in her hurry.

"I just remembered another appointment!" she blurted at the nurse, to the other's utter amazement. And this, Maura knew, was definitely a lie.

And then she rushed through the waiting room, the startled faces of the pregnant patients all a blur, and out into the dank, oppressive humidity of early afternoon.

Maura's heart pounded as she fled across the street to the hospital parking lot and climbed into the decrepit old minivan that had carried her in temperamental fits and starts all the way across the continent. She couldn't help feeling that with her uncharacteristically crazy flight out of Dr. Copeland's office, she had blown her only chance to get a physician to supervise her practice in midwifery.

Oh, what was wrong with her? She'd thought she was adjusting to her new life and that everything was coasting along beautifully until she'd been confronted with Dr. Alexander Copeland. All he'd done was speak a few ultra ordinary sentences to her, nothing even slightly suggestive. And she'd reacted like a frightened adolescent, not a grown woman—and a woman who was a registered nurse, at that. She rested her elbows on the sticky steering wheel and pressed her fingers to her temples, digging the heels of her hands into her eye sockets as though to rub out Dr. Copeland's handsome lingering image.

Well, she couldn't work with Alexander Copeland on a personal basis. That was perfectly clear. Her sexuality, she thought with a stab of despair, was as yet too new and untried to be subjected to such a man.

It was several minutes before she composed herself enough to fit the key into the ignition and start the motor. Much as she needed a physician to supervise her practice and to provide dependable medical backup, she'd have to find somebody else who felt safe, even if it meant going all the way to Charleston.

Driving distractedly along the Shuffletown highway, she wondered how she'd ever be able to face Alexander Copeland again. Her inappropriate response to him forced her to see that she was going to have to relate to men in a new way in this, her new life, just as Kathleen had all too often cautioned her.

At the moment Maura was feeling her sister's advice very strongly. She missed her comfortable old identity like a newly amputated limb. She was like the amputees she'd seen in the wards during her nurse's training: An important part of her had been cut off, and she could still feel the phantom ache of it at times.

When she first noticed the smell of burnt rubber, she was about a mile from the turnoff for the Teoway Island bridge. She sniffed the air, hoping that the acrid odor wasn't coming from her minivan. Then a dashboard light flashed on, and she pulled over to the side of the highway in alarm.

Maura was standing forlornly on the deserted road worrying about the wildly smoking engine and wishing she knew something about automobile mechanics when a small brown girl leaped out of the shrubbery. "Mama's going to have a baby!" blurted the child.

And then the girl started babbling, making very little sense at all to Maura. She was clearly in a panic, looking for someone, anyone to help.

Maura put her arm around the child's shoulders and knelt down beside her so that she would be at the child's eye level. Her gentle touch seemed to have a calming effect. "Slow down," she said quietly and with an encouraging smile. "I can't understand what you're saying."

The chocolate-brown eyes blinked and a tear rolled down one plump cheek. The girl was still rattled, but no longer incoherent. "Please," implored the child, tugging frantically at Maura's hand. "Come quick. My mama's having a baby."

And so without stopping to ask any more questions, trying her best to cope with the world and whatever it demanded of her, Maura grabbed her midwife's bag off the cot in the back of the minivan and followed the child down the rutted dirt path at a run. On this one occasion, it seemed, her unreliable old vehicle had broken down in just the right place at the right time to do somebody some good.

But then, she thought grimly, it was the only bright spot in a day when everything seemed to be going awry.

Chapter 2

The glare of the low-lying South Carolina sunset was muted in this shadowed room where filtered light touched the liquid dark eyes and high cheekbones of the dark-skinned woman laboring on the bed.

Maura brushed a strand of her own auburn hair back behind her ear and summoned up all the feeling and intuition of her art. Gently she stroked the woman's damp brow, concentrating on focusing her abundant energy so that the woman might draw strength from it.

"Push, Annie," she said, her voice low and vibrant with emotion. No matter how many babies she delivered, Maura never failed to feel reverence for new life and respect for the dignity of motherhood. The emotional and spiritual aspects of the art of midwifery were what made this calling so special.

Annie rolled her eyes and looked frightened. Maura felt a stab of doubt about the situation. But what could she expect from this woman? Annie had never laid eyes on Maura until a few short hours ago. It was Maura's responsibility to reassure her.

Maura knew that Annie was afraid of the sensations of labor and needed to slow down. She slipped around the edge of the bed and eased herself down beside her. "Slow your breathing," she urged, placing Annie's hand on her own flat abdomen and demonstrating how to draw each breath slower and deeper than before.

Annie relaxed visibly, smiling as she became centered within herself and therefore less tense. She raised grateful eyes to Maura's. "Sure am glad you happened along," she said.

"I am, too," Maura told her warmly. She glanced at the small girl who hung over the back of a spraddle-legged straight chair in a corner, watching the proceedings with fascinated interest.

"You all right, Cindy?" Annie asked anxiously, craning her neck so she could see her daughter.

"Yes, Mama," said the child.

"Any time you want to leave, you go on," Annie said.

"I want to be with you, Mama."

Annie took a deep breath. "That's good. It makes me feel better having you near."

The fact of this family's privation had been evident from the moment Maura saw the shack with its tar-paper roof and the porch leaning haphazardly to one side. "Such poverty!" she'd muttered to herself. Her anger at this need existing only a stone's throw away from the exclusive resort and residential community of Teoway Island had taken second place, however, to her sense of purpose when she'd encountered the frightened young woman on the sagging bed in one of the cabin's two rooms.