Page 38 of Cascade

“Mmm,” Pam says. “I hear you saying how much you value Abigail as a friend, how concerned you are for her health. Have you had this strong emotional reaction when other patients have presented with symptoms similar to these?”

I pause for a moment and consider. “I never really let myself have emotional reactions,” I finally blurt out. “When I’m with my patients I have to shove all my emotions aside to deal with later.”

“And what did ‘later’ look like for you? When someone had the same presentations as your mother?”

“Well…” I think about the babies born sleeping, the patients I’ve had to transfer to specialist hospitals in Philadelphia. All the parents I’ve comforted in the NICU when their babies were born woefully sick. “Later just never seemed to arrive.”

“Hmm, that’s what I was thinking, too,” Pam says. She reminds me of the night I met Archer—how I’d taken a step toward feeling some of my feelings at that bar and wound up behaving fully out of character. She says taking Archer home could have been my way of coping with stress. “Bleeding the radiator a bit,” she says, referring to me going home with a stranger and then seeking him out a few days later for another tryst.

“Do you need to refer your patient to another provider, Opal? What comes next regarding her care?” I bite at a hangnail as Oscar circles my ankles in the hallways. Like he, too, is experimenting with trusting me.

It’s like both of us have stepped out onto a rickety drawbridge and found, to our surprise, that it holds our weight. “I’d like to remain in consult with the high risk OB,” I whisper. “I’d very much like to be there when her baby comes.”

Pam and I talk about logistics for a few minutes, assessing whether I’m able to separate my concern for Abigail from my grief about my mother.

I know the women in Abigail’s family are on the road as we speak, driving in from Ohio to check on her. The Bakers have rented out Indigo’s entire inn and Daniel Crawford has been prepping comfort food to feed an army. I’ve been trying to work out how I fit into all of it, how I can share something reassuring to my friend.

I set my hand on the hall floor, palm up, and curl my fingers a few times until Oscar approaches. I hold my breath as he sniffs my hand, starts to lick at my palm with his scratchy tongue. When he shoves his head up against my hip, I melt with relief and drape my arm around him.

DECEMBER

I work a series of 12 hour shifts the next few days. House visits, rounds at the postnatal unit in the local hospital. I gather data for my project and sit with Abigail, who is on hospital bedrest until she’s far enough along to safely induce labor. And then I organize more data for Dr. Moorely.

I’ve barely seen Archer. When he’s not at work, his family is doing rotating shifts at Abigail’s bedside. I’ve seen his siblings and parents more often than my own boyfriend, and we are—for now at least—living together. I actually don’t even know if my apartment still smells like skunk.

Life is hectic. I’m exhausted, and just when I’m about to cave into the need for sleep, I get a call from Moorely to say he’s noticed something exciting in the data I’ve been recording. He asks if I can come down to take a look, and even though I’m coming off a night shift and haven’t slept, I decide to make my weary way toward campus.

I find him and Hunter in a conference room. Hunter is gesturing wildly, drawing a diagram of what I can only assume is a dilating cervix, and Moorely seems utterly relieved to see me arrive.

“Opal!” He springs up from his seat. “Hey, Crawford,” he says in his posh British accent. “You must excuse me. I need to review this algorithm with Ms. Whittaker.”

Hunter looks like he hasn’t slept since Thanksgiving. “Right,” he says, erasing the whiteboard. “Certainly.” He heads off down the hallway before it registers to me that I should probably comfort him.

Moorely whisks me down the hall to his office, where he has so many computer screens I’m not sure where to look. He ushers me into a seat and I’m delighted when he pulls up an easy-to-read infographic.

“Check out this user interface,” he says, beaming. “Pretty easy to digest, right?”

He’s got graphs showing correlation between daily blood pressure checks, smoking, blood loss…so many symptoms…and pregnancy outcomes at the 6-week checkup. I clap my hands. “This is just what I hoped we could do,” I told him. “I can’t wait to expand to other pregnant populations in low-income areas!”

“Is this where you Yanks would do a high five?” Moorely grins from behind his desk.

I nod. “I think so, Andy.” I laugh and extend my palm, slapping hands with him and we both do a little dance.

“This is good data,” he says. I feel pride sweeping through me. The knowledge that my work is actually helping people, actually making a difference in families’ lives once they have babies—I can’t describe that sensation. I’m so unaccustomed to this. My instincts are telling me to hold back my joy, to wait for Dr. Moorely to say,“Actually, we uncovered an error…”

But this geeky scientist is dancing his way around his office, and I know this isn’t the norm for him. The way Archer teases him, to even see Moorely smile is a big deal. “Hey, Andy, you’re sure about these numbers?” I hesitate, fingers clutching the edge of his desk.

“Opal. Opal Whittaker.” He takes a deep breath. “We’ve got correlation. We’ve got no margin of error. We’ve stripped the data of external factors, designed the algorithm for your charting app intentionally to avoid bias. This is a masterpiece.” He walks around the desk and ushers me out the door.

“This is the kind of news where you run to a bar and celebrate after.” He grabs for his coat. “That’s my intention, anyway. Fancy a pint at The Nobler Experiment?”

I shake my head. I need to go somewhere, process this information. “I haven’t slept,” I tell him. “I’ve been catching babies all night.” And it’s true. But the energy is buzzing inside me all the same. I walk beside Andy as we leave campus, shivering a bit in the chilly winter air. As we cross the creek toward town, I see flecks of frost on the brown leaves clustered at the banks.

The dingy gray day reminds me of another day, long ago. When I came home from school to find we’d been evicted from our townhouse. My father was nowhere in sight, but the clean out crew was already there, hurling our things into a Dumpster outside. I remember looking at the brown leaves matted in the front yard we were supposed to rake and mow as part of our lease. Often, I tried my hardest to keep up with the work. Certainly my father was incapable.

If he was working, he was too worn out from warehouse jobs. And if he wasn’t working…

I shake my head and realize that Andy must have been talking to me. “I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I was distracted. What was that?”

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