“They’re not the enemy,” Barb said as if reading her thoughts. “From a professional point of view, this will allow us to take care of even more women outside the hospital setting.”

Annie closed her eyes. None of her colleagues knew her history—only that Callie’s father wasn’t in her life and Annie wasn’t interested in dating anyone. They didn’t know about the nightmare of Callie’s delivery or the agony of recovering, when the psychic pain of knowing she’d never have the opportunity to share the birth of another child with someone she loved was even worse than the physical. Her choice had been taken from her in a flurry of technology and medical imperative. All perfectly justifiable, but in her heart, she would never be sure of the necessity. And she’d never forgive herself for believing so many lies. Jeff had only been the beginning.

“Annie, you there? Damn cell pho—”

“I’m here. Sorry. Bad battery.”

“We need a regional director of the new program to work with the hospital on training schedules, supervisory details, triage protocols, that sort of thing.”

“Chris Ames was an OR nurse before he got his CNM, he could—”

“Chris is terrific, no question. But we want a Philadelphia U graduate, since that’s where the program will be based.”

Annie’s chest hurt. Barb’s jovial, already-been-decided tone confirmed her fears.

“We want you for this, Annie. You’ll meet with your OB counterpart at ten o’clock this morning at PMC.”

Chapter Three

Hollis pulled off her surgical cap and snapped the paper tie on her mask, balled them up, and tossed them toward the trash can across the small anteroom adjoining the delivery room. She’d gotten a few hours’ sleep the night before, but her eyes felt gritty and her shoulders ached. She washed her hands and splashed her face with cold water. With luck she’d be able to put some time in on her bike before the end of the day—twenty miles cycling along the Schuylkill ought to work out the kinks.

“I thought you were off today,” Ned Williams said, stopping in the hall that ran the length of Labor and Delivery.

“I am—was.” Hollis pulled a few paper towels from the dispenser and mopped the water off her neck. Ned was a few years her senior in the department, a good-looking redhead with playful blue eyes, a smile that put patients immediately at ease, and an ex-wife and four kids. She gestured to the delivery room behind her. “One of my patients is a week early. I got the call just as the staff meeting finished. I’m waiting on her now.”

Three other rooms like the one where her patient was being monitored were reserved for women in labor. A fifth room was reserved for scheduled C-sections during the week and for emergency surgeries, day or night. Hollis spent a lot of time in that room. High-risk pregnancies usually went well, but when they went bad they went bad fast, and she often had to operate emergently to save the baby and mother.

“Anything problematic? I don’t mind giving an assist,” Ned said, a hopeful note in his voice.

Ned was double-boarded in adolescent medicine and did a lot of teen pregnancies along with routine OB, and he regularly referred his surgical cases to Hollis. He frequently hung around when he was off call, and Hollis often wondered if the excitement of the hospital was more satisfying for him than his personal life. Her father had loved his job, but he was home at five p.m. every day for supper unless he had a fire call-out. Then no one cared how late he was as long as he came home. Hollis dismissed the unfair comparison—her family wasn’t like most families she knew. She and her five brothers never fought, her mother and father were affectionate and still in love after thirty-nine years, and there was an unspoken rule that no matter how bad things got, together they could handle anything. That’s how it had been until one Tuesday in September when the Towers came down and Rob never came home. Everything changed after that. The world had changed, her world had fractured, and she’d vowed she’d never be that vulnerable again.

Ned was waiting, a faint smile on his face. He was just being friendly. He couldn’t know she didn’t want friends.

“Hopefully this will go smoothly,” she said. “She’s thirty-eight and had preeclampsia with her last delivery, but she’s been on bed rest for the past six weeks and her pressure’s looking good. She’s already fully effaced and moving right along.”

“Good enough.” He started to turn away, then paused. “What do you think about this whole thing with the midwifes? One of the OB practices I did a rotation with when I was a resident worked with midwifes. It was great, actually. I don’t know why, but for some reason, mothers seemed more comfortable with them, especially around all the prenatal stuff.”

“I think there’s plenty of room for other caregivers to get involved with prenatal and aftercare,” Hollis said. “But delivering high-risk mothers in an outpatient setting? Seems like a recipe for disaster to me.”

“Well, I guess you’ll get the chance to find out. Glad Dave volunteered you and not me.” He grinned. “Kind of feel sorry for the poor midwife, though.”

“Thanks,” Hollis said dryly. “I’ll try not to bite.”

“You off the weekend?” Ned asked.

“Yes,” Hollis said, although she’d told Bonnie McCann, who had the call on Monday, she’d back her up if she got busy. She wasn’t doing anything and Bonnie had three kids and a birthday party scheduled.

“I’ve got the kids on Sunday and I promised them a barbecue. If you’re free—”

“Uh…thanks, really. But I’ve got some stuff around the house I’ve been meaning to do for months. I think it’s home-repair weekend.” She didn’t spend a lot of time socializing with her colleagues—fortunately her schedule gave her an easy excuse to pass on dinners and department get-togethers. Friendships didn’t come without a price, and she was just as happy not to have even casual ties. She’d rather invest her energy and time in her patients. Those relationships were short but intimate and intense, and then everyone moved on with their lives. If she never made a long-term investment, she’d never be disappointed or, worse, devastated by loss.

Ned nodded as if anticipating her answer. “Okay, but if you change your mind, we’re only ten minutes from you.”

“Appreciate it, but I think I’ll be knee-deep in sawdust for the foreseeable future.” She wasn’t lying. Her second year on staff, she’d purchased a once-stately old Victorian opposite the small park a few blocks from the hospital. She could walk to work, and if she had an emergency in the middle of the night, she could be on-site in less than fifteen minutes. Somewhere in the last hundred and eighty years, the second and third floors had been divided up into apartments and then later reconverted, leaving many false walls and odd corridors that divided rooms in haphazard fashion. She’d been slowly working to restore all the original architectural details. She enjoyed returning the place to its lost grandeur. This spring she’d started exterior work and still had half the wraparound porch to go.

“Have a good weekend,” Ned said over his shoulder as he went off down the hall.

Hollis checked her watch. Mary Anderson was likely to deliver in the next two or three hours. She ought to be home by one and could get in a few hours’ work on the back porch, a bike ride before dinner, and maybe even get out on her Harley for a quick run after that. She was planning to pull up the pressure-treated wood someone had put down on the porch and replace it with stained oak planks. Some of the posts on the banister also needed replacing, and she had to find a carpenter who could cut her new ones to match.

Happily reviewing her plans for the day, she pushed open the door bearing her name in plain black letters and stepped into the anteroom adjoining her office. Her secretary allowed no one through without an appointment, and the single chair in front of her desk didn’t do much to encourage drop-in visitors. When she was at work, she wanted to work, not kill time with meaningless gossip.

“Hi, Sybil. Anything doing?” Hollis kept walking toward her office, not expecting Sybil to have much in the way of news. If there’d been anything important, she would have paged her. Sybil Baker, forty-five and looking thirty, twice divorced and “done with men,” had been with her since she’d taken the position at the hospital. She had been the executive assistant to the chairman for five years before Hollis arrived but didn’t like juggling all the departmental meetings that went along with the job. She preferred taking patient calls and scheduling office hours. She was also very good at settling down anxious patients and their families, leaving Hollis to concentrate on her clinic and delivery schedules. Hollis was the envy of every doc in the department.

“Actually,” Sybil said, and Hollis slowed, “your ten o’clock appointment is here.”

Hollis frowned. “I’m not scheduled to see anyone.”

Sybil gave her an odd look. “I thought you knew. You have a meeting about the midwife clinic?”

Hollis clenched her jaws, biting off a retort. God damn Dave. He could have warned her. “I didn’t know it was today.”

“Oh,” Sybil said, looking relieved. “That’s why I didn’t know about it. I was afraid you’d told me and I forgot to put it in your book. She seemed certain, so I thought it was best to have her wait in your office.”

Hollis glanced at her watch. Ten fifteen. Great. She disliked keeping anyone waiting—she ran her office hours as close to on schedule as she possibly could, and her patients often remarked how unusual that was for an obstetrician. There were times she was late or missed office hours altogether, but only when she had an unexpected delivery. Otherwise, she wanted her patients to know that she would be there when she said she would be there, for any reason. And that extended to other appointments she made. She’d missed a critical appointment once in her life, and she’d be paying for it until the day she died. She’d vowed then it would never happen again.