EXCERPT



Diane was on time for her four oclock appointment. The doctor was not. LNore, Dr. Santoro's nurse walked into the examining room and introduced herself. They engaged in small talk while they waited for the doctor. After a while, a vibration of the floor disrupted their conversation. The door opened, and some instruments on the treatment cart rattled as if heralding a very determined person. Or a very heavy one.

Dr. Santoro was both. At five-foot-eleven-inches and 198 pounds, with broad shoulders and breasts marginally contained by a 38E brassiere, Alfonsina Santoro, MD, cut an intimidating figure. Her chestnut hair in a nondescript perm framed a squarish jaw, a prominent thin nose and a large mouth with perfectly delineated lips. Dr. Santoro was wearing a faded rose lab coat that could have benefited from pressing a few weeks back. Under the coat, she wore a polka-dot navy blue dress with a wide white collar. From her neck dangled a large gold medallion of the Blessed Mother and a stethoscope with purple rubber tubing.

The doctor smeared Diane's belly with mineral oil, then placed the transducer on Diane's belly and moved it about. A loud lub-dub filled the room. It was the sweetest music to the ears of a mother-to-be: the baby's heartbeat.

Any obstetrician, at this point, would have counted the beats for half a minute and recorded their rate and location, and that would have been the end of the prenatal visit. Not Dr. Santoro. Obsessive-compulsive woman that she was, she could not help going always a little farther. She continued to move the transducer in larger circles, and as she did so, the fetal heart tones faded. When the transducer was a little below and to the left of the navel, a beating was heard again. The new beats filled the small room like the previous ones. Although rhythmic too, they were clearly faster, less intense and of a different pitch. The sounds somehow suggested the "whoosh of cascading water.

After listening to them for a few seconds, Dr. Santoro slid the transducer back to the area where the first sounds had been heard. The three women heard the distinct lub-dub again, louder, slower and sharper. The doctor shifted the instrument back and forth several times between the two areas. The sounds, even to an uninitiated ear, were clearly distinguishable from one another.

"Not two babies, please!" shouted Diane. "The house too small for two babies."

The doctor ignored her.

"Is something wrong, Doctor?"

"No, Diane. Everything is fine," said the doctor. Then she turned to L'Nore. "I want another ultrasound. Now."

Dr. Santoro pushed the wheelchair along the hallways at a speed that could not be considered safe. L'Nore had to engage in a brisk jog to keep abreast. She turned her head right and left, offering apologies to the people who had to jump out of the wheelchair's path.

Dr. Santoro entered the Ultrasound Department through a side door. A young woman in a white lab coat was standing at one end of a chest-high counter, clipping Polaroid pictures of ultrasounds. She was handing the pictures to Ken, the ultrasonographer, who pasted them onto report sheets.

Ken was a burly young man in his late thirties with long blonde hair, a beard, and long sideburns. He knew his job. He had spent five years in Vietnam as a medic. He took shit from nobody.

Dr. Santoro walked straight up to the counter and stood in front of Ken. "I have a patient outside who needs an ultrasound," she said softly.

The file clerk at the end of the counter stopped her clipping momentarily; looked at the clock on the wall and said, "Sorry, Doctor, but we are already closed."

"It is an e-m-e-r-g-e-n-c-y, Dr. Santoro explained to the girl.

"Come Friday five p.m., everyone has an emergency," Ken muttered.

As if the remark were the cue the doctor was awaiting, her face flushed beyond purple, the veins in her neck stood out as gun barrels, and her fingers clawed the edge of the counter like a falcons talons gripping its prey. Then Dr. Santoro leaned forward over the counter. When her face was not farther than two or three inches from the blonde hairy mess of Ken's head, she burst out, "But this is MY emergency!" The Polaroid pictures and the sheets on Ken's desk became airborne, made several pirouettes in mid-air and landed on the floor.

The room became deadly still. As Ken raised his eyes, he saw the bell of a stethoscope swinging gently side to side between Dr. Santoro's colossal bosoms. One on either side of the young man's head, the two massive warheads stood as an ironical antithesis of sex appeal. Ken began to grasp their significance as finely honed weapons. To do battle with an enemy in that state of combat readiness would be sheer folly.

Ken said tersely, "Bring the patient in."

"Thank you," mumbled Dr. Santoro.

After some minutes, Ken barged back into the room. "Doc, come see for yourself," he said.

The two women followed Ken to the scanning room.

"See?" Ken pointed to some blips on the screen. Just one fetus. Now, the placenta is real big."

"Uh-huh," mumbled the doctor.



When L'Nore entered the staff room, Dr. Santoro was standing by the sink, drinking hot cocoa.

"So what's the scoop, Doc? L'Nore asked. "You look worried.

"Listen here, L'Nore. We heard the fetal heart tones, right?"

"Yes."

"Then we heard the other ones, the 'whooshy' ones, right?

"Right."

"The other beats, the 'whooshy' ones, sounded to me more like placental soundslike the blood running through the cord. But, since the fetal heart propels the blood through the cord, they must be at the same rate as the fetal heart."

Uh-huh, nodded L'Nore.

"But they werent."

Right.

"So, then?"

"I give," LNore said at last. "What was that beat?"

"Beats me," the doctor replied, a forlorn look on her face.