Newborn Needs a Dad. Dianne Drake

it is here in White Elk, and by the time I’d worked to the end of my contract, I was more than ready to come back here, where nothing is normal. For me, that makes it better.” He motioned Gabby around the corner to the staff lounge, where he practically lunged at the coffee pot. “How do you take yours? I mean, I’m assuming you still allow yourself a little caffeine at this stage of your pregnancy.”

      “Caffeine in moderation is fine, and there’s always decaffeinated coffee if the caffeine causes side effects. But I don’t like coffee.” She turned up her nose. “Used to, but after I got pregnant I lost my taste for it. Started craving hot chocolate.”

      “But you do like the coffee breaks, don’t you?”

      “As long as I can sit down and put my feet up then, yes, I like the coffee breaks.” Which is exactly what she did. She sat down in one chair, then Neil nudged another one across the room to her, so she could prop up her feet.

      “Is this your first?” he asked, sitting down next to her.

      “Yes. And just so we can get past this awkward moment, I’m not married, don’t plan to be married, I’m not involved in any kind of relationship with the baby’s father or anyone else, and I’m very much looking forward to single motherhood. And in case that sounds defensive, I really don’t mean for it to be, but I’ve said this by rote a few dozen times and that’s just the way it comes out now.” So, if that wasn’t an ice-breaker, nothing was. “And it’s not a secret, Neil. People will ask, they’ll want to talk, and that’s fine. If I’m going to be here for a couple of months, I’d rather everyone knows this isn’t one of those circumstances where they need to whisper and speculate. My pregnancy is the best thing that ever happened to me, and I’m ecstatic.”

      “I’m glad. When I was in family practice in Los Angeles, I saw too many pregnant patients who weren’t ecstatic, and it made me…sad. Sad for the mother, sad for the baby.” A deep frown confirmed his sentiment, but he wiped it away after a sip of coffee, and his normal sunny smile returned. “So, you asked me about the hospital, didn’t you? Five important things everyone needs to know…Well, as you’ve seen, it’s small. That’s important because we like the intimacy. We have forty beds that can expand to fifty, if we have to. Sixty in a dire emergency. Also, we offer general service here, no elective major surgeries, emergency major surgery only when it’s vital, and most minor procedures are welcomed. We specialize in pediatrics, not so much because that’s what we set out to do but by virtue of the fact that the two co-owners have pediatric specialties in their backgrounds, meaning we do get a few more peds referrals than we normally would. Although it’s not technically a pediatric hospital.” He paused, then grinned. “Was that four or five things?”

      “Technically, four. So, you were in pediatrics?”

      “Still am, but for White Elk and the whole Three Sisters area, it’s too limiting, so I have a secondary specialty in family practice. Like my partner, Eric Ramsey. He was a pediatric surgeon, but to be flexible enough to work here he had to expand his horizons. So, besides a couple of doctors who seem to be the proverbial jacks-of-all-trades, we also have a state-of-the-art trauma department, headed by Eric, a full obstetrics department headed by, well, you, for the moment, a neonatal nursery, a good orthopedic set-up, and we also coordinate mountain rescue from here. Just a couple of ticks off full service on a very small scale—and growing, I guess you’d say. And now that’s more than five.”

      “And I’m more than impressed. So, you’re a co-owner?”

      He nodded. “The hospital was struggling when I came back, and Eric Ramsey and I bought it in order to keep it going. In an area such as this you can’t afford to have the hospital go under, because that affects the whole local economy. A ski resort area—and we have three ski resorts in the vicinity—needs a hospital nearby. So Eric and I decided to invest, and see if, together, we could get it back on track. So far, so good, if you don’t count the fact that everybody here is grossly overworked and underpaid.” He chuckled. “I get credit for the good stuff and I let Eric take credit for the bad. Although I think he says it the other way around. Anyway, you’ll meet him when he gets over his sore throat…caught it from his twins. He’s the one who coordinates mountain rescue, by the way.”

      “How many more doctors do you have?”

      “Two full-time orthopedists, Kent Stafford and Jane McGinnis, John Ellis, who’s another family practitioner, only he’s part-time, in semi-retirement now, and we have a part-time rehabilitation specialist, Jackie Pennington, who comes in from Salt Lake city two days a week. Oh, and an obstetrician on the way, but not for another few weeks. We have nurse practitioner Fallon O’Gara, whom you met earlier and who practically runs the hospital—she’s probably the most essential team member we have. And we have a couple of respiratory therapists, three physical therapists, and a dozen staff nurses. We also have a few doctors who come in to help out in the clinic on a rotating basis once or twice a month—a cardiologist and a rheumatologist. Then there’s Henry Gunther, a retired anesthesiologist, on call. He moved here to engineer the ski train—trains were his hobby—so he’s always close by when we need him. Then we have a number of volunteers and support staff, and that’s about it. White Elk Hospital. Struggling, but surviving.”

      “Seems adequate for the area.” And impressive. White Elk Hospital appeared to be a well-run medical facility, even if Neil did admit to a few shortcomings, and it was almost too bad she wouldn’t be part of it for long. It could have been what she was looking for, professionally, anyway. Someplace nice, where people cared about each other

      “Most of the time it is. And the one thing I failed to mention is that we all take our turns in the emergency department and trauma, even if that’s not our specialty. At present, we don’t have enough funds to staff it regularly, so we all get our chance to work there. I’m hoping that before the start of next year’s skiing I’ll be able to hire one more physician, another trauma doc, and bring in a couple of moonlighters. But Eric and I are still talking it over, crunching numbers, crossing our fingers.”

      “It sounds…compact.” And not at all complicated, like so many of the large hospitals were—hospitals where the doctors fit into their own little niche and rarely, if ever, wandered out of it. Some might say there were advantages to staying where you belonged, but she liked the idea of working different areas, especially if the doctors’ medical qualifications suited that. Her own father, an obstetrician, had been a general field surgeon in the army and she’d had training in general surgery, too, at his urging.

      “Coming from Chicago, the way you do, I suppose it would.”

      “Well, coming from Chicago, the way I do, I have a different appreciation for what medicine should be.”

      “Which is?”

      “Uncomplicated.”

      “In an ideal world,” Neil said.

      “In a real world, if that’s how you want it to be. Where I worked, everything was complicated. The more complicated it became, the further away the patients seemed to get. I got used to it, I suppose, but…” She frowned. Shrugged. “It was OK then, but not any more.”

      “What changed you?”

      “I’d like to attribute it to my pregnancy hormones but, to be honest, I haven’t been happy for a while. Not unhappy either. Just existing. Nothing was wrong, nothing was bad. But nothing made me happy about my work, and I think to be a good doctor…to be the best doctor you can be…you need to be happy about your work. My dad always was. He jumped out of bed in the morning and couldn’t wait to get started. He thrived in the complicated system, turned it into his playground and worked it to the advantage of his patients. I suppose I thought I should, too, which is why I stayed in practice with him so long, doing just that. But…” She shrugged again. “I wasn’t suited to the manipulations, I guess you could say. I became too restless to be as effective as I wanted to be and decided I finally needed to make a change. Getting pregnant was the last shove I needed. Don’t know what that permanent change is yet, but I’ll know it when I see it.” She was positive of that.

      “So