Emergency in Alaska Page 7

  So she didn’t get to look back at Michael and Noora, but she could hear what was going on, and what she heard was amazing. Michael was a natural with Noora, and the child responded to him much the way everybody in the village had. More than that, Alek didn’t get the impression that Michael was being anything other than genuine with Noora. He was doing magic tricks, pulling a coin out of her ear and hiding it in his hand, and laughing as hard as she was.

  So maybe he wasn’t quite so bad as she’d thought. A man that good with children couldn’t be all bad. Still, there had been that day in class…A tirade like that aimed at a child could be devastating. She hadn’t been close to being a child and it had been devastating to her.

  Besides all that, there was his accusation about Dimitri. Everything else aside, that was what mattered most now. Being called inept was a small affair in contrast.

  “It’s a polar bear!” Michael suddenly shouted, then ducked down to the floor, pulling Noora down with him.

  “We don’t have polar bears here, city boy,” Noora squealed, creeping back up and looking around to make sure there really weren’t any sneaking up on them, even though she knew better. In the white of the snow, along with the bright of the moon, it was light outside, a perfect light, despite it being the middle of the night, and Noora glanced first to the right, then to the left before she finally gave Michael the signal that it was safe for him to come up, too.

  “So what would it be if it’s not a polar bear?” he asked, looking up at her from the floor.

  “A snowshoe hare, silly.” Noora giggled, then raised her hands to show how small it was.

  “And you think I’d be afraid of a little thing like that?” He faked a scowl at her. “A little, tiny snowshoe hare? I think it was a polar bear.”

  “Or a tree.” Noora giggled again. “A great big one that looks like a polar bear.” She spread her arms to look like a tree, then growled like a bear at Michael, to which he responded by doing the same. And the two of them continued to growl at each other until Alek pulled to a stop outside Noora’s house.

  “So, besides your mother and grandmother, is anyone else here?” Alek asked, hopping out of the Jeep and grabbing her medical bag.

  “No,” Noora said. “It’s Grandma and me. Oh, and my brother or sister, if my mama is better now.”

  “Someone needs to have a serious birds-and-bees talk with Noora,” Michael commented, climbing out of the Jeep and attempting to straighten out his parka as Noora was tugging at him, trying to pull him back into the vehicle.

  “Are you volunteering?” Alek asked, smiling as he tried to extricate himself from the child. It was a cute sight.

  “I treat trauma and illness quite nicely, but I think I’ll leave the facts of life to her mother…or you.”

  Alek laughed. “Coward.”

  “For once, we agree.”

  “So how do you do it, Michael?” she asked, while Noora latched on to his leg as he maneuvered through the snow up to the front porch.

  Before he answered, he bent down, picked up the little girl and tucked her neatly under his arm. “Do what?”

  “That,” Alek said, pointing to the laughing child. “One minute with her and she’s yours for life.”

  “Good with children, good with animals. Most of the time good with adults.”

  Alek grabbed her bag of supplies and headed for the front door. “Not as good as you think!”

  “I’m sensing a little hostility here, and just when I thought we were starting to get on.”

  Alek knocked on the front door, then turned to face him while she waited for someone to open it. “Not hostility. Merely a pointed observation. And we weren’t getting on, Michael. Not when you’re on the attack over Dimitri. We’ll never get on because of that.”

  “You expect me to have an open mind, yet you don’t? Isn’t that a double standard, Doctor? You’re entitled to your opinion but I’m not entitled to mine?”

  “About Dimitri, no, you’re not!”

  “And the lady has two scores to settle with me now. One about which I know, and one she will not disclose. Well, here’s my opinion, Alek, like it or not. I did you wrong somehow, and I shouldn’t have. Dimitri is doing my mother wrong and I won’t let him. I don’t know all the facts about one incident, and you don’t know all the facts about the other. My opinion is, we should go deliver a baby and forget the rest of it for now.” Michael stepped around Alek and offered his hand to Mamie Igliak, Noora’s grandmother, when she answered the door. Before Alek could even get in her greeting to the old woman, she was standing alone on the porch, watching the screen door slam shut right in front of her.

  “No wonder your mother ran away to Alaska,” she muttered, pushing back the door and stepping inside the tiny, wood-frame house. “If you were my son, I’d be running even further than Alaska.”

  By the time Alek reached the rear bedroom, Michael was already at Kitty Eyinck’s bedside, taking her pulse, and Mamie was watching him adoringly, like a woman who was newly in love. Somehow, she wasn’t surprised. Michael Morse had the charms to soothe…well, just about everybody. Everybody, that is, except her.

  “Contractions?” she asked him. “How far apart are they?”

  “Around a minute,” Michael answered. “Mamie says they’ve been getting harder and faster for the past half hour. And that Kitty is right at nine months along.”

  “You’ve learned all that in ten seconds?” Alek questioned, opening up her bag and pulling out a pair of disposable gloves.

  Michael laughed. “Actually, in the first five seconds. In the second five, Kitty told me she would like to have a boy, and that if she does they’re going to name him something traditional, like Niyak, after Mamie’s late husband, Niyak Igliak Eyinck.”

  Alek shook her head. Incredible, she thought. Absolutely incredible. What were all these people seeing in him that she wasn’t? “So how about I take a look? Or have you already done that, too?”

  He grinned as he took hold of Kitty’s hand during her latest contraction. “Did anybody ever tell you how cute you are when you’re angry at me?”

  “I really should have run over you when I had the chance,” she muttered, pulling back the sheet from Kitty. A quick exam revealed that she was fully dilated, the baby was crowning and one brand-new Eyinck was anxious to get out into the world. “From the looks of things here, I’d say we’re ready to go.” She glanced over at Mamie, to make sure she wasn’t offending the older woman. Around here, the use of a midwife in the delivery was much more common than calling the doctor to do the task, and the last thing she wanted to do was offend Mamie or Kitty over a delivery that appeared to be perfectly normal. Until their arrival, Mamie would have handled things quite well all by herself. “Mamie, would you like to do this, or shall I?”

  Mamie was giggling over something Michael had said, or maybe he’d pulled a coin out of her ear like he had Noora’s. Whatever the case, she gave Alek a dismissive wave of the hand and trotted off to the kitchen to fix Michael a cup of coffee, or perhaps make him a cake or a nice mooseburger, while Alek was left to… “Push, Kitty. With your next contraction, push.”

  That’s exactly what happened. One push and the head was visible.

  “Now stop pushing,” Michael instructed. He was sitting casually on the side of the bed next to Kitty now, holding her hand and blotting the sweat from her face. Amazingly, he was keeping her calm. Without the benefit of an anesthetic agent, Kitty was absolutely serene through this whole ordeal. Another of Michael’s amazing tricks. Alek wondered how many more he had. Bagsful, she bet.

  “Now, your baby’s head will rotate until Dr. Sokolov can make sure it’s aligned with the shoulders, then she’ll suction his mouth and nose to make sure he can get a good, deep first breath when he pops all the way out.”

  “Is it a boy, Doctor?” Kitty gasped, as she strained to sit up and take a look.

  “Haven’t seen that much yet, but I’m betting it is. A big one, too.”

/>   Alek shook her head impatiently as she palpated the baby’s neck for the presence of a cord, which was not there. “I’ll bet you’re right at least half the time, aren’t you?”

  “At least,” he said, grinning at her. He turned back to Kitty. “Now, start bearing down again. It’s time we welcomed that baby to the world.”

  “Yes, Doctor,” Kitty said, giving another hard push. Within a few seconds the shoulders, then the rest of the baby appeared, and seconds after that, after Alek had suctioned the nose and mouth, clamped and cut the cord, she laid the little boy on Kitty’s belly. “It’s a boy,” she announced, as little Niyak wailed.

  “Michael,” Kitty said. “Michael Niyak Eyinck.”

  “Michael?” Alek sputtered. Kitty was looking alternately, and adoringly, from little Michael to big Michael as Mamie was toting in a cup of coffee for big Michael and showing him to an easy chair in the corner of the bedroom. An honored easy chair reserved only for Mr. Eyinck or, apparently, for Michael Morse now. “You named the baby Michael?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “IT WAS Ben Smiling’s stew,” Alek explained to Dimitri while she stomped the snow off her boots. It was close to evening now, all the various medical problems were settled in Beaver Dam, and most likely Michael wasn’t too far behind her. She’d convinced Aklanuk Mountain to delay the gasoline for an hour or two—not that the head start mattered, as Michael would eventually show up in Elkhorn. But getting the best of him did make her feel a little better. “Nothing serious, and no one too sick. Got them dosed, delivered Kitty Eyink’s baby boy in the meantime, had a go at a pelvic exam for one of the village girls and got out of there.” She stepped into Dimitri’s open embrace, and hugged him. “And it’s good to be home. Between the conference and staying over to order supplies, then going to Beaver Dam, it seems like I’ve been away for years.”

  “It’s good to have you home, too,” he said, chuckling. “And I always knew Ben’s stew had the potential to poison a whole town. I’ve been telling him for years his no-good stew needed something other than beaver to make it fit for consumption. Nasty, stringy meat. Now, a nice buzhenina would be good.”

  “Except buzhenina isn’t the tradition.” Alek laughed. He’d spent his entire life here, yet Dimitri didn’t exactly get along with the local fare. In that aspect, he was Russian all the way. “And Ben Smiling would never, ever put a fresh ham into his traditional stew, and you know that.”

  “Which is why I never go to Beaver Dam on Founder’s Day. Because there’s not a slice of buzhenina to be found anywhere.”

  “So tell me about her, Dimitri. The woman who answered your phone that one time when I called. She is the new doctor, isn’t she? Except for hearing that she has a pleasant voice, that’s all I know about her.” Except that she has a beast of a son.

  Alek felt his grip on her loosen a bit. Dimitri was definitely uncomfortable about this.

  “She’s nice,” he conceded. “And, yes, she is the new doctor.”

  The man who was never of few words suddenly was, which spoke volumes to Alek. “She’s nice, and…?”

  “Pretty. Oh, and she’s smart. She likes to read and listen to classical music. Tchaikovsky.”

  Getting information from Dimitri was harder than pulling Aryeh Tillion’s tooth, if Aryeh Tillion had allowed her to do it. And there was so much caution in his voice. Normally, Dimitri boomed, but right now he was speaking in what would pass, in normal society, as a regular voice, maybe even one that was a bit subdued. The voice he’d always used with Olga. “So tell me more about her, Dimitri,” she said, trying to sound chipper. “More than that she likes Tchaikovsky. Tell me how long you two have been…” Been what? She didn’t know exactly. “And how you met, and what you have in common.”

  “We’ve been corresponding on the computer for about four months now. She was part of one of those chat rooms…one for older physicians. We dallied about in there for a while, talking about issues…aging, losing a spouse, how to continue our practice when medicine favors younger physicians. She was struggling trying to find herself again, and…”

  “And you became friends?”

  “We talked back and forth privately, yes. By e-mail at first. Out of the chat room after the first few weeks. Then we started phoning, and I had a brief little stay-over with her down in Vancouver last month when I went to look at a new X-ray machine.”

  Alek laughed. “I thought it was strange that you didn’t send me, since you hate doing those kinds of things. And you didn’t come back with any information for a new machine.”

  He grimaced, and his beard bobbled up and down. “She had lost her husband, I’d lost my wife. She needed a place to work, I needed someone to come here and work. She has a son, I have you…both of you are physicians, too. We have so many things in common, as it turned out. It seemed like there was more to bring us together than keep us apart.”

  “So she came here to see you, which is why you sent me away, isn’t it? To have your time together and allow her to settle in without my interference.”

  “More than time together,” he said quite seriously. “When she moved in, I wanted her to feel comfortable. Besides, you needed some time away from here. You work too much, and I do worry that you stay too isolated. So I would have asked you to go to the conference even if I hadn’t invited Maggie up.”

  She laughed. “And so you threw me out the door, so to speak.”

  “For your own good.”

  “And yours, too, I think.” She stood on tiptoe to give him a kiss on the cheek. “I’m happy for you, Dimitri. You’ve been getting a little stodgy lately, and having Maggie around is just what you need since I can already see that she makes you happy.” She gave him a peck on the other cheek, then stepped back.

  “Stodgy?” he roared, finally back to his normal volume, the one Alek liked most. “You’re calling me stodgy? I could live another seventy years and even then not be as stodgy as you are now. If you want to see stodgy, I’d suggest a mirror.” He grinned through his bushy white beard. “It’s been good having her here, Alek. She works with me during the day, and in the evening—”

  “Is this something I really want to hear?” Alek teased. She took his hand and they strolled into her cabin together.

  “She’s good to me, and not in the way you’re thinking, although don’t think a man my age can’t appreciate that aspect of a relationship, because he certainly can, in the right time and place. But it’s nice to have a friend my age around here again. And one of my background. I’ve missed that, and Maggie brings that to me now. I believe I offer her the same.”

  “Maggie?” As if she didn’t know Maggie’s last name—know it all too well. Still, she wanted to hear it.

  “Dr. Maggie Morse, our new associate. She nursed her husband through cancer for two years and now that he’s gone, she’s ready to work again, but no one will hire her because of her age. She’s sharp, bright and one of the finest physicians I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with, and she has perfect skills. Three years out of the field put her on the shelf, however, and I was the one bright enough to take her off it. And she fits right in. The regulars already love her. Loved her right off.”

  The way the villagers had loved Michael right off. The way Dimitri lit up when he talked about Maggie made Alek realize all the more that she simply couldn’t let Michael Morse upset things here. “Well, I’m glad she’s here.” As much as she despised Maggie’s son, she was already fond of Maggie, and she hadn’t even met her. “And I’m glad you found her in the chat room,” she said, giving Dimitri another hug. “You deserve some happiness.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay with this, Alek? Because if you’re not, you know I’d—”

  She thrust out her hand to stop him. “I’m good, Dimitri. I promise, I’m really good,” she said, giving his arm a reassuring squeeze.

  “I’m the one who knows you best,” he reminded her, “and what I’m seeing in your eyes is telling me something entirely di
fferent.”

  “You worry too much.”

  “Because I’m entitled to worry. And you know why I do.”

  Self-worth issues was what Dimitri called it. He was correct to a point, but over the years she’d gotten better. A little therapy to get to the root of her problem—she wasn’t sure if it had helped, or merely enlightened her. Either way, it had had its effects, but not total control. “I’m fine,” she said. “A little tired. Nothing to worry about.”

  “So, if you’re really that fine, did you meet anyone at the conference who might have made you even better? Anyone male? A boyfriend? Perhaps a lover?”

  Alek dropped down into her sofa and pulled her legs up under her. It wasn’t much of a cabin, three modest rooms, but it was hers. All hers, and she loved every little speck of it. “I met a dozen salesmen who were more than happy to wine and dine me when they found out I was also on a shopping spree. And I met several physicians who practically ran away when they found out where I practiced. It seems that the northern territories and the single girl aren’t exactly an enticing combination. Oh, and there was the concierge who must have felt terribly sorry for me being so pathetically alone all the time because he kept sending me little fruit baskets for one.” She laughed. “So, no, I didn’t find anyone but, then, I wasn’t looking.”

  “And you should have been,” Dimitri scolded. “If I recall, I put that at the top of your list—have a good look around.”

  “I did, and I found some new acid reflux pill samples. And a new cholesterol-lowering drug that might be worth trying. And I think I’ve found a better intravenous delivery system than what we’ve been using. Oh, and—”

  “Stodgy,” Dimitri interrupted. “You send the girl to a medical conference, where everybody has some fun. And what does she do? She spends all her time with an IV system.” He shook his head and ran his hand through his hair. “You are hopeless, Aleksandra. A woman contented to live in a tiny cabin alone, whose only companionship is her dog team, deserves a fruit basket for one.” He bent and kissed her on the forehead. “Maggie is working right now, but she’s anxious to meet you.”