II

"Michaela… Michaela!"

Michaela woke up with a start. At first she did not realize where she was, then, as she focused on Philip's face, the memory of the last events came rushing back to her. She closed her eyes again, loath to endure another painful confrontation with the Tanners.

"Get her home and in bed, I'll take it from here." Whom on earth was he talking to?

"Count on it. Thanks Philip."

Sully. She opened her eyes again to see her husband, about to sweep her up in his arms. She forestalled him with a hand on his chest, and rose from her slumped position by herself, grimacing as a sharp pain in her lower back made her pay for sitting so uncomfortably for so long. But it was neither the right place nor time to complain, she had to tell Philip about the baby, Margaret, everything…

Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Vernon slouched in a chair next to the crib, staring vacantly at the wall, but before she had time to think of some reason to stay, Sully had bundled her in her warm cloak, then tugged at her arm and led her outside. Dawn was starting to lighten the horizon and make the frosted tree tops glitter. She felt the frozen scenery was a perfect match for the bitter cold that had seeped into her heart. She was so absorbed by her conflicted feelings that she barely registered what Philip was saying:

"I'm sorry it took me so long to come here. I've been at the Bakers' since last evening."

Ginny Baker! At the mention of her expecting patient, Michaela paid more attention to her colleague.

"How's Ginny?" she asked anxiously. The baby was not due until another three weeks, and with what had happened to the Bakers' first child, she immediately feared the worst.

"She's all right now," Philip answered. He smiled when he announced: "She delivered a boy, then a girl, very early this morning. The little girl is a bit small, but her vital signs are within normal range and…"

Vital signs… within normal range… those were the very same terms she had used when speaking about Thomas. Her previous anguish resurfaced, overpowering completely her concern for her others patients.

"Philip," she interrupted her colleague, "the baby… He has… He's Mongolian."

"Hum… yes it appears so: I took a look at him when I came in. I'm going to stay here, to monitor them both carefully."

"But…"

"No buts, you heard the doctor," Sully chimed in, "now you're comin' with me, and I want you in bed and asleep as soon as we're home." He seized her elbow and stirred her towards the wagon. "See ya Philip."

"See you. Don't worry Michaela, I'll keep you apprised."

Michaela opened her mouth to protest, yet she felt so bone-tired that the mere mention of her bed made her want to hide under the covers and sleep for a week! Nodding her assent, she meekly followed her husband to the wagon…

She roused from a light doze when they stopped in front of the homestead. Leaning heavily on Sully, she got down the carriage and went straight inside. Cozy fires were burning in each earth. Hearing the clatter of some dishes, then the voices of her children, she headed for the kitchen.

"Mornin', Ma!" Brian greeted her with his usual cheerfulness.

"Mama!" Katie jumped down from her chair and ran to her mother "Where you?"

"Morning, children." The sight of their sweet faces was enough to lighten Michaela's downcast mood. Still stiff, she could not bend enough to kiss the tyke's hair, but she patted affectionately the head that was buried in her skirt. Always thoughtful, Brian hoisted his little sister up in his arms, so she could have the indispensable kiss from her mother. Touched, Michaela included Brian in her embrace. Now that he was older, the boy took his responsibilities as a big brother very much to heart and was just as protective as Sully towards her. So was Matthew. She smiled inwardly: between the men of the family and Philip, she was well guarded!

"You look worn out, Ma. Want me to fix ya a bath before I go to school?"

"That's very sweet of you, Brian, but..."

"But I'm gonna take care of your Ma and sister just fine, thanks Brian. It's almost time for ya to go, and we wouldn' want ya to be late," Sully interrupted her. He took Katie from Brian's arms and cuddled her to his chest.

Brian shrugged his shoulders. "All right. You sure you don' need anythin'?"

"We'll be fine, Sweetheart," Michaela reiterated, squeezing his shoulder and smiling at him. "Now, you have a nice day."

"Sure… I'll stop at the Gazette after school, but I'll still be home 'fore supper."

"All right… Hum, Brian, please, would you mind putting a notice on the Clinic door saying I'll be home all day?"

"Sure."

"With Philip at the Tanners' for who knows how long, I'll still have to take care of the emergencies…"

"Michaela…" Sully started to protest.

She rolled her eyes at him: "I certainly hope there won't be any, but you never know. It's my duty," she emphasized.

Sully raised his hands in mock surrender. "Always do what your Ma says, Brian."

"Yes, Sir," Brian agreed with a laugh. "I'd better go then. See ya t'night."

"See you, Brian," said Michaela and Sully in unison.

"S'you, Bian," repeated Katie for good measure, waving good-bye from the haven of her father's arms.

* * *

Michaela was not sure what had roused her. Had she heard a knock downstairs? Her first thought was that a patient needed her. But then Sully would have come up to wake her. The house was actually very quiet, not even Katie's voice, nor the familiar pitter-patter of her feet could be heard. She tried to convince herself that she did not care, and she sank deeper under the covers. She was actually feeling quite content here, in her warm bed. Determined to enjoy to its fullest this so rare moment of peace, she stretched lazily, yawned and turned onto her other side, more than ready to sleep for another few hours…

A distressed wail shook her out of her drowsiness. Not even pausing to think, eyes still half-closed, she sprang out of bed and out of the room, rushed down the stairs, almost losing her footing in the process. When she looked into the living room, she was surprised to see Philip crouched near the sofa, tweezers in one hand and magnifying glass in the other, operating on Katie's forefinger. The little girl was perched on Sully's knee, hiccuping. When she heard her mother's footsteps, she looked up from the terrifying procedure.

"Mama, Mama, 'pinter!"

Relieved that there was nothing serious, Michaela still had the presence of mind to show the appropriate sympathy towards her daughter's injury, when she joined the threesome. She took the wounded hand and kissed it all better.

As soon as her mother was seated beside her father, Katie crawled onto the maternal lap and sat astride it. The little girl was utterly fascinated by her mother's bulging tummy. Since Michaela had started showing, her daughter's favorite pastime was to "touch" and "kiss" the baby, frequently begging it to come out. Michaela fully expected Katie to ask for the umpteenth time when her sibling was coming, but Sully whisked their impatient offspring off her ma's knees, eliciting exhilarated giggles from the little girl, then carried her to the kitchen on the pretext of giving her a cookie and a glass of milk as a reward to her courage during the extraction of the splinter, thus giving Michaela and Philip some time to talk quietly.

"How are they?" was Michaela's first question. Philip shrugged, and then sighed.

"Honestly… I'm not sure how they're going to cope. Mr. Tanner never said a word to me, and when Mrs. Tanner came around and I told her about our… suspicions, she acted like she didn't care, as if she didn't believe me."

"What do you mean by 'suspicions'? Do you have a reason to think that is not Mongolism?"

"Not really, and I certainly trust your judgment. It's just that I'm not familiar with this kind of disorder. I wanted to check the little information we have on this before establishing a definitive diagnosis."

Michaela felt her throat constrict with guilt: she had asserted to Vernon that his son was affected with Mongolism, but what if she'd been wrong? What if she had misinterpreted the signs? Maybe the baby's features had been distorted by the rigors of birth… No, he didn't come out the natural way… It had to be Mongolism, she was sure of it, yet she knew Philip was right: she should have been more cautious when breaking the news to the father.

"Now, don't go thinking you've made a mistake, Michaela," Philip continued. "I'm sure you're right, after all, from what you told me of the time you spent in asylums and orphanages, you probably saw more cases during that period than I did in my twenty-five years of career!"

"Do you think there's a chance that I might have been wrong?" she insisted. She actually wanted to be wrong. If there were the tiniest possibility that Thomas might be all right, she would be more than willing to make amends, even if it meant losing any trust the Tanners might have felt toward her.

"As much as we wish you were, I seriously doubt it." Philip reached for his bag under his feet, pulled out a couple of medical journals and held them out to Michaela.

"I made a detour through the Chateau before coming here. I suppose you have them as well."

Michaela leafed through the first one cursorily: it dated back to March 1867, and related the observations of Langdon Down, the English physician who had named the syndrome Mongolism. She felt a faint stab of grief in her heart as she remembered the discussion she had with her father about that article, a mere few weeks before he died … Sighing, she focused again on the journals.

She was engrossed in a collection of diagrams when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked up to see Sully holding out her robe. Her cheeks warmed in embarrassment when she realized that she wore nothing bur her nightgown.

"I'm… sorry, Ph… Philip," she stammered. "What you must think of me?"

Philip chuckled: "It's all right, Michaela, you don't have you feel embarrassed around me. I understand you have more pressing concerns than getting properly dressed right now."

Smiling half-heartedly, she buttoned hastily the garment and sat again.

"I made coffee, want some?" offered Sully.

"Why, yes. Thank you, Sully," accepted Philip.

Coffee… Michaela realized that she had probably missed lunch, and so had her colleague. She glanced at the clock on the mantle: half past two! No wonder she was so hungry.

"Philip, have you had lunch?"

"Don't worry, I had a bite at the resort kitchen. Cook was kind enough to make a sandwich for me."

"Oh, good…"

"That doesn't mean you can't eat," he added, raising his eyebrows in amusement. Michaela felt herself blushing again. Was she that easy to read, or did Philip possess the same uncanny ability to guess her thoughts that Sully? She turned to her husband. Anticipating her request, Sully announced: "There's some meatloaf and a piece of pie waitin' for ya."

"Meatloaf?"

"Courtesy of Grace. She saw the note on the Clinic door, so she sent Robert E. out here with a basket. Katie an' I ate, but I thought I'd better let you sleep some more," he explained.

"Katie? Where is she?"

"Upstairs, playing house with her doll…"

This time, Michaela smiled genuinely.

"Don't tell me: you're playing the papa, and you told her that you had to go to work."

"That's it," Sully laughed, as he escorted them to the dining room. When both doctors were settled, Sully kissed Michaela's head. "Be right back."

While waiting for her meal, she re-opened the second journal, which was more recent. The article she had been reading when Sully interrupted her was a report about mentally deficient children in general. She perused the last graphics, and then looked up again.

"I remember reading these, especially Down's works. My father and I even talked at length about them. As much as many of his observations are relevant, we both disagreed on some of them. As for Dr. Burnell's article… The figures do speak for themselves, and his comments are interesting, but…"

"But you feel that something's amiss, don't you?"

Michaela frowned. "Well, both of them state that the mental deficiency is most likely caused by a disease contracted by the mother, tuberculosis in particular. Yet Margaret looked healthy enough to me. Besides, I delivered other children, with similar symptoms, whose mothers were fine, too… I don't understand."

"Maybe she came down with something during the early stages of her pregnancy… Do you remember treating her before I came here?"

"No. Mr. Tanner made it quite clear what he thought about my being a doctor… So I assume that if the Tanners ever consulted, they went to see Dr. Cook."

Philip shrugged: "I'll look through the records Andrew left me, maybe I'll find something."

"We could also ask Jake. He's known the Tanners since they settled in Colorado Springs, and now they're neighbors."

"Good idea," replied Philip. His subdued tone puzzled Michaela.

"What is it? Is there something you didn't tell me?"

Philip opened his mouth as if to speak, but no word came forth. Instead, he tapped his forefinger on his chin, a gesture he had when he was hesitating to do or say something. He cast a glance at her, only to tap his finger more frenetically. Michaela's perplexity grew into serious uneasiness at seeing Philip's obvious agitation.

"Philip?" she tried to get his attention again. His nervous tic stopped abruptly, then, after a long pause, he spoke.

"It's true that I haven't cared for as many… congenitally disabled children as you have, but I know a Dr. Hartman, who's specialized in pediatrics, who probably saw more cases than the two of us combined… Well, he told me that the mother's age was determining in this kind of aberrations. He had noticed that the older the mothers were, greater the risk was for them to produce handicapped children, physically, mentally or both…"

"Now that you mention it, most women who had…," she could not help but cringe at the word, "Mongolian babies, whom I delivered, were in their forties, or at least in their late thirties. Yet again, Margaret is quite young, I'd say she's not much older than Julia. So why bringing this… up?" The last word died on her lips. Was it Philip's way to warn her that something could happen to her unborn child?

Philip got up and started pacing in front of her. "I knew I shouldn't have told you this given your condition…"

"Philip, I'm a doctor as much as I am a mother, I know the risks, for the baby and for me, due to my age." Her voice held a tremor of fear, so she took a deep, calming breath. "All I care about right now is finding the best way to help this family. Beginning with establishing a definitive diagnosis."

"I guess we'll have to stick to the one you've made first, then wait and see if the child starts exhibiting others symptoms that might confirm or invalidate it. As for helping the Tanners, I think I'd better handle this case on my own…

"But…"

"Believe me, it would be better, for you especially."

"Ya'd better listen t'him, Michaela", Sully spoke up, coming from the kitchen with a tray. He placed it in front of his wife and sat down next to her, opposite to Philip.

Michaela was starting to resent the men's over-protective attitude. Her cheeks burning from irritation, she glanced from one to the other: "For Heaven's sake, stop treating me like a porcelain doll!" she burst out.

"For Heaven's sake," mimicked Sully, "we're treatin' ya like a pregnant woman! Neither one of us wants anythin' to happen to ya or the baby."

"And you have enough patients to care for," added Philip.

"So do you," she retorted churlishly. Her appetite gone, she pushed the tray away.

"Eat!" both men ordered, Sully shoving the plates back under her nose.

Michaela had enough. She rose angrily and cast a long, murderous glance at the two males before heading for the staircase.

Once upstairs, she could hear the men talking, but could not make out what they were saying. She felt another flush prickling her face, this time in shame. She had acted like a high-strung harpy, instead of being grateful to Philip for his willingness to make things easier for her during the pregnancy, despite his own long list of patients.

"Mama?"

Michaela turned to her daughter, who was standing in the doorway to the nursery.

"Sweetheart…"

"Where Papa?"

"Downstairs, with Philip."

"Play wid me?" the little girl requested sweetly, tugging lightly on her mother's sleeve. The child let out a tiny yawn, and Michaela could only guess that Sully had not been able to put Katie down for her nap. Lately their daughter resisted every attempt to get her to sleep in the afternoons, but usually ended up fast asleep in a corner.

"How about we go to my room?" Michaela suggested.

Katie followed her mother trustfully, then climbed on the bed when Michaela sat down.

"What we do now, Mama?"

Michaela smiled down at her daughter: "Before we start playing, I think I'd like a big hug from you." With these words, she wrapped her arm around the little girl's shoulders. Obviously pleased with having her mother's undivided attention, Katie snuggled up against her, resting one of her hands on the small mound that was harboring her sibling. Michaela smiled when she perceived the bubbly feeling that answered to the touch of the tiny hand. Unfortunately, it was still too soon for Katie to feel the movements of the baby, but it would be only a matter of a few weeks before she could. She hugged her little girl tighter, overwhelmed with the awareness of these young lives, of whom she was responsible… She was indeed blessed beyond her dreams.

As Michaela had sensed, it had not taken a long time for Katie to fall asleep. Careful not to disturb the little one's rest, she rose slowly from the bed after settling her daughter on her side of the unmade bed, under the warm winter quilt that was still holding some of her body heat from her morning siesta.

Before going back downstairs to apologize to Philip and Sully for her ill-tempered demeanor, she observed lovingly her child, curled up under the cover, thumb in mouth, for a few more seconds, then quietly left.

To her stupefaction, Philip was nowhere to be seen when she reached the bottom stair.

"Sully, where's Philip?"

"Gone."

"Gone?… Oh dear, he must be terribly upset with me," she bemoaned.

Sully came up behind her and enfolded her in his arms.

"Don't worry, he's not…"

"…"

"Neither am I," he added soothingly, reading her thoughts.

"You should be, I acted like a spoiled child, when you were both looking out for me." She hanged down her head in shame. "I'm sorry."

"Ssh, it's all right. We understand." He rocked her gently for some time, silently re-establishing their loving connection.

"Are ya hungry, now?"

With a smile and a nod, she followed him to the kitchen. Once seated and delving enthusiastically into her meal, she was able to relax a bit, her uneasiness momentarily forgotten as she gobbled down two thick slices of meatloaf, then the remaining half of an apple and cinnamon pie. During the whole process Sully eyed her with increasing disbelief, but to his credit, refrained from commenting.

"How 'bout a cup of tea?" he proposed thoughtfully, watching her licking her lips for any remnants of apple juice.

"That would be nice, thank you, Sully."

He had a pot ready in no time. She looked up at him, more grateful than ever for his love, his tenderness, his care, while he was pouring the hot beverage in two mugs.

"Thank you," she uttered again softly, her hand pressing lovingly his forearm.

"No charge…"

"Are you sure?" she whispered with faked innocence, fluttering her eyelashes invitingly. Sully chuckled, then bent forwards to receive his payment.

"Mmmh… Ya sure taste good," he commented hoarsely when he pulled back, before sitting again. They sat in companionable silence, sipping their tea, occasionally leaning toward each other for some more sugary kisses.

"Katie's sleepin'?" Sully inquired presently.

Michaela nodded with a fond smile: "In our bed, no less!"

Sully grinned, too, picturing their tiny daughter curled up in the middle of their large bed.

"Well, nobody said you couldn't join her and finish your nap…"

"Sully, honestly," Michaela interjected, "I've been sleeping all morning, and well into the afternoon. In fact, I don't remember going to bed… not even having my bath," she wondered out loud.

"I'll bet! When I came back from the barn, 'found ya sound asleep right here. Didn't even bother with fillin' the tub, I just took ya upstairs. Gee, ya didn' even stir when I helped ya into yer nigh'gown!"

"Really? Oh dear, I'm sorry, Sully, I…"

"It's all right, you were exhausted," he interrupted her gently. He reached out to caress her cheek. "An' ya know how much I love t'pamper ya, dontcha?"

She answered with a kiss on his hand.

"The tub's under the stairs, I can still fix ya that bath, what d'ya say?"

"I say 'I love you'!" They got up, but before Sully could go about his task, Michaela had locked her arms tightly around his neck. Eyes twinkling, she requested in her most seductive tone: "Will you wash my back?"

"Do I have a choice?" he teased. He hugged her briefly then started putting more water to heat. As she watched him move around the kitchen, her light-hearted mood dissolved, and her earlier fear that something could happen to her baby returned to form a hard knot in her now full stomach. What would they do if their child was to be born sick, disabled? How would Sully react? Of course, if she asked him, he would tell her he would love the baby no matter what, and he would mean it. Sully was nothing like Vernon Tanner, except for his obvious love for his wife. Yet, she could not help but doubt.

"Sully?"

He was presently dragging the tub into the kitchen. He stopped and twisted around to look at her.

"What?"

"Just…" She caught herself: there was no use asking him such a question, he would only resent her for not trusting him. She plastered what she hoped to be a tender smile on her lips: "I love you."