The California Coven Project Read online

  The California Coven

  Project

  Bob Stickgold

  A Del Rey Book

  Published by Ballantine Books

  Copyright © 1981 by Bob Stickgold

  ISBN 0-345-28677-4

  First Edition: May 1981

  Cover art by Derek James

  Content

  EXCERPT

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  AFTERWORD

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  EXCERPT

  DOUBLE, DOUBLE TOIL AND TROUBLE FIRE BURN AND CAULDRON BUBBLE . . .

  As if on cue, the noise came again, much louder.

  Melanie dropped to the floor and peered under a coffee table covered with scientific journals. “It’s an aquarium,” she announced loudly, “full of frogs!” Nearby lay a box containing dried insects and a book called Your Pet Frog.

  “Carol—does your mom do experiments in here?”

  Carol made a face. “Don’t be gross,” she complained. “Of course she doesn’t. If she did any at all, she’d do them down at the clinic, where they’ve got all that equipment. There’d be no reason to do them here in her bedroom . . .”

  Chapter One

  EXHAUSTED, Maggie lay in her bed listening to the soothing whisper of rain against the window. Through the thin walls she could faintly hear her daughter chattering on the phone. She smiled, picturing Carol lying on the floor of her room, eyes roaming, body squirming, fueled by a fire that never seemed to cool except in the absolute surrender of sleep.

  The rain quickened suddenly, and a dull flash of lightning lit the sky. One thousand one, one thousand two . . . She timed the interval without thinking. One thousand seventeen, one thousand eight— A quiet rumbled rolled into her room. Three and a half miles, she calculated, and smiled, realizing what she had done.

  This is stupid, she thought. If I’m going to he awake, I might as well get up. Lord knows there’s enough work to be done. I should at least read Beckie’s proposal. I doubt that I’ll get another chance before the meeting.

  She decided to get up, then didn’t; fatigue and depression overcame her once more.

  Suddenly her mother’s voice called out. “Maggie? . . .”

  Maybe she was calling in her sleep—Ann had started doing that lately.

  “Oh, please, Maggie.”

  Maggie rose quietly from her bed and took a deep breath.

  The bedroom door sprung open. “Mom?” Carol stood in the doorway, confused and upset. “Gramma’s calling. Can’t you hear her?”

  Maggie stood and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m going now, Carol, it’s okay.” She hesitated, then moved past Carol into the hall.

  “Mommy?”

  Maggie turned back to her daughter. She hadn’t been called “Mommy” in a long time. “What, dear?”

  “Can’t you do anything?”

  Maggie stroked her cheek gently. “I can keep loving her, that’s all.”

  “Maggie?” Her mother’s voice was very weak.

  “Coming, Mother.” She kissed Carol quickly, then hurried down the hall and entered her mother’s room.

  “Maggie, I can’t find my. pills, Please, could you find them for me? I hurt so much tonight.”

  She looked down at her mother’s emaciated figure trying hard to remember her as she had been, before chemotherapy had claimed her hair and the cancer her body. Maggie paused a moment to regain her composure, then bent and kissed her mother. “Hello, Mother.”

  Ann looked up through her pain, confused. “Maggie, please—my pills . . .”

  “You’ve already taken them, Mother.” She said it almost as a whisper, fighting to treat Ann as her mother and not just another patient. “You took them at ten.”

  “No! I didn’t! You haven’t given them to me yet. Maggie please . . .”

  She sat down beside her mother and took her hand in her own lap. “Mother, you did, you took them at ten. You must have slept and forgotten. . . .”

  “But Maggie, the pain. I can’t take it. Can’t you give me anything? Something to help me sleep?” She looked pleadingly at her daughter. “I’d rather be dead than keep living with this pain. I don’t even know why they’re keeping me alive anymore.”

  Tears in her eyes, Maggie relented. “All right, I’ll be — right back.” She squeezed her mother’s hand, placed it gently on the bed, and hurried from the room.

  “Mommy? Is she okay?” Carol stood just outside the door.

  Maggie hurried by her, “Yes. Wait a minute, I’ll be back.” In her room she opened her leather bag and searched carefully through it until she found what she wanted. When she emerged into the hall again, Carol was still there.

  Carol looked at the syringe in her hand. “Mommy, you’re not going to? . . .”

  Maggie looked surprised, then frowned. “No,” she answered, “just Demerol for the pain, and maybe for sleep.” She re-entered her mother’s room.

  Her mother saw the syringe and sighed with relief. She turned away as Maggie injected the painkiller, then relaxed perceptibly “Thank you, darling. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” She sat quietly now, waiting for the drug to take effect. For a moment, she relaxed. “It’s either the pain or the drugs now, isn’t it? If only it was possible to get clear, even for a little while, just to put things in order. . . .” Her face seemed to freeze as the drug took effect, and she turned from her daughter, staring straight ahead, numb to the world.

  Maggie sat a moment, then glanced at the clock on the bed table—a quarter to twelve. Leaning forward, she kissed her mother’s cheek and then, gathering up the Demerol and syringe, quietly left the room.

  “She’ll be okay the rest of the night, Carol. Let’s go downstairs. We haven’t really talked about Gramma since she came home.”

  Carol nodded and moved under her mother’s protective arm, Together, they walked down to the kitchen. Silence endured while Carol made tea and her mother half-heartedly straightened up the room. Finally, they sat across from each other at the table.

  Maggie smiled sadly at her daughter, “I know it’s hard for you, having to watch Gramma die.”

>   “Mother!”

  Maggie shook her head. “No, darling, you must accept that. Gramma is dying. She came home from the hospital because there’s nothing left that they can do for her.” She turned her head to look out the window at the falling rain.

  Carol looked up from her tea, her dark, clear eyes piercing into Maggie’s. “Did she mean it before, when she said that she’d rather die than have the pain?”

  “I don’t know,” Maggie began. “When you’re in that much pain. it’s hard to think in terms of long periods of time—in terms of next year, or next month, or often even in terms of tomorrow. It’s hard to think about anything except the pain that you’re feeling right now, this minute, so you tend to think only in terms of what you would like best for this minute.” She paused, aware of how unconvincing she sounded. “Carol, the truth is that I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  “But is the pain just going to go on and on, and get worse and worse?”

  “Carol, there’ll be times when she’s better and times when she’s worse.”

  “But, in general, it’s just going to keep getting worse, isn’t it, Mom?”

  Maggie nodded in agreement. “Yes, I expect it will.”

  Carol hesitated. “But, then, wouldn’t she be better off dead?” She dropped her eyes to the table.

  Maggie reached across to touch her daughter’s cheek, bringing Carols eyes back to her own. “I can’t answer that any better than you can, Carol. I can’t decide for Gramma.”

  Chapter Two

  THE PHONE beside Maggie’s bed woke her from a fitful sleep. Groggy, she looked at the clock. 8:15. Well, she thought, it could have been a lot worse. Swinging her feet off the bed, she picked up the phone. “Hi, Lisa, what’s up?”

  “’Morning, Maggie. It’s Sally Chandler—she’s at home and seems to be doing well. Contractions are about ten minutes apart.”

  “Sounds good, but it’s her second, so I suspect we better get over there right away.” Maggie reached over for the bedside terminal and typed in Sally’s name. Her records appeared on the screen. “Kathy Perez is their labor aide. Why don’t you get in touch with her, and I’ll call Sally back.”

  “Fine Sally’s at 868-4476.”

  Maggie checked the screen. “I’ve already got it.”

  “Right.”

  “Okey-doke. I’ll get back to you after talking to Sally.”

  “Good enough. ’Bye now.”

  “Good-bye” Maggie hung up the phone and quickly scanned the file—Sally was a week late, and there had been no complications to date. Lisa would be calling the hospital to notify them Sally was in labor, just in case, but it looked like the baby would be born at home. Maggie typed another request, and across the room the printer muttered softly to itself, then spit out a hard copy of Sally’s file. Then she flagged the computer records so that new data entered at the clinic would automatically print out at her home.

  Picking up the phone again, she dialed Sally’s number. By now Maggie was totally awake. Sally answered halfway through the first ring. Maggie smiled—rarely did Sally’s phone ring more than once.

  Fifteen minutes later, Maggie was on the road, heading north out of Santa Cruz along the coastal highway. Sally lived in Davenport. almost twenty miles up the road. Maggie would rendezvous with Kathy and the ambulance there. If things went as expected, the labor aide would do most of the work, and the ambulance would sit, unused, in front of the house.

  The air had cleared overnight, and she could see out to sea as far as the horizon, the morning sunlight bouncing back brilliantly from the crests of the windblown waves. Even the oil rigs on the horizon glistened. She hummed quietly as she drove, somehow calmed and reassured by the steady rhythm of the sea. Finally, she crossed the bridge on the edge of Davenport and slowed for the turn. Up the street, she saw an ambulance parked. Good for Kathy, Maggie thought. She beat me.

  Inside, the atmosphere was tense, but almost festive. Sally’s husband escorted her in. “She’s in transition now, so it shouldn’t be long,” he said. In the bedroom, everything looked in order. The labor aide smiled, so Maggie turned to Sally.

  Smiting, she asked, “How’s it going?”

  Instinctively, Sally grinned back. “The contractions are coming awfully fast now, it’s not like when I had Darryl at all.”

  “That’s because you’re doing it this time.” Sally’s first child had been born in a hospital, and Sally had been heavily drugged.

  “Well, just so that—” She stopped in midsentence as a contraction began. Her husband took her hand as she went into a pant-blow breathing pattern. Maggie watched her critically. She was holding together well. Unless she suddenly panicked, it should be an easy delivery.

  Halfway through the next contraction Sally’s face soddenly froze up. “Oh, God, I want to push—can I push now?”

  Maggie hurried to her side. “Not this time, let me check after the contraction. If you’re clear, you can start with the next one.”

  Sally nodded and returned to the pant-blowing. The air was charged with anticipation. “Okay!” Sally announced as the contraction came to an end, and Maggie gently checked the extent of Sally’s dilation.

  “You’re clear!” she announced. “You can start pushing with the next contraction.”

  Kathy rested her hand on Sally’s belly, monitoring the strength of the contractions, checking Sally’s pushes. They were beginning a bit early. “Take an extra breath before you start pushing,” she suggested.

  Sally nodded, waiting for the next contraction to begin. Maggie monitored her progress as she pushed. “It’s moving along,” she announced. “We’ve got a half-dollar’s worth of head showing.”

  Sally grunted with delight, then bore down harder.

  For twenty minutes, the progress continued. “All right,” Maggie warned, “it’s crowning, so go easy on the next push.” She waited for the contraction to start, her hand on Sally’s belly. “Okay, push . . . harder, harder . . . that’s good . . . just a bit more . . .” Suddenly, the infant’s head appeared. “Okay, relax, relax, wait for the next one.”

  Kathy stood next to Maggie with a large mirror. “Here, take a look, you’ve got its head out.”

  Sally stared at the reflection of her child’s head in the mirror. Its eyes were open, and the tiny head slowly turned from side to side, as if taking in all of its new surroundings. Then, abruptly, Sally realized that the next contraction was beginning. One deep breath, let it out, a second, hold it and PUSH.

  “Easy!” Maggie shouted. “Not too fast, it’s coming really well, not too hard now . . .”

  The shoulders moved past their last restraint, and then Sally could feel the child’s torso slide out from within her.

  “It’s a girl!” Maggie announced triumphantly. “You’ve got yourselves a beautiful daughter!” Still attached by the umbilicus, the child was passed to her mother.

  A half-hour later, Maggie was heading for her office at the Santa Cruz Birth Center Sally and child were fine, and the labor aide would stay with them through the morning and most of the afternoon. She was prepared to handle anything that might come up and had Maggie’s confidence.

  Chapter Three

  THE MEDICAL practices Committee of the California Midwives Association met the next Friday evening in San Francisco. Maggie drove up to the city from Santa Cruz with her colleague and political cohort, Beckie McPhee. Ten years Maggie’s junior, Beckie had been a member of the Santa Cruz Birth Center in the mid-’70s, when home deliveries were discouraged and delivery of a child by anyone other than an M.D. was a felony. Now, fifteen years later, she was practicing her skills legally. Unlike Maggie, who had been a registered nurse before midwifery was legalized, Beckie’s only training was the one-year school all midwives attended.

  The drive up Highway 1 along the coastline took well over an hour, but they noticed neither the scenery nor the time as they rehearsed their plans for the meeting one last time. Beckie drove a steady 100 kph, passing car
s more casually than Maggie would have. The latest revised estimates promised at least two more years without the Bay Area subway, still not repaired since the mild quake of ’84.

  “I think that tonight, and in the meeting in two weeks, our best plan is just to stress the medical aspects of it,” Beckie said. “Obviously, the philosophical issue is the more important one, but we don’t have enough votes to win that one. As it is, I think the vote’s going to be real tight.”

  “But the medical issue and the philosophical issue are the same one, Beckie. It’s a question of trusting technology implicitly, even when the facts show the technology not only useless, but harmful.”

  “Maggie, I agree with you. But we can’t get those people to pass a resolution condemning technology. Their faith in it borders on the absolute.”

  “I don’t want them to condemn technology! I want them to pass a resolution saying that they don’t just accept every new device that some company comes up with, unless it’s been thoroughly tested and has been shown to be of value.”

  “Oh, hell, Maggie, that’s a wife-beating question.” Beckie swung into the left-hand lane and zipped around a slower car. “To get them to pass a resolution like that you have to get them to admit that they do accept technology blindly, and they don’t think they do.”

  Maggie frowned, looking out the window at the passing hills.

  “In fact,” Beckie continued, “I wouldn’t even push the question of whether the fetal monitors were accepted blindly. And that’s what I’d really like to get you to agree on. It’s not going to help if you pull out your papers from back in the ’70s, showing that fetal monitors tripled the frequency of Caesarian deliveries without having any effect on the infant-mortality rate.”

  Maggie tried to object.

  “I know what you’re going to say,” Beckie interrupted. “And I agree. I think there was enough information back then to indicate that they shouldn’t have been used unless the delivery was at risk. And I know the frequency of monitor-caused abscesses in the child. But if you try to tell them that, what they’ll hear is your saying that they’ve been using techniques that were shown to be dangerous years ago, and I don’t think you can get them to agree with that. I do think, however, that if we present those studies together with those of Modrono, which came out just this last year, and argue that the early studies suggested a danger and these studies prove it—”