Dr Paul Armstrong was deeply concerned.
His sister Olivia Armstrong Mallory could have never, by any
stretch of the imagination, been described as robust or even
glowingly healthy, but she sat in his office today, turning
to him not just as her older brother, but as the chief of
staff of the Armstrong Fertility Institute. He knew talking
about this wasn't easy for his sister. She'd addressed half
her story to the crumpled tissue she held in a death grip
between her fingers in her lap.
How many times since he'd begun to work here had he heard
this same story before? Too many times, and yet, not enough
to become insensitive to it.
Olivia wanted to become pregnant and all her attempts, she
had confided quietly, had thus far failed.
Even as he listened to her haltingly pour out her heart,
Paul began to suspect that there was more to all this than
she was telling him. Something beyond the hunger to have a
child.
"Olivia," he pointed out gently, "you're being
too hard on yourself. You're just twenty-nine—"
Eyes full of misery and unshed tears looked up at him.
"And I've been trying to get pregnant for five years,
Paul. Five very long, disappointing years."
This, too, he'd seen over and over again. The anguished
faces of frustrated women, pleading for help, asking him to
make the most natural of dreams come true for them. He'd
never imagined he'd see this look on the face of one of his
sisters.
"Olivia, there are other avenues. You could adopt a
child," he tactfully suggested.
But he could see, even as he said it, that for Olivia, this
wasn't the solution. She pressed a small, fisted hand
beneath her breast, pushing against her incredibly flat
belly. "I want to feel life growing inside me, Paul."
Though his heart went out to her, Paul felt bound to tell
her what he told every woman or couple who came in to see
him with this same dilemma. "It isn't all roses, Livy.
There's a very real downside to being pregnant."
Assuming, he added silently, that he could even get her there.
Olivia shook her head, her sleek black hair shadowing the
adamant movement. "Don't you understand I don't
care?" Reaching across the desk that separated them, his
sister took his hands in hers in supplication. "I
really want to be pregnant. Help me, Paul. Whatever
it takes, help me."
The force of her words had him wondering again. He had to
ask. "Olivia, is everything all right?"
Releasing his hands, his sister drew herself up in her chair
as she squared her shoulders. "Everything's fine, Paul."
Her words only reinforced his concern. "You said that
much too fast."
Olivia inclined her head. "All right, I'll say it
slower. Every-thing's-fine." She deliberately drew out
the sentence, saying it in slow motion and awarding it a
host of syllables.
He would have laughed if he wasn't so concerned. "Livy,
I'm your brother. You can talk to me."
"I am talking to you," she insisted.
"I'm telling you that I want to have a baby. As the
chief of staff you should be able to understand that."
Blowing out a breath and clearly struggling not to cry,
Olivia asked, "Now, can you help me?"
Though he had a tendency to be oblivious to the obvious at
times, the irony of the situation did not escape Paul. The
daughter of the famous fertility expert Dr. Gerald Armstrong
was infertile. Somewhere, the gods were chuckling.
If he ever helped anyone at all, Paul thought, he should be
able to help his sister.
"Yes," he answered gently, "I think there's a
good chance that I can." Of late, there had been a
number of allegations of wrongdoing, rumored to be made by a
former disgruntled employee, of eggs and sperm being
switched, research that was held suspect and too many
multiple births, all of which had caused a cloud of
suspicion to be cast over the institute and the work they'd
done over the years. Paul had been going out of his way to
try to right all of this. He began by luring the
world-famous Bonner-Demetrios research team away from a
prominent San Francisco teaching hospital and getting them
to head up the institute's research operations here.
Just in time, he thought, looking at his sister.
"We've just scored a coup and managed to get two
top-flight physicians to join our staff here. Both of them
have been on the cutting edge of fertility research for some
time now. I'm going to refer you to one of them."
Olivia nodded, desperately trying to draw hope from her
brother's words. "What's his name?"
"Dr. Chance Demetrios. If there's any way possible for
you to wind up getting morning sickness, he'll find it,"
Paul promised with a quick smile. Paul wrote a few words on
a pad, then tore the page off and held it out to her. "I
know he doesn't have patients today until later. Are you
willing to go now?"
Olivia looked down at the slip of paper her brother had
given her, unable to read a single word. She sincerely hoped
that another doctor would have no trouble deciphering the
hieroglyphics. "Are you sure he can see me?"
Paul smiled the shy, boyish smile she remembered so well
from their childhood, the smile she recalled gracing the
lips of her protector. Derek, their other brother, was
always the one in the foreground, gregarious, loud and
charming. But it was Paul she always felt she could count
on. Paul was the dependable one who spoke little, but meant
every word he said.
"Yes," he assured her. "I'm his boss. Chance'll
see you." Rising, he came around the desk and squeezed
his sister's hand. "Sure there's nothing else you want
to tell me?"
Olivia stood up and did her best to smile. "I'm sure."
That wasn't good enough for him. Paul tried again.
"Maybe there's something you don't want to tell me, but
should?"
"Only that I love you." Olivia rose on her toes and
brushed a quick kiss to his cheek. Backing away, she held up
the note he'd just given her. "Thank you."
Paul sincerely hoped that Chance was the magician the man
claimed to be. "Anytime," he replied.
His sister left his office, closing the door behind her.
Paul went back around to his chair.
He'd just managed to sit down when the door flew open again,
this time without a perfunctory knock or even the pretense
of formality. His other sister, Lisa— the head
administrator at the institute—burst in with just a
tiny bit less noise than a detonating cherry bomb.
Ordinarily, she vacillated between looking harried and
looking pleased because another happy couple had left the
institute, pregnant and satisfied. Now she looked as if she
was about to bite someone's head off.
"Do you know what he did?" she demanded angrily,
slamming the door closed with a bang.
Paul had always found it was best to remain calm in the face
of anyone's tirade. If he remained calm, he could assess the
problem more accurately. "Who?" he asked mildly.
Lisa looked at him as if he'd suddenly turned simple on her.
"Derek, of course."
"Of course," Paul echoed. Taking a breath, he
patiently pointed something out—and not for the first
time. "Lisa, contrary to legend and a handful of
fair-to-bad movies, just because Derek and I are twins does
not mean that I automatically know what he's
thinking, so, no, I don't know what he did." And then he
smiled indulgently at her. "But I'm sure you're going to
enlighten me."
Lisa let out a loud huff and Paul would have been
hard-pressed to say who she was angrier at right now, Derek
or him. "He's gone off on his own, that's what he's
done."
He was going to need more of a hint than that. "As
in… he left?" He sincerely doubted that Derek
would just run off at such a difficult time and leave his
siblings to deal with the entire mess. But he had to admit
that he and Derek often marched to completely different
drummers and there were times when his brother's actions and
motivation completely mystified him. Not only that, but of
late, he seemed to be preoccupied.
"No, as in going off and hiring someone to— Now
wait a sec—" Lisa held her hand up in case Paul
was going to interrupt her "—I want to get this
straight. 'Someone to help us repair our
image.'" Then Lisa fisted her hands on her hips.
"I'm head administrator here and Derek's gone
and hired a PR manager without so much as saying boo to me."
Paul sighed. He lived and breathed his work to the exclusion
of almost everything else, except for his family. Very
seldom did he come up for air, much less to mingle in the
everyday dealings of running the institute.
Paul asked his fuming sister, "What do you mean?"
"Public relations, Paul," she said, even more
annoyed. "Derek went and hired a damn spin doctor."
"So what's the issue?" he asked, confused.
Lisa threw up her hands in desperation. "For such an
intelligent man, you can be so dense sometimes. The point
is, Derek is the chief financial officer—he isn't
supposed to hire anyone without consulting us. Major
positions are supposed to be filled by the three of us
evaluating the candidate for the job, remember?" She
didn't wait for him to respond before she went on. "If
you ask me, I think Derek's beginning to envision himself as
Caesar."
Lisa was the youngest and as such, she was given to
exaggeration. "Dial it down a notch, Lisa. I don't like
Derek doing something like this without consulting us,
either, but I think it's a stretch equating him with Julius
Caesar."
"I'm not equating him with Caesar," she protested.
"I think Derek sees himself as Caesar. The
bottom line is," she said with a toss of her short black
hair, "we don't need a PR manager."
Paul nodded. "At least we're in agreement about that."
It never occurred to her that Paul would see it any
differently than she did. "Good, then fix it," she
demanded. When he raised an inquisitive eyebrow, Lisa
pressed, "Unhire her."
Even though terminating this unwanted new employee was his
first inclination, Paul did want to be fair. That would mean
talking to Derek and finding out just what his brother was
thinking when he hired this person. "Where's Derek now?"
Lisa sighed. "I have no idea. You know how he is, social
butterflying all over. But I do know where the new
girl is," she said triumphantly. "She's in Connie
Winston's old office," she said, referring to a recently
retired officer of their board of directors. Lisa was
clearly not finished with the topic. "You know, Derek's
got no right to constantly usurp us like that."
Paul had always been ready to go the extra mile, giving
everyone the benefit of the doubt. "Derek probably
doesn't even realize that's what he's doing. You know he
gets impatient when things don't go as fast as he thinks
they should." Paul shrugged philosophically. "He
doesn't have the patience of a scientist."
Lisa pounced on her brother's words. "Good thing you do.
Now get rid of this woman and give Derek a piece of your
mind when you find him."
He laughed, shaking his head. "If I gave all the people
who I think deserve it a piece of my mind, I wouldn't have
any mind left to use for myself."
Lisa's frown was back. "So then you're not going to tell
Derek that he's got to stop making unilateral decisions?"
"I didn't say that, did I?" His eyes held hers until
Lisa shook her head. "I'll talk to Derek," he told
her, then added, "not that I think it'll do any good."
"You're probably right," she was forced to agree.
"But you never know, maybe we'll get lucky. But
first," she emphasized, "you have to give that woman
her walking papers."
There were times when Lisa was like a hungry dog with a
bone. She just wouldn't let go. Which meant he'd get no
peace until he gave in. Paul rose again. "Connie
Winston's old office, you said?"
Lisa nodded. "The three of us are supposed to be running
this clinic. It's the Armstrong Fertility Institute, not
Derek Armstrong's Fertility Institute. If anything, it
should be Dad's name, not Derek's."
Paul put his hands on his sister's arms, trying to settle
her before she got riled up again.
"Take a deep breath, Lisa—and calm down. There are
a hell of a lot worse things going on in the world. Derek
playing king is really just small potatoes in comparison."
"Emperor," Lisa corrected doggedly.
He closed his eyes for a moment. He was not going
to get sidelined with semantics. "Whatever."
Paul was fully aware that if he even attempted to put off
this woman's termination, Lisa would continue bedeviling him
until such time as he would make good on his promise. His
sister meant well, he thought, but she tended to get far too
worked up. Still, she was right. Derek shouldn't have just
gone off and hired someone without even running the idea
past them. This was a completely new post his brother had
created.
Did they really need someone to try to restore the
institute's good name? Or rather, their father's good name
even though it wasn't imprinted on the front of the building?
Dr. Gerald Armstrong had always been a little larger than
life when it came to the public eye. Paul was not ashamed to
say that he revered his father and the groundbreaking work
he had done. He'd gotten away from the boy he had once been.
The boy who, when he was growing up, felt his father was
accessible to everyone but his own family. He knew his
mother felt that. Gerald Armstrong was always far too busy
making a name for himself to enjoy the name he had already
gotten, almost by accident: Dad.
Still, that was all water under the bridge now.