Though Pauline was not an established patient of the facility, money and celebrity status both talked quite loudly. Within six hours of touching down at Cypress Muni, even before the six travelers from LA checked into their suites at the Hilton of Gardenville hotel, Pauline managed to hook herself up with the most reputable OB/GYN doctor with privileges in the hospital and complete all of her preadmission paperwork over the phone from Mary and Tom’s house. She was scheduled for a complete examination by Doctor Jennifer Lu at her office on the P of the V campus at 10:00 on Friday morning. Dr. Bradshaw’s office was already faxing all of her records over.
“I gotta say,” she said as she sipped from iced tea and munched on a tuna sandwich that Mary had made for her, “it really is nice to be a rich bitch.”
“Amen to that, mi hermana,” Celia told her.
Jake, meanwhile, was having a phone conversation of his own.
“You’re serious about this, Jake?” Jill the accountant asked him from her office in downtown Heritage, her voice the tired exasperation it tended to have when he instructed her to do something like what he had just instructed her to do.
“I have never been more serious about anything in my life,” Jake assured her. “If there is a God, he just sent me a clear and unmistakable sign. When you get shaken out of bed at four-thirty in the morning by a couple of rocks grinding together under the surface of the Earth, when you have to crawl through traffic for three hours just to get thirty miles, when your pregnant sister has to pee in a diaper just so you can escape, that means it’s time to get the hell out. I’m getting the hell out. I want a big chunk of oceanfront land somewhere within two hundred miles of LA, preferably near an airport or big enough and remote enough that I can build my own goddamn airport on it. I want to be able to hook up to power, obviously, and be able to have a reliable water supply. I want it to be high enough above the ocean that a tsunami from some earthquake in fucking Japan or Alaska doesn’t drown my ass or wash away all my shit. Are you writing all this down, Jill?”
“I’m writing all this down,” she assured him. “Can I assume that you’re going to put your assets in New Zealand on the market to partially finance this venture?”
“Hell to the no,” he told her. “I love my New Zealand pad. No way I’m giving it up.”
“Jake, you haven’t even been there in almost three years,” she said. “You’re paying a mortgage and construction loans on a house and property that is sitting empty, not to mention the monthly upkeep costs. Not to mention your airplane over there that you’re also still paying for and that some tour guide pilot is using for free.”
“When things settle down with Laura and I, we’re going there,” Jake assured her. “I’m keeping the New Zealand place.”
“Do you have any idea what a large chunk of southern California hillside oceanfront property is bound to cost?” she asked him.
“A few million, I’m thinking,” he said.
“Try at least double that,” she said. “And that’s the low end. And that does not include the cost of architecture, land improvement, road improvement, construction costs, infrastructure costs, and taxes.”
“Understood,” he said. “It’s a major expense. I get it. But I’m pulling in a lot of money now since the last album did so well, and I’ll be pulling in even more with the next one. This is a major life goal of mine and I’m going to do it. Now will you please stop lecturing me on it and start working on finding it for me. Hire whoever you need to hire, pay whatever you need to pay, but I want some possibilities to look at as soon as possible. You dig?”
A quite audible sigh, and then: “I dig.”
Pauline did not go into labor by the time her January 26th due date rolled around. She did not even experience false labor. This was no problem. Dr. Lu offered to induce her on the 27th if she was up for it.
“Hell to the yeah, I’m up for it, doc,” she said at her morning appointment that day. She then winced. “Jesus. I can’t believe I just said that.”
“That you’d like to be induced?” Lu asked, confused.
“No, ‘hell to the yeah’,” she clarified. “I fucking hate that expression.”
Dr. Lu raised her eyebrows. “Uh ... I see,” she said.
“Never mind, doc,” she said. “When can we get started?”
“I’ll call the hospital right away,” Lu said. “They’ll call you when there’s a birthing suite available and they want you to come in.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Obie, who was sitting next to her and holding her hand.
The phone call came just after one o’clock that afternoon. Pauline was politely asked if she could arrive at the women’s and children’s center at four o’clock.
“Bet your ass, I can,” Pauline assured her. “I want this thing out of me.”
“Very good,” the schedular said. “We’ll have the Manzanita Suite all ready for you.”
Pauline checked in ten minutes early, the entire bunch, including Tom, Mary, Stan, and Cindy coming to the hospital to be with her. They took up every seat in the Manzanita Suite, which was essentially a large room with a bed in the middle and designed to look like a master bedroom instead of a hospital room. The sinks and medical cabinets and other medical equipment were all designed to be unobtrusive and to kind of fade into the background.
“Jesus Christ,” Pauline remarked. “I could live in here.”
“We do like to make the birthing experience as pleasant as it can be,” said the labor and delivery nurse who was caring for her—her name was Collette and she was absolutely thrilled to be taking care of Jake Kingsley’s sister so she could deliver OB2’s daughter. And having Celia Valdez be part of the party was an added bonus.
“Let’s get this show on the road then,” said Obie, who had been through this particular experience twice in his life but was still thrilled and anxious.
They got the show on the road. Pauline changed into a hospital gown and got into bed. Collette started an IV on her and then hooked her up to a variety of sensors and monitors, including one that wrapped around her enormous stomach and could tell when she was having a contraction. The same device also monitored the clump’s heart rate in real time.
“All right,” Collette told her as she hooked up a separate set of tubing to Pauline’s IV. “The Pitocin is starting now. I’m starting it slow, but you should start to feel some mild contractions within fifteen minutes.”
“And that’s when that epidural goes in?” Pauline asked. She was not looking forward to the pain of childbirth.
“No,” Collette told her. “The epidural goes in after the contractions are well established.”
“Why?” Pauline asked. “Isn’t the purpose of it to keep me from feeling pain? I’m here to tell you, sister, I am not one of these chicks that thinks you gotta do this shit all natural. They invented epidurals for a reason, right?”
“That is true,” Collette assured her, “but I’m afraid the standard procedure is to wait until the contractions are well-established so, in case of a failed induction, we didn’t put a needle in your spinal column unnecessarily.”
Pauline shook her head. “You people and your rules,” she said with a grunt.
The contractions started right on schedule, almost fifteen minutes to the second after the Pitocin drip was initiated. They were mild ones at first, hardly more painful than menstrual cramps, but when Collette turned up the rate on the “Pit”, as she and her colleagues called it, the strength of the contractions went up as well.
“All right!” Pauline grunted unhappily as a particularly strong one rolled across her about an hour into the process. “This shit is no longer fun!”