Bob Stickgold - The California Coven Project

TheCalifornia Coven

Project

Bob Stickgold

ADel Rey Book

Published by Ballantine Books

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

calledYour 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 doanything?”

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 ofSanta Cruz along the coastal

highway. Sally lived inDavenport . 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 ofDavenport 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 andPUSH.

“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 inSan Francisco . Maggie drove up to the city fromSanta Cruz with her colleague and political

cohort, Beckie McPhee. Ten years Maggie’s junior, Beckie had been a member of theSanta

CruzBirthCenter 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 cars 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—”

“That then we’ll be lying to them,” Maggie concluded. “It’s such a sleazy way to deal with people.”

Beckie nodded. “I agree. Maggie, it’s sleazy. It’s also known as politics, and I hate it as much as you

do. But the thing to keep in mind is that it’s a political victory that we’re after now. Enough political

victories, and we’ll have your philosophical victory. But I’m afraid that’s going to be a long time in the

coming.”

Maggie’s frown continued. “Some of those women get me so mad—they’re as bad as the obstetricians

were. They just can’t let a woman have her child. They have to get in there and do it for her.”

* * *

The meeting was at the home of Amy Belever, a classmate of Maggie at the San Francisco School of

Midwifery. Amy lived in the old Haight-Ashbury section of the city, just a few blocks fromGolden

GatePark . The neighborhood was a mix of recently renovated three-story flats and curvilinear

plastihomes. Amy, who stood a mere five foot one, tended to win arguments by sheer force of will.

Fortunately, she was solidly behind Beckie and Maggie.

“There is absolutely nothing wishy-washy about the motion,” she insisted. The meeting was running late

over the issue. “The motion states, ‘The Medical Practices Committee proposes that the California

Midwives Association recommend that its members refrain from the use of intrauterine fetal monitors,

except in circumstances where the member believes that either the mother or child is at risk.’ The only

part that could be the least bit unclear is the meaning of ‘at risk.’ Since the resolution doesn’t define it, the

midwife would have to use her discretion in deciding whether mother or child were at risk. And if she

can’t, for God’s sake, she could look up the indicators in any obstetrics text. Frankly. I don’t think there

have been any rational objections presented to the proposal, and if there were, I’d like someone to

repeat them for me!” Glaring from one face to another in the room, she thunked into her chair.

Maggie looked around the room silently. We’re arguing just like men—angrily, personally, even

violently. Everyone knows that we’re arguing philosophy and not just about the fetal monitor. Beckie was

wrong to think that it could be left out. Hesitantly, she raised her hand and was recognized by the chair.

“I think that there’s an issue here that we’ve all been thinking about but hiding in the background. Maybe

it would be easier to talk about the fetal-monitor issue if somehow we could talk about the other one

separately. So I’d like to suggest—I know it’s getting late—but I’d like to suggest that maybe we take

some time here just to discuss our feelings about the use of technologies like the fetal monitor, and others

too, like anesthesia and analgesia. Because . . . because I think that the general issue is what all the anger

we’re seeing here is about.” She looked around and saw despair in Beckie’s face.

When Maggie turned back to the chair, she was confronted by Susan Glanvil, who stood with an almost

terrifyingly smug smile on her face. She was one of the leaders of what Maggie had come to think of as

“The Opposition.”

“Well! I must admit I’m surprised that one of you finally had the guts to come out and admit it!”

Maggie felt herself turning red under the unexpectedly violent attack. The woman suddenly turned

sharply away from Maggie, dismissing her, and spoke in an almost inaudible voice.

“Because this trulyisthe issue before us.” She paused, for emphasis, and then continued. “I must confess

that when midwifery was legalized, my fellow R.N.s and I had mixed feelings on the proposition. Not that

I worried so much about the capability of those women who were obstetrical nurses and who would now

become midwives, but rather I worried that women who had not had the opportunity to work with

trained obstetricians, who had not worked in good obstetrical wards in hospitals, that those women might

not have the training in some of the less common techniques involved in delivering children.” Her voice

slowly grew louder. “But not once did I consider the possibility that those women, rather than frantically

seeking to gain this necessary expertise, would renounce invaluable techniques, that they would renounce

the gains of obstetrics during the last twenty years, that they would rather return to the devastatingly

crude nostrums of the past, when midwives earned their bad reputations through their ignorance of

medicine and their dabbling in witchcraft!

“But the sponsors of this motion want us to vote that midwifery return to the dismal state it occupied in

the 1600s. I think we have no choice but to reject this proposal overwhelmingly.” By the end, her voice

was soft again. She turned to Maggie briefly, her face a mixture of pity and hatred, then sat.

There was a shocked silence in the room. Before Maggie fully realized it, Beckie had risen to her feet

and begun to speak.

“. . . doesn’t seem reasonable at this late hour. It is, however, two weeks until the general meeting, and I

would like to suggest that we table this until next meeting, and that we finish with it then.”

Glanvil leaped back to her feet, ready to continue her attack, but was stopped by the chair.

“Beckie, you’re suggesting that we adjourn. If we do that, we will meet again in two weeks as

scheduled, and this issue will still be on the floor when we come back. If you want to so move, you still

have the floor. A motion to adjourn is not debatable.”

A wave of relief swept over Maggie. Thank God the chair, in addition to being on her side, knew what

she was doing. Glanvil hadn’t had a chance.

In a calm, strong voice, Beckie said, “I so move.”

In another half-minute the meeting was over, much to the relief of most everyone except Susan Glanvil.

Bob Stickgold - The California Coven Project

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