A tall, shapely young woman stood in the doorway. She was dressed down in tastefully modest, but obviously expensive, well made attire. Long blond hair fell to the middle of her back and the frowsy student look did little to disguise her sleek curves. Jonni's brows came together, her lips parting as if to say something, but no words came out for a second. The last time Jonni had seen her the willowy blonde had been dressed in rags and heavily pregnant - - or in the process of becoming un-pregnant, actually, though had been a much more pain-free route than the one Jonni had so recently been forced to take. All of which made Jonni's next (and last) statement even more strange to the doctor and Lucia both.
"Grandpa?" Jonni managed to get out before her head started to swim. A second later, Jonni's head fell to one side in a somewhat understandable swoon.
"Grandpa?" Norah muttered to herself. "Did that woman just call me "Grandpa?"
Of course, Nora couldn't blame the young redhead for being disoriented. She couldn't be much older than eighteen and it looked like she had just pumped out identical twins. Nora decided she would probably be out of her head too if she had just given birth to twins. A brief, annoying thought, her and Paolo having children, flitted accross Norah's mind, but she batted it away. What was she thinking? She had a career to consider. Besides, something about this high-tech delivery room hidden just off of a library where DeMorrell received his guests set her nerves on edge. There was something very wrong here. Who would want to have kids after seeing something like this?
She had followed an alternate list of menus branching off from the intercom screen. Apparently it tied in to the doors and locks for all the locations listed, including this weird place. OB-GYN Lab One was a hidden, sound proofed room directly adjacent to the study. When she had touched the icon marked open another hidden panel much like the one which concealed the liquor cabinet, only much, much larger, retracted into the wall from the bookcases to either side of it and slide to the left out of sight. The sound of the woman's screaming was now in stereo, pouring from the speaker of the media tablet and much louder through the doorway directly ahead of her. Curiosity (and concern) getting the better of her Nora stepped into the secret room. Dropping the tablet into her purse she also briefly touched her tazer, reassuring herself of its presence.
The doctor looked up from where he was tending to the half-naked redhead in the hospital bed and the eyes above his surgical mask became angry. Norah took everything in with a vague sense of un-reality. The doctor stormed up to her, leaving the two newborns in the arms of the eerily silent Hispanic woman in the ridiculous parody of a French maid's uniform. Even her own parents, long joked about amongst friends for being notoriously cruel employers of domestics, didn't make their female servants dress like that! Besides, she was a maid! What was she doing in a delivery room? Was any of this even happening?
"Excuse me, miss!" the doctor sniffed in a self-important manner, bringing Norah a little more back to the here and now, "This area is off-limits! I'm afraid you're going to have to leave immediately!"
Nora remembered that she was a stranger here and was briefly afraid. The female patient was unconscious and both her children were wailing unhappily. The Hispanic maid was glaring at her with murder in her dark Latin eyes. This was an emergency situation and she was an unexpected distraction. Her first instinct was to back out the door and reseal it without a word.
Two things, three really, kept her from obeying that first, compliant instinct.
One, she was Nora Volancort and her parents had not raised her in a manner which had accustomed her to being spoke to in such tones by anyone. This doctor, whatever he was doing, was a hired hand. He was not the master here. He was hired help, better trained, but essentially no better than the maid.
Two, she was here at the express invitation of Sir Lucius DeMorrell, owner of this property and likely the doctor's employer. It was impossible for her to believe even a man as supposedly eccentric as DeMorrel would be weird enough, though perhaps depraved was a more appropriate term, to invite a scholar to inspect his private collection of artifacts while his wife gave birth alone. Unfortunately, it was also impossible to believe the man didn't know what was occurring not just under his own roof, but in the very next room!
Three, she had the strong feeling something was more than just wrong here. Something had come unhinged, possibly DeMorrell's sanity, possibly her own. The urge to flee was strong. The urge to stay was stronger.
She recognized the woman in the hospital bed as DeMorrell's wife, Jonni. She didn't look anything like her usual self, a voluptuous trophy bride regularly seen on the covers of gossip rags and in commercials promoting charity work. Her blood red hair was in disarray and she was pale and puffy. The bags under her eyes looked big enough to pack three days worth of luggage and her famous figure had obviously undergone the ravages of pregnancy. There was still blood on the sheets below her waist and her belly was still contracting even in unconsciousness.
No one had seen this woman in months. Most media outlets speculated she was in rehab. There had yet to be a word of her pregnancy. Something seemed odd about that. News agencies around the world would have had a field day with the richest man in the world's teenage wife having a baby, twins no less!
Suppose, DeMorrell had gone insane? Inviting guests over, female guests like herself, while he forced his wife to give birth behind a hidden door; all that seemed a little insane. If so, then the smart thing for little Miss Volancort to do would be to run away as fast as her heels could carry her. Unfortunately, she couldn't leave without trying to take DeMorrell's wife and the newborn infants. If something happened to them it would be her fault. Since they were in no condition to be moved, Nora decided to stay. Staying was what made her think she had lost her own mind.
"I said you have to go, madam!" The doctor was louder this time, but seemed somehow less sure of himself than before. Nora frowned and stepped away from him, though no nearer to the door back to where she had come from. There was something nervous and dishonest behind the thin man's bespectacled eyes. He made to grab Nora's upper arm and she batted it away almost effortlessly.
She realized he was afraid of her. Something was very wrong here. Drawing herself up to her full height, Nora was tall for a woman and certainly taller than this doctor, she took a deep breath and said with a much icy command as she could muster, "Take another step near me and you will regret it."
The doctor must have believed her, he stopped, "I'll call security!"
Nora casually reached into her bag, fluidly removed the tazer.
"No, you won't," Nora lunged at the doctor.
