Chapter 4: The Aftermath

Concord, North Carolina

November 20, 1998

Concord Regional Airport was twenty-four miles northeast of downtown Charlotte, North Carolina in the suburban city of Concord. Jake landed here, not because it was closer to Carolinas Medical Center where Celia was currently staying (it was not) but because it was a much less congested airport than Charlotte-Douglas International, which was the tenth busiest airport in the United States. He and Laura secured the Avanti in the general aviation parking area at 5:11 PM, Charlotte time, and then, travel bags in hand, made the trek to the rental car area. Laura had already reserved a BMW 5 series for them while they had eaten a quick lunch at their refueling stop in Oklahoma City. They climbed into the car, Jake behind the wheel. He looked at the folding map of the Charlotte region for a few minutes, finding and memorizing the route to the hospital. By 5:30, they were on their way, driving through the light Sunday evening traffic and arriving at the hospital’s parking complex at 6:03 PM.

Celia was in Room 347, which was the post-surgical care unit. After checking in with the main desk in the lobby, they were directed to a certain set of elevators all the way on the other side of the building. They made the walk and then rode up to the third floor. They entered the unit and then walked up to the nurse’s station, where two nurses and a unit clerk, all dressed in scrubs, were chatting about something that had nothing to do with medicine or healthcare.

One of the nurses looked up at them as they approached. She was in her late thirties, reasonably attractive, wearing a pair of thick glasses on her face. “Can I help...” she started, and then her eyes grew big as she got a good look at who she was talking to. “Oh my God! You’re Jake Kingsley!”

“I am,” Jake agreed. “This is my wife, Laura.”

“Nice to meet you,” Laura said politely.

“You must be here to see Celia Valdez!” the nurse said.

“As a matter of fact, we are,” Jake told her. “Is it okay to go to her room?”

“Oh ... yeah ... sure,” she said. “Let me just go check with her first and make sure she’s ... you know ... up for having visitors right now.”

“Fair enough,” Jake agreed.

The nurse—her name badge declared she was Renee Wiliker RN—got up and walked down the hall. She opened the fourth door on the right and poked her head inside. Jake had a sudden fear that Celia would refuse to see them. She had, after all, just gone through a very traumatic event and it was her relationship with the two of them that had directly caused that event. Did she hate them now? He thought that a distinct possibility.

But when Renee returned to the nurse’s station, she simply told them, “She said to come on in.”

“Right,” Jake said. “Thanks.”

They walked down to the door with the number 347 on it. Jake carefully opened it and put his head in the room. Celia was in the bed. She was wearing a hospital gown and the blankets were covering her legs. Her hair was in disarray and her face was considerably more pale than normal. There was an IV pole and a pump sitting next to the bed, connected to her left arm by IV tubing.

“C?” Jake asked softly. “Laura and I are here.”

She looked at him, her face expressionless. “Come on in,” she said softly.

They came into the room, moving hesitantly. “Hey, C,” Laura said. “We made it.”

Celia nodded. “You did,” she said. “Can you shut the door?”

Laura pushed the door closed until it latched. As soon as it did, Celia’s face scrunched up and her lip began to tremble. She burst into tears and a sob came out of her mouth. “It’s so good to see you two,” she told them.

“Oh, Celia,” Laura said, rushing to the bedside. She bent down and took the singer into her arms. “I’m so sorry this happened to you!”

Celia hugged her back, clinging to her almost desperately. “The surgeon told me I almost died,” she cried. “Literally. He said if I had waited another hour or if it had taken the doctor another hour to figure out what was wrong with me, I would have bled to death.”

“That’s scary, love,” Laura said, stroking her hair, feeling hot tears on her shoulder. “But you made it. You’re all right now, aren’t you?”

“That’s what they say,” Celia said. “I don’t feel all right.”

Jake took a few hesitant steps forward, feeling uncharacteristically awkward and uncertain. Should he hug her as well? Did she want him to? It was showing affection to each other that had gotten her into this mess, wasn’t it?

Celia looked up from Laura’s shoulder and seemed to notice his hesitation. “Come here, you,” she told him.

He came to her, kneeling down next to Laura (who refused to let her go) and putting his arms around her. She returned the embrace with her right arm, as the left one was still holding Laura. She then leaned in and kissed him softly on his cheek. “Thank you for coming out here so fast,” she whispered.

“We left as soon as we heard,” Jake said. “I’m so sorry about all of this, C. I can’t even find the words to tell you how sorry I am.”

“It’s not your fault,” Celia told him. “It’s just one of those things that happens.”

“But it was my ... you know ... my sperm that did this to you,” he said.

She kissed him again, a little closer to the mouth this time. “Yes, it was,” she said, “but it’s not like I didn’t invite that sperm inside of me. And it’s not like any of us could have foreseen this.”

“I know,” Jake said. “I just feel terrible that this happened.”

“I’m better now that you two are here,” she said. She leaned over and kissed Laura on the cheek as well. She then kissed her softly on the lips. “I love you two so much. I don’t want what happened to me to change what we have. Please tell me it won’t.”

“It won’t,” Laura said, kissing her one more time.

“It won’t,” Jake promised, kissing her on the lips as well.

“Good,” she said, a slight smile on her face now, the tears starting to dry.

They broke the embrace and separated. Jake looked up at the IV bag that was being pumped into her and read the label on it. Zosyn, it was called. “What is this they have running into you?” he asked.

“It’s an antibiotic,” she said. “I get that every eight hours I’m told. That’s the second dose.”

“How’s your pain?” Laura asked.

“It’s not so bad now that they ... you know ... took care of the problem. Just an ache down there, like ripped muscles. They’re giving me Vicodin for it.”

“Did they have to cut you all the way open?” Jake asked.

“No,” she said. “They did the surgery laparoscopically. Look.” She pushed down the blankets and then pulled up the hem of her gown revealing her thighs, a pair of prudish white hospital underwear, and her bare belly. There were five tiny incision wounds, one in each corner of her abdomen and one just below her belly button. All were held shut with steri-strips stained with a small amount of blood. Her entire belly seemed to be distended and was colored a pale yellow-orange from the disinfectant they had swabbed her with before going in. “They put instruments inside of me through the openings in the corners and then a camera with a light through the belly button incision. And they pumped my abdomen full of carbon dioxide. That’s why it’s sticking out so much. It kind of looks like I’m ... uh...” She trailed off, her face taking on a pained expression.

Jake winced a little. It kind of looks like I’m pregnant, she had been about to say. And she was right. But she was not pregnant. Not anymore.

“That shouldn’t scar very bad,” Laura said.

“No,” Celia said softly. “Not on my belly anyway.” She pushed the gown back down and then pulled the covers back up.

“Are you sure you’re okay, love?” Laura asked her gently.

“I don’t know,” Celia said. “I’m still trying to come to grips with this. I have never been pregnant before. When they told me the test was positive, I was still trying to process how I felt about that when they told me the baby could not survive. That’s kind of fucking with my head a little, honestly.”

“It’s kind of fucking with mine a little too,” Jake admitted.

“Yeah,” Celia agreed. “It is a lot to sort out.” She took a deep breath. “They couldn’t save the fallopian tube. It was too badly damaged. Now, I only have one of them. The one on the left.”

“At least God gave us two of them,” Laura said. “You can still have a baby someday.”

“Well...” Celia said, “there’s a little more to the story about that.”

“What do you mean?” Laura asked.

“Dr. Jenkins, he’s the OB/GYN who was been assigned to my case, reviewed the ultrasound that was done in the ER. He says that the reason the embryo did not implant in my uterus like it’s supposed to is because I have something called ‘fallopian tube stricture’. That means the tube was, for whatever reason—probably some genetic defect—too narrow to let a normal sized zygote travel down through it. The sperm could get up and fertilize my egg, but the fertilized egg couldn’t get down and got stuck there.”

“That’s terrible,” Laura said.

“What about the other side?” Jake asked, seeing where she was going with this.

She frowned a little. “They didn’t look at the left fallopian tube initially because it was pretty obvious that it was the right one that was having the issue. But once Dr. Jenkins saw the report, he ordered them to do another ultrasound to look at the left side.”

“And what did it show?” Laura asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Celia said. “They only did it an hour ago. Dr. Jenkins has gone home for the night. I won’t know until he makes his rounds tomorrow.”

“Did he say it was likely that the left one had this too?” Laura asked.

She nodded. “He said it was very likely,” she said. “In most cases, if a woman has the stricture on one side, she has it on the other as well.”

“And what does that mean?” Jake asked.

“If I have it on the other side,” she said, “then it is very unlikely that I can become pregnant naturally. But if I do become pregnant, it will probably be another ectopic pregnancy.”

They let that absorb for a moment and then Laura stood and went back over to the bed. “Oh, Celia,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” She put her arms around her friend and lover once again, giving her comfort.

“Is there any fix for the problem?” Jake asked.

“He said he would discuss that with me when after he read the report,” she said. “Doing so earlier would be premature.”

“He would rather have you worry about it all night?” Jake asked.

“Apparently so,” she said.

At 6:33 PM, while Celia was picking at her unappealing tray of hospital food, the phone in the room began to ring. She glanced at it for a moment and then looked at Jake. “Would you be a dear and get that for me?” she asked. “I really don’t want to talk to anyone right now.”

“Sure,” Jake said. He reached over and picked up the phone. “Yeah?” he said into it.

“Jake? Is that you?” a female voice asked. It was Liz, who had gone back to the hotel to get some sleep shortly after Celia had been moved to her current location.

“It’s me, Lizzy,” he said. “Laura and I just got here about twenty minutes ago.”

“Good,” she said. “Turn on the television to Channel nine. It’s the late edition of the Charlotte evening news.”

“Why should I do that?” he asked carefully.

“Because they’re going to do a report about Celia,” she said. “And they strongly implied in the teaser segment that they know things they shouldn’t know.”

“Shit,” he muttered. “Okay. Thanks, Liz.” He hung up the phone.

“What’s up?” Celia asked, not getting good vibes off of hearing his end of the conversation.

“Liz says they’re going to be talking about you on the channel nine news report.”

“Shit,” Celia said. She reached for her all-purpose remote control device and picked it up. She fumbled with it for a few moments but was finally able to turn on the television and change it to channel nine. A commercial for a local car dealer that was trying to clear out the 1998 inventory to make room for the 99’s was just finishing up.

The news report—the last edition until the eleven o’clock nightly report—came onto the screen. A male and female newscaster were sitting behind a desk. A picture of Celia in concert, her twelve-string guitar in hand, her face flushed, sweaty, and beautiful, appeared on the graphic before them.

“As we reported in the morning and afternoon newscasts,” said the female anchor, “legendary singer and performer Celia Valdez was taken by ambulance to Carolinas Medical Center in downtown Charlotte early this morning from her hotel room at the Marriott of Charlotte. She had just finished up the second of two highly acclaimed performances at the Charlotte Coliseum last night and was scheduled to travel to Jacksonville, Florida for two consecutive nights starting tomorrow. Hospital officials refused to comment or even verify that Celia was a patient in their facility, citing privacy laws. Pauline Kingsley, Celia’s manager and spokesperson, released a statement this afternoon stating that Celia had suffered abdominal pain in the early morning hours and the concern was that she might have acute appendicitis. No further official updates on her condition have been given.

“Multiple anonymous sources, however, both from within the hospital and from within the emergency medical services community itself, are reporting that Celia Valdez was possibly suffering from an ectopic pregnancy and required life-saving emergency surgery to correct the problem.”

“You fuckin’ puta!” Celia nearly screamed when she heard this. “You’re actually telling people my fucking business?”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Jake said, stunned, angry.

“They can’t report this!” Laura said, quite visibly outraged. “How can they get away with this?”

The anchor had no answers for them. Instead, the graphic changed to an anatomical diagram of the female reproductive system and she began to explain to her audience just what an ectopic pregnancy actually was.

“We are told,” the anchor then went on, “that it is common practice in a case such as this to abort the fetus during the surgery because it is possible that the abnormal implantation might endanger the mother’s life. We have no confirmation whether or not this was the case with Celia Valdez—we are still waiting for official confirmation that she did indeed suffer an ectopic pregnancy—but Celia is from Venezuela originally, a predominantly Catholic nation, and is on record as having been raised as a member of the Catholic church. Since Catholics are traditionally very much opposed to abortion, we will be interested to find out whether or not she agreed to go through with the termination of her fetus during this event.”

“Jane?” asked the other anchor, who had the proper solemn look on his face, “is there any word on who the father of Celia’s baby is?”

“No word on that subject yet,” the female responded. “As many are aware, Celia was married to A-list actor Greg Oldfellow for nearly ten years but they divorced in 1997 after a scandal involving actress Mindy Snow, who became pregnant by Oldfellow under questionable circumstances when the two had a brief affair. Mindy Snow delivered a child—Grand Oldfellow—last year. By all reports, Celia and Greg are no longer in contact with each other since the finalization of their divorce and there have been no reports of Celia being romantically involved with anyone since then, other than the rumors and speculations about her being involved in a same-sex relationship with the pilot of her tour aircraft.”

“Oh my God,” Celia cried, shaking her head back and forth. “Is this really happening?”

“This is un-fucking-believable,” Jake had to agree.

Forty-five minutes later, Barbara Fortwright, holder of a master’s degree in nursing and the hospital’s director of nursing, and Dr. Terrance Williams III, the chief medical officer of the facility, were in Celia’s hospital room at her request, both of them having been called in from their homes, both of them looking quite alarmed and shamefaced.

“Can you explain to me,” Celia demanded, “why my personal, private medical information regarding what happened to me in your hospital is being reported on the 6:30 news?”

Fortwright handled that one—or she made an attempt to, anyway. “I assure you, Ms. Valdez, that no one at the hospital released your private information to the media. My suspicion is that they are reporting speculation as fact.”

“Speculation?” Celia asked with a glare. “They reported that I rode here in an ambulance and was diagnosed with an ectopic pregnancy, which I then underwent surgery to fix. Since that is exactly what happened to me, wouldn’t you agree that their speculation, as you call it, seems to be awfully specific and spot on?”

“Someone is running their mouth about Celia,” Jake said. “Several someones, most likely.”

“I assure you,” said the doctor, “that patient confidentiality is something we hold sacred here. There is no way that anyone on our staff was telling your diagnosis and treatment to a reporter.”

“Then how did they know?” asked Jake. “Obviously someone in this building does not hold that confidentiality all that sacred.”

“You need to find out who is talking,” Celia demanded. “And you need to issue a statement condemning this breach of my privacy.”

“We will launch an investigation into this immediately,” Fortwright said. “And, if that investigation reveals that one of our staff is the source, he or she will be immediately terminated from employment and we will issue an apology.”

“Why don’t you issue the apology now?” asked Jake.

“Because the investigation has not been completed yet,” she said, as if talking to a moron. “We cannot suggest that we are responsible and apologize when we do not have the facts in hand. I still highly doubt that a member of our team is the source of this information.”

“Who else could it be?” asked Celia.

“That is what we hope to uncover in the investigation,” said Dr. Williams.

It was kind of like banging one’s head against the wall, though not as satisfying.

The story that Celia might have had an ectopic pregnancy (and the speculation about who the father might be) was repeated on the eleven o’clock news. By this time, the story had already gone out on the AP wire from coast to coast. The next morning, newspapers across the country reported it as well, usually in the entertainment sections, but a few—the LA Times, the New York Times, and the Charlotte Register—had the story on the front page, above the fold. It was in these articles that names of the suspected father first began to appear. Number one on the list was Coop, who was already known to have an illegitimate child and who was, after all, Celia’s long-time drummer. Coming in a close second was Larry Candid, who, though virtually unknown outside of the small circle of bands, roadies, drug dealers, and record company executives he did business with, had his name thrown out there when some reporter discovered he had been Celia’s road manager for the past three tours. Other suggestions were Greg Oldfellow, Charlie, and Miles the saxophone player. There were no suggestions that Jake Kingsley might be the father despite the fact that it was publicly known that he and Celia were close to each other and business partners and there had been previous rumors about an affair between Celia and Laura Kingsley. Perhaps the thought that the exotic, beautiful singer would let the scrungy rock musician into her pretty little panties was too ridiculous to contemplate.

“We have interviewed every single staff member, technician, nurse, and physician who had contact with you since your arrival at our campus,” said Fortwright at eleven o’clock in the morning that day. “All of them report that they have shared no private information with anyone outside of the medical team.”

“Well, of course they’re going to deny it,” Jake said, shaking his head and giving a large eye roll. “You think they’re going to drop to their knees and confess that they told their spouse or their best friend about Celia?”

“I am forced to take them at their word,” Fortwright said. “Except for the physicians, they are all union employees protected by collective bargaining agreements. I am unable to interrogate them as if they were suspects in a crime.”

“No,” Jake agreed, “but you can try to backtrack the rumors to their sources, can’t you?”

“I do not have the resources or the budget for such an investigation,” she said. “Without some kind of evidence of malfeasance, I am obligated to take these people at their word and conclude that the breach of Celia’s privacy occurred outside of the hospital.”

“Who outside of the hospital would have known such detail?” asked Celia.

“I do not know,” she said. “Investigating outside of the hospital is not our responsibility or obligation.”

And that was pretty much that. They were never going to know who had spilled the beans. And that person or persons would never be held accountable.

“What do we tell the public?” Celia asked Pauline when she talked to her by phone shortly after Fortwright left to go do some work on her budget paperwork. “Do we just lie to them and tell them I was here for appendicitis?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Paulin said apologetically. “There are too many specific details floating around that contradict that story.”

“What then?” the singer asked, near tears again. “Tell the truth?”

“No,” Pauline said, “I don’t think you should go that far. This is a private matter and it really is none of the public’s business. Despite what the scumbag reporters are always spouting, the people do not have a right to know your business.”

“What do we release then?”

“I would suggest we only give them the most generic and basic of facts,” Pauline said. “We don’t lie to them, but we don’t give them the truth either. You had an onset of abdominal pain after the show in Charlotte. You were taken to Carolinas Medical Center by ambulance. It was discovered that you had a life-threatening condition that required surgical intervention. You underwent the surgery and are now recovering and expected to resume touring after the recovery.”

“And when they ask about the reports that I was pregnant?” Celia asked.

“I tell them that you are not pregnant,” she said simply. “That is true at this moment, correct?”

“Yeah,” Celia said with a depressed sigh. “It’s true.”

“I’m sorry, C,” Pauline said. “No one should have to go through what you just went through and have it all aired out in the media. It’s not right.”

“No,” she agreed. “It’s really not.”

Dr. Jenkins was a skinny, fussbudget sort of man. He showed up just after one o’clock that afternoon for his rounds. He seemed to Jake the kind of guy who would have his garage immaculately clean and sterile with all of those little ink outlines on the wall to designate where every tool and hammer was to be hung. He was in his middle-forties, balding, wore glasses, and was dressed in a sparkling clean white coat with his title and last name stitched onto the breast. Despite all that, or perhaps because of it, he came across as an expert in the field of the female reproductive system and Jake felt very confident in him within the first minute of meeting him.

“I have reviewed the ultrasound report and the imagery from your study last night,” he told Celia as he stood at the foot of the bed and as Jake and Laura sat in chairs next to it.

“And what’s the verdict?” Celia asked, chewing her lip a little nervously.

“Is this a subject that you wish to discuss in front of Jake and Laura?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered without hesitation. “They are very dear friends.”

“Very well,” Jenkins said with a nod. “As I suspected would be the case, your left fallopian tube is also afflicted with a significant stricture that has made it too narrow for a normal sized fertilized embryo to successfully travel down for implantation in your uterus.”

Celia’s lip quivered a bit. Laura grabbed her hand and held it while Jake put his hand on her shoulder. “Does that mean ... that I can’t ... I can’t have children?” she asked, her voice cracking.

“No,” Jenkins said immediately. “It does not mean that at all.”

Celia’s eyes widened. “It doesn’t?”

“No,” he said. “There are several options we can discuss to deal with the situation at hand.”

“What kind of options?” Celia asked. “If my right tube is gone and my left tube has this stricture thing, doesn’t that mean that the only way I can get pregnant is for it to be another ectopic pregnancy?”

“That is true if we do nothing,” said Jenkins. “As it stands right now, your left fallopian tube is not so narrow that it prevents sperm from travelling up into the ampulla and fertilizing an egg if one should happen to be there, but is too narrow to allow the fertilized egg to travel down and implant. Left untreated, any pregnancy you have will be all but guaranteed to implant in the fallopian tube, which will lead you into another life-threatening situation such as what you just went through. It will also lead to the loss of your only remaining fallopian tube. That would effectively sterilize you for all but the most invasive type of in vitro fertilization if you ever did decide to have a baby.”

“Are you saying that IVF is my only option at this point?” Celia asked.

“Not at all,” he said, “although it is one of the options. The thing is, however, that IVF is much less invasive and difficult to achieve if you have at least one intact fallopian tube for us to work with. You see, if the tube is intact, even if there is a stricture there, we can go in through the vagina and retrieve an egg quite easily because there is an intact pathway for us to do so. We can then fertilize the egg in the lab and implant it in your uterus. If you have no fallopian tube for us to work with, however, then it becomes much more difficult to retrieve an egg since we have no road to get there. Surgery under general anesthesia would be required and it becomes much more dicey getting the eggs out intact. The risks of bleeding and post-operative complications rise as well.”

“Okay,” Celia said, nodding. “We want to keep that fallopian tube intact then.”

“Assuming you wish to have children at some point, yes,” he said.

“I do,” she said, nodding quickly. “I really do.”

“Okay then,” Jenkins said. “We’ll take simply removing the left fallopian tube to protect you off of the list of options.”

“But you said the IVF is not the only option?” Laura spoke up.

“That is correct,” Jenkins said. “You can still conceive and implant naturally, you just need a little help.”

“What kind of help?” Celia asked.

“I could put a stent into that fallopian tube and make it wide enough to do its job properly,” he said.

“A stent?” Celia asked.

“That’s right,” he said. “A stent is a plastic mesh tube that would be inserted into the fallopian tube to make it wider in diameter while still leaving the cilia—those are the little hair-like protrusions that help propel the egg to the uterus—mostly intact and functional. Now, a stent would only last five years at the most, which would put you in a window for when you could conceive without a significant chance of ectopic pregnancy occurring again.”

“Five years, huh?” she asked.

“That’s right,” he said. “You are, however, thirty-six years old now. In five years you’ll be forty-one. That age is considered high-risk for pregnancy anyway, although many women in their mid-forties can and do still conceive and deliver normally.”

“If you do this,” said Jake, speaking for the first time since being introduced to the doctor, “then a time-clock is ticking.”

“A good way of looking at it,” Jenkins agreed.

“Interesting,” Celia said, casting her eyes over to Jake, then Laura, and then back to the doctor. “How is this stent put in?”

“It’s a relatively simple procedure,” Jenkins said. “I’ve done several dozen of them in my time. We put you under procedural sedation using Versed and fentanyl and then insert the stent through your vagina, through your cervix, through your uterus, and into the fallopian tube. The whole thing takes maybe twenty minutes.”

Celia took a moment to absorb this and then nodded. “So ... I should do this when I’m ready to have a baby?” she asked.

Jenkins shook his head. “You should do this now,” he said. “You’ve already had one unplanned pregnancy despite your use of birth control pills. You told me that you did not miss any doses, correct?”

“That’s right,” she said. “I take them faithfully every day, even when I’m out on the road and not ... you know ... doing it.”

“And you have not been on antibiotics or anything like that?”

“No,” she said. “I’m very healthy ... except for my fallopian tubes.”

“Well ... that means that your birth control pills were defective or understrength, or your body has enough of its own female hormones to override them, or perhaps a combination of both. In any case, the fact that it happened once means the odds of it happening again are higher. If you are going to be sexually active and rely solely on the pills for contraception, you are going to want to have that stent in place so that if another unplanned pregnancy does occur, it will at least implant where it is supposed to.”