A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

He makes light of her pain. “This doesn’t hurt,” he says, going on.
He wouldn’t know. He’s never had a cervical exam before. Shelby
squirms. He tells her to hold still. He says that the more still she
holds, the sooner he will be done. It’s denigrating. “All done,” Dr.
Feingold says to Shelby as he yanks the latex glove from his hand.
“Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
She won’t look at him.
Dr. Feingold doesn’t use electronic fetal monitoring to continuously
monitor the baby’s heart. Instead, he listens with a Doppler device.
Many obstetricians do. Electronic fetal monitoring isn’t necessary for
everyone, unless they’re high risk. But intermittent auscultation is
exactly that—intermittent—and requires diligence on the part of Dr.
Feingold and the labor nurse. Tonight the hospital is busy. Many
women are in labor, including another of Dr. Feingold’s patients. The
nurse says, “Must be a full moon.” There’s no truth in that. It’s only
folklore. Changes in barometric pressure can cause women to go
into labor, but not full moons. It’s more likely there’s a storm coming
than that there’s a full moon.
Dr. Feingold steps out of the room. Before he leaves, he asks me
to step out into the hall with him. He says to me privately as if we’re
in cahoots about this, “You’ve got your work cut out for you with this
one.” He’s smirking as he asks, “Is this what they mean when they
say attention whore?”
I’m so shocked that at first I don’t speak. I just stare, wide-eyed
and slack-jawed.
“My clients,” I tell him when I catch my breath, “are always looking
for OB recommendations. I wouldn’t recommend you to anyone,
Doctor.” If I had personal experience with Dr. Feingold before, I
would have told Shelby to run in the other direction. I have a growing
list of doctors I won’t work with, of hospitals I won’t go to. He’d just
been added to my list. He believes his medical degree gives him
carte blanche. It doesn’t.
Once he’s gone, I return to Shelby’s side. She tells me, “I hate
him.”
“Don’t worry about Dr. Feingold,” I say. “Just think of your beautiful
baby and the life you’ll share. You’re almost through, Shelby.”