Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 08 (5 page)

“Immediately?
Is it an emergency?”

“She
can’t hardly breathe. She just keeps gasping and heaving. I moved her upstairs,
like you said, but it didn’t help her none.”

“Where
is she now?” I was surprised she’d left the children alone, so fierce had been
her hold on them last night.

“You
show me how you help me, then I’ll tell you.”

I
looked at my watch. It was six-thirty now. Lotty might still be at her clinic,
but the thought of her angry words made me squirm.

“I’ll
take you to the emergency room at ... ” I paused, trying to imagine which area
hospital might be the least inimical to such a family.

“You
can’t,” she burst in. “You can’t take her to a hospital. You know what they do:
they call the cops, the cops arrest me for neglect, and who look after the
children then?”

“You
don’t have any relatives to care for them? What about their father?”

“What
are you? The caseworker? Their old man beat on me, he beat me up plenty, but I
could handle it. When he start hitting on Jessie, though, that’s when I draw a
line, say enough. You take her to a hospital, that’s where they going to send
her back, back to her old man because he can hold a job and he wants to look
after her. I see the way he look at her, not after her, and she’s not going
back there. Get that straight. You said a doctor, someone who would treat her
for free, not a hospital.”

“Okay.
No hospital.”

I
went back to my desk, my knee still smarting, and called Lotty’s clinic.

The
answering machine referred me to the emergency room at Beth Israel. I hung up
and started dialing Lotty’s home number. I didn’t know whether to be relieved
or not when she answered. I told her I’d found the homeless family and they
needed urgent medical care.

She
didn’t sound enthusiastic, but no one who works as hard as Lotty would welcome
such a greeting. She wanted me to send them to Beth Israel, but when I
explained that the woman adamantly refused hospital help she sighed in
exhaustion and agreed to meet me at the clinic.

When
she’d hung up I turned back to the woman. “Okay. A doctor—one of the best in
Chicago. No hospital. No forms. Go get Jessie and meet me back here while I
finish a few things.”

“You’re
not calling the cops.” It was a command, not a question.

“No.
I need to tell a friend that I’m going to be late. And I need to shut down my
computer for the night.”

She
stayed at my elbow while I spoke to Mr. Contreras, telling him something had
come up and I wouldn’t be able to run the dogs after all. When I shut down the
system the woman went to fetch her children. While they waited in the lobby,
Jessie gasping for air, I took a cab across the Loop for my car.

Found—and
Lost Again

“These
children need a week in the hospital to recover from dehydration and
malnutrition, let alone whatever underlying lung problems they have.” Lotty
spoke uncompromisingly.

She
had met us at the clinic, taken one look at Jessie, and—after giving her a jolt
of epinephrine to control her wheezing—phoned Beth Israel to prepare for an
emergency admission. She then told me to make myself useful by bathing the
children while she examined them in turn. Stripped of their layers of swaddling
and filth they had the gaunt boniness we usually see only on televised reports
of remote famines.

While
Lotty prodded joints and listened to chests I ran their clothes through her
office washing machine. As I dumped the bundle in I found a yellow sweater that
looked familiar, and realized with a shock that it was one of the pieces I had
deposited behind the boiler. It already looked as filthy as the rest of their
wrappings.

“The
lady here promised me—” the mother began.

“Vic
spoke from her heart but she’s not a doctor. I would be an absolute criminal if
I allowed you to take these children back to whatever cellar you want to hide
them in.”

The
mother let out an anguished “no,” but didn’t add to it. I summarized what she’d
told me about the children’s father.

“There
must be someone who you could turn to, at least for an address,” Lotty said.
“I’m not asking you to give up your children to an abusive man, but you must
see how bad it is for them, living the way you do.”

“If
there was someone, don’t you think I’d be with that person?” The woman dashed
angry tears away.

“Look,”
Lotty said. “There are some shelters for women with children. I’ll do my best
to get you space in one of them. And I promise you I won’t turn you over to the
police. We’ll use Vic’s address for you—you can be their aunt, my dear—that
should be appropriate for you.”

“Touche,
doctor. Fine.” I turned to the woman. “I’ll be your children’s auntie. But you
must follow Dr. Herschel’s advice. If your children die you will be bereft
forever, you know, not just for the time they’re in someone else’s care.”

The
woman didn’t like it, but she saw we weren’t going to budge. Lotty even got her
name out of her while we waited for the clothes to dry: Tamar Hawkings.

While
Hawkings watched, eyes bright with suspicion, Lotty called the best of the
shelters for women with children and explained Tamar’s plight. They were
crowded past any hope of taking on another family, but promised to put the
Hawkingses high on the waiting list.

“Vic
will carry on tomorrow finding you a place to stay. But for now, off to the
hospital with you.”

The
mother’s face took on a bleached, hopeless look. When Lotty called Beth Israel
again, going over the children’s situation in detail with the attending
emergency-room physician, Hawkings listened with painful attention, as if to
make sure Lotty wasn’t arranging instead to turn them all in to the state.

Myself,
I felt certain the hospital would call Family Services: no one could look at
those distended stomachs and bowed legs without reporting child abuse.

And
after that? Would they be forcibly returned to their father?

Lotty
started locking up. “Dr. Haroon is the attending physician and he’s promised to
speak to the admitting nurse. If you have any trouble, ask for Rosa Kim. I’ll
check on the children in the morning. And where are we going to put Ms.
Hawkings tonight?”

I
made a face. “I guess she can come home with me.”

Tamar
Hawkings shook her head vigorously. “No, you don’t. You don’t trick me like
that, putting my children in the hospital away from me. I know my rights; I
know the mother can stay by her children in the hospital room.”

She
didn’t speak again during the short drive to Beth Israel. It had started to
rain, a freezing rain mixed with sleet that made driving treacherous. Behind me
I could feel the children’s fright. Infected by their mother’s terrors, they didn’t
talk, but the tension in their small bodies made the tendons in my neck ache.

Since
Tamar Hawkings had neither a green card nor a financial guarantor, our first
few minutes in the emergency room were chaotic. I finally found the admitting
nurse, Rosa Kim, who took over the situation with brisk if impersonal
authority. Beth Israel was the major health care provider in Uptown; Kim was
used to uninsured emergencies of all kinds. When she assured Tamar that she
wouldn’t call DCFS unless some unexpected problem emerged, I thought it was
safe to leave.

I
called Lotty from the building lobby to thank her.

“Vic,
when you saw them yesterday, why didn’t you get them help? Those children are
in shocking condition.”

“I
offered her help and she didn’t want it. The only thing I could have done at
that point was to call the cops, which would have been a real violation. And
anyway, she did a good job scuttling out of there—I didn’t see her again until
she chose to appear at my door.”

“Even
so, calling the cops would have been the responsible act in this case.

You
know I’m not a friend of police intervention in people’s lives; but, Vic, you
just can’t continue to set your own judgment up as God’s in these kinds of
situations.”

“Hey,
Lotty, ease up. Over a two-day period Tamar saw she could trust me, so she came
to me of her own accord. The kids are getting the help they need now. I don’t
think that’s acting like God; that’s doing their mother the courtesy of
thinking her judgment is as good as mine.”

“But
last night you could have talked to Deirdre about getting them into one of the
Home Free shelters. Now I don’t think the hospital will release the children
into Hawkings’s care. Frankly, I wouldn’t.”

I bit
back a hot retort. Maybe Lotty was right. Maybe I was only fighting with her
because I couldn’t admit I’d made a mistake on Monday.

“I’ll
ask Deirdre at dinner tomorrow night. The evening sounds like a prelude to
hell—maybe she can do something useful and salvage it.”

Lotty
gave a dry laugh. “In fact, you’ve thought of the perfect hostess present. I’ll
check on the children in the morning when I make rounds.”

On
that more pacific note we hung up. The last twelve months had been filled with
moments like this—hot exchanges, painful temporizings.

All
the way home on the icy streets I kept wondering what I should have done when I
first found Tamar and her children. The question haunted my dreams; I awoke
feverish from interrupted sleep to a world encased in ice. It glazed the trees
in front of the apartment so that every twig, each nascent bud, seemed dipped
in crystal, but on the sidewalk below people skittered and fell. As I shivered
at the window I saw two cars slither into each other at the intersection of
Barry and Racine.

My
first appointment today wasn’t until ten. By the time I had to leave the roads
might be more passable. I slipped on jeans and a sweater and went down to the
lobby for my newspapers. Behind Mr. Contreras’s door the two dogs, Peppy and
Mitch, heard me and set up a hearty cry. The old man opened the door and the
dogs bounded out, tails thrashing against me. I caught their forepaws as they
leapt up on me and let them lick my face.

“I
know, I know,” I said to Mr. Contreras. “They need a run. But look at the
street—we can’t go out in this. It should warm up during the day—it’s April,
for pity’s sake. I’ll run them tonight. Scout’s honor. No matter what
eleventh-hour crisis flings itself at my door. ... I’m making coffee. Want to
come up for a cup?”

“I
got some hot, doll. Why don’t you come in and have some of mine?”

The
old man’s coffee tastes like tar laced with gasoline. Improvising desperately,
I told him I’d left water on to boil upstairs and needed to get back to it. Ten
minutes later he joined me in my kitchen, a plate of sticky buns in hand, the
dogs circling his legs.

That
was the last joy I had all day. At noon, between meetings, I tried to
flagellate myself into an interest in Phoebe and Camilla’s problem. I turned on
the computer and tried to organize some questions, but my mind seemed to be a
chalky waste. I watched a clerk sort papers in the building on the other side
of the tracks. The unending flow of paper, out of the mail, into file folders,
back into the mail, seemed like my own dreary routine. Lay out the questions,
make appointments, survey Lexis, get the SEC reports. Another train passed. The
pigeons flew up again, obscuring the clerk.

When
the phone rang I welcomed the interruption—until Lotty gave me her bad news.
“Your friend Ms. Hawkings disappeared. She took her children, along with some shoes
belonging to other families in the ward.”

For a
moment my brain refused to absorb the information. When Lotty repeated it,
sharply, I dully asked for particulars.

Apparently
a social worker had come up around ten to interview Tamar and the children. She
acceded to the mother’s demand that the father not be informed, but said that
until Tamar could prove she had a stable home for the children, even a shelter,
they would have to go into foster care.

“Great,”
I said. “The magic words. When I left last night I thought I had a clear
understanding with the staff that they couldn’t use that as a threat.

Tamar
has gone to considerable lengths to keep her children with her. She’s not going
to give them up now.”

“It
wasn’t a threat, Vic. It was reality. They don’t want to take her children from
her, but she can’t go on living in basements with them.”

“Unfortunately
Tamar Hawkings doesn’t agree.” My shoulders felt as though someone had tied
lead bricks to them. “I’ll see if she’s come back here. And call the cops to
start a missing persons search. But short of putting her in jail I don’t know
what we can do to keep her from taking off again. Unless we can find a place
that will house her children and her together.”

“The
Chinese have a proverb for this,” Lotty said at her driest. “’If you rescue
someone from drowning you’re responsible for them forever.’”

On
that ominous note she hung up on me.

Touch
of a Scumbag

The
rest of the day turned into a blurred nightmare, culminating with its chef
d’oeuvre, Deirdre’s dinner party. Any hopes I had of solving Tamar Hawkings’s
problems there disappeared within minutes of seeing my hostess.