The Children's Ward (4 page)

Twelve

“Oh, look at you, your dress is all wrinkled,” Tiffany White said, brushing at Courtney’s skirt.

“I told you not to lie down like that.”

“Come on,” David White said, standing to the side of the car and watching as his wife attempted to hand-smooth the material. “We’re late.”

“She can’t go in looking like this.” Tiffany straightened up and turned to her husband. “Get her suitcase out of the trunk and let me see if I can find something less wrinkled.”

“Tiff, if we’re not out of here in an hour, we can forget about cocktails…”

Courtney stood silently, looking across the parking lot toward the hospital building.

“I want her to look nice,” Tiffany said, absently stroking her daughter’s blond curls. Her own hair was the same color but it took two hours at the hairdresser every three weeks to keep it that way.

“She’s being admitted to a hospital,” David said, “not dressing for a debutante ball.” He tapped the face of his watch with his index finger. “And we are going to be very late.”

“All right, but if we run into anyone we know and she looks like this…”

“Everyone who
is
anyone is already at the party,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”

The admitting clerk fastened the hospital ID bracelet around Courtney’s wrist hurriedly. It was a quarter after five—five o’clock was the end of her shift—and she was anxious to leave.

The paperwork was done, consent for admission signed, and wristband attached. All that remained was the entry of Courtney White’s name, patient number, and diagnosis into the computer. About five more minutes of work, she calculated.

It didn’t help that the child’s father refused to sit down, pacing, instead, in the narrow confines of the admitting cubicle. Or that every other minute he made a point of looking at his watch.

She knew what time it was; she was on overtime.

The little girl, in contrast, sat quietly in her chair, hands in her lap. She had not said anything during the entire procedure.

She entered the data, double-checking the patient number, and reached for the phone to call the volunteer desk. With any luck, someone would be available to take the little girl over to the ward.

Listening to the phone ring, she watched as the mother pulled at the material of the little girl’s dress, stretching the fabric across the bias, attempting, apparently, to remove a series of wrinkles which encircled the skirt.

“What a lovely child,” the volunteer said, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose and peering at the little girl.

Twin smiles appeared momentarily on the parents’ faces.

“You could do us an enormous favor,” Dave White said, “and take her to her room. We have an urgent engagement that we’re already late for…”

“Well,” the volunteer said brightly, “that’s what I’m here for.”

“Courtney,” Tiffany said, “we’ll see you tomorrow after you’re all settled in.”

“Bye, baby,” her father said, mussing her hair.

She watched them leave, her face expressionless.

Thirteen

Quinn ran her finger along the x-rayed image of Russell’s spine, narrowing her eyes in concentration.

“That’s the first film,” Joshua said, “taken in emergency. You can see the degree of soft tissue swelling.”

“Where was the point of impact?”

“Here, in the thoracic spine.” He pointed. “Between T-11 and T-12.”

“How long was this after he fell?”

“Maybe thirty minutes.”

“I don’t see a fracture.” She removed the first film from the lighted screen and hung another. Again she ran her finger down the spine. “He’s still hyperesthetic?”

Joshua nodded. “Extraordinarily so. But…”

“Yes?”

He shook his head. “I keep thinking it must be something I’ve missed. I’ve looked at these films hundreds of times, trying to find an answer…why his symptoms don’t match his injury.”

She turned off the viewing screen and put the films into their manila jackets. “Sometimes they just don’t match, particularly with children.”

“I know you’re right…” His pager began to beep and he went to the phone while Quinn looked through the hard copy images of Russell’s spine CT exams.

“Courtney’s here finally,” Joshua announced, hanging up the phone. “Let’s do the admitting exam and that’ll be it for today.”

“I was worried about you,” Joshua said, taking the thermometer from Courtney’s mouth.

Courtney, who had remained silent during the examination, looked up. “Why?”

“I know what it’s like to be sick when you’re away from home.” When she did not respond, he continued: “When I was a kid, we had a family tradition; we’d wait all year for vacation and then I’d get sick the second day. I got the measles in Florida, chicken pox at the Grand Canyon, and the year we went to Hawaii, I developed appendicitis. My mother always said that’s why I became a doctor, because I equate hospitals with vacation.”

Courtney regarded him seriously, her dark green eyes giving nothing away. After a moment she turned onto her side, away from him, and pulled the covers up to her neck.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” she said, “just leave me alone.”

It was already dark outside when they left the ward and Quinn shivered in a sudden gust of wind. The faintest of sounds, like glass breaking, floated in the air.

Fourteen

Her stepmother answered the phone in the same emotionless voice that she’d used since Julie died, and Quinn, for a moment, was tempted to hang up without speaking.

Then in the background she heard her father’s voice, and heard the hope in his voice as he asked who it was.

“Carol, it’s Quinn,” she said clearly.

“Quinn.” A hesitation. “How are you?”

“Fine…getting settled in.” She could hear a chair scrape in the background and pictured her father, rising from the kitchen table to come to the phone. “How are you and Dad?”

Again, that hesitation. “As well as can be expected. Your father is painting the back bedroom.”

Julie’s bedroom. Why didn’t she just say it?

“Is Dad there?”

No answer, just suddenly her father was on the phone.

“Quinn honey,” he said, and her heart ached at the sound of loneliness in his voice.

“Dad.” She swallowed hard and took a breath. “I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier…”

“Don’t worry about it. I know you’re busy.”

Never too busy for you, she thought, but lately that hadn’t been true.

“Anyway, I’m here now, and as soon as I get everything into some kind of routine, I’ll be able to come home for a weekend every once in a while.”

“Good, good. And Christmas? You haven’t been home for Christmas since…” his voice faded.

“I might have to work this Christmas.”

“Well, I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”

“Me too.” She felt dangerously near tears.

The silence lengthened between them but it was somehow not empty. Quinn closed her eyes and listened intently, hearing love and acceptance. Minutes passed.

“Dad, I’d better go now, I’ve got an early start in the morning.”

“Take care of yourself,” he said.

“I love you, Dad.”

She hung up the phone and sat in the darkened room, waiting for the tightness in her throat to subside.

She thought of everything she should have said to her father. But what could she say to heal her family’s wounds? How could she confront her stepmother’s masked anger? Her own feeling of guilt?

Despite her work with troubled children, she had not been able to help Julie. She had not heeded the cry for help. She had done…nothing. And Julie was dead.

Fifteen

Abigail awoke. The ward was dark and silent, and for a moment she was unsure of why she had woken up.

Then she felt the tingling in her hands. She raised her right arm, bringing her hand to her face and resting her fingertips on her temple.

The feeling persisted. The vibration matched her pulse and it began to spread, moving up her arm to the shoulder before spreading across her back and chest. It radiated through her until her entire body was suffused.

She was not frightened. She had imagined many times how it must be to die and her curiosity was stronger than her fear. If this was dying, it was not unpleasant at all.

Her grandmother had told her some things about dying, about her mother, who chose not to live.

It had frightened her then, the thought of closing her eyes and never opening them again. Of the space left vacant…the finality of it all. Where would her thoughts go, when she died?

Little by little, when the mood struck her, her grandmother would tell her about how it had been. Usually the mood struck her when she’d had some wine with dinner, and some after.

Death, invited, had taken her mother in a frenzy of blood and pain. She had cut her wrists…sawed at them. The room had been splattered with blood, her grandmother said. They thought that she had grown tired of waiting, frustrated by her wounds which the doctor later said would not have proved fatal. Somehow, she’d found the desperation to plunge the knife into her body.

Abigail, six months old, slept through it in a corner of the room.

For a time, after she knew what had happened, she was terrified. Afraid to sleep at night, afraid even more to show her anger in case she should fly into a rage, as her grandmother said, and hurt herself. When she was five and starting school, she heard for the first time about a murder, and was paralyzed with fear. Someone else could decide for you, that it was time you should die.

But gradually, her fears passed.

Gradually, she came to understand that what it really was…was escape.

Now she waited in the dark.

TUESDAY

Sixteen

“Ballard?” The X-ray department secretary consulted an appointment schedule. “For today, right?”

The transportation orderly nodded, leaning over the counter and pointing to an entry. “There…Ballard, seven-thirty a.m.”

“I thought you said an x-ray; she’s having a scan.”

“All the same to me,” he replied.

“There’s a big difference. Anyway, the technician isn’t here yet, so put her in the waiting room. She can watch TV.”

“Whatever.”

Abigail watched the morning news with the sound turned off; it was better that way. It also allowed her to listen for conversations of interest, although so far, with only the secretary and orderly in the office, the news might be more exciting.

Complaints about the holiday work schedule, cafeteria food, and a doctor named Carter who ordered every single procedure stat…

She yawned. As soon as this was over, she was going to go back to bed. It had taken a long time to get back to sleep last night.

She didn’t feel any different this morning— except for being tired—but she thought she should feel
something.
If she’d been near death, shouldn’t she be…weaker?

Every time her grandmother had a spell with her heart, it would be days before she could do more than sip tea and fan herself. That had been going on for as long as Abigail could remember and she expected that almost dying should be the same for everyone.

She didn’t feel weak, though, nor did she think that she wanted any tea. If anything, she was ravenously hungry. She’d slept through breakfast but she had saved a corn muffin from dinner and she always hid a candy bar or two in her suitcase. It would hold her until lunch…

The electronic doors opened and a man in a white lab coat walked purposefully up to the desk.

“Oh, Dr. Carter,” the secretary smiled. “Can I help you?”

“I need a stat CAT-scan on a patient of mine, up in 311.”

Stat cat, Abigail thought, smiling to herself.

“Well, it’ll be a least forty-five minutes; the technician isn’t here yet and we’ve got a patient waiting already.”

From where she was sitting, Abigail could see the man stiffen.

“Stat means immediately,” he said. “Where is the technician?”

“Her car wouldn’t start this morning…I’m sure she’ll be here as soon as she can. But Dr. Fuller’s patient is already here, waiting, and…”

“Dr. Fuller’s patient can continue to wait.” He looked around, spotting Abigail. “She’s obviously in no distress.”

“I’ll have to call Dr. Fuller before I can put your patient first…I can’t…I’m not…”

“My patient is on the way down,” he said, turning as the doors opened. “And now your technician is here.”

The technician, a woman in her forties, winced when she saw the doctor. Then she attempted a smile.

“Dr. Carter, good morning.”

Carter was facing the technician and Abigail watched as the secretary made a gesture behind his back.

“I need a stat…”

The doors opened once again, and two nurses pushed a gurney into the room. All that was visible of the patient was a balding head. Neither of the nurses was smiling.

“Okay.” Carter rubbed his hands together. “Let’s get moving.”

Abigail watched as everyone crowded through a door into what she supposed was the room where the scans were done. They had apparently forgotten about her.

She looked back at the television. The weather was on and she watched as the weatherman placed a black storm cloud on California.

She could feel a headache building behind her eyes.

Seventeen

Alicia Vincent woke up angry.

He was not going to get away with it. He had endangered their daughter’s life by taking her—for six months every year—to live so far away from medical help.

He knew as well as she did that Tessi was not a healthy child, that she could take sick in the wink of an eye. Yet he persisted in living on that Godforsaken excuse for a ranch.

The blinding anger that he had provoked yesterday had festered as she slept.

It was time to act…past time.

She tossed back the covers, anxious to get on with it. She reached for the phone and listened to the line click until the motel operator answered.

“Long distance,” she said, “Los Angeles.”

It was early yet, only eight, but Howard was often in his office early, wanting to always be a step ahead of everyone else.

Howard Kraft was the attorney who had handled the divorce and who handled her affairs ever since then. He was everything that James Wolf was not: a brilliant, ambitious, ruthless man who knew how to get what he wanted.

Their celebratory drink after the final divorce decree was awarded had led them to her apartment and bed, something she had wanted from the first day she saw him in court. His certain arrogance matched her own; he deferred to no one, not even the judge. And he got away with it.

He had initially advised her against fighting the joint custody petition, reminding her of how often total freedom from responsibility for Tessi would be an advantage. Her position as publicity director for a banking conglomerate required a fair amount of travel and there were occasions when Howard’s wife went off to visit one relative or another.

And, with more men demanding their parental rights, it was very possible that the judge would grant the petition no matter what the argument against it.

Unless James Wolf could be proven to be an unfit parent.

Which was exactly what Alicia intended to prove. Her fingers were actually shaking as she dialed Howard’s private office line.

There was no answer. She hung up the phone.

She would call again later, after she had a chance to talk to Tessi. The stories that Tessi had told her in the past had always just irritated her and, in fact, she hardly listened. But now she needed ammunition against James and so she would listen this time. Listen for the faintest hint that he had acted recklessly.

This time she would teach him, once and for all, that it was not wise to cross her.