The Stone Gallows (6 page)

Silence.

The woman held her breath and counted to thirty, just in case the
nurse had forgotten something. When nothing happened, she eased
the door to the cupboard open and walked slowly up the corridor.

She had been there before, seven years and a lifetime ago, and
remembered the layout. There was one four-bedded room, one double
room, and four single rooms. She was only interested in the single rooms,
all of which were occupied. A small glass window was set in each door,
and she used it to scrutinise the occupant of each room, studying each
woman as she slept. She passed on the first two; in each instance, the
occupant in the bed had stirred slightly. That was no good. She
needed somebody who was fast asleep. Not just asleep, but dead to the
world.

The patient in the third room lay on her back, her head tilted over the
pillow, her mouth gaping. Even through the closed door, the woman
could hear the snore. But it still wasn't right. Even in the gloom, she could
see the mound of the sleeping woman's belly, and knew that the woman
was still waiting to give birth. She shook her head and moved on.

She had been counting silently, under her breath. One hundred and
eighty seconds had passed since the nurse had left. Three minutes. She
knew from experience that nurses work to a different tempo than other
people, and that five minutes of their time meant at least fifteen to the
rest of the world. Still, it wouldn't do to mess about.

The four-bedded unit was directly across the corridor, the curtains 
pulled to cover the windows. There was a light cough and the sound of
somebody shifting their weight. She froze, but the noise was not repeated.

She peered into the window of the last single room.

The occupant of the bed was asleep – not the dreamless, exhausted
sleep of the third woman, but not the fitful, light drowse of the first two.

And more importantly, unlike the third woman, she wasn't alone.

At the bottom of the bed was a cot, and in the cot was a baby.

Slowly, she eased the handle down and pushed the door open. In a
second, she was inside. There was a pair of slippers on the floor. Quickly
she tucked one underneath the bottom of the door to prevent it from
closing behind her.

She waited, certain that her intrusion would cause the sleeping
woman to wake up, or at least stir. Weren't new mothers supposed to
sleep lightly so that they could protect their new-borns?

Apparently not. The sleeping woman – a girl, really, not more than
eighteen – snored lightly. A bare arm lay on the bedclothes, and in the
pale darkness, the woman saw bruises on the inner forearm. Junkie, she
thought. She doesn't deserve to be a mum.

Three hundred seconds now. Five minutes were up. Quickly, silently,
the woman moved forward and scooped the sleeping infant out of the cot.

Tiny black eyes opened, but she hushed it, stroking the child's brow until
the eyes closed. One last glance at the sleeping girl, thinking, babies are
such a huge responsibility, especially for somebody like you. I'm really
doing you a favour.

Then she was gone, stopping only to kick the slipper free and close the
door noiselessly behind her.

6.

Ellen returned to the unit three minutes later, loaded down with
provisions for the night. The Pot Noodle machine had been out of order,
so she had stocked up with two cans of Coke, two packets of crisps, two
bars of chocolate. Hardly the kind of nutritious snack that the posters on 
the wall advocated, but who the hell wanted salad at half past three
in the morning?

Nobody seemed to have stirred since she had left, which was lucky.

Even the babies were sleeping quietly. There were seven of them, four in
the single rooms and three in the quad. It was unusual for them to be so
quiet, but she wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. She did a
round of the unit, checking on everybody one by one, using the glass in
each door to view them. The only person that seemed to have moved was
the girl in room four; her slippers had been side by side when she had
checked earlier, and now one was skew-whiff, on its edge two feet away.

The girl must have been up to the toilet briefly before returning to bed.

Ellen tried to check on the baby, but all she could make out was the
blanket, one end of it trailing over the side of the cot, the rest of it puddled
at the bottom. She debated going and adjusting it, before deciding to let
sleeping babes lie.

Actually, she was a little surprised that the girl had been up. The poor
thing had been exhausted. Hers had been an exceptionally long labour,
thirty-six hours, and she had needed not one but three units of blood.

The first unit had gone in alright, but the venflon in the crook of her
elbow had slipped out of the vein, causing extensive bruising. It had
taken a junior doctor four attempts to reset the thing. The poor kid must
have felt like a pincushion.

7.

Another toilet, bigger this time. Four wash-hand basins, four cubicles.

A poster on the wall reminded people to wash their hands. Empty soap
dispensers made the advice impossible to follow.

The woman checked all the cubicles were empty before laying the
baby down on the tiled floor of the last one. She knew it wasn't sanitary
(especially not in a hospital), but she needed both hands free. There was
a paper-towel dispenser fixed to the wall next to the wash-hand basins.

Underneath it was a bin, lined with a black plastic bag, half full of. . .
well. . . stuff. Gritting her teeth, she rolled up her sleeve before plunging
her arm in, feeling the dampness of used paper, glad she couldn't see
exactly what it was her fingers were probing. It was unpleasant enough
just to imagine it. . . second hand tissues. . . tampons. . . at any second
she expected to feel the sting of a used needle.

After a few seconds of interminable groping, she found what she was
looking for. She withdrew her arm, clutching a plastic bag, placing it to
one side and rinsing her hand and arm underneath the hot-tap, rubbing
vigorously with fresh paper towels until she was dry, if not clean.

She'd hidden the bag earlier in the evening, right at the end of visiting
hours, when the corridors and toilets were full of members of the general
public making their way home. Using just her fingertips, she emptied its
contents. Bottle of baby milk (room temperature, but there was nothing
she could do about that. Hopefully, she wouldn't need it) sleep suit. . .
baby blanket. . . scissors. . .

Scissors?

Where were the damn scissors?

She remembered packing them, wrapping them carefully in the
blanket so that they wouldn't cut her hand. She shook the blanket,
listening carefully for the chink of falling metal.

Damn it, where were they? Without them she wouldn't be able to
remove the wristband that encircled the baby's wrist – the wristband
that emphatically proved that she was not the mother.

No matter. How time flies when you're on the run. She grabbed the
sleep suit and the blanket and entered the cubicle, closing the door
behind her and picking the baby off the floor so that she could balance it
on her knee as she sat on the toilet. The baby was awake now, goggling
at her with its blue eyes. ‘It's alright, mummy's here. . . mummy's here,
shush, shush, my little love.'

Unconvinced, the baby screwed up its face, drew breath to cry. The
woman grabbed the bottle of milk and thrust the rubber nipple into its
mouth. ‘I bet you're hungry. I bet you're starving. Isn't that nice?'

The baby followed its instincts, sucking hungrily at the bottle. Without scissors to cut the child's clothes off, the woman forced the sleep suit 
directly over the one the infant was already wearing. Then she wrapped
it in the blanket and stood up, cradling it in the hollow of her left arm,
her right hand holding the rapidly emptying bottle in place.

Took a deep breath.

Thirty seconds to walk to the main entrance to the hospital, and
another thirty to get to where she had parked her car. All she had to do
was be cool. Hospitals were twenty-four hour places. If people were sick
in the middle of the night, the nurses didn't wait until daylight before
allowing loved ones to see them. There were all kinds of people wandering about. As long as she was confident, if she walked like she had every
right to be there, then she would make it. She remembered some old war
movie her husband loved, a scene where the prisoners had to cross open
ground before they could disappear into the woods. Now she knew what
it felt like. Absurdly, she was tempted to whistle the theme music for the
Great Escape.

She left the toilet, started making her way down the corridor, trying
to see everything without looking nervous.

Walk. Not too fast, not too slow. Head down, but not too far. Don't
look like you're afraid to make eye contact, but don't do it accidentally.

Talk to the baby. It's your baby, why wouldn't you talk to it? If anybody
asks you why you don't have a pram, tell them you were in such a rush
you forgot to put it in the boot of the car.

Out of the corridor and into the main reception area. More people.

Nobody was looking. Vending machines, bright lights, lots of chairs. A
woman sat with her head in her hands. Behind her, a family cried. Don't
look at them. It's bad luck.

‘Excuse me!'

The woman felt a bolt of fear. Her arms became rigid.

‘Excuse me!'

She stopped, turned. Forced a hideous smile onto her face.

It was a man in a football top, his eye blackened and his right arm in
a sling. He was leaning on a vending machine, waving a five pound note
at her. ‘You don't have any change, do you?'

‘I'm sorry, I don't.'

He shook his head, slapped his good hand against the side of the
machine. ‘You'd think they would provide coffee for those of us that have
got to wait.' He nodded at the baby. ‘Yours?'

‘Mine.'

‘I've got five.'

Good for you, she was tempted to say. Instead, she lied. ‘My third. He's
only four days old. My granny had a stroke yesterday. She's not expected
to last the night. I've driven all the way from London so that she can see
her great-grandchild.'

The man nodded. ‘I'm sorry.'

She thanked him, told him she needed to go.

Nobody stopped her.

8.

As far as Ellen was concerned, the Coca-Cola people were right: you
really couldn't beat the feeling. The drink was ice cold, and tasted like
heaven. She guzzled the first can in three huge gulps before eating a Mars
Bar in what seemed like a single bite.

Jesus, it was time to come off nightshift. Any more of this and she
would have a backside the size of Falkirk.

She was confident that the complaint against her would eventually be
dismissed. The man had been huge – compressing his chest had been like
sinking her hands into soft dough – and her lawyer would exploit the
fact, making it plain that it would be nigh on impossible to calculate the
correct pressure needed when the subject was so grossly overweight. Too
little pressure and the man would have died, right there in the car park,
leaving trust officials with the tricky decision over whether to load him
onto a trolley and have him taken to the hospital morgue, or to phone
Greenpeace and ask them to push the corpse back into the sea.

The Dan Brown novel was tucked into a drawer at the nurses' station.

She took it out, sat down and put her feet up. Opened a packet of crisps
and a second can of Coke. Maybe she shouldn't be in such a rush to leave 
night shift. It wasn't as if you got the time to skive like this during the
day.

‘I'm sorry, I couldn't do it.'

‘Jesus!' Ellen sat up, spilling the crisps down her top. She twisted her
neck behind her so that she could see where the voice had come from.

‘Jesus!'

It was a woman, about the same age as Ellen. Tears stained her
cheeks, and she held a bundle out. ‘I was going to take it, but I couldn't.'

She stepped forward, thrust the child into Ellen's arms. ‘Here.'

Dumbfounded, Ellen watched as the woman turned on her heel and
ran for the door. The child pulled in her arms, and she looked down to
it. It was awfully bulky, and as she looked closer, she saw that it was
wearing two layers of clothes. Then she saw the identity tag on the wrist,
realised that it was one of her charges, and had to sit down, breathing
harshly.

It took her less than two minutes to figure out what happened, and
even less time than that to decide never to mention it. If the powers that
be could make her feel at fault for saving a man's life, imagine what they
could do in a case like this.