In the Woods

by Robin Stevenson

  Maybe I should just pull the baby out of my jacket and hold it up in front of me.

  There’s a lull in the traffic, and no one drives past for a minute. I wonder if I should ride all the way to the highway, but people might be even less likely to stop there. There’s nowhere to pull over. I yell a few swear words loudly and then feel bad about the baby hearing them. Not that it can understand, but still, it seems sort of wrong that the first words this kid hears were those particular ones. “Sorry, little guy,” I say. “I’m just a bit worried, you know? A bit stressed about getting some help for you. Just hang on there. Life is going to get better, it really is. If you just hold on, you’ll get to do all kinds of cool stuff. You’ll eat peaches and swim in the summertime, and you’ll learn to ride a tricycle, and maybe someday you’ll even kiss a girl. Not that I’d know anything about that myself.”

  And then a small car appears over the hill and slows down. The driver’s a woman, and I think for a second that I probably look too crazed and desperate to be trusted, but she actually slows down, pulls to the curb and stops. I don’t make the mistake of running over this time. Instead I unzip my jacket and point at the baby. “I found it in the woods,” I say. “Can you call an ambulance?”

  “What is…? Oh my god! A baby? You found it in the woods?”

  I think for a second of Hansel and Gretel and the abandoned children of the fairy tales Mom used to read us. “Yes. By the lake. Can you please…?”

  She gestures to the passenger seat. “Get in. It’ll be faster.”

  I scramble into the car.

  “Can I see the baby?” She looks at me. She’s middle-aged, a big lady with graying dark hair and large tanned hands and a confident voice. “My name’s Lainey. I’m a nurse.”

  “Um, I’m Cameron.” I struggle to untie the sweater sling, then give up and just lift it over my head. The baby doesn’t weigh anything. “He’s still alive,” I say stupidly.

  She just nods and takes the baby.

  “Good.”

  “Um, I could sort of see his heart beating. In his head, like, on top there?” I point. “Is it meant to be like that?”

  “Yup. That’s normal. The skull isn’t closed yet in a baby. Just a sec.” She’s counting, checking the baby’s pulse and breathing. “Okay, hold the baby against you and keep it warm. Five minutes to the hospital.”

  She drives fast, but not crazy-fast, heading onto the highway. “The skull can’t fuse before birth. It has to be able to give a little to fit through the birth canal.”

  Up until this moment, I hadn’t thought about anything but this baby and getting it to the hospital. But that mention of the birth just made me realize that someone— some girl, some woman—gave birth to this baby and left it in the woods.

  “I don’t understand how someone could do this,” I say at last. “Leave a baby out there like that.”

  “You don’t know whose baby it is?”

  “No. God. This is the…the sickest thing I’ve ever seen.” I glance down at the baby’s head. “He could have died.”

  “Mmm. Easily. How’d you find him?” Her eyes are on the road, hands steady on the wheel as she takes the exit to the hospital.

  “I was just riding my bike and I heard a cry,” I say. And then I think of Katie, sending me on her crazy errand. Was this just a freaky coincidence, or was this the reason she wanted me to go to the lake? How the hell could she have known about the baby? Helping someone hide a baby…I can’t see it. I think about her two best friends and wonder about each of them in turn: Nikki, star of the swim team, freestyle record holder, off to Ottawa in the fall to study journalism. Luba, who coaches the junior swim team and works with disabled kids after school and still manages to pull off the same marks as Katie. But neither of them was pregnant. There was no way. Even if they’d wanted to hide it, I don’t see how they could have. I mean, they all see each other in their swimsuits practically every day.

  And then my stomach drops as I remember: Katie quit the swim team four months ago.

  “Sure you don’t know who it could belong to?” Lainey asks again. Her voice is calm, almost casual, but there’s nothing casual about the question.

  I push the thought aside. It’s crazy, anyway. Katie wasn’t pregnant. I’d have known. She hasn’t even had a boyfriend yet, nothing serious anyway. Besides, she’s hardly the baby-dumping type. Katie’s hyper-responsible.

  I look at Lainey and shake my head. “I don’t have a clue.”

  Chapter Five

  The emergency room is busy, but Lainey doesn’t bother to join the lineup at the reception desk. She just takes the baby from me and marches up to the counter. I hang back. The baby is passed to a short man in green scrubs, who disappears down the hallway. Mostly I’m relieved that someone else is taking over, but I’m not sure what to do now. I’d like to know that the baby is okay before I leave.

  Then I realize that I just left my bike at the side of the road. My new bike. Shit. Odds of it still being there? About the same as the odds of finding a baby in the woods, I guess.

  I glance at my watch. Six o’clock. Oops. I should call Mom.

  Or maybe I should call Katie and ask her who the hell’s baby this is.

  I look around for Lainey and see her talking to a woman up by the counter. Then they both start walking toward me, and I realize that maybe all this isn’t quite over yet.

  “Cameron?” Lainey smiles, and I feel suddenly anxious. Which is stupid, because I haven’t done anything wrong.

  “Cameron, this is Nancy. She’s the emergency room social worker.”

  Nancy holds out her hand, and I shake it awkwardly. I think of Nancy as an older

  person’s name, but she’s maybe thirty, tops, fair-skinned, with dark hair buzzed short on one side and hanging forward over her eyes on the other. Too many earrings to count, plus a piercing in one eyebrow and another in her nose.

  “Can you come into my office to talk for a few minutes, Cameron? I need to ask a few questions, make sure we have all the information.”

  I shrug. “I guess. I should call my mom though. She’ll be wondering where I am.”

  “Tell her you’ll be a while,” Nancy says. “The police are going to want a statement too.”

  “Um, police?” Maybe I won’t call Mom right away. I follow Nancy down the hallway and into a small carpeted room.

  She closes the door behind me.

  Click.

  I haven’t done anything wrong, I tell myself. So there’s no reason to feel trapped. There’s no reason to get freaked-out.

  “They’ll have to investigate,” she says, sitting down. “They’ll want to find the mother if possible.”

  I stay standing. There’s a long silence. I think silences are some kind of counseling trick. I remember this from when we used to go as a family to see that therapist at the children’s mental-health place. “I was just riding my bike,” I say. “And I heard a noise. Crying.” I shrug. “I guess Lainey told you the rest.”

  “Cameron, you brought the baby to hospital, which is great. You probably— well, almost certainly—saved her life.”

  “Her?” For some reason, I’d been assuming it was a boy.

  “Yes. A girl.” There’s another silence, but this time I don’t fill it.

  Nancy leans to one side, one elbow on the arm of her chair, chin resting on her hand. Her fingernails are painted slick black. “If you are the father, you aren’t going to get in trouble. Like I said, you brought the baby here and got her help right away. But…”

  I just about choke. “No! Jesus. No, I’m not.” It hadn’t even occurred to me that anyone would think that. To be honest, even when I’d been trying to figure out who the mother could be, it hadn’t crossed my mind that there was a father too. Duh.

  “Are you sure? It’d be better to tell the truth up front.”

  “Christ. Yeah, I’m sure.” Too goddamn sure, in fact. I’ve never got past second base with anyone, but Nancy doesn’t need to know that
.

  “So it was just coincidence? You just happened to be there at the right time?”

  I nod, mentally cursing Katie for getting me involved in this mess. Her words echo in my head. Don’t tell anyone. I wonder what she knows, what

  she’s done. Was she there, even? In the woods? Helping someone hide the baby and then arranging for me to find it?

  It doesn’t make sense.

  Nancy looks down at her hands for a long minute. “You know, I don’t want you to think that I don’t believe you. I have to ask these questions.”

  “It’s okay.” I just want to get out of here. “Is the baby going to be okay?”

  “I think so. It seems to be a healthy, full-term infant. I don’t think it could have been out there for long.”

  I don’t mean to prolong the conversation, but I have to ask. “Why would someone do this? Leave a baby like that?”

  She sighs. “It happens more often than you’d think. There was a girl last year who left hers in the food court washroom at the mall.”

  “I think I heard about that.”

  “They never figured out whose baby it was. At least it was alive.” For the first time, a hint of emotion, of anger, creeps into her voice. “Often they’re not. Often they’re killed or just hidden and left to die somewhere. Dumpster babies.”

  I swallow. If I hadn’t agreed to go to the lake… “Cameron, if you have any idea about who the mother could be, she urgently needs medical attention.”

  “Like, psychological help you mean? Counseling?”

  “That, yes, but physical too. Post-partum care.”

  Ugh. I don’t want details, so I just shake my head. “I really don’t know.”

  She sighs. “We probably won’t ever know. In these cases, most often the mothers are never identified.”

  “Won’t someone notice? I mean, if I knew someone who was pregnant and then they weren’t pregnant anymore, I think I’d notice.”

  “You’d think. But often these women—or girls, because they’re often young—manage to hide the pregnancy completely.”

  I shake my head. I don’t want to argue with Nancy, but I’ve seen pregnant women, and they usually look like they’ve swallowed a basketball. I can’t imagine someone hiding that.

  She hands me her card. “Sorry about grilling you.”

  “It’s your job, I guess.” I stick the card in my pocket.

  “If you need to talk, call me.”

  “Why would I?”

  She smiles at me, looking more relaxed now that she’s apparently switched her view of me from potential Baby-Dumping Creep to Good Samaritan. “It must have been pretty traumatic, finding a newborn in the woods.” I shrug. Everything’s considered traumatic by social-work types. “Not really,” I say. “Just, you know, kind of freaky.” “Sometimes things catch up with us later,” she says. “Anyway, you have my number.”

  Chapter Six

  By the time I repeat everything to the police and answer all the same questions again, it’s well past seven, and I still haven’t called home. The police officer takes me out to the lake, and I show her where I found the baby.

  She stands there, hands on her hips, boots planted on the trail, gazing into the darkening woods. Rain is still falling, and the trail feels soft and squishy under my feet. “So what exactly were you doing here? I mean, of all the places you could have picked to ride your bike, why did you come here?” she asks.

  It’s a fair question. It’s not really a bike trail—in fact, there’s a sign that says no bikes and no horses. And it’s hardly the kind of day most people would choose to hang out at the lake. “I don’t know,” I say. “We used to…” I’m about to say that we used to come here as kids, but I suddenly think of Katie and instinctively decide to leave her out of it.

  “We?” she prompts.

  “Ah, me and some kids from school.

  We used to party out here in the summer.

  I met a girl…” I shrug. “I don’t know.

  Some good memories here.”

  “Mmm. Well, it’s lucky you did.”

  “I guess so.” A bead of sweat runs down my side, and I shiver. “Can we get out of here? I’m freezing.”

  The cop gives me a ride back to pick up my bike, which, incredibly, is still there.

  “Two miracles in one day. You really are a lucky guy,” she says.

  I guess that’s one way to look at it.

  When Mom sees me getting dropped off by a police cruiser, she freaks and demands to know what I’ve done now. As if I’m always getting brought home by the cops. She just assumes I’ve done something wrong. Which is an assumption I’m getting a little tired of.

  “Mom, would you just listen?” I yell, exasperated. “I haven’t done anything, okay? I’m not in any kind of trouble.”

  She stops, mid-rant, and sinks down on the couch. “Sorry, Cameron. I got your note, and when you didn’t come home, I thought you’d had an accident. I’ve been beside myself.”

  Now that she’s not yelling at me, I can see how stressed she looks—sort of pale and tight about the mouth. She’s a major-league worrier, even when everything is going well. If it was up to her, Katie and I would wear helmets 24-7 and never leave the house.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I should have called.

  My cell phone died.”

  She ignores my excuse. “Yes, you should’ve. I was just about to phone the hospital.”

  “Actually, I was at the hospital.”

  I hesitate, but there’s no reason not to tell her, and besides, it’ll probably be in the paper tomorrow. “I was riding my bike out at the lake and I found a baby.”

  She stares at me blankly. “What do you mean, you found a baby?”

  At that moment, Katie appears from down the hall. She stands behind Mom, her eyes locked on mine, her face pale.

  “I went out to the lake,” I say. “I was riding my bike. And I found a baby. And I took it to the hospital. And now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to eat something and take a hot shower, because I’m cold and I’m starving.”

  Mom’s mouth is opening and shutting, goldfish style. I’m about to head to the kitchen to scavenge for leftovers, when Katie speaks.

  “The baby…is it okay?”

  I meet her eyes. “Yeah,” I say. “She’ll be fine.”

  Then I walk away. I know Mom has about a million questions, but I don’t have much else to say. I just need to be alone.

  I take a plate of pasta up to my room and inhale it in about thirty seconds. Then I head to the shower. I gradually turn up the water temperature until it’s as hot as it can be without actually scalding me.

  I stand there, leaning on the wall while the spray drums against my back. I have goose bumps all over and I’m shivering.

  I always have a hard time warming up once I get really cold, but I think it’s more that that. Much as I hate to admit it, I think Nancy was right, and I’m a bit freaked out by the whole finding-a-babything.

  I take a deep breath and try to think.

  Try to make some kind of sense of all this.

  Katie’s phone call, the baby, all those questions. What I’m most freaked-out by is the part that I didn’t tell Nancy or the police officer about. What role did Katie play in this? I picture her face in the living room when she asked me if the baby was okay, but there are no clues there.

  Was she—could she have been— asking me if her baby was okay?

  I can’t imagine Katie dumping a baby in the woods.

  The worst thing, the thing I can’t even let myself think about, is that if this baby was Katie’s, then she has been pregnant for nine whole months and hiding it. She’s gone through all this without any of us knowing. Without Mom knowing. Without me knowing. Which means I have let her down again.

  I step out of the shower and rub myself dry, wrap the towel around my waist. My skin is boiled-lobster red, and the bathroom is totally steamed up, but somewhere deep inside me the chill is creeping back, hard an
d cold as glacier ice.

  Chapter Seven

  I detour through the living room and play a quick round of twenty questions with Mom. Same questions, more or less, though she seems to accept my discovery as a coincidence more readily than the social worker or the police officer. I retreat to my room and look up abandoned babies online. A minute later there’s a knock on my bedroom door.

  “Cameron?”

  I close the laptop quickly. “Mom?” God, please not more questions.

  “Cameron, hon? I forgot to tell you. Someone called for you earlier.” She lowers her voice like it’s a big secret. “A girl!”

  I wish she didn’t have to make it sound like a first. “Yeah? Who?”

  “Audrey, she said. Such an old-fashioned name. Is she at your school? You’ve never mentioned her before.”

  “I have to do a socials project with her. Mr. McKluskey put us in pairs.” And I’m forever in his debt.

  “Oh.” She sounds mildly disappointed. “Well, she said to call if you got in before ten.”

  I look at the time. Nine thirty. “Okay. I’ll call her.”

  Audrey answers the phone on the first ring. “Hello?”

  “Audrey? It’s me.” I blush. I doubt she’s been sitting there waiting for my call. “Cameron, I mean. Um, you called earlier.”

  “Yeah. About getting together to work on our project for McKluskey’s class.”

  “Right.” Audrey has the tiniest bit of an Irish accent, even though she’s been here since she was a kid. She has a voice I could listen to all day. It’s pretty low for a girl, and really quiet. Whenever she talks in class, everyone goes silent and listens hard, because she’s not a girl that talks a lot. If she talks, it’s because she has something to say, and usually it’s something that no one else has quite thought of. She has this sort of off-center way of looking at the world.