Raney & Levine

by J. A. Schneider

  He straightened, and looked away. Jill glanced up at him. He looked hurt.

  Oh, guilt time…again. She was sorry.

  “Can we discuss this on full stomachs? Please?” She straightened too, touching his arm tentatively, then putting her arms around him. David gave in, hugging tiredly back. She nuzzled into the crook of his shoulder, practically sagging on him. “That wasn’t the real me talking because I’m ready to faint,” she whispered. “Head’s busting and we haven’t eaten.”

  “Okay.” David fell silent but kept brooding.

  In the staff elevator, which they had to themselves, he paced and his fretting resumed. “The snakes, the damn snakes. It’s the same guy.”

  “It’s usually me who obsesses, David.”

  “Nobody killed yet, but it’s somebody seriously whacko who’s after the whole hospital.”

  Jill peered up determinedly, watching the floor numbers bring them down to the cafeteria. Five, four … She’d learned their different ways of reacting to stress. David spewed and let his feelings show. Jill retreated into herself.

  “The clincher is Hutch’s rubber snake,” he fumed, stopping to watch Jill watch the numbers. “Why a fake garter snake, when you can get fake cobras, rattlers, copperheads? Because real garter snakes are everywhere, easy to find, and after the anatomy lab a woman - pregnant with an appointment waiting here – gets brought in horribly beaten with a real garter snake wrapped around her. So we can connect them, right? In case he thinks we’re stupid?”

  Three, two…

  David looked away and resumed pacing, his fists bunched in his scrub pockets, his voice dropping lower. He glared at a GIVE BLOOD poster. Then at notices for staff meetings.

  “Same creep and he’s more ambitious than July’s whacko, a planner sending abused women as threats to us and Jesse and now the whole hospital.”

  Jill had glanced further up. “Why is the button for the sixth floor taped over?”

  “Huh? Oh, that’s the generator floor. Machines and stuff that power the hospital.” He paced again. “Shit, Jenna’s snake is with the cops for evidence. I would have liked a better look at it. Under a microscope.”

  “It died.”

  “No way it could have lived. Its belly had been torn, it had lost most of its blood-”

  “David?” Jill breathed out slowly, sounding truly weak. “If you knew the headache I have. Please. Can we just eat first?”

  The others were waiting at their favorite table in a far corner of the cafeteria. The table had become a sort of clubhouse for the five of them. Woody Greenberg, Sam MacIntyre and Tricia Donovan had been through it all with Jill and David. During the first crisis on the roof, they’d gone nearly crazy running around and shouting into their cell phones. Then the second time they’d gone through the same horror, when Jill and David were again almost killed.

  Déjà vu all over again Jill thought, depressed, as she and David carried their trays past filled tables, the whole cafeteria back to the same anxious hush, with staff in scrubs sending sympathetic or worried glances their way. News of the anatomy lab snake and Jenna’s attack had spread fast, on top of today being Madison’s big announcement about Jesse, and Jill and David’s faces again blanketing the media.

  Tricia had told them in the locker room that TV and cable were already covering the attack on Jenna Walsh, surrogate mother. No mention of the snake, though. That hadn’t leaked – yet - from the hospital, and the cops must be withholding that part.

  “Hangin’ in?” a radiology friend fisted David’s arm as he passed.

  “By a thread, thanks,” he muttered.

  Other residents sent Jill anxious little waves. So did a table of her fellow interns: Charlie Ortega the Hugger, Ramu Chitkara so very English from Oxford, and Gary Phipps, who usually lived on Mounds bars.

  Charlie jumped up to hug her around her tray. “You okay? Jeez, awful day.” She smiled faintly, then at Ramu, there too urging tea (“Darjeeling!”), and Gary, also hugging and jibbering how freaked he was.

  She managed reassuring nothings for them, then followed David to their table.

  Woody took her tray from her and MacIntyre pulled out a chair.

  “You look pale,” Woody said.

  “Really pale,” MacIntyre added helpfully.

  “It’s my every-three-months look,” Jill said, thanking them, sitting between David and Tricia, who pushed Ketchup to her.

  “You’ll need it on that excuse for a grinder.”

  “It’s all they had left.”

  “What? The mystery meat is gone? Summon the waiter. I want to complain to the chef.”

  Nobody smiled, including Tricia after her feeble attempt to lighten the mood. They all started to discuss Jenna Walsh.

  “They called me,” David said grimly between bites. “Her subdural was evacuated, but did pressure damage to the brain.”

  “She still comatose?” Woody asked feelingly.

  “Yep, being monitored in the neurosurgery recovery room.”

  Tricia got emotional. “So horrible. That poor girl. And the baby, the poor little baby…”

  Jill bit determinedly into her grinder. She got a few bites down, and then couldn’t eat more. Her heart thudded, and her head. She felt a little sick.

  “Anyone got Advil?”

  MacIntyre pulled two blister packs from his pocket and pushed them across to her. “Keep ‘em,” he said. “I raided the charge nurse’s supply. Sorry it’s not Percocet.”

  Jill smiled thinly, pushed a pill out from under its aluminum foil cover. It was an effort.

  Under his bluster, Sam was a sweetheart. Sandy-haired and as tall as David, he was actually attractive unless one minded his occasional temper, his white jacket that always looked slept in, and the eating manners of a timber wolf. Now he was flipping Advil packs like playing cards to everyone around the table.

  Woody said, “Aw, let’s steal the good stuff, Percocet’ll keep you happy till March, pass the Ketchup please?” His curly brown hair bobbed as he banged on the near empty bottle. He’d probably be wiry all his life. Even on no sleep he was usually amped and stumbling over his words.

  Tricia, watching his Ketchup smother his half-eaten burger, said, “I know I’m going to have nightmares about that snake. Just hearing about it…”

  MacIntyre grimaced. “Just as well you didn’t see it.”

  Jill and David traded glances.

  David looked gravely at Sam and Woody. “You haven’t heard the whole story.”

  Jill listened as he filled them in. The SPAWN OF THE DEVIL sign, maybe connected to the seven-headed rubber garter snake found in the anatomy lab. The Bible passage Carl Hutchins read them about a seven-headed serpent representing evil. Jenna Walsh’s real garter snake.

  “Impaled on her crucifix,” David said. “Subtle, huh? Think it’s the same guy?”

  Tricia saw the whole picture. “My God,” she breathed.

  Sam was very still, except for one hand making a fist on the tabletop. “So now we have a religious zealot to deal with?”

  Woody pushed his plate away, wordless.

  “And is this guy done?” David asked, leaning forward. “He went to a lot of work sewing that rubber seven-headed snake. His attack on Jenna was planned. He brought his real snake and pin.”

  “And probably knew she was headed here.” Jill put her Coke down. “Had a four o’clock appointment in the clinic. The two snakes and the attack - think they had anything to do with Jenna being a surrogate mother?”

  She got stares that understood.

  “Surrogacy’s a huge no-no for Catholics,” Tricia said.

  “Not for Protestants,” from Sam.

  “Hutch says Baptists are against it,” David said.

  “Oh, right, and fundamentalists,” Sam said grimly. “They don’t like Harry Potter either. Witchcraft, y’know.”

  David was unhappily stacking Advil packs like a house of cards. “I don’t think Jews are against surrogacy,” he said. “Wha
t was that story In the Bible? Sarah was infertile so she asked her maid to bear Abraham’s child? So…that was the first surrogate baby.”

  “Recorded baby,” Woody said. “It must have been done throughout history.”

  Jill listened as the others started talking at once. Do you realize most wars have been fought in the name of religion? Yeah, each side claiming they and they alone could interpret the Bible and God’s will. The Reformation! Catholics and Protestants killing each other for centuries! Queen Mary I executing Protestants, burning them at the stake? The Inquisition, oh, don’t go there. Pulled apart on the rack, then getting burned alive! Wasn’t Galileo tortured during the Inquisition?

  “I read Galileo’s biography,” Woody said, watching David piling Advil cards. “He was declared a heretic, forced to recant his outrageous idea that the earth revolved around the sun…instead of the Church’s position that the sun revolved around the earth. He was old and sick and forced to spend the rest of his life under house arrest.”

  Jill knew Galileo’s story. Abruptly the others switched back to an emotional discussion of the SPAWN OF THE DEVIL sign, and she felt a new tightness in her chest. A sense of fear and loss at once, knowing that David was right about Jesse because she and David were magnets for every weirdo. Her eyes stung and she wanted to cry.

  Do stalkers ever quit?

  He’d be safer adopted anonymously.

  A zealot now to deal with?

  Tricia took another Advil. Woody somberly started collecting their plates, stacking them onto a plastic tray. And David’s house of cards fell.

  His eyes were grave. “Two snakes in one day,” he said. “This creep’s got a ritual that excites him. What’s he planning next?”

  12

  Like planes landing at JFK, three women in labor had been brought in. David sent Sam, Charlie Ortega, and Ramu Chitkara to one with more time; to another he sent Gary Phipps and woke grumpy George Mackey, and to the one in hard labor, he brought Woody, Jill and Tricia.

  The patient had been brought in only thirty minutes before, “ready to pop,” a nurse said. In the labor room Jill and Trish had to rush the history and physical, assess the labor and check the degree of cervical dilatation.

  Then the nurse helped them push the bed from the labor room into delivery, where a circulating nurse was helping David and Woody, already scrubbed, into their surgical gowns. Jill and Tricia got into surgical gowns too, and helped hoist the moaning woman onto the table.

  Dilatation was already a full ten centimeters. The head was visible. The mother was pushing and moaning loudly.

  “Almost there!” Woody said.

  “Um, not so sure.” David frowned over his mask. “The head isn’t coming. The kid’s stuck.”

  He slid one gloved hand in alongside and past the baby’s face. “Great,” he grimaced. “The cord’s around the neck.”

  Jill and Tricia both darted looks to the fetal monitor. “What now?” asked Tricia.

  “Come see.”

  “I’ve only done this once,” Woody said.

  The three watched David slide in his second hand, and manually rotate the baby a quarter turn, from face down to a position where the shoulders were vertical. Then, very gently, he pulled the shoulders first downwards, and then upwards, until the baby and the umbilical cord were partway out.

  “This isn’t rare,” he told the others. “You need to do it fast, or the cord will be compressed by the mother’s pelvic bone, which will cut off the baby’s oxygen supply. The cord can also act like a noose and strangle the baby.”

  Woody quickly clamped the cord, still pulsating, in two places close to each other. David nodded, and Jill used sterile scissors to cut between the clamps.

  “That’s it,” he said. And more brightly, looking up: “Momma, you’re doing great.”

  Momma smiled at him, gasping.

  The rest of the baby, slippery with amniotic fluid, slid right down into his hands, one hand at the junction of the neck and shoulder, the other under and supporting the lower back. It was a girl. “Oh, beautiful!” he said, holding the child up by her ankles while Tricia unwound what remained of the cord, wiped the tiny face with a sterile cloth, and used a rubber bulb syringe to suction her mouth and nostrils.

  The newcomer began to breathe on her own, and let out a lusty wail. Woody hooted and the others beamed as they put her, howling, on her joyous mother’s chest. Jill tied the cord, and Tricia removed the clamps.

  The rest - checking the placenta, administering Ergotrate to contract the uterus - took just a minute. The whole birth had taken fourteen minutes.

  A welcome respite for Jill from her brooding. She even smiled for David as they left the delivery area.

  “Let’s see how Jenna’s doing,” he said, scrubbing out.

  When they left he had his arm around her. Had seen her gloom in the cafeteria, and in the elevator kissed her, lovingly and fully.

  On the surgery floor, they made their way to neurosurgery and Jenna Walsh’s ICU room - and a surprise.

  She lay, eyes closed, on pillows with her bed slanted up and her head swathed in bandages. A blue sheet and blanket covered her up to her chin. Wires protruded from under her blanket to a beeping monitor. Her IV pole by the monitor hung its tubing down to a vein on the back of her hand.

  And seated sprawled across the bottom of the bed was a woman with her face in her arms. She was crying softly. A man was seated next to her, his head down, his arm across the woman’s back.

  The man looked up as they entered. Blinked at their scrubs, and blinked again as they approached. His bloodshot eyes saw their OB/GYN nametags.

  David and Jill introduced themselves.

  “Oh,” said the man. “We’re Paul and Susan Sutter. The…baby’s parents. Jenna was our surrogate.”

  Susan Sutter was frail-looking with short, pale blond hair. Her eyes were raw and her face was strained, but she struggled for composure. Apologized, even, for crying, and thanked them for their efforts. Her hand gripped her soggy tissue.

  “Jenna’s not doing well,” Paul Sutter said, glancing back at the pretty, comatose face on the pillows. “The surgeon was in a while ago. He said there’d been damage to her brain. Hopefully only temporary.”

  “Hopefully,” David said softly, peering at Jenna. “No ventilator, she’s breathing on her own...”

  “Is that a good sign?” Susan Sutter asked.

  David hesitated. “It’s favorable,” he said carefully. “There’s still been brain damage. Something like this, you just have to wait and see.”

  They’d both just lost a child, and they were still here, deeply concerned about their surrogate. Jill knew David was thinking the same.

  “You were close with Jenna?” she asked, putting her hand on the bed rail. David was studying the nurses’ chart hanging at the bottom of the bed: pulse, blood pressure, respiratory rate and temperature. He inhaled, let it drop.

  Susan Sutter wiped an eye again and nodded. “She was a friend,” she said. “The sweetest person you can imagine. Big-hearted, giving…” Her voice cracked.

  Her husband gulped, “Whoever did this…I don’t understand such evil.” He shook his head incredulously. “A few times Jenna had morning sickness bad, and worried more about Susan. My wife’s an unstable type 1 diabetic. Adoption became impossible because if one parent is deemed ill…”

  He made a futile gesture, handed his wife another tissue, and swallowed. “Jenna cared so much about others. She used to fret about Susan losing consciousness during her sugar lows. ‘Eat a cracker, have a donut!’ she’d say. They’d go for walks together and Jenna always brought raisins, fruit drinks in those little box lunch packs because she was afraid Susan would faint.”

  David’s cell phone rang. He excused himself and stepped out to the hall.

  Jill’s breath caught. David might have said Don’t bother them, but she surprised herself by leaping at his absence; looking feelingly from Paul to Susan Sutter.

  “An
y idea who could have done this?” she asked gently. “Did Jenna have enemies?” Her heart pounded. She and David hadn’t heard what the Sutters told the cops.

  “Her brother Brian,” Susan said bitterly; and Paul Sutter said. “We found out belatedly that he’s obsessed with the Church, harangued her that surrogacy was a sin and she was going to burn in hell. He wasn’t gentle about it, he really hurt her. She finally told him to get lost, and told us not to worry.”

  He really hurt her. Jill gritted her teeth, managed to restrain her anger. If someone profoundly believes something, there are kinder ways to persuade. Jenna was brave, giving, and had suffered.

  On the bed rail, Jill’s knuckles went white. “Did he ever threaten her? Or, like, stalk her?”

  The Sutters’ eyes met. “Not that we know of,” Susan said slowly, looking back at Jill. “He called her one last time during the summer. Spent the whole call screaming at her. She hung up on him.”

  “Did she have friends? Any kind of support group?”

  Paul looked uncertain. “One good friend named, uh, Mary?”

  “Mari,” Susan said. “Mari…something on Bleecker Street. Jenna also belonged to an online group called SurroMomsForum. She found a lot of comfort there. Talked to other people dealing with the same…issue.”

  It occurred to Jill that it was doing the Sutters good just to talk. Susan’s face had actually brightened a little when she described Jenna finding comfort.

  “Jill.”

  David was back, excusing himself again. “We’ve been called,” he said. Delicately, Jill noticed. Nothing about delivering babies.

  Paul Sutter stood and gave Jill and David each the Sutters’ card. Jill glanced at it. They owned an interior design company.

  “We’re limited to visiting hours here,” Paul said. “But if we miss you, please call us if…anything. We want to help. This shouldn’t happen to good people.”

  They thanked him and made for the door, David saying they’d be checking regularly on Jenna.

  “Hope to see you again,” Jill said with a little wave.