Tortured Teardrops

by P. D. Workman

  And when he cried, in that funny, hoarse bass, Tamara went into panic mode.

  “You have to stop it,” she told Anderson, the guard who had been assigned to monitor her overnight. She yanked on the handcuffs, making them clatter loudly, which sent the baby into louder cries of distress. “Stop it, stop it! Can’t you make it stop crying?” Tears came to her own eyes. “Please, you have to stop it!”

  “The nurse said she would come and feed him. She’ll be here in a few minutes. He’ll be okay until then.”

  Tamara fought against the handcuffs, trying to slide them down the guardrail so she would be able to get closer to the baby to try to quiet him.

  “Please!” she insisted. “Please pick it up and try to stop it. Just… just anything. Put your hand over its mouth. Make it stop.”

  He looked at her, his expression serious. “You need to lie back down. With your head up where it belongs. No more moving around. Just stay still.”

  “Then will you pick it up? Its crying is so loud!”

  “He’s a baby, they cry. I’ve heard louder!”

  He waited for her to get back into position and then looked over at the crying baby in the bassinet. “Babies are not in my pay grade.”

  “Please, just do it. Just this once.”

  “Just this once? You think that he’s only going to cry once during the night?”

  “Please…”

  Anderson went over to the bassinet and slid his fingers under the crying baby, supporting its huge, heavy head and bringing it up gently to his shoulder, trying to find a place between buttons and insignia where nothing would scratch his tender skin. The baby’s cries quieted and he rooted around, looking for milk. Tamara watched, terrified he was going to start crying again. Anderson patted him lightly on the back and jiggled, trying to keep him calm. “Dinner is coming, little guy. Won’t be much longer now. The nurse is getting you a nice warm bottle and then you’ll be happy.”

  Tamara couldn’t pull her eyes away from him. “Do you have kids?”

  “Yes. Three boys.” A smile that she had never seen before crossed his face, thinking about his little family.

  “Wow. Three boys. How old?”

  “Four, two, and three months. Two in diapers. They keep us busy.”

  Three children. Tamara had been run off her feet taking care of two. What if his wife decided that she couldn’t manage three that little? Why had he made her pregnant three times so close together? Didn’t he understand how difficult it was? Didn’t he know what could happen if she got overwhelmed?

  “You should…”

  He looked up from the baby’s head to Tamara’s face. “What?”

  “I don’t know. That’s too many. You should give one of them to someone else. You shouldn’t make your wife deal with so much.”

  He raised his brows. “You don’t know anything about it. She loves being a mom and we could never give up any of our kids.” He shook his head. “People don’t just give their children away because they take time and energy to take care of.”

  The baby hiccupped and made noises, making a knot in Tamara’s stomach. Then the nurse finally got there with a small bottle for the baby.

  “Well, look at this,” she said with a smile. “How about I just give you the bottle and you take care of him?”

  Anderson carefully handed the baby to her. “I’m not actually supposed to be doing this.”

  “He would have been fine to wait for a few minutes.” The nurse cradled the baby and offered him the nipple, and he immediately started sucking as if his life depended on it. “You don’t need to worry about letting him cry.”

  “It wasn’t him I was worried about.”

  The nurse’s eyes went to Tamara. She didn’t know all of Tamara’s history, of course. She didn’t know what she was convicted of, or the details of her psychosis and delusions. “He would be just fine,” she told Tamara, drawing her words out as if she had to speak extra clearly to Tamara for her to understand. “You don’t need to worry about us not taking care of your little guy, Mom.”

  “I just don’t want it to cry,” Tamara snapped. “I can’t… I can’t stand listening to it cry.”

  The nurse’s expression hardened. She looked down into the baby’s face as she fed him. “Well, he’s a hungry little fellow. He’s got a good, strong suck.”

  Anderson looked at Tamara. “Why don’t you try to sleep now?” he suggested. “He’ll be quiet for a couple of hours now that he’s been fed. You need to get your sleep.”

  Tamara nodded. She closed her eyes and tried to relax.

  Mrs. Henson was allowed to visit Tamara in her hospital room. She sat a distance away as dictated by the guard. She talked to the baby in the bassinet, cooing over how sweet he was. “Isn’t he just perfect? Babies are such a miracle, they amaze me every time.”

  Tamara stared at the ceiling, doing her best to ignore it.

  “What do you think of him?” Mrs. Henson persisted.

  Tamara shook her head. “I don’t know why they made me have it. I’m not going to do anything. I’m not going to fall into their trap.”

  Mrs. Henson raised her eyebrows. Tamara recognized the signal that she was saying something she shouldn’t, and closed her mouth, lapsing into silence.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Sore and tired. Glad it’s out of me.” Tamara rubbed her belly, feeling the ropy scars she had torn there. They itched, and she had to be careful not to scratch them, worried she would peel away the skin. “You can hold it if you want.” She looked over at Sardis. “If he says it’s okay.”

  Sardis nodded. “Go ahead,” he agreed.

  Tamara watched Mrs. Henson closely as she slid her fingers under the baby and picked him up. He was starting to get restless and Tamara didn’t know how long it would be until the nurse got there with a bottle for him. Mrs. Henson knew all about babies and hopefully, she would be able to keep him quiet until then.

  “Hello, little boy,” Mrs. Henson murmured, gazing down at him with a gentle smile.

  Tamara wanted to tell her to watch out; to guard herself and be sure that she didn’t get trapped by him. Not to get pulled into whatever trap they were trying to lay for her.

  “Have you decided on a name? Or what you’re going to do?”

  “No. I don’t want to give it a name.” That might give it power over her. “And I don’t want it.”

  Mrs. Henson looked disappointed. “That’s really too bad. I was hoping that once you saw him, your feelings would be different. Few people can resist the pull of a newborn.”

  The knot in Tamara’s guts tightened. She felt sick watching Mrs. Henson with the baby. “Maybe you shouldn’t be holding it…”

  Mrs. Henson laughed. “It’s okay, Tamara. I didn’t mean it that way. He’s not going to do anything to me.”

  “We don’t know that. We don’t know what they’ve done to him. He could be some kind of mutant…”

  “He’s a perfectly lovely little baby. He’s not a mutant.”

  Mrs. Henson was still there, relaxed as she watched the baby and fed him his bottle, when the social worker finally showed her face. She was a narrow, stern-faced woman, who made no apology for being there a day late. She looked over the room.

  “I’m Mrs. Arbiter,” she introduced herself briskly, flicking the ID sleeve hanging at her neck. “So, this is the little fellow who has caused all of this fuss.” She looked the baby over. She was not pulled in by his glamour, Tamara was relieved to see, but remained dispassionate.

  Mrs. Henson looked up from the baby and smiled.

  “Oh, it’s you, Marion.” Mrs. Arbiter said with a note of surprise. She blinked, trying to work it out. “Tamara French isn’t one of your girls…?” She obviously knew that Tamara was in custody, so she wasn’t one of Mrs. Henson’s foster children.

  “Not right now,” Mrs. Henson said. “She was for a bit and I’m hoping that she will make parole in a couple of months and that we can swing things…”r />
  Mrs. Arbiter considered this. “Is she interested in keeping the baby, then? I was given to understand…”

  “No,” Tamara said strongly, trying to discourage all such talk. “I don’t want to see it again.”

  She saw a look pass between Mrs. Henson and Mrs. Arbiter.

  “She may feel differently after a while,” Mrs. Henson said. “I’ll explain later.”

  A small nod from Mrs. Arbiter. “Give me a call. And let me know if she makes parole and has a change of heart.”

  “Of course.” Mrs. Henson pulled the bottle out of the baby’s slack mouth and lifted him to her shoulder to burp him.

  They had a low conversation while Mrs. Henson finished up with the baby, talking about girls and babies they had both known and giving updates on them. Tamara waited, wondering if they would ever take the baby away, or if their plan were to wear her down with their chatter until she could no longer stand it.

  Finally, Mrs. Henson gave the sleeping baby a kiss on the forehead and nestled him into the baby carrier Mrs. Arbiter had brought with her.

  “Goodbye, little fellow. Maybe I’ll see you again…”

  Tamara breathed a long sigh of relief as the baby was finally taken out of her room. Mrs. Henson stayed in her seat, her expression distant. After a few minutes, she blinked and looked at Tamara.

  “You’re probably too tired right now, but we should talk about parole before long. You’re going to be up before the board again and they’ll want to know your plans.”

  “They’re not going to let me out,” Tamara said. “Would you let some dangerous psycho juvie out to terrorize the town? They’re not that stupid.”

  “I think things may change.” Mrs. Henson shifted and got up. “I should be getting on my way. They’ll be wanting to move you back to the facility.” She didn’t get any closer to Tamara’s bed, didn’t touch her or hug her before making her departure. “We’ll talk again soon, okay?”

  Tamara nodded. “Okay. See you.”

  Mrs. Henson gave a little wave, and was gone.

  33

  TAMARA WOKE UP and rubbed her eyes, lying in bed and listening to the sounds of the unit around her. There was yelling down the hall; Brinkley, Tamara thought, still having problems despite all of her med changes.

  She ran through the events of the previous few days in her mind, rubbing a belly that was returning to its former shape much more slowly than she would have liked. It wasn’t until she had reviewed everything up to her release from the hospital and transfer back to juvie that Tamara realized she had been able to hold the timeline in her head without anything shifting. She sat up slowly, stretching her mind further back, to recall the previous months’ events, again with no disorienting changes or confusion.

  When the nurse came around with Tamara’s breakfast, she found the inmate ready and waiting for her.

  “Can I get an appointment with Dr. Sutherland? I think… I want to talk to him.”

  “I’ll put in a request,” the nurse agreed. She handed Tamara her breakfast tray. Tamara took the piece of toast and considered the rest of her breakfast, hungry instead of nauseated, for once.

  “Can I wait until after I see him to take my meds?”

  The nurse frowned at her. “Why?”

  “I don’t think I need them anymore. If he says to keep taking them, I will,” she added hurriedly. “I’m not saying I won’t, just that… I want to talk to Dr. Sutherland first.”

  “I have no idea when you’re going to be able to get in to see him. So no, you’re going to have to take them now. You have to come off of anti-psychotics slowly, anyway, so even if Dr. Sutherland decided you didn’t need them anymore,” the nurse’s expression clearly indicated that she thought this a very long shot, “he wouldn’t let you just stop taking them today. They have to be reduced gradually.”

  She handed Tamara the little cup of pills. Tamara took it and downed them, showing that she wasn’t going to argue or be hard to get along with. The nurse scowled, apparently not impressed. “Let me see your hands.”

  Tamara displayed empty hands.

  “And your mouth.”

  Tamara opened her mouth, stuck out her tongue, pulled out each cheek, and swiped a finger around the inside of each cheek, demonstrating that she had, in fact, swallowed the pills rather than cheeking them.

  “Okay,” the nurse agreed grudgingly. “I’ll set something up with Dr. Sutherland and he can decide what changes need to be made.”

  “Why don’t you tell me how you feel about your baby, now?” Dr. Sutherland inquired, folding his hands on his desk and looking at Tamara with piercing eyes.

  Tamara shifted uncomfortably in the chair. Still on her cocktail of meds, she was restless, but tried to sit still and prove to Dr. Sutherland that she was perfectly lucid and the meds could be dropped.

  “I don’t know…” she said honestly. “I don’t believe that he is a monster implanted in me by the administration…”

  Sutherland smiled. “Well, that’s progress.”

  “But I don’t… I don’t feel anything for him. I mean, like a mother should feel about her baby. I just don’t know…”

  “You didn’t really have the opportunity to bond, so I wouldn’t expect you to have strong maternal feelings for him.”

  “No?” His words gave Tamara some measure of relief. Maybe she didn’t need to feel like a bad person for not having warm feelings for her baby. “I don’t know how I’d feel if I saw him now. I wouldn’t think he was an alien or monster… but… I don’t know…”

  “It isn’t like you planned the pregnancy or that it was a happy surprise.”

  “It screwed me up pretty bad.”

  “Do you blame the baby for what you went through?”

  Tamara scratched the knee of her uniform and didn’t answer immediately. “I think… I can blame the pregnancy hormones or whatever, and not blame him. I know it’s not his fault, because it happened once before.” She paused, waiting for the paranoid theories to start flooding into her brain. That maybe this was the second time they had implanted this creature into her… but she was able to think it through logically and not spin off into conspiracies. She took a breath and listened to the beating of her heart, calm instead of erratic and trying to pound its way out of her chest.

  “You are doing well,” Dr. Sutherland said, nodding slowly. “You’re much calmer.”

  Tamara nodded. “I can think. And not be scared and angry all the time. It’s like…” she massaged her temples with her index fingers, “like I’ve got my own brain back again.”

  “We’re going to need to watch for any warning signs. You obviously have a propensity for psychosis. Things other than pregnancy may trigger it. Stress, illness, sleep deprivation… We may find that you still need a low dose antipsychotic just to ensure your stability. We’ll dial it back slowly.”

  Tamara nodded. Even though she wanted to be off of the meds that made her so tired and restless, she didn’t want to take the chance of sliding back into that sinkhole.

  “You’re lucky,” Dr. Sutherland said. “Most people with psychosis don’t get to ‘go back’ to what they were like before. They might get relief through medications but, as you’ve found, medications have their own set of problems.”

  “Yeah.” Dr. Sutherland was right about her being one of the lucky ones. She knew how it had felt, thinking that she would never be able to be well again. “I just hope… it stays that way. Not like some of the girls who keep coming back to Forensic.”

  “One day at a time,” Dr. Sutherland advised. “And although the delusions seem to be subsiding, you may still have other issues. Mood. PTSD.” He shrugged. “We’ll just have to take it slow and pay attention.”

  “Okay.”

  “That means you need to let me know what’s going on in there.” Dr. Sutherland tapped his own head with one finger. “You have always played it pretty close to the vest.”

  Tamara’s face warmed and she looked down at her feet.
“Yeah. I know.”

  “It shouldn’t take having a complete breakdown for us to know there’s a problem.”

  For her transfer back to General Population, Tamara had to put up with the full shackles and chains, in spite of the fact that she wasn’t leaving the prison grounds, but only being walked from one building to another. Burgess was the one to get her all locked up, and Tamara was pleased to see that the guard from General who had come to escort her back was Zobel.

  “Hey,” she greeted softly, unsure of how to talk to him after all of the messes he had seen her through.

  “French,” Zobel’s voice was clipped. “I assume you aren’t going to cause me any problems this time.”

  Tamara opened her mouth, surprised by his manner. Zobel gave her a quick grin to reassure her.

  “Oh. No, no trouble,” Tamara agreed.

  He made a show of checking all of the chains and locks, then nodded at Burgess. “I’ll take her from here.”

  He led her from the building and across the compound. “Glad to be coming home?”

  Tamara took a deep breath of the cool morning air.

  “Yeah. I guess I am. But it’s going to be weird after Forensic.”

  “I imagine you’ll get a little attention from the others, until you’re settled back in again.”

  Tamara thought back to the gangs, the posturing, the politics of the unit, and sighed. “Yeah. I guess so.”

  “Well, just take it easy. Don’t overreact. It will pass.”

  Tamara gave a little laugh. “Are you saying don’t flip the breakfast table into Lewis’s lap?”

  Zobel chuckled. “Nice to have you back. Yeah. Little things like that tend to inflame the situation. Lewis is gone, by the way.”

  Tamara turned her head to read his face. “Killed? Transferred?”

  “Released. Finished out her sentence. So she won’t be gunning for you.”