Operation Baby Rescue

by Beth Cornelison

  “Just…be careful. Call me when you’re done.”

  She could hear Isabel babbling in the background, and she felt a little catch in her chest. She drew a deep breath for courage and gathered her purse and camera bag from the seat beside her. “I will.”

  After locking her car, Elise stowed her keys in her purse and strode toward the front door, buffeted by a cool autumn wind. The volunteer at the information desk directed her to the office of the hospital administrator, George Bircham. The silver-haired man, who wore a suit that looked like he’d owned it since the 1970s, greeted her warmly and conducted the first several minutes of the tour himself. They’d visited the pediatric hall and the radiology lab first, while Elise clicked pictures and scribbled notes. Next, Mr. Bircham led her to the E.R. A shiver chased down her spine as she remembered entering the emergency room months ago, doubled over in pain as her contractions peaked. From the E.R., she’d been rushed upstairs to Labor and Delivery just in time for Grace’s arrival.

  “And unlike big-city hospitals where you may wait hours to be seen, our emergency-care department boasts an average wait of only eleven minutes!” the administrator bragged as his pager sounded. “I’m sorry, Ms. Norris. I have to answer this call.” He flagged down a nurse who was leaving the cafeteria. “You work in Labor and Delivery, don’t you?”

  When the nurse nodded, Bircham introduced Elise and asked the nurse to show her around, let her take pictures and answer her questions.

  “Thank you for your time,” Elise said, shaking his hand then falling in step behind the nurse whose name tag identified her as Cheryl Watts.

  Elise wiped sweat from her palms on her slacks as they rode the elevator to the second floor. When they reached Labor and Delivery, Cheryl led her to the nurses’ station and introduced her to the nurses there. Elise snapped a couple pictures and asked a few innocuous questions to make the nurses feel more comfortable.

  “What’s going on here?” a male voice asked from behind her.

  Her pulse jumped, and she nearly knocked over the coffee of one of the nurses as she spun to face the man in scrubs. Dr. Arrimand.

  Would he recognize her? Remember her name?

  Shoving down the swirl of nerves that danced through her, she stuck her hand out and pasted on a bright smile. “Elise Norris from the Lagniappe Herald. Mr. Bircham has granted me permission to photograph the behind-the-scenes operation here at Pine Mill for a feature article and photo spread about small-town hospitals.”

  He shook her hand and eyed her camera. “Bircham approved this?”

  “Yes. I think he saw it as good promotion for the hospital. I’m planning a day-in-the-life piece.”

  The doctor lifted an eyebrow as if intrigued.

  “I’d love to interview you for the article,” she said as inspiration struck. Could she get any valuable information from him without arousing suspicion? She’d have to be careful, cagey.

  “Dr. Arrimand, we’re ready for you in delivery two.”

  Elise recognized the nurse who’d arrived to summon the doctor and flashed back to the minutes after Grace was born. She was the woman who’d injected her with the drug that had put her to sleep after only a brief time with Grace. When the nurse glanced toward Elise, the woman did a double take and frowned.

  “On my way,” Dr. Arrimand said. “I have to go now, but I can give you about ten minutes in around an hour.”

  “That’s terrific. Thank you.”

  He started to walk away then turned back and aimed a finger at her. “I expect you to respect the patients’ privacy. No pictures without their permission. Understand?”

  “Absolutely.” She could barely contain her relief as she watched him march down the hall. An interview with Dr. Arrimand was the next best thing to…

  Her breath caught, and she hurried down the hall after the doctor. “Dr. Arrimand, wait!”

  He paused and sent her an irritated look as she caught up to him. “I’d like to go into the delivery with you.” Seeing a refusal coming from the darkening of his expression, she rushed on to explain, “The birth of a baby is so symbolic. I want to show how the hospital is there for the community from the beginning of life until the end and at major milestones along the way. I’ll get the mother’s permission, of course, and use the utmost professionalism and discretion in the angles I shoot.”

  “Dr. Arrimand!” the delivery-room nurse called from down the hall. She held a surgical gown out ready for the doctor to slip into.

  “All right,” he said, trotting away.

  Elise followed at a jog, but was stopped at the door by the nurse. “You’ll need sterile garb if you’re coming in. The kits are on that shelf.”

  Finding the sterile coverings, Elise hastily donned the gown, shoe and hair covers, and a pair of latex gloves. When she entered the delivery room, the bright lights and antiseptic smell hit her with a cascade of memories. A tremor rose from deep in her core, and she fought the urge to flee.

  The husband of the woman giving birth gave her a curious look. “What’s with the camera?”

  Seizing on the distraction and recalled to her reason for being there, she introduced herself and gave a quick summary of what she wanted to photograph. The couple agreed, and Elise began snapping pictures from the head of the bed.

  Elise caught the moment Dr. Arrimand held the baby boy up for the couple to see for the first time and the moment the delivery nurse placed the swaddled infant in the mother’s arms. Her hand trembled so badly as she photographed the family bonding that she was sure the pictures would be too blurry to use. Tears puddled in her eyes when the father bent to press a kiss on his new son’s head.

  She swallowed hard to clear the knot of emotion clogging her throat.

  Oh, Grace, what happened to you?

  “Congratulations.” Her voice sounded choked as she set the camera aside and took out her notebook. “Do you have a name picked out?”

  “Dillon Charles,” the woman said, beaming proudly at the boy.

  As Elise scribbled the name in her notes, the delivery nurse nudged her out of the way.

  “Mom needs to rest, and we need to finish cleaning him up and give him a thorough health screening.”

  Elise held her breath, waiting to see if the mother was injected with any drugs. She watched as baby Dillon was passed to another nurse who placed a hospital ID on his ankle and laid him carefully in a clear bassinet labeled Baby Boy Thompson. Still no injection had been given to the mother. Elise was torn whether to follow the baby as he was rolled out of delivery to the nursery or stay with the mother to see what happened to her.

  “When will the pictures be in the paper?” Dillon’s father asked. “We want to be sure to get a copy…or ten.”

  Deciding what happened to the baby was the key to learning anything that would help find Grace, Elise backed toward the door, trying to keep the nurse with the baby in sight. “Uh…next weekend, I think. I—” She stepped into the hall in time to see the baby wheeled into the last room at the end of the corridor. “Thank you,” she said in a rush, “for sharing your special moment with me…and our readers. I… Good luck.”

  She gave a little wave to the couple and hustled down the hall to the nursery. Through the plate glass window, she spotted the nurse unwrapping Dillon, carefully wiping him clean, and fitting him with a tiny diaper and blue cap. Next, she listened to his heart and lungs, and Elise clicked a few pictures through the glass. Lowering the camera, she watched the rest of the procedure until Dillon was returned to his bassinet and rolled into place next to the other babies. She chewed her lower lip with a strange sense of disappointment gnawing at her. Had she really been hoping to witness and document some egregious flaw in the delivery process? She would never want another baby placed in jeopardy the way Grace might have been, but how was she supposed to prove something was amiss at this hospital when everything she’d seen today seemed on the up-and-up?

  She checked her watch and saw she had several minutes before her m
eeting with Dr. Arrimand, enough time to visit the morgue and ask a few questions. A chill shimmied through her. She dreaded the idea of seeing the morgue, but if her article was truly to cover the hospital’s role in both the start and end of a person’s life, a few pictures in the morgue were needed.

  The coroner on duty, who introduced himself as Dr. Galloway, explained to her how he processed a body and which ones required an autopsy.

  Clutching her pen so hard she thought it might break, Elise took notes on what he said. “Wh—what about babies? Are they handled any differently?”

  The coroner gave her a sad smile. “Babies are always sad cases, but no, they are treated the same as any other body we receive. Fortunately, the babies are few and far between. When we do get a child of any age, they stand out. That’s a hard day at work.”

  “Can you tell me how many babies, newborns, you’ve had in the last two years?”

  Dr. Galloway gave her an odd look, and she had to admit her question must have sounded morbid. “Only one or two off the top of my head. But Dr. Hambrick, the other coroner who works here, might have worked a case like that. Is it relevant to your article? I can look it up in our records if it’s important.”

  Elise’s nerves jangled, and she clutched her notepad against her chest like a shield. “Yes, please. I would like know.”

  He stepped over to a computer and logged in. “All babies or just newborns?”

  “Just newborns.” She bit her bottom lip as he scrolled through his records and sorted and filtered the information.

  “Let’s see…” He bent over the keyboard to study the results on his monitor. “In the last two years, we handled five babies that were less than a week old.”

  “Five?” Elise moved behind him to look over his shoulder at the screen. “Isn’t that a lot?”

  Dr. Galloway shrugged. “One seems like a lot to me.”

  “True.”

  He pointed to the monitor. “First one was stillborn, no autopsy run. The next three were significantly premature. No autopsies. And the last one…jeez, a one-week-old baby. Autopsy showed he died of shaken-baby syndrome.”

  Elise gasped. “How horrible!”

  The coroner nodded. “I remember the case. The new mother was drunk at the time and couldn’t get the baby to stop crying. Shook him so hard it caused brain damage and death. Dr. Hambrick had to testify at her trial. So sad.”

  Elise frowned. Where was Grace’s record? “Are you sure that’s all? Just those five?”

  “Just those five?” He gave her a speculative glance. “A minute ago you said five was a lot.”

  “Well, it is…but…I just thought maybe…well, could that record be incomplete?”

  “It’s updated in real time. That’s all the newborns under a week old that we handled.”

  Elise’s head spun, and her knees shook so hard she had to sit down. The morgue had no record of Grace, with or without an autopsy. Was that more evidence the hospital had lied to her? Had given her false information about an autopsy being performed on Grace?

  “Are you all right, ma’am?” Dr. Galloway narrowed a concerned look on her. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Oh, I…I just felt dizzy for a minute. I skipped lunch and…” Her voice trailed off as a new thought occurred to her.

  Did the lack of a record on Grace support Mystery-Mom’s theory that Grace was alive somewhere? Her pulse sped up, and a bubble of hope swelled in her chest.

  “Can you print that page for me?”

  He hesitated. “I’m not sure I—”

  “Are you familiar with the Freedom of Information Act? By law, the public has a right to public records, including—”

  He held up a hand to stop her. “But personal medical records are, by law, private. Since these records show only statistics, however, I guess it’s okay. If you have a few minutes, I’ll get it for you, but our printer is out of paper.”

  She checked her watch. She was due in Dr. Arri mand’s office. “Can I stop back by and get it later? I’m interviewing Dr. Arrimand in just a few minutes.”

  Galloway’s eyebrows shot up. “You managed to get an interview with Joe Arrimand?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “He’s not usually the talkative sort. Keeps to himself, doesn’t socialize with the rest of the hospital staff much. And he’s as busy as a one-legged man at a butt-kicking contest.”

  Elise had to chuckle at his simile. “I wouldn’t have thought there were that many babies born here.”

  “Not just here. He also works at Crestview General and Clairmont Hospital.”

  Crestview. Where Kim had delivered her baby. A chill slithered through Elise as she processed the ramifications.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll bring the copies to you. I’m headed out to dinner soon, so I’ll stop by Dr. Arrimand’s office with it.”

  With a grateful smile, she thanked Dr. Galloway for his assistance and hurried back upstairs to her meeting with Dr. Arrimand. She forced the new questions that buzzed through her brain to a back burner. She didn’t need to be distracted or agitated as she interviewed Dr. Arrimand.

  As she rode the elevator from the basement to the second floor, she checked her camera and discovered her memory card was full. Popping the card from its slot, she tucked it in her pocket and found a new one in her camera bag. She’d just clicked the new memory card in place when the elevator slid open.

  Down the hall by the nursery’s viewing window, a small crowd had gathered, laughing and cooing. Dillion’s mother sat in a wheelchair in the middle of an adoring family, and his father received handshakes and slaps on the back.

  Elise shoved aside her envy of the joyous occasion and asked at the nurses’ station for directions to Dr. Arrimand’s office. The delivery nurse gave her a suspicious scowl, but Cheryl Watts escorted her down a back hall.

  The doctor, still in his scrubs, greeted her more cordially than he had earlier and waved her toward a chair across from him. “I trust you’re getting the information you need for your article, Ms. Norris. My staff tells me you’ve been taking lots of pictures.”

  “Well, photography is my first love and my regular assignment with the newspaper. But I was given special permission by my boss to write the accompanying article for this feature, as well, so that’s the reason behind all the questions. I want to knock my boss’s socks off, so that he’ll trust me to do more features like this in the future.”

  Dr. Arrimand chuckled. “That’s the spirit. How can I help you knock his socks off?”

  She flipped open her pad to a fresh page and tapped her pen on it, thinking. As she had with the hospital administrator, Elise decided to start with few simple questions to put him at ease. “Tell me your favorite thing about your job. I mean…it must be so inspiring to be able to witness the miracle of new life every day, to see the joy of the parents and family…”

  “Absolutely. That is the best part of the job.” He went on to talk about a few of his favorite patients, the birth of his own children and the reason he chose obstetrics as a career. She asked him about his choice to work in the small-town hospital versus a larger hospital like the ones in Shreveport, New Orleans or Lagniappe.

  “Well, I’m small-town born and raised. My father died when I was young, and my mother struggled to take care of us. We were as poor as dirt, but the town took care of us any way they could. I owe a lot to this town, and so in my own way, I’m paying back the folks who helped my family. Besides, I like living in Pine Mill, away from the crime and hustle and bustle.”

  Elise nodded, scribbling notes furiously. She furrowed her brow, debating the best way to phrase her next question. “Being a smaller hospital with less money, Pine Mill isn’t able to afford some of the emerging technology and equipment. Do you find it frustrating having limited resources?”

  He scoffed. “You make it sound like we’re backward and out of date.”

  “Let me clarify. In the labor-and-delivery department, you don�
��t have the critical-care facilities like St. Mary’s in Lagniappe.”

  He turned up a palm. “And St. Mary’s doesn’t have the cutting-edge facilities to treat childhood cancer the way St. Jude does, and the Mayo Clinic has better facilities than a lot of places.” He smiled. “There’s always going to be a dog on the block with a bigger bone or a better doghouse. We do the best we can with what we have. Our patients get top-notch care for a hospital our size.”

  Elise opted not to press the issue, despite his politician-like deflection. She didn’t want to raise undue suspicion about her hidden agenda. “Okay, we’ve talked about your favorite part of the job, helping bring babies into the world, but what about your least favorite?”

  He laughed heartily. “Oh, that’s easy. Paperwork.” He motioned to his messy desk. “As you see I’m a bit behind in that department.”

  A knock on the door saved her from an awkward reply.

  “Yes?” Dr. Arrimand called.

  The door opened, and the nurse from the delivery room entered. “I’m sorry to interrupt.” She cast a wary look toward Elise then hurried over to the doctor and bent at the waist to whisper in his ear.

  The doctor’s expression darkened, and he cut a quick, accusing look toward Elise. Had she not been watching the exchange with the nurse closely, she might have missed the telltale glance, but that brief sidelong glare told her she was the topic of the nurse’s secret.

  She sat forward in her chair, the nape of her neck tingling.

  “You’re sure?” Dr. Arrimand murmured in a low voice.

  His nurse gave a quick, almost imperceptible nod.

  “Okay, thank you, Helen.” He leaned back in his chair, silently dismissing the nurse, and he turned back to Elise. The doctor was no longer smiling.