Embryo 2: Crosshairs

by JA Schneider

  Chubbs disappeared, and out came two chickens. Pink-feathered chickens. Mad and squawking at Blair.

  “You’ve already had us out, we’re tired!” yawped one, while the other furiously peck-pecked at the front of Blair’s shirt. Again, to shrieks of joy, Blair wailed and writhed comically.

  Parents arriving to pick up their kids were laughing and smiling too, on the sidelines with beaming DeWitt.

  Jill stood in the rear, frozen, stunned by the chickens with little pink feathers. It took some seconds to start breathing again. Then, with shaking hands she got out her iPhone, snapped the chickens. Took some other pictures too, unable even to fake a smile, then stood just gripping her phone. She was very pale.

  One man noticed her lack of reaction. “Not funny?” he asked.

  That broke through her shock a little. “Oh, er, yes,” she said, not convincingly.

  His light-colored hair was thinning and he seemed about forty. He gave a weary smile.

  “This got our little guy away from wanting Xboxes like his cousin has.” He shook his head. “Imagine. Ventriloquism. I used to love it, but who’d have thought these kids would? It’s become such a gizmo age.” He paused, watching more hilarity as one of the attack chickens started yanking ferociously at one of Blair’s front buttons. More writhing and wailing. Evan did the same schtick over and over, and the kids loved it.

  The light-haired man seemed to want to talk. “It’s also nice seeing them enjoy it in groups. Video games are so solitary.”

  “That’s for sure,” Jill said, barely hearing herself. He seemed not to place her from TV or anything, just looked at her white coat over her scrubs and said, “We so love this hospital.” He shook his head again. “To think that our little guy started in a Petri dish. We’d given up hope.” Then he extended his hand. “My name is Steve Walker.”

  Jill shoved her pink feather into her left pocket, and greeted him. Came further out of her shock, and actually took notice of him. A faded preppie with a frayed button-down collar. He seemed distracted too, she realized. After they shook, she saw his gaze shift to…Trey Raphael, a few feet behind her, taping the show and the giggling kids. He taped a minute more - hopefully not noticing Jill photograph him too – and then clicked off.

  “Hi Trey,” Steve Walker called to him.

  “Hey, hi back.” Raphael faked jovial but looked uncomfortable.

  “Any second thoughts about buying back that photo you sold me? Half price, seriously.”

  Raphael raised his shoulders, shrugging. “I got hammered too. You know that,” he said, getting very busy with his camera.

  Steve Walker looked back to Jill, gave another tired smile. He spoke like a man with nothing to rush to.

  “My hedge fund went bust,” he said. “In better times, Trey was hot in the art world. I bought one of his photographs and paid too much.” He gestured as if to say, I’m an idiot. “The photo was pretty erotic, my wife hated it, but I thought it was an investment.” A pause. “What’s crazy is, I started out as an artist. Struggled for two years, gave up, went back to grad school thinking that was the sure track.” He rubbed his mouth unhappily. “Life sure plays its tricks. Trey and I both started out in the arts, and look at us now.”

  The giggles had lulled, and Trey despite his camera-busyness heard. He bent to pick up a red balloon, unhappily approached Steve Walker, and held it up.

  “Think I wanted to end up like this?” he said, waving the balloon. “A P.R. flunky photographing chickens?”

  Steve sighed. “You sold to a lot of hedge funders, bankers. Are you still selling from your web site?”

  “A trickle.”

  Steve Walker turned to Jill. “Have you seen TreyRaphael.com? Whew, that’s just the kosher stuff. He still-“

  “That’s enough, Steve.” Jill felt Trey’s warning glare in her direction, though she was pretending to watch the show. A piglet now, complaining about the establishment’s food. “Fit for pigs!” he squealed. Loud giggles, but not too loud to hear.

  Jill clicked a quick photo of Blair scowling at Haig; realized after she took it that Raphael was in it too, watching her.

  Near her, Steve Walker asked Raphael. “So…where’d yours all go?”

  “Down the drain,” Trey said low. He had stepped closer to Walker. “Tried to keep the gallery as long as I could, but hell, you guys stopped buying, and the rents in Soho…”

  Commotion up front. Evan Blair with a brief introduction was handing the puppets over to the orderly Sandy Haig, who already had Chubbs on his lap.

  After awkward fumbling: “And who might you be?” Chubbs said…or tried to say. But his wooden features didn’t move, and the voice was too thin and high. Jill remembered the orderly’s voice. He didn’t seem to know how to mimic the Chubbs voice the kids were used to.

  “I’ve come to rescue you from all this,” Haig told the puppet. “Move you to a condo.”

  Chubbs just sat…like a dummy. His mouth barely moved. His eyes didn’t open and close. His head finally swiveled - too far so it was almost backward, and some kid missing teeth yelled, “He lookth thtooopid!”

  The giggling stopped. Kids lost interest, got up in the unknowingly rude way of children and started to move away, to parents who were already there or arriving, or back to balloons and the noisy Bounce House.

  Haig found himself sitting alone behind the black-draped box. He looked humiliated; an unmoving, slack-jawed dummy himself in the widening, empty circle around him. DeWitt, smiling and waving bye to parents, went sympathetically to him and patted his shoulder, assuring him that he was “getting better.”

  Blair came to stand over him looking less sympathetic. Was giving him an earful as Jill came up to them; heard the orderly tell Blair helplessly, “I’m trying.”

  “Try harder,” Blair snapped. “It’s all in the head levers. I showed you how to work them, even wrote a script for you. Listen, you said you wanted to do this.”

  “I do. I’ve been practicing.”

  “Practice harder. And work on your voice. It’s too high and timid.” Haig reddened painfully. Blair bent to pick up puppets, reached to swipe away pink feathers on the rug. There weren’t many. Jill knelt to the rug to help; snuck a few feathers into her pocket with her heart beating hard.

  Photograph the rug? No, she thought. It would look odd.

  Sandy Haig had Chubbs upside down and was peering inside his head, one hand fiddling with levers. Blair took the puppet from him, and he looked more hurt.

  “Listen,” he told Haig. “I can’t teach you anymore. I just don’t have the time.” He put Chubbs and the other puppets into a cubbyhole and closed its bright-painted door. No lock, Jill noticed.

  She also noticed Trey Raphael leaning against a wall, watching them all. What was the connection between these people...and the feathers? She was breathing fast and her mind whirled.

  Corinne DeWitt appeared with a dustpan and stiff brush to sweep the feathers. “Those chickens shed something awful,” she said, kneeling next to Jill. “The feathers stick to everything. See how they cling to the rug? Because they’re curled I guess, and the teeny quills attach…”

  “Where did they come from?” Jill asked. Her breath was shaky.

  “Donated, like most of the other puppets. A mother gave four of the chickens.” DeWitt shook her head as she vigorously brushed. “We’re down to just those two. Maybe kids snuck a couple home in their little backpacks? Honestly, you’d think the parents would notice and return them. Pink chickens were such a hit. We used to let the kids pet them. No more.”

  Blair suddenly re-entered Jill’s awareness. He was looking down at her, beaming. “Did you enjoy the show?” he asked.

  She glanced up and smiled at him, giving no sign that her heart was in her mouth. “Can’t tell you how much,” she said, smiling her thanks too at Sandy Haig as he headed out.

  She wanted to talk to him.

  “Thanks for inviting me,” she told Blair hurriedly. “I have to go now
.”

  20

  She followed him mostly because he’d been humiliated, had left looking so hurt. She also wanted to know about the connection between those people at the party.

  She caught up as Sandy Haig walked through the now empty Infant School.

  “Hey,” Jill said, feeling awkward, her heart still throbbing.

  “Hey back,” Haig said with a weak smile. He had a thin, sensitive face; was built well but with muscles that came not from a gym, but from lifting patients, pushing heavy gurneys.

  “Don’t mind Blair,” Jill told him. “He can be a bit of a turd.”

  Haig shrugged. “Problem is, I want to learn.”

  The blue-carpeted room was amazingly neat now, with every toy in its place. Two young women in the far corner knelt over a small screen, one trying to fix it, the other on her cell phone saying, “need batteries.” The double doors were closed. After the preschool clamor, the quiet here felt eerie.

  Haig shoved his hands in his scrub pockets. “Evan was nicer when he gave me a first lesson. He likes kids, offered to do his ventriloquism thing a couple of times, they loved it, so Mrs. DeWitt begged him to do more.”

  “But he can’t, right?” Jill said, swallowing. “No time because he’s both a night nurse and struggling through med school.”

  Haig nodded, shrugged. “So in a way I lucked out. Once on night duty, Blair said if I learned the puppet thing, I could do kids’ parties, earn like four hundred bucks in an afternoon…in two hours! I like working here, it’s a steady job, but I need extra money. That guy Raphael-“

  SQUEEK! Jill hadn’t looked where she was going and stepped on something.

  “Oh-h!” She jumped, her pulse rocketing.

  Haig bent and picked up a yellow rubber ducky. Frowned at it, then turned and tossed it into a bin of other shrieky rubber duckies.

  “Place is like a minefield,” he muttered, opening the door for Jill. They stepped into the hall.

  “Trey Raphael?” Jill prompted. “You know him?”

  “Met him through Blair.” Haig scratched his head. “No, actually through a nurse friend of mine, Kassie Doyle. She got us all talking one night, and it was Raphael who got the idea from Blair bragging about how much money he used to make doing kids’ parties. There’s still plenty of rich people out there.” A depressed sigh. “So Raphael asked me to do two shows last weekend while he taped…he makes the DVDs and sells ‘em…that’s where he makes extra money. Unfortunately the kids at those two parties were like” – Haig’s thumb jerked back down the hall – “in there. I bombed.”

  He looked down, grimly determined. “Trey was nice. Said he’d had other guys do worse, and he’d give me another chance if I got better at it, so I’m really trying.”

  “Nice of him,” Jill said, thinking, Blair and Raphael?

  They passed a messenger and two secretaries closing office doors.

  Jill was frowning. Raphael had struck her as a self-important narcissist, charming only when he wanted to be. And Sandy Haig really did bomb back there. He bombed badly, couldn’t even find the puppets’ head levers. That doesn’t take talent…

  At least Haig was easy to talk to, to question. His failure had been painful to him. He seemed to want to vent.

  Jill said, “So it was Kassie Doyle who got you all together?”

  “Yeah.” Haig had a habit of watching the floor as he walked. “She and I were on night duty, Trey was taping…something, and Blair was there too.”

  “I know Kassie Doyle,” Jill said. “She’s had back trouble.”

  “She’s had it bad. I live near her, brought her groceries and stuff when she was laid up.” Haig stopped at an elevator, pressed the button, looked up at the numbers. The elevator was several floors above.

  “Funny,” he said, still staring at the numbers, “how you can pass doctors and other people in the hospital a hundred times, but Kassie got us all talking. She’s like that, a good friend and mama hen to people. It’s Blair who can be mean.”

  The elevator numbers started to move. “Kassie’s covered his ass a lot,” Haig continued, glancing back at Jill. “Evan rushed through nurse training, then forgot stuff. She caught his mistakes, re-taught him. Once he even insulted her ‘cause she’s a few pounds overweight, and when he left she said, ‘He doesn’t mean it, he’s just stressed.’”

  He looked at the floor for a second, then glance up with a thin smile. “Thanks,” he said simply.

  “For what?” Jill looked at him.

  “For listening.”

  The elevator arrived, and he got on.

  Jill smiled sympathetically through the open doors. “Best of luck,” she said, then spoke in a rush. “Hey, you can do that ventriloquism. Maybe all it takes is a little loosening up - y’know, distracting the audience with jumping around and…like this.” She gestured flamboyantly.

  Personality, she wanted to say. Razzle dazzle showmanship…the stuff a guy like this just didn’t have.

  Haig smiled shyly. “I’ll try.” He looked down, gave a depressed little wave, and the elevator doors closed.

  Her head ached, trying to process everything she’d just seen and heard. She checked her phone messages. David, oh joy. She called him back. Smiled, just hearing his voice.

  “Woody suggested pizza in the E.R. lounge.” He sounded tired. “Six-thirty. Sound good?”

  Jill pulled in a deep, relieved, back-to-alive breath. “Yes, yes, yes…”

  “I’m guessing that’s a yes.”

  She was walking the hall again. “How’d your four hours go?”

  “Everybody’s okay. Delivered another kid who weighed nine pounds and was stubborn about leaving that nice, warm place. We’re all exhausted.”

  “So I guess you’re not up to accommodating a bunch of women who stormed the clinic wanting your baby?”

  David groaned.

  She laughed out loud. It felt so good. “Jim Holloway’s probably still be there. Would he like pizza too?”

  “He’s in, I already spoke to him. It’s Tricia’s turn to order and Jim’s to go meet the delivery guy.” A puzzled hesitation. “What do your mean there? Aren’t you still in the clinic?”

  “No. Long story. I’ll tell you when I see you.”

  David sounded too tired to process. “Okay. We gotta shower.”

  Between the clinic and scrabbling on the kids’ rug down here, Jill felt the same.

  “Me too. I’ll see you there.”

  “E.R. lounge, six-thirty. Hey, I’ve been missing you.”

  21

  Half an hour later Jill was there, in the E.R. lounge, sinking into a couch and pulling her long, still slightly wet hair into a ponytail. Before showering, she had switched her phone and her little collection of pink feathers to the pocket of new scrubs; thrown the old scrubs into the hamper.

  Tricia and Woody appeared five minutes later, then David and Sam.

  David called, “Incoming!” Slid onto the couch next to Jill, kissed her cheek, and slid down leaning on her.

  “I’ve got something to tell you,” she said quietly.

  “Lemme guess,” he mumbled. His eyes were closed. “Six deliveries just came in, ready to pop, urgent.”

  “No,” she whispered. The others were talking wearily about C-sections: big head, little mom. Today’s C-section kid sure was a Palooka…

  “Open your eyes, David.”

  He did. Peered at Jill sleepily, then followed her gaze to the fingers of her left hand. She was holding about six little pink feathers.

  He sat straighter, frowning.

  Low-voiced, she quickly filled him in on the puppet show. Pulled out her iPhone and showed him the pink chickens, Blair and Raphael; told him about the feathers on the rug…no lock on the puppet closet.

  “And one stuck to Lainey’s rapist’s ski mask,” he said softly.

  Woody, Tricia and Sam were tiredly arguing about the drug Ergotrate, and uterine contractions not happening as they should.

  �
��More later,” David whispered to Jill.

  She’d seen him notice the others’ curious glances as they whispered. Probably thought, give their tired brains a break, and droned a weary answer that she barely heard. Right, right, massage the uterus to make it contract…that shuts off blood vessels torn by the vacated placenta…then get the Ergotrate in fast. David was muttering as if he weren’t even hearing himself. “There are few things in this world that work,” he sighed, trying for a lighter tone, “but Ergotrate do.”

  General nodding, sinking lower in chairs, and a long moment of silence followed.

  Tricia, in an armchair, checked her watch.

  “Where’s Jim?” she wondered aloud.

  Woody said, “He’s waiting at the deliveries dock. Busy time, it takes longer.”

  Sam checked his watch too. “Probably a hundred orders driving in. They never let those guys past the entrance.”

  A surgical resident walked through, nodded pleasantly, made a quick trip to the bathroom, and left.

  More minutes passed. They muttered about delivery takeout vans clogging the separate mail and deliveries parking area. Maybe the hospital should open its own pizza place? Tricia suggested.

  Woody reminded her that delivery guys still wouldn’t be allowed past the entrances.

  “At least it would cure the traffic jam,” she said. “Good thing the FedEx trucks don’t come at the same time as takeout.”

  Jill was frowning. “This isn’t like Jim,” she said. “He would have come and said, Oh the guy’s stuck in a worse jam than usual. He would have come to say something.”

  David rose to his feet. “Just what I was thinking. I’m going to go check.”

  The same surgical resident came running back. “Someone’s been hurt. He’s one of your guys.”

  A nasty gash behind the ear. Bright blood soaked Jim’s hair and the back of his scrub top. But he was conscious; his pupils were round, equal, and reacted to light.

  “Guy came from nowhere,” he mumbled. “Ow, that hurts!”

  “Procaine,” said Woody standing over him. “Give it three seconds.”