by Mike Wells
The next second or so was filled with the smells, textures, and tastes of tire rubber and concrete.
And then...blackness.
* * *
Neal awoke in the bed with a start.
He sat up, gazing out into the darkness. His mind felt like mush. What time was it? What day was it?
His foot was throbbing...and his shoulder...
Neal remembered the note on the refrigerator, then peered over at the door to the living room. It was open, but the entire apartment was dark.
Where the hell were his wife and daughter?
Gritting his teeth in pain, Neal eased himself out of bed and fumbled around in the blackness until he found the light switch. His foot throbbed as if about to explode.
“Annie?” he called out into the living room, thinking maybe she and Natasha were asleep on the couch. But he could see that they weren’t there.
Neal sighed miserably. His mind was still a little fuzzy from the pain killers, but most of the effects had worn off. He turned around and peered across the room, at the night stand. The clock said 11:38.
“Damn,” he muttered, holding his hand to his dully-aching head. He hadn’t meant to sleep so long.
Then noticed something else—the phone was off the hook.
Maybe something had happened to Annie and Natasha. With the phone off the hook, nobody could get through...
Feeling a groggy sort of panic, Neal limped back across the room and clumsily placed the receiver back in its cradle. As he did this, he noticed something else...things were missing from the room. All of Natasha’s toys were gone. The fish-mobile above her crib, some pictures of Natasha that were on the dresser, Annie’s small library of baby books...
Maybe someone had broken in...
Annie left you a note, Neal. Remember? She went to the grocery store.
The phone rang.
Neal turned and stared at it, confused. With an unexplainable sense of dread, he slowly reached for the receiver.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Neal limped through the main entrance of the Sandy Springs hospital, almost unaware of the pain in his foot, and asked where intensive care was located.
“Sixth floor,” a nurse told him.
Neal limped down the long hallway in a semi-daze, feeling as if he were still dreaming. The bright fluorescent lights and white uniforms and wheelchairs and medicinal smells made him only think of catastrophe and death. Why hadn’t he noticed that the phone was off the hook before he had fallen asleep? The hospital had been trying to call him since six o’clock, when the ambulance had arrived at the emergency room.
He stepped onto the elevator and punched the “6” button, then leaned against the panel to give his foot a rest. At least Natasha was all right, that much he knew. But they would only say that Annie was in a “guarded” condition and that he should come to the hospital right away. The doctor in charge of her would give him more details, they said.
When the elevator doors finally opened, Neal limped out onto the sixth floor, now painfully aware of his own injury. He nearly bumped into an attendant who was pulling an IV cart down the hall.
“My wife’s in here somewhere,” Neal said, “and I don’t know which—”
“Nurse’s station,” the man said sharply. He continued on his way, the IV rattling behind him.
Neal limped down hallway and stopped in front of a desk where three nurses were sitting, one talking on the phone and the other two fussing with file folders.
“I need to know where my wife is,” Neal said. “And my baby daughter.”
One of the file-folder shufflers looked up at him. “The name?”
“Becker,” Neal said, trying to keep his voice even. “Ann Crawford Becker.”
The nurse glanced at a piece of paper in front of her. “Your wife’s in 623. Your daughter...” The nurse ran her finger down the list. “Are you sure she’s in intensive care?”
“No, there’s nothing wrong with her. At least that’s what somebody told me on the pho—”
“Your daughter’s fine,” the nurse on the phone said, covering the mouthpiece. “She’s in the nursery, on the fourth floor. Carla, call down there and have someone bring her up here.” She looked back at Neal and motioned down the hallway. “Room 623 is down at the first corner.”
Neal nodded. Now, all three of the nurses were looking at him. No, they weren’t looking at him, they were gawking at him.
“Are you feeling all right, Mr. Becker?” the nurse named Carla asked.
“I’m fine.” Neal wiped his forehead self-consciously. He had been sweating like racehorse ever since he had awoken from his long nap. “Where’s the room?”
The nurses exchanged glances with each other.
“Right down that way,” the nurse on the phone repeated, “at the first corner.”
“Thanks.”
Neal turned and began to limp down the hallway, aware of the three sets of eyes on his back. When he reached Room 623, he peered through the doorway and swallowed hard. Someone was under an oxygen tent. There was so much gauze around the person’s head it looked like it might have belonged to a mummy. The eyes were the only part of the face that were visible.
They were both shut—and blackened.
Neal hobbled into the room, aware of the soft hissing and beeping of the machines that surrounded whoever was laying in the bed. With a sinking feeling, Neal admitted to himself that it had to be Annie—there was no one else in the room.
Neal approached his wife with trepidation. She was as motionless as a corpse. He slowly reached out and took her cold fingers in his hand.
“Are you Mr. Becker?”
Neal turned partially around—a pudgy nurse had just glided into the room.
“Yes,” Neal said blankly.
“We’re glad to see you. I’ll go find the doctor who’s—”
“I’m right here,” a male voice said. A middle-aged man came through the door, tall and wearing a pair of teardrop-shaped glasses.
“I’m Dr. Rayson,” he said, offering Neal his hand.
Neal let go of Annie’s fingers and shook Rayson’s hand.
“Your baby’s just fine.”
“Where is she?” Neal said, then remembered that one of the nurses had already told him.
“Down in pediatrics, in the nursery. Somebody’s on the way up here with her right now. After we looked her over in the ER, we sent her up there to make sure she was okay, but there wasn’t much doubt about it. The car was only traveling about ten miles an hour, backwards, and your daughter was strapped into her car seat. The impact was negligible.”
“Backwards?” Neal said, glancing back at Annie’s unconscious face. “What happened, anyway? Is she going to be all right?”
The doctor avoided the second question. “Apparently, your wife was buying something in a store, a mini-market on Windy Hill Road, I think it was, and she left your daughter in the car. It either slipped out of park by itself, or your wife forgot to put it in park. I don’t think the police know for sure.”
Neal shook his head slowly. “She would never forget to put it in park, not with Natasha in the car.”
The doctor nodded, but the doubt on his face was obvious.
“She wouldn’t forget,” Neal said defensively. “She was—I mean, is—a fanatic about taking care of that baby.” Neal was appalled that he had accidentally spoken of Annie in the past tense, as if she were already...
Neal glanced at Annie and then looked back at Dr. Rayson. “What happened to my wife? I don’t understand. Is she going to be all right?”
The doctor and nurse exchanged glances.
“It’s hard to say at this point,” Rayson said. “It’s always touch-and-go in cases like this. She sustained a severe concussion, but there don’t seem to be any serious problems associated with it at this point. With a little luck, she ought to come around in a few hours. Of course, she won’t be back on her feet again for a while.” The doctor picked up he
r chart and read from it. “Three broken ribs, a fractured hip, a broken wrist, and various other contusions.”
Neal winced. “But...I still don’t understand what happened to her. I thought you said she was inside the store.”
“She ran out and tried to stop the car from rolling backwards. According to the police, she got caught between it and another vehicle, a pick-up truck, I think it was, when she was trying to get the door open.”
The visual image this description conjured up in Neal’s mind made his head start spinning. Next, the room started spinning.
“Hey,” he heard the doctor say, as if from a long tunnel.
Neal felt a strong set of hands supporting him. A moment later, he found himself sitting in a chair next to Annie’s bed.
“You almost passed out on me, friend,” the doctor said.
Neal looked up at him. “What?”
The doctor was peering at his foot. “What happened here?”
“Nothing, really. I...stepped on something, that’s all.”
Dr. Rayson looked puzzled.
“Something sharp,” Neal added.
“Let me have a look at it.” Rayson squatted in front of him, but Neal hardly noticed. He was preoccupied with how Annie’s car had come out of gear. And what about the emergency brake? There was no way Neal could believe that Annie could forget to put the car in park, let alone forget to put on the emergency brake. Not with the baby in the car. No way.
“Are you sure no one jumped into the car and tried to steal it?” Neal asked, as Rayson carefully removed Neal’s sock.
“I’m pretty sure. We wondered the same thing. But there were several witnesses at the store—the car just started rolling on its own.”
“On its own,” Neal mumbled. If Annie didn’t leave the car out of park and the emergency brake off, and nobody had tried to steal it, then the car had just magically started moving on its own...
Or...
“Here she is!”
A slender, brown-haired nurse had just entered the room, carrying Natasha in her arms. An orderly was on her heels, lugging the car seat with him. He set it on the floor, at the foot of the bed, and sauntered back out of the room.
“You’ve got a serious infection, friend,” the doctor said.
Neal looked back down at his foot. Dr. Rayson gently turned it sideways, so Neal had a better view. “Those red streaks on your ankle...it’s not a good sign.”
“Oh, shit,” Neal muttered.
“Yeah,” the doctor said sympathetically. “Are you on any antibiotics?”
“No.” Neal glanced at Natasha, who was still in the nurse’s arms. She was wearing the orange jumper that Annie’s mother had made. Her little eyes were open, staring at him. There seemed to be a smile on her face.
“You need to be put on something immediately,” Rayson said, “before this infection gets any worse.” He motioned to the pudgy nurse. “Get a wheelchair and take Mr. Becker down to ER.” The doctor turned back to Neal. “They’ll fix you up down there, and then you can take your daughter home.”
“Who...me?” Neal said.
The doctor and the nurses exchanged glances.
“Yes, you. You are the baby’s father, aren’t you?”
Neal looked at Natasha, at the smile on her little face. “Yeah, but...”
They were all watching Neal with interest, waiting for him to continue..
“I...I mean, my foot. How can I take care of her with an infected foot?”
The doctor sighed. “You’re not dying, Mr. Becker. After you’re on antibiotics, you just need to stay off your feet as much as possible, keep your right leg elevated. But you can certainly stand up long enough to heat formula and change diapers.”
Neal groped for some other excuse. The last thing he wanted was to be left alone with Natasha.
The nurse who was holding the baby said, in a soft voice, “Is there anyone who can help you out? Your mother, sister, somebody?”
There was a page over the intercom for what sounded like “Dr. Rayson.”
The doctor glanced in the direction of the hallway, then looked back at Neal. “Well? Is there?”
Neal did a quick inventory of anyone who might be able take Annie off his hands. But he drew a blank. Neal’s own mother was out of the question—he couldn’t ask her to come all the way from Louisville. And his sister lived in Detroit. Except for Annie’s mother, that was it.
Dr. Rayson turned impatiently to the nurse who was holding Natasha. “Did you get a hold of the grandmother yet?”
“No, doctor, she’s still not answering.” The slender, soft-spoken woman had moved a little closer and Neal could read her name tag—SUSAN MATLOW, it said.
“Well, keep trying to call her.”
Neal wasn’t surprised they couldn’t reach Annie’s mother. She was never home, always running around with one of her boyfriends.
The doctor looked at Neal. “You don’t have any idea where your mother-in-law might be, do you?”
Neal shook his head, though he was distracted by Natasha. The baby was watching him intently. The smile on her face seemed to be widening.
“Can’t she just stay here for a few days?” Neal blurted. He looked pleadingly from one face to another.
Susan gave Dr. Rayson a hopeful glance. She seemed to have already formed an attachment to the baby.
“I’m afraid not,” Rayson told Neal. “Your daughter’s in perfectly good health. It’s against the rules, not to mention the fact that we’re completely full as it is.”
“It will just be for a couple of days,” Neal said, panicking, “maybe just one day. Just until you can find Annie’s mother.”
Susan said, “We do have enough room in the nursery at the moment, doctor.”
Rayson whirled around to her. “Dammit, Susan, you know better than that! This isn’t a day care center, it’s a hospital.”
“Sorry, doctor.”
There was another page for him over the intercom. A second later, an out-of-breath nurse poked her head in the door. “Doctor Rayson, you’re needed in 604, stat!”
“Allright, allright.” Rayson stood up and spoke quickly to Neal, as if irritated by the entire situation. “You’re just going to have to wing it, Mr. Becker. We’ll look after your baby while you go downstairs and have your foot treated, but after that, you’re going to have to take her home.” He paused and looked at Annie, then turned back to Neal. “There’s no point in you staying here—we’ll call you as soon as your wife comes around.”
Neal stared at Natasha, fear coiling up inside him like a dark, slick snake. She wiggled her legs and arms happily, as if she was looking forward to being all alone with Daddy.
Dr. Rayson took two steps towards the door, but turned back to Neal.
“You do know how to take care of a baby, don’t you?”
The eyes of all the medical personnel focused on Neal’s face.
“Well, sure,” Neal said, trying to hide his uncertainty. “Of course I know how.”
CHAPTER 8
It took Neal a good ten minutes to strap the baby seat into the passenger seat of his car. He and Annie and Natasha hadn’t been on many happy little family outings together, and he didn’t have much experience with the device. He was glad that the orderly who had wheeled Natasha and him out to the car had gone back inside the building and wasn’t watching the struggle.
During this lengthy process, Neal avoided looking at Natasha’s face. She had fallen asleep, but he had a gnawing fear that her eyes would pop open and she would say...well, he didn’t know what she might say. The thought of her speaking at all terrified him.
When he finally finished strapping her in, he went around to the back of the car and tossed the two crutches the nurse in the emergency room had given him into the trunk, along with his unused right sneaker. The nurse had done a good job bandaging up his foot, but there was now no way he could put his sneaker on. It didn’t matter—he could drive just as well shoeless.
; It was a depressing night, a cold drizzle falling from the sky. His battle with Natasha’s car seat had gotten him breathing hard, and this had made all the windows to fog up. He started the engine and let it idle for a moment, waiting for the defroster to clear the moisture enough so that he could see through the windshield.
He would not look at Natasha. Instead, he tried to concentrate on the things he would have to do in order to care for the baby until they could track down Annie’s mother. Surely the unpleasant woman would come home tomorrow. Unless she was out for the whole weekend with Dan or Doug or whatever the guy’s name was that she was currently banging. Paula Crawford was trash, as far as Neal was concerned. She cared more about her own sexual escapades than she did about her daughter and granddaughter.
When Neal and Annie had decided to get married, Annie had invited her mother to come down to Atlanta—less than a two hour drive—to celebrate. But Paula had refused because Charlie (the guy she was banging before Dan or Doug or whatever the guy’s name was) was coming through town and she wanted to “see” him. And this was already after she was dating the new guy!
Neal wondered what Paula would say when she found out her daughter was hospitalized, laying in intensive care, battered and unconscious. Do you think she’ll stay unconscious until Monday? One of my old boyfriends is coming into town this weekend, and I already have plans...
Trash, absolute trash. Of course, Neal knew it was a two-way street—Paula didn’t care too much for him, either. Still, that was no excuse for her attitude towards her daughter, and her granddaughter. If Paula had ever come down to Atlanta, Neal would have been more than happy to live somewhere else for the duration of her visit—they wouldn’t have even had to see each other. But, no, she was too damn busy running around with her boyfriends to help out. She hadn’t even seen Natasha since the day she was born!
The only thing Paula Crawford had done for her new granddaughter was make that ridiculous orange jumper Natasha was wearing now. Big black letters that were embroidered across the front boldly announced: