by Sharon Webb
She wondered later why she had run so unerringly to that room-to the room of the only pediatric patient on Med-Surg West.
* * *
The security chief agreed with the police. It could have been anybody. Kitty stared in shock at the sheet covering the body and face of Anthony Herrera. Rideout had given Tony's mother a sedative and led her away.
Only four years old, she thought. Only four. A sweet little kid. She felt sick. She took a few deep breaths and closed her eyes, but still the image wouldn't go away-Tony's dark eyes staring up at her, dilated and glazed. His throat had been cut with surgical precision.
She bent over suddenly and clutched her belly. The baby was kicking again.
Chapter 3
On the next night, Kurt's birthday supper was interrupted by a shooting down the hall. The two little Gomez girls lay dead, victim of an uncle who was baby-sitting while his sister labored in Women's Hospital with her third child. For reasons of his own, he had first killed the children's cat, strangling it slowly with his belt.
As police led the man away down the long hall punctuated with half-opened doors and startled faces, the man looked at Kurt. There was a half-smile on his face and a look in his eyes that the boy would never forget-a look that suggested triumph.
When the police had gone, the people slipped into the halls, each just outside his own door, to talk in low shocked whispers while the little cake with its fifteen candles stood forgotten in the kitchen.
The incident was mentioned on the late news, but the lead story concerned the fire-bombing of the Temple Terrace recreation department during a puppet show. Seventeen children were dead, forty-seven injured.
Mention of the fire-bombing made the late national news, but the story was eclipsed by two other fire-bomb episodes, one in a summer camp near Aspen, the other in a children's hospital in Memphis. There were similar incidents in Budapest, Kobe, and Christchurch.
Within the week, national news had ceased calling the incidents murder. A new euphemism had entered the language-deprocessing.
By the tenth day, one hundred ninety-two children had been deprocessed in the Tampa Bay area.
Chapter 4
Kitty Tarantino stared at the notice the three-to-eleven Med-Surg supervisor had tacked up:
NOTICE
No visitors are allowed in any hospital area where there are patients under eighteen years of age.
In the event that pediatric patients overflow to adult floors, personnel will immediately remove all visitors from the area prior to accepting the patient. Security is to be notified at once. Nursing personnel will stand by elevators and all other entrances until a security guard relieves them. No one without valid hospital ID is to be allowed in these areas.
Rudy Martinez, Administrator
ALL EMPLOYEES TO SIGN UPON READING
She thought about the little Herrera boy and shivered. And what good did it do anyway when they let slime like P.G. creep around on the floor? She had no proof, of course, but who else could it have been? When the police questioned the staff in the hastily set-up interrogation room in the nurses' lounge, she had been sure that the orderly would emerge under guard as the murderer. But, no. He was still here- lurking around like a fugitive from a mental ward. He made her sick.
There had been three attacks on patients in Pedie and two more in OB. Newborns! Thank God she didn't work there. How do you tell a new mother that her baby was fine, perfectly fine, until some slime came by with a plastic bag off a housekeeping cart?
She tried not to think about the babies. She hadn't actually seen them, of course. Her imagination, fueled by the hospital grapevine, had been bad enough. The night it happened she dreamed about them-encased in pale yellow plastic, clear enough so you could see inside, clear enough so you could see the little faces.
The next day she had felt contractions. One of the RNs, Connie Davis, told her it wasn't real labor, but just preliminaries. "Braxton-Hicks contractions. They go on all through pregnancy, but you just don't notice them until you get near term."
Tonight, they felt stronger. She had tried to eat supper, but she had felt a little nauseated. Probably because of the mess they'd served in the cafeteria-Chicken Arcane, the staff called it. Pu-oo-oo-trid.
She didn't want to think about going into labor, didn't want to think about her baby being taken into the nursery. She would deal with that later, when the time came. Right now, the time had come to prep Hollis for her gallbladder surgery. She picked up a prep kit and two towels and headed down to 27. When she walked into the room, a pain in her belly doubled her up.
The patient's thin eyebrows quirked in alarm, "What's the matter? You all right?"
She caught her breath, "Sure. I'm fine."
The patient's eyes narrowed and she looked Kitty up and down. "You don't look fine."
Kitty filled the basin with water and began to shave the woman's belly. "Just something I ate, I guess. I'm all right."
"You shouldn't be working, you know. As far along as you are. Let your husband carry the load for a while." Her eyes fell on Kitty's soapy hands. Kitty followed her gaze, then curled her fingers into her palm.
"I don't wear rings while I'm working. They get caught on things," she said defensively. She wasn't quite sure why she bothered to lie. Lots of girls had babies these days without being married. She wasn't ashamed. But there was something in the woman's sharp face that reminded her of her mother.
She was toweling the woman dry when the next contraction came. This time it began in her back like hot tugging fingers pulling on either side of her spine. Her belly felt tight as a drumhead.
She dumped the prep kit into the trash and got out of the room. She leaned against the doorjamb for a few seconds until the pain passed, then headed for the bathroom.
She came out a few minutes later, shaken. There had been a pink-tinged spot on her panties. She didn't know much about OB, but she knew what it was that she had seen. It was what they called bloody show. She was in labor. She didn't want to think about it. Not now. She brushed a lock of hair from her eyes and looked up and down the hall. Janice. She needed to talk to her. She'd know what to do.
She spotted Janice's round, homely face in an excited knot of people at the nurses' desk. "Who would have believed it?" said the ward secretary, looking from one to another. "Of all the people around here, I'd never have picked him."
"It just goes to show you can't tell about people," someone said.
"You can't tell about who?" asked Kitty.
"About anybody. Not anymore."
"What are you talking about?"
"About Jim Bohannon."
"Who?" She shook her head. She didn't feel that she was thinking very clearly at all. "You know. Jim-the security guard," Janice's pale eyes were rounder than usual. "They just p
icked him up for killing the Herrera kid."
Kitty blinked. Jim? The guy who always had a big hello for her whenever they passed. Everybody liked him. It wasn't possible. She touched Janice's arm. "Are you sure?"
"That's what I said. None of us can believe it. I thought- What's the matter?" Janice reached out and steadied her. "Are you all right?"
Hunched a little from the pain in her back, Kitty took a breath, then said, "I think I'd better go sit down."
Janice steered her to the nurses' lounge, deposited her in a chair, and looked at her sharply. "Have your pains started?"
Kitty nodded and leaned forward, hands clutching her belly.
"I'd better call Rideout."
"No."
"Davis, then. You need to have a nurse look at you."
She shook her head. Nobody else could know. Nobody. She could see Jim standing over the Herrera kid. Jim-with a knife. A nice normal guy like Jim. She could have coped with the idea of P.G. killing the boy. P.G. the creep. But Jim-
"Look. I gotta call somebody. You're in labor. You need to go up to OB."
To OB-where babies came in shiny plastic packages. Nausea rippled in her stomach and became a wave. She ran into the bathroom and began to vomit, clutching the side of the toilet bowl to keep her balance. Then she tottered back to the chair and sank, exhausted.
Janice ran water on a washcloth and patted it on Kitty's forehead. "I'm calling Rideout."
"No. Please. You've got to help me," she begged. "I can't have the baby here. I've got to get home."
Janice's eyes rounded, then narrowed in sympathy. "I know you're scared. But you've got to have a doctor or a nurse."
"You can help me."
Janice shook her head in amazement. "Honey, I know we're friends, but you've got too much faith. I'm just an aide like you, remember?"
"Please. I don't care. I've got to get home. You can help me."
"You can't take that kind of a chance. You need a doctor."
Shiny yellow plastic stretched over little faces. It could be anybody. Anybody at all. Somebody who smiled and gave you a wink on the elevator. Anybody. She began to moan, clutching her belly, rocking back and forth at the sudden contraction. "Oh please. Oh please, oh God, oh please."
Janice turned away. She stared at the floor and rubbed her arms, then she looked back at the hunched figure who whimpered in pain and fright. She took a breath, then turning, reached out and hugged the girl to her. "All right, Kitty. I'll help you." She glanced at the wall clock. "It's nearly eleven. We'd better leave soon."
* * *
Janice stared at Kitty's stove. It was old and it had been modified for metered gas. She fingered knobs that wouldn't turn and looked in vain for some kind of switch that would start the flow of fuel. "Kitty, I can't get the stove to turn on." She stepped into the bedroom.
Kitty lay curled on her side on the unmade bed, clutching a thin pillow, moaning softly. Janice stared uncertainly at the girl. How had she managed to let herself get talked into this? "Kitty, the stove. I need to turn on the stove."
Kitty looked at her, "Huh?"
"The stove. I need to boil water."
Kitty drew up her feet and tried to sit up. "It's on the back. The switch. It's off to one side. I'll do it." She tried to get up, when another contraction began. This one was harder. Her mouth fell open with the surprise of it. She gasped, grabbed the pillow, stuffed the end into her mouth, and bit down.
Janice twisted her hand against her mouth, started to move toward Kitty, than ran to the stove instead. She'd have to have something to tie the cord with. She knew that much, anyway. And she needed to boil water to sterilize the tape and the scissors. Scissors. She needed a pair of scissors. Damn! She didn't know if Kitty even had any scissors. Then she remembered. Sure. She'd had a pair at work. They'd be in the pocket of her uniform. She ran back into the bedroom and picked up the clothes from the heap on the floor where Kitty had dropped them. The scissors were there and she scurried back to the little kitchen.
She ran her fingers behind the back edge of the stove near the top. There was a hole there and inside-the switch. She snapped it on. The pilot light flamed.
She found a pot and ran water, dumped in the scissors, and set it on a burner turned to high. Now… Tape. She needed tape or string. Something.
She found a clean towel, ragged with age, ripped a narrow length from the end of it, and tossed it into the pot.
While the water boiled, she went back to check on Kitty. Sweat lined the girl's forehead. She lay on her back, arching her body, riding with the force of the contraction. When it subsided, her eyes glazed and she dozed.
Janice pulled down the sheet. God. She was getting the bed in a mess. There had to be something in this room to put under Kitty's hips. She went to the dresser and pulled open a drawer. A jumble of underwear. The next one held a pathetic little pile of baby clothes, a tiny pink dress, a pink gown, two little undershirts and a white blanket. The bottom drawer held a box of disposable diapers. She started to rip it open, but stopped. She'd have to find something else. The baby would need the diapers. She stared at the box and suddenly it hit home-there was going to be a baby, and she was going to have to deliver it.
The sum-total of her obstetrical experience had been presiding at the birth of her dachshund's litter. She raced into the kitchen again. The water bubbled on the stove, clanking the scissors in a ticky-tacky little rhythm against the side of the pot. She found a cooking fork and fished the length of towel and the scissors out and plopped them, dripping, on a folded clean dish towel. It wasn't altogether sterile, she thought, but it would have to do.
She laid the towel on the table, then took it up again. The table cloth was plastic. It would do for a bed pad. She put the dish towel and scissors on the counter and pulled the cloth off the table. In the bathroom, she picked up what towels she could find. As she did, a cry from the bedroom startled her. She ran in as Kitty arched her back again. In horror, she saw a gush of fluid spurt from the girl. She caught most of it with a towel and managed to tuck the plastic cloth and another towel under her. Kitty clutched at her arm as another contraction racked her, "Help me-e-e-e." It ended in a strangled screech.
"I'm here. I'm here. It's all right." She prayed that it was. As she pulled away from Kitty's grip, a row of red crescent scratches lined her arm.
At the next pain, Kitty began to bulge and Janice realized with a start that she was seeing the baby's head. Dear God. It was nearly here. She needed to wash her hands.
She ran into the bathroom and washed with a sliver of soap she found there. With dripping hands, she remembered that she had taken all the towels to the bedroom.
A scream sent her racing back to Kitty. "It's coming! Oh, God. It's coming!" the girl yelled. And then it was too late to think about towels or anything except the baby. Its head was fully born. She grasped it, and felt it turn in her hands. A shoulder slid out, then the rest of its body-a tiny, slippery boy on a bloody towel.
> "It's a boy. You've got a boy."
Kitty raised up on her elbows, "A boy? Is it really here?" Her breath came in short pants. "Is it all right?"
Janice stood up wearily and brushed a strand of hair from her face with a forearm. "He's here all right." The baby gave a fretful cry. Then another.
Some of the fatigue went out of Kitty's face when she heard him. "Is he all right? Let me hold him."
Janice reached for the slippery baby, then stopped. The umbilical cord pulsed. "Oh, Christ. I forgot about the cord." And she scampered to the kitchen for her scissors.
She snatched up the dish towel that held the scissors, started back toward the bedroom, then stopped. The placenta was going to come. What could she do with it? She fumbled through the cabinets, found a small package of plastic garbage bags, and pulled one out.
Kitty opened half-closed eyes and stared at her as she came up to the bed. "I'm going to cut him loose," said Janice with false bravado. She didn't know how to proceed. Should she do it now, or wait until the placenta came?
Kitty gave a short gasp, then clutched at her baby with a wail of anguish. Janice stopped short, "What is it?"
Kitty was staring in horror at Janice's hands, and as she stared, the wail became a piercing keen.
"What? What is it?" Janice looked, bewildered, at Kitty, then down at her own hands, at the towel, the scissors, the plastic bag… Oh, God. The bag! The babies from the nursery… "Oh, Kitty-No." She turned away from the screaming girl and ran from the room. Her face twisted with the pain of it. They were friends. Friends, damn it. Didn't that mean anything? Janice's face began to work. She leaned against the wall in exhaustion as tears streamed down her face. How could Kitty think it? How could she?