Another contraction hit, sending a wave of pain through Fran’s entire body. She gasped, clutching her stomach, before glaring down at the proximate location of the problem. “Now why don’t you just learn a little patience, huh? Your daddy’s on his way to get me to the hospital, and then you can be born in a nice clean bed, instead of on a stranger’s floor.”
The baby, who was having none of this “logic,” kicked her hard in the kidneys. Fran sucked a breath through her teeth and began half walking, half waddling toward the door, trying to focus on putting one foot in front of the other, rather than on the increasing sensation of being torn in two.
She opened the bedroom door to find Jonathan waiting there, his hand outstretched to grasp the doorknob. “About time you came back,” she said, pushing past him. “Where’s the car?”
“Right out front, and the hospital is only two blocks from here. Are you all right? Is the baby all right?” The white edges of panic still showed all the way around Jonathan’s eyes. “What can I do?”
“You can help me to the car,” said Fran, who would normally never have passed up an opportunity to tease Jonathan about his endless questions, but was currently distracted by the effort of keeping a tiny human from escaping her body before they got to a place with clean sheets.
“Of course.” Jonathan took her arm. Together, they were able to make their way down the hall much more quickly than Fran could possibly have managed on her own. She leaned on him heavily the whole way, letting him support the bulk of her weight. Her free hand clutched her stomach the whole way, like only that small point of pressure was doing anything to keep the baby inside of her.
Angus was waiting for them at the front door, holding it open. His eyes fell on Fran’s hand, clutching her stomach, and he asked anxiously, “Is she all right?”
“Don’t mind me, just havin’ a baby,” Fran gasped. “Johnny, help me down the stairs.”
“Yes, dear. Angus, we’ll be back later. I will do my very best to make it to the beach at dawn,” said Jonathan. Fran’s arm tightened until the pressure became painful. He winced, but didn’t say anything. A little pain was the least he could endure, given what she was currently going through.
Helping Fran into the car was difficult. By the time he was done, she was swearing steadily and he was starting to wonder if their child would be born already enlisted in the navy. Finally, she was in, and he shut her door before running around the car to slide into the driver’s seat. He glanced up. Angus was still standing on the porch, watching them wistfully.
There would be time to worry about their host’s state of mind later. Jonathan slammed the door and hit the gas, sending them rocketing down the narrow street that would bring them to the hospital. Fran made small pained sounds and breathed in and out through her teeth, both hands now clutching the swell of her belly.
“Almost there,” said Jonathan, forcing himself to keep his eyes on the road. “Just hold out a few more minutes, all right, sweetheart? We’re almost there.”
“It hurts, Johnny,” she said.
“I know.” Forcing a jovial note into his voice, he asked, “What are we going to name him? We should have decided by now, but in our defense, I thought we’d have more time.”
“I like ‘Alex,’” said Fran, before taking another whooping breath. “S’a good name, and he’s been a good father-in-law. Be nice to honor him a bit.”
“I like that too,” Jonathan said, and pulled up in front of the whitewashed two-story building that was the Gentling hospital. People in white coats and nurse’s uniforms were already spilling out into the parking lot by the time he killed the engine. Jonathan smiled in relief. “Angus called ahead.”
“Tell him I’ll pay for new sheets,” said Fran. One of the doctors opened her door and helped her out of the car before Jonathan could even get his key out of the ignition. He stood just in time to watch them help her into a wheelchair and whisk her off to the hospital proper.
More slowly, he followed them. What happened next would be entirely on Fran, and he would have no place in it. That was a large part of why their first child had been born at home: men weren’t allowed in the delivery room, as a rule, but his mother had been more than happy to let him sit by Fran’s bed, wiping her forehead with a cloth and holding her hand while she screamed. This was a whole different world.
Jonathan Healy had spent very little time in human hospitals. Most of his own care had been received at home or at the hands of sympathetic veterinarians. It had been a gorgon doctor who had pulled buckshot out of his rear end when he’d offended a local farmer, and it had been the medic at Fran’s old circus who’d fixed his arm up after he’d been shot. Human hospitals were a mystery, too high-tech and clean to seem entirely safe. He understood the need for sterile surfaces and washing one’s hands, but pulling all of the dirt out of an environment struck him as a way of challenging God to find a way to give you an infection anyhow.
Fran had been whisked into one of the delivery rooms, leaving him to pace back and forth in the hallway outside and listen to her screams. She interspersed them with enthusiastic cursing, doubtless shocking the ears of one or more of the nurses. That thought brought a short-lived smile to his face, and then it was back to pacing, right up until the moment when a newborn baby’s lusty cry split the air. The infant sounded as angry as Fran had. Jonathan positioned himself outside the delivery room door, practically bouncing on his toes as he waited for someone to emerge and tell him the outcome of Fran’s efforts.
Minutes passed. The baby stopped crying. Finally, just as he was about to violate hospital rules and shove his way in there, a nurse emerged. “Mr. Healy?” she asked, eyes going directly to Jonathan.
“Yes,” he answered, squaring his shoulders and standing up a little straighter in automatic attention. “How is my wife?”
“She’s resting right now, but you should be able to see her soon.” The nurse’s face split in a broad smile. “Congratulations. You have a beautiful little baby girl.”
Jonathan blinked. They had both been so convinced that Fran was carrying a boy that he had never given much thought to the alternative. “Can I see her?”
“We’re taking her to the nursery to get her cleaned up and ready for you,” said the nurse, still smiling. “Mother and baby are both doing fine.”
Jonathan’s knees seemed suddenly, unaccountably weak. He put out an arm, catching himself against the wall before he could topple to the floor. “I...thank you very much for letting me know.”
“It’s our pleasure,” said the nurse.
From inside the room Fran bellowed, “Get your ass in here, city boy!”
The nurse laughed. “It sounds like that’s your cue. Are you ready to see your wife?”
“I’ve been ready since we got here,” said Jonathan, and walked past her, through the delivery room door.
The various doctors and nurses he’d seen rushing into the room were all gone now, having apparently exited through the door marked “staff” on the opposite wall. He noted this in passing, most of his attention going to the most important thing present: Fran. She was sitting up in bed, her hair matted down with sweat and lacking its customary curl. She had never been so beautiful.
“Hello, Fran,” he said.
She smiled. It did nothing to lessen her visible exhaustion. “Hello to you too, Johnny. You get to see the baby? It’s a little girl. Never thought that was gonna happen, did you?”
“I am overjoyed,” said Jonathan gravely, as he walked toward her bed. “I can’t imagine any greater future than one where you and I are raising our daughter together.”
“We didn’t come up with a name for her,” said Fran.
Jonathan sat down on the edge of the bed, taking her hand. “We could name her after Juniper, if you like. Or after my mother. Or after you.”
“Don’t like any of those.” Fran closed her eyes. “Enid is a good name, but not for a little girl in the here and the now. Juney’s still using her
name, and I miss her something awful. Wouldn’t want to be reminded that she’s missing every time I called my baby girl in for dinner. As for naming her after me...it’d get confusing, don’t you think? We need something else for her. Something nobody’s using.”
“We don’t have to decide right now. You need your rest.”
“How do you feel about ‘Alice’?” Fran opened her eyes again, rolling her head toward Jonathan. “Sounds sort of like ‘Alex,’ so we’re still honoring your father, but it’s modern enough that nobody’s gonna make fun of her for it.”
“I like it,” said Jonathan. He reached out to brush a lock of sweat-matted hair away from her face. “Alice Healy.”
“Alice Enid Healy,” corrected Fran, reaching up to catch his hand. “Did they let you hold her?”
Jonathan paused. “What?”
“When they took her out of the room. The nurse said they were taking her out to see you.” Fran smiled. “She said you’d be tickled pink to meet your baby girl.”
Jonathan didn’t say anything. He just stared at her, trying in vain to collect his thoughts enough to settle on a course of action.
Bit by bit, Fran’s smile faded. “Johnny, what aren’t you saying? Is there something wrong with the baby?”
“I wouldn’t know,” he said, words slow and stiff. “I never saw her.”
Fran stared at him. Finally, in a horrified tone, she asked, “Where’s our baby?”
“I don’t know.”
Jonathan helped Fran out of the bed and back into her bloodstained coat. She was barefoot and unarmed—one of the few times he’d seen his wife without at least a dozen throwing knives somewhere on her person. She thrust her hand out at him and he placed a small revolver in it, watching with relief as her fingers curled in the proper position around the grip. She was focused enough to respect trigger safety. That was good.
Together, they walked through the staff-only door, Fran moving surprisingly fast for a woman who had just given birth. Then again, panic has been known to do incredible things, and there is nothing in this world as panicked as a parent whose child has disappeared.
They had gone halfway down the white-painted hall on the other side of the door when a woman in a nurse’s uniform came around a corner and stopped dead, her eyes going wide with surprise. “You can’t be here,” she said. “This is a restricted area. Mrs. Healy, you shouldn’t even be out of bed yet.” She didn’t comment on the guns that they were both holding. Life in Gentling tended to instill a great survival instinct in people, living as they did between the threats from both sea and shore.
“Elaine, I don’t know whether you had any part in this, and I don’t particular care,” said Fran. Her voice was still rusty from screaming, but her grip on her borrowed revolver was true. “Where’s my baby?”
Elaine’s eyes went even wider, something neither of them would have believed possible if they hadn’t seen it with their own eyes. “What do you mean, where’s your baby? Newborns are taken to the nursery to be washed and weighed. It’s standard procedure.”
“Well, then, take us to the nursery so that we can see our daughter, and we’ll gladly apologize for trespassing,” said Jonathan. He sounded more reasonable than Fran did, but something in the precision of his tone warned that he was no less dangerous in this moment than she was.
“It’s right this way,” said Elaine, swallowing hard to keep her fear from rising up and overwhelming her. She beckoned for the pair to follow her as she turned and walked down the hall in the direction that they’d been heading before they met her. “I just came on duty, but I heard that you’d been brought in. It’s a very nice hospital. I don’t think I’d mind having babies in it, if I was intending to have any babies.”
“You’re not?” asked Jonathan, with automatic politeness. Too many lectures about making nice with the locals, especially the human locals; too many nights spent trying to weasel information out of people who would just as soon not give him the time of day.
The back of Elaine’s neck reddened as she realized what she’d just been asked, but she pressed on, possibly because both of the people walking behind her were armed. “Not many human men here in Gentling. I love the finfolk—I really do, they’re some of the sweetest people a girl could ever hope to know—but I don’t want my children returning. If I was going to have a baby, I’d want it to stay with me on the land forever, and that’s just not in the cards if I marry a Gentling boy.” She stopped at a plain white door, finally looking back at them. “I brought you here because I want you not to be worried for your little girl, but she’s not the only baby resting, so please, keep quiet?”
“We will,” said Jonathan. Fran didn’t say anything. She just nodded, lips pressed into a thin, hard line that meant trouble for anyone who dared to cross her.
Elaine opened the door, holding it to let them walk past her. Jonathan was first into the room. Then he froze and Fran, who followed close behind him, did the same, both of them staring at the bassinets that stretched in front of them. There must have been space for twenty infants, and all of them were empty.
“Where are the babies?” asked Elaine. She sounded more dismayed than anything, like panic hadn’t had time to set in yet. Jonathan almost envied her that. She didn’t understand what was happening. “There should be four infants in here. Where are they?”
“Whoever has our daughter has them,” said Jonathan. His voice was distant, assessing. “They couldn’t have carried them out through the front of the hospital. They didn’t carry them out past you. Is there another way to exit without going through the main lobby?”
“There’s the service entrance,” said Elaine. “We use it for grocery deliveries and new equipment...”
“Take us there.” Fran turned, baring her teeth at Elaine in an expression that was nothing at all like a smile. “We’re going to find my little girl.”
Elaine gulped.
The service entrance led to a small, private parking area, where only a few cars were parked haphazardly wherever their owners had abandoned them. Fran scanned the empty gravel lot with cold eyes before snapping, “Johnny, go get the car. We’re going to need it if we’re going to follow the kidnappers.”
“Fran—”
“Go.”
There was no arguing with her tone. Jonathan turned and went back into the hospital, allowing the door to swing closed against behind him.
Fran waited for the small “click” of the latch engaging before she turned, almost lazily, and pressed the barrel of her revolver against Elaine’s forehead. Elaine made a small squeaking noise, her entire body going rigid with fear. Fran’s expression didn’t change.
“You seemed nice before, and I’m usually a pretty good judge of character, so I’m willing to believe you didn’t have anything to do with this,” Fran said, without preamble. “If you’re smart, you won’t go changing my mind. Now who do you think has my baby girl? Don’t sass me, and don’t you lie.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” whispered Elaine.
“I already said I believed you. What you did or didn’t do is none of my concern, as long as you didn’t touch my daughter. Who do you think has her? I’ve asked you twice. You won’t like what happens if you make me ask you a third time.”
Elaine whimpered again. She had no doubt that the woman standing in front of her would pull the trigger if she felt the need. Maybe Fran would be sorry later for having killed an innocent woman, but Elaine wasn’t going to gamble her life on it.
“Angus Gentling,” she said. “He was running around with a girl—Lacey—but she returned early because she’d gathered too many babies from the shore. She’d gotten wet too many times. He hasn’t looked at anyone else in this town since, not like that.”
“What’s being unlucky in love got to do with my daughter?” For the first time since Jonathan left, there was a hint of emotion in Fran’s tone. It was anger. That didn’t make things any better.
“I heard him talking to one
of the other nurses the other day down at the diner. Going on about how the Gentlings shouldn’t have settled here on the shoreline, because it means that the babies can’t stay dry,” said Elaine. “I mean, I guess they’d have baths and such no matter where they lived, but saltwater makes the return happen faster than freshwater does, so living by the sea means returning early. If the town was somewhere in the Midwest maybe, where there wasn’t any ocean, the babies could stay longer.”
Fran’s eyes went wide with understanding before they filled with a cold desperation. She lowered her gun, ignoring Elaine’s sigh of relief. Fran was somewhere well beyond relief in that moment, and her voice was barely more than a moan as she said, “He’s selling the babies.”
“What?”
“There’s always people who want to buy a healthy baby. Seems like it shouldn’t work that way, but it does, and finfolk babies look straight up human when they first come. Don’t they?”
“Yes,” said Elaine. “You can’t tell a human baby from a finfolk baby for anything.”
“So you sell them to adoptive parents far from the sea. They get more time. Do you understand now? He’s trying to help them. He’s selling them for time.” Fran shook her head, sweat-damp hair sticking to her cheeks. “He didn’t think Johnny would come this fast. He thought he would have more time.”
The snarl of tires driving too fast over gravel heralded Jonathan’s return. The car tore around the corner of the hospital, narrowly avoiding a collision with one of the vehicles already parked in the lot. It skidded to a halt barely a second before Jonathan shoved the driver’s side door open, shouting, “Come on!”
Fran didn’t need to be told twice. She grabbed Elaine by the wrist, hauling the startled nurse along with her as she walked as fast as her condition would allow to the waiting vehicle. “Get in,” she commanded Elaine, letting her go. “We need you to tell us where we’re going.”
“But I don’t—”
“You do,” Fran said, in a tone that left no room for argument. “You knew deep down that it was Angus Gentling; you just had to let yourself see. You know where he must have gone. Can’t be many places in a town this size. Now get.”
We Both Go Down Together Page 5