Mother's Milk

by Charles Atkins

  He pulled out his cell and called Barrett. No one answered. He felt a pang of anxiety. Well, it could mean any number of things, and he dialed University Hospital and got put through. She picked up before the second ring. ‘Glad to see you’re still there.’

  ‘Thanks to you,’ she said. ‘Did you find him? Did you find—’

  ‘We found a bunch of late teens and early twenties all OD’d.’

  ‘Dear God. Dead?’

  ‘Not all, don’t know the score yet. You come up with the last name of your dream date?’

  ‘It’s Strand, Chase Strand, and he works for DYFS as a counselor.’

  ‘Any chance you got a home address for lover boy.’

  ‘Knock it off. And no, I don’t have an address. Although he said he went home during the lunch break of the conference. Wait a minute, he told me … God, my brain is scrambled. It’s TriBeCa, he had a friend give him a loft in TriBeCa.’

  ‘Nice friend.’

  ‘Apparently he’d taken care of this guy who had AIDS.’

  ‘A real prince. What about a phone number?’

  ‘He gave me his card … Oh shit, I don’t have my purse or any of my things – not even my cell. They must have locked them up when I came in … Mom, could you go out to the nurses’ desk and get my bag? Thanks … OK, now give me the details.’

  ‘Let me call this in first so we can get an address. He’s on the run, but he might need to pick up a thing or two. If you get his number or an address, call me.’

  ‘Hobbs, I could meet you. I recognize him, no one else does.’

  Hobbs paused. He thought of her in intensive care, of how close she’d just come to dying. ‘You need to stay there.’

  ‘I’m fine. The drugs have all worn off; I could help you.’

  ‘Stay there, Barrett, and call me if you find anything, like an address.’

  ‘Hobbs!’

  He hung up. He looked down at the street; at least now he had a name and something of a description. He headed back toward the stoned couple, who still reeked. ‘You two are going to need to give statements. Don’t worry about the pot; just tell the officer everything you can remember. The guy we’re looking for just tried to kill a bunch of kids, so take it serious.’

  The woman looked back at him, again studying his face, as though she were trying to remember every line, the way the scars and skin grafts created unnatural layers of interwoven flesh. ‘I hope you find him,’ and then added, ‘It’s odd how some people can be so beautiful on the outside and absolute monsters on the inside.’

  ‘It is,’ he said, backing away, but the pretty monsters get dates with Barrett and I get ‘can’t we just be friends’. As he ran down the stairs and toward his car, he reminded himself that his infatuation with Barrett was in the past, but that was a whopping lie. He hated feeling this way, scared to death that she’d been hurt … or killed, hating that she’d been interested in a man she’d just met at a conference. It didn’t help that he was attractive … like she was and he wasn’t. Who you kidding? Barrett is not attractive … she’s a goddamn knockout; no way you’d ever fit – beauty and the freak.

  He yanked open the Crown Vic and booted up the computer. He accessed the department’s database and put in Chase Strand – no priors, no outstanding warrants, not even a traffic violation. Next, into the DFYS website and again put in his name. He came up as a Counselor II with an office on 14th Street, an email address, and a phone number. No way he’d be at work, but at least he’d get his home information by tearing up his office, a thought that gave him a glimmer of pleasure. It was five past midnight when he called in for an emergency search warrant. He hoped that the building had on-site security, as he drove and fantasized about meeting up with Mr. Strand and rearranging various features of his pretty face.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The clock in Barrett’s ICU cubicle hit 1 A.M. A tentative knock came at the sliding Plexiglas door. The lights had been dimmed, but she caught the outline of Jerod’s dreads. ‘Come in,’ she said, wondering why he was dressed in blue maintenance scrubs and whether Hobbs was with him.

  ‘They wouldn’t let me back,’ Jerod said in a low voice, his arms wrapped around his chest, ‘I’m in disguise. Where did your mom go?’ he asked, sliding the door closed behind him.

  ‘I told her to take Max home,’ Barrett said, impressed by his ingenuity and wondering if there were maintenance people with shoulder-length dirty-blond dreadlocks and bright red sneakers. ‘Turn around while I get dressed,’ and she pulled a blue scrub top over her head, the silk blouse she’d worn on her date having been cut open by the medics. At least they hadn’t destroyed her jacket, having pulled it off prior to getting her on the stretcher. ‘Tell me everything,’ she instructed, while stepping into her jeans.

  ‘Are you supposed to be out of bed?’ he whispered.

  ‘I’m fine, tell me what happened.’

  As Jerod went through the events at Marky’s, Barrett struggled to recall anything Chase might have said that would tell her where he’d gone. The card he’d given her was standard state issue, name, job title, office number and email at DFYS. She stared at it, while listening to Jerod. The horror of what Chase had done, had tried to do to her, felt unreal, incomprehensible. He had no soul, no empathy for any of these people, including Janice Fleet, all just means to his becoming a doctor. She flipped the card over. ‘Oh shit!’ Something she hadn’t seen before.

  ‘What?’ Jerod said, his face drenched with sweat, his pupils almost obliterating the irises.

  She pulled her cell out of a blue plastic patient-belongings bag, and dialed Hobbs. Her voice low, ‘Ed, I think I got something, a cell number for him.’

  ‘Let me have it; if he’s still got it on him and the battery’s good we’ll be able to triangulate his location.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In his office on 14th Street. It’s been scrubbed. No personal mail, no address book, nothing. There’s two freaky things, though.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a new one on me, orange peels in his bottom drawer all stitched together, and another drawer full of what I think is surgical thread and funky needles.’

  ‘Of course. He wants to be a surgeon, it’s something gung-ho medical students do who want to be surgeons. That’s his big goal. Does he know that I’m alive? And the kids in that apartment, does he think any of them survived, especially anyone connected to him?’

  ‘My gut says yes, but I’m not a hundred percent. The creep was watching us and probably bolted when the medics showed up. Let me call in this number, and if you find anything else, call.’

  ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Hobbs, you said there were two things, what was the other?’

  He paused. ‘A photo-montage of you and Max; it was in his desk drawer.’

  ‘He took it from my office,’ she said, totally creeped out.

  ‘Like I said,’ Hobbs added, ‘you know how to pick ’em,’ and he hung up.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Jerod asked.

  Barrett looked at him: from the tips of his dreadlocks to the soles of his red sneakers he was miserable, bobbing from foot to foot, in obvious pain, his nose and eyes running. ‘You sure you don’t want some help with that? I can get you medication.’

  ‘Please stop offering. I need to do this, but let me stay with you … I don’t care what you’re doing. I can’t be alone right now and I want to help. Where do you think Chase is?’

  ‘Running,’ she said, looking down at her feet in blue rubber-soled hospital slipper socks. She poured out everything from the patient-belongings bag; her boots were missing. ‘I want to go to the emergency room and see those kids, can you do me a favor?’

  ‘Name it.’

  ‘See if you can swipe a lab coat, one of the long ones. I bet there’s some behind the nurses’ station.’

  ‘Right back,’ he said, sliding open the door.

  She watched as he wheeled a bucket-and-mop cart away from her cubicle to the center of t
he ICU. He never looked up as he passed the long counter where a night-duty nurse was entering her notes into the computer. A couple minutes passed and he was back. He pulled back her door and handed her a white coat he’d concealed in the trash bag. ‘This OK?’

  ‘I think I’m renaming you Slick.’

  He smiled. ‘How many times have I been picked up for boosting?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said warily, taking off her jacket and putting on the lab coat, ‘two that I’m aware of.’ She quickly looked through her wallet, her faculty ID wasn’t in there.

  ‘I’ve only been caught twice.’

  ‘Great, we’ll stick that on your college application under extracurricular activities – accomplished shoplifter … Stick close,’ she said, pulling back the door. And taking a lead from Jerod, she didn’t even glance at the nurse on duty and headed toward the door. Many of Barrett’s rotations in medical school and residency had been done here at University. She knew her way around and headed to the busy emergency department on the ground floor. She was torn, part of her wanted to call Justine to get the lowdown, but if she told her sister she’d left her room, chances were good she’d rat her out.

  ‘You really think I could go to college?’ Jerod asked, following behind with his metal bucket and mop.

  ‘Why not,’ she said, ‘you got your GED last year, and clearly you got some skills. You could do it if you wanted to.’

  In front of them now was the door to the emergency department that connected it to the main hospital. Without her ID and its electric bar code, it wouldn’t open. ‘Look busy, and follow my lead,’ she said, as the door opened and an aide wheeled out a patient on a stretcher. Barrett smiled at the old woman hooked to an intravenous and a cardiac monitor and walked past her into the ED with Jerod close behind.

  University’s emergency department was unique; two concentric circles at the center of six broad corridors for the patients. A bird’s eye view would be like a child’s drawing of the sun. Its core was a glass-fronted station where dozens of doctors, nurses, and technicians could work simultaneously on computers without being barraged by the noise outside; around that was an open staff area that led down the corridors of patient cubicles. It had been redesigned over the past few years to accommodate a growing need, as financially distressed area hospitals were forced to close their doors, and more of the city’s uninsured looked here for care. But even with a renovation that cost eight figures, tonight looked bad, patients on stretchers spilling out of the rooms and up and down the broad hallways.

  ‘Stay close,’ Barrett said, glad that the controlled chaos would hopefully keep anyone from noticing she was wearing patient slipper socks. Of the six corridors, three would be possibilities for the overdoses – trauma, general medicine, or telemetry. ‘Keep your eyes open and tell me if you recognize anyone,’ she whispered.

  ‘That girl over there,’ Jerod said, pointing to a dark-haired young woman on a stretcher that was hooked to a portable ventilator. ‘That’s Kat.’

  They walked over and looked down. The girl was out, and probably, like Barrett, she’d been given additional drugs to keep her calm while she was on the breathing machine. Barrett looked across at the IV bag; a steady drip of Narcan to try to ride out the overdose. On the cardiac monitor the girl’s heart was going good, so unless she’d had a period of prolonged respiratory arrest, her chances were good. If not, she’d live, but with brain damage. As Barrett stared at her, a shiver ran through her, this was her just a few hours back. ‘Do you recognize anyone else?’

  ‘Let’s keep walking,’ he said, peering into rooms and pulling back curtains.

  Barrett watched how Jerod moved: sick as he was, he blended, keeping his head down, doing little cleaning tasks as he went, emptying bedside garbage pails into the black bag. She followed suit, going quickly from room to room; it would have been so much easier to find Justine, who was probably working on one of these kids right now. As she had that thought, she heard her sister’s voice from the next room.

  ‘Just give him a few minutes; I think he’s through the worst, and if we don’t have to tie up another vent so much the better.’

  Barrett caught Jerod’s eye and motioned for him to keep hidden, while she took cover behind the curtain of an obese asthmatic woman having a breathing treatment inside a plastic tent.

  Jerod shook his head violently back and forth. ‘You are crazy,’ he hissed, ‘worse than me,’ and instead of following her direction he walked out and to the next cubicle.

  Before he got far, Barrett heard a strange woman’s voice stop him. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Followed by Justine’s voice. ‘Jerod? Why are you dressed like … Oh, right, where are you, Barrett? Come out, come out.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Barrett stepped out to meet her sister. She was with a tall athletic-looking female officer who’d been stationed outside the room. Inside was a young blond man on a stretcher, who appeared unconscious but not on a vent.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here, Jerod,’ the officer said, ‘and who’s that?’ she asked, eyeing Barrett’s outfit from her lab coat to her patient slippers.

  ‘I’m Dr. Conyors,’ Barrett said, extending her hand. ‘I work with Detective Ed Hobbs …’

  ‘You awake, Marky?’ Jerod asked, having pushed his way into the room. ‘You asleep or you faking it? ’Cause if you’re pretending I can get through that real quick, you piece of shit!’

  ‘You need to get out of here,’ the officer said. ‘Jerod … what are you doing?’

  Jerod looked across at the young policewoman, with her shiny brown hair tied back in a ponytail. ‘Kate,’ his voice pleading, ‘Marky is the only one who can help us find the guy who did all this. He tried to kill me and Dr. Conyors.’ He swallowed hard. ‘He murdered two of my friends and he’s done things to girls … If we don’t stop him …’

  Officer Kate Stanton looked behind her, as though expecting her partner to suddenly reappear from the all-night cafeteria. ‘Be quick,’ she said looking at Jerod and then at Barrett, ‘I’ll wait outside.’

  ‘So this is Marky,’ Barrett said, looking at the seemingly unconscious man with his short platinum hair caked with sweat and matted to his head. ‘Marky, I’m Dr. Conyors. I need to talk to you.’ She watched his chest rise and fall, his eyelids quivered faintly.

  ‘He’s awake,’ Jerod said, ‘you can tell.’

  Justine pulled the curtain around them. ‘You really shouldn’t be here,’ she said. And then more to herself, ‘Not like that’s going to stop you.’

  ‘Marky,’ Barrett said more forcefully, ‘open your eyes.’ She looked at his intravenous, and then at her sister. ‘Throw in another amp of Narcan.’

  Justine was about to argue, that this wasn’t Barrett’s patient, that she could get into mountains of trouble … ‘I’ll be right back.’

  Barrett looked at Jerod and then back at Marky. ‘You really think he’s faking?’

  Without waiting for a response Jerod reached under the sheet and pressed down hard on Marky big toenail.

  ‘Ow!’ The blond man’s eyes opened. He glared up at Barrett and then saw Jerod by his feet. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ he slurred.

  ‘Fuck you!’ Jerod replied. ‘Look what your boyfriend did.’

  Marky’s head rolled from side to side. ‘Is he here? Is he here?’

  ‘What do you think, ass-wipe. You think he’s going to try and kill you and then hang around … although,’ he looked across at Barrett, ‘he could be here.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, and gently put a hand across Jerod’s chest, moving him away from Marky. The Narcan had pulled Marky from death’s door, but his pupils were still tiny; he was still high; she needed him to be less numb, and she wouldn’t have minded if he were in a bit of pain. ‘Look, Marky, you nearly died; some of your friends aren’t going to make it. It’s clear you’re implicated; if I were you I’d start by telling me where we can find Chase Strand.’

  ‘Implicated, my ass,�
�� Jerod spat out, ‘he dosed those kids just the way he tried to do me. You’re going to fry, Marky. You think your boyfriend’s going to hang around for that? He wants you dead, so you can’t rat him out. That’s what he wanted. Ain’t love a fucking kick in the pants?’

  Barrett shot Jerod a look. Was he for real or was he doing his impersonation – and a pretty decent one – of good cop, bad cop? ‘Marky, focus, give us an address for Chase.’

  ‘It’s not true,’ Marky said, thick white spittle caking his mouth in the corners. ‘He loves me.’

  Barrett could almost have felt sympathy, but every second that passed increased the chances that Chase would vanish; the man was a chameleon, fooling her, Janice … Marky, God knows how many others. She startled at the sound of the drape pulled back.

  Justine had returned with two amps of Narcan. ‘You got him awake,’ she commented. ‘We won’t need this.’

  ‘Oh yes we will,’ Barrett said, grabbing one of the glass vials from her sister’s hand. ‘Give me the needle.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Justine asked. ‘He’s awake, if you give him more you’re going to throw him into withdrawal.’

  Barrett’s hand shot out with lightning speed, snatching the plastic-wrapped syringe. ‘Exactly.’ She tore open the package, broke the tip off the vial, drew it up, and then pierced Marky’s IV tubing, just inches from where it went into his vein.

  ‘Barrett!’ Justine stared at her sister. ‘I can’t be part of this.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Barrett said, depressing the syringe, not wanting to look at Justine’s worried face. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘This isn’t you,’ Justine said, her eyes fixed on the syringe, and in a whisper, ‘this is torture.’

  Marky twitched, his face turned to a grimace, and in the course of a few seconds he went from barely rousable to moaning and curled up in a ball. ‘What’s wrong with me?’ he gasped.