The Children's Ward

by Patricia Wallace

  She put her hands behind her back, warming them.

  Upstairs, David was still in the shower. She could hear the water running and, faintly, her husband’s voice singing an unidentifiable song.

  She had been ready for at least twenty minutes and it would be twenty more before David would be ready to go. It didn’t matter, though. It gave her a chance to wander through the house and admire her handiwork.

  Tomorrow she would get started on Courtney’s room. The painters were due at ten and the new carpet would be laid at four. She had not made up her mind about the furniture—it was practically brand new—but the overhead lighting fixtures had to go.

  So many details.

  David liked to tell everyone that she had no business sense but she wondered whether he could coordinate so many projects at once. There were times when the entire house was filled with workmen, all of whom needed choices made, orders verified, and work approved.

  David, despite his pretensions, was no businessman himself. He tended to forget that the money that paid for his downtown office and briskly efficient secretary was hers.

  It had been quite a surprise; she never would have guessed that her thrifty widowed father would take out so many high value insurance policies. Or that he owned five hundred acres of land.

  The only hint she ever had was her father’s sly remark that she’d get her reward—for being a devoted daughter—when he went on to his.

  Now it was there, in dozens of bank accounts. More money than she had ever imagined.

  It was a challenge to find ways to spend it.

  David had ideas, naturally; the office and secretary were one. But she kept a tight rein on how much he spent, putting only a specified amount into his accounts each month. The rest was in her own private accounts and in trust for Courtney.

  Courtney. She felt bad about how little time they spent with their child. Especially now that she was in the hospital.

  The vacation to the Bahamas had been David’s idea of family togetherness, but for the most part, Courtney was left to amuse herself while they indulged in adult pleasures.

  Shopping was the only activity she shared with her daughter, and even that had not gone right. Amazing that a child as beautiful as Courtney would care so little about her own looks.

  If left to her own devices, Courtney dressed indifferently, making no attempt to highlight her best features. It had gotten to the point that Tiffany seriously wondered if the child was colorblind.

  She had come to regard dressing Courtney as a form of decorating. With Courtney serving almost as an…accessory…to the rest of the house.

  She honestly did not know what Courtney would do without her.

  Well, that was what a mother was for.

  Twenty-seven

  “There’s this house,” Russell said, keeping his voice low so the nurse would not hear them. “You can’t see it from the street ‘cause it’s all overgrown with bushes. It’s gotta be a hundred years old, at least, and all the paint is peeling off, you can see the wood is gray underneath.”

  His eyes had adjusted to the dark and he looked at the three faces watching him.

  “It’s like the wind is always blowing, and you can hear it whistling through the attic…and the windows are so dirty that it’s never really light inside. If you turn your back on the windows…there are shadows…you can feel the darkness creep up on you, like someone’s standing behind you, but…no one’s ever there.”

  One of the girls giggled and was hushed by the others.

  “So nobody wants to go there alone, because of the stories…about the man who lived there…and how one night he just up and murdered his wife and son, and a maiden lady who boarded with them…”

  “The sheriff went to the house when nobody had seen the man for a couple of weeks…and he found the man sleeping in the same bed with his dead wife…and maggots were crawling out her nose.”

  “Oh, gross,” someone said, and the giggling resumed.

  He waited for them to be quiet again.

  “So the sheriff takes him away to the funny farm and goes back to the house to remove the bodies. And it’s getting dark. He has to wait at the house for the undertaker…and he hears a noise…like someone walking in the upstairs bedroom. So he starts up the stairs…real slow…careful not to make a sound. The wind has come up and branches are scraping against the windows…and it starts to rain…and just as he reaches the top of the staircase…the lights flicker…and go out.

  “He’s standing there in the dark at the top of the stairs and trying to listen to see from which direction the sounds came from…but the rain is beating against the roof and the wind is howling so he can’t really hear it anymore…and he walks toward the little boy’s room…the door is part way open and he doesn’t remember it being open before.

  “When he reaches the door, just as he’s reaching to push it wider open…it closes.”

  “I’d die,” one of the girls said.

  Ignoring her, Russell continued: “So now he’s standing there in the dark hall, certain that someone is on the other side of the door. He’s not really afraid, ‘cause he’s got a gun, but he’s a little nervous…so he takes a deep breath…and reaches for the door.

  “Just as his hand closes around the doorknob, it starts to turn. Then…the door opens…and there’s nothing there. But the little boy is gone from his bed…

  “The sheriff stands there, not really believing it, thinking that the darkness is playing tricks on him…but the longer he looks at the bed…the more obvious it is…the boy is gone.

  “Now he decides to go back downstairs and wait for the undertaker…and he turns around…and framed in a doorway across the hall is a figure…just standing there.

  “Lightning flashes and in those few seconds he can see that it’s the wife…eye sockets empty and flesh rotting off her bones.”

  “I’d die,” someone repeated.

  “Then, as he watches, she turns and goes back into the room. He turns and runs back down the stairs, out the front door and smack into the undertaker…

  “He refuses to go back into the house until daylight. So…he’s up all night because he doesn’t want to go to sleep and have nightmares and by morning he’s pretty much convinced himself that it was all some kind of…illusion.

  “When they get back to the house…he and the undertaker…the sun is shining…everything looks normal…and they go straight upstairs and into the wife’s room.

  “There she is…and the little boy’s in bed beside her.

  “And the story goes…whenever the father was away at night, the little boy used to sleep in his mother’s room…and after the sheriff took her husband away…she went to get her son.

  “And every night since then, her ghost walks the hallway, searching for her son.”

  “Russell,” Abigail whispered. “Do you think that’s a true story?”

  “The part about the murders is…that’s why nobody lives in the house. I don’t know about the rest; it happened a long time ago.”

  “How long?”

  “Before my Dad was born, and he’s forty.” Russell tried to stifle a yawn.

  “I wonder,” Abigail said, turning her eyes to the ceiling. “I wonder.”

  Twenty-eight

  Francine loved working the graveyard shift. By midnight, all of the evening people were gone and the laboratory was all hers. There usually weren’t more than one or two blood draws during the night—mainly in the emergency room—and she had a lot of time to study. Her grades had improved markedly since she’d changed from the day shift and even though she was a little tired during her classes, it was worth it.

  She walked around the department, shutting off extra lights, satisfying herself that everything was in order. The cleaning crew had been through and the counters and floors were spotless; it even smelled clean.

  At the desk she settled down to read. It took a little self-discipline to stay awake, since she couldn’t tolerate coffee and
didn’t believe in other stimulants, but she was getting used to it.

  The girl who used to have the night shift always complained about hearing strange noises. Noises that couldn’t be explained away as the blood refrigerators or other machines. On one occasion she had barricaded herself in the bathroom after hearing what she described as “rustling” coming from the pathology lab. It was a couple of hours before anyone noticed her absence from the desk and thought to look for her. It took them twenty minutes more to convince her to unlock the bathroom door.

  Francine was not the nervous type.

  The first sound, like something being pushed across a counter, came, indeed, from the direction of the pathology lab.

  Francine lowered her book but did not put it down. Sitting very still, she listened, her mind searching for a plausible explanation for the sound.

  A jar, left for some reason on its side, rolling on the counter? Set in motion by…what?

  When the sound did not recur, she nodded, satisfied, and turned her attention back to her studies.

  The second sound was unmistakably the sound of glass breaking. It, too, came from the pathology lab.

  Francine closed her book, placing it on the desk. She was not alarmed; a jar left on its side, once set in motion by—whatever—could very easily roll off a counter. Still, she was in charge and she didn’t want anyone to think she wasn’t doing her share of the work just because she worked nights. Part of the work was the clean-up of broken glass.

  She found the whisk broom and a dustpan and walked toward the pathology lab.

  Pathology was a lab within the lab, set apart from the rest of the department by four glass walls. Working in pathology, Francine had often thought, must be like being inside a fish tank.

  She reached into her pocket for her keys, peering through the glass at the same time. Nothing was moving.

  It was a little awkward, trying to select the correct key without putting down the broom and dustpan and using both hands, but she managed. As she extended the key toward the lock, something moved. She watched, amazed, as a glass flask slid across the full width of a counter and fell to the floor.

  She blinked.

  An earthquake?

  A second flask, this one half-filled with an amber liquid, seemed to vibrate for just an instant before it, too, shot across and off the counter.

  Francine put the keys back in her pocket.

  A row of five-millimeter glass vials vibrated in their rack before shattering, one by one, with a force that sent pieces of glass flying across the room.

  She took a step backward.

  Up on the specimen shelf, organs and tumors floated in formaldehyde, quivering as the jars rattled. The first jar, with what she suspected was an excised melanoma, slid off the shelf and cracked open on the counter. The specimen was sliced neatly in two by a sharp angle of glass and one half disappeared over the edge of the counter.

  Francine shivered, her eyes drawn again to the specimen shelf, trying not to think of the purplish, fibrous mass somewhere on the pathology lab floor.

  A second, larger jar balanced on the edge of the shelf. Ropes of intestine twisted inside the jar, necrotic fissures in almost geometric patterns along the length of one side.

  The jar fell on its side, cracking on impact.

  Uncoiling, the specimen slithered wetly over the surface of the counter before dropping over the side to the floor.

  Francine could smell it now, the pungent odor of formaldehyde and the putrid stench of diseased tissue.

  She swallowed hard, trying not to taste the hot bile rising in her throat.

  She took another step backward, intending to turn away, not to look anymore…but her eyes relentlessly focused on yet another specimen jar…a fetus.

  Unbidden, the image of that tiny form, sliding in the muck on the floor, filled her mind.

  Turning, she stumbled over to a sink and vomited.

  Behind her, the sound of glass breaking continued on.

  WEDNESDAY

  Twenty-nine

  “It was quiet,” the night nurse said, pouring coffee into her mug. “Ballard seemed restless for a little while…”

  Mary Aguilar nodded, making a notation on the nursing notes.

  “Vital signs are within normal limits for all of them,” the night nurse continued, “although White did complain this morning of feeling warm. Her temperature was 98.8°.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on her.” Mary looked at the video monitor; the children were eating breakfast.

  “You’ve got a full schedule today,” the night nurse said, consulting a flow sheet. “Ballard has a nine o’clock in radiology for her MRI scan, Delano’s due in hydrotherapy at eight, they’re beginning a blood culture series on White, and Vincent is being evaluated by a psychiatrist this afternoon.” She tossed the clipboard on the desk. “Good luck.”

  Aguilar shrugged. “It’ll get done.”

  “And I got a call from engineering. They’re going to install the video recorder this morning.”

  “Good.”

  “I’m not sure I understand what the purpose of taping is.”

  “To verify subjective observational data…or at least that’s what it says in the program protocol.” She looked back at the monitor. “And to keep us on our best behavior.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Dr. Fuller told me once that he believes a patient’s personality can influence the quality of care he or she receives. Doctors and nurses are only human—”

  “Some of them, anyway,” the night nurse remarked.

  “—and certain types of people can be difficult to deal with.” Aguilar hesitated. “I’m a good nurse and I’m proud of my work, but I’m willing to admit that I’ve had a few patients whom I just didn’t like.”

  “So have I, but I don’t think you have to like every patient you care for.”

  “A patient who whines all the time is less likely to be listened to than one who doesn’t. Patients who are openly hostile are sometimes avoided by hospital staff, and when they do receive treatment, it is often given almost grudgingly.”

  “But it is given.”

  “Even so, you have to remember; in a hospital setting, we are the care-givers. We fill an emotional need as well as a medical or physiological one. If we withhold the emotional support…the caring…if we rely solely on technology to diagnose and treat, we may be omitting the most crucial aspect of healing…the human touch. Babies can die from emotional deprivation…failure to thrive, or whatever you want to call it. They all—even the most difficult ones—need us to care.”

  “Is it that much of a factor with children?” The night nurse looked at the monitor. “I would think that just naturally there would be more tenderness in caring for a child.”

  “There are some children who don’t invite tenderness. And there is evidence that some abused children actually seem to trigger violence…in cases where only one child in a family is abused.”

  The night nurse sighed. “They look so innocent.”

  Thirty

  “If one more person suggests it was an earthquake,” Simon Harrington said, looking on as the cleaning crew shoveled up the mess on the pathology lab floor, “I’m going to throttle ’em.”

  “Never crossed my mind,” Joshua said.

  “Nor mine.” Quinn sniffed cautiously. “Evil spirits?”

  Simon smiled appreciatively, giving Joshua a look she could not interpret. “More likely. Know any exorcists?”

  “Not locally.” She covered her nose and mouth with her hand. “It certainly smells like the devil.”

  “Did anyone see what happened?” Joshua asked.

  “A lab tech.” Simon turned away from pathology, leading them out of the laboratory and into the hall where the air was breathable. “She said everything ‘jumped’ off the shelves.”

  “Was she hysterical?”

  “No, quite the opposite. She said, very lucidly, that the specimen jars moved, one by one, to the edge
of the shelf and appeared to jump—that’s the word she used, jump—off the edge.”

  “Suicidal specimen jars.”

  “So it would seem.” Simon shook his head.

  “Did you check the shelf supports? Maybe one gave way and the shelf was tilted enough to send the specimen jars over the edge?”

  “I thought of that but no such luck. I hope our insurance will cover the damage, although some of those specimens will be difficult to replace.” Simon looked back through the laboratory door at pathology where the cleaning crew was loading the red contaminated material bags into a wheeled garbage can. “Suicidal specimen jars indeed.”

  Thirty-one

  Anne worked quickly, positioning the lift behind the boy’s wheelchair and setting the brake. She released the harness and brought it down until it was in position to the boy’s left.

  “This won’t hurt,” she said, unstrapping the buckles and maneuvering the belts under his thighs and across his back. He was painfully thin and the harness was loose when she finished. The bathing trunks he wore were large as well and her heart ached at the sight of him as he waited, shivering, for her to lift him into the therapy pool.

  She moved behind the lift and pressed the lever which raised him until she was able to move the wheelchair out from under him. Then, carefully, she guided the lift until the boy was suspended over the water and began to lower him.

  “It’s warm,” she promised.

  She thought he looked paler than he had when he’d arrived and opened her mouth to ask him how he felt when he smiled at her. Reassured, she continued lowering him into the bubbling water.

  When he was at the correct level, she locked the lift into position. The water came up to his shoulders and he lifted his chin, looking at her with wide eyes.

  “It’s okay,” she said, wishing desperately that she could remember his name. “The water won’t get any higher.” She knew from experience that, strapped in place, some of the patients felt they were in danger of drowning. “Just relax.”