The Cradle Will Fall

by Mary Higgins Clark

  He walked with Richard back to his office. “You’re still thinking about the psychiatrist, aren’t you?” he asked. “He’s about five ten.”

  Richard hesitated and decided not to say anything until he had spoken with Jim Berkeley and the woman patient who had pressed the malpractice suit. He changed the subject. “How’s Katie doing?”

  Scott shook his head. “Hard to say. Those bums are blaming the vandalism on one of their friends who was killed on his motorcycle last November. Their new story is they took the rap for him because they felt sorry for his folks, but now their minister has persuaded them for the sake of their own family they have to tell the truth.”

  Richard snorted. “The jury isn’t falling for that, is it?”

  Scott said, “It’s out now. Listen, no matter how hard you try to pick your jury, there’s always one bleeding-heart on it who will fall for a sob story. Katie’s done a great job, but it could go either way. Okay. I’ll see you later.”

  At four thirty, Jim Berkeley returned Richard’s call. “I understand you’ve been trying to reach me.” His voice was guarded.

  “Yes.” Richard matched the other man’s impersonal tone. “It’s important that I speak with you. Can you stop in my office on your way home?”

  “Yes, I can.” Now Jim’s voice became resigned. “And I think I know what you want to talk about.”

  ♦53♦

  Edgar Highley turned from the girl on the examining table. “You may get dressed now.”

  She had claimed to be twenty, but he was sure she wasn’t more than sixteen or seventeen. “Am I . . .”

  “Yes, my dear. You are very definitely pregnant. About five weeks, I should think. I want you to return tomorrow morning and we will terminate the pregnancy.”

  “I was wondering: do you think I should maybe have the baby and have it adopted?”

  “Have you told your parents about this?”

  “No. They’d be so upset.”

  “Then I suggest you postpone motherhood for several years at least. Ten o’clock tomorrow.”

  He left the room, went into his office and looked up the phone number of the new patient he had chosen yesterday. “Mrs. Englehart, this is Dr. Highley. I want to begin your treatment. Kindly come to the hospital tomorrow morning at eight thirty and prepare to spend the night.”

  ♦54♦

  While the jury was deliberating, Katie went into the courthouse cafeteria. She carefully chose a small table at the end of the room and sat with her back to the other tables. She did not want anyone to either join or notice her. The light-headed feeling was persistent now; she felt fatigued and weak, but not hungry. Just a cup of tea, she thought. Mama always thought that a cup of tea would cure all the ills of the world. She remembered coming back to the house from John’s funeral, her mother’s voice concerned, gentle: “I’ll make you a nice hot cup of tea, Katie.”

  Richard. Mama would love Richard. She always liked big men. “Your dad was a skinny little one, but oh, Katie, didn’t he seem like a big man?”

  Yes, he did.

  Mama was coming up for Easter. That was just six weeks from now. Mama would be so delighted if she and Richard got together.

  I do want that, don’t I? Katie thought as she sipped the tea. It’s not just because I’m so aware of loneliness this week.

  It was more than that. Much more. But this weekend in the hospital, she’d be able to sort things through, to think quietly.

  She sat for nearly an hour, absently sipping the tea, reviewing every step of her summation. Had she convinced the jury that the Odendall boys were lying? The minister. She’d scored there. He’d agreed that neither boy was a churchgoer, that neither boy had ever consulted him for any reason before. Was it possible that he was being used by them to bolster their story? “Yes,” he agreed. “It is possible.” She had made that point. She was sure of it.

  At five o’clock she returned to the courtroom. As she entered, the jury sent word to the judge that it had reached a verdict.

  Five minutes later, the foreman announced the verdict: “Robert Odendall, not guilty on all counts. Jonathan Odendall, not guilty on all counts.”

  “I don’t believe it.” Katie wasn’t sure if she had spoken aloud. The judge’s face hardened into angry lines. He dismissed the jury curtly and told the defendants to stand up.

  “You are very lucky,” he snapped, “luckier than I hope you’ll ever be again in either of your lives. Now clear out of my courtroom, and if you’re smart you’ll never appear before me again.”

  Katie stood up. No matter if the judge clearly felt the verdict was erroneous, she had lost the case. She should have done more. She felt rather than saw the victorious smile the defense attorney shot at her. A thick, hard lump burned in her throat, making it impossible to swallow. She was within inches of tears. Those two criminals were about to be released on the streets after flouting justice. A dead boy had been labeled a criminal.

  She stuffed her notes into her briefcase. Maybe if she hadn’t felt so lousy all week she’d have conducted a better case. Maybe if she’d had this hemorrhaging problem taken care of a year ago instead of delaying and putting it off with this crazy, childish fear of hospitals, she wouldn’t have had the accident Monday night.

  “Will the State please approach the bench?”

  She looked up. The judge was beckoning to her. She walked over to him. The spectators were filing out. She could hear delighted squeals as the Odendalls embraced their gum-chewing, braless girlfriends.

  “Your Honor.” Katie managed to keep her voice steady.

  The judge leaned over and whispered to her: “Don’t let it get you down, Katie. You proved that case. Those little bastards will be back here in two months on other charges. We both know it, and next time you’ll nail them.”

  Katie tried to smile. “That’s just what I’m afraid of, that they will be back. God knows how much damage they’ll be doing before we can nail them. But thanks, Judge.”

  She left the courtroom and went back to her office. Maureen looked up hopefully. Katie shook her head and watched the expression change to sympathy. She shrugged. “What can you do, huh?”

  Maureen followed her into her office. “Mr. Myerson and Dr. Carroll are in a meeting. They don’t want to be disturbed. But of course, you can go in.”

  “No. I’m sure it’s the Lewis case, and I’d be of no use to them or anyone else right now. I’ll catch up on Monday.”

  “All right. Katie, I’m sorry about the Odendall verdict, but try not to take it so hard. You really look sick. Are you all right to drive? You’re not dizzy or anything?”

  “No, really, and I’m not going far. I’ll be driving just fifteen minutes and then I won’t budge till Sunday.”

  As she walked to the car, Katie shuddered. The temperature had gotten up to about forty degrees in the afternoon, but was dropping rapidly again. The wet, damp air penetrated the loose sleeves of her red wool wraparound coat and pierced her nylon hose. She thought longingly of her own room, her own bed. How great it would be to be able to go there now, to just go to bed with a hot toddy and sleep the weekend away.

  At the hospital, the admitting office had her completed forms waiting. The clerk was briskly bright.

  “My goodness, Mrs. DeMaio, you certainly rate. Dr. Highley has given you the bedroom of Suite One on the third floor. That’s like going on a vacation. You’ll never dream you’re in a hospital.”

  “He said something about that,” Katie murmured. She was not about to confide her fear of hospitals to this woman.

  “You may be a bit lonesome up there. There are just three suites on that floor, and the other two are empty. And Dr. Highley is having the living room of your suite redecorated. Why, I don’t know. It was done less than a year ago. But anyhow, you won’t need it. You’ll only be here till Sunday. If you want anything, all you have to do is press the buzzer. The second-floor nursing station takes care of both the second- and third-floor patients. They’re a
ll Dr. Highley’s patients anyhow. Now, here’s your wheelchair. If you’ll just get into it, we’ll whisk you upstairs.”

  Katie stared in consternation. “You don’t mean I have to use a wheelchair now?”

  “Hospital regulations,” the admitting clerk said firmly.

  John in a wheelchair going up for chemotherapy. John’s body shrinking as she watched him die. John’s voice weakening, his wry, tired humor as the wheel-chair was brought to his bed: “Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home.” The antiseptic hospital smell.

  Katie sat down in the chair and closed her eyes. There was no turning back. The attendant, a middle-aged, solidly plump volunteer, pushed the chair down the corridor to the elevator.

  “You’re lucky to have Dr. Highley” she informed Katie. “His patients get the best care in the hospital. You push that buzzer for someone and you’ll have a nurse at your beck and call in thirty seconds. Dr. Highley is strict. The whole staff trembles when he’s around, but he’s good.”

  They were at the elevator. The attendant pushed the button. “This place is so different from most hospitals. Most places don’t want to see you until you’re ready to deliver, and then they shove you out when the baby is a couple of days old. Not Dr. Highley. I’ve seen him put pregnant women to bed here for two months just as a precaution. That’s why he has suites, so people can have a homelike atmosphere. Mrs. Aldrich is in the one on the second floor. She delivered by cesarean yesterday and hasn’t stopped crying. She’s that happy. Her husband’s just as bad. He slept on the sofa in the living room of her suite last night. Dr. Highley encourages that. Well, here’s the elevator.”

  Several other people got on the elevator with them. They glanced at Katie curiously. Observing the magazines and flowers they were carrying, she decided they were obviously visitors. She felt oddly removed from them. The minute you become a patient you lose your identity, she thought. You become a case.

  They got off at the third floor. The corridor was carpeted in a soft green shade. Excellent reproductions of Monet and Matisse paintings enhanced by recessed framing were scattered along the walls.

  In spite of herself, Katie was reassured. The volunteer wheeled her down the corridor and turned right. “You’re in the end suite,” she exclaimed. “It’s kind of far off. I don’t think there’s even any other patients on this floor today.”

  “That’s all right with me,” Katie murmured. She thought of John’s room. The two of them wanting to absorb each other, to stockpile against the separation. Ambulatory patients coming to the door, looking in. “How’s it going today, Judge? He looks better, doesn’t he, Mrs. DeMaio?”

  And she, lying, “Indeed he does.” Go away, go away. We have so little time.

  “I don’t mind being alone on the floor,” she repeated.

  She was wheeled into a bedroom. The walls were ivory; the carpet, the same soft green as the corridor. The furniture was antique white. Printed draperies in shades of ivory and green matched the bedspread. “Oh, this is nice,” Katie exclaimed.

  The attendant looked pleased. “I thought you’d like it. The nurse will be in in a few minutes. Why don’t you just put your things away and make yourself comfortable?”

  She was gone. Somewhat uncertainly, Katie undressed, put on a nightgown and warm robe. She put her clothes in the closet. What in God’s name would she do for the long, dreary evening that stretched before her? Last night at this time she’d been dressing to go to Molly’s dinner party. And when she’d arrived, Richard had been waiting for her.

  She realized she was swaying. Instinctively, she reached for the dresser and held on to it. The lightheaded feeling passed. It was probably just the rushing, and the aftermath of the trial and—Let’s face it, she thought: apprehension.

  She was in a hospital. No matter how she tried to push away the thought, she was in a hospital. Incredible, childish, that she could not overcome her fear. Daddy. John. The two people she’d loved best in the world had gone into the hospital and died. No matter how she tried to intellectualize, rationalize, she could not lose that terrible feeling of panic. Well, maybe this stay would get her over it. Monday night hadn’t been that bad.

  There were four doors in the room. The closet door, the bathroom door, the one leading to the corridor. The other one must go into the living room. She opened it and glanced in. As the admitting clerk had told her, it was pulled apart. The furniture was in the middle of the room and covered with painter’s drop cloths. She flicked on the light. Dr. Highley surely was a perfectionist. There was nothing the matter with the walls that she could see. No wonder hospital costs were so outrageous.

  Shrugging, she turned off the light, closed the door and walked over to the window. The hospital was U-shaped, the two wings parallel to each other at right angles behind the main section.

  She’d been on the other side Monday night, exactly opposite where she was now. Visitors’ cars were beginning to fill the lot. Where was the parking stall she’d dreamed about? Oh, of course—that one, over to the side, directly under the last light post. There was a car parked there now, a black car. In her dream it had been a black car. Those wired spokes; the way they glinted in the light.

  “How are you feeling, Mrs. DeMaio?”

  She spun around. Dr. Highley was standing in the room. A young nurse was hovering at his elbow.

  “Oh, you startled me. I’m fine, Doctor.”

  “I knocked, but you didn’t hear me.” His voice was gently reproving. He came over to the window and drew the drapery. “No matter what we do, these windows are drafty,” he commented. “We don’t want you catching cold. Suppose you sit on the bed and let me check your pressure. We’ll want to take some blood samples too.”

  The nurse followed him. Katie noticed that the girl’s hands were trembling. She was obviously in awe of Dr. Highley.

  The doctor wrapped the pressure cuff around her arm. A wave of dizziness made Katie feel as though the walls of the room were receding. She clutched at the mattress.

  “Is there anything wrong, Mrs. DeMaio?” The doctor’s voice was gentle.

  “No, not really. I’m just a touch faint.”

  He began to pump the bulb. “Nurse Renge, kindly get a cold cloth for Mrs. DeMaio’s forehead,” he instructed.

  The nurse obediently rushed into the bathroom. The doctor was studying the pressure gauge. “You’re a bit low. Any problems?”

  “Yes.” Her voice sounded as though it belonged to someone else, or maybe as though she were in an echo chamber. “My period started again. It’s been dreadfully heavy since Wednesday.”

  “I’m not surprised. Frankly, if you hadn’t scheduled this operation, I’m quite sure you’d have been forced to have it on an emergency basis.”

  The nurse came out of the bathroom with a neatly folded cloth. She was biting her lower lip to keep it from quivering. Katie felt a rush of sympathy for her. She neither wanted nor needed a cold compress on her forehead, but leaned back against the pillow. The nurse put it on her head. The cloth was soaking, and she felt freezing water run down her hairline. She resisted the impulse to brush it away. The doctor would notice, and she didn’t want the nurse to be reprimanded.

  A flash of humor raised her spirits. She could just see telling Richard, “And this poor, scared kid practically drowned me. I’ll probably have bursitis of the eyebrows from now on.”

  Richard. She should have told him she was coming here. She wanted him with her now.

  Dr. Highley was holding a needle. She closed her eyes as he drew blood from a vein in her right arm. She watched him put the blood-filled vacutubes on the tray the nurse held out to him.

  “I want these run through immediately,” he said brusquely.

  “Yes, Doctor.” The nurse scurried out, obviously delighted to get away.

  Dr. Highley sighed. “I’m afraid that timid young woman is on desk duty tonight. But you won’t require anything special, I’m sure. Did you complete taking the pills I gave yo
u?”

  Katie realized that she had not taken the three-o’clock pill and it was now after six.

  “I’m afraid I skipped at three o’clock,” she apologized. “I was in court and everything but the trial went out of my mind, and I guess I’m overdue for the last one.”

  “Do you have the pills with you?”

  “Yes, in my handbag.” She glanced at the dresser.

  “Don’t get up. I’ll hand it to you.”

  When she took the bag from him, she unzipped it, fished inside and brought out the small bottle. There were just two pills in it. The night table held a tray with a carafe of ice water and a glass. Dr. Highley poured water into the glass and gave it to her. “Finish these,” he said.

  “Both of them?”

  “Yes. Yes. They’re very mild, and I did want you to have them by six.” He handed her the glass and dropped the empty jar into his pocket.

  Obediently, she swallowed the pills, feeling his eyes on her. His steel-rimmed glasses glinted under the overhead light. The glint. The spokes of the car glinting.

  There was a blur of red on the glass as she laid it down. He noticed it, reached for her hand and examined her finger. The tissue had become damp again.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “Oh, nothing. Just a paper cut, but it must be deep.

  It keeps bleeding.”

  “I see.” He stood up. “I’ve ordered a sleeping pill for you. Please take it as soon as the nurse brings it.”

  “I really prefer not to take sleeping pills, Doctor. They seem to cause an overreaction in me.” She wanted to sound vehement. Instead, her voice had a lazy, weak quality.

  “I’m afraid I insist on the pill, Mrs. DeMaio, particularly for someone like yourself who is likely to spend the night in sleepless anxiety without it. I want you well rested in the morning. Oh, here’s your dinner now.”

  Katie watched as a thin, sixtyish woman carrying a tray came into the room and glanced nervously at the doctor. They’re all petrified of him, she thought. Unlike the usual plastic or metal hospital tray, this one was made of white wicker and had a side basket that held the evening newspaper. The china was delicate, the silverware gracefully carved. A single red rose stood in a slender vase. Double loin lamb chops were kept hot by a silver dome over the dinner plate. An arugula salad, julienne string beans, small hot biscuits, tea and sherbet completed the meal. The attendant turned to go.