Vital Signs

“Can I interest you in some breakfast, Nurse Bergstrom?”

For an instant passion leaped across the barrier Hailey had created. She wanted to throw herself into Roy’s arms, because only there would she find peace. But a little round face swam between them, and the pain cut into her heart. The peace would be shortlived—only the length of time it took for the passion to ebb and resentment to take its place.

“I can’t.” She looked at him, shook her head and told him the bald truth. “You hurt me, and I’m scared you’ll do it again.”

“You’d end what there is between us just because you’re scared?” There was temper and challenge in his tone. “I thought you were braver than that.”

“Well, you thought wrong.” She dragged her keys out of her bag and walked around him to open the truck door. “Don’t call me, please. Don’t wait for me again. It’s over.”

“Don’t do this, Hailey.”

She was too tired to argue with him. She started the truck and backed out of the stall. As she drove away she wasn’t even crying. Her eyes were dry and burning with an echo of the pain in her heart.

Dear Reader,

Somewhere it says that the way to make God laugh is to tell Him your plans. For me and my original vision of this book, the truth of that saying grew more and more evident as the writing progressed.

The idea for Vital Signs was born when my son, Dan Jackart, a Vancouver fireman, told me about a disturbing call that involved an abandoned baby. He explained how deeply the firemen and medical personnel are affected when a baby is endangered, and how everyone wonders how such a tragedy could occur. What kind of mother could do such a terrible thing? In the beginning of this story, I admit that I felt the same way. But as I wrote, I began to see that in the heart of calamity is buried the seed of opportunity, the potential for greater growth and higher love. The story took me by the scruff of the neck and led me along paths that surprised and pleased me and, yes, forced me to change ideas of right and wrong. It became clear that I might as well give up on my agenda and let love follow its own circuitous and surprising path.

This was a book with a mind of its own. I hope it pleases you and touches your heart as it has mine.

Love always,

Bobby

Vital Signs

Bobby Hutchinson

Heartfelt thanks to social workers Stew Brown and Donna Miller for invaluable assistance and advice on the complex issue of abandonment and parenting.

Vital Signs is dedicated with love and gratitude to my dear and treasured friend Beverly Piebenga, who got me through this one with professional nursing advice, encouragement and, most of all, stir-fries and chocolate. From both my soul and my stomach, thank you, Bev.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

DAVID RIGGS was two years old when his mother abandoned him one hot Tuesday in July.

Shannon didn’t mean to do it. The welfare check had finally come, and she put Davie into the rickety stroller and walked to the corner grocery. The wizened Oriental man smiled at her when she paid her bill.

“No good this heat. S’posed to rain tomorrow. Good thing—too hot for Vancouver, right, missy?”

She agreed with him and bought diapers and soup and some bananas. Davie loved bananas. He chortled when she peeled one and gave it to him. Then they took the bag of dirty clothes to the laundromat, and Shannon took him out of the stroller. Davie discovered a blue plastic laundry basket someone had left behind. He climbed in and pretended it was a boat.

When they got home, Shannon fed him his lunch and he fell asleep on their bed in the bedroom, wearing only a diaper and clutching his favorite stuffed toy.

Shannon was folding clothes on the kitchen table when she heard the knock on her door. Her heart started to hammer when she opened it and saw Rudy, because she knew he was bringing news about Murphy. He had no other reason to be there.

“Somebody out in the car wants to see you.” Rudy’s acne-ravaged face twisted into a grin. She knew right away it was Murphy in the car, and her heart nearly jumped out of her chest.

She didn’t lock the door, because she’d only be gone a few minutes.

She had to tell Murphy about Davie—had to make him understand why she hadn’t had the abortion like she’d agreed before he got sent to jail.

Rudy opened the back door of the car, and she saw Murphy for the first time in almost three years. Her heart hammered and her knees started trembling at the familiar sight of his silky dark curls, his cobalt-blue eyes. Davie looked so much like him, right down to the cleft in his chin.

“Hey, babe, long time no see.” Murphy took her hands and pulled her into the car, and she collapsed against his chest, tears pouring down her cheeks. She forgot the times he’d hit her, the times he’d hurt her, the lies he’d told. All she remembered was that he was the first and only man she’d ever loved, and she’d been so lonely so long. When he kissed her, hard and deep, she was instantly wet with wanting him.

And then Rudy started the engine and roared off, and she panicked because her baby was back there alone in the apartment. She screamed at them to let her out, her kid was alone.

“Chill out,” Rudy growled, cracking his gum. “We’re only going around the block. I have to make a pickup and I’m late.”

Shannon knew he was talking about drugs. Rudy was a dealer. She’d worked for him—that was how she’d met Murphy.

Then Murphy got that scary look on his face and wanted to know what kid she was talking about. So she had to tell him she’d done exactly what he’d said not to do. She’d gone ahead and had the baby, not used the money he’d given her for an abortion.

Murphy got mad, and instead of going around the block, Rudy headed for Stanley Park. She could have jumped out when they stopped at the lights, but she didn’t. She went blubbering on about Davie, how sweet he was, how much he looked like Murphy, how proud Murphy would be when he saw him.

But Murphy was pissed off because she hadn’t done what he’d told her.

Rudy got the stuff, and she refused when they offered her some.

“Guess you don’t love me anymore,” Murphy said, and she denied it. He said prove it, and then she let him shoot her up the way he always had before, and after that, nothing was important except the feeling, the feeling she’d fought against and yearned for and dreamed of and managed to avoid since the day she’d found out she was pregnant.

Things were blurry after that. She told herself that Davie would be okay. He always slept a couple of hours, and Tonya was coming today. The door was unlocked. Tonya would be mad at her. Shannon had promised her never again, but she also knew Tonya would take care of Davie.

And for Shannon, time ceased to be.

For Davie, time stretched nearly into eternity, although when he grew older, he had no memory of sliding off the bed, calling for his mother, sobbing until his throat was raw from tears and terrible thirst. He never remembered the endless days or the long nights. He had no recollection of slipping finally into something more than sleep.

For Shannon, it seemed only a few minutes before Rudy pulled up in front of the apartment and she saw the ambulance and the police cars and the firemen, but it must have been longer, maybe lots longer. She couldn’t remember. She screamed and tried to get out, but Murphy held her.

“The kid’s okay. They’re taking care of him. Here, this’ll make you feel better.”

And after that she didn’t try to remember.

CHAPTER ONE

THE EMERGENCY ROOM at St. Joseph’s Medical Centre in Vancouver hummed in the midday heat. The sound came from huge air-conditioning units, white noise that the ER staff no longer heard. They heard, instead, the scream of sirens arriving at one of the emergency bays, and the intercom announcement that signaled incoming trauma.

“Trauma alert, emergency department. Paramedics arriving with abandoned baby—male, estimate two years old. Dehydrated, not conscious. ETA four minutes.”

“We’re set up in room three.” Triage nurse Leslie Yates did her best to keep her voice calm and steady, but the one thing that most disturbed her and the rest of the ER staff was a mistreated child.

One of the doctors cursed under his breath, and Leslie knew her own face mirrored the expressions of the rest of the ER staff when the medics arrived with their tiny patient. She found a moment to talk to one of them and he described where and how the child had been found.

“Apartment hotel downtown, a real dump. Must have been ninety degrees in there. The kid was too little to get to a tap. If he hadn’t turned on the TV, the neighbor would never have gone to investigate. She got pissed off when the sound went on all night and all morning.”

Leslie notified Social Services just to be sure they knew. It turned out the paramedics had already called, and probably the firemen and police, as well, but it didn’t hurt to make sure.

During the next half hour, she dealt with several more incoming crises, but every moment she was aware of the drama going on in trauma room three.

“How’s it looking with the boy?” Leslie asked one of the nurses when she hurried out with blood samples. The young woman shook her head, her expression grim. “Poor little thing’s dehydrated. His vitals are way off the scale.”

Ten minutes later Leslie saw a flurry of frantic activity in and around room three and her stomach tensed. The boy must have arrested. Tension was palpable in the ER as the staff fought to save his life. Leslie did what most of them were doing. She prayed.

By the time her shift ended at three o’clock, the boy had stabilized, much to everyone’s relief. He was sent up to pediatric intensive care, and a collective sigh of gratitude could almost be heard throughout the ER. The firemen and the medics who’d attended had called several times to find out how he was doing, and before she went off shift, Leslie made a point of phoning them all to tell them the child was stable.

They all knew the situation might only be temporary, that he could easily go bad again during the night. But at least for now, he was holding his own.

With one last fervent and heartfelt prayer for the little boy’s continued well-being, Leslie went home.

ROY ZEDYCK had gotten home late. There’d been an emergency—one of the foster kids he’d recently placed had pulled a fire alarm at his school. Roy had spent the past two hours meeting with the principal, the kid’s foster mother and the nine-year-old boy, trying to calm them all down. The boy’s explanation for why he’d done such a thing was that life was boring.

This from a kid who’d stolen a car the month before and run it through a neighbor’s garden, added bubble bath to a washing machine and dog-napped a mutt outside a grocery store. Roy could only pray that these new foster parents would persevere, that they’d see past the kid’s penchant for mischief to the brilliant potential Roy detected. The kid had an IQ right off the scale, but he’d managed to wear out three sets of foster parents in less than a year.

Roy pulled on the trousers to his gray suit—his only good suit. He zipped up the pants, noticing how loose they were around the waist. He’d dropped some weight since he last wore them, and he couldn’t afford to lose weight, because he had no intention of buying a new wardrobe.

Must be stress doing it, because it sure as hell wasn’t sex. His love life had been at a standstill for weeks, ever since Anna left in search of greener wallets.

It wasn’t exercise, either. He hadn’t been for a run in ten days, and he’d had to miss the last three pickup rugby games. The court case he’d been involved in had eaten up what little time the job hadn’t.

His testimony had resulted in the formation of a commission that would eventually make changes to the system, but Roy couldn’t forget that those changes had come about as the result of a child’s death. It seemed at times that the world was going to hell, and all social workers could do was spit on the flames. He was weary in a way he hadn’t been since he first took the job with the ministry seven years ago this month.

The phone rang, and he shot it a baleful glare. It might be work, and he already had a briefcase filled with files he’d barely looked at. However, he was part of the after-hours unit, and he was on call.

Or it could be his sister, Nicole, who was going with him to the family party at their sister Jennifer’s tonight. Or it might be the retirement home where his mother was battling another bout of flu. Whoever it was, he had to answer.

He picked up the receiver and silently cursed. It was his team leader, and that could only mean another emergency.

“Hi, Marty, what’s up?”

“That abandoned kid at St. Joe’s—did you see the item on him in the newspaper yesterday?”

Roy’s heart sank. Abused or abandoned kids were bad; they pulled out emotions already raw from overuse.

“I saw it.” There’d been a double murder in North Van, so the article had been buried on a back page of the Province.

“I know your caseload is crazy already and Larissa was supposed to be on this one, but she just called me. Her father died, and she’s flying back to Calgary tonight.”

They’d been shorthanded for the past five years, and with the recent government cutbacks, things had gone from desperate to ridiculous. It took restraint not to remind Marty of that. Roy let him ramble on about their co-workers’ latest personal problems.

“Rita’s getting married this weekend and Jake’s having a hemorrhoid operation. Larissa’s done the preliminary work on the case. The kid’s name is David Riggs. His mother’s known to the ministry—she’s on assistance, name’s Shannon Riggs. I’ve got the case file right here. Mother’s seventeen, she was on the street at twelve, heavy into drugs, but she straightened out when she got pregnant. One of the downtown volunteers, Tonya Cabral, took her in and helped her get clean. The police and the downtown street workers are watching out for Shannon, but so far no sign. David’s two years two months. He was taken to St. Joe’s forty-eight hours ago seriously dehydrated. A neighbor found him, called the fire department. Estimates are the boy was alone three days.”

Roy shuddered. He’d seen babies like that before. He’d watched one of them die.

“It was touch-and-go as to whether David would pull through, but looks as if he’s on the mend now. He’s in St. Joe’s—got out of intensive care this morning and was transferred to the pediatric ward. Harry Larue is the attending pediatrician.”

Poor little kid. Intense compassion, deep sadness and bitter anger ate at Roy’s gut, the way it always did when an innocent child was the victim of neglect. Along with the other emotions came resignation. This was, after all, social work—the job he’d chosen. It wasn’t anyone’s fault that he was having second thoughts. It went without saying that he’d do the best he could for David Riggs.

He went through the mental checklist of what needed to be done, then asked Marty where matters stood, how much Larissa had already waded through.

In cases like this, what had to happen immediately was legal removal of the child from the parent, for the boy’s protection. Larissa had taken the proper steps; the boy was now a ward of the ministry. Unfortunately that was about all she’d done.

Roy needed to talk to the kid’s doctor, the firemen who’d found him, and anyone else who’d been on the scene or knew anything about Shannon and David Riggs. It had to be done immediately, because firefighters and police were busy people, and he wanted to know what their impressions were while they were still fresh in their minds.

It was also important to go see the boy himself, so that he had a feeling for the little person, instead of just a name in a file. It was his policy to do that stat.

“We’ve managed to keep this out of the headlines so far, only because of that double murder. Be prepared for reporters, though. They’ll be after you because of your involvement in the Sieberg affair.”

Tragedy, Marty, Roy wanted to say. The Sieberg tragedy, where the authorities sent a little boy back to his birth mother and he died. But he held his tongue. What did semantics matter when the kid was dead?

“Better refer them to me,” his team leader said. Marty wasn’t a bad guy, but he was a publicity hound who longed to see his name in print. He’d resented the press coverage Roy had gotten during the Sieberg trial. Roy just resented the press coverage.

“Gladly.” He’d had enough run-ins with the papers to last him a lifetime.

So much for tonight’s family dinner. He wasn’t going to be able to stay long. He’d just drop off the gift for his sister Dana and then get to work. Nicole could get a ride home with someone else easily enough.

He’d been looking forward to dinner, though. He was famished. Maybe Jennifer would take pity on him and make him up a plate of food to carry with him.

“Okay, Marty, I’ll get on this right away.”

“Thanks, Roy.” Marty added with gallows humor, “Have a good evening.”

Roy glanced at his watch. Jennifer had said the birthday dinner was at seven-thirty. If he got out of here in five minutes, and if Nicole was ready when he got to her place—a big if, since his sister wasn’t often on time—he could just about manage a quick stop at St. Joe’s to see the boy. It was on the way to Jennifer’s house, anyway, he rationalized.

Well, almost. Ten minutes out of the way, give or take.

He shrugged into his jacket, ran a brush through his hair—he was two weeks past a date with his barber—and was out the door with a minute to spare.

Things seemed to be going well for a change, because there was a parking spot right in front of Nicole’s condo. Roy swung his aging blue Toyota into it and sprinted to the entrance. He punched in her code number and waited impatiently until she buzzed the door open.

Nicole was standing at the door to her condo. She tipped her lovely face up so he could kiss her cheek.

“Hey, handsome, love your suit. Is it new?”

“Vintage. Just had it dry-cleaned. Those guys do wonders.” It was an old joke. She’d seen the suit many times before. Nicole was a clothes freak, and she liked to tease him about his total lack of interest in his wardrobe.

“You look as gorgeous as ever,” he complimented her. He studied her and hazarded a pretty safe guess. “New dress?”

She nodded. “First time out. I’m testing it on you guys and then I’m going to wear it when that hunk of an airline pilot takes me to dinner on Saturday. Think it’s too dressy for a family birthday party?”

“Not at all. It’s a good color on you.”

Nicole burst into giggles. “Roy, its black, you idiot.”

“So?” He feigned hurt. “It’s still a good color on you. But then, any color would be a good color on you.”

It was the truth. His sister was stunning. At five-eleven, she was just three inches shorter than he was, with long, straight, gleaming blond hair. She had the slender figure of a fashion model and a mind like a high-speed computer, and under that golden tan were the muscles of an Amazon. Tonight she was wearing spiky heels, so they were nearly eye to eye.

Nicole was warm and funny and vulnerable. Out of three sisters and two brothers, she was his favorite sibling, a go-for-the-jugular divorce lawyer who dreamed of being a landscape architect. She fantasized about living in a cottage on acres of land where she could grow tomatoes and babies, but for convenience’ sake she lived in a condo with a postage stamp for a yard.

Single, as he was. Searching, which he assured himself he wasn’t.

She reached up and smoothed his hair back. “You could use a haircut, or are you going for that killer ponytail look? Crooked nose, dimple in your chin—you might just get away with it.”

He scowled at her. “It’s not a dimple, it’s a cleft. And I plan to get a haircut. In fact, I’m thinking of a brush cut.”

“I’ll get Mom and the sisters to vote tonight on whether or not you should. My money’s on the ponytail.”

“I won’t be around to hear the results. I’m gonna have to cut the evening short, Nicky. I got a call from work just as I was leaving. Can’t stay for dinner.”

“Just as well for the rest of us. Jen’s making Italian—the cake’s gonna be that cream-and-chocolate masterpiece. What’s the emergency?”

“An abandoned baby at St. Joe’s. I need to meet the little guy and talk to the doctor. You mind if we stop on our way?”

“Not at all. The family knows my car’s in for repairs, so it’s your head that rolls if we’re late.”

“That’s what I love about you, Nicky. You’re clear that it’s every man for himself.”

“It comes from growing up in a house where there was one bathroom and seven bladders.”

“That’s something I’m not sorry I missed out on.” Roy had reunited with his birth family when he was seventeen. His adoptive parents had had two bathrooms and one kid.

He handed her into the car, then took the slight detour that would lead them to St. Joe’s.

“Did you hear Dana’s pregnant again?”

“Nobody tells me stuff like that. This’ll make, what, four for her?”

“Five.” She shook her head and clucked her tongue. “Without me to remind you, you’d never remember how many nieces and nephews you’ve got.”

“It keeps changing all the time.”

“Lucky Dana.” Nicole’s soft brown eyes were wistful. “What did you get her for her birthday?”

“A Swatch watch. I asked Greg what she might like and that’s what he said.”

“I guess she’ll need it to time her contractions. I played it safe and got her soap and bubble bath. You can’t go wrong with that. She told me the kids used the last of her stash to make potions in the bathtub. They’re deep into wizardry. Harry Potter has created a whole new market for bubble bath.”

He laughed. “They’re good kids. And Dana and Greg are great parents.” It was reassuring to know there were people who took care of their kids. He saw so many of the other kind.

“What’s with the baby at St. Joe’s?”

“Two-year-old David Riggs, found abandoned a few days ago in a downtown apartment.”

“I think I saw a small article about him in the paper, but it didn’t give his name or anything.” Nicole frowned. “How could a mother leave a little kid alone for three days?”

It was more a sad statement than a question. Nicole heard too many horror stories to be surprised by much.

“She’s seventeen. She’ll probably insist she didn’t plan to be away more than a few minutes.” He’d heard it so many times before. “David’s now in the care of the ministry, so she’s gonna have to jump through hoops to get him back.”

Unless some idiot judge decides otherwise. Four-year-old Scotty Sieberg had begged to stay with his foster family, and Roy had petitioned the court to leave him there. But Scotty had been handed back to his birth mother. And her boyfriend had shaken the little boy for not picking up his toys, and Scotty had died.