Vital Signs
Rage boiled in Roy as he pulled into the lot beside the medical center. He knew he had to shove the Sieberg case into a mental file drawer marked Don’t go there unless you have to.
“Mind if I come in with you?” Nicole asked.
“Well, I was really planning to leave you out here sweltering in the car,” he teased. “But maybe you can come, as long as you cling to me and do that swivel-hip thing you babes do in heels. Nobody here knows that you’re my sister, and it’ll get me a whole lot of respect from the male members of the staff.”
“And here I thought it was the females you wanted to impress. Is there something sensitive and personal you want to tell me, big brother?”
“Only that I need help fighting off the hordes of rabid women after my body.”
“In your dreams.”
The pediatrics ward was behind a locked door on the fourth floor. Roy presented ID, and the security guard let them in. There was no one at the nurses’ station, but they could hear children’s excited voices and loud laughter erupting from the playroom at the end of the corridor, so Roy headed that way.
“Sounds like a party,” Nicole remarked. “We’ve come to the right place.”
On the floor of the playroom, a group of children sat around a young woman with short, fiery-red curls. Huge, gray rabbit ears were secured to her head by a yellow ribbon. She was wearing a pink T-shirt patterned with garish sunflowers over a pair of green uniform pants, and she was sitting cross-legged, her head bent over a book she was reading aloud.
On the floor beside her, a live rabbit in a wire cage munched on a lettuce leaf, a bored expression on his face. The room was overly warm, and there was a pungent odor of children, antiseptic, urine and rabbit turds.
There was also the ripple of children’s laughter, and Roy smiled with pleasure and surprise. A hospital wasn’t usually a place where kids enjoyed themselves, and it delighted him to hear them having fun.
The sound of laughter died as one after another of the kids caught sight of Roy and Nicole. The woman stopped reading and turned toward them.
“Hi,” she said in a voice that was husky and filled with what musicians called blue notes. “I’m Hailey Bergstrom. What can I do for you?”
She was no beauty. Her nose was long and thin, her mouth too wide in a decidedly square face. Roy noticed those things, but he also noticed that she had unusual eyes, large, tilted, widely spaced. They were a peculiar color, like dark honey.
She made no move to get up. The tag pinned to her chest said she was an RN.
“I’m Roy Zedyck, David Riggs’s social worker. This is Nicole Hepburn.”
“Hi, Roy. Hello, Nicole.” She gave Roy a questioning look. “How can I help you?”
“I wondered if I could see David, and also whether Dr. Larue is around? I’d like to speak to him.”
She turned to the kids. “Sorry, you guys, I’ve gotta go.” She rose to her feet, rabbit ears flopping, and the kids sent up a protesting howl. She held out the book to an emaciated girl in a pink tracksuit. The child was bald, and her eyes had immense brown circles under them.
“Brittany, you finish the story, please.”
“Noooo, nooooo, we want you, Hailey, pleeeeeze,” the kids chorused.
“Brittany can read every bit as well as I can. Stop the noise or Skippy will freak out and have heart palpitations, and we’d have to call Doc Benson.”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And you know how grumpy Doc Benson can be.” She pretended to shudder and then stood tall and held her hand to her forehead in a salute. “When duty calls I must obey, or I will live to rue the day.”
Roy noted that she was very tall in her flat sandals, probably five-eleven like Nicole.
“C’mon, David’s in 4B.”
Brittany’s clear, high voice followed them down the corridor.
Roy figured that Hailey Bergstrom was oblivious to the fact that she had a huge, furry bunny tail pinned to the seat of her uniform pants. It swished as she walked, emphasizing narrow hips. She was thin rather than slender, with long arms and legs, but there was a vibrancy about her that was almost palpable. She seemed to give off sparks. He wondered idly whether getting too close to her might result in an electric shock.
“David just came up from intensive care this morning. He’s my patient. I thought his case worker’s name was Larissa Mott.”
So she’d done her homework, Roy thought. Good for her.
“Larissa’s father died, and she’s off on bereavement leave. David’s got me now.”
She nodded and narrowed her eyes at him. “Any sign of his mother yet?”
Roy shook his head. “Police are watching out for her, but so far no luck. How’s he doing?”
“He’s a pretty sick little guy. His electrolytes are all out of whack and he won’t drink yet. We’ve got him on IV. There’s been a lot of phone calls about him. People saw the article in the Province.”
“I’m sure Larissa already covered this, but I’ll be leaving written orders of my own that David not be released to anyone, and if anyone tries, I’m to be notified immediately.”
Hailey nodded and opened the door to a two-bed ward. One of the cribs was empty, but in the other a tiny figure wearing a blue pajama top and a diaper lay sprawled on his back, deeply asleep, his curls dark against the white pillow. A stuffed dog, filthy and much the worse for wear, was clutched to his face, and an IV tube was attached to his foot with strips of tape. There were deep, dark circles under his eyes.
Roy looked down at the sleeping child and his heart contracted. Children were fragile and precious, their lives dependent on the adults whose job it was to care for them. This one had been betrayed, and it tore at his gut. It always did. The discouraging thing was that it happened all too often in big cities like this one.
“Were there other visible signs of abuse?” Roy knew he’d get the report, but he wanted to know now.
Hailey held up a cautioning hand, frowned and shook her head at him. “We can discuss that outside the room.”
“He’s so sweet, so very small.” Nicole’s voice was husky, and when he looked at her, Roy saw tears shimmering in her eyes. Her gaze was on the baby. “He can’t even tell anybody what hurts. That must be awful.”
“You’re gonna talk a blue streak when you wake up, though, aren’t you, David?” Hailey leaned over the crib and in a crooning voice added, “You’re such a beautiful, smart boy. We’re gonna be great friends, aren’t we, little one?” Her hand lightly touched the boy’s curls, one finger stroking his cheek. She checked the IV drip and carefully covered his legs with a blanket.
The boy turned his head restlessly to the other side and slept on, and Hailey led the way into the hall, her rabbit ears flopping around her neck.
“No matter how little they are, no matter how deeply asleep or unconscious, they hear us talking, and even the smallest ones pick up on what we’re saying,” she said to Roy in a ferocious tone. “He was seriously dehydrated when he came in, he arrested down in the ER, he’s gaining a little ground, but he’s still really sick.” Her tone turned sarcastic. “And in answer to your question, other than being alone for three days without anything to eat or drink, he doesn’t seem to have been abused. He’s well nourished, no bruising or old scars, no broken bones. Real fortunate little guy, wouldn’t you say?”
Roy felt like an idiot. “I’m sorry, Hailey, that was stupid of me. I should have known better than to talk in front of him.” He was embarrassed, but he also couldn’t believe he was being lectured by a woman wearing rabbit ears and a tail.
“Does he have anything of his own, any toys or clothes?” Nicole asked. She was still looking through the glass door at the small figure in the crib.
“The stuffed dog he’s clutching is all that came in with him. It’s his security blanket. It needs a wash, but there’s no way I’m taking it from him right now.”
“Maybe I can bring him some things?”
Hailey smiled at Nicole. “That’s sweet of you, but don’t go overboard. Stuff gets shared in here, and it also gets lost. But it is nice for the kids to have something that belongs just to them.”
“I need to use a phone.” Roy had to contact the police and the firemen who’d found David.
“There’s one at the nurses’ station.”
“Thanks. I’ll use it on our way out.”
“How on earth do you stand it?” Nicole was looking at Hailey, and there was awe and admiration in her voice. “I’d want to kidnap a baby like that and spoil the living daylights out of him.”
“All we can do is love ’em and let ’em go,” Hailey said with a resigned shrug. “Nursing is care, not cure.” She turned her attention to Roy. “And having said that, do you know anything at all about this so-called mother of his?”
Roy shook his head. “Sorry, that information’s confidential.”
“Figures. Protect the criminal at all costs,” Hailey said scornfully, giving him another of her scathing glances. “Makes you wonder what was going on in her head, walking out and leaving him like that.”
“He’s lucky to have you as his nurse,” Nicole said. “They all are. You’re obviously just what these kids need.”
“Hey, thanks.” Hailey’s resentment seemed to evaporate. Her grin was spontaneous and wide, her face animated. She had straight, white teeth, and her amber eyes sparkled. “It’s so good to hear that on the day you’re wearing a bunny costume at work.” She glanced at her wristwatch. “Whoops, speaking of work, I’ve gotta go. It’s time for meds.” She turned to Roy. “Dr. Larue is on his dinner break. He’ll be here later this evening if you want to speak with him. Or the aide can give you his cell number.” She waved a hand at Roy and Nicole and hurried off toward the nurses’ station, tail swishing with gay abandon.
Nicole watched her go. “Now there’s an unusual woman for you.”
“Vicious is more like it.” The looks she’d given him were lethal. He wouldn’t want her armed with a hypodermic.
“She’s not vicious, she’s gutsy.” Nicole looped an arm through Roy’s, and they hurried toward the nurses’ desk. “Balls enough to tell you off and enough perspective to accept the parameters of her job. It’s evident she really likes being a nurse.”
“Nurses, lawyers—power. It’s all about power with you females.”
But he silently agreed with Nicole. Hailey Bergstrom was an example of someone who’d obviously found the perfect job, and it suited her, even the part that included wearing rabbit ears and a tail.
Or cutting him into chunks and spitting out the pieces.
CHAPTER TWO
FROM THE NURSES’ STATION Hailey watched them go down the corridor, Zedyck’s arm looped around the woman’s shoulders.
They could have posed for a magazine ad, she mused. They made a striking couple, both tall, both blessed with an abundance of physical beauty.
Nicole was a stunner, but based on one short meeting, she also seemed to be a truly nice person, lacking the self-centered attitude that sometimes went with such good looks.
Hailey’s mind naturally turned to her older sister, Laura. Laura was drop-dead gorgeous, too, but in Hailey’s opinion, Laura was about as self-centered as it was possible to get. She’d carved out a perfect life, by her standards, and wasn’t the least bit interested in other people’s choices. She’d married Frank, a creep with the same sort of good looks she possessed, produced two perfect kids and decorated a house in the suburbs with a lot of help from Martha Stewart’s magazines.
Hailey wouldn’t know Martha Stewart if the woman had a stroke in her living room, which was probable if she ever laid eyes on it.
How different could two sisters be?
And it was interesting how beautiful women gravitated to men whose looks complemented their own.
Roy Zedyck was as dark as Nicole was fair, and in spite of his mental lapses, he was good to look at, if your taste ran to crooked noses and grass-green eyes and jawlines out of an old western. Good hair, too. She liked it wavy and covering a guy’s shirt collar, the way his did.
For the remaining two hours of her shift, Hailey worked steadily, checking on David often, changing babies and feeding them, telling wild stories and singing nonsense songs as she slowly got her older patients into their pajamas. She ensured that everyone’s meds were administered and did her best to make the kids laugh whenever she could. Even the sickest of them rewarded her with tiny smiles, and to her those smiles were precious gifts.
Hailey always took her time with the kids, even though she knew her supervisor, Margaret Cross, repeatedly documented her for spending too much time with the patients and not enough getting the paperwork done before the next shift arrived.
Margaret was a nurse of the old school who made a point of coming to work in a white dress uniform, white stockings and her nursing cap, a regalia that had the other nurses calling her TGONP behind her back—the ghost of nurses past.
It was obvious Margaret hated her, and Hailey pretended she didn’t give a flying fig. The head nurse couldn’t get her fired, no matter how much she disapproved. That was the beauty of knowing you were excellent at your job. Oh, yeah, and a good union helped, too.
The thing was, there was no way you could rush little kids, nor should you. It was hard enough for them, trapped in here, feeling sick, most of them horribly lonely for their parents. They needed to have some control over their environment, Hailey felt, and if it came in the guise of slowing down the system, so be it. Margaret could have been a general in the armed forces, she believed so strongly in discipline and rules.
When at last the reports had been made to the new shift and Hailey was done for the day, she took off the rabbit ears and tail and rescued her pet, Skippy, from the staff lounge, where he’d been banished after Margaret found him in the playroom.
Hailey was carrying his cage on her way to the elevator when she changed her mind, stowed Skippy back in a corner of the staff lounge and detoured to David’s room.
There was another child in the room with David now, but he was asleep. David was wide awake, lying silent in his crib, his stuffed dog held close to his body, his eyes big and scared when he looked up at her. Earlier she’d changed and bathed him, and held him for as long as she could possibly manage it. His electrolytes were still way below normal, which meant that he probably wasn’t feeling good at all. His sweet little face was somber, and the anxious, frightened look in his blue eyes tugged at her heartstrings.
“Hey, dumpling, you’re wide awake.” She grinned at him and held out her arms, but he just looked up at her with a solemn, wary expression.
“Just you wait, Davie. You’re gonna break down and smile at me yet,” she teased in a whisper, so as not to wake his roommate.
David smelled clean and fresh, and there was a sweet, elusive baby odor to his skin. She leaned down and pressed her nose against his neck and blew a gentle bubble. He lifted a tentative hand and touched her hair, his eyes wide.
“Some mad mess that mop is, huh, Davie? People keep suggesting I get it styled, but I’m a sucker for the natural look. And you little guys like it. You can get your hands in and really yank. Hey, partner, wanna go for a walk?”
She picked him up. His body stiffened with alarm, but he didn’t cry. He pointed at his dog, and she tucked it in his arms. Hauling the IV pole, she carried him on her hip down the corridor to an empty room where there was a rocking chair. Hailey sank into it, and after a while she felt David relax against her.
For forty minutes she rocked and sang him snippets from James Taylor and Janis Joplin. He fell asleep, and because his warm, soft little body comforted her, she went on rocking and singing.
At last one of the other nurses stuck her head in and smiled.
“Hailey, you still here? I thought you’d be long gone by now. You’ve gotta get a life, girl.”
“Hi, Karen. I needed a hug, so I kidnapped David.”
“He’s a real sweetheart. I heard about him from one of the ER docs.”
“He’s an angel.”
Karen came in and studied David, sleeping soundly against Hailey’s chest. “You’re right, he is an angel. But then, you say that about all of them. No word on his mom yet?”
Hailey shook her head. “His new social worker was by earlier. The other one’s dad died, so she’s gone to his funeral. This guy’s name is Roy Zedyck.”
“Oh, yeah, everybody’s heard of him. Big tall guy, great buns. Wow, he’s a celebrity. He was the one who was in the news a while back, the inquiry into that little boy who got sent back to his birth mother and ended up dead?”
Hailey shuddered. “I don’t watch stuff like that, or read about it, either. What we get in here is quite enough for me.”
“Everybody says Robertson’s testimony was the reason they set up that independent commission, so there’ll be someone else for kids to turn to besides the ministry. Hopefully decisions will be made that are truly in the child’s best interest, and not just some arbitrary ruling handed down by one judge.”
“Sounds like a good idea.”
“I can’t believe you haven’t heard about it—it was all over the news. Becky’s gonna be green. She drools when Zedyck’s name is mentioned. But then, Becky drools a lot. I swear she’s got an extra few ounces of estrogen going for her.”
Hailey laughed. “She’s got a good eye for male beefcake, and in this instance she’s dead right. You’d have to be neutered not to notice how sexy Zedyck is.”
And he must have more gray matter than she thought, if he’d impressed the court that way.
“Tell Becky to give it up. He’s got a knockout for a lady, gorgeous and caring, really friendly, name of Nicole. She was with him. They were all duded up for a party or something.”
“Lucky them.” Karen wrinkled her nose. “How come some people get the full-meal deal and the rest of us have to make do with the forty-nine-cent special?” Hailey knew that Karen was going through a messy and painful divorce.
“It has to do with astrology.” Hailey got to her feet, careful not to disturb David. “I better get home. I left my rabbit in the staff lounge. If I don’t get him out of there, somebody’ll rat to Margaret and I’ll be getting a rabbit reprimand on my file.”
Karen giggled. The ongoing conflict between Hailey and Margaret Cross was constant entertainment for the rest of the pediatric nursing staff. And they were right to laugh. If you didn’t laugh about Margaret and her tantrums, you’d be tempted to smother her in the linen closet.
“I’ll bring the IV,” Karen offered. “You just carry him.”
They paraded down the corridor and Hailey settled David into his crib. She bent and pressed a kiss to his cheek.
“Night, little Davie. Sleep well. The angels will watch over you and keep you safe.” She told all her little patients the same thing when she took leave of them.
When they were out in the hall again, Karen gave Hailey a warm smile and a hug. “You need a dozen or so of your own. You’d make the best mom ever.”
Hailey’s smile felt strained. Kids of her own was the thing in life she most wanted. “I’ll settle for just one.”
“How’s the adoption process coming?” Most of her co-workers were aware that Hailey had recently applied for single-parent adoption.
“Slow.” Hailey grimaced. “They really check you out on all fronts. I guess it’s a good thing, but it kind of wears you down after a while.”
Karen nodded. “I can imagine.” She heaved a sigh. “I’m glad now that Jim and I didn’t have any kids. It would make this whole divorce thing that much harder, and God knows it’s tough enough as it is. But I’m getting older, and I guess every woman wants kids sooner or later.”
“For me, I hope it’s sooner,” Hailey said. “I’m gonna be thirty in another month. That’s old compared with when people used to have kids. My mom had my sister when she was twenty-four and me two years later.”
“People generally had kids earlier then. Now it takes time to be able to afford them, and with birth control we have the option of waiting.”
“Some of us, I guess. David’s mother’s only seventeen. One of the ER nurses heard it from a cop.”
Karen shook her head and clucked her tongue. “Sometimes there’s a good argument for abortion.”
“Or adoption.”
One of the monitors began to beep.
“Gotta go. Take care and enjoy what’s left of your evening.” Karen waved a quick goodbye as she hurried off.
Hailey made her way out to the car park and climbed into her battered red half-ton. She’d bought it a year ago, a few months after she purchased her house, trading in her cherished old Grand Prix for it when she realized how many deliveries she’d paid for from Home Depot and how many times she’d wished she could get rid of her own building debris.
The good news was that it took her and the half-ton only twenty minutes to get from St. Joe’s to her street. The bad news was that the two-story blue-and-white octogenarian she’d bought had turned out to be a money pit. She was slowly and for the most part single-handedly repairing and remodeling, but it was a painfully time-consuming, expensive process. The front lawn was full of moss, the back devoid of grass because of two tall cedars, a stand of overgrown lilacs and an immense fir tree that prevented sunlight from getting through. The trees did give the property privacy, though, and she’d pay more attention to the yard when she got the inside livable.
Her master plan was to finish the basement first and rent it out so she had additional income, and then turn one of the four upstairs bedrooms, the tiny one next to her own, into a nursery.
She parked on the street. None of the houses had garages. Gazing for a moment at her house, she felt the same thrill she always did when she arrived home. This funny old battered senior citizen of a house was really hers. She’d had to scrimp and save and practically offer the bank her soul to get it, but she wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Carrying Skippy’s cage, she made her way around to the back, where she’d used chicken wire to construct a pen for the rabbit. After she’d turned him loose and made sure he had food and water, she climbed the rickety wooden back stairs—gotta do something about those stairs—unlocked the door and went inside.
The phone on the kitchen counter was ringing. A glance at her watch showed that it was ten-forty-five. She picked up the receiver.
“Hailey?” Her mother’s voice made her shut her eyes and wish she’d let the machine take the call. “Where’ve you been? I called twice before. I thought your shift was over at seven.”
“Hi, Mom.” Hailey wished, not for the first time, that she’d gotten call display. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to talk to her mother; it was just that she’d rather choose the times it happened, like Christmas and Easter.
“How you doing, Mom?” Hailey ignored the questions, knowing that Jean really didn’t expect an answer. “How come you’re calling this late?”
“It’s Laura. She was over yesterday, and something’s not right with her.”
Hailey rolled her eyes heavenward. As far as she knew, her sister’s problems were primarily whether or not to fire the gardener, change the living-room sofa, or enroll Hailey’s niece and nephew in yet another extracurricular activity. Poor little mites. At seven and nine their lives were already as regimented as Margaret would like the peds ward to be.
“Have you talked to her recently, Hailey?”
“Not for a couple of weeks.” That was about par for her and Laura. The last time Hailey had called, it was on impulse one Saturday morning. She’d wanted to take Christopher and Samantha to the Greek food fair. Of course it hadn’t been possible; they’d had karate and swimming lessons. Sometimes she suspected Laura of deliberately keeping the kids busy so they wouldn’t be overexposed to their whacko aunt. Christopher had once told her that’s how his father referred to Hailey. Chris, bless his heart, had wanted to know if “whacko” had something to do with boxing.