No Such Thing as a Free Ride (3 page)

The Lamaze instructor, a serene, soft spoken woman in her early thirties walked around the room bestowing smiles of encouragement upon poor, unsuspecting mothers-to-be. I counted the breaths between imagined contractions and sighed. “Are you sure you want to go ‘natural,’ Fran? My mom tells me it really hurts.”

The instructor cut me a dirty look and patted Fran on the shoulder.

Fran grunted as she struggled to turn and look at me. “Brandy, I want my baby to come into this world knowing her mother suffered horribly for her, so that I can throw it back in her face when she’s an adolescent and she’s going through those obnoxious teen years.” The ever efficient Franny always planning ahead.

“Do you know what really pisses me off?” she added, and being on a roll she didn’t bother to wait for a response. “While I’m here, spending my Sunday afternoon preparing to bring precious life into the world, where’s my husband? Off having a great time camping with his buddies!”

“Uh, Fran, Eddie’s in the Reserves. I don’t think—”

She cut me off. “How much did your mom say it hurts?”

“Well, it’s been twenty-eight years and she’s still talking about it.”

Fran pondered this. “I’m hungry,” she said at last. “Let’s go get pancakes.”

“Fine by me,” I shrugged. I stood and helped her to her feet. “Um, we’ll be right back,” I told the instructor.

“No, we won’t.” Franny interjected. “I’m getting an epidural and don’t anyone try and stop me.”

We left amid a chorus of “Take me with you’s,” punctuated by an “Amen to that, sistah!”

I drove us over to the IHOP, but Franny couldn’t fit in the booth, so we ordered the breakfast special “to go” and scarfed our food down in the car. In an effort to eat healthy, I’d traded in my hash browns for fruit and then picked the crispy ones out of Franny’s container.

“I love breakfast food,” Franny announced, stuffing a strip of bacon into her mouth.

“Me too,” I agreed. “That’s what’s so great about being an adult. We can eat pancakes for dinner and our mothers can’t tell us not to.”

“Bran,” Fran said, suddenly, a note of panic in her voice. “What if after the baby comes, I turn into my mother?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t get me wrong, Bran. I love my mom. But I can’t help but think that she was once young and fun, and then she had me and Janine and suddenly she became this thoroughly responsible person who would never dream of allowing her kids to eat pancakes at eight o’clock at night. Is that going to happen to me too?”

“Franny, stop worrying. You’re going to make a wonderful mom.”

Fran eyed me seriously. Well, as seriously as she could with maple syrup dribbling down her chin. “How do you know, Bran? Eddie and I didn’t plan this pregnancy. What if I totally screw it up and my kid ends up hating me?”

“That’s never going to happen, Franny.” But as the words came out of my mouth I flashed on the teens at the 7-Eleven. Had their parents worried about this too?

I dropped Fran off at Eddie’s mom’s house and headed over to Carla’s beauty salon. I’d gotten gum stuck in my hair earlier in the day, and I was hoping Carla had some magic formula to remove it without taking half my scalp with it.

The salon is located on Ritner, next door to a funeral parlor. Upon occasion, Mr. Kang, the funeral director will ask Carla to pinch hit for their hairdresser. Carla says it always makes her queasy, but just because you’re dead doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still look your best.

Cars were already parked two-deep in front of the salon, so I’d pulled the La Sabre around back and left it alongside a chain link fence. Trash, blown by the wind, clung to the fence like prisoners attempting a jail break, reminding me that I wasn’t exactly in the classiest part of town.

It was almost closing time. I could see Carla’s retro-do beehive silhouetted in the window as she pulled down the shades. I knocked softly and called her name.

“Hey, Hon,” she called out, opening the door for me. “What brings you here?”

I pointed to the wad of gum. “Can you get it out?”

Carla’s magic formula turned out to be an ice cube. She rubbed it on my head and five minutes later I was Juicy Fruit free.

“Oh, thank you, Carla.”

“No problem. Listen, Hon, I’m glad you stopped by. I heard something the other day I thought you should know.” She tapped an inch long hot pink nail against her front tooth and expelled a reluctant breath. “Bobby had a date last night.”

“
My
Bobby?” I squeaked. “I mean,
our
Bobby?” Alright, I knew he couldn’t stay celibate forever. Just because things didn’t work out between us, didn’t mean he was through with romance. “So, who is she?” I asked, and hoped those were the words that came out of my mouth instead of, “I hate the bitch, whoever she is.”

“Are you sure you want to know?”

I nodded, not sure at all.

“Tina Delvechione.”

“I hate that bitch!”
Unhh
. “What I meant was I’m very happy for them.”

“Honey, it was only one date, and anyway, John says you’ve been pining after Nick Santiago for the past three months.”
So? I’m an equal opportunity piner.

“I know it doesn’t make any sense, Carla.”

Carla hugged me to her. “It makes all the sense in the world, sweetie. Bobby was your first love. The first is pretty special.”

Carla was right, I reasoned. It was natural to feel a little bit jealous. Only—Tina Delvechione? Puhleeze! She’s been trying to get her meat hooks into DiCarlo since high school. It may have been just one date like Carla said, but who knew where it could lead?
By the time I left Carla’s, I had Bobby and Tina married with children. Well, I hope they’re not holding their breath for a wedding present.

I walked back to the car armed with a mini flashlight and a can of pepper spray—my constant companions when traveling alone after dark. Following the thin blue light, I groped the chain-link fence as I maneuvered around piles of urban rubble.

I reached my car, put the key in the lock and listened while a cat mewed softly in the distance. A trash can toppled over with a reverberating clang and I jumped a mile. And then the crying grew louder, more guttural, more
human
, and I froze, fear beating a pathway to my heart. I ripped open the car door and locked myself safely inside.

“It’s only a cat,” I breathed, cursing myself for letting my imagination run wild. I turned on the engine and hit the high beams, squinting as my eyes adjusted to the light. Then I glanced over my shoulder to bust a u-ie, looked back and slammed on the brakes as a young, teenage girl staggered toward the car and collapsed in a crumpled heap on the asphalt.

It looked like she’d been shot. Blood seeped from her lower extremities, forming a deep red stain on the ground where she fell. A split second passed while I contemplated backing up the car and beating it the hell out of there.
What if she had been shot? What if the shooter was still lurking about? What are the odds of anyone believing me when I tell them I didn’t go looking for troubl, but, per usual, it found me?
Whatever, I couldn’t turn my back on her. My conscience simply wouldn’t allow it. Damn conscience.

I scrambled into the back seat to retrieve the first aid kit my mom bought for the car some eighteen years ago, when the Le Sabre was brand new. Then I grabbed my phone out of my pocketbook and punched in 911 and awaited instructions.

Leaning down next to the girl, I brushed her hair to the side and pressed two fingers against her neck. Her pulse was rapid, but at least she was still alive. Gently, I turned her over. I couldn’t see any visible wounds on her abdomen, yet blood continued to leak from her in an ever widening circle.
Where was the damn ambulance?

The girl moaned softly and clutched her belly. “I hurt,” she whimpered.

I took her hand in mine and, with my other hand, smoothed back the hair from her forehead. She was drenched in sweat and shivering profusely. I was pretty sure she was in shock.

As I looked around for something to cover her with, the ambulance pulled up and Tony Blue jumped out. Tony and I went to high school together. He’s an EMT now, taking pre-med classes, part time. Tony and his partner pulled the gurney off the truck.

“That you, Alexander?”

“Yeah, Tony,” I said, relieved. Now that the professionals were here, I was free to go home and have my own private freakout. I looked down at the frightened girl, her face pale as the moon. “Tony’s a good guy,” I said. “You’re gonna be just fine.”

I began to disengage my hand, but she tightened her grip. “Don’t leave me,” she cried. “Don’t leave me!” She struggled to rise and a spasm of pain ripped through her.

Tony leaned close to me and spoke softly. “It would help keep her calm if you’d ride in the ambulance with her,” he told me.

I nodded and looked down at the girl. “Of course I won’t leave you,” I told her. I didn’t even know her name.

*****

Tony asked me to wait while they ushered the girl into an empty cubicle. I sat sandwiched between a twenty-year-old male who had accidentally shot himself in the foot while chasing down a rival gang member, and an elderly woman whose niece had brought her in after she had mistaken some mini decorative soaps for Petit Fours and ate them. The old lady didn’t seem to mind that she was burping up bubbles. She just sat there smiling serenely through swollen, allergic lips.

While I was waiting I called John and asked him to take Adrian out for a walk. I caught him just as he was leaving “Lucinda’s on South,” an art gallery that features his portrait photography.

“No problem, Sunshine. I’ll swing by your place on the way home. Are you still at work?”

“Yes,” I said, a little too quickly. I’ve known John since I was four. He always knows when I’m lying.

“Yeah, sure you are,” he said. “Where are you really?”

I heaved a big sigh and told him.

“So, let me get this straight,” he said when I finished. “One minute you’re a fugitive on the run from Lamaze class and the next you’re speeding down Broad Street in the back of an ambulance with a kid you’d never seen before in your life.”

“Yeah, pretty much.” I figured I’d leave out the part about getting gum stuck in my hair as that was strictly “need to know.”

“Listen, do you want me to come down there and keep you company?”

“Thanks for the offer but I’m fine.” I glanced up and a large pretty woman in blue rounded the corner and began walking toward me.

“I’ve gotta go,” I told him. “Tell Adrian I’ll be home soon.” I hung up before he could make fun of me for thinking the dog understands—
which he totally does
. Then I stood and greeted Dr. Martine Sanchez.

Dr. Sanchez and I have gotten to know each other fairly well over the past several months. Seems my penchant for disaster corresponds perfectly with her rotation on the duty roster. She stopped in front of me and shook her head in mock disapproval. I could tell by the dark circles under her eyes that it had been a long night, and it wasn’t over yet.

“Do you have stock in this hospital?” she teased. “Is that why you can’t stay away?”

“Hey,” I joked back, “at least this time I wasn’t wheeled in on a gurney.”

“Well, I’m glad to see you’re staying out of trouble.”
(Sheesh, does everybody think I go looking for it?)
“But if you’re here to report on the quints that were born tonight, you’ve got the wrong hospital. They’re over at Einstein.”

“Actually, I’m here about a teenage girl who was brought in about forty-five minutes ago. She’s white, long brown hair, pretty.”

“Are you a relative?”

“Um… yes?”

Dr. Sanchez rolled her eyes heavenward. I don’t know why I bother lying anymore. I’ve totally lost my touch.

“Okay,” I admitted. “I’m not exactly a relative. But I do feel responsible for her. I was the one who brought her in.”

“What can you tell me about her?” she asked.

“Not much. I found her and called 911. She was really scared, so I rode along with her in the ambulance. Who is she?”

“We don’t know,” Dr. Sanchez told me, her mouth forming a slight frown. “She’s running a high fever and drifting in and out of consciousness. She had no I.D. on her. I suspect she’s a runaway.”

“What makes you think that?”

“All the signs point to it. Even in her weakened condition she was defiant, giving evasive answers to straightforward questions—we couldn’t get her to tell us her real name. Then there’s this little homemade tattoo on her ankle. A lot of street kids that wind up here sport those.” She sighed.

“What happened to her?” I asked. “Why was she bleeding?”

Dr. Sanchez shook her head. “Miscarriage—or botched abortion. She’s developed an infection. It’s a blessing you found her when you did.”

“Can I see her?”

“May I ask why?”

I didn’t know why and for once I was at a loss for words.

“Mija, I’ve been following your career ever since the first time you ended up in the emergency room, and I know your heart’s in the right place. But I’m very protective of my patients. These kids are exploited enough, so if your boss is looking for a quick ratings boost for your station during Sweeps Week—”

When I answered there was a hitch in my voice that I didn’t expect. I must’ve been getting a cold. “I just thought she could use a friend.”

“Follow me.”

*****

It was after midnight by the time I got home from the hospital. The girl had fallen into a fitful sleep, her slight hands clasped in prayer, an I.V. needle protruding from one thin vein. She was draped in a sheet, her right foot sticking out at an angle, and I caught a glimpse of the amateur etching on her ankle. It took me a moment to realize it was almost an exact replica of the girl’s at the gym.

They were waiting to move her, either to I.C.U. or the morgue, depending on how well she responded to the meds. Dr. Sanchez was cautiously optimistic.

I left the cubicle, thought briefly about going home and decided to hang around a little while longer. The guy who’d shot himself in the foot was just leaving, supported by a pair of crutches and two uniformed cops. I didn’t see the woman who’d eaten soap. I assumed she’d gotten a
clean
bill of health. (Sometimes I crack myself up.)