Raney & Levine (7 page)

14


J
esse was sleeping. Didn’t wake when Jill took him out
of his isolette and held him, hugged him to her.

“I so needed this,” she whispered, drawing a deep breath.
“Can’t tell you how much.”

“Ditto,” David said tiredly, taking a picture of her hugging
the baby, then taking several more. Jill kissing Jesse’s little cheek, his tiny
hand.

“Okay, my turn.”

She handed the baby to David. He sat in the rocker, put
Jesse sleeping on his chest, lay his head back for a second and – just like
that – he fell asleep. He was so exhausted.

Jesse’s head was on his shoulder, and both of them,
sleeping, were facing her.
What a picture.
Jill got out her phone and
snapped it. David moved a little and Jesse moved a little too, as if sensing
their closeness. Jill snapped that picture too.

A nurse just passing grinned and said, “Aww…”

Jill smiled back, then gently lifted Jesse from David’s arms
and put him, still sleeping, back into his isolette.

David woke.

“Huh?”

“Just putting him back,” Jill whispered.

“Gee, he sleeps like a baby.”

“We’ve gotta get to bed too.”

David rose, looking foggy-headed. Came awake watching Jill
download a baby monitor app to her phone, then did the same with his. “Be in
two places at once!” he mimicked the online ad. “Watch your baby when you’re
away, out on date night! Hey, how ‘bout a date night?”

“Two-way communication.” Jill was reading the ad too. “You
can hear your baby and s/he can hear you.”

“Amazing,” David mumbled. He turned away and saw Jesse’s
picture come onto his phone screen.

Jill leaned over the isolette. “How many fingers am I
holding up?”

He peered at his screen. “Three.”

Then she stuck out different fingers. “How many now?”

“Two. You made a peace sign.”

“Awesome.” Jill grinned. “This thing really works.”

Another nurse checking other babies smiled. “A mother’s
dream. My sister just got hers.”

The security guard seated nearby smiled too. “That’s what my
wife says.”

Such good feelings, just coming here. The newborn nursery
was a warming, quiet, protected place, full of love and caring. Every new
little life was so precious.

David was back to muttering sleepily, reading the app’s
directions. “We have to leave the Wi-Fi on. Use of the camera requires internet
access.”

“We’ll keep our phones charged.”

“You can snap a photo or video while away. Sing to him. Play
music for him.”

Jill took another picture of Jesse sleeping, then turned her
back to him and watched him on her phone’s new monitor.

“Oh, he yawned in his sleep!”

“Yep.” David had seen Jesse do it and was grinning goofily
with one eye closed. “Speaking of sleeping…”

“Yes. Bed, bed
…
”

A bad feeling suddenly chilled. It was time to leave. Go
back
out
to the world where evil lived too…and
lay in wait.
Jill
felt it and knew it. David saw her expression change and her fists suddenly
clench.

He put his arm around her. “Feeling nervous again?”

“Big time.”

He exhaled. “Psycho’s had a busy day. He’s probably tired
and fast asleep now, to terrorize another day. Let’s go to my place, sleep in
the big bed.”

They practically leaned on each other, heading out.

Minutes later they were on the sidewalk, David in a navy
parka, Jill in her old pea coat with a long blue scarf drooping. A cold wind gusted,
and she pulled the scarf up over her head. Neither spoke as they hurried the
long block to his apartment, in a square building of 60s featureless
architecture upgraded with surveillance cameras in the lobby, the elevators,
and hallways.

Getting off the elevator, Jill commented on the
surveillance.

“There’s always been drawbridges,” David muttered as he
unlocked his door and flicked on a light. “Moats, forts, sentries…”

It was a one bedroom, with a good-sized, sparsely furnished
central area and a long thin kitchen. They peered tiredly into the fridge,
knowing there was nothing there but leftover Chinese and some still-marinating
beef. Four nights ago, Jill had tried to make shish kebob, make a lovely
dinner…but they’d been called, and hadn’t seen the apartment again until last
night, when they’d argued and were in no mood to cook.

“A few more days and we can donate that beef to science,”
David said.

Jill groaned and went into the bedroom. Pulled her jacket
and scrubs off and was in bed naked a minute later with her head under the
bunched pillow. David stripped and followed, lifting the pillow to peek for
her. She raised her arms to him, and they made love in the nightglow of the
near hospital’s windows, seemingly closer than a block, its towers rising over
smaller, closer buildings.

He was asleep soon after with his arm around her. Jill lay
on her side, unable to sleep. They’d been too blitzed to remember to close the
blinds, and the hospital lights glowed, brought back the awful day. That
sign
threatening tiny, innocent Jesse
and
the hospital, and…oh, poor Jenna
Walsh. That attack was so hideously cruel. Jill saw the snake slither from
Jenna’s sweater again, and jerked cringing in the bed.

David mumbled something in his sleep and moved onto his
back. Jill did too; now lay staring at the ceiling, its shifting lights and
shadows. Sirens wailed in the street below, more sirens sounded from the
ambulance bay. She closed her eyes. Snakes and hateful signs gave way to
thinking about her life, her not-terrific past. Parents divorced when she was
seven. High-profile, absentee mother, a prosecutor. Father seen just a few
times before his death. So busy in L.A. with his brand new life and family,
though he’d sent a few birthday cards. Big deal. The cards had made her cry.

She was still crying, holding Jesse, in the middle of a
cobbled, crowded square, thatched roofs on smaller houses. “Last birthday
card,” her father said. “It’s the Inquisition, I’m so sorry.” She clutched
Jesse harder as a crowd dragged them both to a wooden stake with high-piled
sticks beneath it.
Burn?
They were going to burn them? Galileo was tied
to a stake next to her, his old eyes wide on Jesse. “This is fascinating,” he
said. “
Quick
, explain.” Someone lit the kindling below her and Galileo.
Flames shot up, licking the bottom of her long dress. Jesse screamed and she
hugged him to her, rising up in an acrid cloud, the hospital electric lights
blinking below.

15


D
awn angled through the stained glass, sending soft
reds and blues and golds across the pews. A shaft of gold lit a weeping woman’s
clasped hands and her rosary. Her hands stilled, and she looked up, blinking
through stinging tears. Had God just spoken to her? Her breath caught. Real, or
nervous breakdown? Wait…
real
! She felt it! The gold light was now strong
on the altar. It called to her!

Joy replaced exhaustion. God had heard her hours of
desperate prayer, and was telling her that Frankie Junior would be okay. She
actually felt the Holy Spirit lift her from her seat and carry her, trembling
and arthritic, to kneel painfully before the altar.

Prayers tumbled from her lips:

“
Hail Mary
,
full of grace. The Lord is with thee…Blessed are you,
Lord God, h-holy is your name…”

In her rapture she was stammering… “Blessed are you for
ever, great is your mercy…”

She raised a hand to touch the altar. “Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, we praise you…”

And lost her balance.

Then righted herself, catching the altar edge. “…we bless
you for calling us to be…”

Heard something
thump
to the floor. “…your holy
people…”

Her voice wavered. The gold light shaft had moved on; a
rustling sound drew her attention to a brown paper bag on the floor. Bulging.

Moving…?
Poking at moist places.

Something long and black slithered out and shot across to
the front pew. The woman’s vision blurred in terror.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph!

Then another snake shot out, and then more, writhing near
her, crawling over each other…

Later, the woman would not remember how she struggled to her
feet, and managed to run out screaming. She wouldn’t even recall security
guards and a cop running to her.

It was all a blur…

They were going to be late for rounds. It was almost seven
and the other interns would be waiting. David came, wet-haired from the shower,
to read over Jill’s shoulder. She was hunched into his laptop, madly scrolling
and reading.

“Galileo?” he asked.

“Yeah.” She kept reading, didn’t look up.

“Your hands are shaking.”

“I had another nightmare.”

He made a pained sound and kissed her brow. She still didn’t
look up.

“1633.” she said, tapping the screen. “Galileo was old and
sick during the Inquisition, but they interrogated him for eighteen days, and
finally made him confess that he may have had it wrong, and the Church was
right in saying that the sun revolved around the earth, not the other way
around.” Jill scrolled. “He was still declared a heretic, and died under house
arrest.”

She frowned, fast-skimming more, then looked up. “The Church
finally accepted that he may have been right…
in 1983
.”

“What was the rush? Speaking of rush - please? Rounds and
interns await.”

Waiting, indeed, they were. By the nurses’ desk, Ramu
Chitkara had a bag of bagels he was passing out to Tricia, Charlie Ortega, and
Gary Phipps, who was munching with one hand while his other hand stuffed an
extra bagel into his scrub pants pocket.

Stuffed-face grins broke out as David and Jill approached.
“Fresh!” Ramu held up the bagels. “I ran to the bakery.”

“Don’t you guys ever eat real breakfasts?” David flipped
through patient charts, put them back in the chart rack, and gave it a shove.
The interns followed, Ramu bitching in his lilting British accent about runny
scrambled eggs and dreadful coffee, Ortega extolling twenty minutes’ extra
sleep and having cold pizza in your room. The two had a tendency to yak
simultaneously.

Tricia dropped back to tell Jill she’d had a snakes
nightmare, and Jill described her getting burned at the stake dream. Both
groaned and hugged each other as Gary Phipps, up front, told David about a
breech he’d helped Sam and George Mackey deliver during the night. “Talk about
ass backwards!” he said. “And this kid was
big
!”

The night had been slow, with just four new babies born.
Healthy babies and healthy moms, who still had to be visited and checked.
Outside the first patient’s room, David stopped for a moment and looked up at
the ceiling.

“What?” Phipps asked, peering up too. “Falling ceiling
tiles?”

Jill edged closer. David glanced at her and said, “I’d
really like to go up to see Jenna Walsh first.”

Ortega winced. “Oh jeez, the snake.”

Jill said, “The neurosurgery bunch must be with her now.”

David nodded. “Two rounds groups is a crowd. I want to check
her incision, make sure there’s no infection.”

“We’ll go after this.”

“Yeah.”

Chart in hand, David led the way into the first patient’s
room where he greeted new mom Kim Withers. Asked her how she felt. Did the
physical, checked the pulse and blood pressure, and felt the belly to make sure
the uterus was contracting on schedule. It wasn’t.

“So?” he asked the interns. “What do we do about that?”

“Ergotrate intramuscular,” chorused five voices.

“Oh, such smart interns I have,” David said, smiling at
Withers, writing an order for the nurse and clamping it to the outside of the
chart.

“Stat,”
Tricia and Charlie said simultaneously. David
grinned. “Already done,” he said, red-flagging the note with a red stickie.

Kim Withers had turned down the sound of her TV when they
entered. It still burbled.

Suddenly: “Oh look!” Her eyes darted from David to Jill and
back to the TV. “Omigod, you’re
them
!” She turned the sound up.

Tired gazes went to the TV. The same footage as yesterday.
Last July, Jill and David somberly approaching the hospital after three days
off to recover from the roof trauma. Then footage of the smiling nurse holding
“the miracle baby, who our sources say staff for now have been calling Jesse…”

Withers fluffed her hair and got emotional. “Jesse! I love
that name!”

Ramu turned the TV sound back down, but Withers didn’t
notice. Was emoting higher-voiced about how tough her pregnancy had been.

“Morning sickness when I had to be
in court
, I almost
threw up on a
client
, and the delivery -omigod, the
pain...and I’d
like to have another child
. Uhh…”

They must have all realized what was coming.

“Would it be possible for me to have my next baby
that
way
?” She pointed to the TV, now soundless, showing yesterday’s Willard
Simpson, Bill Rosenberg, and the other white coats before mikes trying to
answer reporters’ questions.

David shrugged. Repeated what he remembered Rosenberg
saying.

“We really don’t know how this was
done. The hospital’s studying the notes of the deceased doctor who did this-”

“Arnett!” Withers said. “Clifford
Arnett. I’ve
so
been following this.”

“Right. His notes are incomplete.”

The interns shifted impatiently.

Withers got impatient too. “Well,
if it was done
once…
how long before they figure out how to do it
again
?
Science, right? Who ever thought we’d have people walking on the moon? Scooping
soil samples from
Mars?
Surely you can…”

As gracefully as possible, David
got them out of there. Time was important; diversions from teaching the interns
had to be ducked.

The second patient didn’t ask, but
the third one did. “Just wondering, that’s all,” she said defensively. “I mean,
I loved my pregnancy, feeling my baby grow and move inside me, but
that
delivery
was hell, and it’s just kinda fascinating that now there’s a
choice.
”

“Not in the near future,” David
said. “Now about your stitches…”

When they left the fourth patient’s
room, he called and got a nurse on seventh floor surgery. Yes, she said,
neurosurgery interns and residents were with Jenna. He asked her to check
Jenna’s night chart. She came back to the phone to report that Jenna’s vital
signs were okay, ditto her abdominal incision, and there was no sign of
infection or vaginal bleeding.

“They’re concerned about her neuro signs, though.”

“The Babinski?”

“Right foot not reacting. No response.”

“Pupillary assessment?”

“Both pupils sluggish response to light.”

He hung up and looked grimly at his interns, who’d been
listening grimly.

“So sad,” Tricia said softly. Ortega stared sorrowfully at
David’s phone.

Which rang again in his hand.

It was Hutch, sounding upset.