Vital Signs

by Bobby Hutchinson

  Hailey dialed the familiar number and Ingrid answered immediately.

  “Hey, Haileybop, tell me what’s going on over at St. Joe’s. Any new patients?”

  Ingrid loved hearing about Hailey’s work. For several years now she’d been one of the volunteers who came to the newborn section to rock and cuddle babies.

  Hailey gave her a rundown on the kids Ingrid already knew about, and then she told her about David.

  “He’s such a darling, Gran. Big blue eyes, black curly hair. He has a filthy stuffed dog he hangs on to for dear life.”

  “I’ll add him to my prayers, and when I’m at St. Joe’s, I’ll come up and visit him if you’re on.”

  “That would be great. How’s Sam?” Hailey adored her step grandpa, who openly admitted he had trouble keeping up with his madcap wife. He was sixty-three, Ingrid seventy-two. They’d married five years before, to the utter horror of Sam’s grown family, who considered Ingrid totally unsuitable.

  “He’s sound asleep. He just finished a catalog shoot for one of those hoity-toity men’s stores. He says it was exhausting holding his gut in for so long, so finally he’s joining my gym. I told him a long time ago he should. Lifting weights counteracts the force of gravity. It’s helped keep my boobs firm, what there is of them, and that’s a not-so-minor miracle.”

  Hailey giggled. Sam and Ingrid were her favorite people. They were also one of the few married couples she knew who were deliriously happy and had fun together every single day. She also strongly suspected they had sex every single day.

  “I wanna be you when I grow up, Gran.”

  “Just be yourself, darlin’. You’re perfect just the way you are.”

  It was a litany Ingrid had repeated to Hailey ever since she was a little girl. It had helped deflect Jean’s disappointment in a daughter who lacked the physical beauty and graces that Jean believed were essential to a woman’s success.

  “So how’s about brunch tomorrow? Can you make it?”

  “I’d love to.”

  “Come over when you get up. I want to try this new recipe for soy muffins.”

  “You sure you don’t want to go out somewhere? My treat.” Ingrid wasn’t the world’s best cook. In fact, she just might be the worlds worst. No one had died from her cooking yet, but sometimes Hailey thought it was a strong possibility.

  “Nope. There’s way too much sugar and fat in restaurant food.”

  There was, but it was also edible.

  “Okay, Gran, I’ll be there about ten-thirty. Can I bring anything?” She added in a hopeful tone, “I can stop and get some of those cinnamon rolls from that little bakery on Fourth.”

  “Nope, just bring your appetite. I’ll make everything. See you in the morning. Sleep well, honey.”

  “You too, Gran.” Hailey hung up. Talking to Ingrid made her feel as though everything was right with the world, and the feeling persisted as she showered in her decrepit bathroom and climbed into bed.

  Her last thought was always for the children in her care at work, and she sent up a prayer for each and every one before she slipped into sleep, adding a special PS for David.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING Hailey took one bite of Ingrid’s soy muffins and tried her best to swallow, but it was a challenge. It was truly awful. Across the breakfast table she saw Sam smoothly transferring his own mouthful into his napkin. He raised an eyebrow and crossed his eyes when Ingrid wasn’t looking, and Hailey had to stifle a giggle.

  “Take another muffin and put some jam on it,” Ingrid suggested. “Maybe they need a bit of sweetening.”

  Nothing was going to improve those babies, Hailey thought. “I’ll just have more of the fruit salad, thanks, Gran.” She loaded her bowl.

  “So what’s going to happen to this little David, then? Will he go into foster care?” Ingrid took a bite of her own muffin, chewed doggedly for several moments, swallowed with difficulty, then went to the cupboard and found a box of crackers.

  “Maybe I should have put the eggs in,” she mused. “I figured the muffins would turn out just as good without, but they’re a bit on the heavy side.” She offered the crackers to Sam and Hailey. “I cut down on the butter, too. That’s probably what did it.”

  “So what did you leave in, sweetheart?” Sam kept a straight face, but his brown eyes were dancing. His thick, white hair shone, his strong, craggy features were tanned a golden brown, and if he had a paunch, it certainly wasn’t evident beneath his navy tracksuit. It was easy to see why he was so much in demand as a mature male model.

  “The soy flour, of course. I told you, they’re soy muffins.”

  Hailey and Sam burst into laughter. Ingrid was infamous for changing recipes, and her experiments were always disastrous, but she never gave up. The wonderful thing about her was that she could laugh at herself, as she was doing now.

  When Hailey looked at her grandmother, she saw her own face as it would be when she was seventy-two, filled with laugh lines and character. Ingrid was a handsome woman, and Hailey had inherited her tall, lanky body, her square face, even her red hair. Ingrid’s was nearly all white now, and what was left of the red had turned rusty, but it still stood out around her head in an incongruous halo of springy, incorrigible curls. The only features Hailey had inherited from her mother’s side were what she called her canine eyes.

  Ingrid’s were a deep green, while Hailey had Jean’s toffee color.

  “So forget the muffins. I’ll get it right the next time. What about this latest patient of yours, that little David you told me about?”

  Sam and Ingrid listened closely as Hailey told them everything she knew about him, which wasn’t much. “The Department of Social Services and the courts will decide what eventually happens to him,” she explained. “He’ll probably go into foster care as soon as he’s released from St. Joe’s, unless some relative comes forward and offers to care for him.”

  “And we all know that’s not very likely,” Ingrid said with a sigh. “There’s so many babies around that nobody seems to want I can’t see why they’re taking so long to find one for you, honey.”

  Ingrid and Sam had eagerly offered to baby-sit their great-grandchild when Hailey finally became a mother. Like Hailey, Ingrid had had little opportunity to get to know Laura’s kids, and Hailey figured it probably had a lot to do with her mother. Jean was proprietary about Christopher and Samantha, and because she and Ingrid had never gotten along, it was a safe bet Jean would do her best to keep her beloved grandchildren out of the clutches of the person she’d long ago labeled her dipstick of a mother-in-law. It was easy to see why Frank and Jean got along so well, with vocabularies that contained labels like dipstick and whacko.

  Although Sam had three grandchildren, there were problems in his family, too. His son and daughter had united in doing everything they could to keep him from marrying Ingrid, and they still hadn’t quite forgiven him for not bowing to their wishes.

  He’d married his first wife in his early twenties. She died when he was fifty-five, and six months later he quit his job as an engineer and began a new career as a model, something he’d always wanted to try. When he began dating Ingrid, his children were aghast; she was the total opposite of what their mother had been.

  “I could have a child immediately if I agreed to take one with severe mental or physical handicaps,” Hailey said. “I’ve really considered it, but I see kids like that at work and I know how much time, energy and money it takes to deal with their special needs. I’ve thought it over carefully, and I just don’t think I could manage alone.”

  Ingrid nodded. “I think you’re wise to give it a lot of thought. A child isn’t something you can return to the store for a refund if it doesn’t work out.”

  Sam reached across and put his hand over Hailey’s, his brown eyes brimming with kindness and affection. “When the time is right, exactly the right little girl or boy will be there for you.”

  “And the right guy, too,” Ingrid said in a decisive voice. “Just reme
mber, they take long enough to show up sometimes. After your grandfather died, I never dreamed I’d meet anyone I wanted to live with again. I certainly didn’t go out looking, but Sam came along, anyway. You recall, Hailey, I wouldn’t even let him get to first base for the longest time.”

  Sam rolled his eyes and Hailey hooted. She happened to know that Ingrid had gone to bed with Sam on their third date.

  “But eventually you caved,” Sam said. “Stubborn bloody woman. I knew from the first time I laid eyes on you that we were meant for each other, but would you listen?” His voice was gruff and tender, and he gave Ingrid a look that made Hailey feel lonely, but also reconfirmed that there were people who truly cared for one another.

  As she drove to work that day, Hailey thought about Ingrid and Sam. Was love preordained? Did two people really come together at a certain point in their lives in spite of their own plans, in spite of themselves?

  An old, deep longing made her chest ache. She’d pretty much managed to convince herself that the relationships in her life weren’t likely to be the male-female variety. It wasn’t that she believed any longer that she was ugly, the way she had as a teenager. In her twenties she’d come to terms with the way she looked, and she’d had her share of dates, but she’d also come to understand that her feeling of alienation from men went much deeper than physical appearance.

  Maybe it came from growing up in an all-female household, with a mother who put all her emphasis on beauty and wasn’t able to conceal her disappointment at having a daughter who didn’t look the way she wanted her to look. Or maybe it had to do with losing her father and not trusting any guy to stay around for the long haul.

  Hailey had no illusions as to why she’d chosen pediatric nursing as a career. With children, there were no expectations. With them she could let loose the full force of her madcap personality, truly be the person she was usually too self-conscious to reveal around adults. And pediatric nursing, more than any other career choice, offered the opportunity to hold children close, to care for them, to love them, to make them feel better in any and every way she could devise.

  She loved her work. There were times when it was painful, when children couldn’t get well and her job was simply to help them die. There were times when she was physically sick from the emotional strain of letting go and saying goodbye. But even then, she never thought for one moment of doing anything else.

  But—and it was a but that she managed not to think about most of the time—there was still the dream that every woman had. She wanted the kind of love that Ingrid had found with Sam, and because she was young, Hailey wanted even more. She wanted to know how it felt to carry a living being inside her, to give birth to a baby conceived in passion, to watch and listen to that precious soul as it grew. She wanted to share that experience with a man who felt the way she felt, who wanted what she wanted.

  During the past year she’d decided it was time to give up that dream. It was time to compromise. There were children who desperately needed a mother, and she could do that. She’d considered going to a donor bank and having a baby, but she’d come to the conclusion that she had the capacity to love any child. It seemed a waste to grow one of her own when there were babies out there ready-made whose parents didn’t want them or couldn’t care for them.

  She made her way up to the ward. Ordinarily she worked a twelve-hour, seven-to-seven shift, but this week she was filling in on her days off so a friend could go to Mexico. The eight-hour shift gave her a little break from routine.

  The first thing Hailey did was check the charts to see how her patients had fared since she’d last seen them.

  David had cried off and on all night, but today he was drinking a little more of the clear fluids he needed. A quick survey of his room showed Hailey he was sleeping.

  Brittany Whitcomb had had chemo that morning, and Hailey went to check on her next. She was curled into a ball on her bed with the sheet and blanket pulled over her head, and Hailey could tell she was crying.

  “Hey, sweetie, how goes it? You feeling crappy?”

  There was a tiny nod from under the covers.

  “Let’s try to figure out what would help. There’s ginger ale here—want a sip?”

  Negative shake.

  Hailey checked the chart. “You’ve had your anti-nausea meds, so can’t offer you any more of that junk. How about if I sing to you?”

  Negative shake.

  “Darn, I keep hoping one of you guys will miss the fact that I can’t carry a tune to save my life.” Rhythmically and tenderly she rubbed Brittany’s small, thin back through the covers. “So how about a story?”

  A tiny nod.

  “Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess named Brittany who lived in a faraway land.”

  Even though Brittany was twelve, the fairy-tale format seemed to comfort her. For the next ten minutes Hailey wove a fanciful story about a princess who had a lot of bad things happen to her. Her mommy and daddy, the king and queen, divorced. Her big sister, the crown princess, married a prince from another country and left home. Princess Brittany was sad and mad, and then, to top it off, she got sick and had to travel to a healing center a long way from her home.

  By incorporating the things Brittany had confided to her from time to time into the story, Hailey could suggest ways for Brittany to manage her feelings about being lonely for her family and feeling sick. When the story was done, the young girl had emerged from the protection of her bedcovers, and although she wasn’t smiling, she wasn’t crying, either.

  “Really, Hailey.” Margaret Cross’s high-pitched voice made both Hailey and Brittany jump. “It would be nice if we all had time to sit around telling stories, but the fact is, we’re shorthanded. Could you come along please and help collect the lunch trays?”

  “I’ll be right there, Margaret.”

  The head nurse obviously wanted to hurry the process along. She put a hand on her hip and sniffed several times, but Hailey didn’t budge. Finally she turned on her heel and left the room, and Hailey pulled a face and moaned, “Busted. I’m gonna get three demerits and I’ll bet I won’t get any ice cream for dinner.”

  Brittany smiled at last. They talked for a moment about Brittany’s birthday, which was coming up soon, and then Hailey had to go. She left the girl a Stephen King novel she’d smuggled in—Margaret didn’t consider Stephen King suitable reading for a twelve-year-old—and went off to collect trays.

  A half hour later she was showing two little boys in the playroom how to do a headstand when Roy Zedyck’s deep voice sent her toppling from her precarious position.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “SORRY, HAILEY, didn’t mean to startle you. You okay?” Roy knelt beside her and tried to help her up.

  “No.” She scowled at him and twisted away. “Owww.” She’d fallen hard and her elbow hurt. Rubbing it, she sat up. “Couldn’t you whistle or something? I was concentrating on balance here.”

  “I really apologize. Next time I’ll give you fair warning. Wish I could do a headstand.” He turned to the boys. “Think if I asked her really nice she’d teach me?”

  “Nope,” Tommy declared, shaking his head. “’Cause I think she needs more practice.”

  “Yeah,” Ian agreed. “She don’t know how to do it right.”

  Roy laughed and Hailey stopped being annoyed. He was easy with kids, and that made up for scaring her.

  “You guys have really hurt my feelings. You’re way too critical.” She was never embarrassed by anything she did that amused the kids, but having Roy see her topple over like a felled tree had made her self-conscious. She brushed herself off and got to her feet.

  He was still smiling at her, so she smiled back. Who could resist?

  “I thought I’d drop by and see how David’s doing.”

  Hailey was impressed. In her experience, social workers didn’t usually pay daily visits to clients.

  “He’s been asleep since I came on shift, but let’s go check again.” She tu
rned to the boys. “You guys practice those stretches I showed you. You’re not nearly ready for headstands, either. I’ll be back to see how you’re doing in—” she checked her watch “—fifteen minutes.”

  She led the way down the hall and Roy walked beside her, easily keeping pace with her long-legged stride.

  “Nicole is probably going to drop by this afternoon with some stuff,” he said. “She was shopping for David last time I talked to her.”

  He had a great voice, rumbly and compelling. She sneaked a sideways peek at him. Hell, he had a great everything.

  “How long have you been in pediatrics, Hailey?”

  “Ever since I graduated. I wouldn’t work anywhere else—I love the kids.”

  “And they love you. Nicole said it was refreshing to meet someone who’d found the exact job she wanted to do.”

  “What does Nicole do?” It was obvious he was smitten with the woman. He kept bringing her up.

  “She’s a lawyer, but her big dream is to have her own gardening business.”

  “Wow.” Hailey was astounded. “I never would have guessed lawyer. She looks like a fashion model. And gardening. She doesn’t look like the type of woman…” She caught herself. “Would you just listen to me, making idiotic assumptions?”

  “Nobody would guess that someone who looks like Nicole would like to be up to her elbows in compost and dirt.”

  “She’d sure clean up good,” Hailey said. “She seems like quite a woman,” she added. “You’re a lucky guy.”

  Roy looked surprised. “Hate to burst your romantic bubble, but Nicole’s my sister.”

  “Your sister?” She was astonished.

  “Yeah, she got all the looks in the family.”

  That was debatable. “Is there just the two of you?”

  “Nope. We’ve got four more siblings—two sisters, two brothers.”

  No wonder he was so easy with kids. “Lucky you, growing up in a big family. I only have one sister, and I always wanted a brother, as well.” Maybe instead of, but she didn’t say that.