Vital Signs

by Bobby Hutchinson

  Shaking and sweating, she struggled to figure out where she was. It was stifling hot. Sunlight penetrated through a rip in the dark-green curtains, and she could hear the sound of traffic outside. A picture of sunflowers was screwed to the wall, and a closed door must lead to a bathroom. A motel room, she decided.

  She propped herself up on one elbow and studied the face of the husky man sleeping beside her. He wasn’t Murphy, and to the best of her knowledge she’d never seen him before. Her stomach lurched. She felt nauseated.

  She slid out of bed. Her legs were rubbery, and she had trouble making it to the bathroom without falling. Her head felt as if it was about to explode, and the drug need went crawling through her veins like a hungry snake, making her itchy and edgy and frantic and sick.

  For an instant memories surfaced, police cars, an ambulance in front of her apartment, urgent voices floating to her in the hot afternoon. A stretcher with a small figure on it—they were taking Davie away, and she had to stop them.

  She’d tried to get out of Rudy’s car, but he’d grabbed her, pulled her back inside, then driven off as Murphy held her. She’d writhed and screamed and fought to get loose, but Murphy was strong.

  “You’re high, baby, they’ll toss you in the slammer. The kid’s okay. They’re takin’ care of him. Here, have some of this—it’ll make you feel better.”

  And from then until now, she couldn’t remember anything.

  She retched into the toilet, gasping for breath, disgust and fear and shame gnawing at her soul. Where was her son? Terror and emptiness made it hard to breathe.

  The door opened, and the man stood there, squinting down at her.

  “You okay, doll? That was some party, huh? I got some stuff left—you want some?”

  She shook her head. She managed to get to her feet, turn on the hot water in the shower and step inside. She pulled the curtain and turned the tap until the spray was as hot as it would get. It beat down on her face, and gradually the pain in her chest became unbearable. She opened her mouth and tried to howl, but no sound came out.

  She’d deserted her baby son, the one thing in her life that was precious and clean and innocent. She’d betrayed him, and in doing that, she’d become the person she’d been running from for so many years.

  She’d become her own mother.

  She wanted to die, but she’d tried before and it wasn’t easy.

  ROY LOCKED the office door behind him, aware that he was the last one in the building, apart from the cleaning staff. It was almost nine o’clock, and he hadn’t eaten since noon. He was famished, and he hated eating alone. He also hadn’t seen Nicole for a while. On impulse he dialed her cell-phone number, and after a few rings she answered.

  “I’m just leaving the office. If you’re not busy, I wondered if you wanted to grab a burger. Or at least talk to me while I wolf a couple down?”

  Belatedly he became aware of background noise, music and the murmur of conversation. “Damn, I’m sorry. I’ll bet you’re out somewhere posh with the pilot. He’ll never believe I’m your brother, so just make like this is a wrong number, and I’ll talk to you another time. Bye.”

  “No, no, don’t hang up. Hold on just a minute.” Nicole said something indistinguishable to someone, and then she was back.

  “Roy? Hailey and I are at Tomato on Cambie. She just got off shift and we’re having a late dinner. Want to join us? Hailey says it’s fine with her.”

  It was a no-brainer. Roy didn’t even take the time to register surprise that his sister and Hailey were out together. “I’ll be there in fifteen. Order me whatever their dinner special is—I’m famished.”

  He spotted them the moment he walked into the funky café. Even in this colorful atmosphere, Hailey’s wild red hair stood out like a beacon. She and Nicole were sitting in a booth beside the windows, plates of delicious-looking food in front of them. He made his way over and slid in beside Nicole.

  “Ah, fairest damsels in the land, thank you for taking pity on a starving man.” There was a basket of bread on the table with only one piece left, and it didn’t look as if the women were going to eat it. He slathered butter on and bit into it.

  Hailey smiled a shy greeting at him. She had a first-rate smile—he’d noticed that before. It started in her eyes and moved slowly to her mouth. And that damned hair looked as if an electrical current ran through it.

  The waitress appeared as if by magic and put a steaming bowl of soup in front of him, along with another basket of warm, fresh bread.

  “Whatever this is, it’s my favorite.” He took a spoonful and groaned with pleasure. “Ignore me, please. Just go on talking about whatever it was you were talking about before I barged in. I’ve always wanted to know what females talk about when there aren’t any men around.”

  “Men, of course.” Nicole leaned her elbows on the table. “But we’ll change the subject now. No point in revealing all our secrets. What are you doing working so late, Roy?”

  “The dreaded paperwork. I was warned that if I didn’t do something about the mountain on my desk, they’d hold back my paycheck. I’m so far behind I need a rearview mirror.” He emptied the soup bowl in a few huge gulps and buttered another chunk of bread. “What else did you order for me?”

  “We just told them to serve you the largest of the entrées. I think it was roasted ox or something, wasn’t it, Hailey?” Nicole knew that he stuck to a basically vegetarian diet.

  “Stewed buffalo tongue.” Obviously Hailey had caught on, as well. She shot him a mischievous look.

  “Tonight I’m hungry enough to eat raw venison.” Roy grinned at her. He liked Hailey’s husky voice, the way it wandered up and down like a musical instrument she couldn’t quite control.

  “Nicole was about to tell me how she got interested in landscape architecture,” Hailey added, taking a forkful of her dinner. It looked like fresh fish in some sort of wonderful sauce.

  “Subtitled dirt to dirt in five generations, much to the horror of my upwardly mobile family.” Nicole laughed. “Our distant ancestors had a gardening business in Milan, but then the family moved to Vancouver and our great-grandfather—who was a hunk if those black-and-white photos are to be believed—capitalized on his looks and married up. Great-grandma was no beauty, but she had pots of money. Her father was one of the early lumber barons. They had a slew of kids—must have had a great sexual relationship—and everyone got university educations, invested in real estate, went into law, expanded the family fortune. My grandpa and my father and two of my brothers are lawyers. Roy, of course, is a social worker. Two aunts are doctors, and one cousin went into politics. Me, I’m the black sheep, a throwback to earlier times. I went into law to fulfil family tradition, but I was born with the good earth under my fingernails. My first memory is pulling up my grandmother’s daffodils to see how big the bulbs were.”

  “So when are you going to follow your heart and start your own gardening business?” Hailey asked.

  Nicole sighed. “Soon, I hope. Someday soon.” She turned the conversation back to Hailey. “How old were you when you knew you wanted to be a nurse?”

  “Eleven.”

  “And? How come so young?” Nicole wasn’t about to let her off the hook with a one-word answer.

  Hailey shrugged. “My dad had a heart attack that year. He was in hospital a week before he died, and the nurses were so good to my sister and me. I developed a huge crush on them. And once I was in training, I knew right away I wanted to work in pediatrics.” She flashed her wide smile again. “I never really wanted to grow up, see, and being around kids all the time is a great way to avoid it.”

  “None of your own?” Roy found he was curious about her, about whether she was married or had a live-in lover.

  He was about to butter more bread when the waitress set a plate heaped with vegetables and baked salmon in front of him. He eyed it with unabated hunger.

  “Not yet.” Hailey shook her head. “I’m single. But I really want a family of
my own, so I’ve applied for single-parent adoption. It’s just taking longer than I thought to get the paperwork finished.”

  “Wow, that’s so brave of you.” Nicole’s voice reflected her admiration. “I’ve thought lots of times about doing the same thing, but I’ve never gone further than daydreaming about it. Tell me how the process works. Are there many restrictions?”

  Roy ate and listened, amazed. He knew Nicole loved kids, but he’d never heard her admit that she’d even considered single-parent adoption.

  “Not anymore,” Hailey said. “Oh, you have to prove there’ll be male input into the child’s life, some sort of father figure. And of course you have to show that you’ll be able to love the child unconditionally and that you’re able to put a roof over its head. But that’s about all. You can either go for a private adoption or through Social Services. There’s a significant difference financially, which was the determining factor for me. Social Services is cheaper. It can cost up to a thousand for a child under the age of three, but if you take a kid over that age, it’s free. And if you feel you can manage an emotionally, mentally or physically disabled child, there’s not as long a waiting period as there is for a newborn. Privately you’ll pay upward of ten thousand for a baby.” She added in an apologetic tone, “Here I am going on about it when Roy’s an expert. He can probably tell you a lot more about it than I can.”

  “Not really.” He shook his head. “I’m not involved much with the department that handles adoptions. I deal more with kids in trouble.”

  “So which route are you taking, Hailey?” Nicole ate the last of her dinner and pushed her plate away.

  “Social services. I couldn’t begin to afford the private-adoption thing. When I decided that I was going to adopt, I bought a little house over near Main Street. Real-estate agent called it a fixer-upper, but that was stretching the truth.” She laughed. “It was more of a tear-downer, but by the time I’d figured that out, I’d already put money and energy into it. It’s a real money pit, but I still love it. I’ve spent so much at Home Depot I’d buy shares if I had any cash left.”

  “You hire people to do the work for you?” Roy was wolfing down his dinner, enjoying every mouthful, but he was finding the conversation just as satisfying as the food. Hailey impressed him. She’d decided what she wanted out of life and then gone after it, full speed ahead.

  “Don’t I wish.” She looked remorseful. “Nope, I can’t afford to hire anyone. I wish I could sometimes. The first thing I’d do is get someone to redo my bathroom.” Hailey shook her head, her curly red hair fanning out around her face. The overhead light struck sparks from it. “It’s a total disaster area. The floor’s rotting out, the bathtub needs resurfacing, the walls are peeling. I admit I don’t know where to start on that project, but for everything else, I do the work myself—at least as much as is humanly possible.”

  “Did you take a course in carpentry?” Nicole was obviously just as interested as he was, Roy noted.

  “Nope. I just bungle through. I’ve figured out how to put up drywall and I’m not bad at painting. I’ve gotten pretty good at sanding. I’ve even done some minor electrical repairs.”

  She sounded proud, and Roy thought she ought to be. He didn’t know many other people, male or female, who’d take on what she had.

  “I’m going to build a deck out back as soon as I get the money saved for the cedar,” Hailey went on. “Although the first priority is that darned bathroom.”

  “But how do you know what to do?” Nicole asked.

  “Oh, I use instructional books and videos and watch repair shows on TV. And I ask the clerks at Home Depot—they’re really knowledgeable. But a lot of it is common sense and trial and error.

  Roy was fascinated and more than a little envious. “I’ve always fantasized about buying a rundown place and fixing it up.”

  Nicole shot him a surprised look. “Have you, Roy? You never told me that. How come you’ve never done it?”

  “Never had the guts.” He smiled at Hailey. “Would you do it again—buy the house, get into all the repair stuff—knowing what you know now?”

  Her face was the kind that held no secrets. Her feelings showed in her expression, and she looked amazed that he would even ask. “Absolutely. It’s fun most of the time. I’ve gotten used to living in chaos and putting up with drains that overflow and toilets that don’t flush, but at least it’s a challenge you can do something about.”

  Roy knew instinctively what she was talking about. As a nurse, Hailey watched sick kids get sicker, knowing there wasn’t much she could do about it. He often had the same feeling in his own work.

  “It helps if you have buckets of money and lots of free time,” she went on. “Neither of which I have, so everything’s taking me a lot longer than it should.”

  “I’d love to see your house,” Nicole said.

  Roy was thinking the same thing, but he wasn’t brave enough to say it.

  “Really?” Hailey looked surprised. “Well, then, why not come over this Sunday. I’m off that day.”

  Roy accepted the dessert menu the waitress was handing him. “I’d like the berry compote with an extra scoop of ice cream, please. You two want anything?”

  They shook their heads and he handed the menu back and turned to Hailey. “Can I come see your house, too?”

  “Absolutely. Around ten. I’ll make us all some brunch.”

  “Oh, Hailey, that’s not necessary—coffee’s just fine,” Nicole began, but Roy interrupted her.

  “Brunch would be fantastic. We’ll be there,” he said in a fervent tone, and wondered why the women looked at each other, shook their heads and then burst into giggles.

  THE FOLLOWING DAY was Brittany’s birthday, and Hailey had arranged a surprise for the girl. Brittany’s mother and father, Susan and Tom Whitcomb, who lived in a small logging town on Vancouver Island, couldn’t make it to Vancouver for her birthday, and Hailey knew Brittany would be missing her family.

  Hailey had baked a huge birthday cake, iced it with purple icing and filled loot bags with prizes. She’d even hired a clown to come to the ward and present Brittany with her gifts and entertain the kids for two hours.

  She knew she should have mentioned it to Margaret beforehand, but she also knew the older nurse would find some reason to veto the whole idea, so Hailey kept putting it off. She finally broke the news at one-thirty that afternoon, half an hour before the clown was due to arrive.

  “I don’t think it’s wise to disrupt the entire ward and our routine in such a fashion.” Margaret’s round face got red and her small mouth drew into a familiar knot of displeasure. “And you should have told me long before this, Hailey. You can’t just do things your own way all the time, you know. This is a medical center. Our first priority is taking care of our patients, not entertaining them.”

  “But making the kids laugh releases endorphins, it’s a scientific fact that endorphins help us get better faster.” It was a defense Hailey had almost worn out from overuse, and Margaret gave her a nasty, knowing look.

  “I am the nursing supervisor, Hailey. I suggest you try to remember that once in a while, preferably before you make elaborate plans that have nothing whatsoever to do with nursing.”

  Fortunately a group of doctors came along just at that moment, and Margaret, ever eager to please doctors, turned her attention to them.

  Hailey sighed with relief. She was off the hook and the party was on.

  The clown arrived shortly afterward. Hailey gathered all the kids into the large playroom, and Karen, who was also on duty, had helped her set up a table with the cake as a centerpiece. They made sure there was juice for everyone, and Hailey put the gifts she’d bought for Brittany alongside the stack that had arrived from her family.

  The kids were beside themselves with excitement, and Hailey was excited, too. She loved birthday parties. And when she saw Brittany’s thin face light with pleasure, she knew she’d done the right thing.

  Hailey
had brought David to the playroom. He was a somber little boy, but he had begun to smile on occasion and talk to her a little. He was still hooked to an IV, so Hailey popped him into an empty crib.

  The clown was outrageous, and the kids laughed with delight. At one point, he went over to David’s crib, and the other kids gathered around as he pretended to pluck candy out of David’s ears and even out of his IV stand.

  “Me, too, me, too,” shouted four-year-old Joshua whose IV was pumping antibiotics into his system to counteract the infection he’d developed after an operation on his bladder.

  The clown obliged, pulling a toy rabbit out of Joshua’s IV stand.

  The kids applauded, and when David laughed aloud, tears came to Hailey’s eyes. It was the first time she’d heard him laugh so heartily. That single reaction was worth all the work and organizing the party had taken, and Hailey’s joy was compounded by the glowing delight on Brittany’s face when she opened her gifts and found the entire collection of Stephen King novels, which Hailey had purchased at a secondhand bookstore.

  Margaret came by only once to warn the nurses that four-o’clock meds had to be distributed along with dinner trays. “Laugh before dinner, cry before bed,” she warned one little kid who was half-hysterical with giggling.

  “Sour old bat,” Karen whispered as Margaret flounced out.

  The clown left, and Hailey and Karen took the kids back to their rooms. Hailey settled David down with a bottle of juice. His blood work showed that he’d soon be off the IV, and then he could join the other kids more often in the playroom.

  Margaret tapped on the glass window, her face stern. Hailey knew Margaret’s shift was over and wondered what she wanted. She went to the door and knew immediately that something was wrong. The supervisor’s face was a triumphant mixture of blame and righteousness.

  “Joshua’s IV was somehow turned off during your party, and there’s every possibility this could result in a life-threatening situation for him.”