STOLEN

by DAWN KOPMAN WHIDDEN

  “Sometimes,’” Hope explained, “in situations such as this, children feel betrayed by their parents, and sometimes they transfer their anger at the perpetrator and they blame their parents for abandoning them.”

  Mrs. Sandberg was nodding compliantly, but as Jean watched, she knew that the woman wasn’t really listening to what Hope was saying. She was anxious to see her child and that was all she was focused on. The woman wanted to see for herself that her little girl was actually just a few feet away from her and alive. Jean knew how she would feel if this had been Bethany; and she imagined that Michaelah’s mother physically ached to touch her child’s body and it took every ounce of self-control not to push Hope out of the way. Jean knew, in her heart, the woman wasn’t going to wait one second longer. She needed to see her daughter now. It has been an eternity since someone took her, and it was time to get her baby back.

  Hope glanced up and was relieved to see Jean join the growing number of spectators. Jean made her way over to Hope, who was offering a few more words of preparation to the little girl’s parents. Jean didn’t envy her friend, knowing all too well her friend was presented with the dilemma of how much to tell, and how soon she should tell it. She wouldn’t want to have to make that call. Should the parents be informed this soon about how much law enforcement and medical personal knew about their child’s experience? Would the truth be easier to swallow now than leaving it to their imagination? Was it necessary to ruin the moment of reconciliation with the horrific details of the child’s captivity? She wanted to ask Hope how much they had already been told about what their daughter had been exposed to, and what this precious little girl had witnessed, and had to submit to. On her way back from the courthouse, Jean had called and spoken with Detective Frank Robinson, who was one of the first to see the child at the hospital; and briefly spoke to one of the physicians who examined the child. Doctor Lercher found evidence of physical and extensive sexual abuse on the tiny little girl’s body. Frank was the first to turn on the camera that was in the cabin and watched less than thirty seconds of the tape before he shut it off in anger, fighting the urge to destroy the very expensive equipment by throwing it against the wall.

  Jean felt the anxiety in the room and wasn’t surprised when Hope succumbed to the demands of the parents and finally gave in. Jean assumed a thorough physical examination had been conducted and that the two nurses in the cubicle with Michaelah were given the go ahead to begin cleaning her up and trying to prepare her for her parents’ visit. Michaelah remained quiet. Just a nod or a shake of her head was all the nurses were getting from her. It was Jean that finally made the first move. Walking over to the cubicle, she carefully pulled the curtain back enough so Mr. and Mrs. Sandberg were finally able to see Michaelah for the first time in months. Michaelah was looking out the window and did not see the group quietly enter the room. The little girl did not move, but continued staring out the window panels that started at the floor steam radiator and went all the way to the ceiling. She didn’t become aware of either her mom or dad until they moved into a position where their reflections came into her line of vision. She appeared to recognize her father first, but still did not make any move to turn around. Mrs. Sandberg couldn’t stand it any longer. She stood for a mere three seconds before she cried out her daughter’s name. Only four seconds had passed, but it must have felt like an eternity to Mrs. Sandberg, before Michaelah slowly and methodically turned her tiny little body around. Her eyes fixated on her mother, and then her daddy, but she remained frozen and didn’t move another muscle. No longer being able to keep away, Mrs. Sandberg threw out her arms towards her daughter. Michaelah immediately jumped back, to get away, and then her body froze in terror. After a second or two, she turned her head, frantically looking around the room, as if there was somebody or something she was expecting to see. Then the little girl bit down on her lip so hard it began to bleed. That was too much for Kate Sandberg. Her mother’s instinct was to fix her baby’s booboo, and she immediately walked over to her baby and whispered to her. “Mommy’s here, baby. Mommy’s here.” Mrs. Sandberg took the corner of the blanket and moistened it with her own spit and gently wiped it across the little girl’s mouth and chin, removing all evidence of blood. With it came the last of the remnants of the bright red lipstick. Her father walked over and carefully planted a kiss on his daughter’s matted head. Michaelah watched them both carefully and intently, not making a sound, but allowed them both to caress and touch her, although her body remained stiff. It wasn’t until Mrs. Sandberg began to walk over to the sink to find a more appropriate cloth to wash her daughter’s face did Michaelah call out. “NO! DON’T GO!” The sound of her voice was barely recognizable to her parents, due to the fact her voice was hoarse from her vocal cords being strained.

  Jean imagined it happened from the child screaming, which she had used as her only possible weapon against her abductor.

  Mrs. Sandberg stopped in her tracks and returned to the girl immediately, both parents holding the child tight. It was obvious to Jean and everyone else in the room that the pressure of those hugs might have caused the child some pain, but the little girl was finally in a safe place and she wasn’t letting go. The sounds of her sobbing now sounded different then when she had been first found. When Jean first heard the child cry, she heard real pain and fright in her quiet sobs, as if she was too afraid for anyone to hear her cry. Now her cries were loud and strong, as if she now felt safe enough to let it out; and Jean realized the cries turned into a sobbing of relief. Jean glanced over at Hope and both knew that it was going to be a long recovery for this child and her family.

  As soon as he was able, Marty made his way downstairs to the Emergency Room. The good news was that his father was awake and was resting comfortably. Marty was anxious to find Hope or Jean. He hadn’t heard from either of them since they left after the incident with the little boy; he heard the rumors going around the hospital that a kidnapped child had been found. Marty thought of the little boy he had held in his arms earlier and felt a sense of relief that he was going to be fine.

  Jean was nowhere in sight, but Marty did see a uniformed officer standing in front of one of the cubicles and a small crowd had positioned themselves in front of the nurse’s station. He immediately tuned into Hope’s voice among the group. She was deep in conversation with Frank Robinson, a detective with his squad, and both were politely ignoring the congregated group trying to get their attention, which consisted mostly of news reporters and cameramen.

  “How is he?” Marty asked, as he pushed through the mob, handing her the cellphone she had left in his possession. He nodded to Frank as he made an effort to disperse the crowd.

  “I don’t know yet. Last time I looked, he was still sedated.” She told him as she politely excused herself from the group.

  “Do you know who the other kid is?” One of the reporters cried out.

  “Where did they find him?” Another one shouted.

  Reporters continued shouting out questions, but Hope just gave that sweet smile of hers. When they realized that Hope was not going to respond to them with any answers, they focused their verbal attack on one of the other physicians. Marty followed about a foot behind her.

  He suddenly realized something wasn’t making sense; he was thoroughly confused. The rumor he’d heard was that a kidnapped child had been found. The questions the reporters were shouting out sounded like they did not know who the boy was or where he came from. Another uniformed officer was standing guard in front of a cubicle, and Hope stopped in front of it. She pulled open the curtain. A nurse’s aide was keeping vigil, seated next to the boy who was sedated and still sound asleep on the examining table. The aide was taking advantage of the fact the boy was snoring softly. She was using the quiet time; totally engrossed in a paperback book. She glanced up and smiled when they walked in.

  There was no question in Marty’s mind that this was the same little boy he had held in his arms earlier, even though his teeth weren�
�t showing and he was snoring softly—instead of squawking like a trapped bird. His small chest was gently rising and falling as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Hope ran her hand through a mess of his dark brown hair. It fell back in a soft, thick wave and it reminded him of how she would do the same to his after it had been shampooed and dried.

  “What are you reading?” Hope asked the young aide.

  Looking over at the sleeping child, and being very deliberate to make sure she didn’t wake him up, she answered Hope by lifting the book up just enough to allow Hope to read the front of the book’s cover.

  Apparently not being able to maintain her silence, she whispered a response as well.

  “Bishop Street” by Rene Schultz, she’s really good. Have you read her?” The young girl smiled, showing a mouthful of teeth so white it actually hurt to look at them.

  Marty didn’t think there was a book out there that Hope hadn’t read. If she wasn’t working, she was reading. She often would come right out and apologize, thinking that the time she spent being immersed in a novel was annoying to Marty, but he really liked the fact that she enjoyed it as much as she did.

  “Has he stirred at all?” Hope glanced over and read the girl’s nametag. It read Vanessa Lubin in big block letters.

  The name Lubin was the same as the one on the name tag of the man Marty had handed the boy over to earlier. He wondered if they were related.

  “Vanessa? Has anything changed?”

  As she shook her head in response, Marty noticed her hair was almost as white as her teeth at the top and the color deliberately stopped five inches from the bottom where it became a dark shade of brown. It was different, but it seemed to suit the girl. Marty was listening to the conversation, but his attention was diverted when he noticed the light blue cotton blanket covering the boy had slid down and was now exposing his right leg. Now he was moving and jerking in his sleep and they watched as he kicked off the blanket. It was now exposing his right leg all the way up to his thigh. Hope noticed it too and reached over to cover him. He knew what she was thinking because he was thinking the same thing. The Emergency Room was cold and she didn’t want him to be uncomfortable, even if he was fast asleep.

  Hope picked up his chart and scanned it quickly.

  “He should be out for at least another hour, Vanessa. I’ll be in the building; can you page me if he starts to stir?”

  She looked at the boy’s chart again and appeared to be satisfied. “I see Dr. Lercher’s been in to see him again.”

  “Yes, Dr. Rubin, she was here about twenty minutes ago, checked his vitals. She said everything was fine. Do we know who he is yet?” she asked Hope, as she glanced up at Marty and then glanced back down at the little boy sleeping soundly.

  “I heard they identified the little girl as the girl who was missing from Queens. Her parents must be thrilled. I just . . . .” Her voice trailed off. There was some sadness in her voice.

  It really wasn’t necessary for her to say what she was thinking, and Marty wasn’t quite so confused anymore. It was clear to him now what had happened. There were two children brought into the hospital this morning. One male and one female. Both children obviously had been traumatized, but to what extent, they weren’t aware of yet. As he watched Hope put the chart down, he took it as a clue she felt nothing more could be done at the moment.

  “Have you eaten yet, Hope?” Marty asked her, as he took notice of how tired she looked. Whenever Hope got tired or hungry, for some reason, the bottom of her eyelids would turn a salmon shade of pink.

  “Starved, let’s go to the cafeteria and grab something to eat.” She answered and then turned back to Vanessa. “Can I bring you something, Vanessa? I have a feeling it’s going to be a long day.”

  The girl shook her head no and thanked her and went back to her book. Hope didn’t say another word until they were back out in the corridor in front of the elevator. “How’s the Captain doing? Is he awake yet? Is he out of recovery?” She pushed the button for the basement where the cafeteria was located.

  “Yes. He was sucking on some ice chips when I left; and Mary was staying with him. Doctor Cohen says my eighty-year-old father has the constitution of a sixty-year-old man, and the stubbornness of a fifteen-year-old teenager. Damn, he has him pegged.”

  The elevator doors slid open and in front of them were now two attendants trying to maneuver what must have been a five-hundred-pound patient out of the elevator. The wheels on the gurney seemed not to be cooperating. The sum of the weight of the two attendants together didn’t equal the weight of the man on the table and they were fighting to get the wheels over the metal strip on the elevator floor. Marty moved into a position so that he could help, and he managed to steer the wheels of the gurney at an angle, where they could maneuver their way out of the elevator and into the hallway, so that he and Hope could get in. When the doors closed, Marty could have sworn he got a whiff of cannabis. He doubted that any of the men had been smoking in the elevator, but it sure had penetrated one, or both, of their clothing.

  The lunch crowd was gone, but the cafeteria was still open for business and two employees were cleaning up. One was wiping down the stainless steel counters and starting to put things away while the other one was sweeping the remnants of food from the floor. Both looked at them with some apprehension and annoyance. Not daring to ask for something hot to eat, Marty and Hope both settled on prepackaged chicken salad sandwiches, a diet coke for Hope, and sweet iced tea for Marty. At least the cashier seemed not to mind the late customers and tallied up their bill with a smile.

  Marty led Hope over to a table in the far corner, hoping they could have at least ten minutes of peace. He thought of throwing their cellphones in the garbage container, but with his dad just out of surgery, and his partner Jean in court this afternoon, he thought better of it. They took off the Saran Wrap from their sandwiches, and Hope couldn’t get her sandwich into her mouth fast enough. The woman eats as if she was raised in his house, with seven older brothers, Marty thought.

  In his house, if you didn’t get to the food fast enough, you were out of luck. Hope, on the other hand, never had to fight for food. She was blessed with only one brother and a stay-at-home mom who made a career out of it. Grace Kelly Rubin made it her mission in life to make sure all of the nutritional needs of her family were met. According to her daughter, the woman spent her days perfecting her meals and insisting her family eat. Don’t dare to put the fork down for half a second or the lady would get offended. She would look insulted, and then inevitably ask, “Don’t you like it? What’s wrong? Doesn’t it taste right?” Poor Hope and her brother grew up eating food they couldn’t stand, or when they weren’t hungry, just so they wouldn’t hurt their mother’s feelings. Even so, Marty loved his future mother-in-law Grace Rubin, and she loved him. She cannot wait for Marty to marry her spinster daughter. (Not technically a spinster because Hope was once married, but her divorced daughter was in her thirties—unmarried—and she was constantly reminding Hope that her biological clock was rapidly ticking away.)

  It was not as though the woman didn’t have other grandchildren; Hope’s brother Lenny had three children. But for Hope not to give her mother the benefit of becoming a grandmother from the womb of her only daughter was the ultimate sin in Grace’s eyes. And she was never going to let Hope forget it. Yet, for all of Grace Rubin’s faults, she loved her two children, and God help the person that tried to hurt either of them. Marty supposed his future mother-in-law’s only real sin was that she loved her children too much and refused to let them go.

  ‘”Do you want to fill me in?” Marty asked Hope as she wolfed down her sandwich. As cute as she was, she left her ladylike behavior behind when it came to eating. As little as she was, she could out-eat Marty any day of the week.

  “I don’t know all the facts, Marty. You need to talk to Jean. The only thing I know is that both of the children were discovered in a cabin up by Hunter’s Cove. You know that old hunting lodge? I
haven’t had a chance to even talk to or really examine the little boy. The little girl is Michaelah Sandberg.”

  Marty recognized the child’s name immediately. There had been an Amber Alert back in December when she first went missing. The tri-state area had conducted a massive search by law enforcement and hundreds of volunteers. After a few weeks, the search and rescue had been called off, law enforcement officials claiming they could no longer spend the funds or continue using their personnel on what they assumed to no longer be a search and rescue but a recovery mission. The girl’s parents vehemently opposed the change in tactics, refusing to believe they would not find their daughter Michaelah alive. They continued to organize volunteer searches. Law enforcement knew the odds were that if the child wasn’t found within the first 48 hours, the chances were she wouldn’t be found alive at all, but it does happen occasionally. Luckily, for Michaelah and her family, she was one of those that had beaten the odds.

  Hope’s eyes normally were tinted a shade of aquamarine green, unless she was upset, and then they would turn a deep forest green, which was what they were now. Marty could tell, by looking at her eyes, something she discovered during the child’s physical examination had made her furious.

  “Do we know who the boy is?” Marty asked, trying to divert her thoughts. She shook her head, and then looked up at him as if he was the one who should have the answer, or at least was capable of getting it.

  Marty had taken some time off so he could be with his dad during and after his surgery. Neither of them vocalized it out loud, but as long as the child’s identity remained a mystery, they both knew he wouldn’t be able to keep his hands off this case and would be going back to work.