Pressure Drop

by Peter Abrahams

“That’s a cheap date. She can bring her own food.”

  Suze showed Nina a review from the Village Voice. The writer called the pig show “a breathtaking tour de force of post-feminist feminism that has the balls to say what needs saying about female-male relations in these dismal days.”

  “I bet she’s already stuck that on her meat locker,” Nina said.

  “I want her to do something for the gallery,” Suze said. “She’s going to be big, Nina.”

  “She’s big enough already.”

  Suze regarded Nina out of the corner of her eye. “She’s talking about doing a book. She wants to meet you.”

  “She’s not getting through my door unless she shaves her pits,” Nina said.

  Suze’s laughter woke the baby. Nina decided to change him. It took a long time: she tried to put the Pamper on backwards, the tabs kept getting stuck in the wrong places, it rode all the way up to his chest in the front but left him uncovered in back.

  “Where did he get that tight little butt?” Suze asked.

  Nina gave it a soft pat. “Takes after his mother,” she said.

  “Dream on,” said Suze, and left for her dinner soon after.

  The baby stirred and made a little squawking noise. He batted one of his stick arms in the air, the arm that wore the bracelet saying “Baby Kitchener.” Nina put him to her breast. His lips searched frantically for purchase, found her nipple, sucked. Nina felt his body relax. She looked down at him; now he had a preoccupied look in his serious blue eyes. She knew with certainty that she was his whole world, but didn’t know what to think about that. She stroked his hair at the back where it grew long, so fine. After a while he fell asleep, his head lolling to the side. Nina laid him in the crook of her arm. Then she touched her nipple, felt the wetness, tasted it. She had produced milk for the first time, thin but sweet. Nina smiled. She was still smiling when a nurse came into the room.

  “There’s a phone call for you at the nurses’ station.”

  “Can’t I take it in here?”

  “We tried to transfer it, but your phone’s not working. Maintenance’ll be up later.”

  Nina, still a little unsteady, rose from the bed.

  “Can’t leave the baby there by himself,” the nurse said.

  “But I’ve got rooming-in.”

  “Only when you’re here. The rest of the time he has to be in the nursery.”

  Nina, carrying the baby, followed the nurse to the end of the hall. Through the nursery window, Nina saw rows of bassinets, but all except three, which contained pink-wrapped bundles, were empty. The nurse held out her hands for Nina’s blue-wrapped bundle.

  “Can’t I take him in myself?”

  “No moms in the nursery.”

  Nina, noting that this was the first time she had been included by anyone in the mom category, surrendered her baby. She watched as the nurse went inside, laid him in a bassinet at the end of the row closest to the window and said something to a plump nurse sitting at the back of the room, a newspaper in her lap. The baby’s head was turned so that she could see his face. It was their first separation, the first time, except for a few minutes after his birth, that they hadn’t been in physical contact. He was sleeping quietly. Nina backed slowly away, then walked down the hall to the nurses’ station.

  “Is there a phone call for me?”

  A nurse glanced up from a chart she was writing on. “What’s your name?”

  “Nina Kitchener.”

  “Room?”

  “Four twenty-two.”

  The nurse went through a stack of yellow slips and handed her one: a message to call Jason at the office. “Pay phone’s on the fifth floor.”

  Nina avoided the elevator, taking the stairs at the far end of the hall so she could pass the nursery on the way. Her little blue-wrapped boy was sleeping in the same position he had been before, except that he’d worked one of his hands free; it rested, a tiny, perfect object, on the white sheet. The plump nurse at the back was now doing the crossword. As Nina approached the door leading to the stairs, she passed a woman pushing a cart piled with magazines, newspapers and candies. The woman, who had leathery, wrinkled skin and wore a volunteer badge, said: “Candy, dear?” She had an accent, vaguely English perhaps.

  “No thanks,” Nina said, and passed through the door.

  She made her way up the stairs, surprised that despite her bicycling—she was past Rangoon and en route to the Amur River, via Shanghai—she almost had to stop for a rest on the way. The phone was beside a door that said: CAUTION: RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS. Nina dropped in her quarter.

  “Hi, Mom,” said Jason. “I hear he’s a little cutie pie.”

  “Suze said that?”

  “No. It was on Rona Barrett this morning. Have you chosen a name yet?”

  “No.”

  “‘Jason’ is nice.”

  “It would be confusing, otherwise I wouldn’t consider anything else. What’s up?”

  “The Birdman wants to talk to you ASAP.”

  “The Birdman?”

  “With the magazine.”

  “What’s so urgent?”

  “He got a nibble from Condé Nast. They’re thinking of putting up half the money. He says. But he’s meeting with them tomorrow and wants to know what you think of the proposal.”

  “I’ll call him,” Nina said, trying to remember anything at all about the proposal. She might have read it in a past life.

  Nina called the Birdman. He had a high voice and talked very fast. “Goodness, you’re hard to reach,” he said. “This might be the most important episode in my life.”

  “You’ve reached me,” Nina said. “What do you want to know?”

  “Your reaction to the proposal, of course. I’m meeting with them at nine-thirty in the A.M. Condé Nast, for God’s sake.”

  “Who specifically?”

  “A woman named Linsky. Or Lansky. Something like that.”

  Nina tried to imagine any good coming from a meeting between Cynthia Lansky and the Birdman and failed. “What has she said so far?”

  “It’s a bit worrisome, actually.”

  “What is?”

  “She says she wants me to consider changing the concept somewhat.”

  “How?”

  “Before I answer that, I insist on knowing what you think of the present concept.”

  I don’t give a shit about you, your silly voice, your concept or Cynthia Lansky, Nina thought. I want to get back downstairs. “The pictures are great,” Nina said. “But it seems to me that the text is too narrowly focused on ornithology to attract anyone but specialists, and therefore I’m not sure what Condé Nast’s interest is.”

  There was a pause, so long that Nina said: “Hello. Are you still there?”

  “Yes,” said the Birdman, his voice momentarily dipping toward the sepulchral. “That’s exactly what the Condé Nast lady said. ‘Too narrowly focused.’”

  “So what did she propose?”

  “That I make it into a big glossy for rich birdwatchers, full of pictures of scenic birdwatching locales in fancy resort places all over the world,” the Birdman said, his tone resuming its approach to hysteria. “She wants me to think, think very seriously, she said, about calling it Oiseau.”

  “And what’s your reaction?”

  “It’s obscene,” said the Birdman.

  “Then say no.”

  “But they’re willing to put up half the money. And on the strength of that I can borrow the other half.”

  “Then you’re going to have to make a decision.”

  “You’re right,” said the Birdman. “You’re right, you’re right, you’re right. Ms. Kitchener?”

  “Yes?”

  “Would you come to the meeting with me?”

  Nina thought. She was due to leave the hospital at noon the next day. The Birdman’s meeting was at 9:30. She could leave the baby in the nursery while she was gone, then return and take him home. This was the first test of how she would combine job and
family. She hadn’t expected it to come so soon.

  “I’ll have to call you back on that,” she told the Birdman.

  “Please, Ms. Kitchener,” he said. “I’ll increase your fee.”

  “That’s understood,” Nina said. “I’ll call you after dinner.”

  Going downstairs was easier. Nina returned to the fourth floor and looked in the nursery window. The little blue-wrapped bundle still lay quietly at the far end of the first row, but now he was turned the other way so she couldn’t see his face. Nina tapped on the glass. The plump nurse looked up from her paper. Nina went through a series of hand signals that eventually drove home the point that the baby in the front row was hers and she wanted him back. The nurse put aside her paper, rose heavily and ambled across the nursery. She leaned forward over the bassinet at the end of the first row, her hands extended to take the baby—and suddenly stopped. She looked up at Nina with a strange expression on her face.

  The sight of it detonated a fear in Nina unlike any she had ever known. She bolted through the nursery door and across the room, unaware at that moment of the stitches tearing along her episiotomy. She had heard of crib death, accidental smothering, infants who died for no apparent reason. Nina pushed past the plump nurse, who seemed stuck to the floor, and grabbed the blue-wrapped bundle.

  Her baby wasn’t inside the blue blanket. In his place was a Cabbage Patch Kid.

  13

  These events followed, in order:

  Nina turned to the nurse and said: “Is this some kind of joke? Where is my baby?”

  The nurse shook her head rapidly from side to side.

  Nina said: “What’s going on? Has there been an accident? Did he fall? Have they taken him for tests or something?”

  The nurse kept shaking her head, faster and faster.

  “What is wrong with you?” Nina said. She fell to her knees and peered under the bassinet, finding nothing.

  The plump nurse stopped shaking her head. She spun around, bumping an empty bassinet and knocking it over, then examined the three pink-wrapped bundles. All contained baby girls, identification bracelets on their wrists.

  Nina, on all fours, scrambled across the nursery, searching under every bassinet.

  The nurse stood motionless in the middle of the room.

  Nina rose and shouted: “Where is my baby?”

  The nurse said: “I—I—I—I—”

  Blood dripped down Nina’s legs.

  Nina ran up to the nurse and took her by the shoulders. “But you were here. What happened? Did someone take him? Where is my baby? Are you stoned on something?”

  “I—I—I—I—”

  Nina shook the nurse. The nurse, much bigger than Nina, did not resist. Her head snapped back and forth.

  Nina ran down the hall. A scream rose in her chest. She forced it down. Her robe opened and slipped off her shoulders. She arrived at the nurses’ station in disarray.

  The head nurse looked up. She had seen all there was to see in a big city hospital. “Is there some problem?” she said.

  The scream burst out. “Yes, there’s some fucking problem. My baby’s gone.”

  “Please lower your voice,” the head nurse said. “What do you mean ‘gone’?”

  Nina swept her arm across the counter, scattering papers and charts. “I mean gone,” she replied, making no attempt to lower her voice. “Gone, gone, gone.”

  The head nurse’s face reddened. She started to rise, angry words forming on her lips.

  The plump nurse appeared. She found her voice. “She’s right,” she said, starting to blubber. “Her baby’s gone and it’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”

  The head nurse focused her anger on her colleague. “Whatever are you talking about?”

  The plump nurse’s mouth opened and made speaking motions, but no sound came. Tears ran down her face.

  The head nurse strode down the hall to the nursery and saw what there was to see. She came back with the Cabbage Patch Kid in her hand. “What is going on?” she said to the plump nurse. “Did you leave your station?”

  The plump nurse shook her head yes and began blubbering again. Blubbering turned to bawling.

  The head nurse, followed by Nina, walked quickly along the hall, checking the bracelet of every baby in every room on the maternity ward.

  “What’s going on?” some of the mothers asked, regarding Nina with alarm.

  The head nurse did not reply. She was running now. She ran to the station desk. She picked up a telephone, punched a button and called out: “Fourth floor code blue. Fourth floor code blue.”

  People arrived. They were running too. Jabbing her finger at them, the head nurse issued instructions. The people spun off in all directions.

  Pushing past orderlies, nurses, doctors, security guards, Nina ran down the hall, back to the nursery, back to the bassinet at the far end of the first row. It was empty. She screamed a scream unlike any she had ever uttered or heard, a wordless scream that filled her head and started the pink-wrapped bundles crying. Then Nina fell sobbing on the empty bassinet.

  Someone threw a blanket over her shoulders. Someone said: “Here. Drink this.” Someone held out a green pill.

  Nina knocked it aside. “I have to search every floor,” she said. “And the basement.”

  Someone said: “We’re already doing that, honey. There’s nothing you can do right now. And we’ve got to sew you back up.”

  Nina glanced down and saw a red puddle expanding on the floor.

  A man said: “We need a description. What’s the name on the bracelet?”

  The head nurse checked a chart. “He doesn’t have a name,” she answered. “Just ‘Baby Kitchener.’”

  “I want him to have a name,” Nina cried.

  Strong arms urged Nina into a wheelchair. She resisted. “I’ve got to search.” The strong arms pushed harder. She fell into the wheelchair.

  The plump nurse glanced at her chair where the newspaper lay, folded open at the crossword. She started blubbering again.

  The head nurse raised her voice for the first time: “Go to the toilet and don’t come out until I call you.”

  The plump nurse covered her mouth and hurried away.

  Nina rolled down the hall.

  A man said: “Don’t forget to check the dumpsters.”

  A cop said: “What the hell is this?”

  A security guard said: “A Cabbage Patch Kid.”

  The cop said: “What are you giving it to me for?”

  The security guard said: “It’s evidence.”

  “Of what?” the cop asked.

  Nina rolled into an elevator. Someone stuck a needle in her arm. She hardly felt it.

  Whoosh. The door closed, boxing her in. The box rose.

  “What’s all that blood?” someone asked.

  Whoosh. The door opened.

  “Going down?”

  “Nope.”

  Whoosh. The box rose.

  “What’s a code blue again?”

  “Sanitation just came and picked up all the dumpsters. Twenty minutes ago.”

  “Then find out where they take them and go search every goddamn one.”

  “And wear thick gloves. There’s all kinds of medical shit in those fucking things.”

  “Jesus Christ, what a day.”

  “Take me to the basement,” Nina said, trying to rise. Her legs failed her. “I want my baby.” The drug prevailed and her eyes closed.

  NINA

  14

  Detective Delgado of the NYPD was tired. She wore a lot of makeup and her hair had been freshly frosted and permed, but nothing could hide the red veins in her eyes or the blue bruises under’ them. She pulled a chair up to Nina’s bed and said: “How are you doing?”

  “I don’t know,” Nina replied. “Fine. Physically.” Nina tried to sit up, couldn’t; she tried again and did. “Are you handling the search?”

  “The investigation. The search, at least the search of the hospital, is over. We�
�ve been through it from top to bottom.”

  “And?”

  Detective Delgado shook her head.

  “What about …?” Nina couldn’t get the word out.

  “What about what?”

  “The dumpsters.”

  “They’ve all been checked, including the ones removed by Sanitation. Nada.” For a moment, Nina thought that Detective Delgado was suppressing a yawn. The detective covered her face with her hands and rubbed hard.

  “What about the basement?” Nina asked.

  “Yes. The basement.” Detective Delgado leaned back in the chair and stretched her legs. Nina smelled her smell: a strong orange blossom cologne mixed with cigarette smoke. “Apparently you referred to the basement several times, Ms. Kitchener. Any reason for that?”

  “Not that I can think of.”

  The detective nodded. “Are you aware that there are five basement levels in this building, six if you include the parking garage?”

  “No.”

  Detective Delgado nodded again. Nina had the feeling that she had just been bested in some contest, but what kind of contest or why she didn’t know.

  “I’m not clear about what’s happening,” Nina said. She could feel the power of some drug waning inside her; its departure allowed patches of unease to blossom in her mind. They coalesced rapidly into dread—everything hit her again, like the back side of a hurricane after the eye has passed. “About what you’re doing,” Nina added.

  “What we’re doing,” said Detective Delgado, “is treating this as a kidnapping.” The uttering of the word made Nina’s blood pound. She felt pain between her legs. Detective Delgado reached into her pocket and took out a notebook and a pack of cigarettes. “Can I smoke in here?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Detective Delgado sighed and put the cigarettes away. She opened her notebook, moistened her finger with her tongue, a tongue that looked yellow and dry, and turned the pages. “Correct me if I go wrong,” she said. The detective’s tone flattened to those of a reader making no attempt to render the material interesting. “At four thirty-five P.M. yesterday, you were informed you had a phone call at the nurse’s station. You gave your baby to a nurse. The nurse delivered the baby to Verna Rountree, who was in charge of the nursery. You then went to the nurse’s station, received a message and proceeded to the fifth-floor pay phone to make your call. Right so far?”