“You and JJ are good friends?”
She smiled happily. “Since college. Do you see a lot of David?”
“Not much.” Garth went with his civilian cover story. When an operator’s background was scrubbed, he could tell no one what he was doing or who he was working for. It was best not to hang around people who knew him before and who could make educated guesses.
“I got out of the navy not long afterward.” His tone was final, dismissing the subject. In fact, he hadn’t seen Doc since that day. After getting married, Doc had taken some of the leave he had saved up. Before he had returned to duty, Garth had accepted the TDY assignment.
She narrowed her eyes. “You don’t want to talk about old times, do you?” Her shoulders twitched in a tiny shrug of acceptance. “We do have more important business to attend to. We don’t have to talk right now. I’m just relieved I don’t need to call social services.”
Garth’s stomach grew cold. “You were going to call?” he asked in his most level voice.
“Well…” A sweeping glance encompassed the condition of the baby. “Yeah. I saw serious neglect—whether it was your fault or not. Based on what I saw—or didn’t see—I didn’t think you were in any way prepared for a baby.”
“But you’re not going to call the authorities now.”
“Not as long as you do what I say.” There was no mistaking the steel in her voice.
***
While Garth made a run to the shopping center out on the highway for the most basic baby supplies, Bronwyn stirred the rehydration formula developed by the World Health Organization—a mixture of water, sugar, salt, and potassium chloride salt substitute—in a hastily unpacked saucepan and set it on the monolithic avocado range to heat.
She needed a few minutes to regroup and reorganize her thoughts. She had been massively relieved when the lights came on because she finally understood how she could be so suddenly attracted to him.
It wasn’t flattering that he didn’t recognize her, even after she reminded him, but she couldn’t blame him.
Except for a “Nice to meet you” when they were introduced, they hadn’t spoken. She’d made sure of it. She’d turned away and made sure their eyes hadn’t met again. Not because he wasn’t attractive, but because he was. Even through the gray fog of her grief, she had been able to see that he was exactly her type. Tall. Dark. Dangerous.
If she had to have a type, why couldn’t it be neatly dressed bankers or scholars with kindly eyes behind their glasses? But no. What made her heart go pitty-pat was a man like this one. She’d already paid the price of loving one of them. Never again.
Troy had come into the ER, a Baltimore cop needing stitches, laughing and flirting despite the blood dripping down his face from a scalp laceration. It was love at first sight—or something close. They had dated for six months. Being a cop, he understood crazy hours. They had breakfast dates, dinners in the hospital cafeteria, and softball dates, extracting minutes together from whatever free time they had. They got engaged. He got killed.
Shot. In the head.
Paramedics had brought him to her ER where the staff recognized him. Another doctor handled the intake. Someone was sent to get her but missed her because she had stepped into the restroom. Bronwyn didn’t know until she overheard nurses who came in say her name and something about a GSW and a cop in Trauma Room 3.
She had had nightmares for months afterward in which anonymous fingers dug into her arms and dragged her backwards, and anonymous voices urged, “Don’t go in there.”
Well, now she knew how she could feel attraction while every intuition she had told her to have nothing to do with this man. And she was better off if it was all one way.
She had remembered the formula, which could be made from ingredients found in kitchens anywhere in the world—and far more cheaply—even before she had sent Garth to get Pedialyte, but she didn’t tell him it could be made at home. She wasn’t sure she trusted he would always have the ingredients. If he was like Troy, who had rarely fixed so much as a cup of coffee at his apartment, she was pretty sure he wouldn’t.
She believed he meant his child no harm. At the same time, she didn’t believe he was an adequate caregiver, and that concerned her. He was not a parent she’d give a prescription to and send home with instructions to return if the child didn’t improve.
She knew about adrenaline junkies. She understood well what thrilling lovers they could be, but a child did not need a thrilling father. She needed one who could be trusted to arrive on schedule. She needed one who was as likely to notice her if she were too quiet as too rambunctious. She was judging Garth by her experience of Troy, which might not be fair. Even if they weren’t the same, Garth still was unprepared to add a child to his life. But ready or not, she was here—and he would have to step up fast.
While she readied and heated the homemade formula, she glanced over her shoulder at the large, roomy box she had cushioned with a folded blanket and laid the baby in. Bronwyn wasn’t happy with her homemade baby bed, but infants Julia’s size could roll. Many were beginning to crawl. The box would confine and keep her safe. Mildred looked dubious, too. She had stationed herself beside it. Occasionally she raised up to peer over the side and sniff.
Julia was moving her arms and legs more, squirming and fussing a little. More than ever, Bronwyn suspected that some of the baby’s lethargy was due to having been given a sedative, and the drug was now wearing off. Anyone capable of dumping a child without putting her where she would be easily found was surely capable of drugging her to keep her quiet.
Of course, she had no evidence that any of Garth’s story was true. And again there was the awareness that if he had been a complete stranger, and if she hadn’t recognized him when she did, she would have insisted the child be taken to an ER and, if necessary, escorted there by the police.
Bronwyn drew her cell phone from her pocket to check it. She’d feel on firmer ground, more sure she either was or wasn’t doing the right thing, when she talked to JJ. She’d left two messages, but her friend still hadn’t called back. She flipped the phone open to call again and saw the battery symbol flashing. She blew out her lips in exasperation. She’d already charged the phone once today. For some reason, it wasn’t holding a charge. She found the charger and plugged it in.
For the present, she was on her own.
Bronwyn doubted Garth’s baby-care abilities, but she wasn’t much surer of her own. Knowing how to doctor a baby wasn’t the same thing as knowing how to raise one. And really, she didn’t know all that much about doctoring them. Babies were not the same as adults except smaller. Their little bodies had quite different requirements. In the ER, if a child came in with anything but the most routine complaints, he or she was passed on to a pediatrician.
Fortunately, she had easily found the food thermometer. She could be sure she heated the solution to the right temperature. Bronwyn removed the pan from the stove and inserted the thermometer. Seventy-four degrees. By the time she transferred it to a bowl, it would probably be the recommended seventy degrees.
She carefully covered the butcher-block table with paper towels and set a notepad and pencil, the bowl of sugar-salt solution, and a 3 cc medicine dropper on it. She drew a ladder-back chair up to the makeshift feeding station and picked up the baby.
The infant didn’t seem to know what to make of the medicine dropper. She flailed at it with a tiny fist and fussed. Bronwyn carefully put a drop of sugar water on Julia’s tongue. In a second she put another. A third and the baby’s interest seemed to be caught.
The next time she brought the dropper to the little rosebud lips, the baby tried to suck on it. She gave Bronwyn an accusing look.
“It’s not what you’re used to, is it?”
It would be easy to question, as her parents had repeatedly, if she knew what she was doing. Bronwyn had already tried a teaspoon. The
baby had opened her mouth eagerly when she saw the spoon as if she knew what it was and was hungry. Eagerness had turned to wails, though. Bronwyn couldn’t seem to time tipping the spoon with the baby’s tongue movements. There was more solution on her than in her, and they were both sticky from spills. What did people do before the invention of baby bottles and plastic nipples when a breast wasn’t available?
Experimentally she dipped her pinkie into the solution and carried the droplet that adhered to the tip to the baby’s mouth. Julia latched onto it eagerly.
If only she had anything the baby could suck.
Sugar teat. The thought whispered into her mind, so clear, yet so different that it could have come from somewhere else.
“Was that you, Mildred?” The dog raised shaggy brows in inquiry. Silly. The dog hadn’t spoken. Wherever the idea had come from, it was a good one. A sugar teat was what people had used once as a pacifier. A lump of sugar would be knotted into a cloth and given the baby to suck on.
She could do the same thing, but instead of a sugar lump she could use a sponge. Her eyes fell on the blue sponge on the rim of the stainless steel sink. She shuddered. Not that. It had been used with God knew what kinds of chemicals and had developed God knew what bacteria. She was on the right track, though.
If she were in the ER, she would just ask a nurse to get her one. On the other hand, if she were in the ER, she wouldn’t have this problem at all. Her mouth twitched in wry contemplation of her predicament. In the ER, she would have handed the baby off to a nurse, and Bronwyn would have hurried to the next patient.
Bronwyn looked around the dingy kitchen. This was her new life. This was what it meant to handle patients completely on her on. But frustrated as she felt to be unable to produce even something as low tech as a sponge, she was enjoying having this one tiny being to focus on, and already the challenge of calling on her own resources was making her feel renewed.
“I know, Mildred! Where did I put the box of medical paraphernalia?” At medical conventions, pharmaceutical companies passed out every sort of freebie from ballpoint pens and notebooks advertising the drug du jour to samples of supplies. She had been given some super-absorbent sponge swabs. Her only hesitation was that the tip might come off in the baby’s mouth.
In a few minutes, the baby was happily sucking away at a scrap of sterile gauze that held the swab. A bulky knot prevented the cloth from being drawn into the baby’s throat and causing her to choke. The baby had grasped the possibilities as soon as the soaked bit of cloth was put to her lips, and thirst had taken care of the rest.
She howled when Bronwyn withdrew the swab to dunk it again. Which made Bronwyn realize she had a use for the medicine dropper after all. She used the dropper to drip the solution onto the fabric protruding from the baby’s lips and let capillary action draw the liquid into the baby’s mouth.
She estimated the little one had taken about three ounces when the sucking slowed and Julia’s head lolled against Bronwyn’s breast.
Bronwyn gently pulled the sugar teat from lips gone slack. She noted the time and amount on the yellow legal pad she was using for a chart then carefully carried Julia to the sink where she wet a paper towel and gently washed the stickiness from the petal-like cheeks and tiny curled fists. Julia looked better already. Her lips and eyelids looked shinier. Her skin was dewier. The soles of her feet felt less papery.
Bronwyn considered returning the baby to the box-bed she’d made for her—and getting back to unpacking—but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d held a baby purely for the pleasure of it, and she didn’t know when she would get another chance. Beyond the kitchen was a small den, a more recent addition than the kitchen, judging by the more modern-looking hardware and light switch plates.
Bronwyn planned to make the den into her “sitting room” and turn the front rooms of the house into her office. The den was as grimy and cheerless as the rest of the house now, but with its river-rock fireplace and large windows, she thought it could be a pleasant room. Among the odds and ends of furnishings that had been left by the previous owners was a platform rocker.
Leaving the light on in the kitchen to provide illumination since there were no lamps, Bronwyn carried the sleeping baby, wrapped in a towel, into the den and settled her on her lap.
Mildred came over and sniffed the baby again, thoroughly and with the same attention to detail. She seemed to approve. She settled at Bronwyn’s feet with her head resting on her paws.
Chapter 12
If it don’t suck, we don’t do it.
—SEAL saying
The refrigerated air of the Walmart—laden with odors of popcorn and new tires, Cheetos, plastic, and humanity—blasted him as soon as the electronic doors whooshed open. The chill that went across the back of his neck wasn’t entirely from the cold air hitting his damp neck and shoulders. He wondered if he would ever feel comfortable in places like this again.
Bronwyn had thought he could find most of what they needed at drugstores or supermarkets. However, he had reasoned that he could find everything here in one stop and, more important, far enough away that no one would recognize him or remember him. Generic. He had taken the superhighway thirty miles east to avoid being recognized buying baby things. He needn’t have bothered. The place was as anonymous as anywhere in the country.
He used to love to visit the Walmart in Durango with his mother. While she shopped, he would zoom to the toy section when he was little and later to the sporting goods. He hadn’t come as often with his dad, but when he did, Garth was more likely to stick to his dad’s side. His dad knew the function of every tool in the hardware section and would take time to explain each one.
In those days, Garth had never thought about how easy it was for someone to get behind him, unheard in the constant babble overlaid with cheesy classic rock Muzak. He’d known being a SEAL would require sacrifices. It just hadn’t occurred to him that one would be Walmart.
In the baby section, he worked his way down the list of baby supplies Bronwyn had given him. Bottles, glass like Bronwyn had insisted. The funny-shaped nipples didn’t look much like the real thing to him. Diapers. Who knew there were that many kinds and sizes? There were cuddlers, cruisers, and Pampers but no poopers—which he would have thought more accurate. Diaper rash ointment.
He cruised into the next aisle. Baby wipes—needed those. He dumped a large package into the shopping cart. Baby soap. Did babies need their own? They must. He tossed in a bottle. On the shelf next to the soap was lotion to help put them to sleep. Julia didn’t seem to have a problem with sleeping, so he rejected it.
Ah, there was the Pedialyte. Now formula and food. Bronwyn said to get cereal, but did Julia like rice or whole grain? He tossed one of each into the buggy. He was a Frosted Flakes man himself.
He steered his cart into the “Infants and Toddlers” clothing section. Bronwyn said, for now, Julia only needed a couple of shirts. He found a table of tiny shirts, all of them smaller than handkerchiefs. The tag on one read 12T; on the next was 3M. Neither looked large enough to get his hand inside, much less a baby. He finally found a size chart and selected a couple. He even made himself put back the one with a truck on it and instead pick up a yellow one with butterflies.
On the way to the checkout, he passed through the toy section. Julia needed toys! On a shelf right in front of him was a cool enemy alien robot. Talk about a great toy! And there was a football shaped for little hands. He’d had one just like that! Sadly, neither looked right for a baby girl—and he wouldn’t be keeping her long anyway.
A few minutes later, he wheeled the cart into the warm, muggy night. The air hadn’t cleared at all, which meant another storm was coming. He stuffed one large plastic bag after the other into the back seat of his truck. He didn’t know what had happened. He’d only come to get a couple of things.
***
He had driven out of the rain b
y the time he had reached the shopping center. On the return trip to Bronwyn’s house, he drove back into it.
Between one moment and the next, the windshield wipers went from squeaking on the barely perceptible drizzle to being unable to keep up with the deluge. He could see only a silver blur punctuated by the red smears of taillights on the car ahead.
He tapped his brakes gently to slow the truck and felt the ABS system feed power to one wheel and then another. The highway’s roadbed was built a couple of feet higher than the low land through which it traveled, with deep drainage ditches on either side, but runoff couldn’t keep pace with the speed at which the rain was coming down.
Thank God, the ABS had warned him of the danger of hydroplaning even before he felt the loss of traction. He took his foot off the gas and let the truck slow while he guided it to the emergency lane, hoping no fool was coming up fast behind him.
The bleary taillights of the car in front of him suddenly bloomed brighter red. They swung wildly back and forth as the car fishtailed. Then, almost gracefully, the car slid backwards off the pavement and the emergency lane, and rolled backwards down the long embankment to the drainage ditch.
Even in dry weather, water stood in the ditches—the cattails attested to that. After a day of rain, the ditch would be full.
Grateful the baby wasn’t with him but safe and dry with Bronwyn, Garth switched on the caution blinkers and angled the truck’s headlights to shine on the clump of crushed cattails where the car, an ancient gray Pontiac, rested tail down, its headlights aimed up into the rain. Its position put the driver’s seat above water, but it wouldn’t be for long.
Garth plunged into the downpour. He could hear a woman and a child screaming.
He opened the Pontiac’s driver’s side door. As he had guessed, it was above water, but the rear of the car was rapidly filling with black water. The driver had her back to him as she leaned over the seat, wrestling with the harness of the child’s seat. Hampered by a pregnant belly and her short stature, the woman’s arms weren’t really long enough to reach her son, and terror made her fumble. Her voice shook as she tried to reassure the flailing child.
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