by Haylen Beck
Libby didn’t answer. She closed her eyes.
The doctor’s voice softened. “Listen, no one’s judging you here. Many women wear prosthetic bellies for all sorts of reasons. That’s none of my concern. But I have to check you out and see what’s causing this pain. So I’ll need you to remove the vest for me.”
She opened her eyes and said, “No.”
“Libby, I need to examine you. Whatever this pain is, it was bad enough to take you off your feet. We can’t just ignore it.”
“No, I—”
The fist again, tighter than before, crushing the air out of her. She drew her knees up, opened her mouth wide, let out a high whine.
“Libby?”
Through the pain, she heard Mason’s voice, and she reached blindly for wherever he was. Strong hands took hers.
“Don’t let them,” she said.
He came close, said, “Don’t let them what?”
“Don’t let them take the baby,” she said. “Please don’t let them.”
His fingertips brushed her cheek. “Honey, there is no baby.”
She grabbed his shirt in her fist. “Don’t say that. Don’t you dare say that.”
“Libby, you’re not making sense. They want to take the vest off so they can examine you, that’s all.”
“Don’t let them. You keep them away from me.”
“They have to, honey.”
“No.”
Then he reached around her back, pulled her upright, and held her as the nurse undid the button at the back of her collar.
Libby screamed. She tried to shake them off, but Mason’s arms circled her, pinned hers to her sides. She screamed again, shouted for someone to help her, to make them stop.
But they didn’t.
34
HER CAR WAS GONE. THIS troubled Mr. Kovak. Although there was no real reason why Anna Lenihan shouldn’t leave home in the evening, it still bothered him. He had planned to catch the late flight back to La Guardia, checking in on her before he left for the airport. That had been at a little after nine, and he had found her usual space empty.
He had been waiting here in the rental for her to return for three hours now, and there was no hope of catching that flight. He checked his wristwatch once more: three minutes past midnight. Something was most definitely wrong. He took a long deep breath, opened the car door, and climbed out.
Deathly quiet on the street, he crossed, entered his PIN to open the gate, and made his way up to the apartment. No point in knocking, he let himself in, and switched on the light. Perfectly clean and tidy inside. Except for the shattered mug on the kitchenette floor. The unease grew in Mr. Kovak’s gut. A brief tour of the living area revealed nothing, so he entered the bedroom.
The closet door stood open. He reached inside and pulled the light cord. On the floor were scattered loose diapers, a baby’s onesie hanging over the side of an open suitcase.
“Goddammit,” he said.
So she had run. It wasn’t the first time one of his girls had taken off. He would find her and convince her to honor her agreement, just like the others. But still, it was a giant pain in the ass.
Maybe she’d gone to her friend’s home. Although it seemed the most likely choice, he believed Anna to be smarter than that. She would know it to be the first place he’d look—and she’d be right—but he would try it anyway. There was her mother, but as far as he knew, they weren’t on speaking terms. Still, a new baby has a way of bringing sundered families back together. That would be the next place to look.
He turned the light off and went to the bathroom door. The light was on already and he saw the mess inside, the clothes on the floor, the tumbler in the basin that had held a toothbrush. He went to turn away, but something snagged his eye.
What was it?
He turned his attention to the clothing on the floor. A pair of leggings, panties, a T-shirt. He nudged the pile with the toe of his shoe and realized by their weight that they were soaked through. Turning back to the bedroom, he saw the trail of liquid across the floor that he hadn’t noticed until now. He went to the light switch by the door, turned it on. A large wet patch stained the comforter on the bed.
“Goddammit, she’s in labor,” he said.
He took the cell phone from his jacket pocket and went to the contacts list, found the number for the clinic, and hit Call. A man’s voice answered within seconds.
“Dalton Gynecology and Obstetrics, how may I help?”
“This is Mr. Kovak from the Schaeffer-Holdt Clinic. Was a young woman admitted this evening? Name of Lenihan, Anna—”
“No one this evening,” the man said. “Both delivery suites are empty, no one admitted since—”
Mr. Kovak ended the call.
“Goddammit,” he said.
He closed his eyes and thought for a few seconds. Superior had a small hospital, but he didn’t think it had a maternity unit. It did have an emergency room, however. Ten, fifteen minutes away. She could have driven herself there.
Mr. Kovak closed the apartment door behind him and went to the rental car.
35
AFTER IT WAS DONE, ANNA remembered little about the birth. She remembered the lone doctor on duty telling her they didn’t have a maternity unit or midwives there, they’d have to transport her to a hospital in Pittsburgh. They kept asking her name, and she must have given them half a dozen, none of them her own. Who was her insurance provider? Did she have any credit cards with her? Any identification?
They had brought her to a private room without a bed, and she lay on her back on the gurney, her knees up and spread wide.
“My God,” one of the two nurses had said, “she’s ten centimeters.”
Anna was dimly aware of them crowding at the foot of the gurney, panicked and confused.
“What do we do?” the nurse asked.
“Where’s that ambulance?” the doctor asked.
“Has anyone delivered before?”
“I have,” the older nurse said. She came close, took Anna’s hand. “I’m Nurse Tiernan. Don’t worry, honey, we’re going to take care of you.”
The contractions had become near constant, as had the urge to push. The pain all-consuming, the beginning and end of everything.
Nurse Tiernan leaned in close, wiped sweat from Anna’s forehead. “I know you want to push, honey, but don’t. Okay? Don’t push yet.”
“But…but I have to, I have to…”
The nurse squeezed her hand hard. “Not yet, sweetheart. Just hold on.”
Someone entered the room, asked the others about insurance, identification, who was going to cover the cost of this? Nurse Tiernan shouted at him to get the hell out, couldn’t he see what was happening here?
“I…I have to…”
“What, honey? You have to what?”
Through gritted teeth, Anna said, “Have to move.”
“Wait, wait—”
Anna ignored her because her body commanded her to get on all fours, the urge, the need so strong she could not disobey it. She rolled to her side, almost tipped over the edge of the gurney, but the nurse caught her.
“What are you doing, sweetheart?”
“I have…I have to.”
Anna got onto her hands and knees, and the contraction hit hard, and she had to push, there was no stopping it, she had to, she had to, she had to…
“Jesus Christ, she’s crowning.” The doctor’s voice, panicked. “Nurse Tiernan, you’d better come down here.”
The nurse disappeared from Anna’s view.
“Let me in there, you get up that end and hold her hand. This baby’s coming and that’s all there is to it.”
Time turned to a bloody smear. Anna’s conscious mind seemed to dissolve, leaving behind a body running on pain and instinct. Voices sounded around her
issuing instructions and reassurances, but she heard little of them. Nothing mattered but the need to push, to breathe, to push, to breathe, to push, over and over again.
“There’s the head,” Nurse Tiernan called, her voice the only one to cut through the turmoil. “Keep going, honey, you’re doing good. When you feel the need again, you give it one more big push.”
I can’t, Anna wanted to say, I can’t, it’s too much, I can’t do it, but still the urge came thick and hard and she had to push and push and push.
Then she heard the piercing, beautiful cry.
“It’s here,” Nurse Tiernan said, her voice bubbling with joy. “It’s here. It’s a boy. You have a little boy.”
Anna collapsed onto the gurney, tried to roll onto her back, couldn’t, she didn’t have the strength left to heave herself over. The doctor slipped an arm beneath her, eased her onto her side, then her back. Nurse Tiernan carried a bloodstained bundle to her.
“Unbutton her dress down the front there,” she said to the doctor. The doctor looked from the nurse to the buttons and back again. “Come on, now’s not the time to be shy, baby needs to meet his mama. Skin-to-skin.”
The doctor did as he was told, and Nurse Tiernan brought the bundle closer, pulled aside the blanket, and Anna gasped at the sight of him. Pink and wrinkled and bloody and perfect. The nurse slipped him down inside Anna’s dress, and he nuzzled into her breast, mewling, eyes open and unseeing.
Anna sniffed back tears and said, “Hey, Little Butterfly.”
36
MR. KOVAK TOURED THE TOWN until he found a pay phone on a corner. He used a paper tissue to grip the handset and wrapped the forefinger of his other hand in another to dial the community hospital’s nonemergency number. He was not concerned about fingerprints, but rather the hygiene of the telephone.
“Superior Community, how can I help you?”
A woman’s voice, somewhat breathless, harried and tired, as if she had recently come through an ordeal.
“Good evening,” Mr. Kovak said. “I believe a young woman in labor came to you tonight. I wondered how she was doing.”
A pause, then, “She’s doing fine. May I ask who’s calling?”
“A friend. Is labor still ongoing?”
“Labor is done,” the woman said. “She had a healthy baby boy.”
Mr. Kovak silently cursed, then said, “That was fast.”
“It was. And that’s all I’m able to tell you without the patient’s consent. If you let me know who’s calling, I’ll pass on your concern.”
“Just give her my best wishes, thank you.”
He hung up and cursed aloud.
Mr. Kovak had spent an hour driving the few blocks around the small community hospital. A squat two-story building with a small parking lot beside it. The kind of place that might stitch up a cut or give eye tests to seniors. Not a suitable facility for a birth or its aftercare. They would have to move her to a hospital with an obstetrics department before too long, and that would make things all the more difficult. If he was going to do anything, now was the time.
Checking his watch, he saw it was after one. Late, but he thought Dr. Sherman would want to know. He took his cell phone from his pocket and found the number in his contacts list. A voice thick with sleep answered.
“Mr. Kovak? Do you know what the time is?”
“It’s late, I’m aware of that, and I apologize, but I thought you’d want to know straightaway.”
A pause, then, “Know what?”
“Anna Lenihan, the candidate in Superior, outside of Pittsburgh.”
Mr. Kovak walked back to where he’d parked the rental car, in a litter-strewn alley between a convenience store and a Realtor’s office.
“Ah, yes, I spoke with the intended mother a few days ago, she’s very excited.”
“We have a problem. Anna told me this morning she wanted to break the agreement, keep the baby.”
Dr. Sherman sighed. “I assume you pointed out that Miss Lenihan had signed a contract and—”
“She went into labor this evening and took herself to the emergency room at the local community hospital. She had the baby within the last few hours.”
Dr. Sherman went quiet. Mr. Kovak felt more certain than ever that he wasn’t a real doctor, at least not a medical one. He always seemed fuzzy on the details of childbearing for a man whose business depended on it.
Eventually, Dr. Sherman asked, “Have you seen the child?”
“No, but I gather it’s a healthy boy. I doubt they’ll let me in to see it.”
“Well, now, that is a problem, isn’t it? What’s the likelihood she’ll abscond with the baby, do you think?”
“I’d say it’s a certainty that she’ll at least try.”
“But you won’t allow that to happen, will you, Mr. Kovak?”
“Not if I can help it. Should I call Biggs?”
Howard Biggs was a local lawyer, a cheap ambulance chaser who made his living from compensation claims. The clinic kept him on a small retainer in case of emergencies. But nothing like this. Mr. Kovak knew the answer before Dr. Sherman gave it.
“Think about how that would look. You showing up with a lawyer and a contract demanding the baby be handed over. Even with a better lawyer, we could do without drawing that kind of attention. No, you’re going to have to be more creative.”
“I’ll try,” Mr. Kovak said.
“ ‘Try’ is the wrong choice of word. I expect you to call me in the morning, at a more civilized hour, and I expect you to tell me that you have Miss Lenihan and the child. My client has paid a lot of money for this baby and I won’t disappoint her. Your future at the clinic depends on it. Is that clear, Mr. Kovak?”
“Yes, Dr. Sherman, it is.”
“Good. We’ll speak in the morning.”
The call ended and Mr. Kovak kept walking as he returned the phone to his pocket. The consequences of messing this up didn’t bear thinking about. It was clear that he would lose this job, and it was perhaps the best job he’d ever had. After the military, he’d done security work all over New York, which involved too many late nights, too many evenings standing out in the cold. Then he’d done some debt collecting, but he’d found that soul-crushing. Then his time as an insurance investigator, which he had enjoyed. But this job had been the best, nothing else was even close.
Truth was, he enjoyed working with the women, shepherding them along their journeys. And most of them fully understood what they were doing, that they were helping out some unfortunate couple, and earning good money in the process. Maybe they would need reminding of their responsibilities from time to time, but not often, and it usually only took a little nudge to get them back on track.
But not this one.
He’d had doubts from the beginning, and he should have nipped it in the bud as soon as she started talking back. Or even better, nixed her from the candidate list. No use in ruminating on it now, though. If he wanted to keep his job, he had to deal with the current situation. Tonight.
Mr. Kovak reached the alley and the car parked in the darkness. He went to the trunk and hit the button on the key to open it. Inside was the small leather overnight bag that he always traveled with. And inside that were the few items of clothing that he kept for occasions when he desired to be less conspicuous.
In the darkness of the alley he changed out of his suit, folding it carefully on the floor of the trunk, and into a cheap hooded top and sweatpants that he’d bought at the Target on Queens Boulevard, along with a pair of knock-off sneakers that he’d got from a street stall in Chinatown. He grimaced when he had to stand on the damp ground, nothing but the thin layer of cotton between his feet and the dirt, as he slipped them on. Finally, he forced his hands into a doubled-up pair of surgical gloves. They had to be ordered online; no brick-and-mortar store carried gloves big enou
gh for him.
He placed his cell phone on top of the folded suit and closed the trunk. Once he’d locked the car, he found a spot behind a dumpster to hide the key. He pictured the route to the hospital, visualized the turns. Maybe a fifteen-minute walk.
Mr. Kovak raised his hood, buried his hands in his pockets, and set off.
37
AS LITTLE BUTTERFLY SLEPT AGAINST her skin, his tiny body between her breasts, Anna drifted in and out of a fitful doze. She straddled the hinterland of half dreams and blurred reality, exhaustion keeping her weighted down, her baby keeping her afloat. Things had become terribly quiet since the rush of activity only a short while ago. Despite the pain, she had been in a state of dizzy euphoria, a high like nothing she’d ever felt before. But now the fatigue had gotten the better of her, and a crash would surely follow.
Little Butterfly stirred, snapping Anna awake, frightening her.
“What?” she whispered, breathless. “What is it, L’il B?”
He mewled, his face creasing, his mouth working.
“You hungry?” she said.
As if in answer, the mewl swelled to a small cry. He pressed his mouth to her skin, seeking her.
“Okay,” she said. “Just wait, L’il B. Gimme a second.”
Holding him in place with one hand—he was so small, a little over six pounds, that one hand was all it took—she used the other, along with her feet, to push herself up the bed. The movement aggravated the pain between her legs, that deep itching sting. She had a shadowy memory of the doctor stitching her down there, but she had no idea how many. By that time, once the afterbirth had come, she was focused on only two things: her child and her exhaustion.
“Aaahhhh,” she said, then hissed through her teeth.
One more push and she got herself into an upright position, but at the cost of more pain, and what felt like more bleeding. She sat still for a time, let the pain ease and her breathing steady. Then she looked down at her boy and realized she didn’t know how to feed him. Feeding had not been discussed in the class she went to, nor diaper changing, or bathing the baby, or any of the day-to-day tasks she’d have to perform. Of course not, she thought. I was never supposed to have him.
