The Perfect Child
Page 2
I grabbed the mug from his hands while I slipped off my shoes and followed him into the living room. I plopped down on the sofa beside him and sank into it, the down feathers contouring around my body. It was the piece of furniture we’d fought over the most when we had decorated the house shortly after we’d bought it. The living room was one of the first rooms you saw when you came inside, and he had thought we should have a formal couch so that it would look pristine and nice. But our house was too small to have another main living area, so I’d known we’d spend all our time there and wanted it to be comfortable. In the end, I had won, and he’d said on more than one occasion that he was glad I had because he couldn’t imagine coming home to a stiff couch.
He sat on the other end, and I stretched my feet onto his lap. He peeled off my socks and started massaging my feet. When I’d first told my sister about his foot rubs after work, she’d been sure it was only because we were newlyweds, but he was still doing it after all these years. If he was there at the end of my shift, he rubbed my feet. Period. It didn’t matter if he’d been in surgery for twelve hours.
“Well?” He raised his eyebrows, questioning.
You couldn’t practice medicine and not be affected by it. Over the years, we’d grown into each other’s therapists. We understood what it was like to be responsible for other people’s lives in a way nobody outside the profession could.
“Eloise was in again tonight.”
“What was it this time?”
“Blood clot.”
“And?”
“Negative.”
He smiled. His dark hair was combed straight back, a few strands stretched flat over a thinning spot in the back. He was self-conscious about his hair loss, but I didn’t care. I loved the weathered look, and as far as I was concerned, he grew more handsome with age. Men were lucky that way. Even his wrinkles were cute.
“What’s your day look like today?” I asked.
“Two surgeries. Three consults.”
Christopher was an orthopedic surgeon at Northfield Memorial, the same hospital where I worked. Northfield was the largest regional hospital in Ohio, and we’d met in the cafeteria while he was a first-year medical student back when he used to work all day and study all night. He’d been so focused and goal driven that he almost hadn’t noticed me, but his work ethic had paid off. It had landed him a residency followed by a specialty placement.
“Anything interesting?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Oh, before I forget to tell you, make sure you read the email from Bianella. She wants us to go to a seminar next weekend on international adoption. There’s supposed to be a panel of parents talking about some of the hidden challenges in international adoptions,” he said.
Bianella was our adoption specialist. We had connected with her after our fertility doctor had sat us down and explained the grim statistics for the final time. Christopher and I had always wanted kids, so adoption was a logical choice for us, and we’d dived into researching facilities immediately, not wanting to waste any more time than we already had. I had been almost forty at the time, and neither of us had wanted to be older parents. I had thought adopting a child would be easy in the same way I had thought getting pregnant would be easy when I’d first started. We’d already had one failed adoption, and it had hurt as bad as any miscarriage.
“I’m still on the fence about going the international route,” I said.
“I know. Me too. Just read it, and let me know what you think.” Christopher slid my legs off his lap. “I’ve got to get getting.”
He headed to the kitchen to put his mug in the dishwasher, and I was walking toward the hallway leading to the bedroom when I suddenly remembered.
“Hey, Christopher,” I called out.
“What?”
“I did forget to tell you one thing that happened tonight.” I paused to make sure I had his attention again. “The police brought in an abandoned toddler.”
TWO
CHRISTOPHER BAUER
I’d just gotten back to my office after a grueling six-hour reconstructive hand surgery that had turned out to be more complicated than we’d expected. I was making a cup of coffee when Dan, the chief of surgery, walked in looking upset.
“Can I talk to you?” he asked, shutting the door behind him.
“You want to sit?” I pointed to the chair in front of my desk. We rarely had closed-door meetings, so it had to be serious.
He shook his head, running his hands through his dark hair. His forehead was lined with stress. “What the hell is wrong with people? Really, how can they be such monsters?” He paced across my office as he spoke.
We’d worked together for years, and I’d never seen him so unnerved. “Are you sure you don’t want to sit down?”
“No, no, I’m good. What I really want is a drink.” He laughed bitterly. “A toddler girl was brought into the ER last night, and her case is awful. I’ve never seen anything like it. Never.” He wrestled with his emotions, probably thinking of his own three daughters, whose pictures lined the desk in his office. “I can’t imagine someone doing that to a child. I just can’t.”
“Just what are we talking about here?” I asked, my curiosity getting the best of me.
“You might want to be the one to sit down,” he said, only half joking. “She was brought in by the police and child services. Apparently, she was found in a parking lot over on the west side down by Park’s Station. You know which one I’m talking about?”
I nodded. Everyone knew Park’s Station and the trailer parks that lined the streets behind it. It was where the town’s meth habit grew and flourished. You only went to that part of town for one thing.
“Her entire body is covered in old scars and bruises. She must’ve been abused for a long time.” He struggled to gain his composure. “She’s severely malnourished and dehydrated, so she looks like those starving orphans you see on TV. You know the ones I’m talking about?” He didn’t wait for me to respond before continuing. “There’re weird rashes on her legs like she might have some kind of septic infection. Her x-rays show multiple fractures all over her body. Some of them are old. Others are relatively new. She’s probably never seen a doctor, so who knows what we’ll find once we start looking.” He cleared his throat. Cleared it again, shifting into project-management mode. “There’s going to be a huge team on this one, and we need all of our best people on it, which is why I want you to take her case. We’re going to convene first thing tomorrow morning, so I need you to cancel your morning.”
“Okay, sure. I can have Alexis rearrange things.” I pulled out my phone and quickly tapped out an email to my receptionist before slipping it back in my pocket.
“Come on, let’s go.” Dan headed toward the door, and I followed him out. He talked as we walked. “This is going to be a complete media circus as soon as the word gets out. So far, nothing has leaked. We’re trying to protect her privacy for as long as possible, but seriously, it’s only a matter of time before they get wind of it. You understand the limits of confidentiality on this one, right?”
“Of course.” I nodded, even though I’d never had any sort of high profile case before. We didn’t get high profile cases in a town of our size, and most of the kids I worked with were victims of car accidents or sports injuries. I was excited about being involved in something so unusual, but I couldn’t admit that.
We stepped into the elevator at the end of the hallway. It was packed with people, so we stopped talking as we rode to the third floor. Dan held the door open and motioned for me to step out.
“What’s she doing down here?” I asked. The third floor was the neuroscience ward, where stroke and heart attack patients stayed.
“No one will think to look for her here,” he said.
“You mean the media?”
“We’re not too worried about the media. They’re easy to keep out. They’re trying to keep her safe just in case whoever did this to her comes looking for her. They don’t kn
ow who hurt her or if she’s still in danger. They don’t even know who she is yet. She said her name is Janie, but who knows. She could’ve just made up the name. She might have even been kidnapped. We’ll know more about her as the case unfolds.”
Dan nodded to the nurses scurrying around the station as we walked by. Two uniformed officers stood outside a door in the middle of the hallway. Dan strode up to them and flashed his hospital ID. I did the same. He turned to look at me before opening the door.
“Prepare yourself,” he said.
He pushed through the door, and a wave of sadness washed over me as I stared at a small child lying on the bed. Nothing could’ve prepared me for her. Dan had said she was a toddler, but the child on the bed looked like she was barely over a year old. Her arms and legs were frail, like they wouldn’t be able to support her if she stood. Her stomach was distended, and her head was massive in proportion to her tiny body and too big for her fragile frame to hold. She was nearly bald. There were only short tufts of blonde where hair should’ve been. She turned to look at us with the palest blue eyes I’d ever seen.
“Hiya.” Her lips spread into a shy smile, revealing a rotten tooth in the front.
“Hi, Janie.” Dan walked over to her bed and bent down to get closer to her.
She reached her arms up. “Hug?”
He leaned over and wrapped his arms around her delicately, afraid to hurt her. She clung to his lab coat. Dan looked uncomfortable.
“I like your smell,” she said in a small voice, barely above a whisper.
She refused to let go, so he turned to look at me, motioning me over. I stepped around one of the nurses and into her view.
“Hi, Janie. My name’s Christopher. I’m going to be one of your doctors,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “I’m going to help take care of you.”
She let go of Dan and reached out to grab my hand. Her nails were long, caked with dirt. Her fingers were so bent they couldn’t coil naturally around mine.
“Hi,” she said hesitantly. “Are you going to fix me?”
I nodded. “I am, sweetheart. I promise.”
THREE
HANNAH BAUER
I was in the kitchen packing my lunch for my shift when the front door opened, signaling Christopher’s arrival. “Hey, honey, I’m in here. I still haven’t finished getting my stuff ready for tonight. I got caught up in some stupid documentary.”
He came up behind me and wrapped his arms around me. He kissed the top of my head and let out a deep sigh. I dried my hands on the towel next to the sink and turned around. Sadness clouded his face.
“Did you lose a patient?” I asked. He rarely lost patients, but sometimes it happened when they had other complications.
He shook his head. “I met the abandoned girl.”
“You did?” I motioned for him to sit down at the table.
“That poor little girl. She’s so beat up and starved.” His voice caught in his throat. “People treat their pets better than she was treated.”
“It’s that bad, huh?” I asked.
He nodded.
I prepared a tumbler full of his favorite scotch and took the seat across from him. He took a small sip, then fingered the top of the glass as he stared out the window above the sink. I reached across the table and took his hand in mine, rubbing the top of his palm with my thumb. I understood his sensitivity toward children. Neither of us had had it when we first married, but years of infertility problems had made us emotional about almost everything involving kids, especially young ones.
“Her name is Janie, and she’s adorable. She has these massive pale-blue eyes that blow you away.” He took another drink. “I reviewed her notes before I left, and she’s been starved for so long her body started eating itself. She has so many old breaks that went untreated and never healed right, so some of the bones fused together. There wasn’t a part of her that went untouched.” His eyes flashed with anger. “Who would do such a thing?”
We both knew the answer to his question—a monster. It went without saying.
“She’s going to need surgery on her elbow. It was a complicated break and healed into almost a ninety-degree angle because it was never set properly. Lots of her bones have fused together from other untreated breaks and injuries. Dan and I are coming up with a game plan first thing tomorrow morning.”
“You’ve got this,” I said. We sat in silence, enjoying our brief time together before I had to leave for my shift. “By the way, I read through all the information Bianella sent us about that seminar you told me about. I even watched the videos. I think we should go,” I said after a few more minutes had passed.
“Really?”
I nodded. “No matter which direction we go, there’re going to be challenges, and we’re going to need the advice of other people who’ve done it before. Just think how helpful our RESOLVE meetings have been.”
After our third round of failed IVF, our doctor had suggested attending a support group for other parents going through similar challenges. Nobody understood the dramatic highs and crushing lows of infertility unless they’d been through it too. Christopher had balked at the idea at first because he hadn’t liked the thought of baring our souls in a room full of strangers, but he’d gotten used to it. A few of the couples had grown to be some of our closest friends, and we went out for dinner and drinks on a regular basis.
“Do you want me to sign us up, or are you going to do it?” he asked.
“I can do it on my break tonight. Why don’t you just relax and prepare for tomorrow?”
“Janie isn’t in the ER anymore,” he said, reading my mind before I could ask the question.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“They moved her to the third floor. She’s tucked in with all the geriatric patients to keep her safe.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Do they really think someone is going to come looking for her?”
He shook his head. “I think they’re just being extra cautious. I can’t imagine that someone who dropped their kid off in a parking lot in the middle of the night would show up to claim her later, but you never know.”
CASE #5243
INTERVIEW:
PIPER GOLDSTEIN
“When did you first meet Janie?” The first officer had been joined by a former detective turned private investigator who’d introduced himself as Ron with a firm handshake. He tried to play himself off as a fellow cop, but his civilian clothes were a dead giveaway. I had no idea why he was so critical to the case.
“On her third day in the hospital.”
“Is that how long it usually takes for a social worker to meet their client? I thought social workers were required to speak with the victim at least twenty-four hours after the incident.”
I hated when they asked me questions that they already knew the answers to. “They are, but she wasn’t stable enough for me to see her.” The bad fluorescent lighting was starting to give me a headache. I rubbed my temples, trying to stave it off for as long as possible.
“She was that sick?” the officer, Luke, asked. Ron had clued me into his name. They both wore the same close-cropped haircut.
I shook my head. “Not sick—starved. Did you know you can’t just feed a starving person or you can actually kill them?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “I had no idea that could happen. She went into cardiac arrest a few hours after being admitted because they fed her too much. It took two days to stabilize her, so I didn’t get a chance to meet her until she’d been there for almost three days.”
“What did you think about her when you met?”
“She was a complete surprise,” I said.
“How so?” Luke cocked his head to the side, eyeing me quizzically.
I didn’t know how to explain Janie. It was difficult to put into words unless you’d been there at the time and seen how she looked. Thankfully, they’d seen some of the crime scene photos, so the responsibility of a perfect description didn’t fall on my shoulders.
I’d worked hard at hiding my shock over her emaciated figure. The outline of her skull had been clear underneath her pale skin, so translucent that purple veins showed through. Her cheekbones had jutted out, and her pale-blue eyes had bulged out of her sunken sockets.
Ron nodded at me, signaling me to continue, but it was hard to just talk freely without them asking me questions. I knew what was expected of me with their questions. Talking freely and open-endedly could result in me saying something I wasn’t supposed to. Nerves twisted my stomach.
“It was hard to connect with her at first, but it’s always like that. Nobody likes social workers, even the people we’re trying to help. I wanted to talk to her alone, but she looked terrified when I asked the nurses to leave, so I let them stay,” I said. “We still didn’t know the circumstances of her case—didn’t have any clue about her parents or guardian or who was responsible for her and if they’d been the ones to hurt her. The police were interviewing all of the people in the trailer park behind the store for potential leads, but they hadn’t gotten anywhere yet. As far as I knew, anyway. The police aren’t always the best at letting me know what they know.” I stopped short, realizing what I’d said. “I’m sorry. I just—”