Molly closed her eyes and stifled a whimper as a needle pierced her arm.
“There, that’s a good girl. It’s all over now. No more needles.”
“You promise?”
A pause. “I can’t promise that. But from now on, no one will poke you without warning you first, okay? I’ll tell them that.”
Molly reached for the woman’s hand. “Don’t leave me. . .”
“You’ll be fine. These people are taking good care of you.”
“But I don’t know them.” She looked straight at the woman, who finally nodded.
“I’ll stay as long as I can.”
Someone else was speaking now; the woman turned to listen, then looked back down at Molly.
“We need to know about your health. Do you have a doctor?”
“No.”
“Take any medicines?”
“No. Uh, yeah. They’re in my purse.”
Molly heard the woman unsnap the patent leather clutch, heard the clatter of pills in a bottle. “These, Molly?”
“Yeah. I take one when my stomach gets upset.”
“There’s no pharmacy label on this bottle. Where did you get it from?”
“Romy. A friend. He gave the pills to me.”
“Okay, what about allergies? Are you allergic to anything?”
“Strawberries.” Molly sighed. “And I like strawberries so much. . .”
Another voice intruded: “Dr. Harper, the ultrasound tech is here.”
Molly heard the rattle of machinery being rolled into the room, and her gaze shot sideways. “What are they gonna do? They gonna poke me again?”
“It won’t hurt. It’s just an ultrasound test, Molly. They need to check your baby. They’re going to use sound waves to look at it.”
“I don’t want the test. Can’t they just leave me alone?”
“I’m sorry, but it has to be done. To see if the baby’s all right. How big it is and how developed it is. You had a seizure today, in Dr. Dvorak’s office. You know what a seizure is?”
“Like a fit.”
“That’s right. You had a fit. You were unconscious and your body was shaking all over. That’s very dangerous. You need to stay in the hospital so they can get your blood pressure under control. And to see if there’s any way to save the baby.”
“Is something wrong with it?”
“Your pregnancy is the reason you had the seizure, the reason your blood pressure is high.”
“I don’t want any more tests. Tell them I want to leave—”
“Listen to me, Molly.” Dr. Harper’s voice was quiet but firm. “Your condition can be fatal.”
Molly was silent. She stared at the other woman’s face and saw the unflinching truth in her eyes.
Dr. Harper nodded to the technician. “Go ahead and do the sonogram. I’ll wait outside.”
“No,” said Molly. “Stay with me.” She held out her hand in a silent plea.
After a hesitation, Toby once again grasped Molly’s hand and sat down on the stool by the gurney.
The technician draped a modesty sheet over Molly’s thighs and pubic hair, then raised the hospital gown, baring the patient’s swollen abdomen. “This’ll be a little chilly,” he said as he squeezed out a gob of clear gel onto her skin. “This stuff makes the sound waves easier to read.”
“It won’t hurt? You promise it won’t hurt?”
“Not a bit.” He held up a squarish device that fit neatly into his hand. “I’m going to rub the edge of this thing over your stomach, okay? And we can see the images on this screen here.”
“You can see my baby?”
“That’s right. Watch.” He dabbed the handheld device in the gob of gel, then placed it on her skin.
“That tickles,” said Molly.
“But it doesn’t hurt, does it? Admit it doesn’t hurt.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“So now you just relax and watch the show, okay?” Slowly he slid the device across her abdomen, his gaze focused on the monitor. Molly, too, watched the screen and saw a jumble of shadows flicker past. Where was the baby? She’d expected to see a real picture, like a photograph, not just a bunch of gray blots.
“Where is it?” she said.
The technician didn’t answer. Molly looked at him and saw that he was staring at the monitor, his expression frozen.
“Do you see it?” asked Molly.
The technician cleared his throat. “Let me just finish the test.”
“Is it a boy or a girl? Can you tell?”
“No. No, I can’t. . .” He slid the device first in one direction, then another, his gaze focused on the images flickering across the screen.
Nothing but blips of gray, thought Molly. There was one larger blob surrounded by smaller blobs. She looked at Dr. Harper. “Do you see it?”
Her question was met with silence. Dr. Harper kept glancing back and forth between the screen and the technician. Neither one of them were looking at Molly. Neither one of them said a word.
“Why aren’t you talking to me?” whispered Molly. “What’s wrong?”
“Just hold still, hon.”
“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”
Dr. Harper squeezed her hand. “Don’t move.”
At last the technician straightened and wiped the gel off Molly’s abdomen. “I’m going to show the film to one of our doctors, okay? You just rest.”
“But she’s a doctor,” said Molly, looking at Dr. Harper.
“I’m not trained to read this. It takes a specialist.”
“Well what did you see? Is something wrong?”
Dr. Harper and the technician exchanged glances.
And the technician said, “I don’t know.”
18
“Freeze that frame,” said Dr. Sibley. He took off his glasses and stared at the monitor, his attention transfixed by the sonogram image. For a moment there was only silence in the room. Then Sibley murmured, “What the hell is that. . .”
“What do you see?” asked Toby.
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know what I’m looking at.” Sibley turned to the ultrasound technician. “This shadow here is what you’re referring to?”
“Yes, sir. That mass right there. I didn’t know what it was.”
“Is it fetal tissue?” asked Toby.
“I can’t tell.” He nodded to the technician. “Okay, unfreeze it. Let’s see the rest.”
As shadows flickered across the monitor, Sibley bent even closer. “There’s alternating density of tissue, both solid and cystic.”
“It looks like a head,” said Toby.
“Yes, it has a vaguely cranial shape. And see that calcification?”
“A tooth?”
“That’s what I think it is.” Sibley paused as the view shifted to a new field. “Where’s the thorax?” he murmured. “I don’t see a thorax.”
“But it has teeth?”
“A single tooth.” Sibley sat frozen, watching the interplay of light and shadow on the monitor. “Limbs,” he said softly. “One there, and one there. Solid appendages. But no thorax . . .” Slowly he sat back and put on his glasses. “It’s not a fetus. It’s a tumor.”
“Are you certain?” asked Toby.
“It’s a ball of tissue. Primitive germ cells gone crazy, manufacturing teeth, maybe hair. It has no heart, no lungs.” “But there’s a placenta.”
“Yes. The patient’s body thinks it’s pregnant, and it’s nurturing that tumor, helping it gain mass. I suspect this is a type of teratoma. Those tumors are known to form all sorts of bizarre structures, from teeth to hormone-producing glands.”
“Then it’s not a congenital malformation.”
“No. It’s disorganized tissue. A hunk of meat. It should be removed from the patient as soon as—” Suddenly Sibley jerked backward, his gaze sharp on the screen. “Run that back! Do it!” he snapped to the technician.
“What did you see?”
“Just run it back!”<
br />
The monitor went blank for a moment, then lit up again in a replay of images.
“This is impossible,” said Sibley.
“What?”
“It moved.” He looked at the technician. “Did you manipulate the abdomen?”
“No.”
“Well look at that. The appendage—see how it shifts position?”
“I didn’t touch the abdomen.”
“Then the patient must have shifted position. A tumor doesn’t move on its own.”
“It’s not a tumor,” said Dvorak.
Everyone turned to look at him. He had been so quiet Toby had not realized he’d entered the room and was now standing behind her. Slowly he moved toward the monitor, his gaze fixed on the freeze-frame image. “It does move. It has arms. It has an eye. It has teeth. Maybe it can even think. . .”
Sibley snorted. “That’s ridiculous. How could you possibly know that?”
“Because I’ve seen one just like it.” Dvorak turned and looked at them, his expression stunned. “I have to make a phone call.”
In the darkness of Molly’s room, Toby could see the red light on the IVAC machine blinking on and off, silent confirmation that the medication was dripping into the patient’s vein. Toby let the door swing shut, and she settled into a chair by the bed. There she sat and listened to the sound of the girl’s breathing. The red IVAC light blinked a hypnotic rhythm. Toby allowed her limbs to relax and her mind to drift for the first time all day. She had just called Springer Hospital to check on her mother’s condition and had been assured there were no changes. At this moment, in a different bed, in a different hospital, she thought, my mother is sleeping while the red light of her IVAC pulses, like this girl’s, in the darkness.
Toby glanced at her watch and wondered when Dvorak would return. Earlier tonight, she’d tried to tell him about Jane Nolan and had been frustrated by his obvious reluctance to hear her out. He’d had so many distractions as well—the crisis with Molly. His beeper going off. And then he had left, to meet someone in the hospital lobby.
She settled back in the chair and was considering a short nap when Molly’s voice suddenly said, through the gloom: “I’m cold.”
Toby straightened. “I didn’t realize you were awake.”
“I’ve been lying here. Thinking. . .”
“Let me find you a blanket. Can I turn on the light?”
“Okay.”
Toby switched on the bedside lamp, and the girl recoiled from the sudden glare. The bruise on her forehead was black against the pallor of her face. Her hair looked like dirty streaks across the pillow.
On the shelf in the closet, Toby found an extra hospital blanket. She shook it out and spread it over the girl’s bed. Then she turned off the lamp and felt her way back to the chair.
“Thank you,” whispered Molly.
They shared the darkness, neither one speaking, the silence both calming and comfortable for them both.
Molly said, “My baby’s not normal. Is she?”
Toby hesitated. Decided that the kindest answer was the truth. “No, Molly,” she said. “It’s not normal.”
“What does it look like?”
“It’s difficult to say. The sonogram’s not like a regular picture. It’s not easy to interpret.”
Molly considered this in silence. Toby steeled herself for more questions, wondering just how graphic she should be. Your baby isn’t even human. It has no heart, no lungs, no torso. It’s nothing but a frightening ball of flesh and teeth.
To Toby’s relief, the girl didn’t pursue the issue. Perhaps she was afraid to hear the whole truth, the whole horror of what was now growing in her womb.
Toby leaned forward. “Molly, I’ve been talking to Dr. Dvorak. He says there was a woman—someone you knew— who also had an abnormal child.”
“Annie.”
“That was her name?”
“Yes.” Molly sighed. Though darkness hid the girl’s face, Toby could hear the weariness in that sigh, an exhaustion that was more than physical.
Toby’s gaze focused on the vague shadow that formed the girl’s face. Her vision was adjusting to the darkness, and she could just make out the gleam of her eyes. “Dr. Dvorak is concerned that you and Annie may have been exposed to the same toxin. Something that caused both your babies to be abnormal. Is that possible?”
“What do you mean . . . toxin?”
“Some kind of drug or poison. Did you and Annie take anything? Pills? Injections?”
“Just the pills I told you about. The ones Romy gave me.”
“This Romy, did he give you any other drugs? Anything illegal?”
“No. I didn’t do that stuff, you know? I never saw Annie do it, either.”
“How well did you know her?”
“Not very well. She let me stay with her for a few weeks.”
“You were together only a few weeks?”
“I just needed a place to sleep.”
Toby gave a sigh of frustration. “Then this doesn’t add up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Whatever caused the abnormalities in your babies happened very early in pregnancy. During the first three months.”
“I didn’t know Annie then.”
“When did you find out you were pregnant?”
The girl thought it over. In the lull of conversation, they heard the squeak of a medication cart being wheeled down the hall, and the murmur of nurses.
“It was in the summer. I was sick.”
“Did you see a doctor?”
A pause. Toby saw the white blanket ripple, as though moved by a shudder. “No.”
“But you knew you were pregnant?”
“I could tell. I mean, it wasn’t hard to see, after a while. Romy told me he’d take care of it.”
“What do you mean by take care of it?”
“Get rid of it. Then I got to thinking how nice it’d be to hold a baby. To play with it. Have it call me Mama. . .” The sheets rustled as the girl’s arms moved beneath the blankets, caressing her belly. Her unborn child.
Only it was not a child.
“Molly? Who is the father?”
There was another sigh, this one wearier. “I don’t know.”
“Could it be your friend Romy?”
“He’s not my friend. He’s my pimp.”
Toby said nothing.
“You know about me, don’t you? What I do? What I been doing . . .” Molly rolled over in bed, turning her back to Toby. Her voice was now faint, as though it came from a great distance. “You get used to it. You learn not to think about it too much. You can’t think about it. It’s like your mind sort of fuzzes out, you know? Sort of drifts someplace else. And what’s going on down there between your legs, it’s not really happening to you . . .” She gave a self-deprecating laugh. “It’s an interesting life.”
“It’s not a healthy life.”
“Yeah. Well.”
“How old are you?”
“Sixteen. I’m sixteen.”
“You’re from the South, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“How did you get all the way up here to Boston?” A long sigh. “Romy brought me. He was down in Beaufort, staying with some friends. Had this way about him, you know? These real dark eyes. Never saw a white boy with eyes that dark before. Treated me so nice. . .” She cleared her throat, and Toby heard the rustle of the sheet as Molly brought it up to wipe her face. The IV tube dangled, silvery, over the bed.
“I take it he wasn’t so nice to you after he brought you to Boston.”
“No, Ma’am. He wasn’t.”
“Why didn’t you go home, Molly? You can always go home.”
There was no answer. Only by the shuddering of the bed did Toby realize the girl was sobbing. Molly herself made no sound; it was as though her grief was trapped in a jar, her cries inaudible to anyone but her.
“I can help you go home. If all you need is the money to get there—”
<
br /> “I can’t.” The answer was barely a whisper. The girl rolled into a tight lump under the covers. Toby became aware of a soft keening, the sound of Molly’s grief at last escaping from the vacuum of the jar. “I can’t. I can’t. . .”
“Molly.”
“They don’t want me back.”
Toby reached out to touch her and could almost feel the girl’s pain seeping through the blanket.
There was a knock, and the door opened.
“Can I talk to you, Toby?” said Dvorak.
“Right now?”
“I think you should come out and hear this.” He hesitated, and glanced at Molly’s bed. “It’s about the sonogram.”
Toby murmured to the girl, “I’ll be back.” She followed Dvorak into the hall and closed the door behind her.
“Did she tell you anything?” he asked.
“Nothing that sheds any light on this.”
“I’ll try talking to her later.”
“I don’t think you’ll get anything. She doesn’t seem to trust men, and the reason’s pretty clear. Anyway, there are too many factors that can cause fetal abnormalities. The girl can’t pinpoint anything.”
“This is more than just a fetal abnormality.”
“How do you know?”
He gestured toward a small conference room at the end of the hall. “I want you to meet someone. She can explain it better than I can.”
Dvorak had said she, but as Toby walked into the room, the person she saw sitting in front of the video monitor looked more like a man from behind—steel gray hair, closely cropped. Broad shoulders in a tan Oxford shirt. Cigarette smoke forming a drifting wreath above the squarish head. On the monitor, the sonogram of Molly Picker’s womb was slowly replaying.
“I thought you gave up the cigarettes,” said Dvorak.
The person swiveled around, and Toby saw that it was a woman sitting in the chair. She was in her early sixties, her blue eyes startlingly direct, her plain features unadorned by even a hint of makeup. The offending cigarette was mounted in an ivory holder, which she wielded with comfortable elegance.
“It’s my one and only vice, Daniel,” the woman said. “I refuse to give it up.”
“I guess the scotch doesn’t count.”
Life Support Page 28
