“Six days ago, someone found her in a restroom at a gas station.”
My stomach drew tight.
“By herself?”
“Yes.”
“Who discovered her?”
“A worker heard her crying.”
“Where was her mother?”
“She'd gone.”
After a pause, he added, “The police recovered some things belonging to her nearby. Her identification, a phone, some clothes.”
I looked at the carrier again.
“Sophie had prenatal substance exposure,” he continued. “She's been watched by the neonatal team since she arrived.”
The specialized placement forms made sense now.
Withdrawal could interfere with a newborn's feeding and sleep. Babies might tremble, struggle to settle, or cry for hours, wearing down even caregivers with considerable experience.
“Has the neonatal unit discharged her?”
“She's permitted to leave for this visit, and nothing else. We have authorization.”
“Why this visit?”
The mustached man came a little nearer.
“Dorothy Chen is her great-grandmother.”
I turned sharply toward him.
Dorothy Chen in Room 304. I recognized the name immediately.
I had spent part of the previous night covering an overflow assignment upstairs. Dorothy was ninety-three, seriously malnourished, and recovering from a recent stroke. She also had pneumonia.
According to her chart, her husband was gone and she had no surviving children. County social services was the only listed family contact.
Her condition had been declining.
One thing about her had stayed with me. Whenever anyone came through her door, she asked whether the baby had arrived.
I had assumed medication or the stroke was making her confused.
“Dorothy has a relative?”
“Sophie,” he replied. “That's who she has.”
I glanced down at the forms.
“And Sophie's mother?”
The older biker's expression became hard, although none of that anger seemed meant for me.
“Dorothy brought her up.”
The man with the mustache took over.
“Dorothy's only daughter died young. She left behind a little girl.”
“Dorothy's granddaughter?”
He nodded.
“She raised her from the time she was small.”
“What is her name?”
“Marissa.”
The oldest man's eyes dropped for a moment.
“Dorothy held down two jobs. Office cleaning at night, clothing alterations during the day. Any extra work she could get.”
His mouth tightened.
“She covered school, braces, college applications. All of it.”
“What went wrong?”
“Life got complicated.” He paused. “Then there were drugs.”
He spoke without scorn, which caught me off guard.
“Marissa went missing about four years back. Dorothy had no way of knowing if she was even alive.”
“Has anyone located her now?”
“Not the police.”
He looked toward Sophie.
“But among the things they recovered when Sophie was found was a card with Dorothy's telephone number on it.”
The younger man spoke again.
“That's how Dorothy learned there was a great-granddaughter.”
CHAPTER 3
I turned toward the elevators.
“Was that what landed her in the hospital?”
“More than just the news,” the oldest man replied, rubbing the end of his beard. “She was frail already. Living by herself, hardly eating.”
“When they called, she got up too fast and fell,” the mustached biker said.
“She had a stroke?”
They nodded.
“Then developed pneumonia?”
“That's right.”
The younger man's gaze fell.
“Since she regained consciousness, she's asked every person entering that room whether Sophie is on her way.”
A faint noise rose beneath the carrier's cover.
He leaned down immediately, his movements practiced rather than alarmed. Two fingers slipped under the blanket's edge.
“Hi there, peanut.”
The tenderness in his voice was so striking he almost sounded like a different man.
He gave the carrier a single gentle rock. The noise ceased.
I turned my face aside, feeling oddly as if I had intruded on a private exchange.
The man in the bandana noticed.
“Linda told us Dorothy might have only a few hours.”
I faced him again.
“You came without notifying administration?”
“They've been notified.”
“Then why did Linda tell you to arrive before they did?”
For an instant, he seemed embarrassed.
“The authorization moved faster than the information did.”
I understood.
It was entirely plausible that someone had signed the right form while half the people responsible for carrying it out had yet to hear anything about it.
Hospitals were very good at that.
I studied the emergency authorization and its county stamp.
Even then, the voices of every supervisor I'd ever had seemed to be shouting inside my head.
An unscheduled movement of a protected newborn. Outside caregivers inside a restricted maternity ward. A visit to a critically ill elderly patient.
I could practically hear an administrator asking why I had failed to follow procedure.
The older biker seemed to read my hesitation.
“I'm sixty-two years old.”
I looked up.
“Good for you.”
His lips twitched.
“I worked as a firefighter for twenty-eight years. Over the last twelve, I've taken forty-three foster placements.”
I blinked.
“Forty-three children?”
“Some stayed a night. Some a few weeks. Three were with me for more than a year.”
He motioned toward the younger man.
“Sophie's been with him since Friday.”
The young biker's attention never left the carrier.
“The woman upstairs devoted her life to a granddaughter she couldn't find,” the older one went on, holding my gaze. “She's asking for just one thing from us.”
His voice dropped further.
“Ten minutes holding that baby.”
I understood my obligations perfectly.
Call the supervisor, wait for confirmation, check each signature, and follow the policy to the letter.
But I pictured Dorothy underneath her hospital bedding, tiny, colorless, and alone.
And I remembered our exchange from the night before.
I had been inspecting her IV when she opened her eyes.
“Can a baby tell when nobody wants it?” she whispered.
I had put the question down to medication. I told her babies recognized warmth, familiar voices, and human contact.
She nodded before asking whether I had children.