be there in four hours.
He smiled at the thought of what would occur after he arrived.
13
Charley Middleton-Perez floated in that netherworld between wakefulness and sleep, anxiety tugging at the edge of her consciousness like a toddler at the hem of his mother’s skirt. She knew at some vague level that she was in a hospital room, that her husband Jack was asleep in the chair beside her, and that the doctors had given her meds to help her rest. From outside in the hall came the faint rattle of a cart gliding over a polished floor and people talking in low voices. She didn’t care enough to eavesdrop. She remained in the drug cocoon, pharmaceutically insulated from her fears.
Unfortunately, it was wearing off. And no drug could quell these fears, not forever. So much had happened, almost all at once. In her mind’s eye, she saw the scenes flicker backward in time, a gruesome rewind. Someone had tried to kill her. They’d murdered her mother, and she had seen her dead on the floor, her lovely features contorted and a blackening pool of blood beneath her head, seeping into the grains of the oak floor, filling its lines like a grisly etching.
Troubled, shifting in the bed, she flashed on her father running for his life. And her husband Jack had risked everything to save them both.
But there was one life he couldn’t save.
She heard a slight moan and realized that it came from her. She was waking up, though she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Closer to wakefulness than sleep, she felt an emptiness that she realized was literally true. She was empty now.
The baby was gone. The baby she had carried for the past five months, within her very body.
She had loved being pregnant, every minute of it. They had tried for the baby for so long, and she couldn’t believe when they’d finally gotten pregnant. She’d memorized baby books, and from day one of her pregnancy, was mindful that every spoonful she put into her mouth and every sip of every drink, she was taking for them both. She ate plain yogurt, gave up her beloved chocolate, fled from secondhand smoke and refused anti-nausea meds when her morning sickness was its worst. Her every thought had been to nurture the baby, one they’d both wanted so much.
Jack, Jr.
She had decided to name him Jack, Jr., and Jack would have loved the idea. Now she would never tell him her plan. He hadn’t wanted to know whether the baby was a boy or a girl, so she’d kept it from him too, though she was bursting with the news.
Surprise me, he had said, the night she had found out, a smile playing around his lips. And she had felt so full of love at his uncharacteristic spontaneity that she had thrown her arms around him and given him a really terrific hug, at least by pregnancy standards, which was from three feet away.
She shifted on the bed, and her eyelids fluttered open. She caught a glimpse of light from the windows, behind institutional-beige curtains. The brightness told her it was morning, though of which day, she didn’t know. Before her eyes closed again, she spotted Jack, a sleeping silhouette slumped in a chair, his broad shoulders slanted down. His head, with his sandy hair rumpled, had fallen to the side; he would have a crook in his neck when he awoke.
She felt an ache of love for him, together with an ache of pain for their loss. His son. Their son. A son could continue to redeem a family name tainted by his grandfather’s shady dealings. He had become one of the most respected lawyers in New Orleans, if not Louisiana, and his secret motive was to silence the whispered sniggering behind hands, the malicious talk of Creole mob connections and worse. He’d served on several committees to allocate Katrina relief funds, and his work to help the hurricane victims had gained him some national attention. For him, a baby son represented a new, brighter future.
I’ll take one of each, Charley, he said one night, as she rested on his chest after they had made love. He had been tender with her in bed, even more so than usual, moving gingerly over her growing tummy. Neither wanted to do anything to hurt the baby, the two of them as spooked as kittens.
But now there would be no baby, no son, no redemption. Only emptiness.
She blinked, then closed her eyes, feeling tears well. She didn’t cry, stopping at the edge of emotion, afraid to fall into the chasm of full-blown grief. The drugs were preventing feelings from reaching her, distancing her even from herself. She must be having some kind of delayed reaction. The night she’d miscarried, she’d been so scared when she heard that she was in danger and Harry, too, that she hadn’t had time to react to losing the baby, much less to mourn him.
Her eyelids fluttered again, and the background noise grew louder. She was waking up; there was no avoiding it. She realized that the talking wasn’t in the hall, but it was her husband’s voice. He was saying, “Don’t worry, she’s asleep and should be up in an hour or so.”
She looked over, her vision clearing, and realized that he hadn’t been asleep, but on the cell phone, which was tucked in his neck.
“Okay, good luck,” he said into the phone. “I’ll keep you posted.”
“Jack?” she asked, her voice raspy.
“Hey, sleepyhead.” He closed the phone, rose, and came over to the bed with a warm smile. “How you feeling?”
“Fine.” She didn’t feel like telling the truth, not now.
“That was your dad, checking on you.” He sat on the bed and stroked her hair back from her forehead. “Good news. He’s fine. He’s joined forces with some people he seems to have faith in. I gotta believe he knows what he’s doing.”
“He does.” She felt relief wash over her. A professional, her father knew who to trust and who to run from.
Perez leaned over and gave her a soft kiss. “So all we have to worry about now is you.”
Suddenly a burst of laughter came from the open door, and they both looked up in time to see a stout nurse in patterned scrubs bustle into the room, her hand extended palm-up. “Give it here, buddy!” she said to Perez. Her voice was louder than was polite, but she was laughing.
“No way.” He laughed, too.
“We had a deal,” the nurse shot back, and without missing a beat, she grabbed the cell phone out of his hand. “Your husband works too damn hard,” she said. “I told him he can’t use his phone in the hospital. Now I’m confiscating it.”
Perez rose, mock-frowning. “Who are you supposed to be? Nurse Ratchett?”
“You know, your poor husband hasn’t eaten since yesterday lunch,” the nurse said. “He won’t leave your side.”
“Aww.” She felt a pang of guilt. The nurse couldn’t know that Jack was guarding her in case the killer came looking for them.
“All the other girls are crushing on him, but I’m impervious to his charms.”
“Impossible,” Perez said with a smirk.
She was feeling safer now that it was morning and her father was OK. Plus the hospital was waking up, the hallway increasingly noisy. “Jack,” she said, “why don’t you go get some breakfast? Take a break.”
“No, I’m fine.” He dismissed her with a wave but the nurse grabbed his arm.
“Go, get out. I have to check some things on your wife, and I’d throw you out, anyway.”
Perez said, “You OK, Charley?”
“Yes. Please, go. Eat something.”
Perez nodded, then eyed the nurse with amusement. “Gimme my phone, Ratchett.”
“When you come back.”
“But I need to make calls.”
