Charlaine Harris - Crimes by Moonlight

“BLEEDING in early pregnancy can often be insignificant.” Dr. Iqbal sat on a swivel stool at the foot of the exam table. The wand in his hand made little circular motions on my bare stomach, now wet with gel. His eyes were on the black-and-white TV screen, which showed a grainy image of my unborn daughter. “However-”

“However-?” I looked at his face, trying to find reassurance. The hospital lighting did not become him. “She’s okay, though?” I persisted. “You can tell, right? You’d know, right?”

“There’s movement, her heart rate’s normal, cord’s not wrapped around her.”

“But-?”

“But bleeding in the last trimester’s never good.” He glanced at me. “This one’s a head-scratcher. It could be placenta previa, but it’s not. It’s not placental abruption. And it’s not labor. Also, you’re not bleeding now. You’re sure it was actual bleeding? Not just spotting?”

“It was flowing. Gushing. All over the chair I was sitting in.” Which was leather, at least. I’d cleaned it as well as I could, waiting for the ambulance. Cleaned myself, too, although traces of blood remained on my inner thighs.

“And the color? True red? Or brownish? Pinkish?”

“Red. Ketchup red.” It was a relief to say it, with no equivocation. A relief to be here in the hospital, all antiseptic and stainless steel and charm-free linoleum. No creaky floors. No personality. No rustic appeal.

Dr. Iqbal switched off the monitor, then grabbed a paper towel and wiped the gel from his wand and from my stomach. “Richard still here?”

“He just left. Went home to take care of the kids. A friend’s been watching them since five thirty a.m., but she has to get to work.” She wasn’t really a friend; she was a woman I’d met exactly twice at a Mommy and Me class. But I had her phone number, and she’d come over at once, without hesitation. She was a friend now, I realized.

“Well, let’s take a wait-and-see attitude. The baby’s thirty-six weeks, so if she had to come out now, she could. But she’s better off staying in, and without a clear reason to induce… I’ll keep you here a day or two for observation.”

I nodded, suddenly dead tired. If the baby was safe, that was all that mattered. Somdahl & Associates seemed very far away at the moment, and as I lapsed into a half sleep, I thought how absurd it was, in this overlit hospital room, to believe in witches.

And once more I dreamed of numbers.

“DON’T squish your mommy,” Richard said.

“They’re okay,” I said. Charlie and Paco were in the hospital bed with me, Charlie holding the TV remote and Paco pressing the buttons that raised and lowered the mattress. I’d missed them. I was never away from them.

“I’m gonna use the bathroom, and then we’ll go. The sitter’s coming at noon.” Richard had called a babysitting agency so he could go back to work. This was a good thing; I’d need backup help when I went into labor.

“Is that your bathroom?” Paco asked, pointing to the door that Richard closed behind him. I nodded.

“Madeeda has a bathroom, too,” Charlie said. “And Madeeda has a curtain in her room.” He pointed to the curtain separating me from the empty bed across the room. “Madeeda has a TV on the ceiling.”

“Just like Mommy.” I smiled, playing along. “So Madeeda lives in a hospital now?”

Charlie nodded. “In this hospital.”

My smile faltered. “Really?”

“Upstairs,” Paco said.

I felt cold suddenly. “Do you know where upstairs?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You could take me there?” I asked.

Paco shook his head. “Paco and Charlie can’t go there. Only Mommy.”

“Why?”

“Madeeda telled us.”

“How would I find it, though? Her room?”

Charlie said, “The numbers!” Paco laughed and bounced on the bed. “Twelvey twenty-one-y.”

I waited until Richard and the boys left, then got out of bed. A nurse had just checked my vital signs and done fetal monitoring, so I was unhooked from everything and free to move around. I didn’t hesitate. I wrapped a second hospital gown over the first, backward, so that the gap in the back was covered, then padded out to the elevator banks in my socks and loafers. Once inside, I pressed the button marked 12.

IT was quiet on the twelfth floor. Compared to Admissions and the bustle of Labor & Delivery, it was a graveyard. I followed the signs for the east corridor. E.

The nurses’ station was empty. I walked past it, down a hallway with a flickering fluorescent light. This was an old section of the hospital, unrenovated. I found myself shivering as I walked.

Some of the doors with the 12E prefix were closed, some of the rooms unoccupied, and the few patients I saw through open doorways were asleep. It seemed like a place people came to die.

I was whispering as I walked. “… twelve E nineteen, twelve E twenty. Twelvie twenty-one.” I paused before the open door. There were nameplates for the two patients, e and w. The bed on the west side of the room was empty. It was the patient in 12E21e that I’d come to see. M. Quadros, according to the nameplate.

Even in her sleep I recognized her. She was younger than me, but not much. Long, curly hair, a reddish purple that could only come out of a bottle. Memorable hair, even if you’ve only seen it once, even though it now had an inch of black roots showing at the scalp. Her face was pale and showed the remnants of bruises. Her long, lovely arms were bruised, too, purple and green around the sites where blood had been drawn or tubes inserted. She was skinny, the sad little blue gown and blanket not thick enough to hide the bones jutting through. She no longer smelled like Shalimar.

“Hello,” I said to her, but she didn’t respond. I touched her face, very gently, but she didn’t respond to that either.

I wondered how long she’d lain there. I’d seen her only a month before.

WE’D met at the Somdahl & Associates Fourth of July barbecue. Even with the hair she wouldn’t have stood out among the crowd of strangers, and I, as a company spouse, wouldn’t have made an impression on her either, but for a clumsy gesture. A drunken partner had spilled a pitcher of beer on her T-shirt, and instead of apologizing made lewd remarks about how good some women look wet. Another man tried to intervene, no doubt thinking “sexual harassment lawsuit” but the drunk wouldn’t give way gracefully. While the two men worked it out, I’d walked over to the beer-soaked woman and touched her shoulder. I had an extra shirt in my car, I told her. When she hesitated, I put an arm around her, and she let me lead her away.

“Thanks,” she said. “Asshole. All week I work for him. Now I must eat and drink with him.” She had an accent that I couldn’t identify. Some Romance language.

“Who is he?” I asked.

She’d looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “Albert Werner. The CFO. You must be new.”

“My husband is,” I’d said. “I’m just the spouse. Jane England.”

“You’re married to-”

“Richard England.”

Her eyelashes fluttered, a butterfly’s gesture. “Your husband is Richard England.”

“Yes, do you know him?”

There was a pause. “Yes.”

We were at the car now and she was waiting, so I opened the trunk and she added, “You are the Good Samaritan.”

“No problem.” I pulled a pink T-shirt out of the emergency diaper bag. Clipped to the bag was a plastic-framed photo of Paco and Charlie with Tooth. “I have twin toddlers, so someone’s always spilling something on me, or my breasts used to leak, when I was nursing. I’m just in the habit of carrying around a change of clothes.”