Джеймс Паттерсон - The Midwife Murders

Val looks about as awful as a pretty woman can look—or like a woman who just gave birth to twins, and lost one. Her hair is oily, unwashed. Her lovely face is marked with bruises and red blotches, patches of acne, and lots of smudged, caked-on makeup. She is shaking: her arms, her legs, her shoulders. As soon as she sees me enter, she bursts out crying.

I put my arms around her shoulders, and during the thirty or forty seconds that I am holding Val I cannot help but consider the dramatic differences between her and Greta Moss.

Each woman is beautiful, but Greta is tall and hyper-styled. Val is small and sexy and, well, hot. Val has been totally screwed by life—the worst of luck in where she grew up, in her finances, in her future. Greta? Well, her fairy tale is told all over the internet every day.

Finally Val is calm enough to speak. “Lucy, they took my baby!” she yells.

Oh, Christ. I think that yet another baby has been stolen. But I’m understandably being an alarmist. Val quickly clarifies.

“No. She wasn’t stolen, if that’s what you’re thinking. I was supposed to be discharged from the hospital with my baby last night. And that’s when they told me. A doctor or a midwife or a nurse or somebody told me that my baby girl and I are all set and ready to leave. Then a nurse comes in, and she is all efficient and mean, and she says that the doctor or whoever is wrong. I cannot have my baby. ‘Yes,’ I say. And then they said, ‘No, that is not possible. You yourself can get out of here, but the baby must stay.’”

She brings her hands to the sides of her head. She stops talking, and she cries loudly. I have a good idea of what happened: Maternity Discharge looked at her records and saw that her blood contained a mixture of cocaine, as well as oxycodone and hydrocodone, both powerful opioids. The discharge desk or Nurse Franklin called Social Services, and they put a stop on allowing Val to leave with her daughter.

Val begins to compose herself. She starts talking again. Between sobs and shakes and coughs she explains some more. “They bring a nurse and a social worker and a cop, like I’m a criminal, to see me in the discharge office, and they say what the social worker already told me. I cannot have my baby. They will keep her like an orphan.”

I try to explain to Val that her little girl will not be kept “like an orphan.” Instead the infant will stay in the GUH neonatal nursery until the great jumble of the New York City Department of Social Services sorts things out. I tell her that she can visit the baby anytime she wants.

“But I want my baby now,” she cries. “She is my baby. I do not need the mayor to tell me when I can visit my own baby.”

I have a choice to make now. I make it: I let her have it right between the eyes. I don’t shout. But I am way more than stern. “Look. I tried to get you help. You compromised your pregnancy.”

Val is now sobbing uncontrollably. I’m trying to practice tough love, something I’m not very good at. I’m good at tough, and I’m good at love . I’m just not good at them when they’re together.

“Why are you so mean to me?” she says. “Why is everybody in this city so mean to me?”

“Because you don’t listen. Do you love drugs more than your baby?”

That lights up her face with horror. “No. I love my baby. I want my baby,” she yells.

“I know you love her. I know you want her. But you have to show and prove that you love her. You do that by cleaning yourself up.”

But I can’t keep yelling at her. The situation is the usual crazy mess for users: heartbreaking and infuriating.

“Where are you living these days?” I ask.

“I think I can stay with my auntie Sofia,” she says. Then she explains that her mother, who I know is a prostitute and a user, won’t allow her back in her apartment.

“Where does your auntie live?”

“On St. Ann’s Avenue, 149th Street.”

Great. Possibly the worst area of the worst neighborhood in the South Bronx. And that’s a contest that’s got a lot of competition.

I tell her that right now we’re going to visit her baby in the nursery. “You’ll hold the baby for about ten or fifteen minutes. Then we’ve got to go someplace else. We need to go to a social service and addiction center in Washington Heights.”

She interrupts me. She speaks firmly. “No, I like the center on East 35th Street. Don’t boss me around, Lucy. I’m in charge of my life.”

I can’t take it anymore. “Listen, you are not in charge. We’re picking a place where they can help you and help you get your baby back.”

I walk out of the room to clear my mind. Under my breath, I say, “Jesus Christ! When will it ever end?”

CHAPTER 29

I WASH VAL’S FACE. “I should have used Easy-Off oven cleaner to remove all this foundation,” I tell her as I scrub. Then I dress her in a clean white T-shirt and a clean pair of powder-blue hospital scrub pants.

Now Val is ready to see her daughter and to play Mommy. I have to say that Val does a damn good job of it. She cuddles and feeds and changes her baby in the hospital visitors’ nursery.

Meanwhile, I gather copies of any papers the hospital has on file that can help us get through the Manhattan outpost of the Department of Social Services—MSS. Val clearly has the bio-maternal instinct. It takes a lot of cajoling and threatening to get her away from her baby and out of the hospital. Once we’re down in the mechanical sewer they call a subway in Manhattan, we take the A train from midtown all the way to the neighborhood that is almost at the northernmost end of the island: Washington Heights.

Now we trade the chaos of GUH—the guards, the cops, the agents, the nurses—for the chaos of MSS. The guards, the social workers, the pregnant women, the abused women, the homeless women and men, the creepy storefront lawyers. Even Val, a very tough street-smart young woman, is frightened by the sheer noise and confusion of the place. There are, at the very least, nine or ten different languages being spoken here.

The lines are long. Most everybody, including Val and myself, has complicated, emotional stories to tell. So many of the people and their caregivers don’t have the correct papers, the correct signatures. I’ve been to this place a hundred times before. Most of the people who work at MSS know me as Lucy the Baby Catcher. Most of them like me a lot. But some of them think I’m just a pushy bitch. You know what? Both opinions are perfectly valid.

I know one of the social workers pretty well. Lateesha Ro is one of the MSS officials in charge of sorting and providing all the needs approval applications that Val requires—childcare support funds, infant day care, addiction and alcohol rehabilitation. Without my pushy attitude we could spend the rest of the month in this place. You need application approval before you can do anything else. But since I helped birth three of her kids, Lateesha sneaks me to the front of her line. Needless to say, those folks who’ve been waiting patiently (and impatiently) in line for a long time are none too pleased. Lateesha Ro is, however, tougher than anyone. She announces loudly to the many others waiting that “Ms. Ryuan is a medical official, and she takes complete precedence. This is a medical emergency.”

One of the guys waiting in line sizes up the situation quite accurately. “That’s bullshit,” he shouts. And for a moment I think he’s going to smack Val or me or both of us.

Okay, I’d be angry, too, but I don’t let that stop Val and me from cutting to the window where Lateesha stands. We get there without sustaining an injury.

Val is still shaking, disoriented. I have to remind myself frequently that she is what my mother would often say about some of her teenage mothers: “She’s just a child giving birth to a child.”