Bobby Hutchinson - Vital Signs

“The kid’s okay. They’re taking care of him. Here, this’ll make you feel better.”

And after that she didn’t try to remember.

THE EMERGENCY ROOM at St. Joseph’s Medical Centre in Vancouver hummed in the midday heat. The sound came from huge air-conditioning units, white noise that the ER staff no longer heard. They heard, instead, the scream of sirens arriving at one of the emergency bays, and the intercom announcement that signaled incoming trauma.

“Trauma alert, emergency department. Paramedics arriving with abandoned baby—male, estimate two years old. Dehydrated, not conscious. ETA four minutes.”

“We’re set up in room three.” Triage nurse Leslie Yates did her best to keep her voice calm and steady, but the one thing that most disturbed her and the rest of the ER staff was a mistreated child.

One of the doctors cursed under his breath, and Leslie knew her own face mirrored the expressions of the rest of the ER staff when the medics arrived with their tiny patient. She found a moment to talk to one of them and he described where and how the child had been found.

“Apartment hotel downtown, a real dump. Must have been ninety degrees in there. The kid was too little to get to a tap. If he hadn’t turned on the TV, the neighbor would never have gone to investigate. She got pissed off when the sound went on all night and all morning.”

Leslie notified Social Services just to be sure they knew. It turned out the paramedics had already called, and probably the firemen and police, as well, but it didn’t hurt to make sure.

During the next half hour, she dealt with several more incoming crises, but every moment she was aware of the drama going on in trauma room three.

“How’s it looking with the boy?” Leslie asked one of the nurses when she hurried out with blood samples. The young woman shook her head, her expression grim. “Poor little thing’s dehydrated. His vitals are way off the scale.”

Ten minutes later Leslie saw a flurry of frantic activity in and around room three and her stomach tensed. The boy must have arrested. Tension was palpable in the ER as the staff fought to save his life. Leslie did what most of them were doing. She prayed.

By the time her shift ended at three o’clock, the boy had stabilized, much to everyone’s relief. He was sent up to pediatric intensive care, and a collective sigh of gratitude could almost be heard throughout the ER. The firemen and the medics who’d attended had called several times to find out how he was doing, and before she went off shift, Leslie made a point of phoning them all to tell them the child was stable.

They all knew the situation might only be temporary, that he could easily go bad again during the night. But at least for now, he was holding his own.

With one last fervent and heartfelt prayer for the little boy’s continued well-being, Leslie went home.

ROY ZEDYCK had gotten home late. There’d been an emergency—one of the foster kids he’d recently placed had pulled a fire alarm at his school. Roy had spent the past two hours meeting with the principal, the kid’s foster mother and the nine-year-old boy, trying to calm them all down. The boy’s explanation for why he’d done such a thing was that life was boring.

This from a kid who’d stolen a car the month before and run it through a neighbor’s garden, added bubble bath to a washing machine and dog-napped a mutt outside a grocery store. Roy could only pray that these new foster parents would persevere, that they’d see past the kid’s penchant for mischief to the brilliant potential Roy detected. The kid had an IQ right off the scale, but he’d managed to wear out three sets of foster parents in less than a year.

Roy pulled on the trousers to his gray suit—his only good suit. He zipped up the pants, noticing how loose they were around the waist. He’d dropped some weight since he last wore them, and he couldn’t afford to lose weight, because he had no intention of buying a new wardrobe.

Must be stress doing it, because it sure as hell wasn’t sex. His love life had been at a standstill for weeks, ever since Anna left in search of greener wallets.

It wasn’t exercise, either. He hadn’t been for a run in ten days, and he’d had to miss the last three pickup rugby games. The court case he’d been involved in had eaten up what little time the job hadn’t.

His testimony had resulted in the formation of a commission that would eventually make changes to the system, but Roy couldn’t forget that those changes had come about as the result of a child’s death. It seemed at times that the world was going to hell, and all social workers could do was spit on the flames. He was weary in a way he hadn’t been since he first took the job with the ministry seven years ago this month.

The phone rang, and he shot it a baleful glare. It might be work, and he already had a briefcase filled with files he’d barely looked at. However, he was part of the after-hours unit, and he was on call.

Or it could be his sister, Nicole, who was going with him to the family party at their sister Jennifer’s tonight. Or it might be the retirement home where his mother was battling another bout of flu. Whoever it was, he had to answer.

He picked up the receiver and silently cursed. It was his team leader, and that could only mean another emergency.

“Hi, Marty, what’s up?”

“That abandoned kid at St. Joe’s—did you see the item on him in the newspaper yesterday?”

Roy’s heart sank. Abused or abandoned kids were bad; they pulled out emotions already raw from overuse.

“I saw it.” There’d been a double murder in North Van, so the article had been buried on a back page of the Province.

“I know your caseload is crazy already and Larissa was supposed to be on this one, but she just called me. Her father died, and she’s flying back to Calgary tonight.”

They’d been shorthanded for the past five years, and with the recent government cutbacks, things had gone from desperate to ridiculous. It took restraint not to remind Marty of that. Roy let him ramble on about their co-workers’ latest personal problems.

“Rita’s getting married this weekend and Jake’s having a hemorrhoid operation. Larissa’s done the preliminary work on the case. The kid’s name is David Riggs. His mother’s known to the ministry—she’s on assistance, name’s Shannon Riggs. I’ve got the case file right here. Mother’s seventeen, she was on the street at twelve, heavy into drugs, but she straightened out when she got pregnant. One of the downtown volunteers, Tonya Cabral, took her in and helped her get clean. The police and the downtown street workers are watching out for Shannon, but so far no sign. David’s two years two months. He was taken to St. Joe’s forty-eight hours ago seriously dehydrated. A neighbor found him, called the fire department. Estimates are the boy was alone three days.”

Roy shuddered. He’d seen babies like that before. He’d watched one of them die.

“It was touch-and-go as to whether David would pull through, but looks as if he’s on the mend now. He’s in St. Joe’s—got out of intensive care this morning and was transferred to the pediatric ward. Harry Larue is the attending pediatrician.”

Poor little kid. Intense compassion, deep sadness and bitter anger ate at Roy’s gut, the way it always did when an innocent child was the victim of neglect. Along with the other emotions came resignation. This was, after all, social work—the job he’d chosen. It wasn’t anyone’s fault that he was having second thoughts. It went without saying that he’d do the best he could for David Riggs.

He went through the mental checklist of what needed to be done, then asked Marty where matters stood, how much Larissa had already waded through.