Birthday Girl Read online

  Elliott glanced to his right. Amy was watching the screen, entranced.

  “No headway was made in the case, and the young man was feared dead until just this past Wednesday, when a construction worker stumbled across a body in a parking lot in the Trinidad neighborhood of northeast DC.” The camera switched to a scene of cars and dumpsters. “But the body turned out to be Jay Kelly. Comatose, but alive.”

  Another cut, this time to a middle-aged woman with graying brown hair and a moon face. Her eyes were red and the skin of her nose blotchy. “We’re just so thankful to have Jay back. We never gave up hope, but his birthday was just a few days ago and . . . and . . .” They watched the woman pull herself together. “It seemed a kind of milestone, you know, and the light began to dim. But he’s with us now, and that’s all that’s important.”

  The reporter wrapped up the story in her singsong voice. “Jay was taken to Mercy General with undisclosed injuries and is listed in serious but stable condition. The police investigation into his abduction has been reopened with these new developments.”

  The news report moved on to the vagaries of the day, but Elliott was no longer listening. “Your database?” His voice was raw.

  “Here.” Amy fished it out of her bag and banged it onto the bar. She flipped through the pages, snatching at the next before the first was gone, whispering, “It’s here, it’s here, it’s here.”

  Elliott stood and moved close, watching over her shoulder, not daring to speak.

  “Got it!” Amy said, her finger pinning a slim paragraph to the page. “Jay Lawrence Kelly. Abducted from foster care four years ago.” She raised her head to look at Elliott. “His mother said in that report that his birthday was just this past week.”

  “Found comatose, with undisclosed injuries, in serious condition.” His face was grim. “Just the way you’d describe a drug overdose if you didn’t want to come out and say it.”

  Amy grabbed his arm. “Elliott, this boy is supposed to be dead.”

  “A teenage boy, growing an inch a day. Metabolism of a jackrabbit,” Elliott said, thinking out loud. “It would be easy to screw up the dosage if you were trying to make it look like an accident yet didn’t want to overdo it.”

  “We have to talk to him, we have to talk to this Jay Kelly,” Amy said, but he was nodding before she said her next words. “He knows whether Lacey’s alive or not.”

  28

  Sister

  She returned home from work, faintly bothered by her lunchtime meeting with her brother and his talk of saving the young addict. It had stuck with her throughout the rest of the afternoon, a reminder of the important—no, critical—work she was doing to save the children. Certainly more important than her brother’s efforts, feeding, as he did, into a system that nearly ruined them both.

  The thoughts were still weighing heavily as she came up the drive. She was struck at the sight of her own home, and she let the car roll to a stop as she stared at her house, the house her brother couldn’t bear to look at—as if his memories were more painful than hers—the house she’d lived in her whole life. The house she’d chosen as her reminder of, and shelter against, the moment her life had changed.

  Angled slabs of light slid through the trees, catching the leaves as they fell, seeming to hold them for a moment before letting them continue their descent. The windows were down, and the same musty smell of rotting earth filtered into the car. A breeze blew through the car, crisp and cool, with the promise of winter riding behind it.

  Exactly the same as that day.

  It had been her first year of junior high and the everyday choices—coat or sweater? boots or sneakers?—seemed profound, potentially life altering. She’d been so excited to choose for herself, so thrilled for the future. Thanksgiving festivities had wrapped up and a Christmas dance was around the corner, with the holiday break soon after. Mother had been distracted and distant, of no help. All the children had demanded her attention, whining and yelling and crying, none of them seeing something break in their mother’s eyes.

  Butterflies and stomach cramps had kept her in a state of perpetual nausea throughout the day—she’d been so nervous, had forgotten everything from her locker number to her homeroom assignment—but she’d finished thrilled and exhausted, unable to stop talking to Tom Childress on the way home. On the bus, she’d caught a look in his eye and flushed, feeling confused but excited, filled with the sense that she’d started to cross some kind of threshold.

  They’d kept chatting at their bus stop long after the sound of the diesel engine had faded into the distance—she swinging her denim bag back and forth, he with his thumbs hooked in the straps of his backpack like an old man in suspenders—until the realization of just how late she was hit her like a slap on the back of her neck. The Childress boy had gaped as she’d turned without a word and sprinted away, helping confirm a reputation for strangeness she’d gotten through grade school.

  She’d begun to tremble as she made the long hike up the drive. Mother didn’t abide tardiness and had a number of punishments, large and small, to drive the point home. She was sweating and out of breath when she rounded the bend and came in sight of the house, but relief warred with fear when Mother wasn’t waiting for her on the porch as she so often was, arms crossed and one hip thrust forward like an accusation.

  The door was open.

  Another rule broken, another reason to be anxious. She shut it, then stood in the foyer for a moment, listening.

  The house was very still.

  The furnace clicked on and warm air shouldered its way through the hall, trailing with it a strange smell.

  Three steps in, she stopped, feeling queasy, and pressed a hand into her stomach. Something ugly sat in the air, squat and croaking, calling for her to pay attention.

  She opened her mouth to call out, but instinct stopped her and the words died in her throat. Slipping off her shoes, she padded down the hall and peeked into rooms, but there was no one in the parlor or the den or the kitchen or the dining room. She crept up the stairs, pressing herself tight to the wall to keep the steps from squeaking. The pattern of the wallpaper was rough under her hands.

  At the top of the stairs, she went down the hall to Charlie’s bedroom.

  The door was open and the bad smell was strong.

  The croaking in her head grew louder.

  Hunching her shoulders, she slipped in without touching the door or the frame.

  Buddy was on the bed, sleeping. The top sheet, a thin thing with a Western motif, was pulled to just under his chin and had been tucked tight around his body. She whispered his name. When he didn’t respond, she put a hand on his chest and felt the complete inertness, the wooden lack of life that was more like a piece of furniture than her brother.

  She clapped both hands to her mouth, vomiting into them.

  Stumbling out of the room she bumped into the door. It banged against the wall as it swung.

  From the bedroom down the hall, Mother called her name. The voice was slurred, drowsy, thick.

  Quickly, then, she retraced her steps, the metallic stink of vomit filling her nose, tears welling in her eyes, shaking and flinching as she slipped back down the steps.

  Her mother called her name again. Thuds and bumps and footsteps on a tile floor.

  She flew down the rest of the steps, grabbed her shoes, and flung open the door . . . then stopped. How far would she get? Her mother was fit enough to run after her or hunt her down in the car.

  From the upstairs hall, her mother called for her again, the voice a screech now.

  Leaving the door open, she bolted down the hall into the kitchen. Quaking with fear, she went to the oven, opened the door, and crawled inside. Praying that the springs wouldn’t squeak, she shut the door quietly, cutting off all light.

  Crouching in the dark, she hid in the last place in the world her mother would think to look, shivering and squeezing her eyes shut as the woman stumbled around the empty house, howling her name. She
pinched her lips until they were numb as she listened to the screams of her brother and sisters as they came home and were met by their mother and placed in their beds.

  The absolute silence that followed was Mother doling out her own final punishment in the upstairs bathtub. Long, long, long after the last sound had died away, Sister lay curled on the floor of the oven, praying her mother was truly dead, that she wouldn’t come downstairs and brace herself against the door, then turn the stove on to punish her willful eldest daughter.

  The police discovered her the next day, still in the oven. It took two burly officers to pull her out of it. They found Brother three days later, starving, hiding in the bole of a nearby tree, willing to die there rather than come home. After a year of therapy, they learned he had watched Mother kill Buddy before fleeing, running out the door and into the woods an hour before Sister had come home.

  In the hospital, the doctor had told them, not realizing the terrible irony his words contained, that they were both lucky to be alive.

  29

  Elliott

  Once upon a time, Elliott thought, Mercy General Hospital in northwest DC had probably been a single, elegant brick building with an elliptical cobblestone drive. Patients would have been delivered to an oak-shaded front door by horse-drawn ambulance, greeted by mustachioed doctors wearing pince-nez and cared for by bonneted nurses. Today, it was a sprawling medical campus with twenty buildings, five entrances, and four multilevel parking garages. It was as busy as an airport—people and cars moved in every direction, passing signs containing a bewildering collection of colors, numbers, and letters.

  “Where do we start?” Amy leaned over the steering wheel, squinting at the main building in front of them.

  “Pull up to the main lobby and throw your hazards on,” Elliott said. “We need some information or we’ll just drive around in circles. Literally.”

  She parked behind a rusty white van and Elliott hopped out, heading for the entrance. Inside, a Christmas tree covered in tinsel and paper cutouts of candy canes took up a corner of the lobby. Next to it sat an information desk where Elliott helped himself to a map of the hospital complex, unfolding it as he returned to the car.

  He spread the map on the dashboard and the two of them peered at it, trying to make sense of the blocks and polygons. Amy traced a finger over the paper, tapped it. “Here. We’re here.”

  Elliott studied the legend in the bottom corner. “Most of the buildings don’t concern us. They’ll be for specialties like oncology or psychiatric care, administration, physical plant, stuff like that.”

  “He’d be in pediatrics, wouldn’t he? Or just general admission? Both are in the main building.”

  “Unless there’s a separate ICU. The news report said he was in serious but stable condition.”

  Amy closed her eyes. “I had to take Lacey to an emergency room once for a sinus infection. Really bad. They kept her for two nights. I remember the other parents in the waiting room talking about PICU and PIMC.”

  “PICU.” Elliott stared out the window. “Pediatric intensive care unit. The kids on the edge.”

  “And PIMC is obviously pediatric something-something care.” Amy flipped the map over and scanned a more detailed rendering of the core medical facility. “Here. Pediatric intermediate medical care.”

  “Kids who are out of the red zone, but not out of the woods.”

  She glanced at him. “Sounds like ‘serious but stable condition’ to me.”

  He nodded. “Let’s go.”

  They parked in a garage and walked back to the main campus, hunched over by the cold and watching as headlights and streetlamps flickered to life. It was only late afternoon, but already the sun was low in the late autumn sky and would be setting soon.

  Guided by the map, made their way to the PIMC. The halls were colorfully decorated but sterile, smelling of disinfectant and too-brightly lighted by overhead fluorescent bulbs. Nurses and doctors deep in conversation ignored them as they passed, moving with purpose; patients and visitors shuffled along the halls with less drive and focus.

  The walls of the PIMC waiting room were a playful purple and blue. A bank of vending machines—snacks, soda, and a combo coffee/tea/soup machine—sat in a small alcove. Comfortable, blocky chairs with rounded arms were placed in discrete clumps of two and three for the adults, while a child-size street sign proclaimed that one side of the room, with its diminutive plastic tables and a basket of toys, was for KIDS ONLY. Couples huddled around the room, most with the hollowed-out look of pain and worry held in check.

  Elliott threaded the aisles, leading them to a couple of chairs in a far corner. Amy sank into a seat, curling her legs underneath her, while Elliott picked up a magazine and started flipping through the pages.

  Amy leaned close. “We’re just going to pretend to be parents?”

  “Yes,” Elliott whispered back. “We need a break, and acting like we belong might get it for us.”

  “I’ll feel like a fraud.”

  “Act like the night you took Lacey in for a sinus infection. She’s not in danger, she’s just sick. We’re both worried, but you’re holding it together for her and I’m holding it together for you.”

  Stricken, Amy’s face fell, and Elliott cursed himself. He put a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it literally. Try to remember everyone here is focused on themselves, even the guards and nurses and intake personnel. Look concerned and worried and we’ll fit right in. When’s the last time anyone asked if you belonged in an emergency room?”

  Amy nodded, then glanced at a set of double doors with a lock bar and a phone on the wall. “The patient section is locked down How are we going to get back to see Jay? If he’s even here?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  An hour passed before a weary-looking couple on the other side of the waiting room got to their feet. They’d fidgeted for the better part of thirty minutes and engaged in a whispered argument for ten more before coming to some kind of agreement. The woman paused long enough to put on an oversize pink parka, but the man—gaunt and bent at the shoulders—left his denim coat hanging on the chair before heading for the door. A temporary sticker badge had been slapped on the breast of the coat near the collar. The smell of stale cigarette smoke trailed behind as they passed.

  Elliott watched them go, then turned to Amy. “Do you have any quarters?”

  “A few,” she said, automatically reaching for her purse. “Why?”

  “I need a cup of coffee. Hurry.”

  She frowned, but produced a couple of quarters that Elliott snatched from her before hurrying to the vending machines. He bumped his fist on the plastic front impatiently as an indefinable brown liquid poured out of the spout, then grabbed it and tore several handfuls of paper napkins from a dispenser before heading back.

  As he passed the seats of the couple who had left for their smoke, he stumbled, spilling coffee on himself, the denim jacket, and the floor. A few people glanced over, then went back to the TV or talking to each other. Cursing, he set the half-empty cup down and made a show of mopping the coffee from the floor, spending extra care on the man’s jacket. Once done, he tossed the soaked napkins into the trash, picked up his cup, and came back to Amy.

  She looked at him quizzically. “I hope you weren’t looking forward to a full cup.”

  “It runneth over,” he said, grabbing her hand and putting something in it. “But I still shall want.”

  She looked down to see that he’d placed one of the sticker badges in her hand. She looked up, her mouth an “O” of surprise. He motioned for her to stick it on her lapel.

  “What about you? Why wouldn’t you have one?”

  He shrugged impatiently. “I forgot it or didn’t get one or whatever. It only matters that one of us has one.”

  The doors opened with a hiss and the fidgety couple returned. As before, the acrid smell of cigarette smoke pushed through the room with them as they made their way to their seats. As they
walked by, the husband continued past them to his chair and grabbed his jacket, but Amy smiled as the wife—plump, with frizzy blonde hair permed to within an inch of its life—glanced at them and returned the smile.

  She stopped. “What are you all here for?”

  Amy swallowed. “My little girl has a sinus infection. I waited too long and it just got worse and worse.”

  “Oh no! I had my share of those. What I wouldn’t give for one now.”

  Elliott scooted to the edge of his seat. “Why are you here, ma’am?”

  “My little builder,” she said with a sigh, “thought he’d put together a skyscraper like the kind his daddy works on. So he made one out of scrap wood and bricks in the lot next door and tried to climb to the top. The whole thing came crashing down with him on top, and he cracked his head open.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.” Amy made a sympathetic noise. “Is he going to be all right?”

  “If he wakes up,” the woman said matter-of-factly, but her eyes were shining. Amy stood and gave the woman a hug. Elliott stood and squeezed the woman’s shoulder awkwardly, then offered her one of the paper napkins he’d saved. She took it gratefully and blew her nose.

  “We’ve been back there three times, but he’s just the same,” the woman said, her voice hoarse. “Doctors say it’s just going to take a while.”

  “What ward is he in?” Elliott asked. Amy shot him a look, but he ignored her.

  “Intermediate care.”

  “Well, that’s good then, isn’t it? That means the doc thinks he’s hanging in there.”

  “Do you think so?” The woman searched his face, looking for hope.

  “I think the ones worst off go there.” He lowered his voice and nodded toward the PICU door. “Maybe he’s not out of the woods yet, but give it time.”

  “Oh, thank you for saying that.” She sighed and shook her head. “It could be worse, I guess. Like that boy that was missing? The one they found after all those years? He’s just down the hall from my Tommy. Can you imagine thinking your baby’s gone, only to find out he’s been on the streets this whole time?”