The Children's Ward (18 page)

Seventy-four

It was obvious that Courtney could not do it alone.

Abigail would have to help her.

The lights in the ward had been off for quite a long time and still Courtney was fighting sleep. For whatever reason, Courtney did not want to dream.

It didn’t matter, though, because Abigail was going to help her, and Abigail could do it alone if need be.

Like the time with that doctor, as soon as Abigail closed her eyes she was in another place.

Courtney’s house.

She was standing just inside the front door, looking toward the staircase. The entry light was on. As far as she could see, the rest of the house was dark.

No one was home.

Of course. Courtney’s parents were not the sort to stay home on a Friday night.

Abigail moved slowly through the rooms of the house, fascinated to see the damage that Courtney had done. Blackening the walls was not the type of thing that Abigail would have chosen…

As she was about to float upstairs—her body was entirely weightless—the door opened and Courtney’s father came in. He was reeking of alcohol and he staggered as he tried to lock the door behind him. Courtney’s mother was not with him.

He walked unsteadily out of the room and Abigail followed him. He was getting himself another drink. The look on his face as he lifted the glass to his mouth reminded her of her grandmother.

He finished the drink in two swallows and, leaning against the bar for support, he poured another.

Abigail saw the note before he did. Keys?

He spilled some of his drink on the bartop and was reaching for something to wipe it up when he saw the note. He picked up one of the keys, looking at it with drunken curiosity.

He pulled the note closer to him, the spill forgotten.

Abigail pushed into his mind.

Courtney’s mother had left him. He crumpled the note and bounced it off the mirror behind the bar.

Abigail was aware that he was not disturbed about the loss of his wife. She could feel his feelings and it was clear to her that very little mattered to him. Not even Courtney.

There were a few things her grandmother had been able to tell her about the man who was her father.

He was married to another woman at the time Abigail was born, and he never had shown an interest in seeing his own child. He had not wanted his life disrupted by what he called a careless mistake.

It was very painful for Abigail to know that her life had been a mistake.

There were many times, growing up, that Abigail had prayed for her father to change his mind. She wanted, with all of her young heart, for him to come and take her away. He never did and of late she had accepted that he never would.

But what
this
man was feeling was worse.

He was Courtney’s legal father and had spent years living in the same house with her. He had shared birthdays and holidays with her. Courtney was not a faceless child he’d never seen.

Yet Abigail knew he felt no loss.

He poured a third drink.

She was undecided.

How best to handle the suicide of Courtney’s father? What was the most painful way?

With his mind numbed by alcohol, it would be easy to make him do as she wanted. But she had to hurry before he went to sleep.

David White moved the chair into the closet. Holding onto the back of the chair with one good hand, he stepped up and steadied himself by grabbing onto the edge of the closet shelf.

Where had all of this trash come from? He didn’t remember putting it in here.

He opened a shoe box and peered inside. Letters. Tiffany had saved them, like she collected other worthless things.

He tossed the box on the closet floor.

She should have taken all of it with her. All of it. All…of…it…

Except the money.

That she wouldn’t get away with. She wasn’t the only one with a lawyer. California had community property laws and he just might sue for alimony from her. It had been done.

It was about damned time men started standing up for their rights. Everywhere you turned, you could hear stories about women taking dear hubby to the cleaners, getting half of everything, including one bitch who’d put her husband through medical school and then sued for a share of his future earnings because she’d “contributed” by supporting him. The hell with that!

Tiffany was hopelessly naive if she thought she could keep him quiet by giving him the house. He’d be lucky, with all of the fire damage, if he’d get a couple of hundred thousand for it. How long did she expect him to live on
that
?

In fact, this was the best thing that could have happened. While they were married, he’d been forced to be happy with the allowance she’d paid into his accounts. It was never enough. Now, instead of a few lousy thousand here and there, he’d get half of the store.

Yeah, it would work out.

He threw a second box containing several pairs of Courtney’s baby shoes to the floor. Why in the world would anyone save baby shoes?

He’d taken care of that problem—the possibility of having more children—shortly after Courtney was born. The vasectomy had been done right in the doctor’s office. Tiffany had never known about it. In fact, when she’d been unable to get pregnant a second time, she’d suggested that they both get checked but he’d reminded her that they’d done it once, so everything had to be in working order. Eventually she forgot about it.

He leaned forward, reaching for a cardboard box that looked like it might be what he was looking for, and almost lost his balance. For a moment, looking down at the cluttered floor, which seemed to sway, he thought he was going to be sick.

He swallowed hard, trying to keep it down.

He would try to cut down his drinking. In his new life, he would try to clean up his act. With that much money, he could afford to buy fun other than from a bottle.

There it was. He opened the box and took out the gun.

He stuck the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

Seventy-five

To Lucy Fitch, the night shift was a godsend. From the moment she’d been licensed as a registered nurse, she had wanted nothing more than to work nights.

It wasn’t just the shift differential, although the extra money was nice. And it wasn’t because she was lazy.

There were three very good reasons why she preferred nights.

The most obvious reason was because she liked to sleep days. There was no more luxurious feeling in the world than turning over in bed, looking at the clock which read noon, and knowing there were at least three more hours of sleep due you.

The second reason was that it gave her an excuse not to lose weight. Everyone knew that working nights threw the body’s metabolism out of whack. (If they didn’t know, she was sure to tell them.) She was by necessity required to be less active at night; with patients sleeping, she could
hardly be expected to run up and down the halls. Thus, with decreased activity and a messed up metabolism, she could hardly be faulted for carrying around an extra ten or twenty pounds.

But the final reason was the one that kept her firmly rooted on the graveyard shift.

Working nights had the added benefit of being able to say no to any social engagement you might want to avoid.

It was a boon during the holidays.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like to socialize…she did. And it wasn’t that she didn’t love her family…she thought she did. It was just that her family’s Christmas parties ranked alongside the Inquisition as far as pure entertainment value.

In fact, they
were
inquisitions.

Why wasn’t she married? Didn’t she want kids? Why had she broken up with that nice boy from the church? Hadn’t she heard that beggars couldn’t be choosers? Why didn’t she call home more often?

All of it stopped when she started working nights.

She had found the perfect excuse.

Either she’d worked the night before, or she was scheduled to work
that
night, whatever night that night was.

She got out of Easter egg hunts, Fourth of July picnics, Thanksgiving reunions, and— hallelujah!—the Christmas parties.

There was no occasion, big or small, that the specter of “working all night” could not be used as an hedge. Even the wedding of her skinny cousin to that Neo-Nazi barber.

Working nights was the single best decision of her life.

She was a little upset when she was assigned to the children’s ward—medical was the best floor when it came to work load—but when they told her there were only four patients and that none of them were seriously ill, she decided to make the most of it.

She finished what little charting there was to do and cleaned all of the paperwork off the desk. Then she got out her bag of goodies and the latest Stephen King novel.

There was nothing to compare to being scared silly while stuffing her face with junk food.

Chocolate cupcakes, potato chips, peanuts, chocolate-covered cherries, red licorice, and mint cookies.

And a diet soft drink.

She took off her white nurse’s shoes and put on her knitted slippers, then put her feet up on an up-ended trash bin.

With a brief look at the video monitor—her patients were all asleep— she began to read.

Eyes wide, she turned the page, feeling the dread build in her stomach. Her hand reached out, fingers roving past the peanuts and chips, and grabbed a stick of licorice. This was a gnawing chapter, she could tell.

What was that?

Frowning, she lowered the book.

Like someone whispering.

She looked at the monitor; the children were all asleep.

There it was again.

Using the licorice as a book mark, she put the book on the desk and got to her feet.

Whispering. Definitely voices.

She went to the exterior door and put her ear against it. She couldn’t imagine anyone foolish enough to be outside on a night like this, but anything was possible.

It wasn’t coming from outside.

What in the world?

Of course! One of the children had rolled over the TV remote control in their sleep. The volume was down so it sounded like whispering to her.

Mystery solved.

Padding silently in her knitted slippers, she went into the children’s ward.

The screen was dark.

The whispering went on.

She crossed to the first bed, leaning over the boy carefully. He was not making any noise, nor was the remote control even on the bed.

She opened the bedside table, searching for a radio.

Nothing.

At the second bed, the girl had the covers pulled all the way over her head. Lucy could not hear a thing.

Except the whispering.

It was making her nervous.

She searched the bedside table and even looked under the bed but there was nothing to be found.

Ducking between the third and fourth beds, she quickly checked for a source of the noise. She even picked up the stuffed animals on the third bed and held them to her ears.

The little girl in the fourth bed turned over, opening her eyes and looking straight at Lucy.

The whispering stopped.

“Hello,” the little girl said.

Lucy smiled. “Hello.”

Back at the desk, she settled down to continue reading her book.

She did not hear any more whispering.

By morning she had forgotten.

SATURDAY

Seventy-six

Quinn awoke with a start.

She had been dreaming about the face on the tape. Mad, demented eyes and twisted features. Cords of muscle rippling along the neck.

She sat up in bed, fully awake.

Saturday morning.

The earlier she got to the hospital to make her rounds, the sooner she would be free for the day. Pushing the covers aside, she got out of bed and went to the window to see if it was still raining.

It was not. The storm had blown over and the
sky was a pale winter blue.

She jumped slightly as the clock-radio began to play.

A little nervous.

Leaving the radio playing, she went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She pulled her nightshirt over her head and stepped under the water.

The warmth soothed her and she stood where the water would massage the back of her neck. She felt the tension drain from her body and she let her eyes close.

What had happened last night?

She was firm in her belief that it had not been a hallucination. She had been completely awake and in full control of her senses. She was under no more stress than usual.

The rational explanations that she had thought of last night made no more sense this morning than they had then.

Maybe there wasn’t a rational explanation.

Maybe what had happened was exactly what it now seemed: that through some…variance in time, she had been witness to a brutal murder that had occurred in the children’s ward.

She was surprised at how easy it was for her to accept such a premise.

As soon as she arrived at the hospital, she went to her office to try and call Emily Ballard.

Again there was no answer.

She dialed directory assistance for that area code and asked for the listing, on the chance that admitting had typed the number incorrectly. It was the right number.

She hung up and then dialed the number again, letting the phone ring.

Well, she would try after she’d completed her rounds. Sooner or later she would reach the elusive Emily Ballard.

“I didn’t expect to see you here today,” Quinn said to Mary Aguilar. “You do get a day off once in a while, don’t you?”

“I have two weeks of days off, starting tomorrow.”

Quinn sat at the nurse’s desk and opened Russell’s chart to the progress notes. “Going anywhere special?” she asked, skimming the notes.

“Just away. And I’ll tell you, I need it.”

“Working you too hard, are they?”

“Either that or I’m going crazy.”

Something in Mary’s voice made Quinn look up.

“Is there something wrong?” The chart was forgotten for the moment.

Mary hesitated. “I’ve been having these dreams,” she said.

“Do you want to talk about them?”

“Oh, I…I don’t know. It’s probably nothing. But the past couple of nights, I’ve had dreams about the ward. About the children.”

Not about the face of a madman, Quinn thought, and relaxed.

“Actually, it’s only two of the children; Tessi and Courtney are gone, I don’t know where.”

“Just Russell and Abigail,” Quinn prompted.

“Yes.” Another hesitation. “They’re here, in the ward, and something terrible is happening. The walls are falling down and there’s fire and smoke…I can’t hear what they’re saying but Russell is yelling at Abigail. She laughs at him.”

“Go on.”

“That’s all there is.” Mary frowned. “But I keep dreaming it, over and over. And I can never hear what they’re saying.”

“That is odd. Have they had an argument?”

“Not at all. In fact, I think Abigail has a crush on him. She’s so concerned about him…that’s what makes the dream so strange.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about it. But if you ever do hear what they’re saying, I would like to know.”

When she got back to her office she discovered that someone had delivered the strip chart record of Courtney’s EEG. It had been done late Friday afternoon at Ian Campbell’s request, following his evaluation of her.

Attached to the EEG was a note from Ian asking her to call him, at home if necessary, after she’d had a chance to review the study.

She put it aside and went to the filing cabinet to get the next videotape for scanning.

In the next two tapes, she only found one item that she thought Joshua should review.

On the Thursday morning tape, Abigail appeared almost catatonic for more than an hour, staring fixedly, not blinking.

But, on two occasions during her trance-like state, she smiled.

Once at 11:45 and the other time at 12:30.