AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Hey, did my name just get called?” I asked.
“Deana?” she asked, pretending as she usually did that she didn’t know my name because I was so new. If there was one person that I didn’t particularly care for at work, it was Mary.
“Yes,” I said, biting my tongue from snapping at her.
She rolled her eyes and sighed, as if relaying a message was the hardest thing she had done in weeks. For all I knew, it probably was. She wasn’t exactly the most motivated person to get up and move around.
“Yes, it looks like you were paged from pediatrics,” she said.
“Pediatrics?” I asked. “Why?”
“I don’t know the answer to that,” she said curtly. “Perhaps you should go down to the pediatric unit and find out.”
I refrained from telling her I knew full well she could page the pediatric unit and find out what was going on much faster than me going down there. She knew I knew. I had a feeling she wanted to make me look bad in front of Dr. Sutton, and her method was by making sure to mention my absence as soon as I was gone and infer that I was blowing time somewhere else than where I was supposed to be.
I walked to the elevator and hit the button to call it. I forgot how ancient the elevator was, though, and eventually gave up and went to the stairs. It was only one floor down, and I padded down quickly, heading directly to the nurses’ station there.
“Hey, I’m Deana,” I said. “Someone called for me?”
The woman pointed down the hall at a pensive-looking nurse, standing by a shut door. I walked closer to her, and when she saw me, she looked slightly relieved.
“Deana?” she asked.
“Yes. You paged me?”
“Someone in this room asked for you by name. They need some help.”
Confused, I looked at the closed door and then back to her.
“Why me?” I asked. “I don’t work in pediatrics.”
“He said he saw you going upstairs and knows you,” she said. “He needs someone to help him out, and he only wanted to talk to you. Or at least wants to talk to you first.”
“Me?” I asked, and then terror struck my heart. “Oh God, is his name Gerry?”
“No, I don’t think so. I think you better just go talk to him. He’s pretty upset.”
The sound of a baby wailing from the other side of the door was enough to convince me. I reached and put my hand on the handle. As I turned it, I hoped against hope that it wasn’t something terrible happening to one of my friends’ children.
11
HAWK
The baby had cried for so long I was positive something was wrong.
Flying into a panic wasn’t exactly what I thought I would be doing this morning, but there I was, running around my room, trying to find a missing shoe that turned out to be right next to where the first one was. I got as dressed as I felt absolutely necessary and thanked whoever was looking out for me from above that the diaper bag was still packed.
Putting Rose into the car seat carrier and stuffing a blanket around her, I brought her out to the truck and locked her in, then hopped behind the wheel. She was definitely running a fever, and the tears were constant. I didn’t know much about babies, but I knew that if they were crying that hard and were warm, it wasn’t a great sign. Searching on the internet just led me to even worse possibilities than I could imagine.
As I drove, trying to temper my desire to get there as fast as possible with the need to drive as safely as possible, I thought about how I was going to have to learn how to handle this stuff in a hurry. If that meant a few trips to an ER, it was going to have to be that way. My sister might have given me a challenge that I may never forgive her for, but it wasn’t Rose’s fault. She was my niece. It was my job to protect her and care for her if her mother couldn’t.
Thankfully, the hospital wasn’t terribly far from where I lived; it just meant going down the mountain on the other side and approaching it from the sister city to Ashford.
When I finally pulled in, I grabbed Rose’s car seat and brought it inside with her still wailing in it. I wanted to take her out and hold her, to press her against me and let her know she was safe, but I didn’t want to do anything wrong either. I was so scared and confused as to what I should do that I just wanted to get her in front of a nurse who could give me some idea. I needed someone I could trust.
