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30 years ago, 1968
Sally
She woke up kicking and screaming, unaware of when she started or stopped but overwhelmed with a deep desire to fight. Someone gripped her arms on both sides, trying to contain her thrashing. If Sally had her way, she would punch the person in the face. Rip off his skin or wrap him in a chokehold. It was a doctor she had never seen, and nothing about his expression was kind.
“Sally, I’ve already told you. Your baby is dead. I’m sorry.”
He kept repeating the lie over Sally’s protests, getting louder each time as though saying it with force would make it true. It wasn’t working. Sally saw nurse Amy leave her room earlier today, and saw the way this new nurse wouldn’t look at her even now, eyeballs nervously sliding to the left each time she spoke. Even when Sally was helped off the floor of her old room, even when she was moved to a new bed in another wing and helped into clean sheets. Even when her broken leg was set, and her cuts were doctored with sterile antiseptic, the nurses wouldn’t look at her, wouldn’t answer her questions, wouldn’t acknowledge her protests.
“Stop lying to me!” Sally shouted from her hospital bed. “I saw nurse Amy walk out with him right after the blast. Where is she now? Where did she take him? Go get her, and I’ll ask her myself!”
Another doctor walked into the room, covered in soot and panic, his gaze rapidly shifting from the nurse to her. “What is going on in here? I can hear your shouts from down the hall. Miss Gertie, are you alright? Did you get hurt in the blast?” He picked up her wrist, timed her pulse, then scribbled something on a chart and checked her fluids. “Do you need something to help the pain?”
“I need my baby is what I need,” Sally barked, growing exasperated and trying to pull out her IV before any new medication took effect. “My nurse took him, and I want him back.”
The doctor sighed, a “you poor thing” look dragging his eyes downward. “Miss Gertie, I’m afraid your baby didn’t make it.”
“Go get nurse Amy and make her say that to my face!” Sally said.
The new doctor’s sympathy only seemed to grow. “I’m afraid we sent nurse Amy home an hour ago. She was too traumatized from the blast to be of much use, so she went home to get some rest. She should be back in the next few days when she’s feeling better.”
Went home?That didn’t make sense. Wouldn’t they need all hands on deck at the hospital to help treat survivors? Sally didn’t know much about health care, but she knew you didn’t send the experts away when you needed them most.
“Well, call her back in. She has my baby, and I want him back!” She felt her chest press in, and her limbs flail and kick as her agitation grew but couldn’t do anything to stop it. Her stitches stretched and popped, but the pain was nothing compared to the pain of wanting her baby and being ignored. The tears came hard and fast, her breathing slow and thin, the words, “help me sedate her,” floating high overhead while a needle slid under her skin.
The world went numb.
Her arms hung slack.
The darkness called out to her until she could do nothing but succumb to its plea.
She awokein another room entirely. One absent of machines. Absent of beeping or dripping IV’s. Absent of windows or outside footsteps. Sally lay there blinking at the ceiling, at first disoriented and sleepy. Her mind slowly drifted into focus as the memories of the day came floating back on a cloud of what felt like someone else’s nightmare. Life was hard. Always hard. Too hard to mess with most times. Her eyes watered and leaked sideways, but she was too tired to dry them. Must be the drugs. Must be the heartless people taking chunks of her heart with them as they dug dug dug for pieces.
She wanted her baby.
Like most things about her life, she didn’t have much hope of that happening.
She wondered why God hated her so much. Why He made all these people to hate her too like He needed moral support and created a whole team to pick His side. It wasn’t easy always being on a team by herself. It was even harder knowing for one brief moment that she had built her own little team.
She wanted her baby.
So right then, she decided to take it upon herself to find him.
Sally swung one leg over the bed, then the other. Her limbs were made of Silly Putty, all soft and rubbery as she tried to stand. Her middle sagged and dipped like her organs wanted to fall out, so she grabbed a pillow off her bed and held it to her stomach to support the soft skin that once housed a human and now hung empty. She was hollow and alone, and her breasts began to ache.
Sally didn’t know where to go, but there were no answers to be found by staying in her room. Shuffling slowly to the door, she cracked it open and peered out, looking for anyone who might stop her or alert the nurses that she was on the move. Seeing no one, she stepped out into the sterile hallway.
She didn’t recognize this part of the hospital. It almost didn’t look like a hospital at all, or maybe too much of one. An overhead light blinked and buzzed like it was the backdrop of a sci-fi movie, an impending alien invasion. The low hum of a radiator filled the silence, an occasional staccato beat of machinery ticked off the seconds, each one bringing her closer to the reality of getting caught.
She swallowed and took a right, seeing a bathroom in front of her she could use as an escape should the need present itself. Down the hall, a female patient was being pushed in a wheelchair by a nurse in blue scrubs. Sally followed the woman and the nurse, then ducked behind a door when they veered left. She waited there a moment when she heard someone else approaching, then backed into the shadows when she saw Jack leading the way. He was followed by a nurse pushing another wheelchair. Jack’s wife held a baby with a bandage on its chin, a tuft of dark brown hair peeking out of the creamy hospital stocking cap.
Sally leaned in for a better look and fell forward against the wall with a cry, crashing into it with a thud. She might have pulled another stitch with the way pain cut through her insides.
“What are you doing out of bed?” an orderly admonished, grasping under her arms and pulling her to stand, rather roughly it seemed. “Miss Gertie, you’re supposed to be lying down recovering from your wounds, not galivanting around the halls like this. What were you thinking?”
The pain turned to fresh tears, helpless and flowing as they fell. “I just want my baby. I think I just saw him leaving with that lady…”
The orderly sighed, his patience gone. “Your baby is dead; we’ve told you this already. He died along with eight other people, including a doctor. Try to have a little compassion.” He muttered that last part but may as well have shouted, the stab to her heart hit so forcefully. Compassion for who? Why was she always the one expected to sacrifice?
