Chapter Ten
“Sir?”
Brock opened his eyes and grunted as his brain caught up with what his eyes saw. The hospital waiting room was the most obnoxious shade of aqua he’d ever seen. But hospitals were not strange places to him. He’d been in and out of plenty of emergency rooms like this one, since turning fourteen and fracturing his ankle, breaking two ribs, and flirting with a concussion after jumping from the top of a quarry wall on a dare.
He’d been as high as a kite of course. Couldn’t even recall doing it after he’d regained consciousness. But he sure as hell recalled the aftermath.
He rubbed his eyes and focused on the scrub-clad person hovering over him. “Yep. What… I mean…” For a split second, he couldn’t remember why he was here, since waking up in hospitals had become so much a part of his normal life. He wrinkled his nose at the smell—rubbery and medicinal.
He saw Kayla then, standing just behind the nurse, still hanging on to that damn kid from the ill-fated meeting. “I just wanted to let you know that Child Protective Services are here. They’ll take the little one off your hands. You and your…friend are free to go.”
He blinked fast, trying to parse this. Kayla sat down next to him. The child, now somewhat cleaner and wearing dry clothes that were too large for her, sat with one arm around Kayla’s neck, thumb jammed into her mouth. She eyeballed Brock from that position, her blue eyes still wary.
“Are you sure? I mean, we can… My friend and I… We can stay…” Kayla’s voice sounded pinched and stressed. Her eyes were red as if she’d been crying. He put a hand on her arm. She flinched so hard the little girl flinched and started fussing. “Sorry,” she whispered into the girl’s matted hair. “Seriously. You don’t have to—”
The nurse looked sympathetic but firm. “I’m sorry. Neither of you are relatives. You told me yourself you just happened to be at that AA meeting today.”
“Yes, but…but…Brock?” Kayla turned to him, her eyes wide, wild with dismay. She was clinging to the little girl almost as hard as the girl was to her.
He sucked in a breath. He wanted to make this right. His need to make this right was so urgent it was like a giant hand was squeezing his chest, making him breathless. He got slowly to his feet, attempting to appear authoritarian.
“Listen, what’s the harm in us hanging around, keeping the kid calm? We were at a meeting with her mother—actually NA, Narcotics Anonymous—so we know what she’s going through. And the kid is…” He turned and gestured to them. “She’s so torn up and seems calm now, with Kayla and me.”
“Sir, I understand and I’m sorry but—” A clanging alarm made her back away. “I have to go. But the CPS will be here in fifteen minutes.”
“Okay,” he said, his hands shoved into his pockets, watching as staff scrambled around, heading for a room with a flashing blue light over the door. “Um…isn’t that…?”
The door of the room flew open, revealing a scrum of people around what he assumed was a bed, working, yelling, while various alarms and other noises blared. The door swung shut again. He swallowed and sat back down.
“Oh my God,” Kayla whispered. “That’s her room, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
They waited and watched. At one point, Kayla held out her hand and Brock took it, holding it tight while medical personnel poured in and out of the room. They’d followed the ambulance in his car, Kayla holding the child in her lap against the law, and had ended up at County General, what was more often known as the Medicaid Hotel. It was where you went when you didn’t have a sweet safety net of insurance like he’d always had, no matter how dumb his shenanigans might have been.
The place was about as dire as you’d expect. Grimy and hot, as if they couldn’t even afford to run the air conditioning full blast. The random human detritus surrounding them were dark-skinned, many bleeding, some crying, most glaring down at the cracked linoleum floor under their feet.
“Oh shit, Brock.” She let go of his hand and pointed. The movement woke the girl on her lap. She let out a howl as if having a nightmare even as she woke. A couple of men and one woman had emerged, looking grim, leaving the door half open.
“Time of death, five-o-eight,” someone said from inside the room.
Kayla started moaning and rocking the girl back and forth. Brock got up. His reaction to the stress was to lurch into management mode. He needed to find the proper authorities and get this kid turned over to them. The noise, heat and overwhelming stench of unwashed bodies and blood and general hospital-ness was making his gut churn. To his shock, Kayla stood up next to him and whispered in his ear. “Let’s go.”
“What?”
“Let’s go. I’m not leaving her to…foster care or worse. She’s already traumatized by God knows what. I can’t let her be—”
“That’s not our decision to—”
“Fuck you and your decisions. I’m leaving.” She whirled away from him, clinging to the girl who had her hands locked together behind Kayla’s neck.
“But…wait…”
She got as far as the elevator before a couple of nurses intercepted her and marched her straight back to where they’d been sitting. For some reason, at that moment, the beautiful determination on Kayla’s face slammed into him. He was almost always the first in any room to notice the hot women and leap right in, always flirting these days. In his bad old days, he’d have his hand up one skirt and would be eyeballing the next target within hours of spying someone as drop-dead appealing as Kayla Hettinger.
But for some reason, his reaction to her had been muted. Most likely thanks to this latest cocktail of dope they had him on. That was the point of it after all—dulling his sharpest, least appealing edges. Now, however, now… He studied her face as she held on to the little girl. Her features were not perfect, taken separately, but together, she resembled an exotic model—a woman just this side of gorgeous, falling somewhere between interesting-looking and beautiful.
Five-o-eight, his mind chimed, recalling that for the time of death, as well as the fact that as of four-thirty he had missed a dose of meds—his crucial daily hit of lithium—a relatively new addition to the mix and the one thing that dulled him the most.
“I’m sorry,” one of the nurses was saying as the other one began talking to the little girl, trying to coax her to let go of Kayla’s neck. “But this child has to be evaluated and then turned over to Protective Services.”
“Protective Services,” Kayla spat out as she backed away. “Protective, my ass. It’s nothing but a holding pen. And a dangerous one at that. I won’t let you take her.”
“Ma’am,” the nurse said, exasperated, and over this whole scene.
“Don’t touch me,” Kayla yelped when an orderly appeared, the muscle, ready to wrestle the baby out of Kayla’s arms. “Brock, don’t let them.”
“I’m… I…” He ran fingers through his hair. The ants were on the move, and had been for a while now. They were making their collective presence well known right now, with their typical crap timing.
She glared at him, keeping one hand on the back of the girl’s head. Her face was red. Strands of dark hair that had come loose from her ponytail framed her forehead and cheeks. Her lips were full and ever so slightly ragged. He felt his body flush with blood, including the last place he needed it to, as he watched her. He turned away.
“Restroom,” he choked out.
A nurse pointed down the hall. He ran, leaving her yelling for him, which made the kid start screaming again.
Even as he shoved the door open, hellbent on getting some water on his face, he realized his error. He looked at her, saw her surrounded, cornered by the medical staff, clutching that child to her like a talisman, or a shield. He sucked in a breath and headed back down the hall, determined to do something right for a change, and not just something that was all about him and his weaknesses.
“Excuse me,” he said, shouldering his way none too gently through the crowd and standing next to Kayla. Tears streamed down her face, mingling with the little girl’s own. “Listen. Can you give us a minute? And back off a little. We haven’t done anything wrong. We’re the ones who sat here with this little girl while her mother died of an overdose, all right?” He glared at each of them until they gave him some space.
Kayla leaned into him. He put an arm around her, feeling her tense the second he touched her. “Thanks. Now, if we sneak out, I think we can…”
He dropped his arm and turned her so they were facing each other. She was so hopeful, so damn beautiful it was painful to disappoint her. “Kayla. We can’t just take her. They’d find us and we’d be in a shit load of trouble. You know that. I know that. Let’s hand her over and then we’ll—”
“No!” She pulled away, glaring at him. “You don’t know shit, Brock Fitzgerald. I don’t care if you are an addict. You were a fucking rich boy junkie. Your mommy and daddy took care of you all the way through. You have no fucking idea what it’s like to be in the God damned system. And she’s already been through so much…”
“Kayla…I’m…”
“You’ll never understand. She’ll get shuttled around, probably abused…”
Brock realized that a couple of new people had joined the group down the hall. Two women in cheap suits, holding file folders and wearing fake-sympathetic expressions. For a moment, he pitied them and their horrific job. He held up a hand, keeping them all at bay for a few more minutes.
“We can’t just take her. You know that. Kayla, look at me.”
She shook her head, keeping her face pressed into the child’s shoulder as she backed up until she hit the wall between a pair of elevator doors. He walked up to her, as if approaching a rabid animal trapped under a porch. She clutched the child closer, shaking her head, tears streaming down her face. But when he tugged the girl, she let her go. As if resigned to her fate, the girl remained silent, even as she reached for Kayla before giving up and shoving her thumb back in her mouth.
“It will be all right,” he assured everyone, including himself. “I’ll talk to them. See if they’ll consider us…uh…me or you…for temporary placement.”
“Don’t be stupid,” she spat out, swiping at her eyes. “That’ll never fucking happen.”
He opened his mouth but nothing came out. Because she was right.
“It’s fine. I don’t care. Take her.”
He handed the child off to the suited ladies, who scurried away, avoiding any further scenes. All the residual adrenaline he’d been floating on for the last few minutes flew out of him, leaving him depleted and weak, wanting a drink and a hit. He sighed and turned to Kayla, hoping they might salvage something, a friendship maybe, based on this shared fucked up experience.
She’d slid to the floor and now sat, elbows on her knees, staring into the air in front of her. He dropped down next to her, unsure what to do or say. “You’re right, you know,” he managed, leaning forward, parroting her stance. “About me being the rich asshole-type of junkie.”
“I know that,” she said, her voice devoid of any affect whatsoever. “That kid doesn’t have a fucking chance. You know that, right? She’s doomed. Just like I was.”
“Well, maybe not.”
She scoffed and rose, leaving him down on the filthy floor, staring up at her. “Thanks for the ride,” she said, keeping her voice light.
“Wait, hang on. Let’s go…eat something.”
“Not hungry.” She was already striding toward the exit door.
He sat for a solid five minutes after she’d stomped out, watching the hospital’s ER staff close in around the space she’d just vacated. Making it seem as if she’d never existed.