Vital Signs Read online

  “I hope so. The police are picking him up right now. He should be here in a few minutes.”

  It took her a moment to digest that. “Then who…” She gestured at the treatment room. “Shannon?”

  Roy nodded. “I came in through emergency because I wanted to make certain David wasn’t here, and I happened to see medics bringing someone in with an overdose. Her face was covered with a breathing mask, but I saw the tattoos on her arms and knew who it was.”

  “Is she…?”

  “They’ve given her Narcan.”

  Hailey knew the powerful drug blocked the narcotic receptors. People on the edge of death from overdose made what seemed a miraculous recovery when injected with Narcan.

  “She’s conscious,” Roy said. “She told me where she left David.”

  “Not…not alone?” The words were a prayer.

  Roy shook his head. “With someone named Janet Riley, a woman she met at the library.” He glanced toward the street doors. “Here they are now.”

  Hailey ran toward the police officer carrying David. The toddler was wrapped in a gray blanket and wearing blue flannel pajamas several sizes too big, and his eyes were confused and heavy with sleep. He spotted Hailey.

  “Lee-lee, I got Bonzo.” From the depths of the blanket he drew out the battered dog and held it out for her to see.

  “Good for you. Bonzo looks healthy. And so do you, punkin.” She smiled at him and took him into her arms. She cuddled him close, burying her face in his curls and the sweetness of his neck, fighting tears of relief. David put up with it for a moment, but then he looked around and his lip quivered.

  “Where my mommy? I want my mommy.”

  One of the ER doctors came out of the cubicle just then. “Miss Riggs is conscious and she wants to talk to you, Mr. Zedyck.”

  Hailey nodded to Roy. “David and I’ll go to the cafeteria and get some juice.”

  “Where Mama?” The little boy wasn’t letting up, and Hailey was afraid that in a moment he’d start screaming, so she decided in favor of the truth.

  “Mommy’s sick. She’s right in there with the doctor. We can go see her soon, okay? Let’s go find some juice first.”

  David scowled, but he didn’t make a fuss. He was thirsty and he drank the apple juice she bought him in one long swallow, and then pointed at the corridor. “Go Mama now.”

  “Okay, Mr. One-Track Mind.” Hailey stuffed Bonzo in her coat pocket, and with David heavy on her hip, made her way back to emergency.

  “Shannon wants to talk to you alone,” Roy told her, meeting her outside the treatment cubicle. “They said it’s okay for you to go in.”

  Hailey hesitated. She didn’t want David to see his mother if she was sick. She tried to hand him to Roy, but the child clung to her and shook his head, his lower lip sticking out mutinously, his arms locked around Hailey’s neck.

  “Mama,” he insisted.

  She gave up and stepped inside, and David let out a squeal when he saw Shannon. She was sitting on the edge of the treatment table, an IV in one arm, but otherwise she looked quite normal.

  “Mama.” David scrambled from Hailey’s arms into Shannon’s. He patted her face with his hands and touched the IV with a finger. “Mama sore?” He pressed his lips to her cheek.

  The girl was weak, and it was obvious it was all she could do to hold on to him. Hailey stayed close, supporting David’s back in case he slipped from Shannon’s grasp.

  “Davie, hey, my big boy.” Shannon closed her eyes and her face contorted in agony as he wrapped his arms around her neck. After a moment she looked at Hailey and her mouth trembled. Her face was ashen, and the bones stood out in skeletal relief.

  “You were right,” she whispered. “I’m not a good mother to him. Maybe I can’t ever be. I know…” Her voice broke, and it took time for her to be able to go on.

  Hailey waited, not daring to hope. Her heart was pumping, and her arms ached from supporting the boy in Shannon’s thin arms.

  “I know you love him a lot, and…and Roy told me you’re a good person.” She seemed to gather every ounce of strength, and her voice was suddenly loud and strong in the small room. “I want you to take him. I’ll…I’ll sign the papers so you can adopt him. He deserves better than me.” She held David convulsively close, and then she loosened her hold on him, looking into his face, trying desperately to smile through the tears raining down her cheeks.

  “Mama has to go into the hospital, Davie. Mama’s sick. Remember when you were in the hospital? Mama can’t take care of you, so you go home with Hailey, okay?”

  “No.” David’s chin wobbled.

  “Yes.” Shannon’s voice was firm.

  For one endless moment Hailey considered accepting. But Susan’s story about being a teenage mom was fresh in her mind, and Bonzo weighed heavily in her pocket, the battered symbol of a little boy’s love for and need of his mother.

  She cleared her throat and looked directly into Shannon’s ravaged face, sending a silent prayer of thanks to Brittany’s mother, who had taught her so much about love and what it really meant.

  “I’ll take him now and care for him, if Roy says it’s okay, but only till you get your life straightened out.” It took everything Hailey had to say these words. “People can’t be easily replaced, Shannon, and he loves you. He’s a powerful reason for you to take control of your life. He’s such a special little boy.”

  Shannon’s tears turned to wrenching sobs. David patted her head and started to cry, too. Exhausted, Shannon lifted David into Hailey’s arms and collapsed on the bed.

  Hailey hauled Bonzo out of her pocket and offered him to David, thinking to comfort him, but David took the dog and stretched toward his mother. With Hailey holding him, he tucked it into the crook of Shannon’s arm. He didn’t struggle as Hailey carried him out of the room, but he did cry, deep, heart-breaking sobs that Hailey felt in every pore of her body.

  Outside, Roy was waiting. He draped an arm around both of them.

  “I think you’d better get this boy home and into bed,” he said.

  Her heart leaped. “Will you come with us?”

  “Nothing in this world could stop me.”

  ROY DROVE the truck, and David cried himself to sleep in the car seat they’d borrowed from the hospital. The next days and weeks would be agonizingly hard for him, and for Hailey, because the fact was, he wanted and needed Shannon.

  “Shannon said…” Hailey began, but he shook his head.

  “We’ll figure all that out later. Right now there’s something more important to discuss.” He pulled the truck into a bus zone and put the gearshift in park. The wipers went on struggling with the downpour. A streetlight provided just enough illumination for Hailey to see his face, his eyes, as he turned toward her then reached across and covered her hand with his, where it cradled David’s shoulder.

  “Hailey, I love you. I want to be with you always. Will you marry me?”

  A city bus pulled up behind them and the driver honked his horn.

  Roy didn’t budge. His eyes were on her face, and everything she’d ever dreamed of was here, in the cab of an old pickup at three o’clock on a rainy morning.

  “Okay,” she said. What was it with her vocabulary? She cleared her throat. “Yes. Yes, of course I will. Marry you.”

  The bus driver honked again as Roy leaned across the gearshift and the sad, sleeping boy and kissed her, but Hailey didn’t think it was an angry or impatient honk.

  She chose to believe it was a benediction.

  EPILOGUE

  HE WAS TALL for five, taller than most of the kids starting kindergarten that warm September morning. He’d used gel on his hair, brushing his unruly dark curls nearly flat, and the green backpack he’d chosen looked too big for his shoulders.

  He clung to his beloved daddy’s hand until they reached the door where the teacher waited. She was a slender young woman in jeans and a Batman sweatshirt, and Hailey smiled at her. Her name was Amy, and they’d m
et the previous week at a welcome-to-kindergarten evening. Hailey felt she could trust someone who wore a Batman shirt the first day of school.

  “Hello, David.” Amy crouched down so she was at his level. Hailey noticed that he’d already let go of Roy’s hand.

  “Welcome to kindergarten. Want to come in and meet the other kids?”

  David nodded. Amy stood up and smiled at the three adults.

  “He’ll be just fine,” she assured them, her hand on David’s shoulder. She bent to him again. “Maybe you oughtta say goodbye to your little sister?”

  David turned and grinned at Emily Ann, enthroned in her stroller. The grin revealed the gap where his two front teeth hadn’t yet grown in. His blue eyes danced with excitement, and his husky voice was confident.

  “Bye, Em. Bye, Mom. Bye, Lee. See you after school, Daddy.”

  Without a single backward glance, he turned and went inside.

  Emily let out an imperious howl and banged her heels against the footrest. “Me, me, me go David!” she demanded, struggling to get out and follow her brother. Her red curls stood out like a flag, and her imperious personality was evident in her voice.

  Hailey wheeled the stroller quickly away, pulling a toy car out to distract her howling daughter. Emily Ann threw it on the sidewalk.

  Shannon picked it up. Her eyes were wet, and she swiped at them with her sleeve as she stuck the toy into the carrier. “Well, I guess Davie’s a big boy now. Our baby’s grown up.” Her voice was wobbly. “I’ll probably see you guys tomorrow. Right now I’ve got to get to work.” She gave Hailey a quick, hard hug and then loped toward the bus stop. At twenty, she still resembled a skinny kid, tight black pants hugging nonexistent hips, hair dyed a shocking pink and cropped within an inch of her scalp.

  The familiar, comforting weight of Roy’s arm came around Hailey’s shoulder, and she blinked away the suspicious dampness in her eyes as she turned and smiled up at him.

  “He’ll be okay,” she said. It was really a question.

  “He’ll have made friends with half the class by now,” Roy assured her.

  She knew it would be like that. David had a winning personality, a kind, caring and generous nature that attracted adults and children alike. In many ways, he was old beyond his years. He’d had to be. He was still helping to raise his mother to adulthood.

  “If only your daughter was half as agreeable as our son,” Hailey teased. Emily Ann was this minute taking off her sandals to pitch at her mother in protest at not being allowed to go with her adored big brother.

  Roy recovered one and stuck it in his jacket pocket. “We ought to let Ingrid raise her—they’re so much alike.” The words were tough, but the tone betrayed that Em had her daddy wrapped around her tiny finger. She also had her paternal grandparents completely charmed, as well as Ingrid and Sam. Even Jean was beguiled, although these days Jean was preoccupied with the retired doctor she was seeing.

  As for Em’s godmother, Nicole—well, thanks to her, Emily Ann had a wardrobe to rival any royal princess, and she already knew a weed from a flower. She couldn’t quite climb into the tree house Nicole had built, but the scrapes on her arms and legs attested to Em’s strength of mind—nothing was going to deter her for long. Nicole, either. She’d finally given the legal firm her resignation, effective the end of the year, and she’d had cards made up that read, “Need a cultivated gardener? Call the Ace of Spades.”

  “Shannon seems to like this new job.” Hailey said to Roy; David’s mother was selling aromatherapy products. Hailey couldn’t count the number of jobs Shannon had held and then sabotaged in the past three years. She’d been in drug rehab twice more since the first time, but it had been fourteen months now since the last episode. Maybe it was safe to hope that this time she’d make it.

  “I’ve been asked to give a talk on open adoption at the upcoming convention,” Roy said. “Any chance you’d come along and tell them your side of things?”

  “I’d have to be honest about how tough it is,” Hailey warned. Shannon had been as much a part of their lives as David had, and the challenges she’d presented had been far greater than any they’d faced with him. There’d been times when Hailey wished she’d accepted the offer Shannon had made that long-ago night in St. Joe’s ER. She and Roy had started their marriage with a two-year-old crying for his mother and a troubled teen to nurture, and it hadn’t been easy.

  Gratifying, though. It had been gratifying.

  “Maybe it’s not always as challenging as it’s been for us.” Roy leaned over and kissed her windblown curls. “But then, we’re the type who thrive on challenge.”

  It was a common bond, one of the many they shared. Roy’s job was difficult and draining. He’d turned down two offers of promotion because a move into upper management meant he’d no longer be directly involved with people like David and Shannon, and he understood that they symbolized the work he was born to do.

  Hailey worked two or three days a week at St. Joe’s, doing her best to comfort the kids in the pediatric ward and make them laugh. She’d worked as head nurse for a full year after Margaret’s death, but it hadn’t suited her.

  She was lucky that day care had never been a problem. Laura had taken care of David from the first, and after her own sweet Matthew was born, Laura had started an exclusive and very successful day care center, remaining defiantly single while staying very much in love with Michael.

  “I think this contrary girl of ours needs a nap.” Roy now had Em’s other shoe poked into his jacket pocket, along with her pink socks. He was carrying her fluffy sweater. Their little daughter was red-faced and screaming, struggling to remove her shirt. Her major form of protest for the past few weeks had been stripping off all her clothes.

  “She’s a nudist by nature, like her daddy.” The memory of that long-ago dinner always made Hailey grin.

  “I don’t have to be at work until after lunch,” Roy said, giving her a lecherous look. “Got any leftover lasagna?”

  “I keep a supply frozen, just for romantic moments like these.” She laughed with him, loving him, wanting him more than ever, as he did her, and her heart swelled with gratitude and joy.

  He leaned toward her and whispered something wicked and erotic and enticing in her ear, and around them, the September morning seemed to shimmer.

  ISBN: 978 1 472 02650 7

  VITAL SIGNS

  © 2003 by Bobby Hutchinson

  First Published in Great Britain in 2003

  Harlequin (UK) Limited

  Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

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  Bobby Hutchinson, Vital Signs