Vital Signs

Shannon was folding clothes on the kitchen table when she heard the knock on her door. Her heart started to hammer when she opened it and saw Rudy, because she knew he was bringing news about Murphy. He had no other reason to be there.

“Somebody out in the car wants to see you.” Rudy’s acne-ravaged face twisted into a grin. She knew right away it was Murphy in the car, and her heart nearly jumped out of her chest.

She didn’t lock the door, because she’d only be gone a few minutes.

She had to tell Murphy about Davie—had to make him understand why she hadn’t had the abortion like she’d agreed before he got sent to jail.

Rudy opened the back door of the car, and she saw Murphy for the first time in almost three years. Her heart hammered and her knees started trembling at the familiar sight of his silky dark curls, his cobalt-blue eyes. Davie looked so much like him, right down to the cleft in his chin.

“Hey, babe, long time no see.” Murphy took her hands and pulled her into the car, and she collapsed against his chest, tears pouring down her cheeks. She forgot the times he’d hit her, the times he’d hurt her, the lies he’d told. All she remembered was that he was the first and only man she’d ever loved, and she’d been so lonely so long. When he kissed her, hard and deep, she was instantly wet with wanting him.

And then Rudy started the engine and roared off, and she panicked because her baby was back there alone in the apartment. She screamed at them to let her out, her kid was alone.

“Chill out,” Rudy growled, cracking his gum. “We’re only going around the block. I have to make a pickup and I’m late.”

Shannon knew he was talking about drugs. Rudy was a dealer. She’d worked for him—that was how she’d met Murphy.

Then Murphy got that scary look on his face and wanted to know what kid she was talking about. So she had to tell him she’d done exactly what he’d said not to do. She’d gone ahead and had the baby, not used the money he’d given her for an abortion.

Murphy got mad, and instead of going around the block, Rudy headed for Stanley Park. She could have jumped out when they stopped at the lights, but she didn’t. She went blubbering on about Davie, how sweet he was, how much he looked like Murphy, how proud Murphy would be when he saw him.

But Murphy was pissed off because she hadn’t done what he’d told her.

Rudy got the stuff, and she refused when they offered her some.

“Guess you don’t love me anymore,” Murphy said, and she denied it. He said prove it, and then she let him shoot her up the way he always had before, and after that, nothing was important except the feeling, the feeling she’d fought against and yearned for and dreamed of and managed to avoid since the day she’d found out she was pregnant.

Things were blurry after that. She told herself that Davie would be okay. He always slept a couple of hours, and Tonya was coming today. The door was unlocked. Tonya would be mad at her. Shannon had promised her never again, but she also knew Tonya would take care of Davie.

And for Shannon, time ceased to be.

For Davie, time stretched nearly into eternity, although when he grew older, he had no memory of sliding off the bed, calling for his mother, sobbing until his throat was raw from tears and terrible thirst. He never remembered the endless days or the long nights. He had no recollection of slipping finally into something more than sleep.

For Shannon, it seemed only a few minutes before Rudy pulled up in front of the apartment and she saw the ambulance and the police cars and the firemen, but it must have been longer, maybe lots longer. She couldn’t remember. She screamed and tried to get out, but Murphy held her.

“The kid’s okay. They’re taking care of him. Here, this’ll make you feel better.”

And after that she didn’t try to remember.

CHAPTER ONE

THE EMERGENCY ROOM at St. Joseph’s Medical Centre in Vancouver hummed in the midday heat. The sound came from huge air-conditioning units, white noise that the ER staff no longer heard. They heard, instead, the scream of sirens arriving at one of the emergency bays, and the intercom announcement that signaled incoming trauma.

“Trauma alert, emergency department. Paramedics arriving with abandoned baby—male, estimate two years old. Dehydrated, not conscious. ETA four minutes.”

“We’re set up in room three.” Triage nurse Leslie Yates did her best to keep her voice calm and steady, but the one thing that most disturbed her and the rest of the ER staff was a mistreated child.

One of the doctors cursed under his breath, and Leslie knew her own face mirrored the expressions of the rest of the ER staff when the medics arrived with their tiny patient. She found a moment to talk to one of them and he described where and how the child had been found.

“Apartment hotel downtown, a real dump. Must have been ninety degrees in there. The kid was too little to get to a tap. If he hadn’t turned on the TV, the neighbor would never have gone to investigate. She got pissed off when the sound went on all night and all morning.”

Leslie notified Social Services just to be sure they knew. It turned out the paramedics had already called, and probably the firemen and police, as well, but it didn’t hurt to make sure.

During the next half hour, she dealt with several more incoming crises, but every moment she was aware of the drama going on in trauma room three.

“How’s it looking with the boy?” Leslie asked one of the nurses when she hurried out with blood samples. The young woman shook her head, her expression grim. “Poor little thing’s dehydrated. His vitals are way off the scale.”

Ten minutes later Leslie saw a flurry of frantic activity in and around room three and her stomach tensed. The boy must have arrested. Tension was palpable in the ER as the staff fought to save his life. Leslie did what most of them were doing. She prayed.

By the time her shift ended at three o’clock, the boy had stabilized, much to everyone’s relief. He was sent up to pediatric intensive care, and a collective sigh of gratitude could almost be heard throughout the ER. The firemen and the medics who’d attended had called several times to find out how he was doing, and before she went off shift, Leslie made a point of phoning them all to tell them the child was stable.

They all knew the situation might only be temporary, that he could easily go bad again during the night. But at least for now, he was holding his own.

With one last fervent and heartfelt prayer for the little boy’s continued well-being, Leslie went home.

ROY ZEDYCK had gotten home late. There’d been an emergency—one of the foster kids he’d recently placed had pulled a fire alarm at his school. Roy had spent the past two hours meeting with the principal, the kid’s foster mother and the nine-year-old boy, trying to calm them all down. The boy’s explanation for why he’d done such a thing was that life was boring.

This from a kid who’d stolen a car the month before and run it through a neighbor’s garden, added bubble bath to a washing machine and dog-napped a mutt outside a grocery store. Roy could only pray that these new foster parents would persevere, that they’d see past the kid’s penchant for mischief to the brilliant potential Roy detected. The kid had an IQ right off the scale, but he’d managed to wear out three sets of foster parents in less than a year.

Roy pulled on the trousers to his gray suit—his only good suit. He zipped up the pants, noticing how loose they were around the waist. He’d dropped some weight since he last wore them, and he couldn’t afford to lose weight, because he had no intention of buying a new wardrobe.

Must be stress doing it, because it sure as hell wasn’t sex. His love life had been at a standstill for weeks, ever since Anna left in search of greener wallets.

It wasn’t exercise, either. He hadn’t been for a run in ten days, and he’d had to miss the last three pickup rugby games. The court case he’d been involved in had eaten up what little time the job hadn’t.

His testimony had resulted in the formation of a commission that would eventually make changes to the system, but Roy couldn’t forget that those changes had come about as the result of a child’s death. It seemed at times that the world was going to hell, and all social workers could do was spit on the flames. He was weary in a way he hadn’t been since he first took the job with the ministry seven years ago this month.

The phone rang, and he shot it a baleful glare. It might be work, and he already had a briefcase filled with files he’d barely looked at. However, he was part of the after-hours unit, and he was on call.

Or it could be his sister, Nicole, who was going with him to the family party at their sister Jennifer’s tonight. Or it might be the retirement home where his mother was battling another bout of flu. Whoever it was, he had to answer.

He picked up the receiver and silently cursed. It was his team leader, and that could only mean another emergency.

“Hi, Marty, what’s up?”

“That abandoned kid at St. Joe’s—did you see the item on him in the newspaper yesterday?”

Roy’s heart sank. Abused or abandoned kids were bad; they pulled out emotions already raw from overuse.

“I saw it.” There’d been a double murder in North Van, so the article had been buried on a back page of the Province.

“I know your caseload is crazy already and Larissa was supposed to be on this one, but she just called me. Her father died, and she’s flying back to Calgary tonight.”

They’d been shorthanded for the past five years, and with the recent government cutbacks, things had gone from desperate to ridiculous. It took restraint not to remind Marty of that. Roy let him ramble on about their co-workers’ latest personal problems.

“Rita’s getting married this weekend and Jake’s having a hemorrhoid operation. Larissa’s done the preliminary work on the case. The kid’s name is David Riggs. His mother’s known to the ministry—she’s on assistance, name’s Shannon Riggs. I’ve got the case file right here. Mother’s seventeen, she was on the street at twelve, heavy into drugs, but she straightened out when she got pregnant. One of the downtown volunteers, Tonya Cabral, took her in and helped her get clean. The police and the downtown street workers are watching out for Shannon, but so far no sign. David’s two years two months. He was taken to St. Joe’s forty-eight hours ago seriously dehydrated. A neighbor found him, called the fire department. Estimates are the boy was alone three days.”

Roy shuddered. He’d seen babies like that before. He’d watched one of them die.