Vital Signs

Hailey smiled at Nicole. “That’s sweet of you, but don’t go overboard. Stuff gets shared in here, and it also gets lost. But it is nice for the kids to have something that belongs just to them.”

“I need to use a phone.” Roy had to contact the police and the firemen who’d found David.

“There’s one at the nurses’ station.”

“Thanks. I’ll use it on our way out.”

“How on earth do you stand it?” Nicole was looking at Hailey, and there was awe and admiration in her voice. “I’d want to kidnap a baby like that and spoil the living daylights out of him.”

“All we can do is love ’em and let ’em go,” Hailey said with a resigned shrug. “Nursing is care, not cure.” She turned her attention to Roy. “And having said that, do you know anything at all about this so-called mother of his?”

Roy shook his head. “Sorry, that information’s confidential.”

“Figures. Protect the criminal at all costs,” Hailey said scornfully, giving him another of her scathing glances. “Makes you wonder what was going on in her head, walking out and leaving him like that.”

“He’s lucky to have you as his nurse,” Nicole said. “They all are. You’re obviously just what these kids need.”

“Hey, thanks.” Hailey’s resentment seemed to evaporate. Her grin was spontaneous and wide, her face animated. She had straight, white teeth, and her amber eyes sparkled. “It’s so good to hear that on the day you’re wearing a bunny costume at work.” She glanced at her wristwatch. “Whoops, speaking of work, I’ve gotta go. It’s time for meds.” She turned to Roy. “Dr. Larue is on his dinner break. He’ll be here later this evening if you want to speak with him. Or the aide can give you his cell number.” She waved a hand at Roy and Nicole and hurried off toward the nurses’ station, tail swishing with gay abandon.

Nicole watched her go. “Now there’s an unusual woman for you.”

“Vicious is more like it.” The looks she’d given him were lethal. He wouldn’t want her armed with a hypodermic.

“She’s not vicious, she’s gutsy.” Nicole looped an arm through Roy’s, and they hurried toward the nurses’ desk. “Balls enough to tell you off and enough perspective to accept the parameters of her job. It’s evident she really likes being a nurse.”

“Nurses, lawyers—power. It’s all about power with you females.”

But he silently agreed with Nicole. Hailey Bergstrom was an example of someone who’d obviously found the perfect job, and it suited her, even the part that included wearing rabbit ears and a tail.

Or cutting him into chunks and spitting out the pieces.

CHAPTER TWO

FROM THE NURSES’ STATION Hailey watched them go down the corridor, Zedyck’s arm looped around the woman’s shoulders.

They could have posed for a magazine ad, she mused. They made a striking couple, both tall, both blessed with an abundance of physical beauty.

Nicole was a stunner, but based on one short meeting, she also seemed to be a truly nice person, lacking the self-centered attitude that sometimes went with such good looks.

Hailey’s mind naturally turned to her older sister, Laura. Laura was drop-dead gorgeous, too, but in Hailey’s opinion, Laura was about as self-centered as it was possible to get. She’d carved out a perfect life, by her standards, and wasn’t the least bit interested in other people’s choices. She’d married Frank, a creep with the same sort of good looks she possessed, produced two perfect kids and decorated a house in the suburbs with a lot of help from Martha Stewart’s magazines.

Hailey wouldn’t know Martha Stewart if the woman had a stroke in her living room, which was probable if she ever laid eyes on it.

How different could two sisters be?

And it was interesting how beautiful women gravitated to men whose looks complemented their own.

Roy Zedyck was as dark as Nicole was fair, and in spite of his mental lapses, he was good to look at, if your taste ran to crooked noses and grass-green eyes and jawlines out of an old western. Good hair, too. She liked it wavy and covering a guy’s shirt collar, the way his did.

For the remaining two hours of her shift, Hailey worked steadily, checking on David often, changing babies and feeding them, telling wild stories and singing nonsense songs as she slowly got her older patients into their pajamas. She ensured that everyone’s meds were administered and did her best to make the kids laugh whenever she could. Even the sickest of them rewarded her with tiny smiles, and to her those smiles were precious gifts.

Hailey always took her time with the kids, even though she knew her supervisor, Margaret Cross, repeatedly documented her for spending too much time with the patients and not enough getting the paperwork done before the next shift arrived.

Margaret was a nurse of the old school who made a point of coming to work in a white dress uniform, white stockings and her nursing cap, a regalia that had the other nurses calling her TGONP behind her back—the ghost of nurses past.

It was obvious Margaret hated her, and Hailey pretended she didn’t give a flying fig. The head nurse couldn’t get her fired, no matter how much she disapproved. That was the beauty of knowing you were excellent at your job. Oh, yeah, and a good union helped, too.

The thing was, there was no way you could rush little kids, nor should you. It was hard enough for them, trapped in here, feeling sick, most of them horribly lonely for their parents. They needed to have some control over their environment, Hailey felt, and if it came in the guise of slowing down the system, so be it. Margaret could have been a general in the armed forces, she believed so strongly in discipline and rules.

When at last the reports had been made to the new shift and Hailey was done for the day, she took off the rabbit ears and tail and rescued her pet, Skippy, from the staff lounge, where he’d been banished after Margaret found him in the playroom.

Hailey was carrying his cage on her way to the elevator when she changed her mind, stowed Skippy back in a corner of the staff lounge and detoured to David’s room.

There was another child in the room with David now, but he was asleep. David was wide awake, lying silent in his crib, his stuffed dog held close to his body, his eyes big and scared when he looked up at her. Earlier she’d changed and bathed him, and held him for as long as she could possibly manage it. His electrolytes were still way below normal, which meant that he probably wasn’t feeling good at all. His sweet little face was somber, and the anxious, frightened look in his blue eyes tugged at her heartstrings.

“Hey, dumpling, you’re wide awake.” She grinned at him and held out her arms, but he just looked up at her with a solemn, wary expression.

“Just you wait, Davie. You’re gonna break down and smile at me yet,” she teased in a whisper, so as not to wake his roommate.

David smelled clean and fresh, and there was a sweet, elusive baby odor to his skin. She leaned down and pressed her nose against his neck and blew a gentle bubble. He lifted a tentative hand and touched her hair, his eyes wide.

“Some mad mess that mop is, huh, Davie? People keep suggesting I get it styled, but I’m a sucker for the natural look. And you little guys like it. You can get your hands in and really yank. Hey, partner, wanna go for a walk?”

She picked him up. His body stiffened with alarm, but he didn’t cry. He pointed at his dog, and she tucked it in his arms. Hauling the IV pole, she carried him on her hip down the corridor to an empty room where there was a rocking chair. Hailey sank into it, and after a while she felt David relax against her.

For forty minutes she rocked and sang him snippets from James Taylor and Janis Joplin. He fell asleep, and because his warm, soft little body comforted her, she went on rocking and singing.

At last one of the other nurses stuck her head in and smiled.

“Hailey, you still here? I thought you’d be long gone by now. You’ve gotta get a life, girl.”

“Hi, Karen. I needed a hug, so I kidnapped David.”

“He’s a real sweetheart. I heard about him from one of the ER docs.”

“He’s an angel.”

Karen came in and studied David, sleeping soundly against Hailey’s chest. “You’re right, he is an angel. But then, you say that about all of them. No word on his mom yet?”

Hailey shook her head. “His new social worker was by earlier. The other one’s dad died, so she’s gone to his funeral. This guy’s name is Roy Zedyck.”

“Oh, yeah, everybody’s heard of him. Big tall guy, great buns. Wow, he’s a celebrity. He was the one who was in the news a while back, the inquiry into that little boy who got sent back to his birth mother and ended up dead?”

Hailey shuddered. “I don’t watch stuff like that, or read about it, either. What we get in here is quite enough for me.”

“Everybody says Robertson’s testimony was the reason they set up that independent commission, so there’ll be someone else for kids to turn to besides the ministry. Hopefully decisions will be made that are truly in the child’s best interest, and not just some arbitrary ruling handed down by one judge.”

“Sounds like a good idea.”