Million Dollar Baby

Bodine grunted as he checked the chamber.

“Nothing up here,” Deputy White called down from the loft.

“I could’ve guessed,” Bodine muttered under his breath as he turned his attention back to the stall, instructing Chandra to reconstruct the scene. She pointed out the position of the baby and answered all the questions he asked. Deputy White climbed down the ladder from the loft and, after observing the stall, asked a few more questions that Chandra couldn’t answer.

The deputies didn’t say as much, but Chandra read in their expressions that they’d come up against a dead end. Outside, they walked through the paddocks and fields, and even followed a couple of trails into the nearby woods. But they found nothing.

“Well, that’s about all we can do for now,” Bodine said as they walked across the yard. He brushed the dust from his hands.

“What about the baby?” Chandra asked, hoping for just a little more information on the infant. “What happens to him?”

“Don’t worry about him. He’s in good hands at the hospital. The way I hear it, Dr. O’Rourke is the best E.R. doctor in the county, and he’ll link the kid up to a good pediatrician.”

“I see.”

Bodine actually offered her a smile. “I’m sure O’Rourke will let you look in on the kid, if you want. In the meantime, we’ll keep looking for the baby’s ma.” He opened the passenger side of the cruiser while Deputy White slid behind the wheel. “If we find her, she’s got a whole lotta questions to answer before she gets her kid back.”

“And if you don’t find her?”

“The baby becomes a ward of the state until we can locate a parent, grandparent or other relative.”

Chandra’s heart wrenched at the thought. “He’ll be put in an institution?”

“Probably a foster home—whatever Social Services decides. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now, we have to find the mother or next of kin. We’ll keep you posted,” he said, as if reading the worry in her eyes for the very first time.

Bodine slid into his seat, and Deputy White put the car into gear. Chandra waited until the car had disappeared around the bend in the drive before returning to the house with the rifle.

So what happens next? she wondered. If nothing else, the baby was certainly a part of her life.

As she walked into the house, she heard the phone ringing. She dashed to the kitchen. “Hello?”

“Miss Hill?”

She froze as she recognized Dr. O’Rourke’s voice. “Hello, doctor,” she said automatically, though her throat was dry. Something was wrong with the baby. Why else would he phone her?

“I thought you’d like to know that the baby’s doing well,” he said, and her knees nearly gave out on her. Tears of relief sprang to her eyes. O’Rourke chuckled, and the sound was throaty. “He’s got the nurses working double time, but he’s eating, and his vital signs are normal.”

“Thank God.”

“Anytime you want to check on him, just call,” Dallas said.

“Thanks for calling.”

There was a long pause before O’Rourke replied. “You seemed concerned last night and…since the boy has no family that we know of…”

“I appreciate the call.”

* * *

AS DALLAS HUNG UP the phone in his office at the hospital, he wondered what the devil had gotten into him. Calling Chandra Hill? All night long he’d remembered the worry in her eyes and, though he wasn’t scheduled to work for hours, he’d gotten up and gone directly to the hospital, where he’d examined the baby again.

There was something about the boy that touched a part of him he’d thought was long buried, though he assumed his emotions were tangled up in the circumstances. The baby had been abandoned. Dallas’s emotional reaction to the infant was because he knew that baby had no one to love him. No wonder he had felt the unlikely tug on his heartstrings when he’d examined the baby and the infant had blinked up at him with trusting eyes.

“This is crazy,” Dallas muttered, and headed back to the parking lot. He would drive over to the club and swim out his frustrations before grabbing some breakfast.

* * *

RIVERBEND HOSPITAL APPEARED larger in daylight. The whitewashed walls sprawled upward and outward, seeming to grow along the hillside, spawning several clinics connected by wide breezeways. The Rocky Mountains towered behind one facility, and below it, within view, flowed the Rattlesnake River. The town of Ranger was three miles away.

Chandra parked her truck in the visitors lot and prepared herself for a confrontation with another nurse on an authority trip. She wouldn’t have to pass anywhere near the emergency room, so in all probability, she wouldn’t run into Nurse Lindquist again. Or Dr. O’Rourke. He’d appeared dead on his feet last night, surely by now he was sleeping the morning away.

Probably with his wife.

Chandra’s eyebrows pulled together, and above her nose a groove deepened—the worry line, Doug used to call it. The thought that Dr. O’Rourke was married shouldn’t have been unpleasant. Good Lord, he deserved a normal life with a wife and kids…yet…

“Oh, stop it!” she grumbled, walking under the flat roof of a breezeway leading to the main entrance of the hospital. The doors opened automatically and she walked through.

The reception area was carpeted in an industrial-strength weave of forest green. The walls were gray-white and adorned with framed wildlife posters hung exactly ten feet apart.

A pert nurse with a cap of dark curls, a dash of freckles strewn upon an upturned nose and a genuine smile greeted Chandra from behind the information desk. “May I help you?”

Chandra returned the woman’s infectious grin. “I hope so. I’m Chandra Hill. I brought in the baby—”

The nurse, Jane Winthrop, laughed. “I heard about you and the baby,” she said, her dark eyes flashing merrily. “I guess I should transfer to the night shift in E.R. That’s where all the action is.”

“Is it?” Chandra replied.

“Oh, yeah. But a lot of it’s not too pretty, y’know. Car accidents—there was a bad one last night, not too long before you brought in the baby.” Her smile faded and her pretty dark eyes grew serious. “Anyway, what can I do for you?”

Jane Winthrop was a refreshing change from Alma Lindquist.

“I’d like to see the baby, see how he’s doing.”

“No problem. He’s in pediatrics, on two. Take the elevator up one floor and turn to your left. Through the double doors and you’re there. The admitting nurse, Shannon Pratt, is still with him, I think. She’d just started her shift when they brought the baby in.”

Chandra didn’t waste any time. She followed Jane’s directions and stopped by the nurse’s station in the pediatric wing on the second floor. Chandra recognized Nurse Pratt, the slim brunette, but hadn’t met the other woman, plump, apple cheeked, with platinum blond hair, a tanning-booth shade to her skin and pale blue eyes rimmed with eyelashes that were thick with mascara.

“You’re back,” Shannon said, looking up from some paperwork on the desk. “I thought you would be.” She touched the eraser end of a pencil to her lips as she smiled and winked. “And I bet you’re looking for one spunky little guy, right?” Before Chandra could answer, Shannon waved toward one of the long corridors. She leaned closer to the other nurse. “I’ll be back in a minute. This is the woman who brought in the Baby Doe.”

The blond nurse, whose nameplate read Leslie Nelson, R.N., smiled and a dimple creased one of her rosy cheeks. “He’s already won over the entire staff—including Alma Lindquist!” She caught a warning glance from Shannon, but continued blithely on. “You know, there’s something special about that little guy—” The phone jangled and Leslie rolled her huge, mascara-laden eyes as she picked up the receiver. “Pediatrics. Nurse Nelson.”

“She’s right about that,” Shannon agreed as she led Chandra down the hallway. “Your little friend has wormed his way into the coldest hearts around. Even Dr. O’Rourke isn’t immune to him.”

“Is that right?” Chandra asked, lifting an eyebrow. She was surprised to hear Dr. O’Rourke’s name, and even more surprised to glean a little bit about the man. Not that she cared. He was just a doctor, someone she’d have to deal with while visiting the baby.

“One of the nurses caught him holding the baby this morning. And he was actually smiling.”

So there was a more human side to the gruff doctor. Chandra glanced down the hallway, half expecting to see him, and she was surprised at her feeling of disappointment when he didn’t appear.