Perfect Timing (43 page)

The old man—whom Quincy judged, even in a dazed state, to be a few fries short of a full order—stared up at Quincy for a long moment. He wore only his uppers, and his bottom lip sucked in over his toothless lower gums. He had faded blue eyes, a face with crisscrossing lines deep enough to pass for tire ruts at a monster-truck mud-slinging contest, and a huge sore on the side of his nose that was probably a stage-four melanoma.

“Your baby girl is dead?”

The question ran a knife straight through Quincy’s heart. His throat convulsed. His already unclear vision blurred even more with tears. “Yep, pretty sure. My wife delivered premature on the backseat of my truck. I”—Quincy gulped—“couldn’t get them here quick enough.”

The old guy rounded on the admittance secretary. “Jesus help us all. You people run us through this joint like we’re steers going to slaughter!”

“Now, Randall, let’s not get excited,” the woman said. “You need to stay here this time so we can help you.”

“Yeah, right. Send me home with pain pills that make me so dizzy I fall again!” Randall brought his liver-spotted fist down on the admittance counter. “Did you hear what the man just
said
? What’s
wrong
with you, telling him to step back out of the privacy zone? You can take that stupid tape line on the carpet and shove it where it’ll never again see daylight.”

Frantic as he was, Quincy noted that the woman’s attitude suggested she’d heard all of this before, often. Her tone was patient, much like a kindergarten teacher’s. “Randy.”

“Don’t you
Randy
me! I’m not a four-year-old. Find out where this poor sap’s wife is, and do it right now, or I’m calling the cops.”

Quincy had a bad feeling that wouldn’t be necessary. He’d blown that state trooper’s doors off, and he guessed he’d soon be facing charges of some kind.

“Please, ma’am,” he said to the woman, relieved that his head was starting to clear. “I’m not here to get admitted. My wife is here somewhere. My name is Quincy Harrigan. All I want is to find her.”

The woman passed a hand over her frizzy blond hair. “It’s gotta be a full moon. Never gets this crazy otherwise.” She punched a phone button—Quincy guessed it connected her to the ER over the headset she wore—and hummed the tune of the Beatles’ famous hit “Yesterday,” tapping her fingers on the desk as she waited to connect. Quincy wished with all his heart that it
were
yesterday so he could relive every moment up to the present with the knowledge he had now. “Yeah, I got a guy out here named Quincy Harrigan whose wife was just brought in. Says his baby girl was DOA, stillbirth.” She listened a moment, then nodded. Glancing up at Quincy, she said, “Someone will be right out. Now will you
please
step behind the privacy line?”

Quincy put his boots into reverse, mission accomplished. Randall nodded and grinned at him. Then he doubled a fist and jabbed at the air. “You’ve got my prayers, boy. I’m real sorry about your baby girl, but if your wife is okay, you’ll have others.” His faded eyes went bright with tears. “Me and Gladys lost one. Just about killed us at the time, but in the end, we had eight. All healthy as goats in a rich man’s garden and clamoring for more food. Three boys, five girls.”

Quincy wondered where the hell all those kids were now. A burst of anger shot through him. “Randall, what’s your last name? I wanna look you up after this all settles and take you out for a whiskey.”

“Whitmeyer! And damned proud of it.”

The old man turned back to continue his argumentative and loud exchange with the plump blonde with frizzy hair. Quincy dipped his chin and stared at the white tape on the carpet right in front of the toes of his boots.
Privacy line
. He kind of got Randall Whitmeyer’s rage, because right then, nothing would have felt better to Quincy than shoving his fist through a wall.

Just then a tall blond guy emerged from the bowels of the ER treatment facility and walked toward Quincy. “Mr. Harrigan? If you’ll follow me, you can be with your wife. Dr. Stevenson is here. She’s with your baby. Mrs. Harrigan is receiving treatment right now, and she’ll be moved to the maternity ward soon.”

Quincy’s heart did a squeeze, as if a huge fist had closed over an orange to drain it of juice. “Stevenson is with our baby?” He was afraid to believe their little girl was still alive. “Why? I mean, she looked dead, so
why
?”

“Your baby isn’t dead. She’s just . . .” The orderly took a deep breath and lifted his bony shoulders, making his blue scrub top shift over his torso. “It’s not really my place to give you details about her condition, sir. But I can say she is alive.”

Quincy put a hand against the wall. “Sorry, I need a second.”

“Hey, man, I get it. You drove them in. Must have been one hell of a ride.” The fellow clapped Quincy on the back. “But, hey, you did good. You got both of them here in the nick of time.”

Quincy straightened and trailed behind the fellow to the ER doors, which opened only by a punch code. Then he was following the orderly—or was he a nurse?—down corridors with curtained cubicles, all of which branched off from the ER main desk, where doctors, nurses, and assistants bustled, checking charts, talking on phones, and rushing away. Randall had it all wrong, Quincy thought. These people here were doing the best job they could. He just prayed they had magic in their fingertips to save his wife and baby.

Ceara was in cubicle forty-six, and when Quincy pushed through the curtain, he found his wife lying on a bed with nurses working over her, hooking her up to an IV, putting sticky disks at strategic points on her torso to monitor her heart, and fastening an automatic blood pressure cuff around her arm. Ceara lay flat, her face nearly as pale as the white sheets. He saw that her eyes were squeezed closed and tears trailed from their corners into her wildly curly red hair.

One nurse, a thin brunette, glanced up. “Mr. Harrigan?”

Quincy nodded.

“We’re moving your wife upstairs to the maternity ward in just a moment. Dr. Stevenson wants to oversee her care up there. You can take a seat just outside and follow us if you like.”

“I’d like.” A whole team of draft horses couldn’t have kept Quincy away from his sweet Irish rose.

“Quincy?” Ceara’s eyes flew open at the sound of his voice. When she saw him at the foot of the bed, she tried to reach for him, but the nurse trying to anchor an IV stent to her arm grabbed her wrist and held it down. “Our baby. She is dead, and ’tis all me fault!”

“She isn’t dead. She’s a fighter, just like her mother,” Quincy said quickly. “Dr. Stevenson is with her right now.”

Ceara’s haunted gaze clung to his. “Truly? Ye wouldna lie?”

“Of course I wouldn’t,” Quincy assured her, “and what happened isn’t your fault, sweetheart. Don’t be thinking that way.”

A nurse on the left, also a brunette but chunky of build, said, “You see? I told you the baby isn’t dead. Dr. Stevenson is upstairs doing everything she can to save her. She’s a great doctor, so your little girl is in the best of hands.”

“’Tis me fault,” Ceara said again. “I used me healing power. I should ne’er ha done that.”

A petite blonde kicked off the bed brakes, and nurses on both sides of the bed jerked up the rails and locked them into position. Quincy backed out of the cubicle, frightened by the attendants’ urgency in getting Ceara moved. He stood helplessly out of the way as his wife was wheeled from the cubicle, one nurse pushing, two others keeping pace with the IV tripod and the monitor.

The little blonde, who carried only a chart and a tray of blood samples, gestured to Quincy. “You can go up with us in the elevator. It might be a squeeze, but we can all fit.”

“Thanks.” Quincy hurried to get abreast of her. “How is my wife?”

Speaking softly so as not to be overheard, the nurse said, “Well, her vital signs are jumping all over the chart right now, but that’s probably due as much to her emotional state as it is to the physical trauma. Either way, Dr. Stevenson wants her moved upstairs for more specialized care.” She flashed Quincy a reassuring smile. “It’s very upsetting to a woman when she delivers prematurely, and your wife is understandably frantic with worry about the baby.” She winked conspiratorially. “She’s said some pretty weird things. The doctor will most likely give her a sedative to calm her down. That’s about all I’ve got for you. Sorry. Dr. Stevenson has ordered several blood workups.” She nodded toward the tray filled with vials. “And once we’re upstairs, the PA will do a full exam and perform any after-delivery procedures necessary, and Dr. Stevenson will update you as soon as she has a moment to talk.”

“Do you have any information on our daughter?”

The blonde shook her head. “Sorry. They whisked her straight upstairs to the NICU.”

“What’s that?”

“Natal intensive-care unit. It’s where they take preemies or any babies in need of special care. Sometimes our preemies don’t require it immediately, and they go in later, when problems start to crop up. But your little gal—well, she’s a twenty-five-weeker, and some of her vital organs may not be quite ready to rock and roll without some help.”

Quincy missed a step. His stomach burned as if he’d just swallowed ground glass. “I know you don’t have any solid facts, but you must know, general rule of thumb, what her chances are.”

The blonde jutted her chin at the elevator. “Hurry. Don’t want to miss our ride.”

Quincy allowed the nurse to squeeze into the car first. He found himself standing to the left of Ceara’s bed, toward the foot. The only comforting gesture he could offer his wife as the doors closed and the elevator slipped into gear was to gently squeeze her toes. Ceara’s swimming blue eyes sought out his face; then her gaze clung to his.

“It’s going to be okay,” Quincy said, injecting confidence into his voice that he was far from feeling. “You’ll see, honey. They have a special place up there for babies who come early, with all kinds of fabulous equipment and medicines. It’s called NICU, which stands for natal intensive-care unit.”

The petite blonde grinned at Ceara. “And, hey, private rooms for each baby, and specially trained nurses assigned to them. As hospital care goes, it’s the Ritz.”

“What is the Ritz?” Ceara asked tremulously.

The nurse laughed. “You’ve never heard of the
Ritz
?”

Quincy squeezed Ceara’s foot again. “In truth, there isn’t only one Ritz-Carlton.” To Ceara, he added, “They’re luxury hotels. Someday soon we’ll stay in one.”

The elevator stopped, Quincy exited first to get out of the way, and before he could even think about getting close to his wife to reassure her further, hospital staff in green scrubs moved in, taking Ceara up the hall and through two big swinging doors.

Ever since learning that Ceara was pregnant, Quincy had pictured himself being a totally hands-on dad during the last months, attending Lamaze classes, being with Ceara as her coach during delivery, and then staying with her in the birthing suite with their baby by her bed and his family coming in to visit. He’d been envisioning his child’s arrival much like it had been when Aliza was born, he guessed. The hospital had fabulous quarters for new mothers, with pullout beds for fathers, lots of comfortable furniture for visitors, and a family-friendly atmosphere.

Instead Quincy went to a small nurses’ station and was directed to a waiting room. He sat on a bench-back sofa that was about as inviting as cement, braced his forearms on his spread knees, and stared blankly at the mottled floor. He consoled himself with the thought that Ceara was receiving the best of care. That meant she’d be okay, right? Someone would surely come out soon to update him on her condition.

The minutes ticked by, and no one came to tell him anything. Not knowing . . . well, to him that was almost worse than hearing bad news. At least then he’d be able to face it—and somehow deal with it. He thought about contacting his family, but decided against it. Might as well wait until dawn. There was nothing they could do.

“Mr. Harrigan?”

At the sound of a female voice, Quincy jumped so violently that he nearly parted company with his boots. Dr. Stevenson walked into the room, her expression solemn, her blue eyes rimmed with red, probably from lack of sleep. Quincy shot to his feet.

“My wife—how’s she doing?”

“Holding her own, but she’s very weak. We’re keeping a close eye on her.”

“And our little girl—did she . . . Is she still alive?”

She patted his arm. “Let’s sit, shall we?”

Quincy didn’t want to sit, damn it. He wanted to hear about his baby and then more about his wife, and he took bad news better on his feet. But he obediently sat again. Stevenson rubbed her slender hands together.

“Your baby is hanging on—for now.”

“For now?”

The doctor nodded. “At twenty-five weeks, she’s very premature, Mr. Harrigan, so she’s extremely tiny. She weighs only one-point-four pounds, which is only slightly below the average weight for a fetus at that stage, not at all abnormal if she were still in the mother’s womb, but that’s very low for a birth weight.”

Quincy had seen his daughter and already knew how tiny she was. “Give it to me straight, Doc. Don’t beat around the bush.”

She sighed. “All right. For starters, she has retinopathy, which is believed to be caused by disorganized growth of the retinal blood vessels. In her case, I suspect it’s mild and may resolve itself, but her low birth weight may cause complications.”

“You mean she’ll be blind.”

Stevenson inclined her head. “Possibly. She also has respiratory distress syndrome, the most common single cause of death in preemies. I’m treating her little lungs with a medication called a surfactant, a substance normally present, but absent in her case. She also has pulmonary hypoplasia, which essentially means her lungs haven’t properly developed yet. She’s incubated and also intubated to assist her in breathing, but when you go in to see her, Mr. Harrigan, you will notice retractions of her chest wall, grunting when she tries to exhale, and cyanosis, which is a blue or purple tint to the mucous membranes and sometimes to the extremities, especially fingers and toes. The nail beds often turn bright blue or purple.”