Plus One (7 page)

She dropped the tag and leaned back in her chair. “Another time, then.”

He let go of my hand and gave me a gentle shove. “Let’s go, Plus One.”

Wednesday
3:30 p.m.

There may in fact be a god, because I prayed for him not to let my niece be rooming in with her mother, and lo and behold, the baby was in the Day nursery, swaddled and sleeping in one of dozens of clear plastic bassinets.

We had walked through the maternity ward past most of the patients’ rooms, and I had studiously ignored the ones with open doors, not wanting to catch a glimpse of my brother.

Day Boy stopped at a cabinet before we reached the nurses’ station and took out a hospital visitor’s gown for me. It was two sizes too big for my emaciated frame, which was just what I needed. I slipped it on over my hoodie and tied the strings behind my waist. He looked clinically at my hair—which was disgusting by this point—and handed me a scrub cap made of a fibrous cloth. He pulled out two pairs of disposable shoe covers from a pop-up box, one pair for him and one for me, and two surgical masks from a box on another shelf. We put the booties on and left the masks dangling from one ear.

“Let’s get this done quickly,” he said. “Officer Dacruz will expect to pick you up in the ER in the next couple of hours, and I’m the one who will take the heat if you’re not mended by then.”

We walked up to the window of the nursery to study the babies in the bassinets. It was a room full of new life: innocent, mostly napping, new Day life; little people who didn’t yet know they had the world wide open in front of them. There were two nurses tending to the babies, one male, wearing a surgical mask, and one female. My heart sank. There were too many people here for this to work. The male nurse looked at us through the window. He was black and skinny, and his eyes locked on mine for a second before he turned away, oddly flustered. I thought with despair that he’d gotten a good enough look to identify me.

“Why didn’t you try to see your sister-in-law and brother as we passed through the ward?” Day Boy said to the window.

“Why don’t you mind your own business?” I asked, mimicking his clandestine, curious voice. It was a handicap for me that this guy was so observant.

“Did you lie to me about having a brother?”

I looked at him, shocked. “No!”

“Take it easy,” he murmured. “It wasn’t an unreasonable question given everything that’s happened.”

And he was right. He had no reason to trust me, based on what he knew of me: that I had deliberately hurt myself, that I’d broken the curfew law, that I’d eavesdropped on his conversation about the minister’s baby, that I was forcing him to protect himself and his mother by compromising his own apprenticeship.

I was something of a shit myself, it turned out.

I said grudgingly, “Ciel and I don’t get along anymore. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see his baby.” This last part was a lie, of course. It was Poppu who needed to know the baby; I didn’t really care one way or the other about her. “What’s going on between us sucks, and I don’t want to talk about it.”
That
was the truth.

He was quiet. No chafing, no lectures.

“Will your brother have used your last name?” he finally said, searching the name tags on the bassinets.

“I think so.”

“Let’s see.” He pretended to ponder. “Was that Lecore, or Le Coeur?” He pronounced it the correct, French way the second time.

“There she is,” I said, pointing to a bassinet. “Baby Girl Le Coeur.” My voice cracked as I said it. My throat was hot, and I felt a sting of tears. It must have been because I wouldn’t have to deal with Ciel after all. I hadn’t realized how anxious I’d been until that moment.

Day Boy assumed it was the emotion of seeing the baby. “You’re determined to hold her.”

I nodded with that vulnerability I had mastered in the cell.

The female nurse began to wheel one of the bassinets to the door. Day Boy took advantage of the opportunity and moved to greet her.

“Hi,” he said as she opened the door. He held up his ID and smiled, I had to admit it, disarmingly. “Could we step in for just a second? This young woman would like to catch a glimpse of her niece before curfew.”

It was the first time I had ever been described as a young woman rather than a hooligan, and the first time anyone had passed me off as Day. In fact, I felt more Night than ever—strung out and hollow.

“I’m sorry, visiting hours are over.”

“I know, but she only missed the cutoff by a few minutes, and she has a bit of a drive ahead of her before dusk; she’s cutting it too close as it is.”

It was the most humane lie I’d ever heard. I spoke up, fortified by his generosity. “Oh, please? Tomorrow I leave for college. The next time I see her she’ll be walking.”

The woman pursed her lips, debating with herself. Then she smiled at me. “Just a quick peek.” And to Day Boy she said, “You’ll both wash your hands and put on your masks, right?” She pushed the bassinet out the door and let us walk in.

One nurse down, one to go. I had to admit that having Day Boy with me—an official employee of the hospital—was a boon. I’d lose a lot of cred when I managed to ditch him.

We washed our hands side by side at the sink. Or rather, Day Boy washed his hands, and I did the best I could on my left hand and the four good fingers of my right.

“College?” Day Boy said softly, a gleam in his eye. “Almost no one goes to college anymore.”

“
I’m
going to college,” I said, low enough that the male nurse wouldn’t hear me. “Dwight Correctional University.”

He laughed; a real laugh, not a cynical huff, not a snort through the nose. It came from his belly, the way Ciel’s did. God, I missed the old Ciel.

“Now hurry up,” he said, as we dried our hands and lifted our masks on.

I scooped up the baby as gently as I could. I had no idea how to hold an infant, but it was surprisingly easy with her swaddled so tightly in the blanket. Even her neck seemed to be supported by the wrapping. Only her face showed, with a little pink-and-blue-striped knitted cap on her tiny head. Everything else—her torso, arms, and legs—was a diminutive, taut bundle.

It was a mystery how anything could be so small and so light and still be a complete human being. She was asleep, with the most peaceful expression I had ever seen on a living thing. Her jaw was slack, but her lips—perfect and full—were closed, with the lower lip sucked in slightly under the upper. Her smooth, round cheeks sagged near the corners of her mouth from their own weight. Her large froggy eyelids were completely wrinkled, but they were new, fresh wrinkles, not old. Her nose was tiny and broad. Her ears looked like little sculptures.

The second nurse had his back to us the whole time, standing at a procedures table, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. He was working on an infant whose fussing was becoming insistent.

“Everything okay over there?” Day Boy asked. The mask made his voice slightly muffled.

The baby’s cry turned to a guttural, hysterical scream.

“I think I got it,” the nurse said, not turning around. His tone didn’t inspire confidence.

Day Boy moved to join him.

I looked at the chart on top of the metal box below the baby’s bassinet. She had been fed only fifteen minutes ago by breast. Another close call: if I had arrived sooner, she would have been in the room with her mother, and I might have had to face Ciel. The baby’s full belly explained her sleepy contentment. For a brief second I had a pang of jealousy. What was it like to nod off whenever the urge came? My thoughts were getting thick from my own exhaustion. I wished I could curl up somewhere, anywhere, full to distension, and close my eyes.

I looked at the rest of her chart—she had been fed at roughly two-hour intervals. So she was about an hour and a half away from needing to eat again. The metal box below the bassinet had a sliding door that was open, showing stacks of tiny diapers. I slipped one into the left back pocket of my jeans, out of sight under the visitor’s gown. I hoped I wouldn’t need more than one diaper; I was pretty sure I could complete my kidnapping-and-restoration mission in ninety minutes. Or maybe: my kidnapping-and-go-to-jail-for-life mission.

There was a baby boy asleep to the right of the Le Coeur bassinet. On his metal supply box was another chart, but also, miraculously, a stray stethoscope. A nurse or a doctor must have left it there after filling in his data. It might prove useful to me.

“Whoa!” I heard Day Boy say. I stiffened. And then he said, speaking to the nurse, “You’re doing that too close to the calcaneus. Use the lancet more on the side of the heel. What test did you say you’re collecting blood for?”

“CBC?” the nurse said, uncertainly.

“Well then, where’s your microtainer? Have you done this before?”

I guessed not all Day employees were brilliant, which figured. Rays are only human, too.

All at once—or as “at once” as my sleep-deprived state allowed—I realized
this was it
. This was my chance: Day Boy and the other guy had their backs turned. I scanned the ward through the windows. There was a nurse on the phone at the ward station, completely distracted. A doctor and a Medical Assistant were in the hall, but conferring with a maternity patient who was taking a slow, painful walk with an IV pole.

I lifted my visitor’s gown to the side. I unzipped my hoodie. I put the baby against the cavity of my stomach. There was an advantage to being skin and bones and too tall: my “pregnancy” wouldn’t show much. She felt warm through my T-shirt. Even though she was swaddled, her little mass was somewhat pliable, and for the first time I was frightened by the fact that she was a living person. I would have responsibility for keeping her safe if I pulled this off. I zipped up my hoodie just enough to hold her body securely in place, but not so much that there wasn’t room for air to circulate around her face. I fumbled to straighten the visitor’s gown over my belly. My movements were so numb and inefficient, I worried whether I could pull off any escape that required gross motor skills. I wondered what the hell I was doing—why I was ruining my life in the span of a single night and day. But then I thought about Poppu in his bed, his beautiful eyes becoming shadowed pits in his skull, his scarred body all knobby joints and loose, ashen skin. I thought about what it would mean to him to kiss Ciel’s baby. And then I thought about how Ciel acted like he wasn’t part of our family anymore, like this baby wasn’t part of our family, wasn’t Poppu’s flesh and blood, and the anger gave me strength.

I looked at Day Boy and the male nurse. Both were leaning over their crying patient, hard at work. I had one last moment to cover my tracks, and to buy myself some time to leave the hospital undetected. I snatched the stethoscope from the bassinet on my right. As I shoved it into my back pocket, I noticed that the sliding door of the metal box was open a crack, and a fragment of something blue was peeking out from the stack of diapers. I didn’t have time to dawdle, but there was something familiar about it. I pushed the door open, lifted the stack of diapers, and pulled out a blue-and-white lanyard strap.

It had a Day maternity nurse ID attached to it. The photo was of a Japanese woman, Yukie Shiga.

It was like finding a diamond ring on the sidewalk. It seemed impossible that a nurse could have lost it, yet there it was, a gift from the universe; it was the only lucky thing that had happened to me in years; and it was suddenly absolutely essential to my escape. What would I have done without it? Maternity ward security is notoriously high. I put it over my head with shaking hands and tucked it inside the neck of the visitor’s gown.

I glanced out the window of the nursery: the nurse was still on the phone at her station. I finished my task quickly: I picked up the baby boy—Baby Number Two—and gently tucked him into Ciel’s baby’s bassinet, so that it wouldn’t be empty. All newborns look pretty much alike, right? All were wrapped in the same pink-and-blue-striped blankets and wearing striped hats. The switch would only be discovered when they were unswaddled and their ankle bands checked. And then, since Baby Number Two’s bassinet was the last one in the row, I ripped off the blue patient-information card that was taped to it and stuffed the card in my front jeans pocket, hoping that it looked more normal for the last bassinet to be empty. I braced myself and closed my eyes, dizzy.

“You okay, Plus One?” I heard Day Boy’s voice.

“No, I…” I looked over my shoulder at him and the nurse, trying not to turn my body. “I think I’m going to be sick again.”

“I’ll get you someth—”

“Can I go to the restroom instead?” I said, before he could finish his sentence. “I saw one next to the nurses’ station.”

Day Boy made a quick decision. “Sure. I’ll come knock on the door in a second.”

“Thanks,” I said, heading out—bent a little as if I were sick, but really to hide my new baby belly. If I could get past Day Boy, maybe I could get past anyone.

“Plus One!” he called to me.

I froze. I put my hand on my sweaty forehead and looked over my shoulder at him. Had he seen the bulge? My heart was exploding inside my chest.

“I’m sorry you’re not feeling well,” he said.

The
Morazan

For the two years after Ciel was reassigned, drawing on my desk helped to keep me from going mad in school. My sketching partner in crime never failed to have at least one classroom in his schedule that overlapped with one of mine, and to sit at the very same desk. I always sat in the back, and apparently so did he, although I couldn’t figure out why. I did it to hide from teachers, to avoid being called on, and to catch up on lost sleep without being noticed. But it was hard to imagine that he was a truant, like me, given that he tossed around words like “virion.” So instead I decided that he was brilliant but cripplingly shy, this was his only social outlet, and I was helping him to cope with his handicap while he helped me to survive Poppu’s chemotherapy rounds.

His family must have liked nature as much as we did, because he seemed to have visited every one of our favorite nature haunts. Once, the Monight after the principal had made me scrub our last creation clean from the desk during lunch, I started a new drawing with this single word:
Quiz
. Below that, I wrote a number
1
and drew giant cedars as viewed from below in a forest, with ropy ridges of bark, and impossibly thick trunks triangulating to meet in the sky.