With a cold sick certainty, The Nail realized he wasn't going nowhere. Not under his own steam, anyway.
He stiffened as he heard the old engine rumble and shudder to life against his back. He began to blubber as the truck lurched into motion.
Santa was going to run him into the wall!
But no. The truck bounced out of the alley onto the street. After that it was a nightmare ride through the Lower East Side with people staring, pointing, some even laughing, then crosstown on Fourteenth with the truck swerving from lane to lane, running lights, screeching to a halt, inches—inches!—from rear bumpers and fenders, then roaring into motion again.
All that was bad enough, man, but when the westbound lanes weren't moving fast enough, the truck swerved into the oncoming traffic and played chicken with a banged-up yellow cab. The Nail knew fuck sure ol' Santa wasn't going to back down, and for the few screaming, terror-filled heartbeats that it looked like the cab wasn't going to either, The Nail lost it. Literally. Warm liquid spilled down his left leg.
But the cab lunged out of the way at the last second and the truck got back on the right side of the street and began accelerating.
A cop! The Nail had never dreamed he'd be in any circumstance when he'd want to see a cop on his tail, but here it was. And where were they? Why wasn't there ever a fucking cop around when you needed one?
The truck fishtailed into a wide, screeching turn onto what The Nail thought might be Seventh Avenue, but he couldn't be sure because he closed his eyes as they scooted within a hair of a horn-blaring bus. Then the truck jumped the curb and scattered terrified pedestrians before skidding to a halt on the sidewalk.
As the engine cut out, The Nail whimpered and waited in terror to see what Santa had planned for him next. But Santa said nothing, did nothing. The Nail twisted around and looked through the windshield. Santa was gone.
But The Nail wasn't alone. A crowd of gawkers was gathering, forming a semicircle around him and the truck, staring, pointing at his bloody face, his pee-stained pants, and whatever it was Santa had taped to his head. Someone laughed. Others joined in.
The Nail wanted to die.
And then he heard the sirens.
SUNDAY
1.
"How's it going, Hector?"
Little Hector Lopez looked up at Alicia from his hospital bed but didn't smile.
"'Kay," he said.
She'd admitted him to the pediatric service on Friday due to intractable vomiting, but he'd been holding down fluids since yesterday afternoon. He looked better. Still had a fever, though. His spinal tap had looked negative, but the culture was still pending. So were blood and urine cultures. She hoped this turned out to be a simple gastrointestinal virus, but his practically nonexistent CD-4 count deeply worried her. Just to be safe, she'd shot him up with some IV gamma globulin.
"How're you feeling?"
"Thith hurtth," he said, pointing to his splinted left arm where the IV tube drained into an antecubital vein.
"We'll take that out as soon as you're better."
"Today?" he said, brightening.
"Maybe. Your fever's got to come down first."
"Oh."
Alicia turned to Jeanne Sorenson, the nurse who was accompanying her on rounds today. The big blonde was barely twenty-five but already a grizzled veteran of the AIDS war.
"Who's been in to see him?" she said in a low voice.
Sorenson shrugged. "No one that I know of. His foster mother called—once."
"All right, then," Alicia said. "Who's Hector's buddy on this shift?"
"We haven't assigned one yet."
Alicia suppressed an angry snap. "I thought we agreed that all my kids would have one buddy per shift," she said evenly.
"We haven't had time, Dr, Clayton," Sorenson said, looking flustered. "It's been hectic here, and we figured he'd be out in a couple of days, so—"
"Even if it's one day, I want them assigned a buddy. We've been over this, Sorenson."
"I know that," the nurse said, looking sheepish.
"But apparently it didn't sink in. You know how scary a hospital is for an adult, so imagine yourself a child confined to bed in a place where a bunch of strangers have taken your clothes and sneakers and started sticking needles in you and telling you what you can eat and when you can go to the bathroom. But at least most kids can count on a mother or father or someone familiar showing up and lending a little reassurance. Not my kids. They've got nobody to fall back on. Their support system is a black hole. Can you imagine what that's like?"
Sorenson shook her head. "I've tried, but…"
"Right. You can't. But trust me, it's terrible."
Alicia knew. She'd been hospitalized a few weeks into her first year at college—for dehydration secondary to a viral gastroenteritis very similar to what had brought Hector here. She was in only two days, but it had been an awful experience. No boyfriend and no close friends, no one to visit her or even ask after her, and damned if she was going to call home. She'd never forgotten that feeling of utter helplessness and isolation.
"So that's why they need someone on every shift who'll come in and talk to them and smile and hold their hand every hour or so, someone they can count on, just so they don't feel so damn alone. It's almost as important as the medicine we pump into them."
"I'll get on it right away," Sorenson said.
"Good. But don't do it for me. Do it for him." She turned and rubbed Hector's bristly head. "Hey, guy. That buzz cut looks as mad as ever."
Now she got a smile. "Yeth. It'th—" He coughed. He tried again but interrupted himself with more coughing.
"Easy, Hector," Alicia said.
She sat him up and parted the back flaps of his hospital gown. Pressing the head of her stethoscope against his ribs, she listened for the soft cellophane crinkle that would herald pneumonia. She heard nothing but an isolated wheeze.
Alicia checked Hector's chart. The admitting chest X ray had been negative. She ordered a repeat, plus a sputum culture and gram stain.
She stared down at his bony little body. She didn't like that cough one bit.
2.
"Oh, no," Alicia said as she rounded the corner and saw the police cars in front of the Center. "What now?"
She had her donut and coffee from the hospital cafe in one hand, the fat Sunday Times in the other. She usually spent the rest of Sunday morning at the Center. They still had kids coming in for their treatments, just like every other day, but it was a lot less intense than the rest of the week—nowhere near as many phone calls, for one thing—so she used it to catch up on her paperwork.
She had also planned to devote some of today to figuring out her next step in the saga of the will and the house that supposedly belonged to her but no one wanted to let her have.
But now…
Just inside the front door she nearly collided with two cops, one white, one black, talking to Raymond. Raymond. He was devoted to the Center, but he rarely if ever showed up on Sunday.
"Oh, Alicia!" he said. "There you are! Isn't it wonderful?"
"Isn't what wonderful?"
"Didn't anyone tell you? The toys! The toys are back!"
Suddenly Alicia wanted to cry. She turned to the pair of policemen. Raymond introduced her. She wanted to hug them.
"You found them? Already? That's… that's wonderful!" Better than wonderful—fantastic was the word.
"I guess you could say we found them," the black cop said, scratching his buzz-cut head. His name tag read POMUS. "If you can call opening up a truck parked on the sidewalk by your front door really 'finding' them."