The terror of his dream grew. He began to struggle against the paralysis, the helplessness, of his dream. He was trying to scream, when he jerked, waking suddenly. He looked around and found himself still in the pediatrics nursery, silent except for the tiny bodies clinging to life.
He rose from the metal chair, reached down and with his hand delicate as breath he touched the abandoned baby on the cheek. She still slept.
Jones walked into the ER and found it calm; the young doctor on duty was asleep on a cot, visible through the open door of one of the examining stalls. Nancy, at the night-duty desk, spotted Jones and asked, “How is she?”
“She’s gonna live long enough to need a name. And a mother. She leave an address?”
Nancy fished in her records. “We got it between screams, while she was in labor. But it won’t matter much, she’s not coming back.” She handed Jones a slip of paper with a name and address. At that moment the door opened and a guy in motorcycle riding clothes—or half of them because his jacket had been sanded from his body by sliding across pavement—came in, assisted by two cops, one of whom was the guy Jones had sewed up at the rugby game.
Jones waved to the cop, and as the nurses moved to show the new patient into an admitting stall, Jones tucked the address into his pocket and headed toward the door. On his way out he stopped to wake the young resident. “Hey, Maestro, it’s show time.”
The resident stood quickly; sleep was a half measure in an Emergency Room. “What’s up?” he wondered.
“Looks to me like a guy went down on his Harley and lost about, oh, three thousand dollars worth of tattoos.” The resident was smiling as Jones left.
Jones drove six blocks to an ATM and made a withdrawal. He used cash so that he left no trail.
He found a surplus store, one he had used before; its neon sign advertised “Open 24 Hours.”
He drove along the cold wet roads into a part of town where no one had a credit card and what cash they had went to milk, bread, drugs, or sex. The sleeting rain had driven everyone else off the streets. A few young men watched from doorways, ready to move out and broker transactions. Jones stopped outside a block of welfare housing, and checked the address in his pocket.
In the unit on the first floor, a fifteen-year-old girl was sitting by the grimy window, but she wasn’t looking out at the rain. She had sat there a long time, by the look of her. She was holding a cheap but old doll—a doll saved from her own childhood. Tears slid down her face like the rain on the window glass. There was no heat in the apartment; her breath showed in the air, and she cradled the doll as if to keep it warm—and in so doing, to keep herself from the cold.
She was surprised by the tinny bong of the doorbell ringer. It disturbed her; who would be ringing her bell at this hour? She moved to the door and peered cautiously through the peephole. She saw nothing. Carefully she unlocked the door and opened it enough to peer out, with the chain catching. Seeing no one, she unchained the door and opened it for a better look.
Leaning her head outside her doorway, she found the hallway clear in both directions. But at the foot of the door was a bag. She picked it up gingerly and took it inside, shutting the door and triple-locking it behind her.
She opened the bag and withdrew its contents. An insulated, rainproof coat unfurled in her arms. At first she couldn’t comprehend it. What was this? Who left it? Was it a trick? It couldn’t be for her; no one in her life had given her anything—even the doll that was her only treasure was something she had stolen from a store. But the coat was in a bag—at her door. And someone had rung her bell. Could it really be for her?
Four minutes later she was wearing the coat and looking into the mirror over her bathroom sink. The mirror was cracked, and the silver backing had flaked so that the image seemed clouded, but she could see herself—in the coat. It wasn’t rich; it looked like military surplus. But it was new, full length and heavy. She put her hands into the pockets and stared at herself in the mirror, embraced by the warmth and the mystery.
Finding something in the pocket, she pulled her hand out, and discovered she was holding several hundred-dollar bills.
Jones returned to the pediatric ward and tossed his coat onto the metal chair. He was still wearing his hospital gown. He looked down at the baby. She was still resting quietly.
He sat down in the chair again and fell sleep. This time he slept peacefully, without dreams.
5
Lara sat studying the eight-by-ten black-and-white prints that Malcolm had ordered done, photographic enlargements of the tiny sculpture their scouts had discovered. She, Brenda, and Malcolm were leaning over around the coffee table in Lara’s office, a spacious, elegant suite with an imposing desk of English oak; the office connected to a tiny bedroom where Lara slept most nights now. Malcolm had already seen the photo enlargements, so as she sat studying them, he sat studying her; he knew she had been in the lab all night—she still wore the lab coat and the caps they used to prevent hair from contaminating samples. Pink edges of sleeplessness rimmed her eyes, and her voice, when she had greeted him that morning, lacked the firm edge of determination she always showed the outer world. Malcolm had seen her father fray too, when he had come to understand that never in his lifetime would he solve the problem he had dedicated his life to overcoming.
Malcolm had been with Lara and her father on the night William Blair died. He had suffered from lung cancer. He had been a lifelong smoker—it was an irony that so many doctors who knew full well the destruction cigarettes could spread through the heart and lungs could still succumb to the habit—and despite many efforts to quit (once led by Malcolm, who had also smoked during college, and who offered to quit along with him; Malcolm had succeeded, but William went back to smoking after his wife died) had never been able to permanently shake the habit. When William lay in the hospital on what they all knew was the last night of his life, Malcolm whispered to him, “I wish we’d spent more time trying to beat cancer.”
But William had smiled then—actually smiled, behind the mask of the ventilator that kept his chest rising and falling—and shook his head; then his eyes turned to Lara, sitting in the chair beside the bed, and Malcolm knew exactly what that look meant, and what he would do for his dying friend and for his living daughter, as long as he would live himself.
Now Lara, seeing this new evidence of stupendous dexterity, tossed off the remainder of her lab gear and paced her office. Lara possessed the trait—some might call the affliction—of believing that if anything needed accomplishing, she had to acquire skill for it personally. But before her were the signs of a skill beyond any she could achieve herself; she knew that already, after a young lifetime of trying. She had never seen anything like the manual skill or the subtle artistry that the carvings demonstrated. The photo blow-ups made it even more evident than microscopic views of the carvings did.
Malcolm had also brought a folding file. He extended it to her. “Turns out we already had a file on the guy. He first came to our attention as a resident when his teachers started using terms like ‘virtuoso’ about his surgical technique. But he passed on our interviews, told our recruiters he wanted to practice in Virginia. Ended up at the state university, near the town where he grew up.”