The Story of Therapy Dog Tails 483
Where Everyone Gets a Dose of Puppy Love
FICTION 41: Colors of the Past 16
Colors of the Past
a novel
W.D. Haverstock
Part Two
Chapter Four
… He walked to the window. “I can’t sit down. I feel like I’ve been sitting all afternoon. The traffic in the city was terrible.” The words seemed to sap his strength. “All I could think of on my way here was that I wasn’t going to make it in time.” He remembered the woman and the girl on the street.
“That’s not important, darling. You’re here now.”
“When James called, he said he didn’t think it would happen before tonight but as soon as he said it, I knew I had to hurry. I knew that if I didn’t hurry, the baby would be born by the time I got here.”
“None of that matters now. My uncle was here and everything is fine. There was nothing for you to do but wait anyway.”
The window looked over a long, neatly trimmed lawn behind the hospital. Beyond this was a wide, empty road. Two bicyclists rolled slowly to the north beneath the round, orange disc of the sun that rested heavily on the horizon of chimneys and treetops. The bicycle wheels spun over the ground as if free of friction. The sunlight seemed nearly too weak to penetrate to the earth.
George pressed the palms of his hands hard against the cold, flat window sill.
“I want to take her to Wilmette,” Susan said.
“What?” When he looked up, the bicyclists were gone and the sun was nearly hidden.
“I don’t want to keep her in the city. In fact, I was thinking of asking Katie to come and stay with us for a while.”
George turned his back to the window.
“She could help me with the baby and you wouldn’t have a thing to worry about.”
He looked across the room and could not see her face in the waning light.
“Ma’am?”
The nurse was standing in the doorway with a bundle in her arms.
“Here she is.”
The nurse crossed to the bed and George came up to the opposite side.
“If you could help Mrs. Grange sit upright in the bed, sir,” the nurse said, “I’ll just put the baby right down in her arms.”
George helped Susan into position. The nurse set the baby gently into Susan’s arms and lifted a tray from the bed table as she turned to go. She glanced again into the faces of these two new parents as though there were something there to discover.
The tiny bundle felt light in Susan’s arms but her hand froze as she pulled back the corner of the blanket and gazed upon the sleepy face of her child. She gasped and involuntarily pulled her hands away. The baby slipped down over Susan’s stomach and bumped against George’s arms as he smoothed the sheet over the bed.
“No,” Susan whispered faintly as if the life had been drained out of her.
From the corner of her eye, the nurse saw the baby slip out of Susan’s hands. With her free hand she reached back for the baby and steadied her against Susan’s hip. As she swung around to take the baby back, the tray fell to the floor. The drinking glass shattered the cold silence of the room and the water splattered in isolated drops across the floor. A tiny, helpless whine threaded its way out from beneath the blanket.
George’s body sprang erect at the touch of the child. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded in a hushed military tone. In horror, his eyes were drawn to the child, the baby he had seen half an hour earlier in the nurse’s arms, the one child that could not have been his own.
“I’m sorry,” the nurse stuttered. “I thought . . . .”
“Only a fool could make this kind of mistake. I’m going to have your job for this,” George spat as if he could not bear the keep the words in his mouth. “They should never have allowed you people in this hospital in the first place.”
At the sound of his voice, the nurse stepped back. “I’m sorry, sir, but we all thought you knew. If you would like to speak to Dr. Newman, I believe he is still in the building.”
“Yes, I want to speak to Dr. Newman.” George walked around the foot of the bed. “As soon as you bring our baby into this room.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Grange, but . . . .” The nurse stepped carefully toward the door.
“What’s your name?”
“Mrs. Johnson, sir. Like I said . . . .”
“I want to speak to the doctor now.” George stepped in front of the woman and glared across the gulf of the child’s innocent body into the nurse’s eyes. “And I want to speak to your supervisor. Where is she?”
George stared hatefully into the terrified eyes of the nurse. He could feel his body sway slightly back as if he might fall backwards as he waited for her to reply. The nurse lowered her eyes to the floor.
There was a rush of blood in his face. He could feel the tension in the muscles of his back and pressed his knuckles into his thighs.
The woman stopped a few feet in front of the door. George stepped around her and walked in quick, short strides out of the room.
“There, there,” Mrs. Johnson whispered and rocked the baby gently in her arms.
The child’s eyes were open wide. They were the color of George’s. Her light brown skin looked unnaturally dark against the stark white of the blanket. She opened her mouth as if to cry but no sound came out.
Mrs. Johnson raised her eyes to the mother. “I’m truly sorry, Miss. I didn’t mean to upset you. Reason I brought her here was because I thought you knew.”
“All I know is that you’ve made a mistake.” An anger Susan had never felt before rose into her throat and choked the words as she spoke them. She lay motionless and with her eyes closed. “Or someone has played a horrible joke on us.”
“We all was surprised, too, when we saw that baby,” Mrs. Johnson said, “and so we checked with Dr. Newman to make sure there was no mistakes. I’m sorry if something is wrong but this here is your own child, Miss. There ain’t no mistake about that.”
“Take her away, please,” Susan moaned.
“There’s no mistakes, Miss Grange. This here’s your own child you telling me to take away.”
Susan opened her eyes and lifted her head off the pillow. “That is not my child!” she shouted but her voice was barely audible.
“Yes, ma’am.” Mrs. Johnson shook her head and turned away.
Susan fell down limply into the bed and covered her face with her hands. The rage that she had heard in George’s voice echoed through her mind as she tried to erase the memory of the child altogether. She tapped her knees together but could feel no sensation. Her fingertips were moist and she realized that her face was covered with sweat and that all of her body felt hot. She noticed only now that her breasts were painfully swollen.
She closed her eyes and tried to imagine that she was at home, at James’ house where she had not slept since the night before the wedding. She wanted to see the familiar surroundings of her room, to hear the voice of her uncle and to smell Katie’s clean sheets on her bed. She wanted to open her eyes with a surge of will that would obliterate this mad hallucination. Instead, she saw only the picture of her mother and father on the bed table in her uncle’s house where she had left it on her wedding day.
She thought there was the echo of footsteps in the hallway outside the door. “George,” she called weakly and squeezed her eyes closed more tightly. “George? Are you there? Is that you, George?”
Mrs. Johnson comforted the baby and pushed the largest pieces of glass into a pile with her foot. “Miss, your husband hasn’t come back yet. Are you all right? Can I get you something?”
The voice seemed to float above Susan’s head, outside of her body, in another room, but it was a woman’s voice, not her uncle’s. It was a voice she had never heard before and she started to cry. She pressed her fists into her eyes as though she might hold in the tears but the effort was too great. Her hands fell limply to her side and she sobbed into the room.
“Maureen,” another woman’s voice said from the doorway. “Would you take the baby back to the nursery and let me speak to Mr. and Mrs. Grange privately. Send Dr. Newman in as soon as he comes down and get an orderly in here to clean up this mess.”
Mrs. Johnson carried the baby out of the room.
The woman closed the door when George came in. She was tall and slim with her reddish hair tucked tightly under her cap. George paced several times across the room before stopping near the bed. Susan wept quietly with her eyes closed and her face turned away from the door ….