Laurel and Anne Elise are asleep and, in Laurel’s case, snoring. It amazes me how, in a maternity ward, you can enter any room regardless of whether the patient is awake or asleep or even wants to see you. None of the doors are locked. I prowl through the room, opening drawers and closets and medical cabinets. I look at the wet boot prints I’ve tracked into the room. The floor is covered with hexagonal tread marks. Just like the salesgirl promised when I bought my new boots, I haven’t slipped all day. Laurel stirs in her bed, murmuring in her sleep. At times, it’s as if she’s about to awaken, but then she rolls to her side and starts snoring again. I could totally mess with her—ransack her room and its belongings or maybe write foul messages onto the room’s television screen with lipstick—but I can’t let my worst instincts take hold of me. I am better than that, and I need to remember this.
Anne Elise stirs in her bassinet, reaching out and begging me to lift her into my arms. I smell the reason for her liveliness: she needs a diaper change. I watched nurses perform this duty yesterday when her diaper wasn’t quite so fragrant. Disposable diapers, wipes, and a jar of petroleum jelly are stored in a drawer in the bassinet, and as I unwrap Anne Elise’s swaddling clothes, the liberating act of freeing her from her blanket and diaper brings delight upon her face. She makes a sound—not quite a giggle but more like a squeak. At her age, unable to talk or express herself through more than a couple of facial expressions, much of what she thinks and feels is open to interpretation, but she clearly likes the cooling sensation of the room’s mild air against her warm flesh. Perhaps it’s because I was one of the first people to ever hold her, but she’s disturbingly trusting of me. I lift her legs and slide a fresh diaper beneath her. After wiping Anne Elise clean, I spread petroleum jelly on her warm bottom to prevent diaper rash, and she falls almost immediately back to sleep in her bassinet.
Two days after she’s given birth, Laurel’s IV bag still hangs from a stainless steel IV stand. Tubing from the bag extends to where it connects to a catheter in her arm. In her sleep, Laurel crosses her arms, jostling her IV tubing. The line from the IV bag is long, bordering on unmanageable. You would think the tubing would be shorter to decrease the possibility of entanglements.
As I look over the cheerless room, something on the nightstand catches my attention. I don’t know how I could’ve missed seeing it. Right next to the flowers is a gift box of Debauve et Gallais chocolates. Those should’ve been my chocolates. We talked for years, James and I, about sending me to the hospital with a box of Debauve et Gallais. When we talked about having a baby, the taste of Debauve et Gallais chocolates would fill my mind. I’d think about it while making love, think about it whenever I imagined myself cuddling my newborn baby. Now, my insides turn to acid, a boiling, bubbling mess of dreams gone bad. My knees knock together. I feel sick, unable to breathe, and barely able to think properly. More than his affair and the sex and the sneaking around behind my back, this box on Laurel’s nightstand smacks of betrayal.
Those should have been my chocolates.
I feel like waking Laurel and yelling at her, but then a better idea comes to me. Laurel’s asleep. I watch her eyes wriggle under her lids. She looks incapable of doing anyone harm, but I know better. I’m trembling with anger, everything haywire and jittery inside me. Without the antibiotics, she might die from her episiotomy infection. I run my fingers over her IV tubing. I could tie it in knots, cutting off her flow of antibiotics. Evil isn’t beyond me. Anne Elise stirs in her bassinet. It’s like she can sense her mother is in danger.
I tug on the IV line, pinching off the flow of antibiotics. Still asleep, Laurel squirms in her bed. I see the rise and fall of her chest beneath the blankets as she takes in a long, whistling breath. I wrap the IV line around the open rail of her bed railing. Laurel’s not going to get a drop more of antibiotics as long as I’m in the room. With luck, it’ll be hours before nurses notice what’s happened. And by that time, her infection could be past the point where it can be easily remedied.
I open my Prada handbag, pull out my KISS medallion bracelet. Lois Belcher told me I’d know when the bracelet was successfully activated. I step over to the bassinet, where Anne Elise still sleeps, and press my medallion over hers. Both discs glow pink, and then, from nano-sized speakers embedded in the medallions, I hear the faint smooching sound of a kiss. Hearing the sound, Anne Elise opens her eyes. I pick her up and peek outside the door. Anne Elise is snug against my shoulder, and when I zipper up my black bubble jacket, only the top of her pink knit newborn’s cap peeks out. No one is at the nursing station. I walk out into the hallway with Anne Elise. Every crime has its penalty, every bad bargain its purchase price. James shouldn’t have given that Debauve et Gallais box to Laurel, nor should Laurel have seduced him. The hallway’s totally empty. Just before the elevator opens for us, I look down the hall to make sure no one’s spying on us. There’s not a single person anywhere around. The elevator door opens. We step inside. When the elevator door closes behind us, I unzip my jacket a few inches to give Anne Elise more air. She’s pleasantly warm against me, a snoozing bundle whose only crime is having been born to the wrong woman. A moment later, the elevator door dings open, letting us off. We walk through the sunshine-filled lobby, my new boots making a squishy sound with each step. Laurel’s had her opportunities with my husband, and now I’ve got an opportunity with her baby.
PART TWO
Chapter Eighteen
JIM
I’m the celebration at the end of Laurel’s day, the friendly face who’ll stride into her room and make her forget the dreariness of being confined to bed. Tonight, I will tell her how beautiful she is, how darling and dear. This is what I tell myself as I hop out of my Volvo in the hospital parking lot. Today’s my lucky day: an uptick in the precious metals market netted hundreds of thousands of dollars for even my risk-averse clients, and although, overdrawn on my credit cards, I was not positioned to take advantage of the market myself, it feels good knowing I had a hand in someone else’s gravy train. Karma is a comes-around, goes-around thing: sooner or later, the luck I bestow on others will flow my way too.
Inside the hospital lobby, I’m greeted by a sign in the gift shop window proclaiming a two-for-one candy sale. “Make mine a Hershey’s Bar and an Almond Joy,” I say, whipping out my credit card. The young woman manning the cash register—probably a high school student working nights to earn a little weekend spending cash—tells me her other customers are not so enthusiastic as I am, prompting me to tell her of the miraculous birth of Anne Elise, “a girl who, if we’re lucky, will one day grow to be as beautiful as you.”
The girl blushes at the compliment, weaves her hand through her caramel-brown hair.
“I have a baby girl! And soon I will have two delicious chocolate bars: one for me and one for the new mother!”
The salesgirl swipes my credit card through her machine, but the message that displays on its screen is not to her liking. She frowns, scans the card a second time. “You say this is your first child?”
“My very first!”
She frowns again at her machine. This isn’t the first time my card has been declined, but she’s too young and polite to burst the bubble of my good fortune. She hands me back my credit card, hands me my chocolate bars, and cannot look me in the eye. Rather than making excuses for my overextended credit line, I feign oblivion at her generosity: she’s taken it upon herself to commit a minor act of theft on my behalf, and what could be luckier than that?