Cold truth

Chapter 26

"Hospitals are where the future is fought over," Abby said. "A nurse on the maternity ward told me that when I was in labor. She said that maternity was the only place where they fought to live because that's where the babies were born. Everyone else was fighting not to die."

They were standing in the lobby of the Caulfield Medical Center studying the directory for the location of the medical records department that was scheduled to open at eight o'clock. The lobby was already crowded with doctors, staff, and visitors, who swirled past them, confident of their destinations. Like all hospitals, it smelled of disinfectant. Mason wrinkled his nose, preferring the lingering tang of smoke and beer that drifted into his office from Blues on Broadway.

"Room B-23," Mason read aloud. "That's in the basement."

They were fifteen minutes early. Abby had been awake since five, tossing restlessly, finally shaking Mason at six.

"I hope it's Jordan," she said. "I mean, I know it's a long shot and it would probably cause more problems than it solves, but I hope Jordan is my daughter."

Mason knew that nothing plays with you more than hope. The sliver of daylight left by the long odds of a dark prognosis. The guarantee of salvation that can't be cashed in this lifetime. The promise of love. Mason knew the truth about hope. That it was a tricky thing people stretched well past specifications, sticking its square peg into too many round holes, forcing it to fit until the peg splintered and the hole snapped shut. He knew that, but wouldn't say it, letting Abby hope a while longer.

The medical records department was across from the elevator. Instead of a door, there was a long white customer counter, furnished with a bell to ring for service and authorization forms for patients to sign permitting the hospital to release their records. The only thing the department was missing was someone to answer the bell, accept the authorization forms, and retrieve the records.

Mason often had to obtain a client's medical records, and used a standard authorization form that hospitals accepted. He'd had Jordan sign one authorizing the release of her records to him before they left Kansas City. Abby filled out one of the hospital's forms requesting her records, clutching it as she paced the empty hallway, the sound of her footsteps absorbed by the carpet, the persistent overhead paging of doctors interrupting their thoughts.

Mason leaned against the counter, watching her, wondering what it was like to reach back into the past and find a piece of yourself. His parents had been killed in a car wreck when he was three, bequeathing him memories that were now little more than vapor. Without the pictures Claire had kept in their house while he was growing up, he doubted he would have remembered what they looked like.

As if sensing his thoughts, Abby said, "You know, it's funny. I remember my labor. It was awful. I kept asking for more drugs. I remember delivery and feeling like my insides were falling out every time I pushed. I remember holding my baby for a few minutes after she was born, before the nurses took her away. But I don't remember her face. How do you forget something like that?"

Mason didn't answer because he didn't know, though he suspected that memory sometimes protected people from remembering. A clerk appeared at the medical records counter. Mason checked his watch. It was exactly eight o'clock. He motioned to Abby, who had slipped back in her memories, searching for a face.

"Can I help you?" the clerk asked.

He was a slender, middle-aged man with dull eyes who asked his question with an uncertain voice, suggesting that he didn't think so. He wore a photo ID badge around his neck identifying him as Gene. Mason had worse luck with bureaucrats, private and public, than he had with women and bad guys. He was convinced they had a secret web site where they posted his picture under the heading Make Him Beg. Mason decided to make Gene his friend, figuring Gene was the kind of guy who needed one.

"You bet, Gene," Mason said. "We need some medical records." Mason and Abby handed him their authorizations.

"ID?" Gene asked them.

"Absolutely," Mason said, "glad you asked. Can't be too careful, huh?"

Gene carefully studied their driver's licenses. "It's the rules," Gene said. "Patient Social Security numbers?" he asked. "That's how we search for the records," he explained, pointing to the computer terminal behind the counter.

"They're on the authorizations," Mason said, forcing his smile to stay on duty, deciding that Gene would probably ask his own mother for her ID and Social Security number.

Gene ignored Mason's goodwill, sitting down at the computer, his back to them. He disappeared a few moments later, returning with a thin file of papers he handed to Mason.

"That'll be twenty-five dollars," Gene said.

Mason looked at the records. The cover sheet was labeled "Baby Girl Doe." Beneath that was a stamp that read "Adoption," and next to the stamp, a handwritten note that said "Baby named Jordan Hackett per adoptive parents." Mason handed the records to Abby as he wrote a check.

"The birth mother's name is blacked out," Abby said, her voice cracking with the strain.

"The baby was adopted, so the natural mother's identity is sealed by state law," Gene said.

"But what about my records? Where are my records?" Abby demanded, gripping the edge of the counter as if she was about to vault over it.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," Gene said. "We don't have any records on you. Are you sure you've got the right hospital?"

Abby's grip gave way, Mason supporting her with his hand pressed against the small of her back. "You're kidding, right? This is some kind of a sick joke, right?" Abby asked. "I was a patient here twenty-one years ago. I gave birth here. They took my baby away from me in this hospital twenty-one years ago! You don't seriously think I would forget what hospital I was in, do you?"

Gene raised his palms in self-defense. "I'm not saying anything, lady. The computer doesn't have any records for you. As far as the hospital is concerned, you were never here. That's all I know."

Abby shuddered, fighting for self-control. "Check it again," she said. "It's a mistake. Check it again, please."

"I already did, ma'am. There's no mistake."

Mason put his hands on Abby's shoulders. She twisted away from him. "No!" she said. "There is a mistake. I was here! Let's go," she said to Mason.

"Where?"

"The maternity ward," she answered, practically running for the elevator.

Mason caught up to her as the elevator doors opened. She punched the button for the sixth floor without checking the directory. "It's there, I know it," she said.

"What's there?" Mason asked.

"They called it the Baby Book. All the mothers signed it when they checked in. They had at least ten volumes, hundreds of pages for all the babies born here. The nurses made a big deal of it."

Abby burst out of the elevator onto the sixth floor, Mason trailing her, not doubting her memory of the hospital's layout, hoping her memory of the Baby Book was as accurate. She pushed through the double doors marked Maternity, breathless, glancing around in near panic.

"They changed it," Abby said. "It used to be right over there." She pointed to a waiting area decorated in rainbow wallpaper and worn furniture, then marched to the nurse's station.

"Hi," she said to the nurse, catching her breath.

The nurse, a large gray-haired, black woman with a round, tender face, put down her charts. "What is it?" she asked evenly, accustomed to excited women.

"The Baby Books, where the mothers wrote their names when they checked in, what happened to them?"

"Oh, honey," the nurse said. "Just like everything else, it's all done by computer now."

"But what happened to the old books, the ones from twenty years ago?"

The nurse smiled. "Are you in one of those books?" Abby nodded. "Well, come on then," the nurse said. "I wouldn't let them throw those books away. I'm Evelyn," she said, taking Abby by the hand. "When were you here, child?"

Abby told her as Evelyn led them past the nursery where the newborn babies were on display, Mason following a few steps back, feeling like a stranger in a strange land, sensing again the depth of Abby's longing. They stopped at a linen closet filled with sheets and towels, except for three shelves that were lined with alternating pink and blue three-ring binders, each dated for the years they covered. Evelyn and Mason stood aside as Abby traced her finger along the binders, stopping at the one she was searching for, yanking it off the shelf.

Sitting cross-legged on the hallway floor, with Mason crouched next to her, Abby flipped through the pages, checking the date at the top of each page. Each page was divided into columns for the mother's signature, the date of admission, the date of the baby's birth, the sex, weight, and length of the baby, and the baby's name.

"Yes! There I am!" she said, jabbing the page with her finger.

Mason followed her finger across the line that began with Abby's signature, continued with the entries for the birth of a seven-pound baby girl, twenty-one inches long, and ended with a blank space for the baby's name.

"There's no name," Mason said, looking up at the nurse.

"Did you give your baby up for adoption?" Evelyn asked Abby. Abby, tears brimming, nodded. "That's why. Sometimes a birth mother didn't name her baby. It made it a little easier for some of the girls."

Abby stood, the binder sliding from her lap onto the floor, and walked back toward the nursery. Mason picked up the binder, found the pages for the two weeks before and after Abby's entries, and handed Evelyn the notebook. "Could you make copies of these pages for me?"

"Of course," Evelyn said.

Mason joined Abby at the nursery window, standing behind her, his hands on her shoulders. Abby pressed her hands against the glass, reaching for the babies more than waving at them. A nurse cradling one of the newborns in her arms smiled broadly and mouthed which one to Abby and Mason. Abby shook her head. Evelyn found them a few minutes later, handing Mason the copies. Mason thanked her, tugging gently at Abby's sleeve.

"It's time to go," he said.

Abby held onto Mason's arm, letting him lead her, blinking her eyes when they emerged from the hospital. The city was wrapped in a gauzy haze reflecting sunlight in a filtered glare, the day not sunny or cloudy, the uncomfortable ambiguity matching her confusion and disappointment.

Mason found a walkway that led around the hospital grounds, following it to a bench in a garden alongside a small fishpond. The flowers had been trimmed back for fall. Burnt orange leaves shed by the surrounding oaks floated on the surface of the pond, their tips upturned, like miniature junks. The air was crisp, a solidly autumn day.

Abby sat on the bench, her arms folded, rocking slightly. Mason studied Jordan's medical records and the pages from the Baby Books, letting Abby find her voice. The medical records were devoid of anything that identified Jordan's natural parents, reporting her birth and first days of life in neutral medical tones. The last page of the records was a copy of an order from the Family Court Division of the City of St. Louis Circuit Court granting Arthur and Carol Hackett custody of Jordan Hackett, the order noting that the unnamed natural parents had waived their parental rights.

Mason read every entry in the Baby Book. There were several others where the space for the baby's name had been left blank, a hole in the mother's history filled without the mother's knowledge by strangers.

"How could they have lost my records?" Abby asked at last.

"It's a big place. It's been a long time," Mason said, reciting the obvious excuses. "I'll tell you something else that's missing," he said.

"What?"

"Gina Davenport's signature in the Baby Book. The nurse gave me copies of the pages for the two weeks before and after you were there. Emily Davenport was born one week before your baby and Jordan were born. Either she didn't sign in, or she wasn't there."

"That's not possible," Abby said, sitting up and shaking off her funk. "Every mother signed the book. It was a ritual."

"Not Gina," Mason said.

Abby grabbed the pages from the Baby Book, studying each entry. Mason tried to tie the loose ends of Abby's missing medical records to Gina's missing Baby Book entry, but the knot kept unraveling. His cell phone rang, saving him from another attempt.

"Mason," he answered.

"Lou, it's Harry. Where are you?"

"Caulfield Medical Center in St. Louis. We talked to Abby's uncle. He sold Abby's baby, but claims he doesn't know who the buyer was. He's been marinated in booze so long, it's a miracle he remembers his name. We didn't do much better at the hospital. I hope you've come up with something."

"Your hunch about Robert Davenport was half right," Harry said.

"Which half?" Mason asked.

"The half about Davenport getting busted. It happened when he was living in St. Louis."

"Which half was wrong?"

"There's no connection to Centurion Johnson."

"I wouldn't have expected one in St. Louis. Centurion always stayed close to home," Mason said.

"There's still another half," Harry said. "Davenport was busted along with a few other guys. It was strictly small-time stuff, nickle-and-dime bags, but you'll be interested in who one of the other guys was."

"Harry, don't make me beg."

"Habit," Harry said. "It was Terry Nix."

"Do not shit me, Harry," Mason said, "or I'll tell Claire to put saltpeter in your warm milk."

"I shit you not," Harry said. "The charges were thrown out because of a problem with the search. I tracked down one of the arresting cops. Turns out we know some of the same guys. His name is Roy Bowen. He used to work narcotics, undercover. Now he's behind a desk. Said he'd be glad to talk to you."

"Where do we find him?" Mason asked.

"Where do you think?" Harry asked.

"Krispy Kreme?" Mason said.

"Very funny," Harry answered. "Turn yourself in at noon, downtown."