Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)(30)

“No,” Lucy said, “none of that. She’s a little warm from crying, but I don’t think it’s a fever. Momo, what should I do?”

Chetta, now sitting at her desk, didn’t hesitate. “Give her another fifteen minutes. If she doesn’t quiet and begin feeding, take her to the hospital.”

“What? Brigham and Women’s?” Confused and upset, it was all Lucy could think of. It was where she had given birth. “That’s a hundred and fifty miles!”

“No, no. Bridgton. Across the border in Maine. That’s a little closer than CNH.”

“Are you sure?”

“Am I looking at my computer right now?”

Abra did not quiet. The crying was monotonous, maddening, terrifying. When they arrived at Bridgton Hospital, it was quarter of four, and Abra was still at full volume. Rides in the Acura were usually better than a sleeping pill, but not this morning. David thought about brain aneurysms and told himself he was out of his mind. Babies didn’t have strokes . . . did they?

“Davey?” Lucy asked in a small voice as they pulled up to the sign reading EMERGENCY DROP-OFF ONLY. “Babies don’t have strokes or heart attacks . . . do they?”

“No, I’m sure they don’t.”

But a new idea occurred to him then. Suppose the kiddo had somehow swallowed a safety pin, and it had popped open in her stomach? That’s stupid, we use Huggies, she’s never even been near a safety pin.

Something else, then. A bobby pin from Lucy’s hair. An errant tack that had fallen into the crib. Maybe even, God help them, a broken-off piece of plastic from Shrek, Donkey, or Princess Fiona.

“Davey? What are you thinking?”

“Nothing.”

The mobile was fine. He was sure of it.

Almost sure.

Abra continued to scream.


8

David hoped the doc on duty would give his daughter a sedative, but it was against protocol for infants who could not be diagnosed, and Abra Rafaella Stone seemed to have nothing wrong with her. She wasn’t running a fever, she wasn’t showing a rash, and ultrasound had ruled out pyloric stenosis. An X-ray showed no foreign objects in her throat or stomach, or a bowel obstruction. Basically, she just wouldn’t shut up. The Stones were the only patients in the ER at that hour on a Tuesday morning, and each of the three nurses on duty had a try at quieting her. Nothing worked.

“Shouldn’t you give her something to eat?” Lucy asked the doctor when he came back to check. The phrase Ringer’s lactate occurred to her, something she’d heard on one of the doctor shows she’d watched ever since her teenage crush on George Clooney. But for all she knew, Ringer’s lactate was foot lotion, or an anticoagulant, or something for stomach ulcers. “She won’t take the breast or the bottle.”

“When she gets hungry enough, she’ll eat,” the doctor said, but neither Lucy nor David was much comforted. For one thing, the doctor looked younger than they were. For another (this was far worse), he didn’t sound completely sure. “Have you called your pediatrician?” He checked the paperwork. “Dr. Dalton?”

“Left a message with his service,” David said. “We probably won’t hear from him until mid-morning, and by then this will be over.”

One way or the other, he thought, and his mind—made ungovernable by too little sleep and too much anxiety—presented him with a picture as clear as it was horrifying: mourners standing around a small grave. And an even smaller coffin.


9

At seven thirty, Chetta Reynolds blew into the examining room where the Stones and their ceaselessly screaming baby daughter had been stashed. The poet rumored to be on the short list for a Presidential Medal of Freedom was dressed in straight-leg jeans and a BU sweatshirt with a hole in one elbow. The outfit showed just how thin she’d become over the last three or four years. No cancer, if that’s what you’re thinking, she’d say if anyone commented on her runway-model thinness, which she ordinarily disguised with billowing dresses or caftans. I’m just in training for the final lap around the track.

Her hair, as a rule braided or put up in complicated swoops arranged to showcase her collection of vintage hair clips, stood out around her head in an unkempt Einstein cloud. She wore no makeup, and even in her distress, Lucy was shocked by how old Concetta looked. Well, of course she was old, eighty-five was very old, but until this morning she had looked like a woman in her late sixties at most. “I would have been here an hour earlier if I’d found someone to come in and take care of Betty.” Betty was her elderly, ailing boxer.

Chetta caught David’s reproachful glance.

“Bets is dying, David. And based on what you could tell me over the phone, I wasn’t all that concerned about Abra.”

“Are you concerned now?” David asked.

Lucy flashed him a warning glance, but Chetta seemed willing to accept the implied rebuke. “Yes.” She held out her hands. “Give her to me, Lucy. Let’s see if she’ll quiet for Momo.”

But Abra would not quiet for Momo, no matter how she was rocked. Nor did a soft and surprisingly tuneful lullabye (for all David knew, it was “The Wheels on the Bus” in Italian) do the job. They all tried the walking cure again, first squiring her around the small exam room, then down the hall, then back to the exam room. The screaming went on and on. At some point there was a commotion outside—someone with actual visible injuries being wheeled in, David assumed—but those in exam room 4 took little notice.