Nora wondered if Taylor ever talked. Except for the few sentences they'd exchanged this morning, he had been entirely silent, watching her with those luminous eyes. As soon as his temperature had fallen and the antibiotics began to take hold, he'd seemed a lot more alert, curious, even. Still, he hadn't talked; hadn't asked one question aloud. The more Nora watched him, the easier it became to see when his interest was piqued by something going on, whether it was a shot or the person in the next bed getting lunch. Taylor's eyes slid toward the tray and back to Nora.
"You're hungry?" She asked.
Taylor nodded. For the first time in a few days, he actually wanted to eat.
"They're going to give you lunch, too," she assured him. "Hold on a second."
Sure enough, a nurse came around to Taylor's bed with a covered plastic tray. She set it on top of a rolling table and wheeled it over to him. "Here, angel," she said. "Do you like alphabet soup?"
Taylor nodded. He wished he knew why people were always calling him angel. It wasn't like it was his name or anything.
"First, though, I have to give you a little shot," the nurse said. Taylor winced. She sighed. "I know, baby. It's not fun, is it?"
Taylor shook his head. He didn't care if they were going to feed him. He wanted to go home. He wondered what his brothers were doing now. He wondered what Dan and Nora's house was like. He wondered where his mother was, if she'd gotten home yet. If she got home and they were gone, she'd be mad.
The shot hurt. Taylor clenched his teeth together and told himself not to cry. "Honey, it's all done," said the nurse, holding out three bandages. "Which one do you want?"
Taylor didn't have to think. He pointed to the one in the middle, the Superman one. "That one?" the nurse asked. He nodded.
"Superman," the nurse smiled. "He's cool, isn't he?"
Taylor smiled, nodding emphatically. The nurse took the plastic cover off the lunch, and patted him on the head. "I'll see you later," she said aloud. To Nora, she mouthed, "He is adorable!"
Taylor didn't see her. He had picked up a spoon and was poking at the letters in his alphabet soup. T and A were easy to find. Y was a lot harder. TAY. . .
Suddenly, Taylor thought of Nora. He wondered if she was hungry. He wanted to ask her, but didn't want to talk. He glanced at her, picking up the cookie they'd given him. He held it out to her.
Through her sleep deprived haze, it took Nora a moment to realize what he was doing. When she did, she wanted to hug him. "Oh, honey. . ." she began. "Honey, that's yours. You have it."
Taylor shook his head. He reached for her hand and put the cookie into it. He looked into her eyes. Did she understand?
She did. She smiled. "Thank you so much," she said. "That's very nice of you."
Taylor smiled down at his alphabet soup. The T, A and Y had floated off into different corners of the bowl, but he didn't mind. He could find them again. And here was an L, just like that. T, A, Y, L. . .
Nora noticed that Taylor wasn't eating much. He couldn't be that hungry, with his fever still hovering around 102 and coughing fits that hit him every few minutes. Still, he appeared to be very busy doing something with that soup. She couldn't figure out what.
That was when she glanced down at the tray. Next to his bowl of soup, Taylor had arranged noodles to carefully spell out three words. ISAAC. TAYLOR. ZAC. "You thinking about your brothers?" she asked.
Taylor nodded, looking down.
"I talked to Dan on the phone a little while ago. They're doing good. They miss you."
Taylor swallowed. She was worried he might cry. For awhile, she was silent, listening to the other people in the room.
The other bed was occupied by a pale, puffy boy of eight or nine. He was quite rotund, and his concerned-looking parents even rounder. All three of them had milk-white skin and orangy-red hair, and Allen was covered in splotchy freckles. He wore thick, Coke-bottle glasses and had a spiky crew cut. Actually, he would have been rather cute, in a funny-looking Little Rascals sort of way, if he hadn't been such a whiny brat.
Allen was hospitalized because of an allergic reaction to shell-fish. Because of the severity of the reaction, he had been kept overnight for observation, and might have to stay another night. Admittedly, Nora thought, the kid was actually sick. But that was about all you could say for him. And the parents doted on him so much that it was sickening.
"Allen, honey," said his mother, "look at the videos I've brought you. Superman!"
Nora thought she saw Taylor's eyes light up. If Allen got to watch Superman, he would be able to see it, too.
"That's for babies," Allen scoffed. "I want to see 'Child's Play.'"
Taylor looked down. He was a baby? Maybe he should stop liking Superman. But wasn't Child's Play the scary movie about that doll? Taylor was pretty sure he'd be scared of that.
"I want a candy bar!" Allen demanded. "I want a coloring book. I want to watch horror movies. I want you to buy me a Nintendo!"
"When we get home, sweetie," his mother promised.
Allen's half of the room reminded Nora of Toys "R" US, there were so many stuffed animals and play things. She made a mental note to herself to buy Taylor a teddy bear or something as soon as she got out of here. Then she would go home and sleep. . . the three hours she'd snagged last night left her with the woozy sensation that she was back in her intern days. Thank God Taylor wasn't a demanding child. If she'd been Allen's mother, she probably would have slapped him. Long ago.
"Allen, Daddy and I love you very much, but this nurse has to give you a shot." Allen's mother had the bizarre habit of beginning every unpleasant statement with 'Daddy and I love you very much.' Nora wondered what strange sort of psychological implications that carried with it.
"NO!" Allen shouted. "NO NO NO NO NO NO NO! I DON'T WANNA GET A SHOT!" He kicked and flailed. Taylor's eyes grew as wide as saucers.
"Don't get any ideas," Nora thought, glancing at Taylor.
"NO!" Allen turned and looked accusingly at Taylor. "HE DOESN'T HAVE TO GET A SHOT!"
"He did before," the nurse sighed. "He was very brave about it."
"HE WASN'T BRAVE ABOUT IT!" Allen bellowed. "NOT BRAVER THAN ME!"
"Yes, Allen," said Allen's mother. "Daddy and I love you very much, and you are a very brave boy. But the nurse must give you a shot."
"No." Allen crossed his arms and curled into a ball. "You can't."
Nora and Taylor exchanged a glance. Taylor looked half horrified, but very amused. My gosh, Nora thought. He is absolutely as nosy as I am, if not more. It dawned on her that Taylor's silence was probably due to the fact that he was eavesdropping almost constantly. He seemed to pick up a lot by watching people. That kid had more going on than anyone suspected, she was willing to bet. In fact, when the nurse pulled the curtain between the two beds, Taylor actually looked disappointed. He sighed.
"Shots aren't as bad as all that, are they?" Nora asked him, smiling. "You're being really brave."
Taylor's eyes widened. "That boy," he whispered, in a tiny little voice, "why doesn't his mother hate him?"
"What?" Nora was doubly taken aback, first to hear him talking at all, and again when she realized what he'd said. "Why doesn't she hate him?"
"If you acts like that," Taylor repeated, the slight lisp in his voice becoming readily apparent, "your mother, she hates you."
Nora didn't know how to respond to that. "Well, most mothers don't like it when their kids act like that, and they might yell, but they don't usually hate their kids."
"But his mother be's nice to him," Taylor went on. "She didn't be mad."
"No." Nora shook her head. "But he is sick. So maybe she doesn't want to yell at him when he doesn't feel good."
"Why?" There was no self-pity or malice in Taylor's voice. "When I don't feel good, my mother be's mad at me. And she yells. And then I don't do bad things."
"When you're sick, it doesn't mean you did something bad," Nora pointed out.
Taylor didn't appear to hear her. "Sometimes, when I'm not good, she has to get mad at me. And then I'm always more betterer after."
Nora felt a chill run down her spine. She'd seen a lot of abuse cases, but had really wanted to believe that this was sheer neglect. "Taylor, when your mother gets mad at you, what happens?"
He drew a long, shaky breath, glancing toward the ceiling. "She yells. But she has to hit us, really. And she doesn't hit us very hard."
Nora tried to think. His mother, according to the information gleaned from Isaac, was twenty five years old, a single mother who'd had three kids in four years with one man, who'd walked out on them a few months before Zac was born. She must get desperate, sometimes, and maybe, in the environment she'd been raised in, it was alright to hit a kid. Nora's own parents, in fact, had been big advocates of spanking. They'd never hurt her, and Nora hadn't suffered any psychological damage from it, as far as she could tell, but still, Mami and Papi had had far more resources to draw on than Taylor's mother did. Maybe she didn't know that she might hurt her kids, emotionally, anyway.
Still. . . Nora glanced at Taylor's arm. A white, slightly raised scar ran from just above his elbow to the middle of his forearm. It was a strange place to have a scar, one hallmark of child abuse.
"Sweetie," she asked, "what is that from?"
Taylor was nonchalant. "That was where I brokeded it. It was brokeded in two places."
"How did you break it?" Nora felt awful asking him questions that had the potential to hurt him so much, but she had to.
He didn't meet her eyes. "I fell."
"Where?" Nora had to pursue the topic. "Where did you fall?"
Taylor sighed. "They already askeded me questions about it. I was only three. It was a long time ago."
Nora decided to let it drop. "Okay."
Taylor closed his eyes, yawning. Nora put her hand on his forehead. "Are you tired, sweetie?"
"Yeah." Taylor yawned again, burrowing under the covers. "Wake me up if anything happens."
Nora smiled. "I'll be back tonight, honey." Finding her car keys on the table beside the bed, she stood up and headed toward the door.
Taylor bolted into a sitting position. The suddeness of the action sent him back into another coughing spasm, and it was awhile before he could talk. When he did, his eyes were wide and scared. "You're going to leave?" he stammered.
"While you were asleep, I was going to run home and take a shower." Nora felt a wave of guilt wash over her. He was already attached. . . and so was she.
"Oh. . ." Taylor closed his eyes, struggling not to cry. He didn't want to be alone here. "I. . . I just thought you might stay. . ."
"I'll stay, sweetie," Nora promised. She thought of the room on the first floor that was reserved for doctors who spent the night in the hospital when they were on call. It was a tiny, stuffy room, lined with uncomfortable bunk beds, but when you'd been up for most of the night, it didn't really matter. "I might go down to a room to sleep while you're taking a nap, but I'll have my pager with me, and the nurses at the front desk will call me when you wake up, and I'll be there right away."
"Okay." Taylor didn't sound very reassured, but he lay back down and closed his eyes. After awhile, Nora could tell he'd fallen asleep. It was now or never. . .
She stood up and started out of the room. As she passed by the front desk, one of the nurses called her over. "We located a medical file on the little angel boy you have in there," she said, grimly. "You need to take a look at this."
Nora felt goose bumps rise on her arm as she read through the file, swallowing hard as horror story after horror story rose to life in front of her. From his birth (three weeks early, classified as failure to thrive, readmitted at six weeks because of the serious respiratory illness RSV) Taylor's life had apparently been one traumatic incident after the other. His records indicated that the first time he and Isaac had been taken away from their parents came about when neighbors reported that the people in the next apartment had a two year old and a baby, and the parents hadn't been around for a few days, but they could hear the baby crying. After six months in foster care, the parents had gotten them back, and, aside from a few immunization records, there was little in the file for about a year. Then, when he was nearly three years old, there came another chilling anecdote. Hospitalized after a severe beating, Taylor had been in a coma for four days. At first, they thought he wouldn't recover. When he survived without any appreciable brain damage, it was a miracle. Confirming what Taylor had told her, the next document detailed a compound fracture he'd had at the age of three and a half, reportedly after "falling out of bed." Uh huh, Nora thought, anger boiling within her. That would make complete sense. She knew what a little kid's bones were like, and she knew how they generally broke. There was no way in hell he'd gotten a compound fracture from falling out of bed. Out a window, maybe. Three feet to the ground, no.
Amazingly, they'd only been removed from their mother's custody three times, that first time when Taylor was an infant and the second after he was beaten into the coma. Nora swallowed hard; anyone could have seen that these injuries weren't consistent with the stories the mother was telling. This was such an obvious, classic case of abuse that something had to be done.
She thought back to the physical examination she'd done when Taylor was first admitted. There hadn't been any fresh bruises on his body, though she'd noticed a few fading yellow marks across his back. At some point within the past five to ten days, he'd been hit hard enough with something to cause bruising. Then she was struck by another chilling thought. Taylor was only one of them. If she got a hold of Isaac and Zac's charts, God only knew what she'd find.
Nora swallowed hard. "My lord." This was potentially the worst case of child abuse she'd ever seen, and as a emergency room pediatrician, she'd seen far too many.
"This is sickening," agreed the nurse, shaking her head. "Sickening."
There was no way Nora would have been able to sleep after that. She went back into the hospital room, pulled the uncomfortable visitor's chair next to Taylor's bed, and sat there watching him for awhile, hardly daring to think about the answers to all the questions that ran through her head.
