Life Sentences (24 page)

Daisy put her cell phone away, frustrated
that she hadn't been able to reach Jack. As the moon rose above the city,
she sat on the edge of her sister's bed and watched her sleep. Anna's lower
lip was thicker than her upper lip, and she had a faint mustache. Her
short, square teeth had little spaces between them, and her hooded eyes
fluttered delicately in their dream state. Now her body jerked awake.
"Daisy?" she said, opening her eyes.

"
Shh
.
You're safe. I'm here."

"Hi."

"Hi."

"How come you're looking at
me funny?"

"Am I?"

"Yes."

"All this time, I thought you
were dead," Daisy told her. "But now here you are. I still can't
believe it."

Anna frowned. "I don't get it.
Why'd you think I was dead?"

"It's a long story."

Anna smiled. "I was dreaming
about my angel, Daisy. Remember my angel? The one who came to our door?
You said he was a salesman, remember?"

"Yes, I remember."

"In my dream, I felt loved.
Indescribably loved. Daisy? Remember my angel?"

"Yes," she said.

"He told me I'd have the Son
of God."

The bedroom was papered with pictures
torn out of art books and magazines-classic depictions of the Virgin
Mary holding Baby Jesus. Daisy got it. Anna was going to have the Son of
God. The Second Coming. More proof that Roy had lied to her. Anna was delusional,
but it was just an extension of her old obsessions. She didn't think she
was Death. Roy Gaines had lied to her, and Jack had been right all along.

The headlights of a passing car
streaked through the slatted blinds and
pinwheeled
across the ceiling, and Anna's face contorted in pain. "
Ow
," she said.

"What is it? Anna?"

Her cheeks burned. She rubbed her
shoulder. "Don't let her take my baby away from me," she said.

"
Shh
.
You're feverish."

"Don't let Mom take this baby
away from me, Daisy."

"Why would she do that?"

"Promise me."

"Okay, I promise. Now calm
down."

"Daisy?"

"What?"

"Why are you wearing that?"

She looked at her vintage jeans
and her sopping-wet T-shirt. The jeans were slightly torn at the knees, and
there were spots of blood on the denim fabric from her little scrape
with Gillian. "Why? What's wrong with it?"

"You're dressed to depress."

She smiled. "I look fine."

"You look like a bum. If you
want to go to some pizza parlor, then fine. Off with you."

Daisy laughed. "What are you
talking about?"

"I want to go someplace nice.
I'm hungry. I want to eat a steak."

"Okay," Daisy said.
"I'll buy you a steak, but first get some rest."

Anna closed her eyes.

Daisy went into the adjoining bathroom,
sat down on the closed toilet seat and listened to stray sounds coming
through the open window. There were so many questions she wanted to
ask. Who was the baby's father? Why hadn't Anna come home? Why hadn't she
called and told them she was in trouble? The outside air smelled faintly
of gasoline. She got up and washed her hands in the sink while the radios
of passing cars pounded out clashing rap songs.

Daisy rinsed a washcloth in cold
water, then wrung it out and stood over the sink for a moment, pressing the
cool cloth against her forehead. She could hear Anna talking to herself
and cocked her head. She heard the sound of a door creaking open. She put
the washcloth down, went back into Anna's bedroom and found Roy Gaines
standing in the doorway.

He raised his arm. He held a gun. A
shot rang out, a sound so loud it blew her eardrums out.

Daisy screamed and dove behind
the bed. He was trying to kill her. She got flat on her stomach and stayed
there. "Anna, get down!"

He had them trapped. He was standing
in the doorway. Daisy tried not to panic. "Anna, get down!" she
cried. Anna reached into the top drawer of her bedside table and pulled
out a gun. Gripping it in both hands, she aimed it at the door and fired.
Bang, bang!

Small red jets shot out of the barrel.
Roy fired back. Bullets ricocheted. Daisy flinched. Pop, pop, pop. Then
there was silence.

Daisy had a difficult time swallowing.
The air smelled faintly sulfurous, like rotten eggs. "I'm bleeding!"
Anna screamed. Daisy scrambled to her feet. "Oh my God-"
"The baby." Anna's hands were covered with blood. Daisy looked
at the doorway. Roy was gone. "Daisy, help me!"

"Stay there," she said.
"Don't move." She grabbed a straight-back chair from the corner
and jammed it underneath the doorknob. Then she hurried back to her
sister's side. "Where are you bleeding?" "I don't
know."

Anna's belly was warm and sticky. Daisy
could hear something go glug-glug-glug. She knew that acute blood loss of
35 percent could be fatal. She swiped a towel off the floor and pressed
it to her sister's abdomen. "
Here,hold
this."

Anna held the towel and said her
Hail
Marys
.

Daisy got on her cell phone and dialed
911. Her hands were covered in blood. They were trembling. "Hello?
I need an ambulance right away. My sister's been shot. I'm at 88 Westland.
She's eight and a half months pregnant."

"Where is she bleeding?"
the operator asked.

"I don't know. Somewhere on
her belly." "You need to hold something over the wound."

"All right."

"You need to locate the entrance
wound."

She glanced out the window and saw
Roy Gaines clutching his shoulder. He was bleeding. He got in Jack's car,
that old
shitbox
Ford Topaz, and burned away from
the curb. Why did he have Jack's car? Where was Jack?

She sat cradling the phone to her
ear, holding the dirty towel against her sister's belly and trying not to
panic. Trying not to scream. The silence inside the house was like the
surface of a pond, drops of tension reverberating outward in concentric
rings.

There was blood all over the sheets,
all over Anna's yellow sundress. Daisy applied pressure to the wound.

"He found me," Anna said
hysterically. "How did he find me?"

"
Shh
,
try not to talk." Daisy pressed her hands over her sister's bleeding belly.

"He didn't want this baby. He
told me to get rid of it!" Anna cried. "Get rid of it, can you believe
that? It's his fucking baby!"

Daisy was stunned. "Roy Gaines
is the father?"

"His name is Roy
Hildreth
. He went crazy. He tried to push me down the
stairs, Daisy. He tried to kill this baby. That's why I left him. That's why
I ran away. I thought he was going to kill me! I don't know how he found out
where I am… but he's trying to kill my baby. Please don't let him kill my
baby!"

"
Shh
,"
Daisy said. "The police are on their way."

There were sirens in the distance.
"Why didn't you call me, Anna? Why didn't you come home? We could've
helped you."

She had lost so much blood she looked
like a porcelain doll. "I'm sorry, Daisy. I messed up."

The sirens grew louder. Now flashing
red lights flared into the room, and Daisy got up and removed the chair
from the door, then ran outside to greet the ambulance.

"My sister's eight and a half
months pregnant," she told the female paramedic. "She was shot
in the abdomen."

"How many times?" the square-faced
woman asked as she and a male coworker got their medical equipment
out of the ambulance and wheeled a gurney inside. "I don't
know," Daisy said, following them. "How many gunshots did you
hear?" "I didn't count them all. Maybe four. Maybe six."
"Any other medical conditions we should know about?"

"She's schizophrenic. I
just gave her two
Repaxins
."

"Is she having contractions
yet?"

"I don't think so."

"How old is she?"

"Twenty-eight."

They went inside and found Anna
groaning on the bed, clutching her swollen belly. The female paramedic
lifted her sundress and looked for an entry wound. She turned Anna onto
her side, and Daisy could see the blood spurting out a little bullet hole
in her back.

"It's in the upper abdomen
and out the back," the female paramedic said. "When was your
last prenatal care visit?" she asked Anna directly.

"No doctors. No hospitals!"

"
Shh
."
Daisy leaned forward. "Anna, have you been to a clinic yet? Anything?"

She rubbed her distended belly
and moaned. "No."

The female paramedic didn't seem
too happy about it. "Is this your first pregnancy?"

"Yes."

"Any vaginal bleeding?"

"
Ow
.
It hurts."

Daisy stood out of their way as
the paramedics worked frantically to save her sister's life. They
stemmed the bleeding, hooked Anna up to an IV line and lifted her onto
the gurney. Then they wheeled her outside to the waiting ambulance.

"Can I come?" Daisy asked.

"Sure, hop in." The female
paramedic helped her up, and Daisy sat in the jump seat while the ambulance
swerved away from that awful house, sirens wailing.

"Daisy?" Anna said groggily.

"
Shh
.
Save your strength."

"I thought it would bring me
peace, but it didn't."

"What didn't?"

"End 70."

She felt a tightening in her gut.
"What
d'you
mean?"

"It's a gift for you."

"A gift?"

"You'll find out when you get
there." Her voice faded, her eyelids fluttered shut and the mood inside
the ambulance suddenly shifted.

"Abdomen feels rigid,"
the female paramedic said.

She listened to Anna's belly with
a stethoscope. "I can’t find the fetal heart tone. I just had it a
second ago…

The male paramedic leaned forward
and spoke to the driver. "Tell them to meet us in the ambulance bay
for an immediate C-section," he said.

Daisy followed the paramedics
as they wheeled her sister down the hospital corridor. Anna was dazed
and drenched in sweat, paler than Daisy had ever seen her, flailing around
on the gurney. Daisy chased them around the next corner, where a hospital
team was waiting outside the emergency room doors.

"
Whaddya
got?" the diminutive doctor said.

“Twenty-eight years old, first pregnancy,
thirty-six weeks of gestation," the female paramedic rattled
off. "No vaginal bleeding. Pulse is one thirty and weak."

The doctor lifted the blanket and
examined Anna's abdomen, palpating it with his fingers. "Push a bolus
of normal saline," he said as they wheeled her through the swinging
doors. "I want five hundred
millileters
of normal saline to run wide open. Let's get a CT scan."

There was a dramatic uptick of activity
as the staff began prepping Anna for a crash C-section. They swabbed her
belly with antiseptics and gave her a shot to slow the contractions,
then hooked her and the baby up to separate heart monitors.

"What's happening?" Anna's
voice was weak.

"Don't worry," Daisy said.
"I'm not leaving your side."

During the next painful contraction,
Anna's eyes went flat, and she suddenly and dramatically lost consciousness.
Her heart monitor
flatlined
as she slumped back
against the gurney.

The doctor placed his hand on Anna's
neck. "She's in cardiac arrest. Get the Cardiff wedge."

They rolled Anna onto her side
and placed the Cardiff wedge behind her back, then bent her knees slightly
to support her weight, keeping her at a thirty-degree angle. Daisy knew
that if a pregnant woman was left lying flat on her back for any length of time,
the gravid uterus could press down on her vena cava and prevent the blood
from returning to her heart. One of the nurses was gently pulling the uterus
to the left now in order to relieve some of the pressure.

The doctor tilted Anna's head
back, breathed twice into her mouth and began vigorous chest compressions
against the backboard. "Get ready to
intubate
,"
he said. "One milligram
epi
IV bolus. One
milligram atropine." The nurses started a second TV line and performed
bag-valve-mask ventilations while the doctor continued with the chest
compressions. A resident monitored the separate heartbeats while
an anesthesiologist made preparations for
endotracheal
intubation.

"Blood pressure's zero,"
a nurse said. "The baby's heart tones are slow… ninety per minute.
Fetal heart rate is slowing."

"Clear!"

Daisy stood by and watched helplessly
while they zapped Anna's chest with the paddles. Her body convulsed, and
the doctor glanced up at the heart monitor which started to make those
reassuring bleeping sound again. "She's back," he said.
"We need to take this baby out. Now."

"What just happened?" Daisy
asked.

"Please wait outside,"
he told her, then turned to one of the nurses. "I want the neonatal resuscitation
equipment down here now!"

The waiting room was infinitely
white beneath a bank of artificial lights. The walls were white, the
ceiling was white, the floor had been buffed to such a high degree that
the waxy sheen was brighter than the overhead lights reflecting off its
surface. Daisy sat hugging herself, trying to find some island of comfort,
some refuge from all this whiteness. She knew now that her sister was innocent,
that Roy Gaines had killed those people himself. He wanted to kill Anna's
baby. He must've escaped from prison, and now he had Jack's car. A monster
was on the loose. She had to call the police.

She looked around for her backpack,
then realized she'd left her cell phone back at Anna's place. She got up
and went to the nurses' station, where she found several slammed-looking
hospital employees sitting around on swivel chairs behind the
glass-paneled wall. "Could I use your phone?" she asked.
"It's an emergency."

A heavyset nurse with triple
chins slid the push-button phone across the counter. "Dial nine for
an outside line."

Daisy called the De Campo Beach
police station and asked to speak to Detective Tully. It took a moment
or two for the desk sergeant to connect them. "Hello?"

Tully said.

"This is Daisy Hubbard. Do
you remember me?"

"Of course, Daisy."

"My sister's in trouble. I
don't know who else to turn to. I can't reach Jack, but I saw Roy Gaines get
into Jack's Ford Topaz and drive away. He must've escaped from prison. I
have no idea where Jack is, but Gaines shot my sister in the abdomen.
She's almost nine months pregnant and-"

"Whoa, slow down," he said.
"Where are you?"

"Landon Meyers Hospital."

"Sit tight," he said.
Til
be right over."

She thanked the nurse, then took
her seat again, the hush of the hospital crushing her eardrums. It was
quieter than she expected. She thought she liked quiet, but she didn't
Not now. She wanted bustle and activity. She wanted to be blown away by
the nurses' professionalism, but she wasn't. They looked tired and harried
on this busy night shift.

Roy Gaines had tried to kill her.
He'd tried to kill Anna's baby. Anna was innocent. Her sister was innocent,
and Roy Gaines had lied to them. He'd deceived them all. Colby
Ostrow
, Irma
Petropoulous
…
these people were members of Tanya's Friends. Why had Roy killed them?
Was he so jealous of the people in Anna's life that he'd resorted to
murder? Was he pathologically jealous? Even of the baby? And what about
Katja
Webb?

Did Anna know her somehow? Had
she met
Katja
during her quest to find Louis's
father?

Daisy couldn't keep her teeth
from chattering. A young Hispanic nurse hurried past, pushing a warming
bed on wheels toward the emergency room. When the doors swung open, Daisy
caught a glimpse of frenzied activity before they flapped shut again.
The controlled atmosphere inside the E.R. had dissolved into panic
and uncertainty.

She went over to the nurses' station
again. "What's going on?" she asked. "Is my sister
okay?"

"I don't have that information,"
the heavyset nurse told her.

"Could you please find
out?" She eyed Daisy with pity. "Take a seat. I'll get somebody
out here to talk to you." "Is the baby okay?" "I'll send
someone out."

She sat down on the faded white sofa
again. There were two middle-aged women seated opposite her. "My
husband's appendix burst," one told the other. "He's never had
his appendix out, and look what happens."

Daisy chewed on a thumbnail,
then glanced at the E.R. doors. She could hear muffled voices, along with
a few strident commands. "Suction!" She ignored the twinge
this created inside her. If Roy Gaines had Jack's car, then he probably
had Jack's gun. That was probably Jack's gun he'd shot at them with. If Roy
had Jack's car and Jack's gun, then he must have Jack's cell phone as well.
An hour ago, Daisy had called Jack on his cell phone and left Anna's address
on his voice mail. If Roy had Jack's cell phone, then she was responsible
for telling him where her sister was hiding out. It was all Daisy's fault
that her sister had been shot.

"My daughter fell and bumped
her head," one of the middle-aged women was saying. "She found
out her husband was cheating on her and got drunk and fell. I told her a million
times to leave the jerk. Now she's got a cheating husband and a concussion."

"Ms. Hubbard?" The diminutive
doctor was headed her way.

Daisy stood up. "Yes?"

"Let's talk over here."

She followed him into a corner
of the waiting room. "I'm Dr.
Jarvaska
,"
he said, shaking her hand. He had warm hazel eyes, a furry upper lip that
was trying to be a mustache and a surgical scarf wrapped around his head.
"Please have a seat."

She sat in a wooden chair that was
painted with sunflowers and rainbows. There was a white silence. It
drifted down like snow. The exhausted-looking doctor smiled at her. He
got down on one knee like a man about to propose marriage.

"I'm afraid there were complications,"
he said. "I'm sorry. We did everything we could."

The news was like a necklace breaking,
beads scattering every which way so that you'd never find them again.
"What do you mean?" Daisy asked. "I'm afraid she's gone."

"Gone?" The waiting room
grew bigger and bigger, until it became enormous and overwhelming.
"
Who?The
baby?"

"No, he's in good health.
It's your sister. I'm sorry." There was a churchlike silence. She
tried to absorb what he'd just told her, but nothing registered. The air
began to dim. Her hands went to her face just as everything in her field
of vision shrank to the size of a keyhole.

"We had to perform an emergency
C-section," he continued, "because the placenta had separated
from the uterine wall. She was bleeding into her uterus, and no blood was
going to the fetus. We did a crash C-section in order to save the baby's
life, but I'm afraid your sister didn't make it."

Her veins filled with Freon. She
was in shock. "Fortunately, at this stage of pregnancy, the uterine
wall is very thick. As a result, the bullet didn't penetrate into the
womb. It missed the baby, but there were
intraabdominal
injuries…"

She didn't hear him anymore.
Everything fell away, leaving her dancing on the edge of the universe.
She came back slowly. He was still talking. She watched his mouth move
and his tongue click against his teeth.

"Is there anything I can do
for you?" he asked. "Anyone I can call?" She shook her head.
"Are you all right?" "Can I see her?"

"Yes, of course." He stood
up. "Follow me." The doctor left her alone in the operating bay.
All the machinery was turned off-the X-ray view box, the overhead lights,
the crash cart, the resuscitation equipment. There were stray needles
on the floor, along with discarded bandages, medical wrappers and bloody
footprints. A thin hospital sheet was drawn up around Anna's shoulders,
and her eyes were closed. Her eyelashes made two neat rows of commas.

Gazing down at those peaceful features
was like slipping down a mossy bank. It broke Daisy's brain. It tore her
up like paper. She stood for a long time holding her sister's hand, unable
to cry. She couldn't seem to cry. Why couldn't she cry? There were no tears
left in her tear ducts. No moisture left anywhere in her body. She knew
she should be crying, and it made her very angry that her throat would not
produce a single sob.