The Light at the End of the Tunnel (4 page)

When out of the child’s hearing they had
decided to never talk bad about him again—at least not in front of
him—and that, both of them, especially Leslie, would feign love for
him. Even while discussing it they had both felt foolish. A child
just two months old could not understand speech, or could he?

During the incident three nights earlier,
they remembered that every word they said just made the child cry
louder…and, seemingly, angrier, but when, through intense emotion
on Leslie’s part, she had again taken the child into her arms and
held him, and…loved him, and he had settled down.

“We do need to know where the hospital is
though,” Evan said, but even as he said the word
‘hospital,’
he noticed a change in the child’s expression. He had thought the
child was asleep, “I’ll be right back.” He stepped out, hurried
into the station, asked for and received a phone book—could hear
the child crying, loudly and angrily again—wrote down the
address—and almost without decision tore out the page with the city
map—hurried back, and again slid in behind the wheel.

“There, there,” Leslie was saying, rocking
the child in front of her, totally acting the loving mother. She
glanced at her husband. Her eyes snapped, but she said quietly and
under control, “Let’s go!”

As Evan drove and watched street signs he
pulled out the phone book page from behind his shirt and handed it
to, “Honey, look for Gardenia Boulevard, the hos—
it
, it’s
1430 Gardenia Boulevard.”

Leslie took the sheet and said, “You tore out
the page.”

“I couldn’t exactly ask for directions, and
give the clerk reason to remember me. We don’t need any witnesses
that we were ever here.”

“You’re right, dear.” She quickly scanned the
page, then watched house numbers and signs “Here, turn left up
here, go about six blocks and we should get to the right street.
I’ll keep watching the house numbers.”

A few minutes passed.

“Is…he…all right…?”

“I think so…one thousand…,” she began
reciting, “Hard to see the numbers this time of day…1101…” Another
moment passed. “1214…Gardenia, yes, keep going, a couple more
blocks.”

A few moments later they approached a large
four-story building, with lights on every floor, but not shining
from every window. “Right there, Evan,” Leslie pointed, “That must
be the emergency entrance and it’s quiet, and dark.”

Evan guided their car into the narrow lane,
and began feeling warm in his chest area, not sweaty but much
warmer than usual, like the inside of his body soon would start
steaming. He felt a strained breath leave him, and another one—

“Stop the car,” Leslie said, “But let it run.
You get the basket ready, and I’ll….” She then flipped her door
handle and said very quietly, “Hurry.”

Carrying the basket Evan stopped at her door
and waited. Carefully, Leslie swung her legs out and glanced at her
husband. He looked back but said nothing. Hanging onto the child as
a loving mother would, she stood, “I’ll carry him.”

Together they moved to the barely-lit door. A
barely readable sign said
‘Emergency Entrance’
so they knew
they had come to the right place. Evan stopped. At the same time
his head clanged. He had never before felt such emotions running
through his body. When he leaned over with the basket he feared he
would keep going and fall right onto his face. When the basket
stopped he held on for a few seconds, then stood up and felt his
head whirl, and looked at his wife only with peripheral vision.

She stood holding the child and looking at
it, her face emotionless, then she leaned and kissed the child’s
forehead but left her eyes open—
I’ve never seen anybody, ever,
leave their eyes open for a kiss—
then she leaned down and
placed the child in the basket and tucked the blanket around him,
then stood.

For another moment they stood there. Then the
child’s eyes opened, and it moaned. Evan heard his wife gasp, and
saw her start to reach for him, “No!” He grabbed her arm and spun
her around, then grabbed her waist and hurried them to the car. Her
door was still open. He pushed her in, “Don’t slam it!”

Evan then hurried to the driver side and
thanked God they had left it running. Quietly they backed to the
street, onto it, then back the way they came.

“What if they don’t find him?” Leslie’s hands
went up on her face, “Oh my God, Evan, what have we done?”

“What was necessary, Leslie. They’ll
find
him!” Strangely enough, until that very last second,
Leslie had been in charge, brutally, maybe, but in charge, the one
leading the way and telling him—her loving husband—what to do, and
he had done everything she said. But the child had begun acting
like a normal baby again, but even so, Leslie had kept up her
front…the inner strength that must have taken. He reached to her
arm, “My darling, we did the right thing. They will find him, and
take care of him, and he will act like a normal baby until their
guard is down, and then….”

“Then what?” She put her hand on his hand on
her arm, “Then
what
, Evan?”

“I don’t know. He won’t stay at the hospital,
not for long, not once they determine his health, then he’ll go…to
foster care, I suppose.”

“Until the foster family doesn’t want him
either, then another foster family, and another.”

“Honey, don’t
do
this to
yourself.”

“I gave birth to him, Evan. He was our
child.” Her hands went to her face again as she quenched a sob, “We
even named him.”

“But have you noticed, since the incident we
haven’t called him by name. He’ll get a new name, and…he’ll go from
there.

Thirty minutes later they pulled into a gas
station at that next town, got their gas, then to a diner, got a
mostly-conversation-less meal, then a motel room, where
they—furiously—made love.

“What if the next child is like this one,
Evan?” Leslie asked as they lay in each other’s arms.

“Don’t worry, my darling, it won’t be. What
happened was a once in a lifetime—once in ten or a hundred
lifetimes, but it won’t happen to us again.”

“The child was evil, Evan. It was
born
evil. It will grow
up
evil, and will do
terrible
things.”

“He already has done terrible things, my
darling.”
But I’ll never tell you what
.

Chapter 8
Meet Nurse Nicole
Waters

Les Paul lay in his basket with his eyes
closed. He wasn’t having any real thoughts. He was way too young
for having real thoughts. He still mostly depended on his body to
just do what was necessary when something came up. He opened his
eyes. Nothing there. Nothing but starlight. His mind went to what
he last saw: two people standing over him, looking at him, with
blank faces. He knew they were the people who cared for him,
but…they weren’t caring for him.

His body took over. He closed his eyes and
opened his mouth and the most horrendous sounds began coming out.
Crying had always gotten him what he needed before, and what he
usually needed was attention, and all the extras that came with
it.

****

Only about a minute passed before a young
nurse appeared at the door, and stepped outside, and immediately
reached into the basket and grasped the squalling baby, and lifted
it to her bosom, and then gasped when the small hand went into her
top, and actually tried to get to her breast.

Knowing the baby was probably hungry, for a
brief instant she almost allowed the hand to do what it wanted, but
then she stopped the hand, which brought an immediate rise in the
level of crying. Then she put the baby back in its basket and slid
the basket inside, just as an older nurse appeared and said, “Well,
what do we have here?” The new nurse reached and grasped the baby,
who then ceased crying, did not grab at her breast, and, basically,
just began to act like a normal baby. The new nurse then held the
baby next to her bosom, and patted him on the back, “Weren’t you
even going to pick him up, Waters?”

“I did, but….”

“But what?”

“He—it—tried to get to my breast.”

“Goodness, Waters, the baby is probably
famished. It didn’t know what it was doing.” The older nurse
scowled, “Good Lord, I’m sure it wasn’t flirting with you. Did you
see anything? A car leaving, or anything?”

“No. Just the crying baby.”

“All right. Just one more abandonment by some
young girl who shouldn’t have gotten pregnant. Well, come on, we
have some work to do. And
you
, sister, are going to
do
it. You need to learn some things about babies.”

“I know. I will.” But young Nurse Waters was
not so sure. She remembered the baby’s face as she picked it up,
its expression. At the time she thought nothing of it, and even now
she thought little of it, but couldn’t help still seeing
that…expression. The older nurse laid the baby down, “Get him
undressed, Waters, I’ll get a new diaper and other wraps, but you
will do the work. Have you ever changed a diaper?”

“No, ma’am.”

“You didn’t? Not even in school? What’s this
world coming to?”

“We did in school, ma’am, but it was a
baby-like doll.”

“Very well.” The older nurse started away,
“Get to it then.”

Nurse Waters approached the baby, and first
looked at its face. Now just a normal baby expression. She must
have been imagining things earlier. She unwrapped the blanket and
pulled off the baby’s top and bottom. The diaper itself remained.
It looked clean, and had no odor. The baby must have received good
care. She wondered what would possess a woman, young or older, to
abandon her child. She undid the two clingy straps and opened the
diaper and immediately a monstrous pass of gas, a huge dump of
excreta, and before she could back away a yellow stream of urine in
her face.

She screamed, and could not believe the
vision she was having of the baby’s face. That same expression as
earlier had appeared just before the explosion of waste.

The older nurse came rushing back, “Good
Lord, Waters! What’s wrong?”

Nurse Waters began wiping her face, “The baby
peed
on me!” She held off telling of the baby’s
facial…expression. She was still having trouble believing it
herself.

“Well, that happens, girl. Consider yourself
initiated, now get that child cleaned up and dressed, and at least
now we know it’s a boy.”

Yes, a boy, Waters thought, a girl would
never do what that boy just did. Yet she continued having trouble
with her thoughts, yet she felt sure the child’s bowel movement and
urination had been planned, just like when it grabbed at her
breast. But the child was only just months old, two or three at the
most. It couldn’t possibly be having conscious thought. It couldn’t
possibly
have planned the two assaults on her…yet…

The child lay quietly in its mess. Nurse
Waters approached. The boy baby’s face now had just a normal baby’s
expression. No smile, no frown, just…nothing. She dismissed her
earlier thoughts that must
surely
have been imagination. She
lifted the child from its mess and took it to a plastic-lined metal
bowl in the sink, kept her hand behind its head and neck, yet
thinking this child probably really didn’t require such careful
care, turned on the water and adjusted to lukewarm, then took the
sprayer and washed the baby off, causing it to make pleasant
sounds.

Nurse Waters smiled as she kept the water
flowing, “Oooh, you
like
that, huh?” She shut the water off,
then moved her hand over the water clinging to the baby’s skin,
then sprayed again. The child appeared to really enjoy the
attention, and Nurse Waters felt herself again trusting that the
baby was just a normal baby, that the two earlier events were just
that: vents.

She toweled the baby off then carried him to
where the older nurse had placed the new clothes and diaper and
placed him on it, and immediately Les Paul let go with another
powerful spray of strong-smelling yellow urine, and got poor Nurse
Waters square in the face,
again
.

She screamed again, louder and more
hysterically than before because,
again
, she had seen the
baby’s expression change, just before the discharge. She managed to
keep her hands on the baby, though, because she didn’t want him to
roll onto the floor and get her in trouble, although she wanted to
punish him, somehow, and had trouble believing such a thought had
even passed her mind.

But it had.

The older nurse came rushing back, “Waters!
What on earth…?”

“Take him! I’m through with him! I won’t
touch that…that—she wanted to say that little shit!—that child
again! He peed on me again, and he did it on purpose!”

“You fool, Waters. Babies
do
that.
They can’t
help
it!”

“
This
one does it on purpose.” Nurse
Waters removed her hands from the baby, “You take care of him. I
won’t touch him again, even if it means my job.”

****

The word spread fast. The hospital was small
so that meant it could spread even faster. By the following
morning, all other employees, all three shifts had heard and spread
the news even to the media. Nurse Waters had finished her shift at
midnight, went home, had a terrible night of horrible dreams of
babies attacking her, awoke the next day about 8am, ate a fitful
breakfast, went on her mobile phone and searched for any news of
unusual babies, surprisingly found plenty of questionable
information. But of course that’s what the cyber world lived for:
questionable events of all kinds. Later she got cleaned up and
dressed, and reported for work, and was met at the hospital door by
a reporter from
The National Infamies
who immediately asked,
“Ms. Waters?”