“It's not AIDS,” she said. “Not simple anemia or hepatitis, not any of the bloodrelated immune disorders that I'm familiar withnot even the rare ones. I'm convinced that in the States, with the equipment and people I have at Boulder CDC, I could isolate it, find it, and fix it. But this child has no family and this country would never pay for his. transfer to Stateside, or even allow a visa _ if I paid for it.” She rubbed harshly at her cheek. “He's seven months old and he's depending on me and he's dying . . . and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.” She was amazed to find her cheek moist with tears. She turned her face farther from the priest.
“Why don't you adopt him?” O'Rourke said softly.
She turned to stare at him in shock. He looked at her but said nothing more. Nor did she. They drove into darkened Bucharest in silence.
Chapter Ten
The Romanians did not refer to their unnamed and unidentified male patients as John Doe. The abandoned seven-monthold in the isolation ward of District Hospital One was calledin the notes Lucian had translated for KateUnidentified Juvenile Patient #2613. Most abandoned children had notes in their file telling who the parents had been, or who had dropped them off at orphanages or hospitals, or at least where they had been discovered, but the file on Unidentified Juvenile Patient #2613 was empty of all such information.
Kate had gone through those notes the night before after returning from Pitesti with Father O'Rourke. She had thanked him for the ride when getting out of the Dacia in front of her apartment after midnight. They had said nothing else about his suggestionif it had been a suggestion. Kate still wondered if the priest might have been making a joke.
But she had gone through her notes before collapsing onto her bed.
Unidentified Juvenile Patient #2613 had been brought to Bucharest's District Hospital One after doctors in a pediatric hospital in Tirgoviste had failed to make a diagnosis of the boy's obviously lifethreatening condition. Symptoms included loss of weight, listlessness, vomiting, refusal to take formula, and some sort of immunesystem disorder that made every cold or flu virus potentially deadly to the infant. Blood tests showed no hepatitis or other liver dysfunction, nor anemia, but the white cell count was far too low. Transfusions beginning when the baby was five months old had seemed to offer a miraculous recoveryfor almost weeks the boy had drunk from the bottle and put on weight, his reaction to a patch test had shown a positive immunesystem response, but then the immune problem began again and the cycle started over. More recent transfusions had brought about shorter and shorter remissions. The Tirgoviste hospital had transferred the child to Bucharest five weeks ago and Kate Neuman had spent most of that time just struggling to keep him alive.
Now she entered the isolation ward. The fat nurse with the harelip was standing at the infant's crib-side, feeding him; or rather, she was smoking a cigarette and staring the opposite direction while holding a bottle through the crib bars, pressing the nipple against the baby's cheek. He was crying feebly and ignoring it.
“Get out,” said Kate. She repeated it in Romanian. The nurse slid the bottle into the grimy pocket of her smock, gave Kate a malevolent smile, flicked ashes from her cigarette, and waddled out.
Kate lifted the baby and looked around for the rocker she had requisitioned for the room. It was missing again. Kate sat on the cold radiator under the window and cradled the baby, rocking him softly. I'll authorize the intravenous feeding at once, she thought. The last transfusion had offered remission for only five days.
The tiny baby in her arms focused his eyes on her and quit crying. He was so small that he could have been seven weeks old rather than seven months. The flesh of his little hands and tiny feet was pink and almost translucent. His eyes were very large. He stared intently at Kate, as if awaiting an answer to an old question.
Kate removed the bottle of formula she had heated before coming in and sought his small mouth with the nipple. He turned away, repeatedly refusing, but each time his gaze came back to her. Kate set the bottle on the window ledge and just rocked him. The baby's eyes slowly closed and his rapid breathing slowed into sleep.
She rocked him softly and hummed a lullabye her mother had sung to her.
“Hush little baby don't say a word,
Mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird.
And if that mockingbird won't sing,
Mama's gonna buy you a diamond ring . . .”
Suddenly Kate stopped and lifted the child's face to hers. She smelled the infant scent of his skin, felt the infinite baby softness of what little dark hair he had. His breath was warm and fast against her cheek; she could hear the slight rasp and squeak when he inhaled.
“Don't worry, Joshua,” she whispered, still rocking him. “Don't worry, little Joshua. I'm not going to let anything bad happen to you. I'm not going to let you go.”
The next morning, after a sixteenhour shift and only three hours' sleep, Kate went to the proper Ministry building downtown to begin the endless paperwork for adoption.
Lucian Forsea, her young friend and translator, met her on the steps of the hospital when she returned that afternoon. He came down the stairs with open arms, hugged her fiercely, kissed her firmly on the cheek, and stepped back. “It is true then?” he asked. “You are adopting the child in Isolation Three?”
Kate could only stare. She had told no one at the hospital. She had told no one but the officials at the Ministry that morning. But she had seen this before in Bucharest: everyone seemed to know everything as soon as it happened. “It's true,” she said.
Lucian grinned and hugged her again.
Kate had to smile. The Romanian medical student was in his midtwenties, but she would never have taken him for either a Romanian or a med student. Today Lucian was wearing a Reyn Spooner Hawaiian shirt with huge, pink flowers on it, stonewashed Calvin Klein jeans, and Nike running shoes. His hair was well cut in a style just short of punk, and there was an expensive but not gaudy Rolex chronometer on his wrist. Lucian's face was too tanned for any medical student, his eyes too clear and outgoing for any Romanian, and his English was smooth and idiomatic. Kate often thought that if she were fifteen years younger, even ten, that Lucian would hold a powerful attraction for her. As it was now, he was her one firm friend in this strange, sad land.
“Great!” he said, still grinning at the news of her imminent parenthood.
“If you and I marry, that way we have a child without all the work and waiting. I always said that Polaroid should get involved in the baby business.”
Kate hit him on the chest with the heel of her hand. “Be quiet,” she said. “How were your finals?”
“My finals are finally finalized,” said Lucian. He took her arm in his and started up the stairs. “Tell me your experience at the Ministry. Did they keep you waiting for hours?”
“Of course.” They went through the tall door into the dim and echoing main hall of District Hospital One. Waiting patientstobe lined the benches down the long corridor. Gurneys with sleeping or comatose patients sat ignored, like doubleparked vehicles. The air smelled of ether and mingled medicines.
“And once they had you fill out the papers, they kept you waiting hours more?” Lucian's blue eyes looked at her with what night have been a combination of merriment and . . . what? . . . affection? Love? Kate shook the thought away.
“Actually, no,” she said, stopping with the realization of it. “Once I filled out the forms, they were very efficient. I dealt with just one man. He said he would expedite everything and I realized now that he did. Strange, isn't it?”