Adopted Son Read online

  Four months after Colin Hayes performed his first viral assay, Bethesda Naval Hospital, Bethesda, MD

  The maternity ward at BNH has a set of large, double doors that swing open. Usually the only time they fly open is when a woman in labor breaks through on a gurney, screaming in pain, husband, nurses, doctors all in tow. But on this day the doors burst open to reveal a very different entourage. Ray Johnston has just broken through. He was disheveled. He looked as though he hadn’t slept in days (in truth he hadn’t). His hair, which was usually so well trimmed in a military cut, had grown ragged and mopish. His tie was skewed to one side, and the top button of his blue polyester dress shirt was undone. His tan raincoat clashed with his dark suit and black shoes. He pushed the big double doors to the maternity ward open with both arms. It was a more difficult task than one might think, because each arm was being held by a nurse. “Sir, sir, you can’t just barge in there like that,” said the nurses. Ray didn’t care. He had other things on his mind.

  “Get these people off me,” he said to his compatriots. Three men dressed in dark black suits pulled the nurses back. The men wore dark sunglasses and had little white earphones in their ears. They were much larger than the nurses, and well schooled in a variety of personal combat techniques, so they removed the nurses from Ray’s arms with very little effort. The entire entourage made a fair bit of noise bursting in like that, which attracted the attention of the head nurse. She was taking the temperature of one of the babies. She stopped her work and looked up at the mob of people that had entered her ward. “What the hell do you think you are doing?” she said. “Who the hell are these people; where’s security?”

  Ray just ignored her. He moved amongst the newborn cribs looking for something. He moved down the aisles with precision, sometimes lifting a blanket to see underneath. The babies began crying. Of course, once a few start, they all begin bawling. The ward became filled with the din of babies woken prematurely from their afternoon naps. The head nurse moved to stop Ray, but her arm was grabbed by one of the black-suited thugs. She glared up at him and raised her free fist to strike him. He looked down with her and shook his head in a “don’t even think about it” sort of way that was intimidating enough to erase the violent thought from her mind.

  Ray finally found what he was looking for. He had stopped at one of the HS babies that the ward had. He lifted the little pink blanket and pointed. “This one,” he said. Colin Hayes arrived just in time to hear the command. He had been left behind in the scuffle in the hallway. Ray was crazed with adrenaline, and Colin sometimes had a hard time just keeping up. Colin opened a small case and pulled out a rather large needle. He moved toward the child. “What the hell do you people think you are doing?” said the head nurse. “You can’t just burst in here like this!” She struggled against the man in black. “Who the hell gave you the authority?”

  “Sorry ma’am. National Security,” said Ray. He held the small child’s frail arm. Colin began pouring alcohol on a cotton swab.

  “National Security? You just can’t come in here crying National Security!”

  “I’m afraid they can, Nurse Adams,” said the voice coming through the door. It was Dr. Rourke, the head administrator of the hospital. He entered the room accompanied with two more of the men in dark suits. He held in his hand a slip of paper. “Despite their poor manners, these people have the authority to take blood samples from your patients. Please give them your full cooperation.” Dr. Rourke didn’t look well. He didn’t seem too pleased with what he had just said, as if he secretly knew better, but had no choice in the matter.

  Colin finished taking the sample from the first HS baby. By that time Ray had already identified the other two in the ward. Colin repeated his procedure, carefully cataloging and storing each sample in his case. Nurse Adams was not pleased with the events, but there was little that she could do without Dr. Rourke’s backing. “Who the hell do you think you are?” she said out of frustration. “Who do you work for?”

  “Center for Disease Control ma’am,” said Ray, not really paying attention to the question. He had other things on his mind.

  “CDC? You guys don’t look like you work for the CDC. I want to see some credentials.”

  Ray silently looked up at the men in the dark suits. They got the message. They grabbed the head nurse by both arms and politely escorted her out of the maternity ward.

  Several hours later, the Miller farm, on the outskirts of Tyler, TX

  2 am. Tom sat in the almost complete darkness of his child’s room. His eyes had gotten used to the dark though. He could make out most of the things around him with just the starlight to see from. The nights around here had been getting brighter and brighter as the city moved closer. He remembered being out at night as a kid. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. Now he could see the items in the room quite clearly. The mobile above the bed twirled slowly in the light breeze from the open window. The crib lay before him. Inside was his son, motionless, asleep.

  He had been sitting here for almost an hour, immobile in the darkness. Outside the window there was the occasional sound of a cricket, or maybe a car in the distance, but that was it. On his lap he silently stroked a brand new, kid-sized baseball glove. He had gone a little overboard when he found out Lorraine was pregnant and bought a whole bunch of toys for “his boy.” Off in the corner a veritable treasure chest sat, filled with baseball bats, balls of all sizes and shapes, a few toy six-shooters. Toys that little Jim wouldn’t have been able to use for years, even if he had been healthy.

  “Jim,” thought Tom. “My son is named Jim.” When Lorraine first found out that she was pregnant, they had gone through all sorts of ideas for names. She even bought a book. They had settled on James, since it was her father’s name. When the child had arrived so deformed, they seemed to unconsciously delay filling out the birth records. The kid had gone officially unnamed for several months. Neither of them really wanted to talk about it. You’re supposed to name your kid after someone to honor them, Tom thought to himself. What kind of honor is it to have some freak named after you? Tom quickly retracted the thought. He had talked to the doctors and counselors. He had read all the pamphlets that Lorraine had brought home. He understood that he needed to be more sensitive. He understood that he needed to be more politically correct. He understood that he needed to be strong for the sake of his family, and to be accepting and loving and everything that a good father should be. He understood all this in his head, but that understanding hadn’t made it down to his heart just yet. He fingered the tiny baseball mitt he was cradling in his lap. It had seemed so perfect when he had bought it. Now it felt useless. With those long, spindly fingers and weak, fragile arms, Jim would never be able to fit into it. He would never have the son that he’d dreamt of all these years. He wanted grow old watching his kid win the little league championships, make the football team, grow smart and strong and popular. He wanted someone who could take over the family business and would love the soil as much as he did. He wanted someone who would carry on his legacy and the family name. From what little they knew about HS, it seemed very unlikely that those things would happen now. “I’ll be lucky if he’s not a complete retard,” he thought.

  Tom wanted a smoke, but his wife wouldn’t let him smoke in the house anymore and he was too lazy to go outside. He sat for a while longer in the darkness, not really thinking about anything in particular, just enjoying the quiet and watching the curtains move slowly back and forth in the breeze. Eventually he decided to get up. Not to go to bed, but to go to the kitchen. He hadn’t been sleeping well since the baby came. It wasn’t the crying or midnight feedings either. Most parents of newborns don’t get a lot of sleep in general. But for Tom the problem was internal. Nothing he could put a finger on really. Just a sadness, just some post-partum depression that kept him up late worrying about the future, about what other people were saying about him. He hadn’t had anyone over since the birth, even though a lot of the neighbo
rs expected it. He didn’t want to admit to what sort of child he had spawned. Not just yet. Of course, there were rumors all around town, but for now they were just rumors, and the people had enough class to keep them quiet. Once the story broke though, geez would lips start flapping. “What went wrong?” “Was it his fault?” “Was there something wrong with his genes?” Tom could almost hear all the voices of the neighbors in his head. Yapping and yapping about stuff that just wasn’t any of their damned business anyway.

  Tom sighed audibly and stood up from his chair. He could already taste the beer on his lips, hear the satisfying hiss of the can opening. As he turned to leave the room, he heard a small cry from the child. Nothing really, just a murmur as the baby shifted positions. Tom stopped in his tracks. “That sounded just like a real baby,” he thought. With the lights off like this, it almost looked like a regular baby– all bundled in his little blanket, just the top of his head visible. Tom moved over to the side of the crib and rested his arms against the railing. He had never really looked at his child before. I mean, he had seen him, but he had always averted his eyes a little. Never really appreciating the child, as if in some unconscious way believing that if he didn’t look too closely, all the problems would go away. Maybe if he never really acknowledged the child, the problems would never be fully real. But now Tom did look at his child. He looked at it with fascination and with wonder. There was a slight movement from beneath the covers as the baby shifted again. A small hand slid out from under the blankets. “Its so tiny,” thought Tom. He put out his big, calloused finger and touched the hand. The small fingers wrapped around their father’s thumb. “Well, at least he’s got a good grip,” Tom whispered to himself. He remained motionless for some time.

  Tom thought that his whisper went unheard by anyone except himself and perhaps God, but he was wrong. In the doorway to the room stood Lorraine. Since the baby was born, she had been having trouble sleeping as well, but not for the same reasons as Tom. She was worried about her family and how they would survive. She had felt Tom getting more and more distant over the past few months, and inside she felt a rejection, as if he somehow blamed her for their child’s disability. She had gotten up to see where her husband had gotten off to, to ask him to come back to bed. But there in the darkness, she realized that things were going to be ok. That it might take him a little while, but that he would bond with his child, that he would protect and love his family. She just had to be a little patient, that’s all. With a tear in her eye she quietly backed out of the doorway and went back to bed. There was no need to disturb Tom. She would be able to sleep now, things were going to be all right.

  The next morning, Holy Trinity Orphanage, Bronx, NY

  Sister Mary Helen was up with the first light of dawn. That was the best time to pray. That was the best time to feel close to God. She knelt in her quarters looking out the small window as the first rays of sunlight began to cascade over the horizon. The room was filled with a brilliant orange light as the sunbeams reflected off all the tiny motes of dust in the air. It was a beautiful sight, and Mary Helen wasn’t about to miss it sleeping.

  Mary Helen’s motivations for getting up this early weren’t entirely spiritual though. Soon the children would wake, each with a hungry little mouth to feed, a wet nose to wipe, and a broken toy to be fixed. Dawn was about the only time that she was going to get any peace and quiet. It was quite a struggle keeping up with all the little charges in the nursery, and a few minutes of solitude were most welcome, even if it meant giving up a few minutes of sleep. Of course, Sister Mary never really consciously thought like that. Her mind was on God and she needed to make her daily penitence and her daily requests–nothing ever for her sake, just for the children. She asked God for the food and money needed to keep the place running, she asked for a sunny day and for no one to get hurt on the playground at lunch. She asked for parents to come and adopt the children, since they were all great kids after all. But today she was especially penitent, because she had a special request.

  After she had gone over all the things that she had done wrong since last morning, she hastily asked for the strength to be a better person and a better nun. She read through her standard list of prayers quickly. Then her mind turned to the child that had come to her yesterday, the sickly little thing that CPS had brought from the hospital.

  “God. I have one more request to make of you today. The little boy that was brought in yesterday. The one with HS. He needs your help God. He needs your help more than any of the other children. He’s sick, and he has had such a hard life so far, being born under the most horrible of circumstances. Abandoned at birth and all. I know that you have a great plan for each of us, and I know that your wisdom to bring such a child into the world is above reproach, but I implore you to give me the strength to make his little life more comfortable, and I pray that you send me some parents who would love someone like him, in spite of all his problems. I can tell that he’s a good kid at heart. Amen.”

  Sister Mary looked up at the sky for an answer to her prayers, but nothing apparent was forthcoming. The sun had completely risen now– morning had officially begun. The children would be waking soon. Sister Mary got up on her feet with a slight groan, straightened her habit, and got ready to start another day.

  Two weeks after Ray Johnston’s hospital visit, in the hallway just outside of a BL-4 Laboratory at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Ft. Deitrich, MD

  Ray waited impatiently in the pale green hallway. He paced back and forth on the smooth concrete floor. It was green too. If Ray had been a more aesthetically-minded person he would be wondering why everything here was painted the same pale green color. He could hear footsteps in the distance occasionally, but it was late in the day and the number of people had been gradually diminishing as the sunlight coming through the windows dimmed and turned orange. He decided to take a chance on a cigarette. He pulled a ragged pack out of his pocket. It was a little bent, but the tobacco was still good. Ray looked up at a sign painted on the wall years ago. It said, “no smoking.” He decided to ignore it. He pulled a cigarette from the pack with his teeth as he fished in his coat pocket for a light. He pulled out a silver lighter. It wasn’t really apparent unless you looked close, but one side of the lighter was engraved with a ‘thanks for your assistance’ sort of dopey message. The other side had the CIA logo on it. He struck the flint once and the flame roared to life. Just before he could ignite the tip, his eye caught a smoke detector attached to the wall near the ceiling. Ray only hesitated a minute though before taking his first puff. He had much larger problems than worrying about setting off an alarm.

  Once the cigarette was safely lit, Ray stepped away from the detector, towards the window of the BL-4 lab. He looked inside. Colin Hayes was manipulating samples along with two other technicians. There were small vials filled with blood all over the workbench. Ray knew that the final analysis wouldn’t be available for several more weeks, but he was a good reader of people, he had to be in his line of work. Ray looked through the glass at Colin’s face. The look of resignation and disappointment told him all he needed to know. He began walking down the hallway. He needed to call General Dumphries immediately.

  That same afternoon, Tyler Memorial Hospital, Tyler, TX

  Dr. Thomas could see the Millers coming down the hallway. He was encouraged to see that Tom was holding the baby. Dr. Thomas had been a little concerned that the father was getting distant from his child due to the HS. A lot of parents of disabled children have experienced similar problems. He hoped they hadn’t been lying about seeing that counselor in Dallas. Thankfully, since the last visit Tom seemed to be adjusting better. He stopped them as they walked past.

  “Tom, Lorraine, how are you two doing today?”

  The new parents moved to the side of the hallway to allow traffic to pass and stopped to chat. “We’re fine Dr. Thomas, it’s good to see you again.”

  “Is there a problem? How’s little James
today?” He reached over to the bundle Tom held in his arms and uncovered the top blanket to reveal a little head, fidgeting about.

  “Well, Jim was up last night sneezing, so Tom thought we should take him in to get him checked up. The doctor in the emergency room said that he was ok this morning, no temperature or nothing. We got a prescription just in case.”

  “It was good that you brought him in anyway. It’s best not to take chances with someone so young,” said the doctor.

  “Tom’s been getting so overprotective lately with him, it’s like walking on eggshells when they’re together. He frets over every little thing,” said Lorraine.

  Tom continued. “It’s the HS doc. You just got to be careful. I don’t want to make a bad situation worse.”