Black Jack: A nail biting, hair-raising thriller (Jack Ryder Book 4) (2 page)

“
I
think something is wrong
.”

Susan held the phone close to her ear, her heart pounding in her chest, Chandelle on her arm, fussing and crying. Susan tried to swing her from side to side to calm her down, but it didn’t work.

“You always say that,” Bob said in the other end.

“No this is different. Something is off with her. She is burning up,” Susan said flustered.

“So she has a fever? Well that’s normal in babies. They have to get used to the environment outside the mother’s womb. Babies get sick and they can endure a much higher fever than adults.”

Susan nodded quietly while her husband spoke. He was after all a doctor. He had his own practice close to where they lived in Savannah. He saw many worried mothers come in with their babies.

“It’s probably just a virus,” he said. “There’s a lot of that going around these days. We’ll monitor it. She’ll probably snap out of it in no time.”

“Okay,” Susan said.

She hung up and brought Chandelle to the living room where she sat down and tried to breastfeed. But Chandelle suddenly wouldn’t eat.

“That’s not normal,” Susan mumbled to the baby who was now crying louder than before. “You usually always eat, almost all day long. What’s wrong with you, baby girl, huh?”

Susan tickled Chandelle on her stomach. When that only made her cry louder, she checked the diaper, but it wasn’t even wet.

That’s odd. She hasn’t peed since last night?

“It’s probably just a virus,” Susan repeated her husband’s words while trying to calm the baby down.

But nothing worked. Soon Susan felt the frustration rise in her body and she started to walk around the house swinging the baby in her arms, hushing her, but still nothing worked. She tried putting her down for a nap, thinking the virus and fever probably made her exhausted and she probably needed a nap, but putting her down made Chandelle scream even louder.

Susan let her stay in the bed for a few minutes, sneaking outside thinking it would be easier for Chandelle to fall asleep if her mother wasn’t in the room, but after ten minutes of standing outside the door to the nursery listening to the baby scream her lungs out, Susan couldn’t take it anymore.

She stormed inside and grabbed Chandelle in her arms and held her close. The baby suddenly stopped crying.

Susan took in a deep breath.

Finally. Finally.

But the joy only lasted a few seconds before Susan realized there was a reason the baby had stopped crying.

She had become unresponsive.

The baby wasn’t looking at her at all. She wasn’t crying, she wasn’t babbling, she was hardly breathing. But she was burning hot. Susan let out a small shriek.

“Chandelle?”

Oh my God, oh my God!

B
ob was held
up at the practice and arrived at the hospital an hour after Susan and Chandelle did. He stormed in the room, where Susan was sitting; holding her baby’s small lifeless hand. As her eyes met his, Susan stood up.

“What do they say?” he asked.

“She has an infection. Apparently she swallowed fluid during delivery and that caused it,” Susan said. “She had a 104 when we got here. They hooked her up on antibiotics.”

Bob breathed in a sigh of relief. “Good gracious.”

“We barely made it,” she said between sobs. She had been holding in her tears for so long now there was no holding them back anymore.

Bob grabbed her in his arms and hugged her. “Hey. Take it easy. She is going to be all right. The antibiotics will help and before you know it she’ll be back home with us again.”

“I just can’t…I was so scared, Robert. I was terrified.”

Susan only called her husband by his birth name when she was troubled or if he had done something she didn’t approve of or hurt her somehow. Otherwise it was always Bob, or Bobby, or Babe. She did it because she wanted him to know she blamed him a little for this happening. Because he didn’t react when she asked him to in the first place. Because it could have gone really wrong if she hadn’t walked back into the room and picked Chandelle up when she did. What if she had waited a few more minutes outside the door? What if Chandelle had gone quiet like she did and Susan had believed she had simply fallen asleep? Then what? Just because he kept telling her it was a virus, a simple virus that she
would beat in no time.

“I know, I know,” he said. “But it’s all over now. She’s in the best of hands here. I know the pediatric, and he is excellent. She is getting the treatment she needs and she’ll be better in no time.”

Susan couldn’t help feeling angry with him. How could he be so casual about all this? Didn’t he realize their baby almost died?

“Look at me,” he said and grabbed her by the shoulders.

Reluctantly she obeyed.

“Chandelle will be just fine. I made a mistake. I am sorry, it won’t happen again. From now on I will take you seriously every time you fuss, all right? Could we focus on our baby now and the fact that she’s still here?”

Susan’s sobs subsided. She looked into the eyes of her beloved husband who had known her since they were both in high school. “You’re right,” she said with a deep exhale.

“Now why don’t you and I go downstairs and get something to eat?” Bob said with a gentle smile.

“I can’t,” she said.

“You have to eat, Susan. You need your strength.”

She sighed and looked at her baby. “But can we just leave her?”

Bob chuckled. “Well of course we can. All the nurses are here and the doctors too. She’s sleeping right now. She needs all the rest she can get. Plus all these machines right there will go off if anything is out of the ordinary. She is in the safest place in the world.”

Susan looked at her girl who seemed so peaceful. Her small chest was heaving up and down as she breathed.

“I still don’t feel like…”

“How about you and me go down there and buy a couple of sandwiches, then come back and eat it here, huh? Would that do?”

Susan nods. “All right. I am kind of hungry.”

S
he slept
in the baby’s room. Bob went home to get enough sleep to be able to go to work the next day, since they knew Chandelle was going to be fine. It was hard to sleep in a chair, but if anything she had learned these past twenty-two days it was to get by without much sleep. She kept waking up with a start, looking at the baby, then realizing that Chandelle was still fine before she fell back asleep again.

Every hour a nurse would come in and check on Chandelle. They tried to do so without waking up Susan, but not with much success.

It wasn’t until they were changing shifts around 2 am that Susan gave in to the pressing feeling of having to go to the bathroom. She only stayed in the bathroom for a few minutes. Once she was done, she opened the door to the room and looked at the crib with Chandelle in it, then at the instruments monitoring her progress. She looked at them for a few seconds before it sunk in.

They are all turned off!

Susan stormed to the crib and looked inside. It was empty.

Where’s my baby?

Frantically Susan looked around in the room as if expecting to find Chandelle on the floor or somewhere else, before she stormed out into the hallway. Hyperventilating desperately she approached the nurses room. The door was locked as usually during changing shifts.

Susan knocked. The panic made her hands shake.

“Hello?”

The door was opened and a nurse looked at her. She was about to get angry, but seeing the desperation on Susan’s face made her change her mind.

“Did anyone take Chandelle?” Susan asked.

“Excuse me?”

“My baby,” she continued, finding it hard to say the words. “Chandelle Murray. She’s…she’s not in her crib. I thought maybe something happened, maybe you took her to some examinations or something.”

The nurse’s eyes stared at Susan, scrutinizing her. “I…I just got here. Let me just check with the others.”

The door was closed in Susan’s face. The wait was unbearable. A million thoughts ran through her mind until it was opened again. The nurse shook her head. “No one in here knows anything about it. Are you sure she’s not in her crib?”

Susan stared at the small woman. Was she kidding her?

“You think I would make something like this up?” she asked.

The nurse shook her head. “Of course not. But maybe you dreamt something. Let me come with you and check.”

“I am telling you she’s not there!” Susan cried after her as the nurse took off towards Chandelle’s room.

Oh my God. They have no idea where my baby is!

The nurse opened the door and trotted inside, Susan in her tail. “That’s odd,” she said as she saw the empty crib and all the shut off instruments.

“I was just in the bathroom. When I walked in there, she was still in the crib, sleeping. When I came out, she was gone!”

“She was given antibiotics, right?” the nurse asked.

“Yes,” Susan said, her hands sweating in anxiety.

“Well, that is gone too,” the nurse said. “One of the other nurses must know something. A baby doesn’t just disappear from a hospital. Wait here a minute.”

H
IT
: To ask for another card.

M
ay
2016

Oddly enough no one noticed her. Not one single head in the streets of Savannah turned to look at the little girl as she strolled across the historic part of town. Tourists were everywhere, staring at the beautiful old houses, talking about the Spanish Moss falling from every tree, telling each other the old scary stories about how the moss was filled with small critters,
the chiggers
, that would make you itch, or even crawl under your skin and spread all over your body. Or about frogs and snakes and spiders that liked to hide in it.

“Spanish moss was given its name by French explorers,” a tour guide told a flock of tourist as the girl unnoticed passed them. “Native Americans told them the plant was called
Itla-okla
which meant “tree hair.” The French were reminded of the Spanish conquistadors’ long beards, so they called it
Barbe Espagnol
, or “Spanish Beard.” As time went by Spanish Beard changed to Spanish moss.”

The girl heard the words as they fell, but she didn’t register any of them. She walked past the flock and continued down a broad boulevard with large trees and old houses on each side. People she passed in the street didn’t know where she was going or even care, but she knew. She knew where she wanted to go.

What she didn’t know was exactly where to find what she was looking for.

As she passed them she felt like the big houses were staring back at her, from the empty dark windows, and she hurried through the street. With a chill she imagined the Spanish Moss were long arms and claws reaching out for her, trying to drag her back… back…back inside.

The sunlight was very bright and hurt the little girl’s eyes, but not enough to make her stop. Her skin was pale and her arms and legs burning in the small dress she was wearing. The girl started to run, but her delicate bare feet hurt from hitting the hard surface of the pavement, and it made her stop. She tried to read the street signs, but she soon realized she couldn’t. A man with a suitcase passing her finally looked at her, and she hid her face so he wouldn’t see her properly, and maybe recognize her, because what if he was friends with
the Doctor
, he could after all be, couldn’t he? If he was he could tell that the girl was seen, where she was, but the man walked on not even slowing down to get a proper look at her.

The girl took in a deep breath and realized she couldn’t be far away from her destination. She could smell it in the air.

The girl walked on, passing a couple of old squares and a park, then a series of old shops where she stopped and glanced through the windows, eyes wide open and in awe. Never had she seen anything this stunning. All those things in the windows and especially all those books.

The girl laughed and looked at the blue sky above. It was so spectacular it was almost overwhelming. How can the roof be this high? So many years she had wondered what it would be like to look at it, being outside looking up and not staring at it through the window glass until the Doctor yelled at her to
get away from the window
.

The girl made a grimace, then shivered by the thought of the Doctor pulling her arm harshly while scolding her for
risk being seen
.

While remembering the Doctor’s words, the girl sped up. She knew the Doctor would be looking for her soon, wanting to drag her back…inside.

As she turned one more corner, she drew in a sigh of relief. There it was. Right in front of her. As blue as the sky above.

M
ay
2016

“I was thinking this would be a good place.”

Pastor Daniel looked at us with his arms stretched out. He had taken us to one of small parks in the middle of town, or squares as they were called. Savannah was filled with them. Twenty-four in total I had been told. The town was sort of built around them. They were all beautiful, but this one in particular.

“I was thinking we could do the ceremony right here, he said and walked to a small pavilion in the middle of the square. “You – Jack - would stand here, with your ring-bearer, Austin, at your side and wait for the bride. Then you – Shannon - you come walking from down there, from behind the tree so no one sees you prematurely, while the music plays you walk up here with Angela and Abigail as your flower girls spreading roses out on the grass for you to walk on. How does that sound?”

Tyler burst into a loud scream as soon as Pastor Daniel looked at me with that big smile of his. I looked down at the baby and tried to bounce up and down a little to calm him down. Shannon reacted to his cry immediately, giving me a tired look. She had strapped him around my stomach in the sling to give her a break for once. Tyler was now almost three months old and so far he hadn’t slept one full night.

“So what do you think?”

“I love it Pastor Daniel,” Abigail exclaimed. “I think it is perfect.”

“And the bride and groom to be?” he said looking at Shannon and me.

Shannon smiled exhausted. “It looks great, Pastor.”

It was her idea that we had the wedding in Savannah. It was her favorite city and she simply loved the old houses and the atmosphere here, she had said when I tried to argue for an ocean wedding on surfboards. “It’s the most romantic city in the entire country,” she had said and how could I argue against that? The ocean was my choice, but I had to give her that it wouldn’t be as beautiful and the water would destroy her dress and hair. Austin had been on my side and I have a feeling so was Tyler, but the girls had finally won. They wanted the romantic stuff and so they’d get it.

Savannah had another advantage. No one knew or suspected that Shannon King, the famous country superstar would get married in some small park in the middle of town, so with a little luck we could avoid paparazzi’s and other unwelcomed subjects. It was only going to be us, our kids, my parents and Shannon mother and sister, Kristi with her husband. Shannon hadn’t invited her second sister who lived in New York. I didn’t know why and Shannon made it clear I shouldn’t ask.

It was supposed to be a small and private wedding. Just after my book. We hadn’t told anyone, not even my best friends or colleagues at the Sherriff’s office. Not even Sherriff Ron or even my partner Beth. They were going to get the surprise once we got back. All I said was we were going on a vacation for a week to Bahamas. Just in case any snoopy reporters called and asked for me, suspecting anything. Sending them off to Bahamas would make sure they wouldn’t make it here, once they found out.

“Don’t you think, Jack?” Shannon smiled at Tyler even if she was addressing me. It had been a lot like that lately. I didn’t get much eye contact from anyone. I simply wasn’t as cute as Tyler, I had to realize.

“Yes. I think this place would make a great wedding.”

“Great. It’s settled, then,” Pastor Daniel said. “I will make all the arrangements and then we’ll have the ceremony this coming Saturday at five o’clock.”

We had exactly a week to get ready. Not that we had much we needed to do. Shannon had a dress made for her and the same tailor made my suit and clothes for the kids. It was already taken care off. We had found a small restaurant to have the dinner afterwards. Our guests would arrive just before the weekend, so that meant we had an entire week to explore Savannah and enjoy each other’s company.

Tyler burst into yet another loud scream and Shannon grabbed him. “Here let me take him. I think he’s hungry.”

“Didn’t he just eat?” Austin asked.

While Shannon unwrapped the baby from me, I looked at my big son. I couldn’t believe he used to be this small and demanding. I couldn’t believe I used to have twins and that I actually survived it.