Lifeblood (28 page)

“And just how do you manage that?”

“Once they’re well enough, and strong, we send them to what could be described as halfway houses in east LA, where they learn English. We give them some money. Not a huge amount, but enough to tide them over until the people at the halfway house help them find jobs. A couple of our kids have even taken the GED and started community college.”

“How do they get around the citizenship questions?”

“Where do you think birth certificates are generated?”

Chapter Fifty-four

Rachel’s mouth dropped open.

“That’s right,” Emma said. “Birth certificates usually originate in hospitals. On forms signed by doctors and notarized. Copies are sent to the state. But of course the system isn’t perfect. And a small stack of the forms went missing a while back. It was assumed they were somehow thrown out by mistake.”

“How can you get away with that?” Rachel asked. “Aren’t there cross-checks?”

Emma shrugged. “You would think so, but it’s really remarkably simple. And a notary’s stamp isn’t all that hard to come by.”

“You said you don’t take girls, but there’s one out there. Alone in a room. Soledad.”

“As I said. The kids who are here want to come here. Some have a friend or relative who did it. Others hear about it from someone who knew people who came here. Some want to come here so badly they lie about their age and even their sex. Soledad originally arrived here with another girl. Both had their hair shorn, hoping to pass for boys. Naïve, yes. They have good intelligence, but little or no education. Both the girls were way under age. They may have been sold to the coyote by their parents.”

“Sold? By their own parents?”

“A parent may want a better life for a child, as well as for themselves and the children who remain. But please remember that I refused to take the girls.” Emma’s eyes flashed. “I didn’t want the coyote to think he could get away with that. I should have realized what would happen. As you obviously know, both girls came back to the hospital through the E-R. Maria was dead. Soledad was in serious condition.”

“So you are keeping Soledad? For your, shall we say, purposes?”

“To tell the truth,” Emma said, “I don’t know. And this won’t be the only time girls will be smuggled in here. So I have to think of something.”

Rachel was shaking her head. “No matter how you spin it, pretty it up, Jefferson Medical Center is stealing kidneys. And that ward out there is a black-market organ ward.”

There was a long pause before Emma said, “I wouldn’t call it that.”

“If everything is so clean and nice, why did someone try to kill me last weekend?”

“What?” Emma sounded shocked, but Rachel wasn’t sure the doctor’s look was not just carefully studied surprise.

“Exactly,” Rachel said. “Whoever it was, missed me and hit my friend.”

“My God,” Emma said. “Believe me, there’s no connection to Jefferson, to the transplant team here. I guess I can see how you could think there might be, but that event has to be a coincidence. We save lives here. We don’t take them.”

“I’m not convinced, Emma.”

“Well, forgive me for this, but if you tell the police your suspicion, they won’t believe you. We’ve seen to that. I’m sorry, Rachel, but we had to. What we’re doing here is too important.”

999

Rachel walked back to the garage trying to order her thoughts. This must be what it would be like on another planet, where enemies were friends and some friends could not be trusted.

Eventually, Emma had come to some decision and allowed her to leave, had escorted her out of the hospital. They stopped at the ladies’ room on the first floor and while Rachel dug her clothing out of the waste paper bin, Emma watched, head slowly shaking. “You really are very clever.”

At the garage, she barely stopped at her cubicle to check phone messages before walking up the ramp to her Civic and heading for Pasadena. She had to see Hank.

Making her way through the hospital lobby, she took the stairs to the sixth floor. The door to 614 was open.

Both beds were made up with fresh linens. Both were empty.

Now what?

Rachel hurried down the hall to the nurses’ station.

“Where is the patient from room six-fourteen?” she asked the man behind the counter.

“Bed A or B?”

The look he gave her seemed wary and a tide of panic rose inside Rachel. “I don’t know,” she faltered. “The bed by the window.”

He went to a computer, tapped a few keys and squinted at the monitor. “Sullivan?”

“Yes.”

“He’s been transferred to an isolation unit.”

“Isolation? Why?”

“You are a relative?”

“Yes,” she lied.

“Apparently there’s an infection. This is just a precaution until the antibiotic takes effect.”

“Can I see him?”

“No ma’am. No visitors allowed in isolation.”

“How long will he be in isolation?”

“If the antibiotic is successful, it could be only a few days.”

999

Back at the garage, Rachel called Goldie’s number and left a message. Marty’s line rang six times. Rachel hung up. His voice mail was likely full. He probably hadn’t been home in a while. She knew what that meant. She looked up the number of his favorite poker club, punched it into her phone and asked for him. Everyone there knew him. “This is his daughter,” she added, suspecting they protected men from fuming wives.

“I don’t think he’s here, but I’ll check. Hang on.”

The line went empty for what seemed like a long time.

“Nope, not here. I asked around. They say he hasn’t been in since his big win.”

Rachel thanked him and hung up. Big win? A new big win or the old big win? They usually didn’t come in pairs. But no way could Marty stay away from a poker table very long, and he was not only loyal to One-Eyed Jack’s, he never switched clubs after a sizeable win. Supposed to be bad luck or something.

Rachel chewed on her pencil. Something didn’t feel right.

If there was worrying to be done, she’d have to do it later. Right now, her head felt like it was going to explode. She had to find someone to help her reconcile all this bizarre information.

Looking up, she saw Irene pushing her cart up the garage ramp. The woman was carrying an umbrella, although there was no sign of rain. That and the high-collared prim blouse she wore today made her silhouette look like a plump Mary Poppins. She parked the cart in the space Rachel always saved for her and, umbrella still in hand, came to the booth.

“Dear girl! It is such a lovely day and here you are looking so glum.”

Wondering if she could trust Irene with her quandary, Rachel gave a small shrug and decided no, probably not. Not right now, anyway. Irene might be on first name terms with just about everyone over the age of six in Los Angeles County, but she loved nothing more than a nice morsel of gossip. Rachel needed to think things through. And helping with that was probably not Irene’s strong suit.

As it turned out, she was wrong.

“It isn’t your friend, is it, luv? He hasn’t taken a turn for the worse, has he?”

“No.” Rachel shook her head. “At least I don’t think so.”

Today, Irene’s hair was in gray pin curls. The woman’s mouth made a broad smile below apple-red, round cheeks. “No, of course not. I knew that.”

“How do you know that?”

“Oh, from time to time, I take me a look into the unseen present as well as the past and future. Things will be not quite as expected, but he will be in fine fettle in no time. You’ll see.”

Rachel knew Irene wanted her to ask for details, but she never quite believed the woman when she was playing the mystic, so instead, she pulled out the handbag Peter had given her. “I need to pay you for the weekend. I’m sorry. I should have done it before. Can I give you a check?”

“Of course, dear girl. But just this once. I don’t care to have the tax man poking about in my business.”

Writing out the check, Rachel realized she didn’t know Irene’s last name.

“Never mind. It’s very long and hard to spell. Just write it to Irene. And thank you kindly. But I dare say, you do still look peaked. Tell Irene what is troubling you.”

“Oh, it’s just that I have to decide what to do about something. And I haven’t quite got it sorted out in my head yet.”

“You don’t want to talk about it?”

“Not right now, no.”

“You have to decide something on your own say-so and you don’t know what that say-so is.”

“That probably describes it.”

“Then you would be well advised, dear girl. Very well advised, indeed, to consider the words of Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr.”

“Who?”

“Never mind, luv. The man’s name is not important. It’s the little prayer he wrote for a service at a church in Massachusetts that has helped so many folks make the choices they have to make. It was a Congregational church. Nineteen forty-three.”

“All right.” Rachel waited for some bland little homily that had caught Irene’s attention.

“Give us the grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.”

999

Rachel went through the motions of the day’s work, stopping a couple times to wonder how Irene had managed to come up with virtually the same lines so many alcoholics kept in their wallets or posted on the doors of their refrigerators. Was the woman really clairvoyant? How did she know the name of the person who authored it and where and when? Or did she make up that part?

Whatever, Rachel gained a smidgen of serenity from it, enough to get through the day with reasonably sensible thinking. What did she have to accept? That Hank had been horribly injured, for one thing. That now he had an infection dangerous enough to land him in isolation.

Was there anything in her power to change? By mid afternoon, when she saw Emma come through the street door, she knew at least one answer to those questions.

She motioned to the doctor, walked over to where Emma waited, leaned against the wall, and crossed her arms. “I have a proposal.”

Faint alarm seemed to register in Emma’s eyes. “Yes?”

“I will not go to the police about this,” Rachel began. “At least not right now. But I have a price.”

“And that is…?”

“Soledad.”

Chapter Fifty-five

“What are you saying, Rachel?”

“You said yourself you don’t know what to do with her. You said her parents probably had sold her. And I have very little doubt that whoever locked her in that van in my garage left her there to die. Your system, if we can call it that, is set up for boys. Apparently Soledad has no one to take care of her and nowhere to go. And she’s only eleven years old. In the long run, you don’t have many choices. You can send her back to the people who sold her and try not to know when they sell her again.”

“There is the Department of Social Services,” Emma said.

“Oh, sure. I’ll bet people are lining up to provide a foster home, let alone adopt, an eleven-year-old Mexican girl who barely speaks English and is in this country illegally. Do you know how Social Services even deals with a case like hers?”

Emma gave Rachel a long look as if sizing up her intent. Finally the doctor said, “Frankly, no, I don’t. I’ve been thinking I should try to find out, but I’m afraid of tipping my hand.”

Rachel raised her chin and stared hard at Emma. “So here’s another option. I want to ask her if she would like to come live with me.”

999

The autumn sun made their shadows very long as the two women threaded their way along the sidewalk among pedestrians newly freed from offices and anxious to get to their cars and go home.

“You’re sure you’ve thought about this enough?” Emma asked. “The job you’d be taking on is not a small one. Soledad is nearing puberty. What do you know about teenage girls?”

“Not a lot,” Rachel had answered. “Except I was one. A long time ago.”

“Shouldn’t you wait another few days?”

“Not really. Look, I don’t want to take her right away. Not until you say she’s strong enough. Not until she says she says she’s ready. But everything in my life is so frigging uncertain right now that one more uncertainty will drive me straight over the edge.”

“Given your emotional state, you think you’re up to the task?”

“I’m probably a better option than the county or the coyote or someone who deals in sex slavery which, as you mentioned, may be right around the corner for someone like Soledad.”

Emma stopped on the corner and looked into Rachel’s face. “Forgive me, but I have to ask. What if you’re convicted for drug theft?”

Rachel drew in a long breath and was silent a moment. “I told you, Emma. I didn’t do it.”

“As a matter of fact, I know you didn’t. But I didn’t say what if you’re guilty, I said what if you’re convicted.”

Rachel ran her gaze along the tops of the buildings across the street, lined in red by the lowering sun. “I have a father, friends. If worse comes to worst, I can make arrangements.” She hoped that was true. “It’s better than the people who sold her or left her to die.”

They walked the rest of the way to the hospital in silence, went in the side door and took the elevator to the fourth floor. Pushing the button inside the car, Rachel asked, “Is that ward the reason for the weird floor numbering?”

“I don’t think so,” Emma said. “I think they originally used European floor numbering for some obscure reason, and never changed it.”

The elevator stopped at the ground floor and three people in whites entered. One looked at Emma and said, “I thought you had left.”

The doctor shrugged. “Forgot something.”

Rachel wondered if these and all the other Jefferson staff members knew about the special ward. Despite Emma’s explanations, it seemed like a lot of people to trust with a secret. Maybe it was a case of hiding in plain sight.

The answer was obvious when they all got off on the same floor. Emma was clearly well versed in the charade. The doctor turned left instead of right, and with Rachel following, walked around another ward until the others veered off, then headed back in the right direction.

“Surely a few other people besides me have stumbled across that ward,” Rachel said.