Case Histories

Jackson made his way through the overheated corridors of the hospital, from the medical admissions ward to the pediatric ICU. He walked into the unit unchallenged; the nurse at the desk recognized him and didn't question him. He would have preferred it if she had. It shouldn't be this easy to walk into places.

Jackson observed Shirley through a glass wall that felt like a oneway mirror for all the attention anyone paid to him. Shirley was wearing blue surgical scrubs. Jackson didn't think there was anything much sexier than the sight of a woman in surgical scrubs and wondered if he was alone in thinking that or if most guys did There should be opinion polls on these things. Shirley was standing over an ICU cot, delicately lifting a small waxy baby. It still had an array of tubes and monitors attached to its body so that it seemed like some odd, fragile creature from outer space.

"Give me a sec and I'll let her know you're here," a young male Australian nurse said to him. (Who was running Australia? They were all over here. God knows why.)

Jackson watched a doctor walk over to Shirley and touch her on the shoulder and say something to her. There was something indefinably intimate about the gesture, and from the way she turned to him and smiled Jackson instantly knew that they'd slept with each other. They both gazed down at the baby. Jackson felt even more like a voyeur than usual. The nurse who had recognized him (What was her name? Elaine? Eileen?) came and stood by his side and said, "Ah, sweet."

"Sweet?" Jackson said, wondering what could be sweet about this little tableau. A woman he'd recently spent a night of unfettered lust with cooing over a sick baby with another lover.

"Well, sad, really, I suppose," Elaine/Eileen said. "They can't have children of their own."

"They? They're married? Shirley Morrison and the doctor guy?"

"Doctor Welch, head of pediatrics." Elaine/Eileen frowned at him.

"They're married?"

"Yes, Inspector Brodie. Are you investigating Shirley?"

"It's Mr. Brodie. I left the force two years ago, Eileen."

"Elaine."

"Why would I be investigating her?"

Elaine shrugged. "The way you're interrogating me, maybe."

"Sorry."

Elaine moved closer to him, her tone more confidential. "You know, don't you, that she's the sister of-"

"Yes," Jackson interrupted her. "I know." Shirley Morrison hadn't changed her name after her sister's conviction, she hadn't changed it when she got married. He had asked her, somewhere in the druglike haze of their morning after, "You never changed your identity?" and she said, "It was the only thing I had left." Her hus-band moved on to inspect another alien baby and Shirley put the one she was holding back into its little spaceship cot.

The Australian nurse entered the ICU and said something to Shirley Morrison, who looked up and frowned when she saw Jack-son. He shrugged at her and made a helpless face. He pointed at his own naked ring finger and then pointed at her. She raised her eyes heavenward as if she couldn't believe he was communicating in this ridiculous way. She signaled to him to go to the entrance of the unit. She opened the door a fraction, as if Jackson posed a threat.

"Why didn't you tell me you were married?" he asked her.

"Would it have made a difference?"

"Yes."

"Christ, Jackson, what are you, the last good man standing? It was just sex, get over it." She closed the door on him. He'd had a bad feeling about her, he should have gone with it. Was she a good liar or was she just good at avoiding the truth? Was there a difference? He liked to think truth was an absolute, but maybe that made him into a tight-arsed moral fascist.

On his way out of the ward, Jackson almost bumped into the yellow-haired homeless girl who was lurking in the corridor. She was muttering under her breath, as if she were saying the rosary, and Jackson wanted to say hello to her because he'd seen her around so much recently that he felt he knew her, but of course he didn't, so he said nothing and was surprised when she spoke.

"You know him, don't you?"

"Who?"

"The old fat geezer."

"Theo?" he guessed.

"Yeah, is he going to be alright?"

"He's okay," Jackson said. The girl started walking away from the ICU and Jackson said, "Visiting time isn't over, you can go in and see him, he's in medical admissions."

"No, I saw him this afternoon, I came to find someone else."

Jackson accompanied her out of the hospital. She shivered even though it was a balmy evening and lit up a cigarette and then said, "Sorry," and offered one to Jackson. He lit up and said, "You're too young to smoke," and she said, "And you're too old. And anyway I'm twenty-five, old enough for anything." Jackson thought she looked about seventeen, eighteen tops. She retrieved her dog from where it was tied to a bench outside. "Are you a friend of his?" she asked him.