The next morning, Deb arrives at the hospital at her usual time. She checks in with the head nurse who gossips about one of the more difficult births that took place over night. “It was ugly, a lot of blood, they had to call the husband,” the nurse says, her eyes going wide. “Mama’s okay after a blood transfusion, but it was close.”
Deb has become close with the nurses after they worked together to bring Dolly into the world. It doesn’t hurt that Dolly is so good, too. “An actual doll baby,” the nurses call her. They give Deb little plastic jugs of juice throughout the day, and she brings them angel food cake or cookies or whatever dessert their mother has packed for Violet, usually in extreme excess.
When Deb gets to her sister’s room, she stops short, then backs up into the hall again. The room number is correct. And there are the little pile of peppermints her sister likes to suck through the night to keep awake while she feeds Dolly. Three wrappers from the night before glittering with fluorescent lighting, evidence of her sister’s nightly activity.
But the bed is empty. The blankets, neatly folded. Her sister’s things—her robe, her hairbrush, her suitcase—gone.
Deb returns to the nurse’s break room and knocks on the door jamb. “Ladies,” she greets them. The room is fogged with cigarette smoke and the smell of cheap coffee. She tries to sound nonchalant but something in her voice gives her away because a few of the nurses look up, heads tilted, eyebrows furrowed.
“Who ya looking for?” one of them says.
“I can’t seem to locate my sister. Did she move rooms or something?”
The head nurse, the one who gossiped with Deb about the bleeding mother last night, frowns and shakes her head. “No. She checked out early this morning. Said she needed to get home to see the kids, get some things in order and she’d be back this afternoon.” The nurse’s face brightens. “Dolly’s being discharged today!”
Deb’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes. She retreats back to Violet’s hospital room and sits on the bed which is thin and sterile without her sister’s body warming it. The room looks funny—everything is edged in bright, bright light, like when Deb was little and she stood up too quickly, the room tilting for a second, sparks of color fireworking across her vision. The consequences of low blood pressure; sometimes, she passed out and woke up dizzy and discombobulated. Her breathing comes in quick, short bursts. It’s one of the things that most surprised Deb about newborns, their breath so fast, so hiccupping, so much like the sound of a person panicking.
The head nurse follows Deb into the room. “You okay, hon?”
“I don’t know,” Deb replies slowly. “I think my sister might be missing.”
“Missing?”
“She never came home this morning.
The two women stare at one another. “I’m sure she’s just caught up somewhere. The grocery store, maybe,” the nurse suggests uneasily.
“Why would she do that? She never goes to the grocery store. What if something happened to her?” The panic that Deb’s body has tried to forewarn her about begins to swim up her throat. Oh god, oh god, oh god.
As Deb wilts, the nurse becomes square-shouldered, steely, determined. A professional in emergencies. “There’s no need to jump to the worst case. We’ll put out a hospital-wide call to see if your sister is still in the building. Meanwhile, you can use the phone in the breakroom to call your family and see if she’s made it home.”
Deb does this, and every circle of the dial feels like a revolution, a full orbit around the sun, an eternity. Then: her mother. No, no sign of Violet. Why would Deb ask such a thing? Is something wrong?
This is the same phone Deb uses when, after hanging up with her frantic mother, she calls the police to report her sister missing. They show up to the hospital an hour later and begin to question Deb, the nurses, the doctor even.
“She’s an unusual case,” Deb overhears the doctor saying. “She refused to follow prescribed treatment and suffered extreme pain. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s had some sort of break down.”
You’re not a psychoanalyst! Deb wants to scream at him.
Her mother arrives shortly after and begins to question Deb even more vigorously than the police. No, Violet hasn’t said anything strange, done anything strange, or at least not anymore strange than how a postpartum woman acts, even the nurses say so, ask them!
Her mother sinks into a chair with her hands over her face, the caricature of a woman in distress, and Deb wants to drag her up by her thin shoulders and shake her, exactly what you’re not supposed to do with an infant. “This isn’t a movie, Mother!” Deb screams, feeling more and more like it is in fact a movie. She plays her role of difficult daughter to perfection. Her mother, as expected, responds with a sob. Violence erupts like heat up and down Deb’s arms, and she picks up one of Violet’s peppermints to throw at the wall. Instead, she sucks it out of the wrapper and rolls it around her mouth, its chilly sweetness proving the reality of the situation more than anything. She needs a clear head. She just needs to think. Pick up each piece of evidence, examine it beneath the microscope of her mind, form a hypothesis.
But she’s interrupted by a nurse who enters with a squalling Dolly. “Would you mind?” the nurse whisper-shouts reproachfully. “Brand new mothers are trying to rest.” She gives Deb and her mother a stern look, and Deb has never wanted to hug a stranger more. Finally, someone real. And screaming mad, rightfully so. Her doll baby. “We’ve been feeding her,” the nurse says, “but I think she’s feeling lonely.”
“We need a bottle,” Deb says, taking the baby into her arms, and the nurse magically produces one. “Jesus, I could kiss you, thank you.”
“No need for that. If you need anything, I’m down the hall. Please be quiet. I’m sorry about your situation,” the nurse says, ducking out the door and away from the hysteria as if it might catch.
This, Deb can do. Mixing bottles, changing diapers. Dolly is like one of Deb’s rats, screaming at the negative stimuli of wet, hunger, cold. Deb changes her, feeds her, wraps her in a blanket against Deb’s chest as if she were a kangaroo. She fusses, coos, smooths her hair, babies Dolly in ways she never was allowed with the rat pups. It feels excessive, luxurious. For a few hours, Deb lets the routine of Dolly’s need distract her.
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Uh oh. Looks like Violet is tired of being a baby factory…. Excellent, engaging writing as usual. 💞