December 24, 1986
Later, Molly McBride would look back on this night and
wonder if the disappearance of the baby Jesus hadn't been
a sign. A portent that her life was about to dramatically
and inexorably change.
At the moment, however, attempting to get to work on time,
she had no time to ponder the existence of signs or omens.
During the half-block walk between her bus stop and the
hospital, she'd been approached by three panhandlers.
"Give to him who begs from you. He who has two coats, let
him share with him who has none, and he who has food must
do likewise."
A cloud of foul breath strong enough to down a mastodon
wafted between Molly and an emaciated man, but she did not
back away. The quiz, administered by the former Jesuit
seminarian, was a daily event. And as much as she worried
about the man she only knew as Thomas β Doubting Thomas,
he'd informed her one day β Molly had come to enjoy them.
"Those are easy, Thomas. The first is from Matthew, the
second Luke."
She cheerfully handed over the cheese sandwich she'd made
that morning. "Now I have one for you."
He bowed and gave her a go-ahead sign as, with yellowed
teeth, he began tearing the wrapping off the sandwich.
"God created us without us but he did not will to save us
without us." She waited, not willing to admit that she'd
spent hours looking up that obscure quote.
Thomas wolfed down nearly a quarter of the sandwich,
rewrapped the remainder and stuck it in his pocket. Then
he rocked back on the run-down heels of his cowboy boots
and clucked his tongue.
"Me dear, darling, Saint Molly." His brogue could have
fooled any of Molly's ancestors back in County Cork. "A
keenly educated Catholic girl such as yourself should know
that Saint Augustine is required reading in any seminary."
"Actually, I was thinking more of Saint Augustine's
message telling us that we must take responsibility for
our salvation, and our lives, than winning today's
contest. If you're not careful, you're going to end up in
the hospital."
Beneath his filthy Raiders jacket he shrugged shoulders
that reminded her of a wire hanger. "It won't be the first
time."
"No. But it could be the last." She put her hand on his
sleeve. "I worry about you, Thomas."
His smile was sad. "You worry about everyone. When are you
going to realize, Saint Molly, that no matter what Saint
Augustine told us, you can't save the world?"
"I'll pray for you, Thomas." It was what she always said.
"Save your prayers." It was what he always said.
"I'm beyond redemption."
Molly sighed as he walked away. Then continued on. Mercy
Samaritan Hospital sprawled over a no-man's land in the
shadow of the Harbor Freeway and Santa Monica Freeway
interchange like a huge gray stone Goliath. The
neighborhood where Molly spent her nights was home to some
of the roughest bars, seediest transients and oldest
whores in the City of Angels.
Thanks to gang members' propensity for shooting out
streetlights, once the sun went down, the streets and
alleys were as dark as tombs. To the residents of these
mean streets, the gilt excess of Beverly Hills and the
sparkling sun-drenched beaches of Malibu might as well
have belonged to another planet.
Mercy Sam, a teaching hospital established by the Sisters
of Mercy nearly a century ago, had been more than a place
of healing; it had been a living symbol of hope and
compassion. Hope had long since fled, along with most of
the population of the inner city. Fortunately, although
Molly was the only Sister of Mercy still on staff,
compassion had remained.
A visual affront to Frank Lloyd Wright's famed concept of
organic architecture, the building featured a hulking main
building with two wings. Various out-buildings had cropped
up over the years like weeds.
The pneumatic doors opened with a hiss as Molly entered
the emergency department beneath the bright red neon sign.
The triage area was nearly deserted, as were the fast-
track cubicles, where patients with level-one complaints β
bloody noses, scrapes and bruises, migraines, intestinal
upsets, minor burns and strep throats β were treated.
She went into the staff lounge, changed into the cranberry
red scrubs that had recently replaced the hated pink ones
and joined the other nurses in The Pit, as the ER was
routinely called.
"Merry Christmas," Yolanda Brown greeted her.
"Happy Holidays to you, too." Nothing in Molly's voice
revealed her painful memories of Christmas Eve.
"I'm sorry I'm late."
"It's getting tougher and tougher to run that gaunt-let,"
Yolanda said with a frown. "Nobody rides the bus in L.A.
Especially not at night and in this neighborhood. You
really ought to get yourself a car."
Molly smiled, feeling the shadows drift away as her
equilibrium returned. "Why don't you write a letter to the
Pope and suggest he cosign a loan?"
Yolanda's shrug suggested she'd expected that answer to
the ongoing argument, but intended to keep on trying,
anyway. "You didn't miss anything," she said. "It's
turning out to be a blessedly silent night. According to
Banning's report, it was pretty quiet on the day shift,
too. Which is pretty amazing, given that not only is it a
holiday, it's a full moon.
"They had only half a dozen patients during their last
three hours," Yolanda continued. "The last one was some
guy who sliced his finger to the bone trying to put
together a bicycle for his eight-year-old son. He was
stitched up, given a tetanus shot, advised to pay the ten
bucks to have the store do it next time and was leaving
just as I was coming on duty.
"By the way," she tacked on as an afterthought, "the baby
Jesus is gone."
"I noticed as I walked by the crèche." Molly sighed.
"I suppose it isn't surprising. Putting a baby doll
outside in this neighborhood is just asking to have it
stolen, especially this time of year."
Molly was of two minds about the theft. She found the act
wrong, but she couldn't help envisioning the joy on the
face of whatever child received the doll on Christmas
morning.
"Santa's gonna be paying a surprise visit to some kid's
house," Yolanda said. "Apparently from now on, the
swaddled babe is going to be a bunch of rolled-up towels.
The visual impact won't be the same, but administration
has decided it might last through the night."
Molly wasn't so certain about that, since clean towels
were even more precious than baby dolls around there.
It was almost eerily quiet. There were no metal-bound
triage charts in the racks, crisp white sheets covered the
high-wheeled gurneys lined up in the hallway outside
trauma area A and all the booths were empty, curtains
pulled back in anticipation of patients. Molly was Irish
enough to be vaguely superstitious of such calm.
"Where's Reece?" Molly asked. "Your handsome young brother-
in-law is hiding away in waiting room A. Seems he's got a
hundred bucks' bet with Dr. Bernstein on the Houston
Rockets over the Bulls β it's the third quarter, Jordan's
on a roll and he's starting to get nervous that his bride
is going to murder him when she finds out."
"Lena would never murder Reece. She adores him." And
rightfully so, Molly thought. Dr. Reece Long-worth, Mercy
Sam's ER resident, was the nicest man she'd ever met. He
was also her best friend.
"And he's nuts about her. The guy lights up from the
inside like a Christmas tree whenever she's around."
Yolanda sighed. "If I could ever find me a man who looked
at me the way Reece looks at your little sister, I'd marry
him in a heartbeat."
"Lena's lucky," Molly agreed. Lena had met Reece one night
two years ago when she'd shown up unexpectedly to eat
dinner with Molly in the cafeteria. Instantly smitten,
Reece had proposed within the week. It had taken him six
months to convince Lena to marry him.
Until Reece, Lena's choices in men had been disastrous,
eerily similar to their own mother's. All of her lovers β
and there had been many β had been carbon copies of their
abusive, alcoholic father. Molly often thought that Lena
hadn't believed she was deserving of love, even though
she'd been ravenous for it all her life. During those bad
years, Lena had reminded Molly of a bottomless, fragile
porcelain bowl β impossible to fill and capable of
shattering at a touch.
Molly sat staring at the lights of the small artificial
tree atop a filing cabinet at the nurses' station thinking
that Lena's first Christmas Eve with Reece had probably
been the only truly happy one she'd ever had. The lights
blinked red, green and white, flashing gaily on yellowed
and cracked plaster walls in the unnaturally quiet room.
Normally, Molly would never have questioned the rare
peace. Emergencies came in spurts. But she could never
remember it being as quiet as this.
"You know, this really is starting to get a little
spooky," she said thirty minutes later as she bit into a
bell-shaped cookie covered with red sugar sprinkles.
"So where are all the customers?"
She'd no sooner spoken than the dam broke β a drive-by
shooting; an attempted suicide who'd washed a bottle of
nitroglycerin tablets down with a fifth of Beefeaters gin,
then burned the inside of his mouth trying to blow himself
up with a Bic lighter; and a cop carrying a newspaper-
wrapped bundle.
"One of the bums found her in a Dumpster," he said,
shoving the bundle into Molly's arms.
Sensing what she was about to see, Molly gently placed the
newspapers onto a gurney and carefully opened them up. The
baby's eyelids were sealed shut, its pale blue skin
gelatinous. She was wet and so tiny, she reminded Molly of
a newly hatched hummingbird.
Reece, who'd just finished the unenviable task of telling
the shell-shocked parents of the thirteen-year-old honor
student that he'd been unable to save their son, paused on
his way to check out a lacerated scalp.
"Aw, hell," he responded in his characteristically even
tone that was faintly softened with the accent of the deep
South. "Get a neonatologist on the line, stat," he told
the clerk. "Tell him we've got an extramural preemie
delivery. And start arranging for a transfer upstairs to
NICU, just in case."
Unlike so many other physicians Molly worked with, Reece
Longworth never raised his voice except when it was
necessary in order to be heard over the din. Few had ever
seen him get angry. Such a relaxed, informal demeanor
helped calm the staff, as well as thousands of anxious
patients. The fluorescent red plastic button he wore on
his green scrub shirt reading Don't Panic probably didn't
hurt, either.
"She's so small," Yolanda murmured as Reece managed, just
barely, to put the blade of the infant laryngoscope into
the baby girl's rosebud mouth. "She could fit in the palm
of my hand."
"Probably another crack kid," the cop muttered as he stood
on the sidelines and watched.
While Reece slid the tube between the tiny vocal chords,
Molly said a quick, silent prayer and checked for a pulse.
"Sixty," she announced grimly. She did not have to add
that it was much too slow for a preemie.
"Dr. Winston's the neonatologist on call," the clerk
announced as Reece put in an umbilical line to start
pushing drugs. "He wants to know how much the baby weighs.
Because if it's less than five hundred grams, the kid's
not viable."
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