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Hector, I'll check out your buzz cut, but then "
Her smile faded and she pressed her hand to his forehead. "I think you feel a
little warm."
"He's been running around like a little madman 'Feel my buzz cut! Feel my
buzz cut!' I'm sure he's just overheated."
"Could be, Gladys, but bring him by. my office before he goes home, okay?"
Hector jumped in front of Jack and angled the top of his head toward him.
"Feel my buth cut, mithter!"
Jack hesitated. Hector was a cute little guy, but he was a cute little guy
with HIV.
"C'mon, mithter!"
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Jack gave the bristly top of Hector's head a quick rub. He didn't like
himself for how quickly he pulled his hand away.
"Ithn't it mad?" Hector said.
"The maddest," Jack told him.
Gladys scooted Hector back to his playroom and they moved on to the next
area, which wasn't so pleasant. Jack peeked through a window in a door and saw
a room full of kids hooked up to IV's.
"This is the clinic area. Kids come in here for outpatient therapy we infuse
them, monitor their progress, then send them home."
And then they came to a huge plate-glass window that stretched from waist
level to the ceiling.
"We board the homeless or abandoned infants in there," Alicia said. "We have
volunteers to hold them and comfort them. The crack babies need alot of
comforting."
Jack spotted Gia cradling a baby in her arms on the far side of the glass,
but he didn't pause. He didn't want her to see him.
"You do a lot here," he said as they moved on.
"Yeah, we've had to become a clinic, a nursery, a day-care center, and a
foster home."
"And all because of a single virus."
"But we have to deal with more than the virus," Alicia said. "So many of
these kids aren't born merely HTV positive as if 'merely' can somehow be used
with HIV but addicted to crack or heroin as well. They hit the world screaming
like any other baby at the insult of being ejected from that warm cozy womb,
but then they keep on screaming as the agonies of cold-turkey withdrawal set
in."
"A double whammy," Jack said. Poor kids.
"Yes. Some parents leave their kinds an inheritance, some leave hidden scars;
these kids were left a virtual death sentence."
Jack sensed something very personal in that last sentence but couldn't latch
onto what it might have been.
"Perhaps 'death sentence' is overstating it. We can do a lot for these kids
now. The survival rate is way up, but still& once they get through withdrawal,
they still have the aftereffects of addiction. Crack and heroin burn out parts
of the nervous system. I won't bore you with a lecture about dopamine
receptors, but the result is fried circuits in the pleasure centers. Which
leaves our little crack babies edgy and irritable, unable to take solace in
the simple things that comfort normal infants. So they cry. Endlessly. Until
the strung-out junkie mothers who made them this way beat them to shut them
up."
Jack realized she probably gave this spiel to all the visitors, but he wished
she'd stop. He was getting the urge to go hurt somebody.
"The lucky ones" she cleared her throat harshly "try to imagine a lucky
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HIV-positive crack baby wind up here."
She stopped before a windowless door.
"Here's the storeroom where the toys were kept."
She showed him the room, empty but for some Scotch tape and wrapping paper.
"The toys will be wrapped in this paper?" he said, memorizing the pattern.
"Most, but not all."
He pulled open the door to the alley, and checked the alley itself. Easy to
see how it had been done. The outer door frame and the surface around the
latch were deeply gouged and warped. Looked like the work of a long pry bar in
the hands of someone with the finesse of an orangutan.
He saw Dr. Clayton shiver in the cold wash from the open door. She rubbed the
sleeves of her white coat. She was very thin no insulation.
"How are you going to handle this?" she said as Jack closed the door.
Jack said, "Not here. Can we talk in your office?"
"Follow me."
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