Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10) - Lisa Gardner Page 0,15
guilty of shooting Conrad, if I go to jail this time, when my baby is born, they will take him or her from me. And there’s only one person they’d give my baby to.
I start shivering then, and I just can’t stop.
The nurse thinks I’m cold. Given my unclothed state, I don’t blame her. She produces the promised orange jumpsuit, along with voluminous panties. She steps back a few feet as I wrestle the clothing on. The underwear are just plain wrong, like granny panties met men’s boxers and tried to mate. The orange jumpsuit is also overly large, and scratchy from harsh chemicals. I can get it over my belly, but it swims around my upper body. The shoulders land somewhere around my ears. The leg length is intended for someone twice my height. The nurse takes pity on me and helps roll up the hems before I trip and fall.
We’ve already run through all my vitals. Physical description, date of birth, identifying tattoos. Foreplay before this main event.
Now it’s done. I’m in the system. Not a prisoner, yet, I’m told, as I’m in jail, which is considered temporary. It all depends on how good my attorney, Dick Delaney, is and what happens at the courthouse a mere few hours from now.
“You’ll be in your own cell,” the nurse tells me now, throwing away her gloves, picking up her clipboard. “How do you feel?”
She nods toward my rounded belly.
“Tired.”
She hesitates. “You’re entitled to a medical hold. If you have any concerns about your health, the baby’s health.”
I have a sense of déjà vu. Mr. Delaney asked me all these questions. I didn’t get it then. I don’t get it now.
“Your pulse rate is fine,” the nurse says now, looking straight at me. “Surprisingly strong, all things considered.”
I don’t have tears. Just an endless void of anguish.
“Your vitals are stable. In my honest opinion, I would stick to your own cell. But of course, you have rights …”
“What happens in medical?” I ask finally.
“The infirmary is a different ward. More like … a hospital. You’d get your own room there, as well as access to medical staff, twenty-four/seven. Are you depressed?” she asks abruptly.
“I’m tired,” I say again.
“If you have concerns, any thoughts of harming yourself, your baby …”
“I would never do anything to hurt my child!”
She nods. “This place, it’s loud. The pipes, the walls, the inmates in the wards above you. You’re going to hear noise, all night long.”
I smile; there’s not much of night left.
“But the infirmary … let’s just say, it’s its own special kind of shrill. It’s not populated by inmates with physical injuries as much as by prisoners with mental ones. The screazies, the other inmates call them—screaming crazies. But again, if you have any concerns for your or the baby’s well-being …”
I get it now. They all think I’m going to kill myself. Or the baby. Mr. Delaney, this nurse, they don’t want me on their conscience. Even if that means assigning me to a night surrounded by frothing lunatics.
“I’m okay,” I say again.
That’s it. A female CO reappears, leads me out of the medical exam room. I have a little baggie of toiletries, a clear toothbrush the size of a pinky, a small, clear deodorant, clear shampoo, and white toothpaste. On my feet, I wear the world’s ugliest pair of flat white sneakers, but at least they’re comfortable. Around my wrists, the CO has once again fastened the restraints.
The hall is wide and cold. Cinder block. Thick, but the nurse is right; I already hear the towering prison moaning and groaning around us. Thudding pipes, booming mechanicals, distant murmurs of hundreds if not thousands of caged humans, trying to get through another night.
We arrive at a cell. Cream-painted cinder-block walls. A molded stainless steel toilet, no seat. Thin foam mattress with single beige blanket.
I say nothing. Walk inside. Hold out my wrists. The female CO removes the cuffs.
She closes and locks the heavy metal door, with its cutout window so they can monitor me at all times.
I sink onto the hard platform bed. I pull up my legs with my tennis shoes still on. Then I close my eyes and wish it all away.
My father. Conrad. Beautiful Cambridge. Hard-fought Winthrop. Choices made. Cycles repeated. Around and around and around.
And now, growing determinedly in my own womb, the next generation of tragedy.
I need to do better. I have to do better.
Yet, locked inside jail, waiting to be formally charged with murder …