LITMIR.BIZ

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paper, Liam found the source of the noise. He was so stunned and horrified, he thought for a moment he was going to vomit. He gulped back the bile and breathed what amounted to a prayer and a curse. “Dear God.”

      It was a baby. Wrapped loosely in a small, faded patchwork quilt, it lay with its head at an awkward angle against a grease-soaked paper sack, its fists raised above its bare chest, trembling and pale with cold. Its dark hair was still slick from the birth canal and the stump of its umbilical cord was reddish-brown with blood.

      Liam forced himself to set aside his horror, his revulsion toward whoever had tossed this baby in the garbage, and focused on saving its life. He threw down his umbrella, pulled off his sweater, then gently picked up the infant. It was a boy. A boy like the newborn son Liam had lost a year ago…along with Victoria, his wife.

      Liam discarded the sticky quilt and quickly wrapped him in the sweater, still warm from his own body heat. Clutching the child to his chest, he hurried to the car and slid into the seat. The baby felt so cold against him, Liam was scared to death it was too late to save him.

      “Daddy, show me the kitten! Can we keep it?”

      “Bea, it’s not a kitten. It’s a baby. He’s very cold and I’ve got to get help quickly or he might—” Liam caught himself before finishing the sentence. But Bea was no dummy. Since her mum’s death, his daughter was all too aware that bad things happened to people. She stared, her bottom lip caught between her teeth, while Liam reached with a shaky hand to turn up the heater full-blast.

      He laid the baby in his lap and quickly rewrapped him in the sweater, taking care to cover his head but not obstruct his breathing. The baby had stopped the pitiful crying that had alerted Liam to his presence in the first place, but the quiet was almost more disconcerting.

      He was tempted to rub the baby’s skin to warm him up, but had a vague recollection of having read that that was not a good thing to do in hypothermia cases. As well, he had no idea whether or not hypothermia was the only danger this newborn was facing. Had he been injured during the birth? Manhandled afterward? Were his lungs functioning properly? The dire possibilities seemed endless.

      Holding the baby in the crook of his left arm and tight against his chest, Liam punched the car into gear and circled the station, looking for a phone booth. When he didn’t find one, he pulled up to the road. He tried not to feel desperate as he looked up and down the dark street, wondering which way to go.

      “Are we going to hospital?”

      Liam heard the fear in Bea’s voice, the residual terror of hospitals since her mum’s death. He tried to give her a reassuring smile, but his teeth stuck to his dry lips. “We’re going to find a phone booth and call for help, Bea, or knock on a door if we have to,” he managed. “Don’t worry, honey, we’ll get help.”

      Bea’s bottom lip quivered and her eyes brimmed with tears. “Please don’t let the baby die, Daddy.”

      ALLIE WOKE UP with a start, soaked in sweat, her heart hammering, her mouth dry. She’d fallen asleep on the sofa in front of the television while watching Sabrina, the original one with Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart, and now an infomercial was on. A man gleefully pulverizing fruit in a mixer touted the benefits of a diet comprised only of juices, while a buxom blonde in a body leotard posed nearby and smiled vacuously.

      Allie glanced distractedly at the digital clock on the VCR. It was ten minutes past midnight. She swung her legs over the side of the couch, propped her elbows on her thighs and rested her head against her trembling hands.

      What a dream. What a horrible dream.

      And it was still so vivid….

      She was sitting on the porch in Grandma Lockwood’s squeaky old rocker. She held a baby in her arms and crooned to it the same nonsensical words her grandmother had sung to Allie when she was an infant.

      “Hi-dumma, do-dumma, hi-dumma-diddle-dumma, hi-dumma-diddle-dumma-day.”

      Allie smiled contentedly into the baby boy’s pink and peaceful face. Her heart swelled with mother’s love.

      Suddenly the precious weight of the baby’s body in Allie’s arms disappeared. She found herself holding only the patchwork quilt her grandmother had made for Allie’s firstborn. Terrified, she stood up and began searching for the baby.

      She looked everywhere. In his crib by her bed. On the couch. Under the couch. Under the couch cushions.

      With the fantastical illogic of dreams she found herself looking in spaces no normal-sized baby could fit. In the sewing box. Under the TV guide. Down the bathtub drain. And all the while her horror and desperation grew.

      Where had he gone? Where was her precious child?

      It was such a relief to wake up and realize there was no baby to lose.

      No baby.

      Allie shook her head, wry and resigned. This was the first time one of her baby dreams had ended badly, but maybe it was her subconscious mind trying to wake her up to the reality of her situation.

      It had been going on for months. Three, sometimes four nights a week, she’d dream of a baby. It was a different baby each time, a child as real and individual and detailed in her morning’s memory as if she’d held it in her arms the night before.

      At first the vivid dreams frightened Allie. She thought her sterile state was making her, quite literally, go crazy. But, over time, she started looking forward to them. They filled a need. They allowed her to hold, to bathe, to nurse, to rock and to sing to babies of every description. Sometimes they were blond and blue-eyed, sometimes dark-haired, dark-eyed, and dark-skinned. The only thing they all had in common was that they were hers. Hers to love and care for.

      Ironically the dreams hadn’t started when Allie found out her fallopian tubes were nothing more than stringy cords of scar tissue and she’d never be able to have a child of her own. They hadn’t started when she found out her husband of half a dozen years had been sleeping with Rhonda Middleburger, the waitress at Bill and Nada’s Diner, nor did they begin when she and Doug divorced nine months ago. They’d started just when she thought she’d come to grips with the realities of her life.

      It had been New Year’s Eve. In the first moments of the new year she’d made an important resolution. She was going to quit feeling sorry for herself. So what if all she’d ever dreamed of beyond obtaining her medical license was to be a mother, to fill her house with kids and noise and the type of wonderful family chaos she’d enjoyed in the home she’d grown up in? She, Althea, was destined for something different. No children, no noise, and, apparently, no husband, either. But that was okay. She’d have a wonderful, full life anyway.

      “But first maybe I need to see a shrink about these dreams,” Allie grumbled to herself as she reached for the remote to turn off the TV. “It was weird enough when they were nice dreams, but—”

      Allie was startled by the sound of the doorbell ringing, then a fist hammering on the front door. She dropped the remote and hurried down the hall toward the front of the house, straightening her oversized, sleep-creased flannel shirt so that the buttons at least marched in a straight line between her breasts. She ran a hand through her short blond hair, but knew she must still look a mess. Whoever was on the other side of that door probably wouldn’t care, though, or even notice how she looked. As a doctor in a small town she’d been summoned from bed many times to take care of an emergency, but most people called first and told her they were coming.

      “Allie, you in there? Open up!”

      It was Doug’s voice. His tone wasn’t cajoling or tender, so he must be knocking on her door in his official capacity as Sheriff instead of for the usual reason he bothered her in the middle of the night.

      “I’m coming!” she called, flipping on the lights as she jogged through the living room, then made short work of the dead bolt lock that secured her front door. When she’d purchased the security item at Harv’s Hardware, Harv had just looked at her, wondering, she supposed, what she thought she needed with a dead

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