TW for mentions of violence
It was a slow day down at the station, so May didn't feel guilty about checking her phone when it buzzed in her pocket, signaling the arrival of a text. Most of her friends knew that the best way to reach her during the work day was via phone call, her mother (thankfully) didn't know how to text, and she knew that Phil was in class at the moment, so it was a surprise to see that the message coming in was from Victoria Hand.
"Free to call?" the text asked. "Not urgent, just wanted to check in."
May chuckled to herself as she typed out a quick reply. It was so like Victoria to check beforehand if she was available to talk on the phone. She liked Vic a lot, both as a friend and as a colleague, but sometimes she forgot how formal the woman could be. It was only a matter of seconds after May had sent her reply before the phone in her hand started to vibrate with Victoria's incoming call.
"Hey, Vic," May greeted her. "It's good to hear from you."
"Likewise," came the slightly garbled voice of Victoria Hand. For a workplace where communication was so vital, the police station had remarkably bad cell reception. "I'm glad I caught you. I hope I'm not interrupting anything?"
"Not at all," May assured her. "Quiet day today. Not that I'm complaining, of course. It's given me a chance to catch up on some paperwork."
"Everyone's favorite part of the job," Victoria joked. "Well, really, I just wanted to call and check in with you regarding the girls, and give you a little bit of an update on Bobbi's situation, if that's all right."
"I don't have Phil with me," warned May. "It's the middle of the school day for him, you know."
"I do, I'm sorry. You know normally I would make sure to loop you both in on a call like this, but I've been more than a little overrun lately, and this was the best time I had for the call. I can try and fit something in after hours, if you'd prefer to have Phil with you…"
"No, don't cut into your evening for our sake. I'll take good notes and fill him in. Maybe he can set up a time to talk with you later on, just so you can hear from both of us."
"That would be great, thanks May." Victoria sounded somewhat more relieved than May would have expected, and she wondered just how thinly the social worker was being stretched at the moment. She knew from the times that they had crossed paths professionally that Victoria dedicated herself completely to her work, and that there were few respites from the continuous barrage of cases and children who needed her help. It was crucial work, of course, but May didn't envy her in the slightest.
"So, tell me, how have things been going? I know the last time we talked everyone was still getting settled in, and Bobbi had just started school."
"Things are going well, I think," May began. She didn't want to oversell by any means, but she felt good about the progress their fledgling family was making. "We're starting to get a routine down. My work schedule means that Phil gets to spend more time with the girls in the afternoon, of course, but we always eat dinner as a family, and I'm trying to make sure I get some one on one time with them when I can. I've been taking Bobbi to her physical therapist appointments, so that's given us some time to get to know each other. She actually asked me for help picking out what she should wear to go spend time with her friends one night, if you can believe it," May laughed.
Victoria joined in the laughter from the other end of the line. "I'm not sure I can. To the best of my memory, your wardrobe consists pretty exclusively of dark suits and black workout clothes."
"Black goes with everything," protested May. "And I have to maintain a certain level of professionalism."
"Can't have people thinking you're the kind of lively presence who wears navy or grey, now can we?" Victoria teased.
"We can't all be cool enough to dye our hair, Vic," May ribbed back. She could practically picture Victoria smirking at that comment.
"On the subject of Bobbi, I've got a few things to update you on," Victoria said, steering the conversation back to business. "I know when I first asked you and Phil to foster her I told you it would be a temporary situation, and I'm really sorry to have to do this to you both, but I'm having a hard time finding another placement for her at the moment. Most of my regular group homes are full right now, and, to be frank, I'm running short of suitable foster families in the right area. Her father's been charged with child abuse and neglect, among a few other things, but he made bail about a week ago and is back in his home until his trial, which won't be for another month or so. I can't in good conscience send Bobbi to a foster home in Two Rivers, it's just too close to him for any of us to feel comfortable with the situation."
"Of course," May said quickly. "Vic, I read those files you gave me. I know what that monster is capable of, and there's no way I'd ever want Bobbi to be anywhere near him ever again."
"Which is why I have to ask if you and Phil would be willing to continue fostering Bobbi, at least for a little while longer, until I can find her a more long-term placement."
"Victoria, hear me when I say, Bobbi is welcome to stay in our home for as long as she needs to," said May, deadly serious. "I'll confirm that with Phil, of course, but I'm absolutely certain he'd say the same thing. That girl needs a safe place to land. She needs a home. And we're happy to be the ones to provide it."
"I can't tell you how glad I am to hear you say that," breathed Victoria with a sigh of relief. "You're a lifesaver, May."
"There's no need to go that far," May muttered, her neck growing warm. She hated it when people acted like being a decent human being was worthy of hero-worship, even if it was just Vic trying to be nice. It was a thoughtful thing to say, but the idea of being considered a life saver for not kicking an innocent teenager out onto the street made May deeply uncomfortable.
"I know, I'm sorry," Victoria surrendered with a chuckle. "I forgot you don't take compliments." May rolled her eyes, and even though Victoria couldn't see her, she felt sure that she could picture the dry expression May was making.
"How's she doing?" Victoria asked seriously after a moment. "Bobbi, I mean? Skye and Jemma have at least done this before, so they know what to expect. I'm sure there's been a lot of adjusting for Bobbi, though."
"Honestly, Vic, she's resilient as hell," May said, a little proudly. "We've had some bumps here and there, and I don't think she's used to being around so many people all the time, but she's making friends at school, doing well on her assignments, and she's getting along with the Skye and Jemma, as far as I can tell. She made them bracelets one day, and now Jemma won't take hers off."
"That's wonderful."
"I think it's possible she's putting on a brave face about certain things. Every so often something will set her off, but she tries to shut it down and pretend like nothing's bothering her. I wish she felt comfortable enough to let us in, but I understand why she wouldn't yet."
"It's different for each child, but it's not uncommon for it to take a while for them to open up," Victoria reassured her. "It sounds like you and Phil are doing all the right things. Just keep supporting her and showing her that you're trustworthy. She'll come around when she's ready. What about Skye and Jemma? Are things still going well with them?"
"I think they are." May pursed her lips in thought. "Jemma hasn't had any more major episodes since the one we told you about at the mall. She's so bright, and when she has a mind to, she can wax poetic and tell you the most amazing things. She's got this little friend at school who she apparently talks to almost all day. She's still a little shy around us, but we've gotten her to open up a little bit here and there. Phil's great with her, of course. She told him a little about her parents, which I think was a big step forward for the two of them."
"Honestly, May, the fact that she's talking to you two at all speaks volumes," Victoria said solemnly. "It took me nearly six months of being her social worker before she said a word to me, and I know for a fact she's been in some homes where she's gone basically nonverbal. Some of those homes were exceptionally bad fits, I'll admit, although I don't take responsibility for all of them. The one she had right before I took over her casefile was… horrific, from what I've heard."
May shuddered, wild imaginings of the kinds of terrible things Jemma might have endured springing up in her mind. "She's so gentle. I can't understand how anyone could mistreat her."
"Can't you?" Victoria laughed harshly. "May, I know for a fact you've witnessed some of the worst that humanity has to offer in your line of work. There's evil all over the place out there. We just have to make sure we shield our kids from it as much as we can."
"You're right."
"It's not all bad," Victoria added, trying to instill some positivity back into their conversation. "There's people like you and Phil out there, too. People who give kids the chances they need."
"Phil's one of the good ones," May agreed. She could sense the unspoken "and so are you" that Victoria wanted to add, but mercifully abstained from saying aloud. She didn't think she could take another mushy compliment.
"You haven't mentioned Skye yet. Is everything okay with her?" Victoria sounded more hesitant this time, as if she already knew that Skye had been the most complex puzzle for May and Phil to decipher so far.
"Skye's good. Great, really. She's so…" May fished around for the right words to describe their spunky, hardheaded, and yet deeply loving and sensitive middle child. "She's all in on everything she does. She flings herself headfirst into whatever it is she needs to do, and doesn't worry about picking up the pieces."
"That sounds like Skye."
"We've had to have a few talks about thinking through things before jumping into them. About making good choices. But even with that you can tell she's trying to figure out how to do the right thing. And we've got her set up with a tutor to help with some of the school challenges."
"May, that's fantastic."
"There is one thing I've been meaning to talk to you about," May said slowly. "Skye's been… asking about her parents. That was one of the things we had to talk with her about, actually. She managed to use the computer to start digging through some files she probably shouldn't have had access to, and Phil and I addressed it, but she wants to know where she comes from. I'm sure you get that kind of question all the time, and I know you're probably swamped with other cases, but Phil and I promised we'd help her look into it."
"And you want to know if I have anything that might help?" Victoria guessed.
"There's not much in her file, besides a timeframe and a potential hospital…"
"Yeah, I know. I wish there was more I could tell you, but the nuns' notes are pretty limited, and since I inherited Skye's casefile fourth-hand, I don't have much insight on the earlier pieces. This probably isn't what you want to hear, but it's a longshot on finding any information about her birthparents."
"Does Izzy still have that friend over in Sheboygan's PD? The chatty one with the funny name?"
"Who, Idaho? Yeah, I think so. As far I know he's still in that department. Why, what are you thinking?"
"Just that I might be able to do a little digging with the right connections. Unless that's not allowed?"
"May," Victoria said, "you're more than welcome to turn over whatever stones you'd like. Just don't get your hopes up, and try not to let Skye get hers up, either. It's a cold trail."
"You never know," May told her, a sly grin spreading across her face. "I tend to work well in the cold."
Nothing new came across May's desk the rest of the afternoon, so she took the opportunity to make a call over to the Sheboygan Police Department and ask for Idaho. A chipper-sounding man with a slight east-coast accent picked up the line.
"Idaho speaking."
"Idaho? This is Melinda May with Manitowoc PD. I'm a friend of Isabel Hartley's and I was wondering if you could dig up some information for me."
"Hey, any friend of Hartley's is a friend of mine," the man said. There was a muffled sound, like he had put his hand over the receiver, and May could hear him calling out something to someone who was presumably in the room with him. "Hey, don't let Horowitz take all the raspberry this time!" May cleared her throat to remind him that she was still on the line.
"Sorry about that," he said, returning to a normal volume. "Things get cutthroat on Danish day. What can I get for you?"
"I'm trying to locate some people, but all I have is a general location and a two-month window of time."
"Well, that's not the most specific of parameters…"
"No," May agreed. "Really what I'm looking for is any leads on a possible identification on some birthparents for a kid I'm working with." She opted not to share that she was fostering the child in question. Better to not entangle her search with personal details, she reasoned. "The child was born somewhere between May 1 and July 4, thirteen years ago, then left at a group home without any ID."
"That one run by the nuns over on Union Ave? St. Agatha's or whatever it's called?"
"St. Agnes, yes. She showed up in an Ames' Memorial blanket, if that helps."
"Not surprising. That's the only hospital we got over here. So you're looking for a parent ID on a doorstep kid from 13 years ago?"
"That's correct."
"Well, I'll be honest, that's not really my area of expertise, but I'll see what I can dig up for you. Ames' is real tricky about their records. Usually you've got to go in person, since most of there stuff is still hard copy. Crazy, I know. In this day and age… old habits die hard, I guess. I can run a search for missing persons around that time, check for other criminal activity, death records, things like that in the meantime."
"Only if it's not an inconvenience," May added. "I don't want to take you away from your work."
"It's Danish day, nobody's doing work today," Idaho guffawed. May didn't find the statement nearly as amusing as he did, but she held her tongue. No need to offend someone who might be able to help her.
"Ah geez, okay, there's a whole big mess of hits for that timeframe. I mean, not anything crazy big, it's still Sheboygan we're talking about, but apparently that was a busy time for us. No missing persons that seem to match a baby girl from around then, but a whole slew of crime reports. A string of break-ins, a disgruntled former employee trying to burn down the pizza parlor, some kids getting busted for spray painting the old bridge… let's see… lots of public intoxication around the 4th of July, some DUIs… anything sounding like it might be what you're looking for?"
"No," May said regretfully.
"Oh, here's something. Apparently there was some kind of physical altercation at the hospital around then. Some guy went nuts on a doctor and tried to do him in. Oh geez, okay, it says here nearly beat the doc to death. Poor guy. Nothing here about the whack-o who did it, though, besides a God-awful police sketch. I guess we never caught him. Case is still listed as open."
"Does it say anything about the man's connection to the hospital? Was he a patient? An employee?" May asked. Her mind was starting to pick up speed, rifling through the possibilities.
"Nah, sorry, nothing that concrete. I'll be honest, the report's not filled out very well. I can send you over what we have, though, if you're interested."
"I'd appreciate that."
"So why the interest in a missing persons from over a decade ago?" Idaho asked casually. May could hear the clacking of computer keys through her receiver and assumed he was making small talk while he worked on emailing the file. "Connection to a case you're working on, or just looking to crack something in your spare time for fun?"
"The child in question is of interest," May said. She kept her tone measured, wary of revealing anything too personal to the chatty cop. There wasn't anything wrong with her digging for information on Skye's past, but she knew people could be touchy about crossing the wires between work life and personal life. She knew how to keep the different spheres of her life separate, how to keep things from getting personal, but not everyone understood just how adept she could be at compartmentalizing. "I'm trying to fill out as much of a background as I can, but information's been pretty limited."
"I'm not surprised, if she came from that nun house. I've heard their records are worse than Ames'." He laughed again, and May, again, did not join him. He seemed like a nice enough person, but he was far too loose-lipped and unfocused when it came to her taste professionally. She knew it made her sound like a snob, but she wasn't interested in encouraging his flippant attitude about shoddy paperwork.
"All right," he said after a minute. "You should be getting a ping in your inbox from me. It's May at Manitowoc, right? M-A-Y?"
"Like the month," May confirmed.
"We should be all set, then. Anything else I can do for you, May?"
"No, thank you, Idaho. You've been very helpful. Tell Hartley hello for me, would you?"
"That I can do. Pleasure doing business with you."
"Likewise." The receiver clicked as their lines disconnected, and May leaned back in her desk chair, deep in thought. It might be nothing. People got into altercations all the time, and tensions were sure to be running high in a place like a hospital, after all. Still, something tickled at the back of May's mind, some kind of instinctive hunch that told her there was something worth investigating further. Her colleagues joked about her gut feelings from time to time, calling it her sixth sense and dubbing her "Spider-May," among other creative monikers, but no one ever dared dismiss a hunch from Melinda May. She had proven herself too many times over the years for anyone to make that mistake, and she knew it would be foolish to make it now.
Turning to her computer, May pulled up her email and opened the file that Idaho had sent over from Sheboygan. He hadn't been wrong about the report being poorly filled out. It was a basic physical assault charge form, but the details were sparse and somewhat jumbled. According to the form, an unknown man had entered the hospital on the 4th of July and began attacking one of the doctors on rotation at the time. The doctor claimed not to know the man, and none of the witnesses – two nurses and a patient who had been sitting in the waiting room at the time – recognized him.
One of the nurses had provided information that led to the clumsy police sketch, but Idaho had been right about that, too. The sketch was terrible, both in terms of quality and usefulness. Between the sketch and the descriptions offered by eyewitnesses, all May could discern about the assailant was that he was a white man with brown hair in his thirties. One witness claimed he was 6'5, another 5'10, and reports on his approximate weight were just as varied.
May's eyes jumped down to the bottom of the page, where the doctor's injuries were detailed – mostly some vicious blunt force wounds from a fist fight, plus several defensive knife wounds on the hands and arms. The doctor had been admitted to his own hospital for several days following the incident, but interestingly, chose not to have the police pursue the matter further or press charges against his mystery attacker. She scanned the page until she found the doctor's name and contact information. There. Dr. Daniel Whitehall.
The spike of adrenaline that May always felt when she started making headway on a case began to pulse through her, and she quickly picked up the phone and dialed the number listed after Whitehall's name. She received only the agitated tones of a disconnected line signal and hung up just as quickly as she'd called. She should have figured that he wouldn't have the same telephone number 13 years later. Not one to give up easily, May returned to the file and located a second phone number – the one for the hospital.
"Ames' Memorial Hospital, how may I direct your call?"
"This is Detective Melinda May with the Manitowoc Police Department. I'm working on a case and was wondering if you might be able to provide me with some information about a doctor who works with you."
"What kind of information are you looking for, ma'am? I can transfer you to our records department, or to human resources?"
"Records will be fine, thank you."
After a few minutes of cheesy elevator music, the phone line reconnected, and a woman answered.
"Ame's Memorial Department of Records, how can I help you?" May repeated her greeting and request for information.
"We don't normally give out information like that over the phone, ma'am," the woman said. She sounded apologetic. "You're welcome to submit a written request or visit us in person…"
"Well, could you connect me with Dr. Daniel Whitehall? I have a few questions I'd like to ask him in relation to my investigation."
"I'm sorry ma'am, Dr. Whitehall no longer works here."
"I see." May considered her options briefly. "Do you know where he works now? Or how recently he was employed by your hospital?"
"Again, that's not really the kind of information we give out over the phone, ma'am."
"Did he work in labor and delivery while he was with you? Or did he ever mention a physical attack from a former patient or coworker?"
"Ma'am, there's really not much I can say…"
"Please," May said softly. "There's a child – this girl, and I'm trying to help her–"
"Is this about one of Dr. Whitehall's…cases?" the woman asked hesitantly. May frowned, confused. Sensing that she had found a small window of opportunity, however, she played along.
"It could be. I'm trying to find any connection between the girl and Whitehall. Or, more specifically, between Whitehall and a man who may have attacked him several years ago. Anything you can tell me about him might be helpful. What did Dr. Whitehall specialize in?"
"He… he was a surgeon." So, not an OB-GYN, May noted. The woman was speaking furtively now. "But he would often… assist with patients in various capacities."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, we're not a very large hospital, so a lot of the time doctors and nurses will wear multiple hats. The surgeon on call may be asked to help with a variety of patients if they're the only one on rotation at the time. A birth, a heart attack, things like that. I know that's not exactly protocol in the bigger hospitals, but you have to understand the limitations on our resources…"
"No, of course," May assured her. "That's not what I'm interested in."
"Look, I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but if you're looking into his cases already, then I'm sure you already know. Dr. Whitehall was dismissed from the hospital about 7 years ago for… ethics violations. The whole thing was kept quiet, but I don't think he's allowed to practice medicine anymore, so it's unlikely that you'll find him at another hospital." The woman's voice was coming low and fast, like she was trying to say as much as she could before getting caught.
"What kind of ethics violations?" May asked, her pulse quickening.
"Like I said, if you're working with one of his cases, then there's not much I can say that you probably don't already know. Apparently it had been going on for years until the hospital administration finally caught wind of it."
"Is there documentation of Dr. Whitehall's dismissal that I could have access to?"
"None that I'm authorized to give out," said the woman regretfully. "You'd have to go through the director of the hospital if you wanted information like that, I'm afraid."
"And there's nothing you can tell me about anyone who would have come after Dr. Whitehall 13 years ago?"
"That was before my time," the woman told her. "But if what they say about Dr. Whitehall is true, then it wouldn't surprise me if he made his fair share of enemies over the years."
May thanked the woman for her time and left her phone number, in case she had any other information to share, before exchanging goodbyes and hanging up. She still couldn't be sure that any of this mess had anything to do with Skye, but she had been right about one thing: There was certainly something worth investigating here.