VII

Shepard

She'd actually thought of it the night she and Dwight had taken Inez to the clinic. In the waiting room, Beth had remembered what she'd overheard the social worker telling her boss years ago, that a nurse at that same East Sixteenth Charity Clinic had given Beth her name. The nurse had been there when Beth had been born. The nurse had seen her mother, maybe talked to her. It wasn't much to go on, but it was Beth's last idea before she had to take other steps to find a place to stand on her own, a way to avoid being victimized and learn the things she'd need to know if she were ever to get out of East Side.

So the first week of the summer, Beth stole a few credits from Mr. Benning's sock drawer. The Bennings were new, somewhat better than the Millers, but they still kept the cash in the same old spot. She took just enough to take the bus down to South Sixteenth and back, hopefully not enough that they'd miss it.

She hopped on the bus a couple blocks away from the Bennings. The route ran right through downtown. Beth snagged a window seat, and she watched the buildings as the bus passed by them. On the corner of Kingsway and Beatrice there was a small, neat yellow brick building, sandwiched in between a yoghurt shop and a restored, old movie theatre. There were blue, starred flags out front, and neat, white letters above the entrance to the building read "Alliance Navy Recruitment Center." Beth watched the building until the bus had carried her out of sight and promised herself once again that someday she'd leave East Side and see the stars. One way or another.

East Sixteenth Charity Clinic was a long, low, brown building with a green roof. Everything looked about twenty years out of date and on the benches around the parking lot homeless people in patched gray coats sat, but nonetheless it was a comfortable place. Beth had been here a couple of times before, with Inez, but also once when she'd sprained her ankle running from kids at school, and another particularly bad time when they'd caught her and broken her ribs. Compassionate people worked here, and it had given the entire area a peaceful, safe feeling, despite the misery that walked every day through the doors.

Beth walked up to the front desk. The receptionist was bottle-blond and pleasantly plump. Her name tag read "Shareen." Her face was tired, but not hard-looking like almost all of the faces Beth saw every day.

"Um . . . excuse me," Beth said. "I'm looking for Nurse Joan Redding. Does she still work here?"

It had taken some doing to sneak a look at her file and get the name back in April, when the new social worker had called her in to place her with the Bennings.

The receptionist blinked. "You don't want to see a doctor?"

"I'm not sick, ma'am," Beth answered. "I just need to talk to Nurse Redding. Is she here? I'm sorry, but it's very important."

Shareen activated the console in front of her, shaking her head slightly as she searched the schedule. "She's with a patient," she told Beth. "I—"

"I'll wait," Beth interrupted, as politely as she could, but firmly. "I really need to talk to her."

Shareen looked down at Beth and hesitated. "Oh, okay, sweetheart. I'll tell her you're here. Who should I say it is?" She opened up a message on the console. Her hands hovered over the screen, waiting for Beth's word.

Now Beth hesitated, suddenly unsure. "Beth. Beth Shepard. I'm not sure if she'll remember me."

But she did.

Twenty minutes after Shareen sent the message, Nurse Joan Redding came out to the front. "Clock me out, Shareen," she instructed the receptionist. "It appears I have another engagement."

Shareen looked from the nurse to Beth, baffled, but Beth saw her put in the time into the computer. Nurse Redding followed Shareen's gaze to Beth and spotted her in the waiting room, amongst the coughing and bleeding and desperate, sitting quietly with her hands in her lap. She walked over, and took both of Beth's hands in cool, calloused ones at once, and Beth looked up into dark, kind eyes and forgot her nervousness.

Nurse Redding was a tall, black woman, not pretty, but with a strong, serene face that was better than prettiness, somehow. She wore plain, blue scrubs, and her only accessory was a small, gold cross necklace. Beth could tell at once that it was not a fashion statement, but a profession of faith. She tentatively squeezed Nurse Redding's hands.

"I'm Beth Shepard."

"Yes," Nurse Redding replied. Her face was sad. "I wondered if you'd come here someday, child. Come with me. You must have questions."

Beth squirmed her hands out of the woman's, stood, and looked her over. "I don't know you," she said. "I'm not an idiot."

Nurse Redding chuckled. "No one ever says that unless they feel that they are one."

"I'd be an idiot to go with you," Beth pointed out.

Nurse Redding waited. And Beth set her jaw, and nodded once, because the nurse was right. The conversation would be easier someplace else. She followed the woman out of the clinic.

If the woman had tried to take her someplace private, Beth would've kicked her hard and run, but she didn't. Nurse Redding merely walked her a couple blocks down to a small local coffee shop. The lighting was soft and yellow, a couple kids were playing on a small stage in a corner for tips, and the whole place smelled like chocolate, fresh bread, and coffee. Warm, safe, comfortable smells Beth didn't smell very often. Nurse Redding ordered a cup of black coffee and a small cake, then asked Beth what she wanted. Beth ordered a small cocoa, and Nurse Redding paid, then led them to a tiled table outside on the store's patio.

"Weird how you walk just a couple blocks and the whole city changes," Beth remarked. "Last time I was downtown proper was a field trip back in October to the science museum. I got Mr. Miller to sign the form when he was drunk so Mrs. Miller didn't read it and say no because of the money. I pinched that." She said it baldly, boldly, watching Nurse Redding out of the corner of her eye for a reaction.

"Are the Millers your guardians?"

"Were. Got moved again a couple months back," Beth shrugged. "A guy at the home spilled to the social worker that the two of us had to take care of another girl when she got raped last year. Probably said it 'cause the new social worker's hot, and he was trying to look like a hero or something, but she did her job and started an investigation, and all of us got moved." She shrugged again.

Nurse Redding took a drink of her coffee, and waited. She was a cool one. Beth shifted, uncomfortable. "I never got adopted," she said, although she hadn't meant to explain herself. "Girl with no genetic info? They mod out a lot of diseases now, or at least know what problems the kid might have. Without that information, taking me on was too much of a gamble. Someone might've risked it, but the state doesn't even have a name to start a search so they can offer potential parents a ballpark guess at what problems I might have. And every year . . ." Beth swallowed hard, and bit her tongue until her eyes stopped stinging.

"Every year it is less likely you will be adopted," Nurse Redding finished. She kept her eyes on Beth's face. "How long has it been now? You are . . . eleven, if I remember right."

Beth nodded, still biting her tongue. She clenched her fists too. Her cocoa was cooling. She breathed. Once. Twice. Three times, then swallowed down half of it in one go, and she was fine again.

"I can take it," she said. "I always have. I'll make it some way or another until I can get out, but I thought . . . I thought maybe it might be easier if I could . . . do you know anything about my mother? My father? Anyone at all that was there that night you put the name on the certificate?"

Nurse Redding sighed. "I saw your mother," she said. "You're not the only one in the country with no records, you know. I've heard of cases where babies are dropped off in boxes and such, and some where the mother dies before she can say anything, though that hardly ever happens nowadays. But you weren't like that. Your mother had you at the clinic, and I was the nurse present at the time.

"I guess you favor your daddy, with those gray eyes and that blonde hair, 'cause your mother was dark. Doctor Nolan said it was Greek that she cussed in, when she didn't speak English. She was pretty, though. A little slip of a thing. Her face was shaped like yours."

The news was food to the starving. Beth drank it in. She had her mother's bone structure and skin tone, but she looked like her father, whoever he was. "What do you know about her?" she demanded. "Did she tell you her name? Anything?"

Nurse Redding shook her head. "I'm sorry, honey. She didn't. She showed up alone in labor. We took her straight to a room. She wouldn't take any drugs to help with the pain, and . . . darling, she left. I took you to get cleaned and weighed and all that. Doctor Nolan went to see about something to help her, but when we came back, she'd gone. She walked right out."

Beth stared. Sometimes she'd imagined she had come in a box or that her mother had died giving birth to her. Sometimes she'd dared dream that an evil uncle or grandfather had stolen her from her desperate, single mother, taking her in secret to the clinic with no name or papers, and that all these years, if her mother had just known, she would have come for her. Other times she knew that was a fantasy, and she'd imagined a heartbroken woman in the hospital bed, a mute, or speaking a language no one at the clinic could understand, without the translators the higher-end hospitals would give their staff. Or a woman too stupid to know that she should at least give a name to the child she, for some tragic reason, could not keep or send to some other relative. A woman that had given her up without ceremony, but because she couldn't follow the process, not because she wouldn't. In all her imaginings, whenever her actual mother had been present at Beth's arrival to the clinic on April 11, 2154, she had held her, been sad, wanted to keep Beth, but been unable to do so. Now Nurse Redding was telling her that a woman that had spoken English had gone to the clinic, dropped her like some . . . horse, or something, and walked out without a word before Beth had even been cleaned up properly.

"She . . . she walked out," Beth repeated stupidly. "She just left. God, did she refuse the drugs on purpose so she could? Must've had some pain tolerance, but . . . she walked out?" Her words came faster and faster, and her eyes were stinging again, threatening tears, but Beth couldn't bring herself to care. "She didn't just give me up, she . . . she didn't even care enough to stick around and . . ." Beth was breathing far too fast.

"Sweetheart, Beth . . ." Nurse Redding tried.

"No. No," Beth said, clenching the table now. "Did she say anything in labor? Anything at all?"

Nurse Redding went on, her own eyes moist. "She cussed some and prayed some, and once she said—she said she was no one's mother."

"Yeah, well, she should've thought of that before she got knocked up. Or before she was in the freaking hospital bed having a kid," Beth said, all the bitterness in her breast spilling out, fast and angry. "Could've aborted, and it would've been better—"

"Don't say that!" Nurse Redding interrupted with sudden vehemence. "Darling, never wish yourself out of existence. Now I'm not saying she was right. She should've held you. Given you a name, at least, if she had to give you up. Something of hers you could have. What she did . . . no child should have to grow up with that. But you can take it. You told me so yourself. You're brave and strong and smart. I can tell that plain as day. What your mother did was wrong, but stopping that from living, not even giving you a chance? That would've been worse. By far."

Beth was able to breathe again. She just breathed for a long moment as her world shrank, and all the possibilities she'd imagined blinked out like extinguished candles. "Maybe," she said. "I don't wish I was dead, Nurse Redding, but . . . but . . . what am I gonna do?" The last words came out almost as a whisper. She wasn't talking to the nurse anymore, but the woman answered anyway.

"Call me Joan. You listen to me, Beth Shepard. You're going to make it, just like you said. You're going to keep going, and you're going to make it, and get out, and do whatever you want to do."

"See the stars," Beth said, her voice little more than a whisper "I want to see the stars. Other worlds, other people. This city is enormous, but it's just so small."

Joan Redding laughed. "Beth Shepard. Oh, don't ever tell me God doesn't answer prayers."

Beth blinked. "What?"

"Your name," she laughed some more. "They came around with the paperwork after she'd gone. Your birth certificate's a bunch of crap without any parents on it, just a record for the government to stow away in some database of the date and time you were born, of size and sex and Canadian citizenship. But someone had to give you a name for it, and I wasn't going to let them call you Jane Smith. You deserved more than that."

"So why Beth Shepard?" Beth asked. "And how was it a prayer?"

"Beth's a nice, solid name. Prettier than Jane, and works for just about any girl. I wanted you to make it what you wanted, and hoped it'd do for whoever you grew up to be. But Shepard . . . Shepard was the prayer. For who I hoped you'd be, a strong girl, a brave girl, a caring girl, a shepherd to the Lord's people, and someone I hoped would rise above anything she went through."

Beth laughed, too, getting it now. "Alan Shepard. After the first American in space? Really?"

Joan Redding was still laughing. "Well, you didn't look like a Gagarin."

"Doubt I looked like much of anything," Beth snorted. "Babies usually don't. Nurse Redding—Joan. Thanks. It was a good choice."

"Seems like it. I hope it keeps working for you," Joan Redding fished a pen out of her purse, and wrote a number on a napkin. "Here. Give me a call if I can help you with anything. I'd like to know what happens to you, Beth Shepard."

Beth stopped smiling. She took the napkin and looked at the numbers, even as she knew she'd never call. Joan Redding was nice, but Beth would never be able to look at her without remembering what she'd learned today. And because she was so nice, Beth really didn't think the nurse would want to hear what would happen to Beth next, what she was going to do. Strong, brave? Maybe. She'd have to be. Caring? A shepherd to God's people? Definitely not. God didn't exist in Beth's world, but she wasn't about to tear him out of Joan Redding's.

So she extended her hand to shake, and Joan Redding took it. Beth grabbed the empty coffee cups and threw them in a nearby bin. "Come on," Joan Redding said. "I'll walk you to the bus station. You got enough to get home?"

"Yeah," Beth said. Pinched that, too, she didn't say. Instead, she went with Joan to the bus, and back to the home without parents, with only a prayer of a name watching over her, instead of the promise of parents she'd gone to find.

A/N: This concludes Part One of The Disaster Zone series. Look out for Part Two, The Disaster Zone: Little Beth, which covers the years Beth spends in the Tenth Street Reds, first learning some of the skills she will later put to work for the Alliance—and trying to hide all that she's learning so she doesn't have to drop out of school or get a criminal record that will keep her from joining the Alliance.

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LMSharp

UPDATE 10/11/17: The sequel started posting last Saturday. Find it on my profile to follow Beth's story!