The Star Child Read online

  The

  Star Child

  By

  Mac Cusiter

  The

  Star Child

  All rights reserved © 2020 by Mac Cusiter

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organisations, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design: Mac Cusiter

  Model © Igor Tishenko | Depositphotos 137214486

  Background Courtesy NASA/JPL - Caltech

  Alexandr Yurtchenko | Dreamstime 158886742

  ISBN: 978-0-9941582-7-7

  Truth has stumbled in the streets,

  Honesty cannot enter.

  Truth is nowhere to be found,

  And whoever shuns evil becomes a prey.

  Isaiah 59:14

  The author would like to thank

  Heather Stootman

  for her careful proofreading of the manuscript,

  and his beloved wife Val

  for all her encouragement and wise editorial advice

  The

  Star Child

  Chapter 1

  The hospital was new. The staff were new. The software that ran the place was new, and it wasn’t working. The baby was new. She had been under construction for only a third of the time taken to build the hospital, and there was no comparison with the result. Perfect was a fitting description of Kaela Manning, with her lovely blue eyes and appealing little face, but it certainly did not apply to the hospital, despite its attractive visual appeal. John and Anne Manning, her parents, had been waiting patiently on Anne’s bed in the maternity ward for the last two hours. Hospital rules required nursing staff to carry all newborn babies out of the ward and through the glass doors which exited onto the paved forecourt. From this point the responsibility of care was handed over to the baby’s mother, for better or worse. Kaela had waited too, lying in her new car cradle, snug and warm and oblivious to her parent’s growing frustration. Now she was beginning to get restless.

  “She needs to be fed,” Anne complained to her husband. “We’ve been here for ages. Can you go again and see if someone’s coming to take us out of here?”

  John Manning nodded, stood up and returned to the nurses’ station, located a short distance down the corridor.

  “My wife and child have been waiting for over two hours,” he complained to the sole occupant. “Our baby is becoming distressed. We have made other appointments this morning. Can you get someone to take Kaela out through the front door?”

  “There’s no one else on the ward,” the frazzled head nurse quavered defensively. “I can’t leave the station until there is. You’ll just have to be patient.”

  “I’ve been patient,” John sighed. “Look, I’m a cardiac surgeon. How about you hand over responsibility to me, and I’ll look after my own daughter and see her safely out into our car?”

  “I’ve got to attend an emergency,” the nurse squeaked in an agitated voice. “My beeper has just gone off.”

  She disappeared down the corridor, leaving the nurses’ station completely unattended, which apparently didn’t matter under these circumstances. John returned to his wife who was feeding Kaela.

  “If no one comes by the time you’ve finished, we’re going to go,” he said with a sigh. “The place is in chaos. Nobody knows who’s doing what. For a new hospital it’s a disgrace.”

  “Are you sure it’s going to be all right?” Anne asked anxiously. “I wouldn’t like to get anyone into trouble.”

  “I’ll leave a note at the nurses’ station when we leave,” John said. “There’s only one poor woman rostered on, and she’s having a nervous breakdown. One less task will be a blessing.”

  Anne finished feeding Kaela, and sat her up on her knee. Rubbing her back gently she encouraged an enormous burp, then after changing her nappy, placed her back in the car cradle.

  “No one’s come,” she muttered. “I so want to go home. Your mum was visiting this morning to see her new granddaughter. This is so annoying.”

  “I’ve waited long enough,” John muttered. “We’re out of here.”

  Picking up the car cradle, John assisted Anne to her feet, and together they left the maternity ward. Catching the lift down to ground, they made their way to the impressive atrium which ran the length of the building. At the other end near the large glass doors, was a stylish reception desk. A large crowd of disgruntled and anxious people were gathered around it. Suzie, the hapless receptionist, whose application for transfer lay on her desk in front of her, was attempting to placate them all with information she didn’t have and wasn’t likely to obtain any time soon.

  Her phone was ringing constantly, a jarring discordance obliterating the smooth, sexy voice of some unseen female gushing from the expensive speakers cleverly camouflaged in the sides of the brush box signboards.

  “Welcome,” it said. “If you have any enquiries, please call in at the reception desk, located in the…” ring, ring, ring… “and be sure to enjoy the other…” ring, ring, ring.

  “There’s no point in going over there,” John said, steering his wife away from the chaos. “We can sort out all the paperwork later. I’m going over to get the car out of the parking station. I’ll drive round and park near the front doors. Give me fifteen minutes and then come out with Kaela.”

  “I could come with you,” Anne said with a smile. “It’s awfully noisy in here.”

  “I’m parked on the fifth level and the lift isn’t working,” John sighed. “There’s some comfortable armchairs down there,” he pointed. “Why don’t you take Kaela and sit down? When I’m parked out the front of the building, I’ll come in and get you. I think they allow fifteen minutes parking in that front area.”

  He gave her a kiss on the cheek, and headed for the parking station. Anne headed for the armchairs, carrying Kaela in her car cradle.

  Johara and Isra, two new contract cleaners, were busily mopping the tiled atrium floor. Victims of the new duties allocation software, they had been mopping floors since seven o’clock the previous evening.

  “I’ve had enough of this,” Johara sighed to her friend in her native tongue. “Fourteen hours without a break. Slave labour it is, worse than back home.”

  “You want back home?” Isra replied in the same language. “No bullets come at you here. At least not from a gun. That ward matron has a mouth on her, hasn’t she?”

  “I’m putting in for transfer,” Johara grunted loudly, plunging her mop into the bucket with such force that a good deal of detergent ended up on the floor. “There’s a limit to the number of insults I’m prepared to take. Just think, back home I was lecturing in mathematics at the university. What a waste!”

  Any further thoughts she may have had on the matter were interrupted by a shriek from over her left shoulder. Turning quickly she was just in time to see some woman carrying a baby in a car cradle, slip on the wet tiles and fall full length on top of the mop bucket. The car cradle fell on the floor, and the baby began to cry loudly.

  “Help!” the woman screamed in pain. “My leg! I’ve broken my leg,” she cried. “Get help!”

  Johara took off towards the reception desk, and Isra knelt down beside the car cradle. Lifting the screaming baby into her arms, she began to pat her back, holding her tightly against her chest.

  “My friend go for help,” she assured the woman. “Baby all right. See, not crying anymore. Help come soon. Don’t move.”

  Johara pushed her way through the crowd at the desk, wrenched open the small wooden door and invaded the receptionist’s private world.

  “Woman has fallen over,” she shouted. “She injured. Get help now.”

  Suzie stared at the woman and re-connected her ears to her brain. She had discovered that the most effective way to deal with twenty people all shouting stuff at her was to mentally disconnect her ears and stare at them all like a deer in the headlights. It took a moment to reverse the process.

  “Don’t you hear?” Johara shouted. “There,” she pointed. “Woman and baby. Need help.”

  Suzie picked up the phone before it started ringing again and paused to consult the list of emergency numbers which had been specially prepared by the new management software. There were ten of them. She tried the first.

  “You have rung the maternity ward,” the same sexy voice answered. “If you are already in labour, please hang up and ring hospital reception on …..”

  She tried the second. “This is the intensive care unit,” the same sexy voice purred. “All our staff are occupied. If you have a medical emergency, please contact hospital reception on …. and they will direct you to another number.”

  Suzie slammed down the phone, swore, and dialled triple zero. Not two minutes passed before two paramedics, George and Bert, bowled through the glass doors into the atrium pushing a trolley bed with them.

  “What gives?” Bert said loudly. “This is a hospital. We were just delivering a patient to ICU. Why didn’t you ring them?”

  “There’s a woman fallen over down there,” Suzie replied, ignoring the question. “She needs help.”

  “Ring for a doctor,” George snapped, and followed his mate down the atrium towards the
woman who was lying on the floor.

  The George knelt beside Anne. “Where is the pain?” he asked gently.

  “I’ve broken my leg,” Anne cried. “Don’t move me. Please give me something for the pain. Nearly passing out.”

  “Bert, we need a doctor,” George affirmed the obvious.

  “I’ll run into ICU and see if I can haul one out,” Bert said, sprinting off into the distance.

  In a short time he was back accompanied by a doctor and a nurse. Doctor Brian Stevens knelt down beside Anne and administered a large dose of painkiller. Anne lapsed into unconsciousness. The paramedics placed a slide underneath her and lifted her onto the trolley.

  “Straight into X-ray, the doctor ordered. “I’m due in surgery. When she’s done down there, bring her back to ICU and I’ll take a look at her there. She’ll need surgery after that. Go on, move.”

  “Where do we go?” Bert asked the nurse. “We don’t know our way around this place.”

  The nurse, like most other things in the hospital, was new. She remembered that she had seen a sign down one of the corridors towards the end of the atrium which said ‘DANGER RADIATION’ and headed for that. Isra placed the baby in the car cradle, and patted her back to stop her crying. When she looked up, the trolley was disappearing down a corridor at the far end of the atrium. Picking up the car cradle, Isra moved swiftly towards it.

  The nurse found the sign she remembered, and pointed to the room which lay beyond. Through the doorway she could see some large machine attached to one wall, and a bed parked against the other.

  “In there,” she said full of confidence. “Someone will come and take care of her soon.”

  The exact mechanism of how anyone would come and do whatever never crossed the woman’s mind for a second. She had been on shift for the past fifteen hours, and all she wanted to do was collapse unconscious somewhere. The paramedics pushed the bed through the door, parked it next to the large machine, and left. Isra took the car cradle and placed it on the other bed. The room was rather cold, so she took the blanket which she had found folded up at the end of the bed, and covered the baby with it, leaving a good portion on either side of the cradle.

  “Alnawm jayidaan qalilanaan wahid,[1]” she said softly, and left the room.

  Over the next half hour baby Kaela managed to wriggle her way down the cradle, right under the covering blanket, warm and happy. It was dark under there, and she fell asleep in no time at all.

  Half an hour later, Doctor Brian Stevens returned to the intensive care unit after completing his surgery, and asked for the X-rays on the woman who had had the accident.

  “No X-rays have come up here,” the registrar informed him, “and no woman either. I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”

  “There was an accident in the atrium,” Stevens barked. “A woman fell over and broke her leg. I administered a sedative, and told one of your nurses to take her to X-ray, then bring her back here. Who treated her? Where the hell is she?”

  The registrar looked Stevens up and down. “I have no idea,” he said dismissively. “If you can’t keep track of your own patients, don’t blame me.”

  “Where’s the fool of a nurse who took her to X-ray?” Stevens asked, trying hard to keep his temper under control.

  “What was her name?” The registrar asked, staring at a list on his computer screen.

  “I don’t know her name,” Stevens barked. “I was called out there in an emergency. I grabbed hold of the nearest person I could find. Surely she reported the incident to you? Who was it?”

  “Look,” the registrar said calmly. “See this screen?” He turned his computer towards Stevens. “This is a list of all the staff who are supposed to be here. None of them have materialised. I’ve no idea who these nurses are or why they’re here. Some of them have been on shift for more than fourteen hours. You can’t blame them if they’re a bit ragged round the edges.”

  “It’s a shambles,” Stevens roared at the man. “I want my patient, and I want her X-rays. I give you ten minutes, then I’m going to call the press and tell them what’s going on here.”

  He marched out of ICU towards the cafeteria. He needed a whiskey, but a coffee would have to suffice.

  Chapter 2

  After negotiating the chaos in the parking station, John Manning parked outside the front of the building, and came to collect his wife and child. To his complete astonishment they had both vanished. Searching up and down the atrium for any likely place, he headed for the reception desk in case she had left a message there. Suzie stared at vacantly past him, which served only to escalate John’s rising rage.

  “Listen,” he bellowed. “I left my wife sitting in a chair down there, and now she’s disappeared. “Do you know what happened?”

  Suzie appeared not to hear. Some of John’s words were breaking through her mental firewall, but they sounded angry and threatening. Extra defence was needed. She stared vacantly into space, and mechanically shook her head from side to side. This strategy usually worked.

  One of the cleaners came over and touched him on the arm.

  “Woman and baby?” she asked. “Accident, down there. Woman fell, broke leg.”

  “What?” John barked. “How? Where is she?”

  “They take her emergency,” Johara said. “Not our fault. We been told to clean floor. Everyone walking on wet. We just do what we told.”

  John muttered something under his breath, and ran towards the intensive care unit. Bursting through the door, he strode up to the nurses’ station and demanded to see the registrar.

  “My name is Doctor John Manning,” he said loudly. “My wife was admitted here after an injury in the atrium out there. Where is she?”

  The registrar looked at him in much the same way as Suzie had done shortly before.

  “There’s no woman in here,” he protested. “What doctor treated her?”

  “How would I know?” John bellowed. “She must have been brought into ICU.”

  “You’re welcome to search,” the registrar sighed with a sweep of his hand. “I don’t even know what staff are working here, let alone where your wife has been taken.”

  John felt like shaking the man by the shoulders. “Where else could she have gone?” he said through his teeth.

  “Are you sure she was badly injured?” the registrar suggested offhandedly. “Perhaps she just fell over, and she’s gone to the cafeteria to sit down and recover over a coffee.”

  John raced out of the intensive care unit. He tore down the length of the atrium towards the cafeteria which was located near the front doors, nearly slipping over twice on the wet floor. Desperately he searched around the crowd of diners, praying for the welcome sight of Anne and their baby. Neither were visible.

  “Damn it!” he shouted. “Where the hell are they?”

  “What seems to be the problem?” doctor Stevens asked, putting down his coffee.

  “My wife and baby daughter have disappeared,” John groaned. “I left them to get the car. When I came back, they’d vanished.”

  “There was a baby too?” Stevens asked, suddenly very attentive.

  “Kaela, our newborn,” John said, staring at the man. “One of the cleaners who could hardly speak English, told me that my wife had had an accident. That useless receptionist should be sacked, and the registrar in ICU doesn’t know what’s going on under his own nose. The place is a shambles. I think—”

  “I’m searching for the same woman too,” Stevens interrupted. “I didn’t know there was a baby involved. I attended your wife. She fell over a cleaning bucket and broke her tibia. I gave her a sedative. I didn’t notice a baby. Please, I know this sounds strange, but will you come with me? I think we might have more influence together.”

  “Where do you want to go?” John asked.

  “Hospital director’s office,” Brian grimaced. “No point in asking people here. They need a bomb under them, and I think this is just the occasion for it.”

  “Amen to that,” John sighed. “Lead the way. If they haven’t found my wife and child within the hour, I’m going to bring the press in here, and then things are going to get really nasty.”