times.”
A tired nurse in blood-stained scrubs paused beside her, looking up at the television screen and cursing in Greek, which Jane understood with bell-like clarity. “Listen to him, Mr. Malaka, bloviating. With his mama’s Swiss bank accounts and me pushing patients out in the street, ready or not. Mind the baby, Missis. Who let that dog in here? Oh wait, is that Louk? I see you brought your friends with you.” There was a commotion up the hall and she scurried to join a fresh scrum of paramedics and protest casualties.
And now there was a baby. A real one. Peering sideways from a featherless pillow, Jane found a newborn nestled next to her in a worn blanket mottled by pink bunnies, sleeping like an angel and totally oblivious to the commotion made by a young woman shrieking, sobbing, struggling, and looking tearfully back as she was frog-marched away by a couple of burly security guards. The baby appeared to be similarly deaf to the blaring of dueling announcements in Greek and Albanian that issued from the public address system, and was wholly unfazed by the cacophony of a waiting room crammed with injured or ailing Greeks. Jane herself was lying on a gurney in a hospital hallway a few feet from a big old-fashioned casement window with a leaky sash. A draft of arctic air benumbed every inch of her that was not covered by a skimpy patient gown. A warm wet tongue rhythmically lapped at a minor cut above one eyebrow. The riot dog was ministering to her wounds.
“Oh good, you’re awake,” the Peroxide Kid said cheerfully, from above. He was peering at her upside down, over the head of the gurney.
“Doesn’t anybody in this damn country take ‘no’ for an answer?” Jane thought about sitting up but decided against it. The room was spinning and the lump on the back of her head was throbbing like a drum machine. “Could I get my coat, maybe? I’m guessing someone forgot to pay the electric bill.”
“Actually, the IMF/EU-installed government transferred hospital funds to the banksters, who apparently get their healthcare elsewhere. In other bad news, your clothes seem to have walked away while I was fixing your phone.”
“Thanks so much. Next time please remember to save the Burberry and to hell with the burner.”
“I can see where you might feel that way. Been missing many calls lately?”
“Hard to say. My life is such a gay social whirl since it supposedly ended,” Jane rhapsodized, sardonically. Yeah right. Aside from a few Anons, only one person in the world had her number. The only person in the world who mattered, the only one who had ever mattered. And that person had made no attempt - zero, zilch, NONE - to contact her since leaving in the midst of a shouting match eight, nine, no ten days ago. The bastard.
“Because your sim card more or less died two weeks ago when they outlawed anonymous phone accounts in these parts.” He handed the phone back to Jane, who sat up suddenly enough to jar the sleeping infant awake. “You’re all right and registered now. I put it under Brown.”
“For craps sake. You’re saying the problem is -?”
“Was. Your phone. And Europol. It’s a surveillance thing. Not aimed at you specifically. Terrorists in general - meaning anyone who objects to the goals and methods of the big boys. That would include most of the city of Athens today, if you get my drift.”
Jane could hardly believe it. “They couldn’t tell a person? Like every time you try to dial or something? Like, ‘I’m sorry, but we’re destroying your phone service in order to save it?’”
“The whole phone thing is a little touchy around here. They killed off a Vodafone engineer awhile back, a little misunderstanding over illegal wiretaps. It was in all the papers. The Athens Affair?”
Jane’s hand was shaking, her heart beating wildly. Damn trauma. Fucking meds. She willed her hand to stop. Stop. And for the hundredth time since John’s ugly and chaotic departure, she checked her messages. And there - where all had been dark and blank and silent before - they were. Miles of text messages. Days of phone-mail. John, John, nothing but John.
I can write the saddest lines tonight.
I loved her, sometimes she loved me too.
On nights like these I held her in my arms.
I kissed her greatly under the infinite sky.
Well, Neruda. Her eyes were swimming and no scalding coffee to blame it on. Goddammit.
But it was the baby who cried. Finding itself surrounded by strangers, assaulted by too much noise and light, and feeling somewhat peckish though not perhaps understanding what hunger was, it set up a sharp cry of distress. Being a sympathetic soul, the dog felt compelled to investigate. With an icy wet nose. Jolted, the baby threw its little arms up and wailed in earnest, a dismal bleating that throbbed in time with the aching in Jane’s head. Jane looked down in dismay. The baby began to turn an interesting shade of red.
An elderly gentleman, who had been arguing with his daughter that it was a waste of time to sit there, since he had already been told there was no insulin today, that he should try again tomorrow, stopped his own amplified ranting to address Jane.
“Πόλεμος μέχρι θανάτου εναντίον των πλουσίων, ο Λένιν είπε. Για πενήντα χρόνια δίδαξε πόσο λάθος ήταν και αυτό είναι το πώς τελειώνει. Θα πρέπει πραγματικά ήσυχο παιδί σας, κυρία,” [“War to the death against the rich, Lenin said. For forty years I taught how wrong he was and this is how they repay me. You should really quiet your child, madam.”]
His daughter concurred, approaching the gurney apologetically. “Ναι, αν δεν σας πειράζει. Δεν μπορώ να ακούσω τον εαυτό μου ότι.” [“Yes, if you don’t mind. I can’t hear myself think.”]
Other women gathered, and Jane found herself the center of a clucking and essentially tribal form of solicitude.
"Σήκωσε το, αυτό είναι όλο." [“Pick it up, that’s all.”]
“Κακή πράγμα, θέλουν να γίνει όλο το χρόνο ή τουλάχιστον φασκιωμένα.” [“Poor thing, they want to be held all the time that young, or at least tightly swaddled.”]
“Έχει αυτή την τροφή ακόμα?" [“Has she fed it yet?”]
Jane looked around for a nurse or other responsible party. Even the Peroxide Kid seemed to have disappeared. And still the baby cried. Jane drew a deep breath and picked the baby up. Badly.
“Ω!,” the women rushed forward as one. “Δεν είναι έτσι! Λίγο κεφάλι της.” [“Oh! Not like that! Her little head.”]
“It’s not my baby,” Jane tried to say. The baby drowned her out.
The women looked at each other. The clucking resumed.
“Αμερικανός.” [“American.”]
“Αμερικανός ή όχι, αυτή είναι αρκετά μεγάλος για να γνωρίζω καλύτερα.” [“American or not, she’s old enough to know better, surely.”]
“ξέρουν πώς να αγοράσει τα πράγματα.” [“All they know is how to buy things.”]
“Ή να τους πυροβολήσει.” [“Or shoot them.”]
They glared at Jane with naked disapproval and things were about to get ugly when the window behind Jane swung wide open, giving carte blanche to the winter wind. A chorus of objection from all sides drowned out the shrieking of the baby. The Peroxide Kid stood on the far side, with the woman the guards had escorted from the building and a young man with a thin, tense face.
“Right. Where’s that baby? Where’s she at?” the Kid demanded. Behind him, the young woman held her arms out, and immediately the tide of opinion turned.
“Αχ, αυτό είναι δικό της. Εκείνη δεν μπορούσε να πληρώσει” [“Ah, it’s hers. She couldn’t pay.”]
“Δεν θα αφήσει να το πάρει; Αυτό είναι απαγωγή!” [“They made her leave it here? That??
?s kidnapping!”]
Jane was more than willing to convey the red and squalling infant to its rightful owners, but the window was at an odd angle behind her. She was afraid to pass the baby over her head and none of the bystanders stepped forward to assist. Then there was the little matter of the IV and it’s drip lines and three-wheeled pole, not to mention the wooziness that accompanied swinging her legs over the side of the gurney. But the heightened noise and activity had attracted unwanted attention. As Jane struggled to dismount the gurney, a self-important man in a white coat, a doctor or administrator, waded through the crowd to intervene.
“Όχι δεν το κάνετε.” Flanked by the aforementioned burly security guards, he swept the baby away from Jane. “Πολιτική Νοσοκομείο. Το μωρό δεν μπορεί να κυκλοφορήσει μέχρι που ο λογαριασμός εξοφλείται, τουλάχιστον εν μέρει.” [“No you don’t. Hospital policy. The baby can’t be released until the bill is settled, at least in part.”]
The mother screamed. The crowd went berserk. Well, verbally.
“Ο διαχωρισμός της μητέρας και του παιδιού. Τι είμαστε εμείς, οι σκλάβοι πρέπει να ανταλλάσσονται και να πωλούνται?” [“Separating mother and child. What are we, slaves to be bartered and