Chapter 2
Prentice frowned as he examined the toddler’s arm. How in God’s name could a parent allow a child to get close enough to a stove with a pot of near-boiling water? Common sense dictated that the pots used for cooking should always go on a back burner, well out of the reach of curious little hands.
The child had been sedated for the pain and received a strong dose of antibiotic as a loading dose, with more being delivered intravenously, and her burns salved and bandaged. She looked so tiny and helpless in the hospital bed. A beautiful little thing she was, too. At least the bulk of the burns were limited to her arm. She had suffered minor splashes to her left cheek and chest, plus smaller burns to her neck and shoulder. Even the soles of her feet had been slightly affected. But her most serious burns were on her arm. Had she been standing directly in the path of the falling pot, her injuries would have been much more extensive, and her face might not have been spared.
“All right, I’m done,” he said to the nurse who accompanied him. You can change the bandage now.”
The nurse nodded. “Dr. Blake, the child’s mother is waiting.”
Prentice peeled off his gloves. “Fine. I’ll talk to her now.”
He made a few written notes on the chart, then pulled his compact handheld voice-activated recorder from the pocket of his smock and dictated the fine points of the child’s physical examination. He’d refer to that when he made his final report for Child Protective Services of Lake County, who retained him to follow through on their open cases. In addition to his private practice, he, with the assistance of a staff of social workers, investigated suspicious injuries of the county’s children, and made recommendations as to whether the child should be returned to the home environment or whether the child needed to be placed into foster care.
Prentice loved children, considered them to be a gift from God. How those to whom they had been born could either mistreat them or allow them to be mistreated by others was difficult for him to understand. His predecessor in the position had warned him that some of the cases he’d have to investigate would truly turn his stomach. Prentice began work feeling prepared, but nothing could have readied him for some of the cases of outright cruelty he’d seen in his eighteen months on the job. For every one case of unfortunate accidents due to momentarily distracted parents not watching their kids, it seemed there were two cases of abuse. He’d seen unbelievable situations, like short-tempered mothers and fathers who put out cigarettes on their children when they were being rambunctious, women who allowed their boyfriends to slap and shake their youngsters, or parents who only cared about where their next fix was coming from. He felt it was criminal to treat defenseless children that way…
He opened the door of the private room and entered the hall, where an anxious-looking young woman of about thirty stood. “Mrs. Simmons?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Dr. Prentice Blake. I’m a pediatrician on staff at the hospital, and I also review cases for Child Protective Services.”
“Can I see Sienna now? I spent the night with her. I went to get some breakfast, and they told me I had to wait before going in because you were with her. I wanted to be there when she wakes up.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to spend a few minutes with me first. Your daughter will be fine, but we need to find out the exact circumstances of her injuries. She received mostly second degree burns with some areas of third degree. That’s a serious situation, Mrs. Simmons.”
She shook her head. “Surely you don’t think that I—”
Prentice had seen many a distraught parent since he’d worked with the CPS, but it did little to ease his suspicions. He’d grown accustomed to it, and he knew that their contriteness was borne of regret that they’d been caught administering way-too-severe punishment to their children. He and his colleagues at the various area hospitals saw these cases every week.
“If you’ll just come with me, Mrs. Simmons, he said politely. “This won’t take long, and then you can see Sienna.” He noted that this mother certainly looked as if she’d had a bad night. Her hair, worn in a short cut that under normal circumstances probably looked quite nice, was flat on one side, as if she’d slept on it. Her eyes held a haunted look, suggesting she hadn’t slept well. Of course, that could be simply because the reclining chair at her daughter’s bedside wasn’t all that comfortable…
He led her to his office near the nurse’s station and gestured for her to sit at the oblong table with six chairs in the corner. “All right, Alyssa, we’re ready,” he said. Instead of seating himself at one of the heads of the table, he took the chair directly next to hers. Taking this position made him seem less imposing and tended to make parents loosen up when talking out the circumstances of their children’s accidents.
The social worker who’d been assigned to the case entered the office, wearing a navy pantsuit, a zipped leather portfolio tucked under her right arm.
“Mrs. Simmons, this is Alyssa Palmer,” Prentice said. “She’s with Child Protective Services. She’s going to interview you.”
“I thought you were Child Protective Services. Why do I have to talk to two of you?” the child’s mother asked, looking like a frightened animal.
“I’m a social worker, Mrs. Simmons,” Alyssa explained as she sat opposite them. “Dr. Blake examines the patients, sits in on the interviews, and gives a recommendation.”
Mrs. Simmons’s eyes grew wide. “Recommendation for what?”
“I’m sorry for not explaining thoroughly,” Alyssa said apologetically. She was well suited for her position, Prentice thought. Young—in her mid-twenties, he guessed, making her a contemporary of most of the mothers they interviewed—she had a way of putting the most nervous parent at ease. “We’re required to make a full report of the circumstances behind Sienna’s injury. Most cases turn out to be just accidents—”
Prentice pretended to study his notes. That wasn’t exactly true, but he and Alyssa felt it best not to frighten possibly innocent parents unnecessarily.
“—but in a few isolated cases the injured child or children are removed from the home.”
Mrs. Simmons looked at Prentice, then at Alyssa, disbelief etched on her face. “This was an accident. Surely you don’t think I poured boiling hot water at my child deliberately.”
“We’re here to make an official determination,” Alyssa replied.
Mrs. Simmons shook her head. “You mean I could actually lose custody of my daughter over an accident?”
“Mrs. Simmons, please don’t worry,” Alyssa said soothingly.
“The doctor just said Sienna’s going to be all right.” Mrs. Simmons turned to Prentice. “She is going to make a full recovery, isn’t she?” she asked anxiously.
“Yes, Mrs. Simmons. We’re protecting her against infection with an antibiotic drip, and she’s also receiving pain medication. The majority of the most severe burns were confined to her arm, but the skin of her feet, chest, neck, and face were also affected. We’re still waiting for the plastic surgery consult to determine whether or not she’ll need skin grafts in the areas of the most severe burns.” He paused. “What we need to understand is how Sienna came to be burned in the first place.”
The child’s mother appeared to swallow before answering. “Um…my husband and I, we were…talking in another room. Sienna wandered in, and we asked her to go and play in her room for a few minutes. She’s usually an obedient child, but I guess she went to the kitchen instead. A few minutes later we heard her screaming. We put ice on her arm and brought her straight here.”
Prentice kept his face expressionless. “You didn’t check to make sure she was in her room, or escort her there? After all, she just recently turned four.”
He watched as the mother squirmed in her chair. “Um...no,” she said. “We asked her to go to her room, and she said she would. She usually does as she’s told.” Her brown eyes met his in a pleading look that gave him pause, for in his experience many guilty parents ten
ded to look away while being questioned.
Prentice gave Mrs. Simmons—the chart said her first name was Tierney—credit for being direct, but that hardly exonerated her. He was highly suspicious of the Simmons’s motives for sending their four-year-old to her room in the late afternoon. Mrs. Simmons was a young woman, and he presumed her husband was a relatively young man. Prentice wondered if the couple banished their daughter from the room so they could have a quickie. He noticed Mrs. Simmons hadn’t identified the ‘other room’ where she and her husband had been at the time of Sienna’s accident, but he’d bet a hundred bucks it was their bedroom.
“How is it you had a pot of water heating on the stove?” Alyssa asked.
“I’d started to make dinner as soon as I got home from work. I was working in the kitchen when my husband asked if I had a minute.”
Prentice kept his expression impassive, but he thought, A euphemism…the husband probably asked her to give him head. “And you put the pot on the front burner, where Sienna could easily tip it over?”
“It’s gas stove, and there’s a…a curvature on its back wall. The front burners are the only ones with room to heat a Dutch oven.”
Prentice admitted she had a point; his parents’ stove, although a newer model, was like that. Still, he had a good instinct about these things, and his gut told him Tierney Simmons was holding something back. She was probably too embarrassed to admit what she and her husband had been doing at the time Sienna tipped that pot over, certainly understandable. But he had a burning curiosity about a major factor, one he knew wouldn’t escape Alyssa’s sharp mind, either.
It was her very next question. “Mrs. Simmons, may I ask where your husband is this morning?”
There was no denying the woman’s discomfort. She chewed on her lower lip and seemed to tremble with fear. “He…he had urgent business in California. He was here at the hospital last night, but…his plane left early this morning. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to reschedule.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s a writer. He’s going to be starting a new job.” She named a prominent cable network.
Prentice’s eyebrows shot up. “Not exactly a practical commute from here.”
“He was going to get settled first. Sienna and I will be joining him later.”
“I see,” Prentice replied. “I have to tell you, Mrs. Simmons, that it strikes me as highly irregular for a man to leave town the morning after his little girl is badly burned.”
Her reply came fast. “He didn’t want to go, but he felt he had no choice. The producers wanted him out there right away.” Her eyes anxiously searched both their faces. “You see, my husband was laid off over two years ago, and I’ve been footing all the household bills. Things have been…tight for us financially. But he just sold an original script, and the network wants to build it into a series. He didn’t want to miss out on this opportunity.” After a brief pause, she added, “Not only did we need the money, but it’s important for a man to feel like the breadwinner.”
Tierney wished this interview would hurry up and end. She understood that Lake County’s children had to be protected, but she wasn’t about to admit to this doctor and social worker that Steven planned to stay in L.A., or that they had been discussing the fact that he was leaving her at the time of Sienna’s accident. She wanted to get through this ordeal with her dignity intact.
She deeply regretted Sienna’s injury. The pain made Sienna scream all the way to the hospital, and there hadn’t been anything Tierney could do to ease her child’s suffering, other than apply the makeshift ice pack, which quickly melted. And to think she’d been making a dinner for Steven to celebrate his return home. If only she’d roasted a chicken, her baby wouldn’t be lying in a hospital bed. Not only was she about to lose her husband, but her daughter might be scarred for life.
Alyssa scribbled something down in her notebook. “Mrs. Simmons, what type of work do you do?”
“I’m an executive administrative assistant.” She named her employer. “I’ll be taking the next few days off to sit with Sienna.”
Prentice made a mental note of her words, but the skeptic in him wondered if her devotion was genuine or put on for his and Alyssa’s benefit. The most neglectful or abusive parents, even as they planned to whip the child for getting them into trouble the moment CPS signed off the case, could project selfless concern for appearance’s sake during an interview. He wasn’t impressed with either Mrs. Simmons or the absent Mr. Simmons. Prentice understood that a man who’d gone from unemployment to the big bucks of Hollywoodbeen unemployed for the long-term wouldn’t want to jeopardize his new position, but most employers were compassionate. They may well have agreed to delay his start for a week to allow him to be with his daughter who’d suffered burns. Then again, perhaps Mr. Simmons had been retained to work on a project already behind schedule and the studio brass would have refused his request, but from what Mrs. Simmons said, her husband hadn’t even tried to delay his departure. That bothered Prentice tremendously. “Is there anything else you’d like to add, Mrs. Simmons?” he asked.
“Only that I’m a good mother and I love my daughter. I take all kinds of precautions to keep her safe. It’s just that this one time…”
“Thank you,” he said abruptly, recognizing a familiar refrain. “If you two will excuse me, I have patients to check in on. Alyssa, I’ll catch up with you afterward.”
“Yes, Dr. Blake.” Alyssa turned to Tierney. “Mrs. Simmons, I have just a few more questions for you….”