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relative shadow of a doorway across from the big plate-glass window and
watched.
Gia sat half facing him, but all her attention was on the blanket-wrapped
bundle in her arms. She rocked, smiled, cooed, and looked down at that bundle
as if it were the most precious child in the world. Someone else's baby, but
no one looking at Gia now would know it. Her eyes were aglow with a light Jack
had never seen before. And her expression& beatific was the only word for it.
And then Vicky hopped into the picture, an eight-year-old slip of a thing;
her dark brown braids bouncing as she hurried a bottle of formula to her
mother. Jack smiled. He had to smile every time he saw Vicky. She was a doll
and he loved her like a daughter.
He'd never met Vicky's father and, from what he'd heard about the late,
not-so-great Richard Westphalen, he was glad. Jack had it on excellent
authority that the Brit bastard was dead he knew the where, when, and how of
his death but the remains would never be found. So it would be years before
Richard Westphalen was declared legally dead. Gia had taken back her maiden
name after the divorce, although Vicky remained a Westphalen the last of the
line.
Vicky didn't seem to miss him. Why should she? She'd hardly known him when he
was alive, and now Jack had more than taken his place. Or at least he hoped
so.
He watched a few minutes longer, unable to take his eyes off the two most
important people in his life. And it worried him no end that they were both in
an enclosed room with HIV-positive infants.
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Right, right, right. He knew all the facts and figures about how safe they
were, and all that. And that was all fine and good for other people. But this
was Gia and Vicky. And the threat was a virus, something you couldn't see, and
not just any virus. This was HIV.
HIV had always given Jack the creeps. He wasn't generally given to looking
for or finding conspiracies, but HIV was so damnedefficient . An infection
that attacks the very weapons the body uses against infections& the concept
had such anengineered feel about it.
Jack felt he could protect those two people in there against just about
anything. But not a virus. And they were putting themselves right in its way.
If either one of them should catch it& he didn't know what he'd do.
HIV was something he could not fix.
Jack pulled himself away and walked back the way he had come.
He saw the heavyset Gladys leading a line of preschoolers down the hall. She
smiled and nodded as she passed, a huge goose with her goslings. He spotted
Hector bringing up the rear.
"Hey," he said, pointing. "Who's that kid with the mad buzz cut?"
Jack had expected another offer to "feel my buth cut," or a smile at least.
But Hector's eyes were dull when he looked up at Jack. And then he staggered
against the wall and dropped to his knees. Before Jack could react, Hector
vomited.
"Whoa!" Jack yelled. "Trouble here!"
Gladys was there in a second. "Stay back," she told Jack as she pulled on
latex gloves that seemed to appear from nowhere.
She picked up a hall phone, spoke a few words, then knelt beside Hector. Jack
couldn't hear what she said, but he saw Hector shake his head.
And then Raymond appeared he too was wearing latex gloves. He gathered Hector
up in his arms and carried him back down the hall. As Gladys directed the
other children back into their playroom, a janitor appeared and began mopping
up the mess with a solution that reeked of antiseptic.
Jack moved on. He'd been a frozen observer, not knowing what to do. The staff
here had its own set of rules and protocols that Jack was not privy to. He
felt like a stranger in a foreign country, with no knowledge of the language
or the culture.
He quickened his pace. Hector had been smiling and bubbling less than an hour
ago, and just now he'd looked like a little rag doll with all its stuffing
vacuumed out.
The happy sounds of the children in the day-care rooms attacked Jack as he
moved. Each shout felt like a shot, each laugh a knife thrust. Death hovered
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