One of the Laura nurses stuck her head in the doorway. “Caldwells? Your baby’s on her way.”

Four people jumped up and rushed to the window. The venetian blind opened and they oohed and aahed, laughed and cried.

“Let’s look,” I told Fred.

We joined them at the window. Two nurses, dressed in green scrubs (reassuring) were ministering to a purplish-red baby who was not at all happy about what had just happened to her. So this was the world. Sheesh.

Her father, a bespectacled young man with thinning hair, also dressed in scrubs, kept pointing from the baby to himself as if the crew outside might not be sure this was his daughter. One nurse handed the new father a diaper. He put it on the baby like an expert, then looked through the window where we all applauded him. He grinned sheepishly. A little shirt, a blanket, knit cap, a tiny arm held up for a bye-bye, and the venetian blind closed.

Everyone in the room congratulated the family on their beautiful baby; everyone was sure that their baby would be more beautiful.

“That was really something,” Fred said. “I never got to see ours until they were in the nursery.”

“And I was asleep when they were born.”

“So was I, thank God.” Mary Alice had come up behind us. “This is like squatting in a Laura Ashley field, you ask me.”

“Debbie okay?”

“About there, I think. She and Henry don’t need me in there.”

A very sensitive thing to do, leave the parents alone to share the birth, and I told her so.

“Well, they came in and were cranking up the bed to this ungodly position and I said to myself, ‘Mary Alice, it’s time to get the hell out of Dodge.’”

“Good thinking,” Fred agreed. “Do you think I have time to go to the bathroom?”

“How long does it take you?”

Fred ignored Mary Alice and headed down the hall. She and I sat in two of the straight chairs that were lined up along the middle of the room. Obviously people weren’t supposed to stay here long enough to warrant being comfortable.

“Well, what did Virgil have to say?” I asked.

“Monk Crawford died of snakebites.”

“You mean it was an accident?”

“Far from it. One whole arm was full of bites. Virgil said he was tied up and it looked like his arm was put down in a basket of snakes. Then they left him to die in the car.” She paused. “The snakes were gone, though. Virgil was glad of that.”

“Oh, good Lord.” I closed my eyes for a moment fighting down nausea. The group that had just welcomed their new baby girl left, wishing us good luck.

“Thanks,” Sister said. “And congratulations.”

“What about Virginia?” I asked. “You said maybe they had found her.”