FIGHT by Brent Coffey

hospital bed for the first time in the past two days.  She moaned and stretched her legs and back, wrapping her hands around her waist.  Giving birth was tough.  Moving afterwards was just as tough.  She knew, once more, that she had to be quick.  She tore off the tape holding the IV needle against her arm and discarded them both.  Barefoot on the cold floor, she gingerly made her way out of her room.  Looking down the hospital’s hall in both directions, she saw several nurses making their rounds, but she didn’t see either the nurse that had tried to drug her or Dr. Platter.  She walked as fast as she could into a stranger’s hospital room.  A man lay snoring.  She left without waking him.  She hurried across the hall and into another patient’s room.  A woman, about ten years older and several pounds lighter, was elevated in her hospital bed watching TV.
    “Oh, hello!” Debby began.  She wasn’t sure what she was going to say next.
    Luckily, the woman didn’t acknowledge her.  Too doped up on drugs , Debby thought.  She quickly opened the few drawers in the room’s only piece of furniture, a waist tall brown chest.  Rifling through it, she found the woman’s clothes.  She discarded her hospital gown so swiftly that she didn’t even bother to untie it: she just slipped the top over her neck and let it fall beneath her.  She then put on the woman’s pants.  They were tight, very tight.  I’ll just tell people that I forgot to bring my maternity clothes .  She then squeezed into an uncomfortably small red blouse that didn’t quite match.  Finding some shoes in the chest’s third drawer, she thanked her lucky stars that they weren’t heels.  I’m dressed as miserably as I feel, but at least I’m no longer in a hospital gown. 
    Peeking out of the unknown patient’s door and darting her eyes up and down the hall, she still saw no sign of the nurse or Dr. Platter.  She hurried towards the nursery, walking as steadily as she could to avoid drawing attention to herself.  Passing the nurses’ station, her peripheral vision confirmed that its many staffers were too busy to notice anyone not wearing hospital attire.  She kept a steady gaze towards the elevator bank just ahead, and, passing a table in the hallway, picked up today’s paper in case she needed to avoid eye contact.   Staring down and pretending to read the headlines, she made her way to the front of the nursery, stopping in front of its glass enclosure.  Several nurses that she didn’t recognize were inside tending to rows of crying infants.  Debby wondered how any child was expected to sleep in the fire alarm cries of other children.  One crying infant had set off a domino effect and was joined by a disharmonious choir of his peers.  With frazzled nurses rushing to hold, feed, and change as many disgruntled babies as they could, the place seemed about as peaceful as a bar fight.  Debby recognized Gabe, even though she couldn’t read his tiny wristband.  Being his mother, she didn’t need to be told which child was hers: she knew. She decided to try her hand at another Emmy.
    “Hey, you guys look super busy!” she said with an empathetic laugh in her tone.
    Neither nurse turned to meet her, as both were bent over diaper changing stations.  One nurse said, “Only personnel are permitted in the nursery.”
    “That’s fine.  I’ll show myself to the door.”  And, picking Gabe up, she did.  Gabe’s cries became louder when Debby lifted him out of his plastic crib.  Thankfully, the nurses didn’t notice his increased volume, as the other tenants drowned him out.  She walked outside the nursery, covering most of Gabe with the newspaper to hide his hospital clothes.  She stepped into an elevator filled with people who were either too tired or too sick to ask questions about a crying newborn, and she rode with Gabe to the ground level floor without incident.  She didn’t know how much time had passed