Page 69 of Bears Behaving Badly
“Or you could heroically allow yourself to be trampled,” Annette said again. “A life cut short, but on the upside, you’ll have died a noble death.”
“I’ll go get the car.”
And then there were two. Getting to the peds wing was easier than she thought, and thanks to Brian, the trickiest part was behind—
“Hey! You can’t be here!”
Annette flinched; those words had never been directed to her in this place, and the shock of hearing them took her by surprise. Especially since she was in a part of the hospital that she knew as well as she knew her own home. Recent events had shown her she now had to question what she used to think was familiar territory, not to mention the people in it. The thought made her profoundly sad.
Sharon hurried to where they were hesitating in the doorway to the nursery. “Judge Gomph is looking for you. We have to let him or his clerk know if we see you.”
“Yes, well, about th—hey.”
Sharon was shaking out two sets of buttercup-yellow scrubs, complete with masks. “Put these on.”
“But what if I don’t want to wear a yellow pup tent?”
“You don’t want to be hauled in for obstruction, either,” she replied shortly. David, meanwhile, hadn’t hesitated to swath himself in pastels and now resembled a sexy marshmallow Peep. With stubble.
Annette felt an invisible fist tighten around her throat. Obstruction! She’d never been in so much trouble in her life. Not even the time she refused to leave the All-U-Can-Eat buffet to prove they were guilty of false advertising. “It’s that bad?” she whispered. “What have you heard?”
“That you’re up to something—nobody knows what—and it’s got something to do with all the missing kids.” This while Sharon effectively outfitted them to blend in with the staff as well as an Easter hunt for gigantic Easter eggs. “The last part’s pretty much all we give a shit about.”
“Wait, ‘we’?”
“Allthe missing kids?”
“Annette!” the pediatric resident hissed from across the room. “What the hell are you doing here? You’ve gotta go!”
“I will, stopnagging. What do you mean, all the missing kids?”
“We haven’t been able to find some of them.”
“What?” Annette whisper-squawked (which, until this moment, she hadn’t known she could do).
Sharon and the resident—Dr. Tilbury, who as a werewolf was so amiable she’d been mistaken for an herbivore more than once—had tugged them over to the corner, their backs to the visitor window, and they were staring down at a chart, pretending to be conferring about a patient. Which, technically, they were. “In the last couple of months, we’ve discharged cubs back home, or to a fos-fam, or they’ve been released to another relative’s care, but when our visiting nurses follow up, they can’t find some of them. Or they’ll be adopted, but then no one can find the adoptive parents. It’s happened three times that we know of, but I’m betting there’s more.”
“Oh, fucking perfect,” David muttered.
Annette had to make a deliberate effort not to walk away from their small group to scoop up the Spencer cub, or check on the female werefox she’d fed the other… Could it only be a couple of days ago?
They’re supposed to be safe here. What. A. Joke.
“You say this has been going on for a couple of months?” she asked, making no effort to hide her horror.
“Yes,” Sharon answered. “I told my boss, who promised to follow up and didn’t, and then Tilly here toldherboss, who promised to follow up and did. ‘Paperwork snafus.’ That’s the party line, anyway. But before we could make more noise about it, miraculously, some of the kits turned up.”
“You sound like you don’t believe that,” David said.
“Maybe because I don’t?”
“They were found on paper,” Dr. Tilbury added. “Or in the computer. Not in real life. Sharon and I haven’t actually seen those kids again.”
“When I went to my boss with the third one, they stalled me for a couple of days and then an investigator came to see me with all the right paperwork. ‘Here they are, all snug and safe in the system, they were just misfiled, all the files are in the midst of being reorganized, not to worry, we’re doing our due diligence, run along back to the ward’…like that.”
Annette felt an inappropriate surge of excitement.I was right!Problem solving was hunting; they were all born to it. Still, it seemed wrong to be gleeful at the prospect of missing children, not to mention the ensuing cover-up.
“How has this been happening right under our snouts?” A glance at David showed he was as stunned as she was.
