Jack Sabre

The Beginning “Hang on, lady. Hang on,” yelled the taxi driver, over the screams coming from the backseat of his cab. His black coloured taxi sped along quickly to the Ottawa General Hospital, wheels spinning and car sliding on the greasy snow covered pavement. “Hurry” she yelled at him. As it neared the entrance, the driver, John Torrey, heard the passenger let out another scream. This one was blood curdling. Jerking his head back, he saw the woman, jaw set, pushing up from the bottom of her huge, round like a beach balloon belly, as if trying to hold the baby inside. “Save my baby”, she said through teeth clenched. Then the woman gasped. Her head slowly rolled sideways and her arms fell limply to her sides, her right hand plopping to the floor. Torrey braked hard and turned in his seat. The woman’s hands were covered in blood, eyes open, lifeless and looking right at Torrey. Torrey leaned on the car’s horn desperately looking at the Hospital entrance door. “Come on, come on” he said under his breath. Shortly afterward, two white-coated attendants ran out. “Back here!” Torrey yelled from inside the car, motioning with his hands, pointing to the back seat. “Good lord, the baby’s trying to come out” said one. While he stayed to help, the other ran back inside to get a stretcher. The attendants flung the back door open and as the stretcher arrived placed the handles on the edge of the back seat bench. While one attendant held the far end, the other grabbed the woman by her coat shoulders and dragged her, with difficulty, onto the stretcher, the woman’s back and lower body drooping against the seat. Torrey cringed as he heard her fingernails scrape the leather. They carried her inside. The woman couldn’t have been more than nineteen. And she did not make it. Her insides all bruised up, she had suffered internal trauma and bled out. The hospital staff, led by Dr. Gilles Champlain, managed to pull the baby out alive. Born on November 20, 1921 was a boy. Fourteen pounds and all nine ounces of him. No wonder the mother did not make it. The Doctor and staff agreed it must have been a strenuous pregnancy. It would have been a very difficult birth under any circumstance because the baby boy measured 23 inches long. He was simply, huge. One of the questions on attending staff’s mind was the identity of the woman. “Next of kin will have to be advised” said one of the nurses. “Well, look through her fur coat and see what you can find, perhaps a wallet which would contain a home address,” Champlain replied. “What about the driver, maybe he can tell us something” he stated, looking down the grey hall, for John Torrey. Well, Torrey was not around. The woman’s fur coat held no wallet in its pockets. A compact was found. “Look, nurse Turner said to Champlain. “It’s made out of pure silver.” She went through another pocket of the fur coat, her hand circled something. “Lipstick.” She pulled out a few white tissues. “Isn’t it odd that she does not have more than this on her?” she remarked. “No wallet or money, no jewellery of any kind,” “Where’s the man who brought her in?” asked Champlain. “Did not anybody get his name?” he asked, annoyed. But you see, Torrey had witnessed more than he was used to and was feeling overwhelmed. With that expensive looking fur coat, maybe she was some gangster’s moll, and he wanted no part of that. He did not want to be late for his day shift which was scheduled to start very soon, so he had quietly left the scene. Now, the hospital was in an unusual and awkward situation. An unknown woman had been placed in the morgue and a very healthy, baby boy was alive, without a name. The baby was abnormally large. And strong, too. When they finally pulled him from he mother’s womb, the intensity of his first cry and the crying which ensued through the closed doors of the birthing room could be heard through the doors of the operating room down the hall and on the floors above and below the room. Champlain and Nurse Turner continued to look through the fur coat carefully to see if any tags could indicate which store it came from. They continued searching for any immediate clues that might help the police identify the dead woman. Apart from being expensive material, the coat gave away no clues. Not even a tag indicating which store it came from. A more pressing matter at hand was that the baby boy had to be fed. He seemed very hungry. This in itself was a healthy sign. But with no mother who could breastfeed him, it posed a potential problem. Regular milk would not do as it could bring on colic. After it was fully determined that the baby was fine, Nurse Turner went around in the maternity ward and spoke with some of the mothers. She found Mrs. Cavendish who had given birth three days before. “Mrs. Cavendish, we have a very hungry baby whose mother passed away giving birth, would you mind sharing some of your breast milk with him”. It made Mrs. Cavendish uneasy as she found the request somewhat odd, having never heard of such a thing before. Obviously, she thought of her own baby first. “I suppose I could spare a bit,” she replied. She began squeezing a special type of pump placed over her breast so has to get some milk out and into in a bottle with a plastic teat but then became frustrated with the effort. After quite a bit of frowning and frustration, she said, “Oh, just bring him over here,” and the baby took to suckling on one of her breast right away. After fifteen minutes straight, he was still on it. He started fussing. Mrs. Cavendish looked down on him, a puzzled look on her face. “Good lord. He emptied it” she exclaimed. She switched him to her other breast. And the baby suckled away. Emptied that breast, too. Nurse Turner went to other Mothers in the ward, who had already birthed, politely asking the same request. Again, she received quite a few puzzled looks but under the extraordinary circumstances, some, but not all, of the women obliged. The mothers always remarked how he was hungry and so adorable looking with his chestnut brown hair with its healthy sheen too. He easily took to the breasts and suckled right away. And not fussy either, unless the breast ran empty. The baby had been in the maternity ward ten days now. No one came forward to claim him. Initially, the plan was to change the milk donor on a daily basis. However, it regularly took three mothers in succession to sate his hunger. A pattern developed. The baby would empty one breast so the mother would switch him to her other one which the baby promptly emptied. Then he would have to be brought to another mother where the same deal was repeated. Only then was his hunger satisfied. The mothers always remarked how the baby was so big. “No wonder the poor woman passed away.” The police had not been of much assistance. The attendants who had brought the woman in on the stretcher had provided enough information to locate John Torrey but apart from saying where he picked her up, he knew nothing more about her. The police knocked on some doors in the vicinity where the driver, Torrey, had seen her first, but no additional information was provided. The police suggested to the hospital that perhaps the woman was not from the Ottawa valley area. They advised Champlain that the case would be investigated and filed under a missing persons report since her identity could not be determined and no crime had been committed. There had been no evidence of foul play. They would publicise the woman’s description and keep the hospital informed should anyone come forward with a similar description of the dead woman. Two weeks passed and despite a write up in the local papers and posters on lamp poles, still no one came forward with any information. The young mother remained the John Doe woman in the morgue and the baby had yet to be given a name.