Baby In A Box

The opening of a story I've been working on for a while.

   “That baby has got to be the luckiest person on earth. To think that someone would do that....I mean, who just dumps an infant in a box? On purpose!?”
   “Someone who's probably young, and scared out of their own mind. You're 14 or 15, with no way to get a job--you're helpless yourself. You know there's nothing you can do, so you panic. You want to get rid of the thing causing you to stress out as soon as possible. There's no way to think straight in that situation.”
   The doctors, a lady and a man, were standing in line to order. The cafeteria at the hospital was a bright place, with a stereo system that, today, played the rock 'n roll music which had made the 60s such an iconic decade for some. Nurses in mint green scrubs were having polite conversation over their ham sandwiches, and the plants along the walls were sunbathing in the light that shone through the glass roof. There were flowers on some of the shrubs; some bright pink, others a deep shade of lavender. The mix of colors around the room filled the place with life.
   James Rhimes thought it was ironic. Here he was, sitting in a hospital, in a room that seemed to be smiling itself silly―while over in the corner where the coffee lady was, a conversation about a little, helpless, dying baby was taking place. A tiny little girl, no larger than a football, who had been abandoned and left to die, was being discussed in a place where nurses laughed about the most recent rerun of Friends. James liked that show, but he didn't think anything could make him smile at this point.
   James had been at the hospital for just a few hours. Just this morning he had gotten his hair cut; the long, swooping light brown hair was gone. In its place was a worn, faded, navy blue baseball cap. This cap had been given to him by his father years ago, when James was still a chubby little six-year-old.
   He wasn't chubby anymore. James Rhimes was a former high school baseball star, twenty-two years old, almost six feet tall, thin, and in good health. His father, the man who gave him the cap, had died of an overdose just a few years ago.
   Looking around the room again, James noticed something a little odd; all the plants, all the flowers, even the food was all exactly as it had been three-and-a-half years ago, when his father had been admitted. The courtyard outside the windows looked the same, with it's old, gnarled trees dotting the patterned stone tile with it's old, gnarled twigs. The nurses were the same ones who had been laughing three years ago, and the coffee lady still had the same dimples surrounding her insanely cute grin.
   How on earth was the room still smiling? So many people have had their hearts torn out here, so many hearts had stopped beating, but there was still an air of carelessness about the place.
   James wanted to leave. He wanted to get up, leave his lunch, and walk out the door. He wasn't even hungry anymore. The room had, ironically, pissed him off. All these people were laughing, all these flowers were blooming, and there was a tiny, brittle, barely-living baby under the knife at this very moment, holding on to life by a simple thread. James wanted to go home, and forget what he was here for.  
   But he couldn't. He couldn't just get up and flee. Not at this moment. While he pretended not to hear, James was sitting there at his table, alone, listening to the only two doctors in the cafeteria as best he could. He would sit there for as long as it took for Dr. Thomas and Dr. Reed to finish their lunch, because he needed to hear every word they said about the baby.
   James couldn't just leave the little girl. She was helpless―she had no one to cheer her on. No one even knew her name.
   Maybe she didn't even have a name, yet. She couldn't have been more than a few weeks old, and by the look of her, that was pushing it. No, that cry was coming from someone who knew nearly nothing of the outside world, and what she did know was the smell of sewage, the texture of cardboard, and the freezing, wet air of a mid-February Windy City winter. All she knew was exactly what she shouldn't know.
   James Rhimes couldn't leave her alone like this if he tried. So he listened to every word the doctors said. He needed to know. If he left now, he couldn't live with himself. He would try to tell himself it wasn't his business. The kid wasn't his, after all.
   But it was his business. He needed to see that little girl make it. He needed to know what would happen next. He needed to know how she was doing. He needed to stay with her.
   The very minute that James had heard that cry, that horrible, heartbreaking scream for help; the very moment James had gone over to the dumpster by the sewer and peered inside; the exact second that James saw a fragile, shrieking human being drowning in the cold Chicago rain... 
   When James Rhimes had taken off his winter jacket to wrap it around this dying little girl, he had made her his business.
   And there was no way in hell he was going to leave her side.

Author's Note

Please leave honest feedback. I've got the rest of the story up my sleeve, and anything helps.

Thanks for your time!
--Josh D.

Reviews

[Nia Hope]

I really like this a lot so far it seems like it will have an intriguing plot my only comment to improve would be to either change the second word "gnarled" to another word similar in meaning or to make the phrases seem a bit more parallel. Other than that wonderful job and keep up the good work :)