by CJ Lyons
Grace regarded the small boy. He was right--and showed more wisdom and foresight than his adult guardians had. "What do you want, Alex?"
He jerked his head up, met her gaze with a solemn stare that made his blue eyes darken to indigo. "You seriously want to know?"
"I seriously want to know."
His entire body worked as he sucked in a deep breath, nostrils flaring with the effort. "I want to go outside, feel the grass, the sun shining on my face. I want to be free of this." He pounded one small fist against his wheelchair. "I want a family, people who love me to hold me tight and..." he trailed off, staring at her as if gauging her ability to handle the rest of his wish. "I want to be free to go. Is that too much to ask for?"
Grace blinked back a tear and reached a hand out to take his. "No, Alex. I don't think so."
"You and Kat are the only ones," he said bitterly. "I tried to explain to Dr. V, to the judge and social worker, but no one listens. They just nod their heads and then go on talking like I'm not even there. I've had fourteen surgeries, spent a total of 454 days in the ICU hooked up to machines. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been allowed outside. What gives them the right to decide what's best for me?"
She wished she had an answer for that. But this boy-man wouldn't accept any of the obvious patronizing platitudes about doctors trying only to help him, save him. She remembered the way Vincent spoke about Alex. Obviously he was so attached to the boy that he couldn't let Alex go, couldn't admit defeat, couldn't face the fact that he wouldn't be the one to save Alex.
"That's why you told Vincent I was your mother."
Now Alex looked sheepish. "Yeah. After Kat said it, it just felt right. Did I get you in trouble?"
"Nothing I can't handle. I'll talk to Vincent, all right?"
His face lit up with a grin filled with hope. "Thanks, Grace."
"Now I need your help. I told Kat I'd look at her chart, but--"
"You don't want to go back to the ECU. You don't have to," he said in an excited rush. "Dr. V lets me use his computer sometimes to play games, research new magic tricks and stuff on the Web. I know his password."
Grace stood up, grabbed the wheelchair's handles. "What are we waiting for? Let's go."
CHAPTER 14
House Calls
After finishing morning report and a talk on colic to the interns, Vincent was free to begin his quest for Helman's missing patient. He printed out her demographic information including address and contact numbers. Still no answer at her house.
Vincent drove his Mustang over to Grace Moran's address in Squirrel Hill. The street she lived on was a series of yellow and brown brick duplexes shouldered together as if they were the last defense against the rest of the world.
Raggedy lawn chairs and ancient chrome kitchen chairs sat at the curb, holding parking spaces until their owners arrived to claim them--a unique Pittsburgh tradition that was more sacrosanct than any civil law. Vincent had learned to never violate the sacred spaces protected by chairs that in any other city would have been stolen or disposed of as garbage.
He found a spot down the street from 209. Moran's house was perched on a hill, its front stoop a steep flight up from the sidewalk, the garage tucked in beneath the first floor. The outside was a dark yellow brick that had been popular fifty years ago with blue shutters draped around large, mullioned windows.
He leaned forward to peer up at the house through the windshield. It was an ordinary house, no hint that a crazy lady lived here. Morning kindergarten had just let out and he watched as kids walked past 209 without a glance or hitch in their steps.
It wasn't like that when he was a kid. Any rumor of instability or even eccentric behavior, and the kids would immediately brand the house. Even after the suspected miscreants moved on, the half-truths kids overheard would take on mythic proportions and the house would be marked for graffiti, eggs, and toilet paper, minor mischief and mayhem.
But these kids didn't seem to care. Did they not know? Or were city kids just less bored and curious than he and his friends had been?
He left the Mustang and stepped out into slashing March rain that tried its best to push him down the hill, away from Moran's home. Vincent fought through it and after huffing his way up the hill and the steep steps to her front porch, found himself jabbing at her door bell. A sonorous tone echoed inside as if the empty house was in mourning for its absent owner.
He peered through the glass at the top of the oak door. Moran's front room appeared orderly, would have even met his mother's approval. Photos were clustered on the fireplace mantle, too far away for him to make out the subjects. There was tasteful artwork on the other wall that was within view, a console table with a bowl for keys lined the foyer, and if he turned his head he could see the back of a sofa. The only thing out of place was a floral runner rug that stretched out along the foyer and behind the sofa in subdued shades of red and green.
He tapped the bell again. No movement inside the house—he knew it couldn't be that easy. He settled on the porch swing and pulled Moran's information from his pocket. What was an agoraphobic doing with a porch swing, anyway? He used his cell phone to call her emergency contact, an Ingrid Garman.
"Mrs. Garman?"
"Who's this?"
"I'm Dr. Emberek from Angels of Mercy."
There was the clatter of dishes in the background as she sucked in her breath. "My God, Grace--is she--"
"She's all right, as far as I know."
The woman's tone turned stony. "What do you mean, as far as you know? You're her doctor, aren't ya?"
Now for the tricky part. "Yes ma'am. But we've had a small problem. Ms. Moran seems to have left Angels of Mercy. I'm trying to find her."
"Did yinz try her house?"
"I'm there now. There's no one answering. If you don't know where Ms. Moran is, I was hoping that you could maybe let me in."
"What, into her house?"
"Yes ma'am."
There was a long moment of silence on the other end. "I don't know," the housekeeper said. "Grace, she treasures her privacy--that's why she fired three women before she hired me. They'd go through her stuff, try to get her out of the house, interfere with her way of doing. I told her, I believe as long as you ain't hurting nobody, what you do in the privacy of your own home is your own business. And after that, me and her, we got along real good. She even gave me a TV last Christmas, a small one for the kitchen so's I can watch my stories while I work."
How was Vincent supposed to compete with that? "I promise I wouldn't disturb anything," he began. "And you might be saving her life. What if she's had another seizure and is lying alone somewhere?"
"How's going through her stuff gonna help you find her if she's out on the street?" Mrs. Garman asked shrewdly. "And don't try telling me she's lying in the house needing help, I just came from there."
"Maybe if I could get some insight into her personality I'd know where to start looking."
"Well," she hesitated. "I suppose it wouldn't hurt things. I've got to get these groceries over to my sister's place first, help her with the baby. I can meet you at Grace's house at four."
"You'll help me find her, then?"
"We'll see once I get a look at you for myself."
"Thanks, that's a big help."
"You'd better bring ID, proof that you're really a doctor. You wouldn't believe how many reporters and snoops were around after the trial, as if the poor thing hadn't been through enough already. I've got to go now."
"Wait. Trial? When was that?"
She clicked her tongue as if he should know exactly what she was talking about. "What, are you nuts? After the murder, of course."
And she hung up.
Grace pushed Alex through the hallway past the Pediatric nurses' station to the small corridor behind the elevator bank where the two wings of the Annex came together. Several old patient rooms had been converted into call rooms for the pediatric residents, med students, and the Pediatric Chi
ef Resident.
Alex nodded at the plain wooden door with Vincent Emberek's name written in magic marker on a piece of surgical tape. Grace looked up and down the empty hall, feeling guilty as she knocked on the door. No answer.
Alex opened the door. Being a former patient room, it had no lock. Didn't matter, there was never anything worth stealing in call rooms. She wheeled Alex inside and closed the door behind them. Vincent's privileged position as Chief Resident earned him a private room with space enough for a small desk, ancient computer, two chairs, bookcase and bed. Cozy.
As Alex pulled up to the desk and began typing on the computer, Grace looked around the room. It was neat and spare to the point of being Spartan. Despite the fact that this was his home away from home for a year, Vincent had added no personal touches. The walls remained blank institutional green, the linens covering the bed were hospital issue, stretched taut enough to bounce a quarter, there weren't any newspapers or magazines other than the most recent copy of Archives of Diseases in Childhood.
The tattered, thread worn textbooks on the bookshelf stood at attention in perfect alignment. A crisp white lab coat, pockets empty of the usual detritus that weighed down most residents, hung from a hanger on the back of the door. Behind it a pair of scrubs also hung from a hanger.
"Who bothers to hang up scrubs?" she asked. They wrinkled as soon as you pulled them on anyway. Jeez, and they called her obsessive compulsive.
"Don't touch those. Dr. V doesn't like his stuff messed with," Alex told her.
"So I see." Vincent Emberek obviously worshiped order. Probably a total control freak. No wonder he'd been so upset when she'd challenged his authority.
"I'm in," Alex said triumphantly.
"Does Vincent know that you know how to access confidential patient files?" she asked as she slid into the chair beside him.
"No. But he uses the same password for everything." He typed Kat's name into the database and within seconds her patient record appeared on the screen. "There's a lot of stuff here. Do you know what you're looking for?"
Grace took over the keyboard and began searching the files. The medical record system had a few new bells and whistles but was basically the same as when she was a resident. "Does he have a printer?"
"No. If you print from here it goes down to the nurses' station."
That wouldn't work. She focused on Kat's MRI reports first, then skimmed through the neurology notes. Alex sat beside her in silence, reading over her shoulder.
"What's grey matter vacu-u-mization?"
"Vacuolization," she corrected. "It means part of her brain has been turned into empty pockets where the nerves can't transmit signals. That's what triggers the seizures." She clicked on an MRI image so that he could visualize what she was trying to describe. "See those black holes there and there? That part of the brain controls her left arm and hand."
He squinted at the display of Kat's brain. "Wow. Her brain looks like Swiss cheese. How's come she's not sicker?"
"The virus starts by attacking one side of the brain. In young people like Kat their brain is still developing, so they can compensate. But if the damage begins to cross to the other side, then--"
"She'd end up like me. In a wheelchair--or worse." Alex slumped back, his face cloudy. Grace clicked back to the main menu, erasing the gruesome image of Kat's ravaged brain. "Can her operation fix her?"
"It's her only hope."
"But--will she still be Kat after?"
The million-dollar question. The damage to Kat's brain was extensive, but so far appeared to affect only the motor cortex. Grace pursed her lips. "I think so, yes."
Alex frowned, his eyes squinting as he rocked in his wheelchair. He obviously wanted more definite answers from her. But she didn't have all the answers.
"You keep reading," he told her. "I'll watch the door." He wheeled over to the door, opening it a crack. "Are you a doctor or something?"
"Once upon a time I was."
"Did you ever take care of me?"
Grace paused in her typing. She swiveled to face the earnest boy. "Yes. Once. I was doing a Peds ICU rotation."
"I thought I remembered you."
Impossible. He'd been comatose, coding after his intestines perforated from an obstruction. She'd barely been able to bring him back, stabilize him for the surgeons. "I doubt it."
"No, I do remember you. You only had one ring then." He pointed to the emerald on Grace's left hand. "It sparkled in the light."
Grace twirled the two bands of gold around her finger. He was right. That had been between her engagement and wedding. How could he have known what was going on?
Jimmy's voice rang through her mind: too many questions. She gave Alex a smile and reached over to rumble his hair before turning back to the computer.
"If I'd asked you not to save my life, would you have done it?"
Her fingers slipped on the keys, freezing the computer with nonsense commands. She shivered as the vent beside her blew out a gust of air. "That was a long time ago, Alex. You weren't old enough--"
"But if I was, if I asked, would you?"
Damn, the kid was nothing if not persistent. She was silent for a moment, trying to wrestle control of the computer once more. Then she turned around in her chair to face him.
Before she could answer, the door flew open.
CHAPTER 15
No Safe Haven
"Did you hear the Beast last night?"
"Yeah, what sent him off?"
"Who knows? The guy's freaky-deaky. Makes the rest of us look down right sane."
"He was yelling for someone named Grace. There's no Grace here, is there?"
"You said it, brother. Won't find no grace anywhere near this joint."
Kat shuffled behind the grownups heading into the community room, silent, listening to their gossip. Group was the one time the freaks felt free to speak, the one time they could revert to their previous, pre-mortem, states of being.
Every morning, all the denizens of the Freak Show, except for the Beast, joined together in the community room, exchanging insights, positive reinforcement and accolades for the mandatory ten minutes until Nurse Cray was satisfied and left them to their own devices. There was a video camera in the community room, but no audio monitoring, so first amendment rights were also celebrated here.
"He's a danger to us all," Mr. Atomic said, thumping his fist on the pool table to emphasize his words. "I say we do something about it before someone gets hurt."
"He's no danger to us," The Human Cannonball retorted, true to form. A squat, bullet-headed man, the only consistency about him was his ability to contradict everything and anything anyone one else said. "Only to this Grace person."
"What're you saying?" Minny Mouse squeaked. A tall, solidly built black teenager who would have intimidated anyone with his looks and glowering tattoos, he had the high-pitched voice of a helium fiend. Or in this case, a middle-class kid not much older than Kat who'd lost his voice to a showdown with crystal meth. "Y'all think we should find this Grace, give her to him or sumthin?"
That attracted the women's attention. A much less social and more narcissistic lot than the Y-chromosome blessed among them, the two women tended to gravitate to the perimeter of the room, brooding on their own ills, each secretly wishing for the spotlight.
"Is it true?" Angie the Skeleton asked. "Is she here?" She acted as if she'd missed an opportunity to meet her favorite anorexic poster girl movie star. "Where?"
"She's his lost love, you know," Godiva, the diabetic, a statuesque blonde with waist-length hair and a penchant for forcing her blood sugar to plummet, said in a dreamy voice. "And he's still looking for her. It's so romantic. Pining away for the woman you love."
"I heard he killed her," the Cannonball said with a leer at Godiva. "Then he chopped her up and ate her to destroy the evidence." His own admission ticket to the Show had been punched by a psychiatrist who was unable to banish his "obsessive thoughts". The way everyone shut up around
Kat when they talked about him behind his back, she figured his obsessions must have something to do with sex.
But the Cannonball was harmless, Kat knew. Even before he began Lucidine therapy, he'd showed himself to be all bluster and bluff, cowering whenever anyone took a stand against him.
"So, she's dead?" Angie sighed. "That's so sad. It'd be nice for someone to have a happy-ever-after."
"With the Beast?" Mr. Atomic put in. "Are you kidding? No happy endings for anyone with that maniac running loose."
"But he's not, is he?" Kat clamped her hand over her mouth as the adults all swiveled to stare at her. Stupid. The trick was to sit quietly in the corner--she of all people knew that. "I mean," she faltered, determined to have her question answered now that she'd blown her cover anyway, "he's locked up, isn't he?"
"Aw, Kit-Kat," Angie crooned, stepping away from the window where she'd been studying her reflection to join Kat. "Don't worry. We won't let him anywhere near you."
"Don't make a promise you can't keep," the Cannonball said with a glower. "The Beast rules this place. If he wants this Grace, he'll get her. If he wants you, little girl," he said, swinging his head down to within a few inches of Kat's, baring his teeth in a grin, "he'll get you. Hell, maybe we'll give you to him. A little peace offering until he gets hold of his real thing."
"Stop it. You're scaring her," Angie said, but Kat noted that the other girl moved away from Kat instead of drawing near. Placing distance between herself and the sacrificial lamb.
Kat straightened herself to her full height and despite the goose bumps making her tremble, gave them all her best eat-shit-and-die glare.
"You don't scare me," she said, rattling her electrodes. "None of you Freaks do. Know why?" The adults were silent, their gazes narrowed in distrust as if she'd betrayed some silent code by merely speaking her mind. "Cause I'm gonna have my surgery and then I'm out of here."
The tremble that shook her body became focused into a downright quaking along her left arm and hand. The smell of wet horse flesh choked her nostrils. Kat ignored the partial seizure. As long as it didn't get worse, leaving her at the mercy of these misfits. She tossed her head, electrodes swinging with the motion, and strode to the door. "I'm outta here for good."