by David Bell
‘Thanks.’
‘Whoever it was, relative or friend, just try to, you know, keep it a little on the cheery side for now. This isn’t easy for your brother.’ She nodded towards the door to Ronnie’s room. ‘He’s asleep now, but you can go on in.’
I didn’t move. ‘This woman,’ I asked, ‘what did she look like?’
The phone buzzed again, and this time Janie didn’t even bother to look at it. ‘She was about fifty, maybe a little older. Thin. Dark hair.’ She shrugged. ‘I really didn’t pay too much attention since I was tending to your brother. Maybe she’s a friend of the family?’
‘Maybe,’ I said.
‘I do have to go now, Elizabeth,’ she said. ‘Duty calls. But you’re welcome to stay.’ She waited a moment. ‘It was good to see you again.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It was. Thanks for being so understanding.’
‘It’s part of the job,’ she said. ‘And we’re old friends, right?’
‘Right. Of course.’
I started to move on, but Janie said, ‘You know, if you ever need someone to talk to about all of this, I’m around. We can meet for coffee or something.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Maybe we should.’
‘I’m sure you’re busy, of course.’
‘Thanks, Janie.’
She walked off, the brisk motion of her legs making the fabric of her pants swish together.
I tried to picture the woman she described in my mind, but it was pointless. I had no idea who Janie was talking about.
I finally did move forward. I travelled the rest of the way down the hall to the closed door of Ronnie’s room. I paused again, but immediately thought of what Mom would have wanted. And I knew she’d want me in that room, visiting Ronnie.
I pushed the door open and said, ‘Knock, knock.’
The curtains were drawn, and only a small light burned by the side of Ronnie’s bed. As I came into the room, my feet lightly shuffling over the linoleum floor, Ronnie didn’t move. He lay on his side, his back to the door. I stopped near the bed and studied him. For a long moment he lay so still I worried there was something wrong with him, and I waited, my anxiety rising along with my heartbeat, until I saw the slightest movement in his body. It rose and fell, ever so slowly, as Ronnie breathed. He must have been deeply asleep thanks to whatever medication they had given him.
I felt the relief, let it ease through me.
Don’t be silly, I told myself. He’s fine. He’s doped up, but he’s fine.
I moved around to the far side of the bed, the side Ronnie faced. A functional wood-framed chair, its leather back a sickly orange colour, sat in the corner. I pulled it out, closer to Ronnie’s bed, and sat down. Ronnie didn’t move while I did these things. Air whistled through his nose, and a thin ribbon of drool hung from his lower lip. I looked at his bedside table. I pulled a tissue from the box and gently wiped the drool away. When I did, Ronnie stirred a little. He turned his head a couple of inches and scrunched his facial features into a mask of irritation.
I threw the tissue in the trash and said, ‘Ronnie? It’s me. Elizabeth.’
He moaned and didn’t open his eyes.
I leaned back in my chair, thinking of giving up, of just leaving him alone. But Janie’s story had me thinking.
Who had come to talk to Ronnie? Was it someone who worked with him? Someone from speech therapy? But then why would he get so upset?
I leaned forward again, lowering my face closer to Ronnie’s. His eyes were still closed. ‘Ronnie? Can you hear me? Can you talk to me for just a minute?’
He moaned again, but this time his eyes opened a little. ‘Mmph,’ he said.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Can you tell me who came to see you today? Did someone come into your room and talk to you today?’
His eyelids fluttered. He looked like a drunk losing the battle against unconsciousness.
‘Ronnie?’ I said.
‘Mmph.’
‘Shit,’ I said.
‘Paul.’
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Paul,’ he said.
‘Paul?’ I said. ‘Paul was here?’
‘Mmph.’
‘Okay, I figured Paul came by. Did someone else come by? A woman? The nurse said a woman came by to talk to you. Do you remember that?’
‘Mmph.’
‘Ronnie, stay with me. Who was this woman who came to see you?’
A long pause. Then he said, ‘Elizabeth.’
‘Yes?’
‘Elizabeth.’
‘I’m here.’
He didn’t say anything else, so I said, ‘Who came to see you today, Ronnie? Please?’
‘Elizabeth.’
‘I’m here, Ronnie. I’m right here. I wasn’t here earlier. I was at school. But I came as soon as I could to see you.’
He seemed to be gone then. His eyes closed and his breathing returned to the rhythm of a sleeper. I let out a long sigh. I reached out and pushed the hair out of his face. I didn’t know whether it brought him any comfort or not, but I wanted to do it. He looked so small and defenceless. I tried not to think of him as a child and to never treat him as such, but seeing him there looking so vulnerable just made me want to protect him. And I was the younger sister, the baby. But he needed it much more than I did, at least in that moment.
‘Mmm,’ he said.
I leaned closer. ‘What, Ronnie?’
‘Mom,’ he said.
I thought that’s what he’d just said, but I wasn’t sure.
‘What about Mom?’ I asked.
He took a long time to answer, but he finally said, ‘Mom … here …’
A shiver shot up my back with such force I raised my chin, tilting my head and retracting it into my shoulders. When it passed, and my jangling nerves lost some of their electric charge, I said to Ronnie, ‘Mom wasn’t here.’
He didn’t say anything.
‘Did you have a dream about Mom?’ I asked. ‘Is that why you got upset today?’
‘Mom,’ he said. ‘Here.’
‘Ronnie, no. Mom’s gone. Remember? You found her. She’s gone.’
But he didn’t say anything else. Whatever had allowed him to come out of the drug-induced sleep closed him in its grip again – if he had even been truly awake in the first place. Maybe everything he said had been sleep-talk and nonsense.
But it wouldn’t easily be forgotten.
I leaned back in the chair again. Not easily shaken off or forgotten at all.
15
On my way out, I stopped at the nurses’ station. Janie was gone, so I talked to someone else. She looked to be my age or even younger, and she was tapping away at a computer when I walked up. She stopped what she was doing and smiled up at me.
‘I had to sign in when I came in,’ I said. ‘Does everybody have to do that?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It used to be only after nine, but we have staffing shortages because of state budget cuts, so now all day.’
I scanned the names above mine on the sign-in sheet. I didn’t recognize any.
‘My brother is Ronnie Hampton. Did you see the woman who visited him earlier?’
‘I’m sorry. I just started at five.’
She eyed the keyboard like it was a juicy steak. I knew I was keeping her from her work.
‘I spoke to another nurse – Janie Rader – who said they had to put my brother on something to calm him down. He got a little emotional earlier apparently.’
‘Okay,’ she said.
‘Is it possible for something like that to cause hallucinations? Or make someone so out of it they might see things that aren’t there?’
Her eyebrows went up. ‘If your brother is seeing things or hallucinating –’
‘No, no,’ I said. ‘I’m not saying anything is wrong. Not really.’
‘Then what is it?’ she asked, her impatience starting to show. I wanted to get mad at her but couldn’t. I would have acted the same way if someone had shown up and interru
pted my work with questions. I felt the same way about my students all the time.
‘Our mother just died, and Ronnie said he saw her. And this woman came to visit him apparently …’
‘He probably had a dream about your mother,’ the nurse said. ‘And the drug may have made it more difficult to tell the dream from reality.’
‘Yeah, that’s probably it.’
‘I talk in my sleep all the time,’ she said, dropping the businesslike air for just a moment. ‘My boyfriend thinks I’m crazy.’
‘You’re probably right.’
She turned to the keyboard and started popping the return key as if it had done something wrong and deserved to be punished. Then she started typing.
‘I’ll note it in your brother’s chart,’ she said. ‘It can’t hurt to have the doctors check it out. Maybe they can give him something else.’
I didn’t leave. I took a pen from the top of the nurses’ station and found a scrap of paper. I scribbled my e-mail address and cell phone number. ‘Can you give that to Janie when she comes back? She wanted it.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘She’ll be back later.’
‘Thanks.’
Walking away, I felt even crappier. Had I just made Ronnie’s life worse, consigned him to an even deeper drug-induced oblivion?
Paul called me as I was getting into my car. Visions of my tiny apartment danced in my head. The fluffy couch. The criminally small TV. I had work to do, lots of it. But when I left the hospital, all I could think about was being flat on my back, my brain shifted to neutral. But Paul knew which button to push to change my mind.
‘Are you hungry?’ he asked. ‘I know it was your first day back.’
‘You had me at “Are you hungry?” ’ I said.
Besides, there were things I needed to ask him about.
We met at the Downtown Diner, a local institution that had been unapologetically raising the cholesterol and blood-sugar levels of Dover residents for nearly fifty years. When I arrived at seven thirty, Paul waved to me from a booth. The dinner crowd had thinned out, and except for the sounds of cleanup – clanking dishes, rattling silverware – the place was pretty calm. It smelled good, though. Very good. Grease hung in the air as thick as humidity, reminding me I hadn’t eaten much all day. Not for the past few days in fact. I needed to eat, and Paul knew that too.
He looked better than the last time I had seen him in the hospital parking lot. He looked a little more rested, a little less old and tired. He smiled when I sat down, and only mild strain showed in his eyes.
‘I’m surprised you wanted to come here,’ I said. ‘You know …’ I pointed to his chest.
Paul had suffered a mild heart attack a few years earlier, one that required an angioplasty to reopen a clogged artery. In the wake of the procedure, he’d adopted a healthier diet and started walking or riding a bike a few miles every day.
‘Oh, that,’ he said. He made a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘I cheat sometimes.’
The waitress arrived, notepad in hand, and we both ordered cheeseburgers, fries and Cokes. Paul even asked for a side of mayonnaise for his burger. ‘You know,’ he said when she’d walked away, ‘you’d think having my sister die would make me take more caution with my health, but instead …’ He let the thought trail off, but I got the point.
‘You want to live it up while you can,’ I said.
‘I guess so. Living it up with my cheeseburger.’ He forced a smile. ‘The police paid me a visit today,’ he said. ‘Those two detectives.’
‘What did they want?’
‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘I guess they just wanted to ask me some routine questions. Mostly it was stuff about your mom. You know, did she have any enemies? Did she have any friends? A background examination, I guess you’d call it. They want to know if there was anything in her life that might have driven someone to harm her.’
‘So they’re not just focusing on Ronnie?’ I asked.
‘They asked about him as well. Just more stuff about violent tendencies or whatever. I didn’t have anything else to tell them.’
‘Good,’ I said, allowing myself to feel relief.
‘I have a feeling they’ll be coming to you soon,’ he said.
‘I can’t wait.’
‘You need to be prepared for the kinds of things they’re going to ask you,’ he said. A firmness had crept into his voice. ‘They’re going to – I don’t know. They may say things that will upset you.’
‘Like what?’
He seemed about to say something, then thought better of it. ‘I don’t know. Just be ready for anything they might throw at you. And remember, they’re cops. They may push you a little, rattle your cage. Just keep your cool with them.’
I wanted to say more but didn’t. ‘Okay.’ I let it go.
I sensed Paul’s mood slipping in the wrong direction. The cheer he’d summoned when I came into the restaurant seemed to be draining away, so I tried to steer him towards something else.
‘I made it through my first day back,’ I said. ‘No casualties.’
He brightened again. ‘Good.’
‘I wasn’t prepared and I’m light-years behind, but I went.’
‘Work can be good for that,’ he said. ‘Taking your mind off your troubles. I almost wish I was still working for that reason. Almost.’ The waitress brought the Cokes, and Paul peeled a straw from its wrapper and took a long drink. ‘You have that practical aspect to your personality. It comes from our side of the family.’
‘Work through things by just moving on?’ I asked.
‘Exactly.’ He looked a little distant, a little lost in his own thoughts. ‘I don’t have that quite as much as Leslie did. I get a little hung up on things, and they turn over in my mind. Over and over sometimes.’
I drank my Coke, felt the sugar and caffeine hitting my bloodstream. It was delicious, and I wished they could serve it to me through an IV. ‘It’s because you care,’ I said.
‘Like Ronnie,’ he said. ‘I think of him in there, in that hospital.’ He shook his head. ‘I worry about that and all the pressures on him.’
‘I just came from there,’ I said. ‘Did you go today?’
‘This morning. I guess I was there until about two.’
‘How did he seem to you?’
Before he answered, our food arrived. The waitress set the thick plates heaped with meat and fries down in front of us, then handed over a sticky bottle of ketchup. I asked for another Coke, and once that was delivered, Paul and I were ready to continue our conversation.
‘He seemed fine,’ he said. ‘Quiet still, just like he was at home. But not bad, I guess.’ He sighed. ‘I guess I expected the police to show up and bug him, but they didn’t. Not while I was there.’
I considered not telling him about Ronnie’s outburst during the afternoon. I didn’t want to make him feel any worse or more guilty or conflicted over Ronnie’s stay at Dover Community. But I needed to know if he had any guesses as to who else could have gone to Ronnie’s room that day, so I told him all about it, relating Janie’s story as accurately as I could recall it. While I was telling Paul, he stopped eating. He picked at his fries, lifting them up and setting them back down on his plate without taking any more bites. When I was finished telling him, he didn’t look up.
I asked, ‘Do you have any idea who this woman might be? Does she sound like anyone Ronnie or Mom knew?’
Paul lifted his hand to his forehead and rubbed his temple. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t know everybody they knew.’
‘Could it be someone Ronnie knew?’ I asked. ‘Someone from where he went to speech therapy, or someone from work?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ he said, his voice weary.
‘The nurse thought it might be a relative.’
‘We’re short on those,’ he said. ‘And getting shorter every day.’
I decided not to press him too hard. I turned my attention to my food – which I enjoyed a great deal �
�� and tried to think of non-bothersome small talk. But what was there to talk about? What else existed in the world besides the crisis enveloping my family? I gave up trying to talk about anything else and said, ‘Ronnie said something strange when I asked him about it.’
Paul ate a couple of fries. ‘What was that?’ he asked.
‘Well, first he said my name. I asked him who came to see him, and he said, “Elizabeth.” ’
‘He was doped up by then?’ Paul asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘He didn’t know what you were asking him.’
‘Right. But then he said that Mom had been there.’
Paul slumped when I said those words. I could see the energy draining from him.
‘Why are you telling me this?’ he asked.
‘I thought –’
‘What does it have to do … with anything? He’s high as a kite and he’s dreaming,’ he said.
‘I know. I’m sorry.’ I looked down at my plate of food. I wanted to stop myself from saying anything more, but I couldn’t. ‘I just really want to know who this woman is who went to Ronnie’s room and upset him so much. Don’t you want to know?’
He sighed. ‘Elizabeth, I’m not sure I want to know anything else about any of this.’
We ate the rest of our meal mostly in silence.
16
I lived in what might generously be called the graduate student ghetto on the east side of campus. The undergraduates dwelled mostly on the north of campus, where there were larger places to live and share – rental houses and town homes, spaces landlords were more than willing to wedge six or seven students into and charge them an exorbitant monthly rate with the hope that the parents would just go ahead and pay it. Most of them did.
Graduate students tended to live alone or in pairs, and the apartments on the east side of campus were smaller and slightly nicer. And slightly nicer meant the roofs probably weren’t falling in, the hot water worked at least half the time, and the chances of the police descending on a residence, lights swirling, to roust a group of underage drinkers were next to none. I lived alone, by choice, in a studio apartment on the top floor of an eighty-year-old building. The railroad tracks ran alongside it, and three times a day or night, freight screamed by. It woke me up the first two nights I lived there. After that, I slept through it without stirring.