by Regina Doman
“I can understand,” Kateri said soberly. “Well, mine, as usual, wasn’t quiet. Maybe next year we can bring Rose to our house for Christmas. A Kovach Christmas, with all twenty-seven of us in our old farmhouse, would wake anyone.”
“We might just explore that possibility,” Fish said. “I know Jean wants to have Rose transferred to a facility in New Jersey as soon as she can find one with an opening. Most of them don’t want to take anyone who hasn’t been in a coma longer than six months. In retrospect, we’re lucky that we got her into Graceton Hall so quickly.” When Rose was transferred up to New Jersey, his daily visits to her would be over. But he didn’t want to think of that.
“So, what’s up?” Kateri was businesslike once more, leaning against the seat.
He told her about Donna. She was silent as he finished.
“That’s amazing,” she said after a silence.
“So you didn’t know she was going to tell me that?”
“No, not at all. We talked about Rose whenever she wanted to bring it up. But I didn’t know she had this on her conscience.” She paused. “I guess this changes things distinctly.”
“Sure does,” he said grimly.
“So do you think it was a tramp or some random mugger like the police said?”
“I might have, if it weren’t for this extra strangeness that I was told about before, but it didn’t seem probable until now. Remember those notes that Rose was looking for?”
“An interview her dad did with a nurse?” Kateri recollected.
“Well, here’s their significance.” He told her about the nuns’ tale.
Kateri’s eyes sparked. “So you’re saying that someone from Robert Graves Memorial Hospital might be behind Rose’s accident?”
Internally Fish groaned, realizing the connection. “That’s the hospital where you’ve been protesting, isn’t it?”
“Yes. And I bet I can narrow down the suspects to a single person. Dr. Ellen Prosser, director of the Robert Graves Memorial Hospital. She’s been working there for the past twenty years at least. And she’s unethical. If there was any kind of weird business at the hospital years ago, if she was there, you can bet she would have been involved. And I can guarantee you that going to a baby’s christening party and making threats is something that she would do. Just in her distinctive meat-handed style.”
Fish had to admit he agreed with Kateri on the last point. “But still, there’s a big gap to bridge. If we’re going to hypothesize that Rose was attacked by someone from the hospital who was afraid of her uncovering their grimy secrets, we’d have to prove that someone from the hospital knew what Rose was doing.”
“Well, Rose was interviewing doctors and nurses for her paper,” Kateri said. “She might have mentioned her dad’s papers to them.”
“Possible, knowing how much Rose tends to talk,” he winced. “At least, in the past. Do you know if Rose talked to Dr. Prosser or some of her staff about her paper?”
“Well, I doubt it. She’s been to protests with me there, so she wouldn’t be inclined to ask them for any favors.”
“We need to find her notes on that research paper she was writing. I can call Jean and have her look for them.” Fish shook his head. “It still seems ridiculous to me to be basing an inquiry on something said at a christening party twenty years ago. But all the same, I’m glad Rose isn’t in that hospital anymore.”
They had arrived at Graceton Hall by now, and got out of the car. “I’m very glad she’s out of that hospital too,” Kateri remarked. “For another reason.”
“What’s that?” Fish asked.
“I can come and visit her. There was no way I could go and visit her before.” Kateri said. “Unless I wore a disguise of some kind.”
“Ha! Forgot that,” Fish said.
They went up to her room. Dr. Murray was sitting in a chair next to Rose, writing something on a clipboard.
“Sorry, are we in your way, Dr. Murray?” Fish asked politely.
“No, not at all. Hello. I’m just doing a check on her chart,” Dr. Murray glanced up at them with a small smile. “Come on in. I’m almost done.”
“Hi Rose,” Kateri said easily, sitting down. “Hey, you’re looking good, Rose! Isn’t she, Fish?”
“She is.” Fish saw the doctor’s eyes flicker at him. Maybe she had never heard his nickname before: the Cor guys usually called him Ben. “Rose, you’ve been pinking up. Has that new medication been helping?” He turned to Dr. Murray. “I saw something new in her IV the other day. I wanted to ask you about it.”
“Oh, that?” Dr. Murray shook her head. “I’m afraid that was just cold medication. We’ve had some infections going around this time of year. Sorry, I wish I could say I had found a new drug to try.” She nodded and went to the medical cabinet in Rose’s room.
“Well, she certainly looks better,” Fish said.
Kateri said, “Rose, you been getting some exercise while we were gone?” She punched her former roommate lightly in the arm. “Fish saw your godmother the other day. Did he tell you?”
Letting her chat to Rose privately for a few minutes, Fish got up and walked over to Dr. Murray. “Dr. Murray, you said that Rose interviewed you for her paper, correct?”
“Yes, that’s right,” the doctor said, without turning around. She finished what she was doing, closed the cabinet, and looked at him.
“Did she tell you what it was on?”
The doctor smiled a bit ruefully. “The care of comatose patients.”
“Ouch,” Fish said. “There’s one for high irony.”
“I’m afraid so,” the doctor said with a sigh.
“What sort of things did she ask you about?”
“Oh, the usual things. How we feed our patients, how we keep their muscles exercised, how we keep them healthy, that sort of thing.” She paused. “It was enjoyable talking to her. She was such a lively girl.” She picked up her chart, and stood by the door, a bit expectantly.
“One thing more,” Fish said, walking over to her and lowering his voice. “This sounds like an odd question. I know you do some consulting work over at the hospital. Is there any chance you might have mentioned your interview with Rose to anyone who works over there?”
Dr. Murray looked at him candidly. “No,” she said. “I’m quite certain that I didn’t. Frankly, I try to keep my interactions with that facility to a minimum.”
“Why’s that?” Fish asked casually.
“I don’t like the way they do business,” she said, and added, “Of course, I don’t care to say any more. Let’s just say they don’t have my highest recommendation.”
She pursed her lips, apparently thinking. “If you’re looking for a connection, I did recommend that Rose talk to some other health professionals that work in the area.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Genevieve Groyes—she’s a sister who works at the Catholic hospital in Tulane—Dr. Hamilton Jackson at the Stratford Nursing Home, and Dr. Saba Muningo, who has a private practice in town, but who’s worked with comatose patients before.”
Fish jotted down the names on the edge of a piece of notepaper from his pocket, using Dr. Murray’s pen. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, and turned away. Doctors must be used to fielding queries of this sort, usually from the police.
While Kateri talked with Rose, he went downstairs, looked up the phone numbers, and made some calls on his cell phone. All of the doctors were unavailable, but he left messages and said he would be calling back.
Hers
When the watery world came into focus around her again some time later, at first she tried to get up. But the serpent had arrived before her, and had wound itself around her again. She could not rise from her bed. The moon tapestry hung luminous on the wall beside her, and she could sense the stillness of the night castle beyond the doors, but she could not reach them.
Is there anything I can do to help myself…get out of this coma?
> Her words traveling outward like ripples from a dropped stone. There were ripples in the water around her: serpentine chuckles.
I’m afraid not. But you can always talk to me.
She caught sight of the flash of a thin silver thread, like a dart. It sank its teeth into her arm and she shuddered, but felt nothing. A mosquito, there for an instant, and then gone. She tensed, wondering if this were the moment of death. But it was only the serpent’s silvery venom, trying to loosen her tongue.
Why don’t we talk for a while? Since there’s nothing you can do.
No, there is something I could do.
And what is that?
I could wait.
Wait for what?
Wait for love.
And the form diffused itself into darkness once more, and soon even Rose’s words drifted away from her before she realized what she was saying. She ceased, and hung suspended in nothingness again.
HIS
That Saturday, Fish stopped by Sacra Cor Dormitory in the afternoon and found the small courtyard covered with snow. In the center of the courtyard, someone had erected a teepee next to the huge rock. When Fish walked up to the dorm, he found two guys sitting outside the tent in parkas, each reading a thick volume. He couldn’t help casting a glance at them. One of them was Leroy, the other was James.
“Hi there,” he said. “What are you doing?”
“We’re evicted Eskimos,” Leroy called. His nose was red. “We’ve been bad.”
“Bad?” Fish repeated.
“Yeah. In most dorms, if you break the rules, you get work crew. Alex O’Donnell makes us sit outside and read Thomas Aquinas until he thinks we’re sufficiently informed of the truth,” James said with a sigh.
“I see,” Fish said. “So what did you two do?”
Leroy flashed a devilish grin. “We found a dead deer and put it in his bed.”
“It was an experiment for biology class,” James called.
“No, it was for Paul’s dead animal jars. We just were trying to find a big enough jar.”
“I see,” Fish said. “May the truth warm your insides, if not your outsides.”
He walked into the dorm and tried to find Alex. After a few tries, he was directed to a room where Alex was playing a very primitive video game system on someone’s TV.
“You know, it’s actually still hard to beat that thing,” Alex ruminated, pushing the game away from him. “Hey Ben. Happy New Year.”
Fish came to the point. “You offered before to help me out with Rose if I needed it,” he said. “Does the offer still stand?”
“It does,” Alex said, getting to his feet. “What do you need?”
“I have about thirty file boxes that I need to get through quickly and confidentially,” Fish said. “I could use some help.”
“You’ve got it,” Alex said, and led Fish down the hallway past some rooms, and poked his head into an open door. Fish could see two guys in a room, playing what looked like a complicated board game. Fish recognized Paul.
“Guys, we have work to do for Rose,” Alex said.
“Let’s go,” Paul said, leaping to his feet with a gymnast’s flair.
Alex continued to give orders. “A.J., get the others. Paul, can we use your car?”
“Sure thing,” Paul said heartily. “Hey Ben. I got my wheels back.”
“Glad to hear it,” Fish said. “I’ll meet you outside.”
He was unlocking his car when he spotted Kateri passing by and called out to her. She turned and came over, wearing a thick striped scarf over a black jacket. “I’m going out to the barn to look through files. Want to come?”
“Sure,” she said, “if you don’t mind me reading Plato on the way up.”
“I’m sure I have no philosophical objection.” Fish saw Alex coming and called to him, “You want to ride with me? I’d like to fill you in on some things.”
“No problem,” he said.
In the end, Alex, Kateri, and Leroy, who had been released from his Eskimo sentence, were in Fish’s car, along with James, Paul, and three other guys Fish didn’t know squeezed into Paul’s new car, a large blue boat-like vehicle he had dubbed, “Michelle.”
On the way up, Kateri read her philosophy homework while Alex and Leroy listened to Fish explain about what Donna had seen, as well as Sister Maria’s story.
“I see,” Alex meditated. “You’ve got threats that were made twenty years ago and a mysterious stranger in the barn when Rose fell, and almost nothing in between.”
“That’s right,” Fish said. “And I’m tempted to say that it’s possible that none of this matters, as it won’t help Rose come out of her coma.”
“Well, still, if there’s something illegal going on at the hospital that Rose’s dad knew about and that Rose might have found out about, it seems only fitting to try to finish what they were trying to do,” Alex said.
“Exactly my thoughts!” Kateri called from the back seat.
Alex went on. “And, on the other hand, if Rose really did find out something dangerous, and if someone pushed her out of the hayloft because of it, they might not be satisfied with her being in a coma. Particularly, if there is the possibility, however remote, that she wakes up.”
“That had also occurred to me,” Fish said. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of the people Rose was interviewing before she fell, but they’re difficult to track down. The one doctor is on vacation and the others haven’t returned my calls yet.”
They drove in the long driveway leading up to the house and barn, and Fish parked the car and got out, shivering a bit in the chilly January air. Paul pulled up beside them, and the contingent got out and hurried into the barn to get out of the wind.
“So—up in the hayloft?” Alex queried, picking up the fallen ladder and hefting it upright.
Paul shook his head. “No, don’t use that thing. That’s how Rose fell down. Those boards at the edges might give way even more. Let’s use the ladder bolted to the wall,” he pointed.
“We’ll have to move some hay bales to get to the other end,” Fish said. “But I guess we have enough people.”
“Come on, Sacra Cor, let’s go!” Paul barked, and loped up the ladder easily. Fairly soon, five of the guys were up in the loft, moving bales of hay to clear a way to the file box area.
“There’s no more room for some of these,” Leroy complained.
“Stack ‘em up on the edges,” Paul suggested.
Soon there was a path to the far end of the loft where Rose had been working. Fish got up in the loft, testing the boards as he did so. “Okay, let me tell you why we’re here.” He ran through a condensed version of what he had told Alex in the car, and summarized, “If someone was in this barn with Rose, my guess is that they were up here because they were looking through these file boxes. I want to find out if there’s anything in these boxes that would be incriminating to someone.”
Each of them took a box and started going through it. Paul halted them to point out which ones he and Rose had already gone through, and they started again. It was tedious work, but it went fairly quickly with so many people working. Together they sifted through the boxes over the course of a couple of hours. Kateri was the first to find something possibly useful.
It was a piece of paper with the name “Tennille” and a phone number written on it, and beside it a note, “Nurse—interview.”
“But how does that help us?” Alex said. “No last name—and I bet that number’s out of service.”
“Let’s find out,” said Fish, pulling out his cell phone. “Hmm. No signal. I’ll try out by the car.” He hurried down the ladder and outside to make the call. But though the phone managed to connect to a network, Fish was told the number was out of service.
“If she was a nurse who worked with Dr. Prosser, she’s got to be on a list somewhere in the hospital records,” Kateri said to Fish as he climbed back up to the loft.
“Yes, but how would you find it?” Alex cocked his head,
“Do you know if she’s still alive?”
“Actually, I think Rose told me that she was dead.” Kateri said, and Fish nodded.
“The nuns told me that, too,” he said. “Killed in a car accident.”
“You know, that will actually make it easier to find her then,” Alex said. “How long ago did she die?”
“Fifteen years ago,” Fish said.
Alex said, “Then someone should go to the library and look at the microfilm files for the local papers fifteen years back, and see if they can find an obituary for a ‘Tennille’ who worked at the hospital and was killed in a car accident.”
“I can do that,” Kateri said.
“Then go for it,” Fish said, handing her the paper. “This question is all yours.”
They continued their search, but found nothing else of consequence, so far as they could tell.
“I’ll bring some of the boxes home with me to keep on hand,” Fish said reflectively, when they had finished the last box.
“I wonder if Rose found anything significant the day she had the accident?” Alex mused. “If she did, then maybe that’s why she got pushed.”
“And whoever pushed her probably took it with them,” Kateri said with some disappointment. “The other missing link is how someone would have known that the notes were in the barn to begin with.”
Fish nodded. “Which is why I’m trying to find out who Rose interviewed. I’d like to find out if she mentioned the barn to anyone.”
“Did you check her project notebook?” Kateri asked. Fish looked at her, and she explained, “Rose kept everything for the project in a special yellow notebook. It had ‘Monster Bioethics Research Paper’ written in big letters on the front.”
“Yeah, I know which one you mean. She had it with her when she came to borrow my car the day she fell,” Paul said. “Wonder where that got to?”
Then he and Fish looked at each other.
“Her project notebook,” Fish said slowly. “Did we find it with her? Was it in your car?”
“I don’t think so. I didn’t see it,” Paul said, and winced. “But I already got rid of that car.”
“You cleaned it out first, didn’t you?” Alex asked.