Origin

by Diana Abu-Jaber

  “You two know each other?” Dr. Hoyd asks.

  Opal pulls back her long hair, a funny girlish gesture. “I think we’re neighbors.”

  “Opal saved me from a rabid reporter,” I say.

  “Saved from a reporter!” Opal laughs. “Hardly. And you were asking about Lyons? It used to be right down the street, not far from here. A tiny place. Mostly orphaned kids. It used to be run by the nuns. But all those little places disappeared around the time this one started getting so big.”

  “Corporatization in all things,” Dr. Hoyd says, smiling. “No more mom-and-pop hospitals.”

  “That was a good twenty, twenty-five years ago.” Opal’s wide, calm gaze settles on me, and I feel a lilt of déjà vu. “It was a different era. Everyone just goes here now,” she says. “All the doctors and nurses moved over here. I think we even store a lot of the old medical records for the defunct places.”

  I’d like to ask her more, but there’s a sound of quick footsteps coming up the corridor. Dr. Hoyd looks out and says, “I think you might have a visitor. But not too long, remember? I want you to rest.”

  Keller is there, his hair and clothes looking rumpled. Dr. Hoyd murmurs something about finishing her rounds and as she and Opal slip out of the room, I overhear her asking Opal, “Did you used to be a nun?” Keller drops his wet coat on a visitor’s chair and crouches beside my bed; there’s a beat when he doesn’t seem to know how to touch me. But I put out my arms instinctively, so deeply glad to see him. He gathers me into his chest with both arms, squeezes the breath out of me, and he’s mumbling into my hair, just beyond my ear, “Oh, Lena, oh my God . . .”

  I close my eyes and murmur, “Hey.” I slide back against the pillows and my palms slip down into Keller’s hands. “You don’t look so terrific.”

  He smoothes one hand over the top of his hair, as if that will fix it. “Yeah? And you’re saying this in your hospital bed?” His attempt at smiling looks possibly worse than not-smiling. “I didn’t sleep all night. I knew something was wrong when you didn’t call. And I didn’t get your message from that idiot Hodges till this morning.” He slumps on the bed beside me. “I was up all night, looking at the walls. I wanted to call you, but I didn’t want to seem too—you know . . . too much.” He puts one hand down over his face, as if he could wipe away the fatigue. “And then Frank calls half an hour ago—says you’ve been found wandering the city park in the middle of the night.” He lifts his head, his eyes ticking around the room. He brings his head closer to mine. “Lena,” he says, his voice nearly a whisper, “what happened? That guy—did he force you to go with him?”

  “No!” I glance toward the door. “Did they really arrest Mr. Memdouah? It’s ridiculous—he didn’t do anything.”

  Keller lifts his eyebrows. “They told me he confessed. Says he’s the baby killer. That’s all I know about it.”

  “He confessed! He can’t confess—he’s out of his mind.”

  “Well, that’s not that uncommon in serial killers.” He pulls one of my hands toward him. “Please—just tell me what happened.”

  I sigh and cover my eyes with the other hand, trying to get the events of the night back. “I don’t remember all of it,” I tell him. I try to re-create the evening, what bits I can remember of following Memdouah into the woods.

  Another of the nurses rattles through the room, fluffing my pillows and smoothing the bedsheets. She gives us a coy look and I slip my hand out of Keller’s.

  “So he never explicitly said that he was the killer?”

  “Well—it’s—you have to know what he’s like.” I turn my face to the side, against the cool surface of the pillow. “Yeah, he said stupid things about eating babies. He’s constantly making all sorts of crazy claims. He’ll take credit for anything at all. I’m sure he’d be happy to take credit for being a murderer. It’s all the same thing to him.”

  Keller shifts on the bed so the shadows under his eyes darken. “Is it possible that he did do it?”

  I consider this, recall the sharp, waiting intelligence in Mr. Memdouah’s eyes. I don’t respond.

  “Did you see anything—up there?” Keller presses. “In that park?”

  Again, I struggle to bring the night back into focus—the woods, the cold, the dark. Mostly I recall the brooding quality of the place, suspended like a curtain, that gradually lifted and transformed. “I just remember mostly feeling . . . happy,” I say. I close my eyes: it would be easier to sleep than to think. “It was dark,” I say. “I liked the smell of the forest.”

  He touches my hair, not telling me whatever it might be that he’s thinking.

  CHAPTER 36

  I SLEEP FOR A WHILE, BOBBING TO CONSCIOUSNESS, THEN SINKING back.

  Frank and Carole arrive with a spray of pink flowers and a tin of peanut butter cookies. They enter behind one of the evening nurses. Frank’s face is strained, the skin around his eyes puckered, a washed-out violet. He holds the door and Carole slips in behind him. She folds one hand over her mouth for a moment as she sees me, then she maneuvers around the nurse and hugs me, the side of her face pressed against mine. “Lee, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” She says over and over.

  I let my head fall back against the pillows. “You are? Why?”

  She smiles, but she’s shaking her head, brushing away tears with her thumb and forefinger, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know why all of this had to happen to you.”

  Frank looks uncomfortable and displeased. He ignores the chairs in the room and leans up against the foot to the bed. “You could’ve died, Lena,” he says grimly. “You got yourself a nice, stiff case of hypothermia wandering around out there.”

  “God, Frank, don’t scare her,” Carole says without turning to look at him. Then she frowns and glances at the nurse, commenting that my color could be better. She asks me, “Are they sure it’s just hypothermia? Did you tell them about the sort of work you do? The risks?”

  “What do you mean?” Frank asks. “She’s in the Lab, Carole, not out on the street.”

  Carole’s mouth tightens. “Are you aware of what’s in all of those chemicals and dusting powders she works with?”

  “Phffft!” Frank brushes a hand at her. “That’s what a fume hood’s for.”

  “Hold on,” the nurse says, stepping in. “Let’s give her some air.” She shoos Frank back and yanks a white drapery around the bed for privacy as she checks my vitals, pressing her frigid stethoscope against my chest. “Your mother can stay,” she says, pulling up a chair for Carole. Carole doesn’t correct the nurse.

  “You look hot,” Carole says to me. She holds the back of her hand against my forehead. “I was so worried about you! Frank said you were out in the woods with that man.” She whispers the last words.

  I wait until the nurse has torn off the blood pressure cuff, opened the curtain, and gone out. Then I turn to Frank. “I don’t believe Mr. Memdouah is the baby killer, Frank. I don’t care what he’s said.”

  Frank pulls up another chair and sits next to Carole. “You don’t care what he says? Okay, that’s interesting. I’m afraid, though, that the police won’t be so easily swayed. I haven’t seen him yet, but, as I understand it, the guy makes a pretty persuasive case for himself.”

  I draw the back of my hand over my forehead: the room is humid, with a strong, medicinal funk of Betadine and ammonia. “Was he talking about eating babies?”

  Carole sniffs.

  “Yes. And overthrowing the government, seizing the means of production, putting the president in front of an Iraqi firing squad, firebombing golf courses—oh, and something about the Republican . . .” He makes a searching, circular gesture with his right hand.

  “Technocrats?”

  “Yes—seize and eliminate the united Republican technocrats from . . . Mars—some shit like
that.”

  “Frank,” Carole says, straightening.

  “More importantly, however, he also mentioned a number of key inside points—he brought up toxic dyes and the Lucius processing plant. And he seems to have memorized some sort of manifesto that he says is from the Native Freedom Fighters. About ‘destroying the enemies of the sacred places.’ Something like that. We’re looking at whether they’re the ones who’re masterminding the actual murders and Memdouah’s just a front.”

  “He’s not the one. He’s not,” I protest, though my throat is so wind-burnt it feels raw. “Absolutely, he’s crazy, but he’s just not homicidal. I’ve lived down the hall from him, I saw him and talked to him all the time.”

  “What are you doing, talking to people like that?” Carole asks.

  “Same thing people said about David Berkowitz, Ted Bundy . . .” Frank says. “Spare me the good-guy murderer, please.”

  I close my eyes again and the forest returns to me—the rasping climb up the hill, stumbling between boughs, the wild fragrance of pine. I hold the sides of my bed. “Frank, has anyone called the victims’ families and asked about the tooth on a string yet?”

  “Yeah, yeah, the video footage, right? That tooth thing of yours?” He slips the notepad from the inside of his jacket and flips it open. “So far, next to nothing. Well, Erin Cogan only communicates through her handlers these days. The Abernathys had nothing, of course—they were the ones who saw the thing on the baby monitor. The Handals, nothing. Now, okay, Junie Wilson had heard of a ‘tooth on a thread.’ She doesn’t own one and has never actually seen one. She thought it was some sort of expression—like, if you put a tooth on a string, you make yourself lucky.” He flips the pad shut. “So—that’s it so far. And you say you can’t remember where yours came from, right?”

  I try to struggle up against the pillows. “Frank, let me call Junie Wilson. Let me talk to her.”

  Carole frowns and starts tugging my blankets higher.

  “You know we can’t do that, Lee.” Frank tips his head. “You can advise, but the detectives have to handle it. I’m already uncomfortable with the amount of crime scene work you’ve been doing. If you start operating outside of your jurisdiction, it could undermine potential evidence in court.”

  “But I’m not proposing to do anything more than generate information.”

  “Even so.”

  I press against the headboard in frustration, staring at the sleek, taupe floor. It’s like the floor from an old recurring dream. I start thinking of stripped, frozen trees, and moony snow. My head is aching again. “What if I go visit Mr. Memdouah once I get out of here—is that allowed? Just a neighborly chat?”

  Frank jingles the keys in his pocket and says, “Actually, no.” He looks up at the lights thoughtfully. “They’re holding him over at the VA hospital—under lock and key—I just heard back at the office. He’s in rough shape from the cold.”

  Perhaps it’s something in the IV drip, but I’m sunk with exhaustion. Or perhaps it’s the sense of my own powerlessness. I can barely keep my eyes open. Carole smoothes the sheets under my chin. “Dear, I think this is not the place or the time. You’ve got to rest—whether you believe it or not. You won’t be able to do anything if you make yourself even sicker.”

  I look at them through a warm haze. They’re standing and looking at me. They seem very tall, as if they’re telescoping backward. I nod and close my eyes. I hear some words, they come to me in a bubble: If you need anything. I’d say goodbye; but I’m already asleep.

  CHAPTER 37

  I WAKE AGAIN, MORE FULLY, AFTER SEVERAL HOURS HAVE PASSED, and the throbbing in my temples has softened and diffused. “Hey, Lena,” Keller says gently. “How you doing down there?”

  The room goes ripply at the edges, as if the raft I’m lying on just dipped into the waves. I blink twice. He dabs a cool washcloth on my temples, helps me sit up. I sip some water. I’m trying to resist the haziness that keeps disrupting my thoughts, to recover an idea that came to me earlier.

  “There’s something I need to do here,” I say, my voice so low he has to duck even closer. I crane my head up. “I need to look at the old hospital records here.”

  He watches me; his expression is grave and patient. “What’s this?”

  “Something one of the nurses said. She told me that after the smaller private hospitals folded—like that Lyons Hospital—this hospital stored some of their records.”

  He sits on the edge of the bed, so I slip toward him, my side pressing against his thigh. He puts his hand on my arm, his fingers holding the inside of my upper arm. “Think there’s a connection with the tooth and Lyons Hospital?”

  I hold up my hands. “I don’t remember either of them—all I know is they both come out of my past.”

  “You still don’t believe it’s that Memdouah character?” Keller’s hand has ghosted back over my arm, holding me. “I looked at the arrest report that Hodges filled out and it’s pretty convincing—some solid inside information. He also says that overpopulation is ‘killing the world.’ ”

  “Yeah, and he wants to eat babies. I know.” I stare at the beige and taupe checks on the linoleum floor. “Ron Hodges made the arrest?”

  “Yeah, Sergeant Napoleon. He’s pretty proud of himself making that collar.”

  I rub the inner corners of my eyes, wishing for a cup of black coffee. “I think we can say I’m going for a little walk—the nurse said that they’d like me to get exercise.”

  “But not yet,” he says. “It’s too soon for you to be up running around.”

  I clear my throat. “If we don’t go now, I’ll have to go later, after you’ve gone.”

  He rubs his jaw, displeased; his face is close enough that I can examine the striations in his irises, his dilated pupils. Suddenly he leans in, slips his hand around the back of my head, and my arms slide up into the warm inside of his suit jacket, over the sloping muscles of his back, as if it’s the most natural response. His kiss has a sort of starved insistence; his teeth click against mine, opening my mouth. His weight presses me down into the bed, my fingers dig into his back. When we separate, he sits back, gazing at me; neither of us speaks, but there’s the sense that we’ve struck a sort of deal. He says, “Yeah, I’ll help you.”

  We stroll down the hall, trying to look casual as we approach the nurses’ station, my head pounding with every step. Keller props an elbow on the counter and asks where the medical records office is.

  The nurse looks up at him through her half-glasses, then eyes me as I hover behind him in my hospital gown. “Are you supposed to be out of bed?”

  I laugh in an offhanded way and let my hands flap against my sides. “Well, Dr. Hoyd wants me gone pretty soon.”

  She’s already turned back to shuffling through her paperwork. “All the records are on our computer system—why?”

  “Well, we’re trying to get information on a patient who might’ve been admitted sometime back in the early seventies,” Keller says.

  “He means me,” I interject.

  She turns her delicate face to me. “Were you born in this hospital?”

  “Well, no. We’re actually looking for records from a different place—a private hospital that was right down the block.”

  “You the one asking about that little Lyons Hospital? Yeah, they went under after a fire. We probably do have their records.” She makes a sound through her nose like a laugh. “But that ain’t on no computer. Anything before 1975, that’s not even on microfiche. It’s all in storage.”

  “Where?” I ask.

  Now she puts down her papers. I catch a glimpse of her name tag: she has it pinned on a loose fold of her blouse so it points mostly at the floor. laeticia. Her eyes over the half-glasses are stern, her mouth a firm line. “Some of it’s downstairs, some of it’s out in off-site facilitie
s. But you can’t just waltz in there. If you want to see records, you’ve got to send them a written request.”

  Keller glances over his shoulder. “We just want to find out if Lena was one of their patients.”

  She frowns at me, her eyes wary. “You were the frozen one, I remember. You’re not supposed to be up, running all around.”

  Keller approaches the counter and discreetly opens his wallet badge. “Laeticia, I’m with the Syracuse PD.”

  She leans forward to inspect the badge. She sits back and looks at him. Her expression lifts a little and her eyebrows relax. “Well, good for you.”

  “Laeticia, have you heard about the Blanket Killer?”

  She nods vigorously. “Oh my Lord, yes. That’s all we hear about around here. What sort of person does something like that? I can’t even imagine such a person as that on the earth.”

  “Well, Lena and I are both working on the case and we have reason to believe that Lena’s records might help the investigation.”

  She turns to me, her face soft with anxiety. “How is it connected to your records?”

  Keller cuts in, saying, “We can’t talk about the case. But if you could help us out here, we might really make some progress.”

  Another big nod. “Honey, I’ll call the head of this very hospital right now if it’ll help you out. I’ll do anything I can, help you with that awful business.” She pulls out a scrap of paper and draws a little map with her pen. “Sub-basement, make a left.” She hands over the paper. “You go catch that thing.”

  WE SHARE THE ELEVATOR with an orderly, who gets off in the basement. When the doors open again one floor down, the lighting seems different, dimmer; I can smell the records office: mildewing papers and a sweet decay, like pipe tobacco. At one end of the hall is a sign for the morgue. At the other end there’s a distant light that we head toward. A sign to the right of the open entryway says medical records. Inside the office, a woman sits alone at a broad, shiplike desk, writing a list on a pad of ruled yellow paper.