The Girl in a Coma

by John Moss

  Suddenly a flashlight flares in my killer’s face.

  The room lights go on. Jaimie yells. The pressure stops. I can breathe again. There is a lot of shouting. Jaimie is swearing. He knows I hate when he swears.

  And then it’s all over.

  Just like that.

  After a while police come into the room.

  There is a lot of talk.

  I can hear Maddie explain that I told her about a serial killer in Shady Nook and gave her the number “seventeen.” She figured it must be important. She came in today and checked the records with the nurse in charge. It was Maddie who discovered there was a death every seventeen days exactly.

  She asked questions. She discovered a male nurse had been in a fire that killed his daughter. He was terribly scarred. He usually worked the night shift and he was present for each of the deaths. Maddie wanted to call the police right then but the nurse in charge thought she was nuts and asked her to leave. Maddie got hold of Jaimie Retzinger. They snuck into Shady Nook after the buzzer and bell went off. It doesn’t surprise me that Jaimie knows how to pick a lock.

  Maddie had climbed up on the edge of my bed while she was talking.

  “Did you follow all that?” she asks me.

  Sunflowers in Nana’s garden. Yes.

  “So,” says Jaimie Retzinger. “I saved you again.”

  He comes into my line of vision, then he withdraws. I make him nervous.

  “Well,” he says, “I’m going.”

  He is talking to Maddie, not me.

  Soon everyone leaves except Maddie O’Rourke. Then Maddie slides down onto her feet.

  “Night, night, Allie. I’m not working tomorrow. I’ll come in after lunch. We’ll play with our makeup. I’ve got a new eyeliner you’ll love.”

  It’s very late and I’m tired.

  When I wake up, I’m not thinking about Lizzie or remembering her life in 1812. I’m staring at the ceiling. My sight is improving.

  Around two in the afternoon, I hear Maddie O’Rourke.

  She is talking to someone as she comes through the door.

  “Wait just a few minutes,” she says. Then, to me, she says, “So Allison, we caught the killer, you and I.” She doesn’t mention Jaimie Retzinger. I know what she thinks; she thinks I can do better than him. She climbs up on my bed, sets her makeup case on my chest and carefully does my eyes.

  “There, you look beautiful, Allie. Now, are you ready, I’ve got a big surprise.”

  She leaves for a minute, comes in again, climbs up, leans close, and her huge blueberry eyes are wide. Her amazing waves of black hair sweep across my field of vision. She kisses me on the cheek. I’m getting better at knowing where the pressure is when I’m touched. Then she moves away and another figure leans over me. Gray hair. Glasses.

  “Hello, Darling.”

  It’s Nana Friesen! Oh, good glory. Angels couldn’t ask for more.

  “Madeleine tells me we can have a real chat,” she says. “I see you’re wearing our silver medallion. She’s polished it up for you. And glory, glory, you’re as pretty as ever.”

  Sunflowers! Oh sunflowers!

  “I’ve brought you a gift, Allison.” Nana presses something into my hand and curls my fingers around it. “It’s a very old coin, a gold Spanish doubloon. It’s a gift from the past. Your friend Maddie O’Rourke will look after it until you’re up on your feet.”

  Sunflowers! Sunflowers! Sunflowers!

  Nana Friesen kisses me.

  I can feel my lips glowing where Nana’s lips brush against mine. I close my eyes and open them again. Just like that!

  It’s the first time I’ve blinked.

  Book Three: Killing Time

  Twenty-five

  Allison

  I’ve moved on. Not really moved, but you know what I mean. Lizzie has her life, Rebecca has hers. I have mine. I’m sixteen and I’m at Harvard University. That would surprise anyone who knew me before I got shot in the head.

  Mrs. Muratori told me if I worked hard I’d get to college. Well, I didn’t work hard but I’m here. They tell me Harvard is a pretty good school.

  Only I’m not a student.

  And I’m certainly not a genius professor. I’m not like Sheldon. I’m not even Leonard or Raj. I am what they call a study subject in the Department of Neurobiology. I lie here in bed like a corpse on display and doctors come in and look at me. They poke around and talk to each other.

  They don’t talk to me. Allison Briscoe.

  I say my name over and over to myself.

  If I say it often enough, I can almost believe I’m a real person. I’m not sure the doctors believe it. I’ll get better someday. I’m sure of it. So I don’t panic. What good would it do to panic?

  Besides, I can move my eyelids now. I can see pretty well. I’m improving.

  Harvard’s in Boston. I’m in the medical school. It’s not far from where Madge de Vere lived on Beacon Hill. She was my great great great great great great grandmother. I’m not far from where Paul Revere made his silver things.

  My brother, David, moved to Toronto before I left Canada. He’s going to Victoria College. My Nana calls him “our family scholar.” Well, I’m at Harvard, which is just as good. But I’m not jealous. He deserves the attention. He studies. All I did was take a bullet in the brain. As for my mom, well, who knows what she’s up to? She’s in Peterborough. She’s never traveled to the States or anywhere else.

  I’ve been here since early summer. It’s September now. My friend Maddie O’Rourke came down from Peterborough with me. She’s the only person I can truly communicate with.

  I can’t speak, of course, but Maddie can read my eyes.

  Sometimes she guesses what I’m trying to spell out by making my pupils get bigger or smaller before I get halfway through the word. She’s usually right. She knows my mind.

  That’s why she’s here.

  Harvard has a lot of money. Some doctors in this place heard about me after I helped catch a serial killer in the Shady Nook Hospice. That’s where I was living, if you can call it living. Well, yes, I’m alive, so it’s living. Which is better than being dead.

  Jaimie Retzinger isn’t part of my life anymore. That’s sad but it’s a good thing. Something can be sad and good at the same time. Just like something can make you happy and still be bad. That’s Jaimie.

  After the fuss died down at Shady Nook, I asked him to stay away. I asked Maddie to tell him. She said he seemed relieved. It creeps him out, knowing I’m in here, thinking. The undead are easier to deal with.

  He still drifts into my mind, of course. I know he’ll be riding around town on his dented Harley with Zinger painted on the side. He’ll be stopping in at Tim Hortons in East City. East Village is more like it. He’ll be drinking double-doubles, trying to get them free. Not leaving a tip. He’ll be soaking up sympathy as he explains how he saved me again. He’ll explain how I’ve been shipped off to the States, and he’ll soak up more sympathy. He’s a sponge. If you squeezed him out, there’d be nothing left but empty holes.

  So, anyway, here I am. These doctors at Harvard want to learn more about how I can seem like I’m nearly in a coma, and yet I can hear and see a little bit and, mostly, how I can think. I can dream, too, and sometimes my dreams are important, but I don’t tell anyone about my dreams, not even Maddie O’Rourke. I’m sure not going to tell these guys. The researchers are both sexes, but I use guys to mean either.

  After Lizzie Erb got her life sorted out and decided on the man she would marry, my dreams began falling apart again, just like dreams usually do. Sometimes I dream of the ordinary man and in my dreams he looks like the Devil. When I wake up, I can’t picture him anymore, and I have no idea what the Devil looks like. I mean, I don’t even think he’s real.

  And speaking of “real,” some of these doctors are real
doctors and some of them are professors with PhDs. A PhD means you’re smarter than anyone else about a few things but don’t know a lot about anything else. They call themselves doctor, too. Just like my dentist and the chiropractor I nearly went to, but didn’t. That was when I hurt my back lifting stuff at Timmy’s. My back got better by itself. My teeth are okay. I don’t eat many doughnuts.

  So, these doctors want to study me. I’ve heard about studying rats and monkeys, but I’m a human being. I thought I’d say so, in case there were doubts. Then I told them no. They explained to Maddie that they would cover all of my medical expenses. I said, hey, this is Canada, I don’t have medical expenses. Didn’t you ever hear of OHIP? Maddie explained OHIP was like taxes and made our medicine free in Ontario.

  Oh. Well, then.

  Next they said they would pay for Maddie to come down to Boston with me. Now you’re talking, I thought.

  I asked Maddie if she would like to live in Boston for awhile.

  Maddie O’Rourke is a free spirit. She said yes. She would take a few months off from the People’s Drug Mart where she works in cosmetics.

  So, I had a brain wave. When the Harvard doctors came to see me at Shady Nook, I told them: “You have to fix Maddie’s back. If you’re as good as you say you are, you can do that. That’s the deal, or I won’t be your potato.”

  Well, Maddie translated this by reading my eyes. Then she asked the Harvard doctors to leave the room.

  She had already climbed up onto the side of my high bed the way she usually does so she can do my eye makeup. Or so she can see into my eyes to read what I’m saying. But this time, she leaned close so I could see into her eyes.

  “Allison!” She was angry. “I am who I am. If that’s a problem, you’re not the girl I think you are.” Maddie O’Rourke took a deep breath. “Do you imagine they can make me taller? Do you imagine they can make me straighter, or a better person? Do you imagine then you would like me more?” She took another deep breath. “I spent the first five years of my life in hospitals, Allie. I like who I am. I am as perfect as I ever need to be. I’m perfect for me.”

  She paused. Deep breath. “It’s you we want to work on.”

  I could hear a smile break into Maddie’s voice.

  If I could cry, I would have.

  I blinked and I blinked. I’m sorry! Forgive me?

  Yes.

  And that was that. Maddie O’Rourke is here at Harvard. They laid me out on a stretcher and flew us down in a private plane. They found Maddie a part-time job working in a lab where they do research on flowers. She loves it.

  As for me, during the day I am an interesting subject for the doctors to study. And last night, finally, my dreams began coming together again. I was somewhere else, living another life. Not Rebecca’s or Lizzie’s, but it was just as real.

  I’ve just met Mary Cameron but I feel like I’ve known her all my life, only longer. She is almost nineteen. She is dressed in strange clothes, they’re in tatters and her feet are wrapped in rags. There’s a calendar on her wall. The wall is stone. And every day of the year 1842 is stroked off, up to June 11th.

  Mary

  Mary was wild and Mary was free—but only in spirit. Mary was in prison. Her plea of innocence was overruled in court. But Mary had killed no one. The man who died was her friend, Amos Durfee. Because his body was never recovered and because Mary was a Canadian Rebel, she was convicted of treason, not murder.

  Treason! She thought of herself as a patriot, the same way George Washington was a patriot in the United States when her great grandmother Madge de Veer was alive. Mary didn’t hate the British who ruled her world but she wanted to be independent like the Americans were.

  For a single month, a little place called Navy Island in the middle of the river above Niagara Falls had been declared The Republic of Canada. Over Christmas and into the new year of 1838, Queen Victoria and her ministers were no longer in charge, not on Navy Island. And Mary Cameron had been there.

  Now, Mary was in prison, but they could not keep her locked up forever. And when she was released or escaped, she would find the man who killed Amos Durfee. She believed Amos was murdered because he was a black man and because he was an American. Or because he was Mary’s friend.

  She would find his killer. And she would kill him. She would have her revenge. Then they could lock her up again and throw away the key. They could hang her. She didn’t give a damn what they did.

  Twenty-six

  Mary

  Mary Cameron sat at a table, sewing as badly as she could. She took no pride in her work. None of the prisoners did. They were repairing fine gowns for the ladies in town.

  Mary shared her cell with three other women. They sewed during the daylight hours. They didn’t get much done. They weren’t being paid. Work was supposed to make them better people. That’s what the warden told them.

  Mary looked at her cellmates. Agnes: early twenties, no teeth, a streetwalker. Lily: late thirties, looked seventy, a sickly beggar, a heavy drinker. Apple: sixteen or seventeen, she wasn’t sure, a failed thief. Apple was roughly the same age as Mary Cameron when Mary first arrived at the prison for women.

  And Mary, herself: a political prisoner. She had rebelled against Queen Victoria. She had never met Queen Victoria. The queen lived in England. Her ministers lived in the great stone houses of Kingston. And Mary lived in the largest stone house of all, the Kingston Penitentiary.

  A calendar pinned to a crack in the stone wall said it was June 11. There was excitement in the air. They were going to have an important visitor. They often had visitors at the prison, especially in the Women’s Department. People came to gawk at them. The same way they would go to public hangings—to be entertained.

  Mary usually ignored the visitors but sometimes she’d stare right back at them.

  She had bright hazel eyes and light brown hair. She was pretty. That upset the gawkers.

  They wanted prisoners to be ugly and stupid. That made them feel better about themselves.

  Today, the visitor was going to be a famous writer from England, Mr. Charles Dickens. He had an interest in prison conditions and in helping convicts, especially women.

  Mary was the only prisoner who knew about Charles Dickens. While she was on Navy Island during the Rebellion, she had read the first installments of his novel, Oliver Twist, in a magazine called Bentley’s Miscellany. It was the story of an orphan boy who worked like a slave and joined up with some thieves. She was arrested before the final parts came out. She didn’t know how it ended.

  Mr. Charles Dickens came and went. He was clean-shaven and had sad eyes and a large nose. His hair was long and wind-blown, even though the air in the prison was gloomy and still. He talked to Mary like they had met before. She asked him how the story of Oliver Twist story turned out, and did Oliver have a good life. Mr. Dickens smiled.

  “You don’t belong here,” he said to Mary.

  “Because I’m pretty?” said Mary.

  The great author blushed.

  “I’ve been here nearly three years, sir. Good glory, it’s hard to keep pretty for three years in a hole like this. But I’m not staying.”

  “When will you get out?”

  “When I want to, sir. I can escape—they might let me go if I plead guilty, but I’m not going to do that. I didn’t murder anyone, not Amos Durfee or anyone else I can think of. I’m in here because I’m a Canadian Rebel. I am a political prisoner, a prisoner of conscience.”

  “Are you, now? Well, the Rebellion is over. But good luck to you and your conscience, young lady.”

  “My name is Mary Cameron.”

  Charles Dickens smiled. He turned his back to the warden. He dug into his pocket and pulled out some large coins. He took Mary’s hand through the bars and wrapped her fingers around the coins.

  Then he whispered: “Here’s a little help, M
ary Cameron, for when you escape.”

  As he walked away, she heard the great writer say to the warden: “I’d like to know about that girl. There’s a devil lurking in those beautiful eyes. It will take more than prison bars to keep Mary Cameron under control.”

  Well, of course there was a devil in Mary’s eyes. And in her heart. A few years behind bars weren’t going to change her nature.

  But the fire in her eyes was not kindled by politics. It was from her need for revenge. She had been accused of murder and of that she was innocent.

  Her eyes flashed brown and green and golden. She watched Charles Dickens walk away. She looked down at the four heavy coins in her hand. They were gold.

  Thank you, Mr. Dickens!

  She looked around at her cellmates. Agnes, Lily, and the girl who called herself Apple, because she loved eating apples—if they didn’t have worms. A toothless prostitute, a sickly rum-soaked derelict, and a slow-witted thief. Until Charles Dickens came along, these were her best friends in the world. They were her only friends. But life would be different now.

  She watched as the iron door swung closed, nearly catching the great writer’s coattails. She smiled and her eyes caught the light of the sun coming through the bars in the window. They glistened.

  She had murder in her heart and revenge on her mind.

  The Rebellion of Canada was over. Victoria ruled. But Mary Cameron’s rebellion was a long way from being finished.

  Allison

  When I woke up this morning, I was unhappy. The problem is Mary. I like her. But her vow that she’ll kill someone is upsetting. Even if it’s to avenge the death of her friend. If they catch her she’ll be hanged. She may not care if she’s executed, but I do. Who wants a hanging in the family tree?

  So I’m lying here, thinking about Mary in prison. I’ve got to figure out how to stop her from becoming a killer, but I’m in a prison of my own. I don’t know how much I can do.

  It’s my dream, but it’s her life.