Silent Echoes

by Carla Jablonski

  “Maybe we can still help her,” Colonel Phillips said.

  “You should get her to a hospital,” Lucy said.

  Colonel Phillips and Nellie stared at her; they’d obviously forgotten about her.

  “We should get her up and try to get her to walk,” Colonel Phillips said, ignoring Lucy. “Splash water on her face.”

  Lucy took a step into the room. “I really think you should get her to a hospital.”

  “We can’t!” Nellie exclaimed.

  “Why not?” Lucy asked.

  The woman looked evasive. “We just can’t.”

  Lucy stared at the stricken girl on the bed. She could die if they didn’t get her to a doctor. She had an idea. “Riverview Hospital!” she exclaimed, remembering that Bryce’s friend Alan was a student doctor there. “It’s a charitable institution. You won’t have to pay.”

  “That’s not it.” Nellie glanced at Colonel Phillips, then looked at the ground. “A lady such as yourself wouldn’t understand these things.”

  “Ha!” Colonel Phillips barked. “She’s only recently become a lady, no matter what she pretends. She’s still my daughter, ain’t she?”

  “Oh.” Nellie looked at Lucy, then at Colonel Phillips. She frowned. “We can’t go to the hospital. Not girls like us. I’m…known in the courts. Katie too. If I showed up anywhere official, they’d have us arrested. And if they knew she tried to kill herself with the drops, they’d do much worse. She’d be sent to Blackwell’s Island with the lunatics.”

  “We don’t need a hospital and we don’t need your help,” Colonel Phillips told Lucy.

  “She’s going to die here,” Lucy said. “I know someone who works at the hospital,” she told Nellie. “You remember him, Papa. Alan Wordsworth. He sat with us at the Cavanagh dance.”

  “You think he would help?” Nellie asked eagerly.

  Lucy nodded firmly. “I’m sure he will.” If he’s there, if he remembers me. She shook the doubts out of her mind. “He’s a friend.”

  “I—I don’t know….” Nellie looked at Colonel Phillips. “Will he do as you ask?”

  Colonel Phillips shrugged.

  “I think he will if I ask him,” Lucy said.

  “You’ll go with us? You’d be seen with—” Nellie swallowed. “Thank you.”

  “This is a good thing,” Colonel Phillips told Lucy. “I guess you’re not so selfish after all.”

  “Why would you think that?” Lucy blurted. “I didn’t try to cut you out. I had nothing to do with it. It was all—”

  “We can have this talk another time,” he interrupted. “Now we must get this girl to the hospital.”

  Colonel Phillips lifted Katie off the bed and carried her down the narrow stairs. Lucy wished she’d brought money with her so that they could hire a carriage. She could see her father struggling with Katie’s weight after just a few blocks.

  As they finally approached the hospital, Lucy slowed down, the redbrick buildings intimidating her. Would Alan actually help them? And where would she find him?

  Her father must have noticed her hesitating. “The central pavilion is probably the main entrance.” He shifted Katie in his arms. “Lucy, you run ahead and ask for Alan.”

  Lucy nodded and dashed to the entrance. She halted at the doorway as a screaming man was carried past her, blood soaking the linens on the pallet.

  “Excuse me, miss,” said a matronly woman in a dark dress and a white cap. “Are you looking for someone?”

  “I’m looking for Alan Wordsworth,” Lucy explained. “He—he’s a particular friend of mine.”

  A smile dimpled the woman’s chubby face. “Well, that will disappoint a few on my nursing staff.”

  Lucy ignored the nurse’s insinuation. “Please, I am here with a sick woman who needs to see Alan right away. He told me if there was ever anything he could do, he’d be happy to help.” He hadn’t actually said any such thing, but Lucy would worry about that another time.

  “He’s on rotation in the women’s pavilion this month.”

  “That’s handy,” Lucy said. “My friend is a woman.”

  “Take the small hallway to the left. The ward nurse will find Dr. Wordsworth for you.”

  “Thank you!” She turned and saw her father entering with Katie. Nellie followed, keeping her eyes down, looking very nervous.

  “Here.” Lucy unpinned her hat and gave it to Nellie. She quickly put it on and pulled the veil over her face.

  “Thank you,” Nellie said. Once covered, she straightened up.

  “Follow me,” Lucy said, and led them to the women’s pavilion.

  The ward nurse rushed toward them. “You can’t bring her in here,” she insisted. “She has to be admitted by a doctor!”

  “She’s a patient of Dr. Alan Wordsworth,” Lucy said. She could always count on her father’s training whenever she needed to think quickly of a lie.

  “She took ill so suddenly we didn’t have time to contact him,” Colonel Phillips explained. “But we knew he would want to see her right away.”

  “Oh, well, in that case…” The nurse glanced around. “There. That’s a clean bed. Lay her down there and I’ll fetch the doctor.”

  “Tell him Lucy Phillips is here,” Lucy instructed.

  The nurse vanished through thick double doors, and Colonel Phillips gently laid Katie on the bed. Nellie wrung her hands. “This is all my fault,” she murmured over and over.

  Alan strode into the room. When he saw Lucy, he stopped. “I thought you were ill,” he said, confused.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Lucy said. “It’s not me; it’s…my friend.”

  “This young lady is the patient,” Colonel Phillips said, indicating Katie.

  “Please,” Nellie begged, clutching Alan’s arm. “You have to make her better. I’d never forgive myself if—” She burst into tears and turned away. Lucy pressed her scented handkerchief into the distraught woman’s hands.

  Alan looked even more confused as he looked at Nellie, then Katie. He grabbed a nearby chair and sat beside Katie’s cot. “Do you know what’s wrong with her?” He took up Katie’s wrist and felt for her pulse.

  Colonel Phillips cleared his throat. “We believe that she may have taken an accidental overdose of Dr. Montgomery’s Merciful Elixer.”

  “They give it to babies!” Nellie wailed. “It says right on the bottle that you can give it to an infant to help with teething! I thought it would be safe for Katie.”

  Alan opened Katie’s eyes and peered into them. “Do you know what the complaint was that caused her to take the drops in the first place?”

  “Female trouble,” Nellie said in a small voice.

  Alan glanced up sharply. “What kind of female trouble? It won’t help your friend if you are overly delicate.” Then he looked at Lucy. “Miss Phillips, I believe it best if you leave the room.”

  “No,” Lucy insisted. “I want to stay.”

  “Are you certain?” Now he looked at Colonel Phillips. “I will need very explicit information.”

  “Lucy,” Colonel Phillips said. “I think the doctor is right.”

  “No.” Lucy wanted to know what they were all so worried she’d hear.

  “She…well, she…” Nellie twisted the handkerchief Lucy had given her. “Her stomach was bothering her. And she was terribly tired….”

  Alan looked at her. “Is she pregnant? Did you dose her so that she would lose the child?”

  Nellie stiffened, and Lucy knew the woman was grateful for the veil. “All I know is she wanted something for relief. I didn’t know she would take so much.”

  “Is she diseased?” Alan said. “That is also a hazard of your profession.”

  Nellie took a step backward.

  “I don’t condemn you,” Alan said, more gently. “I simply need to know as much as possible so I can treat the young lady. If I give her an emetic, I need to know if there is an underlying condition.”

  Nellie nodded, and Lucy could hear her tears even
though she couldn’t see Nellie’s face clearly through the netting of the hat. “She—she was terrified. Tom would put her out if he knew. She’d be of no use to him. He pays for our lodgings, you see? He treats his girls right unless they cross him. She couldn’t have a baby. But I don’t think she’s poxy.”

  Lucy felt faint, shocked to be discussing such things in front of her father and Alan.

  Colonel Phillips cleared his throat. “Lucy, I do believe you should leave.”

  “Actually,” Alan said, “I will need to have you both leave so that I may examine her properly. Oh—one last question. How old is she?”

  “Sixteen,” Nellie replied.

  Colonel Phillips looked stunned. “She appears older.”

  “Their profession ages them,” Alan said. “If only their patrons understood that, perhaps these girls would fare better,” he added pointedly.

  He thinks my father— Lucy couldn’t complete the thought.

  “Oh, sir!” Nellie exclaimed. “I can’t have you thinking such things about the kind Colonel! He has never, never availed himself. He has been like a brother or a father to us girls.”

  “It’s all right, Nellie,” Colonel Phillips said. “Dr. Wordsworth meant me no disrespect. Just doing his job.”

  “Colonel Phillips, will you take Lucy to my office? It’s through those doors. Nellie, I’d like you stay with me in case I have any other questions. You seem to know the girl best.”

  “Thank you,” Colonel Phillips said.

  “Yes, thank you,” Lucy added.

  She followed her father through the heavy doors and into a small office.

  “She’s so young,” Colonel Phillips murmured, gazing out the window toward the East River.

  “She’s not young,” Lucy replied. “She’s my age.”

  “Precisely.” He turned to face her. “Perhaps it’s for the best that you stay at Mrs. Van Wyck’s on your own.” He shook his head. “I did you a disservice, dearie dear, and I apologize for it. You didn’t ask Mrs. Van Wyck to put me out, did you?”

  “Of course not,” Lucy said. “It was Bryce. I had no idea until after you were already gone.”

  “He is a presumptuous pup,” Colonel Philips warned. “You must take care there, Lucy. He has a will of his own, and he will see it satisfied.”

  “I guess….”

  “His interests are not necessarily yours,” Colonel Phillips said.

  Lucy laughed. “That’s quite obvious,” she said. “He’s dead against the séances. But,” she added, “those are mine. Ours. He has no say there.”

  Colonel Phillips smiled and nodded. “That’s my girl.”

  “She spoke to me again,” Lucy said suddenly. “In the museum.”

  “Who spoke to you?” Colonel Phillips asked.

  “You know.”

  Colonel Phillips cocked his head. “What did she have to say for herself?”

  Lucy sank into the heavy leather chair behind the desk. “She was so angry at me. All she did was shout at me to leave her alone.”

  “That could mean the end of your budding career. Bryce could have his way after all.” He studied her face for a moment. “You truly believe you are speaking to someone from the other side, don’t you?”

  “What else could it be?” Lucy asked.

  “Don’t rightly know,” Colonel Phillips admitted. “I guess spirits could truly exist after all.”

  He sat on the small settee in the corner, staring up at the ceiling. “Do you think—if perhaps you placate this spirit somehow—do you think she would help us speak to your mother?”

  He turned to face her, and his eyes were a blue she’d never seen before.

  He misses her, she realized. He has missed her all this time.

  She’d seen him angry, seen him belligerent, but she’d never seen him lonely and sad before. Lucy had never known her mother, so she had no one to miss. But her father…

  “I don’t really know how to raise a daughter,” Colonel Phillips said. “That was to have been your mother’s bailiwick. I didn’t do too badly in leaving you with Pappy and Memaw on the farm, did I?”

  “No,” Lucy said, knowing that was the answer he needed to hear.

  “Lord, I missed her with every inch of me. We grew up together—did I ever tell you that?”

  Lucy shook her head. He had only rarely spoken of her mother. Now she realized it had been grief that kept him silent.

  “Do you think…Can you try to speak with your spirit again? I would so love to hear from your mother. Tell her I miss her. Tell her I’m sorry.”

  Lucy didn’t ask what he was sorry for. Instead she answered, “I’ll try. I don’t know if it will work here—but she seems to be moving about, following me. It could work.”

  Lucy shut her eyes and concentrated. “Please speak to me, Lindsay. I am sorry for any harm I’ve done to you. I never meant to upset you. Will you speak to me? Please, Lindsay?”

  Lucy waited. She wanted to reach Lindsay more this minute than ever before, for her father. “Lindsay, please. Just tell me what I must do to apologize and I will do it. But please—speak to me.”

  “You’re here too?” a voice in Lucy’s head said.

  Lucy’s eyes opened. She nodded at her father. He came and sat beside her, took her hand.

  “Yes, it’s me, Lucy. Oh, Lindsay, I never wanted to upset you. I don’t know how I wronged you.”

  “Are you everywhere now?”

  The girl sounded strange, much more distant, and her speech was slightly slurred.

  “I—I’m at Riverview Hospital with my father.”

  “You’re here? I’m here too! Because of you!” The spirit laughed.

  “Were you looking for me?” Lucy asked.

  “God, no. I was trying to get away from you.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I mean you no harm.”

  “Yeah, I guess you can’t help being in my head.”

  “You’re…in my head too.”

  “Interesting.”

  “I have something I want to ask you. I hope you don’t mind. I was wondering if you could tell me anything about my mother.”

  “Your mother? She’s dead, right?”

  “Yes.” Lucy was pleased that the spirit had remembered. “We’d be so happy if perhaps we could talk to her through you. Her name was Annabella Phillips. She died in 1866. Um, giving birth to me.”

  There was a silence, then the spirit named Lindsay said, “This is seriously freaky.”

  Twelve

  Why resist? Lindsay thought. The voice will always find me.

  Something floated across her mind like seaweed. Chemical imbalance. Brain chemistry. Medication.

  Shouldn’t the voice stop if I took the drugs they gave me?

  It was hard to keep the idea in her brain as others rolled in with other tides. How could she know anything about someone who died back in 1866? And if that was when Lucy was born and she was around Lindsay’s age, then wouldn’t the girl be talking to her from…Lindsay felt sick at how hard it was to do something as simple as subtraction. Drugs didn’t enhance mathematics. That was a definite drawback. Equations would be impossible. Breathing out a sharp, sudden breath to try to push aside the seaweed clogging her head, Lindsay thought, 1882. That would be when a sixteen-year-old girl would be living if her mother died in childbirth in 1866.

  Lindsay pressed her fingers on her forehead, hoping to keep the space clear. “Your mother died when you were born,” she said.

  “Yes,” the voice said.

  “What’s your name again?” Lindsay asked.

  “Lucy. Lucy Phillips.”

  “And you were born in 1866.”

  “Yes.”

  The puzzle this presented energized Lindsay. It wasn’t at all the kind of conversation she’d read about in the books on schizophrenia or that the kids in group described. Those voices were cruel, taunting, giving orders. She got her notebook, knowing she was likely to forget details if she didn’t write them down. She wro
te Lucy Phillips on top of the page.

  “How old are you?” Lindsay asked.

  “Sixteen,” she replied, exactly what Lindsay had guessed.

  “Me too.”

  “Can you contact my mother for me?” Lucy asked.

  “I—I don’t think I can. I might be able to get information for you if I know more about her. Where did she die?”

  “In Kentucky. On a farm near Corbin.”

  Lindsay took a deep breath. “What year is it, Lucy?”

  “Why, 1882, of course.” Lucy sounded surprised.

  A theory began to present itself, a hypothesis to test. Lindsay needed more quantifiable evidence. “When we spoke last time, where were you?”

  “At the American Museum of Natural History,” Lucy replied.

  “And you’re in Riverview Hospital now?”

  “Yes.”

  “And before—”

  “In Mrs. Van Wyck’s home in Clinton Place.”

  Lindsay tapped her pencil on the page. That part didn’t fit. She’d never heard of Clinton Place. But the other two…

  Her head jerked up as a nurse opened her door. “Who are you talking to?”

  “No one.” Lindsay closed the notebook and slipped it under her blanket.

  “I’m sorry, dear.” The nurse shook her head. “I heard you. If you want to get better, you’ll have to admit what’s happening.”

  “Lindsay?” Lucy said.

  “We can’t help you unless you let us,” the nurse continued.

  Lindsay squeezed her eyes shut. It was confusing to hear them both at the same time.

  “Is something wrong?” two voices asked.

  Lindsay shook her head.

  “You’re hearing the voices again, aren’t you?” the nurse said. “It’s all right. They won’t hurt you here.”

  “It’s just one voice,” Lindsay explained. “She’s nice.”

  The nurse nodded. “Thank you for telling me.”

  She left the room.

  “I don’t think I can talk to you anymore right now,” Lindsay said to Lucy. “But—but will you talk to me again later?”

  “I’ll try,” Lucy said. “Thank you for saying I’m nice.”

  “Talk to me tonight. You need to be in the same place you are now. Promise.”