The Disappeared Girl

by Martin J. Smith

  Christensen, relieved, joined Brenna in stacking plates. Taylor and Annie had eaten fast and adjourned together. The living room was alive with their teenage video game chatter, and Christensen marveled at how well Brenna’s son and his younger daughter were getting along. He left Melissa’s plate in place, wondering again why she’d wandered away from the table just as dinner was served. “Headache,” she’d said, but Christensen could tell something was bothering her.

  There were times, in the brittle aftermath of Molly’s death—tough, bitter years—when his oldest daughter had deeply resented him and his relationship with Brenna. Maybe their recent marriage, even after years of living together, was stirring all that up again. Or maybe his daughter’s new meds were wreaking havoc on her famously unstable moods. She looked thinner than usual, and lately dark crescents had reappeared behind the loose curtain of black hair that often hid her brown almond eyes. For years now she’d worn Molly’s haircut, a tribute to—and, he suspected, Melissa’s deliberately haunting impersonation of—a woman now gone.

  He hefted the plates and headed for the kitchen. “I’m putting on more coffee. Who wants some?”

  The three adults remaining at the table raised their hands.

  “Unleaded this time?”

  “If you have it,” Carole said.

  The lamb-slick plates slid as Christensen set them beside the sink, and the clatter of that little avalanche filled the kitchen. When it settled, and after the applause from the dining room died down, Christensen heard another sound. He cocked his head toward a muted, distant rumble from upstairs—the rush of water through the house’s ancient pipes. In winter he would have assumed it was the radiators. But it was late summer.

  He checked the microwave clock—nearly ten—and followed the sound out another kitchen door and into the living room, where Annie and Taylor were transfixed by a shooter game he’d expressly forbidden them to play. He went to the base of the stairs and listened.

  “’Lis?” he called.

  She’d showered earlier. He stepped onto the first stair, and its groan echoed through the ground floor. At the landing, he heard Brenna call his name. She was at the bottom of the stairs when he turned.

  “Everything OK?” she said.

  “Just checking on Melissa. You know.”

  Brenna nodded. She knew. Melissa had never been an easy child, not since the day Christensen and Molly adopted her as an already troubled five-year-old. The mild antidepressants and other meds helped, but the intervening years hadn’t changed her much, and in many ways Christensen, the vaunted psychologist, always felt he’d somehow failed her. After graduating from Penn State at twenty-three, she’d moved home and never left, and for the past few weeks she’d seemed brittle enough to shatter. She seemed to enjoy her job at a downtown graphic-design studio, or at least said she did, and was even saving a little money. He hoped she was nearly ready to get her own place.

  “I’ll brew the coffee,” Brenna said. “Ask her if she wants me to make her a plate before I put everything away.”

  “OK.”

  “Jim?” She touched his hand on the banister. “That toast—it was beautiful.” She leaned up to kiss him again, and this time there was a promise in it.

  The stairs ended at the midpoint of an upstairs hallway, and Christensen turned left, following the sound of running water toward the kids’ bathroom at the far end of the hall. The door was closed, but bright light sprayed in a golden crescent onto the hardwood floor beneath it. Melissa was filling the tub; it sounded nearly full. He tapped lightly with one knuckle.

  “’Lis?”

  He tapped again.

  “Aunt Carole and Uncle Michael are getting ready to take off. You want to say goodbye?”

  A strange sensation came over him, hard to pinpoint at first, but warm and wet and a little bit startling. He looked at his feet. He’d slipped off his shoes during dinner, and now cold water was seeping through the gap at the bottom of the bathroom door and soaking his socks. He knocked harder this time.

  “Melissa?”

  He tried the doorknob, an ancient thing for which he’d long since lost the skeleton key. It turned, but his push didn’t budge the door. She must have slid the deadbolt on the inside. He bent to the keyhole, squinting from the dim hallway into the harsh glare. What came into focus took his breath away: a fresh spray of blood across the white tile surrounding the tub. On instinct and adrenaline, Christensen put his shoulder hard to the door and splintered the wood frame into which the tiny deadbolt slid.

  His daughter was naked, her face nearly as white as the bathroom tile but submerged in water the color of a pale merlot. Eyes closed, head dipped to one side, she could have been sleeping.

  In a single motion, he shut off the water and reached deep into the tub, trying to find the drain. She hadn’t stoppered it, but the heel of her left foot was resting atop the hole, blocking the water’s flow. He lifted her foot away, and immediately felt his daughter grab his triceps with surprising strength.

  “Daddy!”

  Her voice was a hoarse whisper. When he turned, he saw that the hand clutching him was attached to a wrist that gaped open—a smooth, almost surgical crossways incision. Each of his daughter’s weak heartbeats pushed another spoonful of blood into the cold, crimson pool.

  “I’m here, baby. I’m here.”

  Her eyes flickered open. “Daddy!”

  Christensen grabbed his daughter’s forearm and squeezed, trying to stem the flow of blood. He pulled a towel off the nearby rack, shook it out and twisted it into a makeshift tourniquet just below her elbow. Melissa winced at the pinch, then began to shiver.

  “Cold,” she moaned.

  “Hold this tight,” Christensen commanded. “Hold it!” He turned back toward the open bathroom door. “Bren!”

  Melissa began thrashing her arms. Her diluted blood soaked his face, his shirt, his hair.

  “Mi-cah!” she screamed.

  “Brenna!” he called again. “I need help! Bring the phone!”

  Melissa’s grip tightened even as her eyes seemed to fade. She clung to him like she was drowning.

  Christensen could hear the scrabbling of furniture in the dining room below and hurried footsteps on the stairs, but the wait seemed to last forever. When a figure finally appeared in the bathroom doorway, it wasn’t Brenna but Annie, Melissa’s fifteen-year-old sister. Her eyes went wide and she made a sound, a shocked and short-circuited “Ah!” She gagged but didn’t throw up.

  “Annie, get Brenna. Now. Tell her to call 911.”

  His younger daughter didn’t move, just stared at them like a stunned deer. Christensen turned back to Melissa. Her eyes were still open, staring at her father’s panicked face but seeing something else, something terrifying.

  “Hang on, baby. Hang on.”

  She clutched at him, but he pried her fingers loose and motioned Annie forward. “Listen to me, Annie: hold the towel just like this,” he said, and finally she responded. “Keep it twisted tight.”

  He pushed past Annie, heading for the upstairs phone. The grown-ups were just mounting the stairs, one after the other. In his wake, Melissa’s frail and fading plea: “Please don’t let me sink.”

  Chapter 3

  Someone had tried to make Mount Mercy Hospital’s tenth-floor visitor’s lounge a calming place of potted plants, pastel colors, and cushy chairs arranged in intimate clusters. They’d almost succeeded. Dorsey didn’t exactly unclench as he entered, but the lounge was a welcome refuge from the agony down the hall. He looked back at Jim and Carole pacing outside Melissa’s room. If he followed his instincts, he’d be pacing with them. Not just because she’d lost so much blood, but because even from Jim’s dining room he’d heard her scream the name.

  It was 4:30 a.m., but he hit three buttons on his Blackberry and waited. First time he’d ever bothered Hickton at home. Tough. That’s what retainers were for—access when needed.

  “Robert? Michael Dorsey,” he said when his
attorney answered. “It’s your lucky day. When was the last time this was considered a billable hour for you?”

  Hickton cleared his throat. “What can I do for you, Michael?”

  “Sorry about the late call. But it’s about the New York trip. I’m going to need to postpone.”

  Dorsey waited through a long silence.

  “You want to put it off?”

  “Something’s come up. Family emergency.”

  “Michael, we’re supposed to be getting on a plane in—” he could hear Hickton rearranging the contents of his nightstand, probably in the dark “—four hours.”

  “Emergency,” he repeated. “We’ve had a bit of a fright with my niece. Looks like I’ll be at the hospital all night. It’s a real mess, Bob. The network people will understand, I’m sure.”

  His attorney mumbled vague concern, adding, “This is a bad idea.”

  “One of those things,” Dorsey said. “You know how much I want all this to work out. But I need to be here for another twenty-four hours, at least until we get over the hump with her.”

  “Sounds bad.”

  “It is.”

  Hickton sighed. “And there’s no way? You know how these things—”

  “The network came to us, remember? Anyway, we don’t want to seem too eager. So you’ll handle the calls?”

  “You want me to reschedule for Tuesday, then?”

  He had a show to do Tuesday. “I’ll call you by noon today. It’s a possibility, but I’ll have to make some arrangements.”

  “We don’t want to let this get away, Michael.”

  “We won’t.”

  He disconnected and immediately scrolled to the number for the station’s publicist. She should know, just in case someone followed up on all the emergency vehicles outside the house in Shadyside, or recognized him as Melissa’s uncle during all the confusion. All he had was Jackie’s office number, though. He waited through her answering machine message and spoke at the tone.

  “Michael here. I’m in town still—it’s late Sunday, actually early Monday now—and had to cancel the New York trip. We’ve had a situation, a family thing. In case any of the local media put things together and call for a comment, it’ll be about my niece, Melissa. But no names, please. She, uh, well, we’re not really sure what happened. It looks like she’ll be … we just don’t know anything right now, see? So if anybody calls, just explain it’s a family matter, private. OK? You’ve got my cell number, so call when you get this message. Maybe by morning I’ll know more.”

  He disconnected but held the Blackberry like a talisman. Again, Melissa’s panicked voice filled his head: Mi-cah!

  He shut his eyes tight. She was only five then. She couldn’t remember, could she?

  Dorsey walked across the lounge to the wide window. Fifth Avenue was the busiest street in Pittsburgh’s Oakland district, the city’s medical center, and it was no less so this time of night. Medicine was a twenty-four-hour business. He was high enough in the building that he could see beyond the women’s hospital across the street and into the Monongahela valley, where the mighty J&L plant once stretched for more than a mile along both banks of the river. A mile upriver from that, between the Homestead High Level and the Glenwood bridges, is where it all happened. Could she really be remembering? With all the publicity about it lately, hell, who knows?

  He raised his phone again. One more call, looking for a number he’d purposely never added to his contacts. He dialed information.

  “Pittsburgh,” he said, enunciating clearly at the electronic prompt. “Residence. For a Ramon Guerra. G-U-E-R-R-A.”

  He turned away from the window and scribbled the number on the back of some papers, the organ donation forms that an emergency room nurse had asked him to hold. When he glanced up, Christensen was standing at the open lounge door looking like a man just pulled from the rubble of an earthquake—alive, but damaged in ways not yet apparent. Still, Dorsey felt self-conscious. He hung up quickly.

  “New York,” he explained. “I just needed to cancel a few things.”

  It wasn’t clear whether Christensen had heard, or listened, or even cared. He just shook his head. “Don’t know anything yet, Michael. She’s still out.”

  “I know her doctor,” Dorsey said, focusing on something upbeat. “She’s in good hands.”

  Christensen stepped into the lounge and let the door swing shut behind him. He perched on one of the lounge’s cheerful chairs. “She lost so much blood. So much.”

  “I know.”

  “And that’s not even the scariest part, Michael.” Christensen didn’t finish the thought.

  He didn’t need to. Dorsey knew the “Why?” of all this was already gnawing at his brother-in-law, not just as the man who raised Melissa but as a clinical psychologist. Dorsey prayed there was an easy answer, knew there seldom was. “We’re here for you, me and Carole. Whatever we can do to help you—her—get through this.”

  Christensen touched the hand still holding the cell phone. “Michael, I’m—”

  The lounge door burst open, and Carole entered panting. A distant voice followed her into the room, the same high keen of terror as when Melissa was in the tub.

  “You’d better come,” she gasped, but by then Christensen was already past her.

  Chapter 4

  Melissa was a knot-tight ball of arms and legs, trembling so violently that Christensen wondered if she was having a seizure. The tube of her IV drip had pulled loose and hung down from its rolling stand beside the institutional bed, still swinging like a pendulum. Her eyes were open, but she didn’t see him come in.

  “Cold,” she said. “So cold.”

  Then she was thrashing, still pale and gasping for breath, arms and legs pumping like she was trying to reach the surface of some deep and distant water. Christensen reached through the blur of limbs, and when his daughter found his arm, her fingers clamped on so tightly that he, too, gasped for breath.

  “’Lissa, you’re OK.”

  “Sinking!”

  “No, baby. It’s OK. I’m here. It’s OK.”

  “Can’t breathe,” she gasped.

  “I’ve got you, ’Lissa. It’s Dad. I’ve got you.”

  She held tight, but stopped struggling. Her breath came in short, desperate gulps as she clung to him like a rescued swimmer. She held on for twenty seconds, maybe thirty, before her grip finally relaxed.

  “Dad’s got you, baby,” he soothed. “You’re OK.”

  Melissa turned her face to his and blinked in recognition. “You’re here,” she said.

  Her grip became a desperate hug. When his daughter pulled away, her face crumpled. Tears rose in plump beads and spilled onto her cheeks.

  “I’m here, ’Lissa. Always.”

  She looked around the hospital room, trying to orient herself in this unfamiliar place, then cut her eyes back to his face. “I’m OK?”

  “Dad’s got you.”

  Her eyes roamed again, but this time they found her left wrist, where a thick white bandage covered nearly two dozen fresh stitches. She stared at it a long time, but more as a curiosity than as evidence that her life had taken a bleak and desperate turn.

  “What’s happening to me?” she asked.

  Christensen brushed a tear from his daughter’s cheek. Her skin was cool and damp.

  “You tell me, ’Lis.”

  “I don’t know where I am.”

  “Mount Mercy,” he said, wishing he’d been less specific. Her mother had died here, and they’d both come to know the hospital’s corridors all too well during those lost, lingering months after Molly’s accident.

  Melissa looked at her wrist again, tried to swallow. Christensen poured some ice water from the pitcher on the nightstand and passed her the plastic cup. She took it in her right hand, still staring at her left wrist.

  “How much do you remember about last night?” Christensen asked.

  More tears came, quiet tears, along with—if he read her face correctly�
��the gradual dawn of a memory. Christensen probably knew as much about traumatic memories as anyone, but he wasn’t here as a nationally recognized memory expert. He was here as a father, and feeling just as helpless and ill-equipped to deal with a depressed twenty-seven-year-old daughter as any other dad.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  “No, no. Don’t—”

  She tried to laugh. “I’m such a fuckup I couldn’t even do that right?”

  Christensen leaned down and kissed her forehead, tasting the salt of her sweat.

  “Where’s Annie?”

  “With Brenna and Taylor, at home. Aunt Carole and Uncle Michael are here, though.”

  Another piece fell into place, and Melissa, startled, cupped a hand over her mouth and closed her eyes tight.

  “Oh God, Dad. The dinner. Everyone was there.”

  Christensen resisted the urge to talk. The memories of the previous night would surface at their own pace, whenever she was ready to handle them, and not before. It was one of the mind’s great marvels. Melissa bit her lower lip to stop it from quivering, but she kept her eyes shut. She still held the plastic cup in her right hand, and she snaked her index finger over its edge and into the ice water. She stirred a lazy figure eight for a minute or two.

  “It’s even colder than this,” she said without opening her eyes.

  “What’s that, ’Lis?”

  “The water in my dream. It’s colder than this.” She held the cup out to him, and he stuck his finger into the ice water as well.

  “A water dream?”

  She nodded. “That probably means something, right?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  She sipped and swallowed with a harsh rasp. “What’s today? The date, I mean?”

  He told her, and she counted backward on her fingers. “Couple weeks ago—that’s when it started. Three, maybe four times, this dream about drowning. Always the same. Cold water. Ice cold. And dark. Then I can’t breathe.”

  Even now, Melissa’s chest began to rise and fall. Christensen gripped her undamaged wrist and felt her pulse hammering beneath the skin.