by Jason Gurley
“Eleanor.”
Eleanor turns her head to look at the stranger.
“Careful,” the voice says. Eleanor’s vision is blurred, but resolves a little. She sees a dark-haired woman in a doctor’s coat. “You don’t want to dislodge anything.”
Dislodge?
Eleanor opens her mouth, but it is dry. The doctor seems to have anticipated this, and holds a cup with a straw to Eleanor’s mouth. She finds the straw with her lips, takes a small sip of water, then exhales slowly.
“You’re feeling a little discombobulated,” the woman says.
Eleanor nods. “Yes,” she says.
“My name is Doctor Clifford,” she says. “You’re in the hospital right now. You’ve been here for a few hours. Do you know why?”
Eleanor closes her eyes to think.
“You were injured at home,” Dr. Clifford says. “Do you remember that?”
Eleanor remembers the bathroom door. “At my dad’s apartment,” she says. “Not home.”
The doctor nods, and puts her hand on Eleanor’s. “Do you remember what happened at your dad’s apartment?”
Eleanor furrows her brow and concentrates. She remembers a bowl of ice cream. She remembers shouting at her father. And—she feels an echo of a memory that is unfamiliar. Blackness. Warmth. The image that springs to mind is of a tide pool, but she has never seen one in real life.
“Esmerelda,” Eleanor says.
Doctor Clifford looks sideways, and Eleanor realizes then that there is a police officer standing at the foot of the bed. She looks back and forth between the two strangers, then settles on the doctor.
“Am I in trouble?” she asks.
“No, dear,” the doctor says. “Who is Esmerelda? Do you have a sister? Was she hurt, too?”
Eleanor feels confused, and the contents of her head seem to tumble around like clothes in a dryer. “My sister is dead,” Eleanor says.
The doctor looks alarmed by this.
Eleanor says, “She died a long time ago. I don’t know why I just said her name.”
“How’d she die?” the officer asks.
“She—it was an accident,” Eleanor says. “Where’s my dad?”
“What kind of accident?” the officer presses, and the doctor shoots him an annoyed look.
The doctor takes Eleanor’s hand. “Your father is talking to some people right now. Do you mind talking to me for a little while?”
“What people?”
“People who are looking out for you, Eleanor,” the doctor says. “Let’s talk about what happened this morning.”
Eleanor narrows her eyes at the doctor. “Where is my dad?”
The doctor sighs, and looks at the officer, who says, “Your father is in temporary custody.”
Eleanor tries to sit up, but the doctor quickly puts a hand on her shoulder. It’s unnecessary—when she moved, Eleanor felt an invisible hand grip her around the middle and squeeze. She winces and grunts, and the doctor says, “Easy,” and helps her lie back down.
“No, no, no,” Dr. Clifford says. “You need to lie still, sweetheart. You're in rough shape, and you need to rest right now.”
“I want my dad,” Eleanor says.
“Let’s talk for a minute, first,” the doctor says. “Just a couple of minutes. Do you think that’s something you can do for me?”
“I want my dad,” Eleanor says again, then raises her voice. “I want my dad now!”
Doctor Clifford makes a steeple of her hands and presses her fingertips to her closed eyes. Then she turns to the officer and nods at the door. Eleanor watches the officer step out, the heavy things on his belt jangling. The doctor turns back to Eleanor.
“I’m going to talk with the officer for a moment,” Dr. Clifford says. “But first, Eleanor, I have to tell you something very important. Okay?”
Eleanor looks away. “I don’t want to talk.”
“That’s okay,” Dr. Clifford says. “You can just listen. What I want to say to you—and I want you to really listen, okay?—is that this is your safe place. Right here, right now. This room. You and me.”
“I want my dad.”
“Children who have been—well, mistreated, let’s say—often feel that they have no voice,” says Dr. Clifford. “Sometimes they think that if they speak up about what has happened to them, their parent will—”
“I want my dad!" Eleanor screams, and the vise grip around her middle squeezes so hard that she blacks out.
The next few hours are a blur of paperwork and instruction. Doctor Clifford leaves and does not return. Shelley, the nurse from Eleanor’s last hospital visit, sits beside Eleanor’s bed, explaining what the back brace is for, and how to change the bandages on her arms. She helps Eleanor sit up, and removes the IV needle—Eleanor gasps a little when it comes out—and helps Eleanor change back into her clothes.
The nurse draws the curtain over the hallway window. She holds Eleanor by the elbow and guides her out of bed. Eleanor hobbles, and smiles ruefully.
“I’m a hundred years old,” she says.
Shelley chuckles. She unsnaps the hospital gown, and helps Eleanor step into her pajama pants—the ones she came into the hospital wearing, still white with drywall dust—and hospital slippers. She helps Eleanor snap her bra into place.
“Now, the brace will go over your bra,” Shelley says. “Just a little.”
“How bad is it?” Eleanor asks.
Shelley cocks her head. “You haven’t seen it, have you?” she asks. “Well—you’re a strong girl. Do you want to see?”
Eleanor says, “Do I want to?”
“You’ll see it at home, first time you look in the mirror,” Shelley says. “Might as well see it here with me, now.”
She leads Eleanor into the little bathroom attached to the hospital room. There is a toilet, and a sink, and a mirror, but no shower or bathtub.
“Raise your arms,” Shelley says, and Eleanor does. Shelley puts her hands on Eleanor’s waist, and they face the mirror together.
“Here,” Shelley says. She points at Eleanor’s right side, just below her armpit. “You can see a little of the bruising here. Do you see?”
Eleanor nods. The skin Shelley points at isn’t dark like a bruise. It’s just pink, like a fierce sunburn.
“That’s not so bad,” she says.
“Let’s turn,” Shelley says. She gently pushes on Eleanor’s hips, and helps her turn sideways.
Eleanor watches the mirror, and sees her back come into view, and she cannot stifle the gasp that lodges in her throat, or the tears that spring to her eyes.
“There,” Shelley says. “Now you can see it.”
The pink immediately deepens into a severe, continent-shaped blotch of purples and blues. The discoloration spreads over most of her back. Only the edge of her left side is unmarked. At the low center of her back, the blotch is almost black. To Eleanor it looks as if some poisonous tar has been injected just beneath her skin. Her back is swollen, and every tiny movement of her muscles resurrects the pain of her accident.
“That’s why putting your bra on hurt just a bit, you see?” Shelley says. “And it’s also why you have to wear the brace for a few weeks, okay? You can’t take it off. It’s there to make sure you’re staying straight and strong while you’re healing up, so you don’t do any lasting damage to yourself.”
Eleanor’s tears spill silently down her face as she watches the nurse fit the brace to her back. Three straps circle her torso, attaching around her belly, her hips, and below her bust. Shelley cinches the brace tightly, and Eleanor gasps again.
“Tighter is better,” Shelley apologizes. “Kind of like wearing a corset in the old days, isn’t it?”
Eleanor nods. "Thank you," she says. "For helping me."
“You don’t have to thank me, honey,” Shelley says.
Eleanor turns away from the mirror, slowly. “They thought my daddy did this."
Shelley looks forlorn. “I don’t want to ask, but—hon
ey, did he?”
Eleanor shakes her head. “No,” she says. “I think I did.”
Shelley pushes Eleanor in a wheelchair, and sets the chair brake at the curb, and together they wait for Paul to pull the Buick around. He does, and when he gets out, Eleanor aches for him. Her father looks humiliated, and embarrassed, and angry, and helpless. He opens the passenger door, and he and Shelley together help Eleanor into the car.
She yelps when her back touches the seat, and her eyes well up again. Everything—everything—hurts.
“It’s going to feel better tomorrow,” Shelley says, patting Eleanor’s hand. “And better the day after, and the day after.”
Eleanor nods, and Shelley steps back. Paul produces a blanket from the trunk of the car and spreads it over Eleanor’s legs, then buckles the seat belt over the top. He reclines the chair for her, which feels much better. The shoulder belt wavers in the air before her face, stretched tight like a mainsail line.
“Better?” he asks, tucking the blanket beneath her legs.
“A little,” Eleanor says.
“Bye,” Shelley calls, and wheels the chair back inside.
Paul drives excruciatingly slowly through town, and other vehicles stack up behind him. None of the drivers honk at Paul, but when he senses their irritation, he pulls over now and again to let them pass.
From the horizontal vantage point of the reclined passenger seat, Eleanor watches the tops of buildings and trees and power lines glide by. Each time the car thuds into a pothole, she winces, and her father apologizes.
“How do you feel?” he asks her, and she says, “Okay,” and a few minutes later he asks again.
Finally she says, “Are you okay?”
Her father exhales, and glances at her. “How much of that did you have to hear?”
“It isn’t fair,” she says. “That they did that to you. That they thought it.”
“It’s not always a nice world,” he says. “I understand their reasons.”
“It’s not fair,” she says again.
They ride in silence a while longer, and then Eleanor says, “I’m sorry, Dad.”
He nods. “Me, too, Els.”
The car comes to a stop, and through the window Eleanor can see her father’s apartment looming over her. Her father doesn’t turn the engine off, and she looks over to see him gazing at her. His eyes are damp.
“I don’t know what happened up there,” he says. “But—whatever it was, I—it can’t happen again. I don’t want it to.”
She doesn’t say anything.
“I’m going to go upstairs, and I’m going to get your things,” he says. “Then I’m going to drive you to your mother’s house. I think it’s probably safer for you there until I figure out what happened up there. I want you to be safe.”
He opens the door and starts to climb out.
“Dad,” she says.
Paul stops and looks back at her.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she says. “It—it’s the same thing as before.”
“When your mother found you,” he says.
Eleanor nods.
“Ellie, what in the world—”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I really don’t.”
“It’s scaring me,” he admits. “Gerry—”
“She wasn’t crazy,” Eleanor says.
“I don’t understand.”
“I know. Neither do I.”
Paul seems to be at a loss. He sits back down in the seat, and stares through the windshield at nothing. “The world isn’t supposed to be like this,” he says. His voice is flat. “It’s not supposed to be like this for a kid.”
Something occurs to Eleanor then. “Dad,” she says. “What time did you get up this morning?”
He looks at her quizzically. “I don’t know,” he says. “A little after eight?”
“Did you come right down to the kitchen?” she asks.
He thinks. “I checked your room. To see if you were sleeping.”
“Then you came to the kitchen,” she says. “And you said we should get breakfast.”
He nods. “And you said—”
“I said it was almost nine, and Dot’s would be packed,” Eleanor finishes. “What time did they check me in at the hospital?”
“What—”
“Just think,” Eleanor says.
“I don’t remember. Maybe a few minutes later? Gerry called, and then—and then—”
“Think,” Eleanor says again. “Are you sure you don’t remember?”
He closes his eyes. “There was the ambulance, and the cop,” he says. “And I had to follow in my car. And the cop followed me.”
His voice is bitter.
“They unloaded you straight into the emergency room,” he goes on. “They—they stopped me. They made me do paperwork.”
“Insurance stuff,” she says.
“Right, insurance stuff,” he says. “And then—I had to sign in.”
“At the desk?”
“Yes,” her father says. “I had to sign in, and I didn’t know—I had to ask—”
“—what time it was,” Eleanor finishes. “And?”
Her father goes pale.
“Dad,” she says.
“Eleven-twelve,” he says. “Ellie—”
Eleanor lets out a long breath. “Three hours later,” she says.
“I remember because the numbers were consecutive,” he says. “Like when you look at a clock right at twelve-thirty-four.”
“One, two, three, four.”
“It was eleven-twelve,” he repeats. He looks as if he can see a ghost standing right outside the car. “Ellie—what does it mean?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “But it keeps happening. Every time I—whatever it is. I lose hours.”
“I think this is a dream, and we should wake up,” her father says, slowly.
“It’s not,” Eleanor says. “I already tried pinches.”
They sit in the car without moving. The engine chugs away.
“Dad,” Eleanor says after a few minutes. “Let’s go.”
Her father looks over at her, still pale. “Your things,” he says.
“There’s nothing I need,” Eleanor answers. “Take me to Mom’s.”
On the way home, her father begins poking holes in the lost-time problem. Eleanor doesn’t listen. She knows that he’s just feeling the real world rush back in. He’s driving through neighborhoods and along the main road and seeing people walking around with children and dogs and ice cream cones.
Reality is a terrific drug.
When the car finally pulls into the driveway at Agnes’s house, Paul kills the engine, then turns to Eleanor and says, “How would you feel if I said I thought maybe it would be a good idea to talk to someone?”
Eleanor says, “Like a shrink?”
“Like a therapist,” Paul says. “Gerry talked to one after—after her boys went missing. She said it really helped her make sense of what happened to her.”
Eleanor considers it. “Sure.”
Paul is surprised. “Really?”
“It couldn’t be any weirder than what’s already happening,” she says.
He nods. “Okay.”
Eleanor unbuckles the lap belt and it retracts noisily. “Help me up,” she says.
Her father nods again, but he’s elsewhere now, lost in thought.
He says, “Your mother hates seeing me. She was so angry the last time I was here.”
“Dad,” Eleanor says. “I need your help. You have to come in.”
He looks at her and seems to snap out of it.
“Right,” he says. “Right. Okay.”
You have weakened her.
The darkness is right, Mea knows. She can see it now in the way the girl shuffles across the driveway. Her father supports her carefully. Her steps are uncertain and shaky, and she is bent over like an old person. The blanket wrapped around her reinforces the illusion.
You observe too much, the darkness
suggests.
Mea does not acknowledge the darkness, and it withdraws. For the first time in the rift, as the darkness had named it, Mea feels cold.
She watches the girl, and wishes that she could slide between the two worlds herself, and touch her.
Instead, she waits.
The days must pass.
The girl must heal.
Again.
Eleanor and her father creep up the walk like two invalids.
Jack is on the porch, standing in the shadows cast by the late afternoon sun. “I don’t want to scare you,” he says.
Eleanor looks up, and she can tell by Jack’s reaction that she has scared him. She knows what she looks like, with her bandages and her blood-filled eye and her bruises and scrapes and stitches. She knows that the brace is visible beneath her T-shirt, a knobby shelf below her breasts. Her shoulders are stooped, her knees weak. Her father’s hands are below her elbows, guiding and supporting her.
“What happened?” Jack asks, his eyes wide. He claps his hands to his head and pulls his hair. “Are you okay?”
Eleanor smiles weakly at him. “Hi, Jack.”
“Hi, hi, yes,” he blurts. “What happened?”
Paul gives Jack the door key, and the boy stares dumbly at it.
“I don’t want to let go of her,” Paul says.
Jack notices Paul’s hands on Eleanor’s arms for the first time, then nods.
“Don’t tell your mother I kept a key,” Paul says to Eleanor.
Jack pushes the door open, then steps back. Paul and Eleanor walk awkwardly through the door—no static charge here, Eleanor notices with relief—and Jack says, “Ellie, damn it, what happened?”
“I don’t know,” she says.
“It happened again,” he says, and Eleanor shoots him a stern look.
Paul stops. “Jack knows,” he says, looking at Eleanor.
Eleanor looks away, then nods. “Yes.”
Paul sets his jaw. “Jack, don’t you tell a soul until we know what’s happening,” he says. “Do you understand?”
Jack nods emphatically, then says, “I think I should sleep over.”
Eleanor can’t help but smile. “It’s fine,” she says. “Dad’s here.”
Paul flips the hallway switch, and light flares like a torch struck in a cave. “Hello?” he calls. “Aggie?”