IT was quiet on the twelfth floor. Compared to Admissions and the bustle of Labor & Delivery, it was a graveyard. I followed the signs for the east corridor. E.
The nurses’ station was empty. I walked past it, down a hallway with a flickering fluorescent light. This was an old section of the hospital, unrenovated. I found myself shivering as I walked.
Some of the doors with the 12E prefix were closed, some of the rooms unoccupied, and the few patients I saw through open doorways were asleep. It seemed like a place people came to die.
I was whispering as I walked. “... twelve E nineteen, twelve E twenty. Twelvie twenty-one.” I paused before the open door. There were nameplates for the two patients, e and w. The bed on the west side of the room was empty. It was the patient in 12E21e that I’d come to see. M. Quadros, according to the nameplate.
Even in her sleep I recognized her. She was younger than me, but not much. Long, curly hair, a reddish purple that could only come out of a bottle. Memorable hair, even if you’ve only seen it once, even though it now had an inch of black roots showing at the scalp. Her face was pale and showed the remnants of bruises. Her long, lovely arms were bruised, too, purple and green around the sites where blood had been drawn or tubes inserted. She was skinny, the sad little blue gown and blanket not thick enough to hide the bones jutting through. She no longer smelled like Shalimar.
“Hello,” I said to her, but she didn’t respond. I touched her face, very gently, but she didn’t respond to that either.
I wondered how long she’d lain there. I’d seen her only a month before.
WE’D met at the Somdahl & Associates Fourth of July barbecue. Even with the hair she wouldn’t have stood out among the crowd of strangers, and I, as a company spouse, wouldn’t have made an impression on her either, but for a clumsy gesture. A drunken partner had spilled a pitcher of beer on her T-shirt, and instead of apologizing made lewd remarks about how good some women look wet. Another man tried to intervene, no doubt thinking “sexual harassment lawsuit” but the drunk wouldn’t give way gracefully. While the two men worked it out, I’d walked over to the beer-soaked woman and touched her shoulder. I had an extra shirt in my car, I told her. When she hesitated, I put an arm around her, and she let me lead her away.
“Thanks,” she said. “Asshole. All week I work for him. Now I must eat and drink with him.” She had an accent that I couldn’t identify. Some Romance language.
“Who is he?” I asked.
She’d looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “Albert Werner. The CFO. You must be new.”
“My husband is,” I’d said. “I’m just the spouse. Jane England.”
“You’re married to—”
“Richard England.”
Her eyelashes fluttered, a butterfly’s gesture. “Your husband is Richard England.”
“Yes, do you know him?”
There was a pause. “Yes.”
We were at the car now and she was waiting, so I opened the trunk and she added, “You are the Good Samaritan.”
“No problem.” I pulled a pink T-shirt out of the emergency diaper bag. Clipped to the bag was a plastic-framed photo of Paco and Charlie with Tooth. “I have twin toddlers, so someone’s always spilling something on me, or my breasts used to leak, when I was nursing. I’m just in the habit of carrying around a change of clothes.”
“I didn’t realize Richard England had children,” she said, touching the photo. Staring at it.
It was one of those remarks—actually, it was the third remark in two minutes—that sent a shiver of sexual jealousy down my spine. But she looked at me then, intently, and said, “Your husband. He’s tall, yes? Large nose.”
I nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “Last week, I carried heavy boxes into the conference room, for the meeting. Eight men around the table, and only your husband, he jumps up to hold the door and then he takes all the boxes from me, to help me. All the boxes.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, but she turned her back to me and pulled off her beer-soaked shirt. I looked at her flawless skin, her narrow ribs, her spine, her lacy little bra straps, and I was relieved that I didn’t need to feel jealousy.
She turned around, dressed once more. “Jane. Thank you. It really is kind of you to give me the shirt off your back. I can’t think of many people at this picnic who would do this. I won’t forget it.”
I reached out to pluck from her wild hair a tiny piece of paper caught there. A Band-Aid wrapper, escaped from the diaper bag.
“And you have twins,” she said, smiling for the first time. “This is very lucky. A blessing. Boys, yes? And a dog.”
“Yes.” I smiled back at her. “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”
“Matilda,” she said. At least, that’s the name I guessed at, but it was hard to know, because it came out quickly, except for the middle syllable, drawn out so musically. Mateelda ...
Later I noticed that she’d left her red baseball cap in the trunk of my car.
THE nurse’s shoes were silent, and I only saw her when I turned. I gasped. She jumped.
“Jesus!” she said, a hand to her heart. “Wasn’t expecting anyone.” She wore turquoise scrubs and Nike running shoes.
“Is it not visiting hours?” I asked.
“No, it’s just you’re her first visitor. On my shift, anyway.” The nurse checked her watch and made a note on the chart held in a binder.
“I just now found out she was in the hospital,” I said. The nurse was reading the chart and didn’t reply. “How long has she been here?”
“This floor? Five days.”
“And how long in the hospital?”
She flipped a page. “Admitted ten days ago to the ER, then surgery, then intensive care, and then up here.”
“What is ‘up here,’ exactly?”
The nurse looked up at me, glanced down at my stomach, and turned back to the chart. Patient confidentiality rules, I imagined her thinking. “This is a hospice room. She’s a DNR. Do Not Resuscitate.”
Madeeda was dying. I took a deep breath. “What happened to her?”
She looked up again, and her eyes narrowed. “You okay to be up and walking around?”
I nodded. “I’m fine. I’m just ... Sorry, she was a friend, but I only just now heard about her.”
“Why don’t you sit down?”
“Okay.” I perched on the leatherette chair next to the bed. Thinking, We’re dressed alike, Madeeda and I. Sharing clothes again. “What happened to her? Can you tell me?”
“Assaulted,” she said. “And left for dead. It was in the paper.”
“Oh, God.” My chest heaved at the thought. “Do they know who did it?”
She checked a catheter and made a note on the chart. “All I know is they had cops outside ICU. But once her brain functioning stopped, they pulled the security.”
Since she was no use to the cops anymore. And no danger to anyone else. “But no one’s visited her?” I looked at the elaborate tropical arrangement on the bedside table, not quite fresh. A Somdahl & Associates business card peeked out from among the calla lilies. “No one from her office?”
The nurse wrapped a blood pressure cuff around Madeeda’s bruised arm. Her movements were gentle but efficient. “Where’d she work? We figured she was with the government.”
My throat went dry. “Why would you think that?”
“Her ICU nurse. She said the people in the waiting room looked like they were gathered for a tax audit. Short hair, sensible shoes, no flowers.”
“No, she was a secretary,” I said. “Somdahl & Associates. No one there wears sensible shoes.” How could you work in a place and not have coworkers come visit? Even in a coma, I’d like to think someone might keep me company. “Can I ask you,” I said, “what will happen when she dies? I mean, will you call people and notify them?”
“People in general? No.” She looked again at the chart, and flipped a page. Her eyebrows lifted, a spark of surprise, quickly
masked.
A buzzer sounded, and a disembodied voice asked for a Nurse Shayne to please come to room 12E13w stat. “Excuse me,” she said and left quickly, taking the chart with her.
I had to follow her. Taciturn as she was, I had to make her tell me more, tell me something, anything. I stood shakily, clumsy with the weight of the baby, gave a last look to Madeeda, then left the room.
The nurse was already moving around the corner, out of sight. But there, next to the door, in a tiny alcove, was a cart on wheels. In the cart were binders. Patients’ charts. A dozen or more. Clearly labeled. I grabbed “M. Quadros. 12E21e.”
I read the binder tabs and flipped to “patient information.” I was terrified to be caught by the nurse, and half afraid, too, that Labor & Delivery would have sent out a search party by now. But there it was. Under “notes” was an arrow, pointing to a business card stuck in the tab page’s plastic sleeve.
On the card was a number. Familiar, like something I’d seen in a dream.
Important, like the gestational age of a baby or a dosage of medicine, but more common: a phone number. It belonged to someone named Bruce Schoenbrod, who worked in the office of the United States Attorney.
YOU could argue that telling the truth once you’re pretty sure the jig is up is less virtuous than telling the truth because it’s the right thing to do. I didn’t really care about virtue that day. I just wanted to keep Richard out of federal prison.
I talked to Richard from the phone next to my bed in Labor & Delivery. I gave him the number and told him to call it and tell Bruce Schoenbrod everything. I told him that if he didn’t make the call, I would. There wasn’t any doubt in my mind; Madeeda had already given information to the U.S. Attorney. The U.S. Attorney had listened. Somdahl & Associates was going down, with or without my husband’s statement, but unless he came clean before the feds moved in, he’d go down, too.
I don’t know why I understood these things with such clarity. I don’t know why Richard listened to me. I don’t know why Bruce Schoenbrod had picked the week after to seek indictments, and not the week before.
I don’t know why a woman who’d known me for half an hour chose to save my husband, when six of Richard’s colleagues ended up on trial. Five, after Albert Werner put a bullet through his brain while out on bail. I could only guess.
Somdahl & Associates crashed, along with Clarien, the pharmaceutical company, and two others whose files turned up “irregularities.” A lot of people suffered financial loss, unemployment, near-devastation as a result. Including us. But through all of it I felt lucky. Blessed. And able to sleep nights, sleep deeply, from the moment Richard made that phone call. But only for three weeks.
Madeeda died the day after I saw her in the hospital. Twenty-one days later my daughter was born. We named her Grace.
House of Horrors
By S. W. HUBBARD
“That’ll be fifty-eight seventy-five with tax,” the greasy guy at the ticket window said. John winced as the clerk drew the credit card out of his reluctant fingers.
“You’re buying a happy family memory,” his wife murmured in his ear.
Happy my ass. Day one of the Harrigan family-togetherness weekend at the Jersey Shore: blistering sunburns for all.
Day two: jellyfish attack.
Day three: riptide warning.
So Miriam declared a boardwalk excursion. No problem. Give the kids fifty bucks and let them have at it. He and Miriam could walk on the beach and watch the pounding surf. But no, this was togetherness weekend. So each person had to choose one activity, and everyone else had to go along cheerfully. John swore if his wife didn’t stop reading these damn parenting advice books he was going to cut up her library card.
Christopher had chosen the bumper cars, Grace the spinning tea-cups, Miriam the Ferris wheel. But for a jaded teenager like Gordon, only one thing would do.
The House of Horrors.
Blood oozed from the house’s masonry. Hideous shrieks blared from its cracked windows. A vulture hovered over the spiked door. Before the clerk brought the credit card slip to be signed, John made one last bid to dodge the cheesy tourist trap. Crouching down so he could look their skinny little girl in the eye, he asked, “Grace, do you want to go into this haunted house? It’s just pretend scary, but if you’re afraid, I could take you somewhere else.”
“Dad!” Gordon protested. “That’s not fair! I did Grace’s lame tea-cups. She has to do this.”
John opened his mouth to scold, then closed it again at Miriam’s warning look. This beach weekend was their first significant outing since they’d gotten Grace. They were supposed to be celebrating the expansion of their family, not squabbling and sulking.
John studied the nine-year-old. There was a transparent quality to her, she was so slight. Could something scary possibly be good for her after all she’d been through? Her pale green-gold eyes stared at him unblinkingly as the wind whipped her fine hair into a staticky halo around her head. She conveyed neither anxiety nor eagerness, just a steady trust in him as a father.
A trust he’d done nothing, as yet, to earn.
Miriam had connected with the child from the moment she’d seen her picture on the website of foster children awaiting permanent homes. For John, the paternal attachment hadn’t formed quite so readily. He worried it never would.
Not that Grace was a difficult child. In fact, she was almost absurdly easy to take care of. She ate what she was served, went to bed without complaint, and did her homework with painstaking attention to detail. John found her compliance unnerving. On top of that, she was so damn quiet! She’d slip into a room so silently he never knew she was there. He’d look up to find her watching him. Last week he’d nearly sawed off his thumb when she appeared out of nowhere in his basement workshop.
“She does it because she craves your attention and doesn’t know how to get it,” Miriam explained. Insert knife and twist. He wanted to do right by this little girl, he really did. But he wasn’t sure he’d ever feel for her the visceral bond he felt for his two sons. “Don’t worry,” Miriam had assured him. “You’ll grow to love her. Give it time.”
The clerk slapped down the credit card slip and slid a pen across the ticket counter. John watched as Grace carefully studied each person in her new family. She would see annoyance on Gordon’s face, concern on Miriam’s, and finally, fear on Christopher’s. Only a year older than Grace, Christopher was a sensitive soul, upset by life’s smallest tragedies—signs for lost pets, roadkill, a stranger’s passing funeral procession. The haunted house had him looking decidedly queasy.
Grace turned back to John. “I want to go. If it gets too scary, I’ll grab on to Christopher. He’ll protect me.”
John and Miriam exchanged a smile. Grace had succeeded in bolstering Christopher and appeasing Gordon in one move. She’d learned quite a bit about managing brothers in just three weeks.
PURCHASE YOUR SOUVENIR PHOTO AS YOU EXIT. YOU’LL KNOW WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE WHEN YOU’VE SEEN A GHOST! The signs hung over a bank of computer monitors in the entranceway to the House of Horrors, each screen showing a different group of gullible tourists, their eyes opened wide, their mouths perfect Os of shock. John hustled the younger kids along, and they joined a line of teenagers waiting to pass through Purgatory’s Portal.
Rowdy and eager to call attention to themselves, the older kids swarmed around a lean boy with droopy jeans and a mop of blond hair that he repeatedly flicked out of his eyes. The biggest fish in this little school of minnows, he let his hand rest suggestively on one girl’s hip, while shoving the other boys around and insulting their manhood.
“Hey,” he called out to the ticket taker, “what should we do if my friend shits his pants in there?”
Miriam shot them a ferocious look, and the boy made a show of apologizing.
“Oh, pardon me, ma’am. I didn’t mean to use profanity in the presence of women and children.”
The gang of friends howled with laughter, as Gordon
tried to disappear into the woodwork. Meanwhile, Christopher was busy reading the signs posted all around them. IF YOU’RE PARALYZED WITH FEAR, STAND STILL AND SCREAM. SOMETHING WILL COME AND GET YOU! BE ALERT FOR FLYING KNIVES. DON’T WORRY—THE BATS DON’T BITE.
“Dad.” Christopher tugged on his father’s sleeve. “Maybe we shouldn’t go in there. Bats can spread rabies.”
“Ooo, maybe we shouldn’t go in,” the blond kid said, imitating Christopher’s earnest, high-pitched voice. “Ya hear that?” He shoved one of his crew. “You might get rabies and start foaming at the mouth.”
Christopher flushed bright red, as Gordon tried to pretend he didn’t know his family. But Grace stared the teenager down, her pointy chin thrust forward, sixty pounds of defiance. While John weighed whether saying something to the teens would make matters better or worse, a green light flashed and a recorded voice intoned, “Next group—prepare to meet your doom!” The gang of kids stepped into the House of Horrors, their screams echoing back into the waiting area.
“DAD? Dad? Where are you?”
They’ d only taken about twenty steps into the House ofHorrors, and already Christopher sounded like he was heading for a meltdown.
“I’m right behind you, buddy. Don’t worry—you can’t get lost.” The “tour,” John belatedly understood, took place entirely in the dark. It was so completely black they couldn’t see one another, although John knew Gordon was in the lead, guided by tiny pinpricks of red light. Miriam followed, then Grace and Christopher. John brought up the rear, keeping a reassuring hand on his son’s shoulder.
“Augh! Something grabbed me!” Gordon screamed.
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