The Awakening of Dr. Brown

by Kathleen Creighton

  “May’s well be comfortable,” he said as he waved Ethan onto the elevator ahead of him. Following, he clanked the cage gate shut and threw Ethan an unapologetic grin. “Got my smokes hid upstairs.”

  In the loft, Rupert Dove waved his guest to the couch with a careless gesture and made a beeline for the baby grand. He fished a half-empty pack of Camels and a book of matches from its innards and lit up, carefully putting the extinguished match in his pocket before he turned back to Ethan, coughing smoke. “What can I get for you, son?”

  The old piano man waited while Ethan shook his head, then settled himself on the piano bench. Ethan felt sure it must be his customary place; he looked so natural there-like part of the instrument itself. Rupert Dove took another deep drag from his cigarette, coughed alarmingly as he tapped ash into the palm of his hand, then looked narrow-eyed at Ethan. “Well then-what can I do for you?”

  Ethan leaned sharply forward and frowned at his hands, fingers laced together between his knees. His heart was racing; he hadn’t imagined this would be so hard.

  “I expect,” the old man prompted gently, “you’re wantin’ to ask me about her. ’Bout Phoenix.”

  “Not Phoenix,” Ethan said, looking up and straight into the old man’s eyes. “Joanna.” Before the piano man could say anything, Ethan pulled the folded paper with the copy of the newspaper article on it from his shirt pocket, unfolded it carefully, then stood and stepped across the space between them. He handed it to Rupert Dove, then sat down again and waited while the old man took a pair of glasses from his pocket and put them on. Breathing in careful measures, Ethan watched the slow movement of his lips as he read.

  “Oh, my, my…” Rupert Dove said softly when he’d finished.

  “Is that her?” The question came more harshly than he’d meant it, but he didn’t apologize.

  The piano man took off his glasses and carefully folded them and put them back in his pocket before he replied. His eyes no longer looked sharp, but were filmy, now, and sad. “I expect it probably is.”

  “But you don’t know?”

  “I never did know for certain what happened to her folks. She used to have bad dreams, you know, when I first found her. She’d be screamin’ and talkin’ in her sleep, talkin’ wild, about some old tenement building and about fire, and, oh, terrible things. Then she’d wake up cryin’ for her momma. Sometimes she’d cry for them, too-the little ones. Called ’em John and Chrissy. But I never could get her to talk about it when she was awake, so I never did know for sure how it all happened. Or why she lived and all them didn’t.” He shook his head and lifted the cigarette to his lips.

  “What happened to her afterward, do you know?” Ethan’s voice was rough. “How did you meet her?”

  “How’d I meet her?” The piano man laughed softly as he watched the fingers of one hand tap cigarette ash into the palm of the other. He shook his head. “Ah…man. She was a street kid-thirteen years old and a regular little hustler. I’d seen her around, you know, seen her watchin’ the street musicians play for change. Saw the way her face’d just light up, like she was standin’ on the steps of Heaven itself. Figured anybody loved music that much must have a pretty good portion of it in her soul, so…I took her in. Gave her a chance.” He gave a shrug as if to say, “And the rest is history…”

  Ethan felt cold to the bone, hollow and fragile as glass. “She was on the street?” he said in a cracking voice, feeling as if it was he who was cracking, coming apart inside. “Why wasn’t she in a foster home? She was only nine…”

  “I expect she was, at first. In a bunch of them, most likely. From things she told me way back then, I gathered she didn’t take to it too well. Not all that surprising-she was bound to be pretty messed up in the head over what happened to her folks. And then…I think somebody messed with her…other ways. That’s when she ran away, figured she’d take her chances in the streets.”

  “My God,” Ethan whispered. “My God…how old was she, do you know? How long was she out there on her own? How in Heaven’s name did she survive?”

  “She’d have to tell you that,” Rupert Dove said flatly. “Anyway she could, I expect.” He rose and went to extinguish his cigarette under a stream of water in the kitchen sink. When he returned to his bench, he sat himself straight up with one long-fingered hand rounded on each knee and fixed Ethan with a look that was more hawk than dove. “I’ll tell you what I do know. Whatever she did out there, it was what she had to do to survive. It didn’t touch her here.” He tapped his chest with one bony finger. “It’s like I told you before-that girl has a virgin’s heart. And a soul just as sweet and beautiful as a child’s. She did what she had to do, and she ain’t ashamed of that. That ain’t the reason-” He stopped and looked away, and Ethan quietly finished it for him.

  “-she hates herself?”

  “The reason she hates Joanna,” Doveman corrected. “And thinks everybody else is sure to hate her, too. I don’t know why that is. Whatever it is, it’s something only Joanna knows. And she ain’t talkin’.” He drew a deep breath and coughed long and hard, and Ethan felt the chill of sudden realization. He knew what, as a doctor he should have guessed long before this. But it didn’t take a battery of tests to tell him Rupert Dove was dying.

  He felt himself buffeted inside, rocked and pummeled as if he were facing into a strong and gusty wind. And, as during similar stormy times in the past, he cast about in his mind for a safe harbor, a peaceful place in which to shelter from the tumult of his emotions…his own quiet place. But for the first time in his life he found that the peace and restoration he wanted-needed-could not be found in quietness, in solitude. For the first time in his life it wasn’t aloneness he wanted.

  He wanted the company of another person. A very specific person. He wanted Joanna. Wanted to be with her, see her, talk to her. Touch her. Wanted her nearness with a sharp and frantic hunger that made him like an addict running on empty. There were so many things he wanted to say to her. Important things. Things as important, it seemed to him, as life itself. His life, certainly.

  “Where is she?” he asked Rupert Dove, in a voice he didn’t recognize. “I need to talk to her.”

  The piano man lifted his hands. “Couldn’t tell you, son. She told me she wanted to find Joanna, and didn’t know where to look. I told her she ought to look in the place where she lost her, but only she knows where that might be…”

  Where do I look for Joanna?

  An image flashed suddenly into his mind, as if someone had turned a spotlight on a darkened stage. He saw a face at the end of a long, dark hallway…Joanna’s face, gone suddenly pale as death, and silver eyes as wild and forsaken as rain. And lips forming an accusation he couldn’t hear.

  He lurched to his feet. Rupert Dove rose more slowly, but still in time to clutch at his arm as he turned. “You know where she is, boy?”

  “I think I might,” Ethan said. Remorse filled his throat with gravel; shame coiled like steel bands around his chest, making it hard to breathe. You bastard. That was what she’d said to him, there in that stuffy hallway. And what a bastard he’d been, right from the beginning…self-righteous and judgmental. He wondered if she would forgive him. He remembered, suddenly, the image of the fawn in the woods, and thought bleakly that it would serve him right if he’d lost her forever.

  In a hard voice, sparing himself nothing, he told Rupert Dove about Saturday’s outing, about meeting Phoenix in the park, and what happened afterward.

  “I didn’t plan it,” he said, the taste of disgust on his tongue. “But when I realized I had a chance to get her into that building…I’d been trying to get her to come down there to the Gardens. I thought she didn’t have any idea what it was like to live like that.” He broke off, muttering softly, and thrust his hand angrily through his hair. “I didn’t know, Doveman,” he whispered.

  The piano man’s hawklike stare pierced through his despair. “You think she might’ve gone back there-to that building?”


  “I think so…yeah.”

  “Then what are we standin’ here for? Let’s go find her.”

  As the cage groaned and clanked its way downward with unbearable slowness, Rupert Dove gave a soft, wheezing laugh. “Funny thing is, you know…she said the same thing to me, the day she found out she owned the building where that poor woman was killed.”

  Ethan caught a hurting breath. “What’s that?”

  “‘Doveman, I didn’t know…”’

  Chapter 12

  Phoenix had made it only as far as the second-floor landing. She sat on the top step with her arms clasped around her legs and her knees tucked up to her chin, eyes wide-open and staring into the lurking shadows. She was shivering uncontrollably, shivering with a fear she didn’t understand, with a cold that had nothing to do with degrees on a thermometer, and a strange desolation that blanketed her whole being like a damp, musty fog.

  Joanna, don’t you dawdle, you get that milk and hurry right on back, now, you hear? I’m depending on you. Promise me, now.

  I will, Momma. I’ll come right back, I promise…

  Smells drifted up from the floor below-the familiar smells of mildew, human waste and decay…and a cooking smell, acrid and pervasive. Somebody was burning dinner. Something made a rustling sound in the trash that had collected in the corners of the stairs. Shuddering, she drew her feet closer. Somewhere a baby began to cry.

  Waves of revulsion washed through her, leaving her weak and hollow. She drew deep, strengthening breaths-and coughed. The burned cooking smell from downstairs was stronger.

  Bracing one hand on a wall so coated with grime that the graffiti hardly stood out at all, she rose stiffly to her feet and lifted her eyes to stare upward into the shadowy stairwell. One more floor to go.

  The third floor. That was where the boy, Michael, lived. Lived with his aunt, now that his mother was dead. She’d go there…knock on his door…and tell him what? That she was sorry? She didn’t know. She hadn’t thought that far. It was just that…she could feel his hand creeping into hers, like a baby animal snuggling close to its mother for comfort. She could see the sadness in his strange golden eyes as he looked up at her…

  Momma, why do I always have to be the one to go? Why can’t Jonathan?

  Joanna, you know your brother’s not as strong as you are. Doctor says he has to be careful not to get too tired…

  I don’t care! I get tired, too. I have to work all the time. I always have to watch Chrissy, and I never get to play. I hate her! I hate Jonathon. And I hate you!

  A tear rolled down her cheek. She brushed it away as she plodded, one step after another up the stairs, but others followed. Finally, halfway between the second floor and the third she paused to mop at her face with the hem of her shirt. But for some reason, her eyes just kept burning. She sniffed-hard-and erupted into violent coughing. The smell-the burning food smell-was so strong it was choking her.

  No-not a food smell. Smoke.

  Smoke was drifting up the stairwell, reaching with ghostly tentacles, spreading like fake, stage fog, the kind that comes from dry ice. She could hear something now, too-a faint, far-off crackling sound.

  Fear came first. It spiked through her like a lance, pinioning her to the spot. Paralyzed, unable to breathe, she closed her eyes tightly and clamped her hands over her ears, trying to shut out the screams. Momma! Jonathan…Chrissy! Where are you? Momma!

  But the screams were inside her own head.

  She never knew how she’d come to be there, but suddenly she was running down a hallway, hammering on doors with her fists and screaming, “Fire! Fire-get out! You have to get out!” Screaming until her throat was raw. Screaming and banging until doors opened to angry faces…slowly comprehending faces…frightened faces. And in the midst of that chaos, her mind was rejecting it all, insisting with the adamance of a stubborn child, No-no, this can’t be happening. It can’t be happening, not to me!

  Angrily now she herded them down the hallway toward the stairs-children and old people, some half-dressed, some crying…some too dazed to even be scared. Inwardly raging, she felt almost glad to have an excuse to scream at someone, a reason to vent her fury at the Fates who would play such a cruel joke on her. Not me! Why is this happening again…to me?

  The understanding came to her gently, more like a sunrise than a thunderclap. The screams and shouts and poundings faded and she entered a strange kind of calm, almost like a dream. Of course you, Joanna. Of course you.

  In the dream she heard whispers, voices from the past. Doveman’s voice, saying, “…Look in the place where I was when I lost it.” She’d come full circle, Joanna had. The Fates had brought her back to the place where she’d lost herself, twenty-five years before. For reasons she couldn’t begin to understand, she was being given another chance. A chance to find Joanna.

  On the second floor the smoke was thicker. Doors were opening even before she got to them, people finally roused by the commotion, coming out to see what was going on and meeting with the black, choking cloud.

  “Get down!” Joanna screamed at them. “Stay low, but hurry! Get out! Run!”

  Down the stairs she went, elbowing people aside, stumbling, half falling, lungs screaming for air. It was her nightmare come to life-the blackness and choking smoke…the colors of fire, flames licking up a door frame, hissing across the ceiling…and a strange keening sound that she realized finally was coming from her own throat.

  From somewhere nearby she heard glass breaking. People were all around her, pushing past her, some crying and choking, others eerily silent, all running, running for the front door and the clean clear air outside. She kept trying to make headway in the opposite direction, certain there must be someone else left inside, certain that only she could save them. But as in her nightmare, no matter how hard she tried, her legs would not propel her forward. She felt herself being carried along with the crowd, helpless as a leaf in a torrent.

  Then she was outside, moving like a sleepwalker through the crowd of people that had gathered in the street…dark shapes with shocked faces, eyes staring past her at the smoke that had begun to billow from broken windows. Somewhere in the distance sirens wailed, getting louder, coming nearer. Someone clutched at her arm and she jerked around, startled and uncomprehending.

  A woman stood there, arms wrapped protectively around the baby clinging in terror to her neck. The woman was shouting at her, her face contorted with anguish and fear, screaming words Joanna couldn’t hear. The noise and the wailing of the sirens filled her ears, filled all the space inside her head. Clapping her hands over her hears, she bent her head close to the woman’s and shouted, “What?”

  “It’s Michael! I can’t find Michael! I don’t know what happened to him-I thought he was right there. Oh, Lord- Oh, Jesus…I don’t what I’ll do if anything happens to him. First his momma and now…”

  Michael. The little boy whose mother had died. The child she and Ethan had spent the day with Saturday, in the park. The child who had stood in front of his mother’s apartment and gazed up at her with lost, golden eyes. She remembered the feel of his small hand stealing into hers, felt it so vividly she looked down and was surprised not to see him there.

  She clutched the woman with both hands just as the sirens yelped and died, so her voice grated loud in the comparative silence. “You think he’s still in there?”

  The woman’s head bobbed frantically. “He mighta went to his old place-I know he had the key. He’d do that sometimes, when he was missin’ his momma bad. It’s the first one you come to, right at the top-”

  But Joanna was already running, pushing through the crowd with her panther’s stride, making for the cracked concrete steps that would take her back into the burning building. Back into Hell. Back into her own half-forgotten past.

  Ethan unbuckled his seat belt and hitched himself forward. “What’s going on? Why are we stopping?”

  Tom Applegate shrugged. “Can’t see, sir. An emergency of some sort-they
’ve got the street blocked off.”

  “Some kind of mess up ahead,” Rupert Dove muttered, tapping his gnarled fingers on one bony knee.

  Ethan demanded harshly, “Can’t we get through some other way?” Urgency jumped and twitched in all his muscles; he felt a tightness in his chest and a churning in his belly he couldn’t explain, except that he knew he had to see Joanna-or Phoenix, or whomever she decided she wanted to be; it no longer mattered to him, and he wanted, needed, to tell her that-now.

  Tom lifted a hand from the steering wheel in a gesture of helplessness. His eyes met Ethan’s in the rearview mirror-steady, uncompromising but not without compassion. Staring back at him, Ethan knew what he had to do. Without a moment’s hesitation, he reached for the door handle.

  “You ain’t goin’ without me,” Rupert Dove wheezed as he pushed his own door open. Ethan heard the old man’s raspy breathing close behind him as he wove his way between idling cars, wading across the streams of headlights and through clouds of engine exhaust. Just as he reached the sidewalk, Tom Applegate pushed past him, swearing, to take his customary place in the lead. Behind them in the clogged street, horns began to bleat futilely.

  Two blocks farther on they found the street filled with fire engines and police and EMS vehicles. Beyond the police barricades shadowy figures were going efficiently about their business in a world turned chaotic, moving quickly, shouting orders, wrestling equipment, or bending quietly over silent shapes huddled on stoops and curbs. Outside the barricades people stood clumped together in groups, holding each other, some weeping, some just staring at the frantic scene with dazed and empty eyes.