Spirit Me Away

by Aaron Paul Lazar

  The siren wailed closer, simultaneous with the clatter of hoof beats. A pair of mounted police galloped across the Commons toward us, but the throng of slack-jawed onlookers gawked and pressed closer around Valerie. With the help of the policewoman, I tried to push them back, but there were too many and they kept skirting around me to get a better look.

  I motioned to Clive. “Hey, pal, can you give us a hand?”

  I had no idea why he wasn’t helping. Before long, the swelling crowd would crush Valerie.

  He started to slink away when the ambulance pulled up and the mounted police trotted closer to the scene.

  I watched him slide into the horde of onlookers, and felt myself redden with anger. “Clive, for God’s sake. Help me keep these people back.”

  “Sorry, man,” he mumbled. He disappeared into the crowd.

  Furious now, I shouted at the people who craned their necks to see. “Get away. Move back!” I jumped onto the bumper of the Datsun, waving my arms at the EMTs. “Over here,” I flagged down one man who emerged from the van.

  He jogged closer, moved Porter and the agitated driver out of the way, and began to work on Valerie. Seconds later, his partners arrived with the stretcher.

  “I didn’t mean any harm,” the driver said, repeating himself. “She just ran right out in front of me.”

  The mounted police finally pushed the crowd back, and the attendants lifted Valerie onto a stretcher, while Porter and Elsbeth hovered nearby.

  “Will she be okay?” Elsbeth asked, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Please! Can you tell me? Will she be all right?”

  The EMTs didn’t give her answers, just nodded seriously and muttered a few clipped instructions to each other. They lifted the stretcher into the back of the ambulance, and Elsbeth climbed in after them.

  Porter and I looked at each other when they left, staring down at the blood spot on the tar.

  “Cripes. Clive took off?” Porter asked, shaking his head and looking around the area for him.

  I nodded. “Unbelievable, huh? The jerk slinked away as soon as he saw the cops coming. Doesn’t look too promising for Valerie, that’s for sure.”

  We jogged past the diner and through the crowd, toward the side street where I’d parked the Valiant.

  Porter suddenly stopped, looking as if he’d seen a ghost.

  “What?” I said, spinning to search the crowd.

  “I thought…” After a moment, he shook his head. “Nothing. I just saw a guy that looked a lot like Nate. You know, the monkey man?”

  I shot him a glance and frowned. “Weird.”

  He strode forward quickly, looking over his shoulder every so often. “Yeah. Weird is right. Considering I already killed him.”

  Chapter 31

  Elsbeth met Porter and me in the Boston Memorial Hospital waiting room. We fell into each other’s arms, did a three-way hug, and sat together in the corner, away from the blaring television.

  “She came to by the time we got here,” Elsbeth said, wiping at tears trickling down her cheeks. “The doctors said she was stunned by the accident, has terrible bruises, and plenty of scrapes along her legs and arms.”

  “Oh, God.” Porter looked toward the double doors where doctors emerged every few minutes to call someone’s name. “But she’ll be okay?”

  “They think so,” she said.

  Surprised at the depth of Porter’s emotion, I watched him cradle his head in his arms. His shoulders shook.

  I took a deep breath and tried to stay calm, but it wasn’t easy. Screams came from behind the double doors. Bloodied people of all ages wandered and cried in the hallways. Patients packed the room. I had the visceral urge to run away, to plug my ears and run into the warm evening air. I pushed down the impulse and held my wife’s hand tightly. Her eyes were haunted and wide, her face pale. She exchanged a glance with Porter and then closed her eyes and leaned her head against my shoulder.

  After an hour, the doctor finally came out to speak with us. She was a petite woman with straight black hair and vivid blue eyes. “Valerie Coolidge?” she called, checking her clipboard.

  We all stood at once. Elsbeth raised her hand to flag down the doctor. “Yes,” Elsbeth said. “Over here.”

  The doctor gave us a sad smile. “You’re her family?”

  I lied. “Yes.”

  “Okay, well then, I’m afraid I have bad news.”

  Porter stiffened, I stopped breathing, and Elsbeth collapsed against me. I steadied her and helped her to a chair.

  “Oh, no. Please.” The doctor followed us and put her hand on Elsbeth’s shoulder. “It’s not that,” she said quickly. “She’ll be okay. She’s fine, actually. She’ll be a bit sore for a week, but she’ll recover.”

  She hesitated, blew her long bangs back from her face and mopped her forehead with her sleeve. “Sorry. It’s been a long couple of days here.” After searching our faces for a few moments, she said, “Which one of you is the father?”

  Porter looked confused. “Her father?”

  Finally, I understood what she meant and spoke up. “Oh, you mean the father of her baby?”

  The doctor nodded.

  I hesitated. “Neither of us. He’s...he’s not here.”

  She lowered her eyes to the clipboard, and then raised them to us. “Try to locate him if you can. Valerie lost the baby a few minutes ago.”

  Elsbeth burst into tears.

  I felt numb, as if I couldn’t absorb any more bad news.

  Porter stood stock-still. His eyes hardened and watered.

  “We will,” I said mechanically. “Thanks for letting us know.”

  “When can we see her?” Porter asked, his face flooded with concern.

  The doctor looked at her watch. “It’s late now. I’d say come back in the morning. We’ll discharge her then, assuming she’s doing well.”

  Elsbeth cried on my shoulder. I wasn’t sure if it was borne of sadness due to the loss of the baby, or relief that her friend was alive. I rocked her for a few minutes, and figured it was probably both, with maybe a bit of weeping due to what happened to her after the Led Zeppelin party. She was still very fragile, and had cried herself to sleep in my arms every night since it happened.

  “Come on, honey. It’s time to go home now. We’ll come back in the morning.”

  She sniffled and stood up. “Okay. Take me home, Gus. Please take me home.”

  Chapter 32

  I slept fitfully that night, and noticed Elsbeth tossing and turning, too. When Monday morning finally broke, we rose early to drive to the hospital, wiping the sleep from our eyes and chugging coffee from foam cups with plastic lids. Porter had to work for his parents at the diner that morning, but we promised to call him when we had Valerie safe and sound at home.

  In the light of day, somehow the emergency room seemed less alarming. The crowd had thinned since the night before, with fewer worried family members asleep on chairs. They looked nervously into the distance with tissues clutched in their hands. One large family quietly played cards in the corner.

  I’d seen them arrive last night, faces tight with fear and eyes full of dread. The man they cared about—father, brother, and/or grandfather—had been brought in on a stretcher with an oxygen mask covering his mouth and nose. I’d watched them wheel him through the double doors into the ER with a woman, whom I assumed was his wife, clutching his hand. His eyes were closed, and he’d labored to breathe. He’d looked to be in his forties, around my father’s age.

  Seeing him had scared the hell out of me, and I resolved to call my parents soon. I’d avoided it for too long and the thought of losing my father—or mother—at such an age sent shocks of paralysis through my system. I’d lost my grandfather LeGarde not long ago, and that was hard enough to bear. Thinking of my relatively young parents dying was impossible to imagine, yet, here I was, in this very hospital where last night I’d seen a man of his age come in on a stretcher.

  When we arrived, we asked at the desk about
Valerie’s status, and the nurse said she’d been “processed” and moved to the third floor. Relieved that she’d been taken to a quieter part of the hospital, we hopped the elevator and followed the signs to her ward, found the room, and tapped on the door.

  “Come in.” Valerie answered in a small voice, sounding frail.

  When she saw us, a smile crept onto her face. She lay in her hospital bed, propped with pillows and covered with a thin blanket. Pale, exhausted, and most likely frightened, she beckoned us inside and we hurried to her side.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she cried, hugging Elsbeth. Her voice caught in her throat, thick from crying, “I lost my baby.”

  Elsbeth began to cry anew, which triggered the same response in Valerie. They held each other to mourn the unborn child.

  Unsure how to help, I perched awkwardly on the edge of the metal heater near the window.

  After several minutes, they separated and wiped their eyes. Valerie handed Elsbeth tissues from the box on the nightstand.

  “We’re wrecks, huh?” Elsbeth said, sniffling and extending her hand to me.

  I joined her on the side of the bed.

  “Yeah,” Valerie said softly. “Hey, Gus. Thanks for coming.”

  I leaned down and pecked her cheek. “No problem, Valerie. I’m really sorry about the baby.”

  She nodded, barely holding back the tears.

  “Will you be okay?” I asked.

  “I guess so,” she said, shifting uncomfortably on the bed. “But I...I remembered something when I saw him.”

  I blinked. “When you saw Clive?”

  Valerie nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  Elsbeth straightened. “Is that why you ran, honey?”

  She nodded vigorously. “Exactly. As soon as I saw him, a memory flashed before me and I panicked. I really almost vomited. It scared me. So I bolted.”

  “You poor thing,” Elsbeth said, patting Valerie’s arm.

  “Do you feel like talking about it?” I said.

  “Yes. I want to. I have to figure out what’s real and what’s not.”

  Elsbeth leaned forward and pushed a stray lock of hair from Valerie’s forehead. “Tell us what you remembered, sweetie. We’re here for you.”

  The girl leaned back against the pillows. “Okay, when Clive walked into the diner, I got this weird vision. It was a doctor’s office, and I was lying on an operating table with a white sheet over my lower half. I had my feet in the stirrups and a nurse stood beside the doctor.”

  “Oh, God, honey. That’s awful,” Elsbeth said, patting Valerie’s arm.

  “I knew I was drugged, because my speech was slurred and the room spun. Clive was there…” She hiccupped into a crying fit, once more hugging Elsbeth.

  When she quieted, she said, “Clive was forcing me down, wouldn’t let me get off the table. When I finally realized they were about to terminate my baby, I jumped from the table and screamed at them. Somehow, I struggled away from them and ran out into the waiting room. I was standing half-naked with a sheet wrapped around me in a room filled with young girls all waiting for the same procedure.”

  Elsbeth and I listened intently, and Valerie continued, weeping now.

  “They made me do it that time. They took my baby.” She hiccupped and sobbed, leaning into Elsbeth’s hug. “But that’s not all. I remembered who Clive is. He’s not my old man. He’s not my lover. He’s not my band mate. I think I played in a band for a while, but not with him. I think he’s my stepbrother. I’m picturing him on a bus with me. We left home together. I can’t remember why, or when. I can’t remember the house. But I remember the Trailways bus. We sat in the back, on a ripped cloth seat. There was a little black girl beside me. She was a real sweetie pie. I was crying. I don’t remember why. The little girl tried to comfort me.”

  Elsbeth stroked Valerie’s arm as she spoke. “Do you remember anything else, honey?”

  Valerie nodded quickly and wiped tears from her eyes. “One more thing.”

  “Take your time, Valerie,” I said. “It’s okay. You can talk about it later if you want.”

  “No, no. I need to get it out. Awful as it is,” she whispered.

  She drew a deep breath, folded her hands in front of her, and continued. “Clive was on drugs. Real bad. He used me to earn money for his next fix. Kept me drugged and at first, rented me out to his friends. Then he set me up with strangers. Kept me in a filthy room, zonked out on heavy stuff, and forced me to...to...have sex with them. I finally escaped one night when he was passed out. Took my guitar case, my lute, a few belongings, and ran like hell again. I don’t remember where I fell or what hit my head. That part is still a blank. But I do remember him. He hired me out. And now I’ve lost my second baby,” she said. Her face crumpled and she buried it in her hands.

  We sat in the white, pristine hospital room, digesting the news. Elsbeth took Valerie in her arms again and rocked her. The room fan kicked in and whirred softly, creating an electronic counterpoint to the soft weeping of both women.

  I stared intently at the white wall tiles near the sink in the corner of the room, and pictured the poor baby who’d been subject to countless doses of drugs and who-knows-what diseases. I felt sick, almost dizzy with anger and sorrow. I stood and wandered unsteadily to the window. The image of the baby pressed on my brain. With my hands in my pockets, I stared at the trees and buildings and finally focused on a robin balancing on a tree limb just outside the window. She hopped along the branch with a worm in her mouth and disappeared around the corner.

  Could the child have turned out healthy, after all that happened to him or her? Or would she have been disfigured, or mentally damaged? I wouldn’t wish the poor thing dead, no matter what the outcome. A child seemed such a precious commodity, whether he emerges whole or healthy, or has a terrible illness.

  The door opened and a nurse swished into the room. “Ready to go home, Miss Coolidge? Dr. Wosner signed your release papers a few minutes ago. ”

  Valerie sat up, collected herself, and nodded. “Uh huh. I’m ready. And when I get my identification papers, I’ll bring them back so you can bill me properly.”

  “Good. We’ve got you covered as an indigent patient right now, but it would be lovely if you do have insurance if you could update the file. Remember now, you’ll have to take it easy, though, and come back in a few days for a follow-up exam.”

  I spoke up. “Don’t worry, we’ll take good care of her. She’s family.”

  Chapter 33

  Valerie recuperated for the rest of the week in the apartment. We were unsuccessful finding out anything about a Valerie Coolidge from the southwest, even though we called Coolidges for hours and asked if they knew Valerie.

  After discovering Clive’s dirty game, I figured that probably was another lie. Coolidge probably wasn’t her last name. But for now, it was all we had.

  Elsbeth made vegetable soup, chicken salad sandwiches, cranberry scones, a tofu and veggie stir-fry, bowls of jello, and various other concoctions for her heartbroken patient.

  By the second day, Valerie was sitting up on the couch; by the fourth, she was doing dishes, light housework, and smiling occasionally. On the following Sunday, she was sick of being stuck in the apartment, and asked if we could attend the Cambridge Commons Love-In. A new band, named Alice Cooper, was scheduled to appear with the “Boss Town” bands, Orpheus and Ultimate Spinach.

  Rather than let my wife go alone with Valerie, I quickly offered to drive. After what happened following the last concert, I wasn’t ready to take any chances.

  Elsbeth seemed relieved I was coming along, however, and also suggested we invite Porter, who’d been in thoughtful attendance all week, anyway.

  Byron and Lana both declined. Byron was scheduled to sing at a local church where all the ladies swooned over him, including the blue-haired set, and Lana said she needed to catch up on her sleep. Neither Byron nor I had summoned the courage to talk to Lana about her true “profession,” although we worrie
d it was dangerous, and had discussed it a few times between ourselves. Confrontation wasn’t my strong suit.

  Hopping into the Valiant, we picked up Porter behind the diner, crossed over the Charles River, and headed down Mass. Ave toward Cambridge.

  When we passed the grounds of Harvard, Valerie seemed to get excited. “Hey, guys. That’s the Fogg Museum. The Wertheim Collection, on the second floor, has one the finest collections of Impressionist and post-Impressionist work in the country.”

  I pulled over to the side of the road, put the Valiant in park, and swung around to face her. Elsbeth did the same.

  “Valerie?” she said, her eyebrows rising. “My gosh. Where did that come from? How’d you know all that stuff?”

  Valerie’s eyes widened. “Oh, man. I don’t know.”

  The motor idled softly as students passed by on bicycles and crowds of colorful flower children flowed in the direction of the Commons.

  She craned her head toward the buildings. “Oh, wow. I think I’ve been here before.”

  Elsbeth beamed at her. “Honey, that’s such good news. Let’s see if you remember any more, the closer we get to the Commons.”

  “Portamento,” I said, smiling. “Right? Sliding slowly, sideways, from memory to memory. You’ll get there, Valerie. You’re getting closer every day.”

  She laughed for the first time in days. “Grab that parking spot, over there. We can walk from here. I think I know the way.”

  I pulled into the spot she found. Porter got out and put money in the meter, and we joined him to walk two-by-two along the bustling sidewalk. The atmosphere in Cambridge that day bordered on euphoria. Long-haired young men and women of all ages trotted along, laughing and shrieking, waving their colorful shawls, swirling their skirts and creating foggy clouds of pot. The sickly smell permeated the air, mingling with the scent of roses tumbling over stone walls.

  I noticed that my wife fit right in with the crowd. She wore a long, white dress that flowed over her sandals and swished provocatively when she walked. The embroidered bodice was a work of art, with rose-colored thread sewn into complicated, Indian designs. A pink bandana wrapped her dark hair, tied under it in the back. To add to the music of the day, a dozen silver bracelets clattered up and down her arm as she walked, and multiple strings of crystal beads clacked and swayed from her neck.