Mortal Remains

Chapter 4

That same evening, Tuesday, November 6, 9:30 P.M.

Hampton Junction

Mark brushed aside a cobweb and sent a nest of spiders scurrying for cover. From a wall of cardboard cartons, he pulled out the third box he’d been through that evening. He was in the basement of his house, the home where he grew up and now lived and worked, rummaging in the inactive files that his father, Dr. Cam Roper, had stored here for as long as he could recall. The voice of his mother complaining about it ran as clear as a recording through his head.

“Honestly, dear, you’ve got lots of space in that office of yours in the village. Why clutter us up with this junk? We could make a workshop down here.”

“That’s why I’m filling it up with this stuff,” his dad had whispered to him, then winked. “To make sure I don’t have to spend our Saturdays down here building stupid shelves.”

Our Saturdays. Mark smiled at the resonance those words could still evoke.

That was before he’d lost them both.

First his mother. Pricked her finger on a needle, he’d been told. Then she fell sick and died in a matter of days. To a five-year-old boy it sounded like something out of a fairy tale, an evil spell cast by a wicked dwarf involving a spinning wheel. But no magic kiss brought her back. Later he’d learned the needle had been a syringe, and the evil had been meningococcus bacteria from a patient with meningitis. She’d infected herself while helping out at his father’s office drawing blood samples.

Two years later his father died, killed in a freak explosion.

Aunt Margaret, his mother’s older sister, already widowed at fifty-five and childless, had insisted on moving in and taking care of him. “For a while,” the crusty old woman told him at first.

She’d stayed for good.

Even when he’d come back from medical school, she continued to live here. At the time he sensed she wasn’t finished watching over him. Since they were each other’s only family, he didn’t mind.

Initially he’d set up his own office in town, finding one with a spacious apartment above it. But when Margaret died, he moved in here, practice and all. Just until he had time to dispose of the estate, he told himself. That was two years ago.

Outside the wind had come up, moaning and whistling against the wooden slat door that led to the yard. The beams above his head creaked and groaned as if the whole structure threatened to lift off the stone foundation, but it never had and, Mark guessed, never would. He easily ignored the sounds, having snuggled under blankets and fallen asleep to them throughout his life. Instead he concentrated on going through the Mcs.

“You have a dad who’s a great doctor, you know,” Kelly had said to him on many occasions, puffing him up with pride. “He saw me first when I was a little girl and was very sick. Now I’m healthy, but he’s still the one I talk with. Lucky you to have him all the time.”

Not for long.

The summer she disappeared, he lost his father in the autumn.

Funny about sound memories. Recalling a person’s voice seemed far more vivid than conjuring up a face. It was as if the dead spoke to him.

He moved on to checking the Bs.

Whenever Kelly came up from New York, she’d always made it a point to come over. As a little boy Mark assumed it was to play with him, especially since she had been his baby-sitter for most summers up until medical school kept her in the city. She always made such a big deal out of seeing him, scooping him up in her arms for a hug and a big smooch. He smiled, remembering how her skin smelled like cinnamon. She made him feel important, the first adult outside his mom and dad or aunt to do so, and he loved the way she fussed over him on account of she liked him, not simply because they were related.

But the truth was she’d also been there to see his dad. An hour became a slow, unendurably long torture whenever he had to wait outside the study, listening for the two of them to finish talking so she’d be all his again.

Kelly might have told his father about her troubles. And if he acted as her physician, even if only as a sounding board, he might have kept a file documenting whatever they discussed. If such a record existed, Mark figured he might find an adult’s point of view as to what was going on in Kelly’s life just prior to her death.

His own youthful recollections of that time came to him filtered through love. When his mother died, Kelly became so much more to him, even though she was in medical school by then, and her visits were less frequent. For a year he felt safe only when she hugged him, said everything would be all right, and softly sang to him. “Puff the Magic Dragon,” “Yellow Submarine,” “To Every Season” – no matter what the lyrics, her voice in his ear made them both invincible. Eventually his mother’s death started to seem long ago, and at times he could again be a carefree kid in endless sunny days. She’d given his childhood a reprieve, resurrecting it before the world grew dark again.

He flicked over voluminous sets of labeled manila tabs before Braden-McShane, Kelly popped up. Looks promising, he thought. the folder being thicker than the rest. Pulling it out of the box, he carried it over to a workbench, snapped on a lightbulb that dangled from the ceiling, and opened the front cover.

The first page contained a faded clinical entry dated July 13, 1951.

His father’s first year in practice. He began to read.

Kelly is six years old. Mother states she’s had a long-standing stomach disorder that no doctors in New York have managed to help her with. Complaints, according to her mother, range from intermittent abdominal pain, nausea, loss of appetite, irregular bowel movements, and diarrhea alternating with constipation. The problem has been episodic since infancy. No history of fevers. No history of tarry stool or blood by rectum. No discoloration of urine, nor jaundiced skin or eyes. Recurrent nonspecific rashes. Repeated investigations, including X rays of her upper and lower intestinal tracts using barium, have been negative.

Rest of Functional Inquiry: Negative.

Immunizations: Complete to date.

Surgical History: Appendectomy at age four, subsequently reported to be normal. Laparotomy at age five, for abdominal pain NYD, results negative.

Family history: No siblings. No history of allergies, diabetes, arthritis, nervous or psychiatric disorders in either mother’s or father’s family (according to the mother’s account).

Social History: Father is founder and president of a brokerage company in New York. Mother active in some charities, but looks after Kelly herself. No nanny or nurse.

Kelly initially shy, but on careful questioning reports no abdominal symptoms of any kind today.

Physical Exam:

Appearance: Well-groomed. Blond hair, blue eyes, thin physique.

CVS: Normal heart sounds. BP 85/60; P 88

Chest: Clear

Abdomen: Non-tender, normal bowel sounds, no bruit, no masses, liver and spleen normal. Surgical scars RLQ and midline below the umbilicus consistent with history of appendectomy and laparotomy.

External genitalia: Normal

Limbs and extremities: Normal

Skin: No rashes at present.

EENT: Normal.

Head and Neck: Normal

Neurological Exam: Normal

Impression: Healthy young girl. Functional GI disorders and neurodermatitis, both secondary to stress.

Plan: Prescribed fun and sun. Good nutrition. Frank discussion with Mrs. McShane stressing the absence of any physical illness in her daughter. Follow up in one month to see how child is doing, or immediately if symptoms return (which isn’t likely).

Mark started to flip the page when he saw written faintly in pencil off to one side the word Mother? He smiled. His father had obviously nailed the problem, diagnosing Kelly’s symptoms as the result of a high-strung parent.

No further entries appeared on the other side of the paper. Clearly Kelly’s mother hadn’t brought her daughter back. Probably hadn’t liked the “frank discussion.”

He shivered. The dampness down here had already penetrated his bones, but now he felt a draft around his legs. He got up and walked over to the slat door that was taking the brunt of the wind. A flow of cool air from where the bottom had warped out of the frame ran across his feet. He grabbed an old coat and stuffed it into the opening.

Seated again, he came to a sheet not so faded, but nevertheless aged. It had brief entries running from July 1, 1970, to July 3, 1974. Each one was identical. Three words: Psychiatric support therapy. Mark let out a solitary quiet chuckle. He’d been right about Kelly discussing her issues with his father. But the man had done what he, Mark, did when the material was so sensitive the patient wanted it to be kept absolutely secret, even from people authorized to look at the record – simply recorded that the session took place, not what was said.

Discouraged, he went on to the third document, a sheet of flowered stationery folded in thirds.

Opening it, he read:

July, 14, 1974

Dear Doctor R,

The salutation made him smile. Kelly had always called his father Dr. R.

You were right. I was not being candid with you when we met two weeks ago. There is a reason I’m so happy, and you are the first and only person I can tell.

I’ve met a man.

A wonderful, caring man who loves me, and I love him.

What a release to be cherished, respected, and liked. I feel as if all the other garbage has fallen away, and I’m free, with a new life ahead of me. Whether it will be with him or not, I don’t know, but I’m full of hope. I haven’t decided yet what to do about it all, and look forward to talking over possible strategies with you. But I am ecstatic!

Regarding the other two matters, we must discuss those. Whatever I plan for myself, I can’t leave and let them go unresolved.

Can we have lunch at the Plaza on Saturday, the twenty-seventh? I can’t bear to go to the estate on weekends anymore, and have pleaded hospital work as my excuse to stay in the city. Waiting to see you then.

Love,

Kelly

Mark’s pulse leapt.

The man could be the mystery person in the cab. If his father had kept the appointment with her, she’d probably told him who it was.

He quickly pulled out and unfolded the next two sets of documents in the file, hoping to see a note or follow-up letter about their meeting.

No such luck. In his hands he held photocopies of some New York City Hospital M and M reports, or Death Rounds, the conference that reviews patient morbidity and mortality.

What the hell were these doing here? Scanning through them, he saw that they were accounts of two separate cases involving digitalis toxicity. The first patient had lived, the second had died, but there were no names listed, only chart numbers, standard practice to preserve anonymity in such investigations. One was dated January 1974, the other June of the same year. They must be misfiled, he concluded, laying them aside.

The final contents were old newspaper clippings lauding the Braden family’s involvement in the community. A FAMILY AFFAIR read the headline of one. It praised the volunteer work of Mrs. Charles Braden and her daughter-in-law, Kelly McShane Braden, at a local home for unwed mothers called The Braden Foundation Clinic founded by Dr. Charles Braden III. LIKE FATHER LIKE SON ran the lead of another article featuring Chaz helping check out a newborn at another of Dad’s projects, an upscale maternity center in Saratoga Springs.

Nothing of use, Mark decided. The Bradens were renowned for lending their name to high-profile charities, as well as feeding the family fortune through commercial medical ventures such as high-priced private clinics. In fact Charles had pioneered the concept of combining the intimacy of home delivery with the latest in obstetrical technology in freestanding facilities, then franchised it through a well-known hospital chain. Mark returned the clippings to the file, having no idea why his father had stuck them here.

Still, he had Kelly’s letter. He’d contact Everett first thing in the morning and tell the detective he’d found proof that she had a lover. Chances were he might have been the mystery man in the taxi.

To which Everett would say, Who was he?

And he’d have to admit he didn’t know.

At that point Everett would probably hang up on him.

Shit!

He had another thought. Why hadn’t his father passed the letter on to the police? Obviously he kept it to himself even after she disappeared.

As Mark picked it up and read it again, it sank in just how abstract Kelly was to him. How different and tormented she must have been from his sunlit memories of her. He never caught so much as a hint of her unhappiness or that she needed to escape from it. Nor had he any specific recollection of her last days in Hampton Junction. He remembered only his father telling him that she’d had to leave without saying good-bye.

“Then I’ll say hello when she’s back,” Mark had said, accustomed to her comings and goings to medical school. But as days turned to weeks with no sign of Kelly, those few words with his dad became the landmark that stuck, not whatever laughing encounter with her that had been his last. Unlikely his take on her with the eyes of a seven-year-old would help explain anything about those final weeks anyway. Hell, he still had trouble reconciling his version of the woman he had known with the grisly remains lying in the mortuary.

He continued to stare at the letter. It at least pinned down one event in the countdown to her murder. The day Kelly and his father planned to have lunch together, presuming they met, she had little more than a week to live.

He pictured them at the Plaza. Had she been as rapturous and exuberant as she sounded in her writing? Was his father happy for her? Did they order champagne? The image of them toasting her well-deserved joy, oblivious to death being so near, filled Mark with sadness. Dreams could be so puny, struggle, hope, and daring so futile. She was on the verge of achieving everything – being a doctor, finding a man who loved her, making a clean break with her past. It made her moment of celebration seem all the more cruel.

Then a chill that had nothing to do with the cold shimmied through him.

That meeting, if it took place, also marked what would be the final two months of his father’s life.

10:00 P.M.

Buffalo, New York

“Can we do a cuddle sandwich now, Daddy?”

Earl looked up from his computer screen to see Brendan, dazed and tousled, totter through the study door. “What are you doing awake?”

“Isn’t Mummy home yet?”

“I’m afraid not.” He stood and picked the boy up. “But it’s back to sleep for you.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s very late.”

“I mean why isn’t she home?”

The vagaries of labor had sabotaged yet another evening of all three of them being together, but try and explain that to a four-year-old. “I told you, sometimes babies don’t want to come out on time,” he said, placing him in bed and tucking in his covers.

“Can’t she make them?”

“Sometimes, but not tonight.”

“She could holler real loud at them, like she does for us when we’re playing outside, and it’s time to eat.”

He grinned down at the budding obstetrical genius. “Mummy won’t be home until long after you’re asleep.”

“I can stay awake.”

“No, you can’t.”

“Look. My eyes are open wide.” He scissored his lids apart with his fingers and grinned like some goofy space creature.

Earl slowly reached toward him with twitching fingers. “Not for long.”

Brendan started to giggle. “Yes, for long.”

“But Mr. Tickle’s here.”

His small hands flew out to grab Earl’s. “No, not Mr. Tickle,” he squealed, wriggling with delight in his bed. “Cuddle sandwich! Cuddle sandwich!”

“Time to sleep, little man.”

“Tomorrow morning?”

“Hey, you’re as relentless as your mother.”

“What’s ‘rentless’?”

“Relentless. It means you never give up.”

“Do I get a cuddle sandwich?”

“Okay. Tomorrow morning, you can crawl into bed between Mummy and me, but not until the sun comes up.”

“Promise?”

“You bet. Now good night, and let’s see who can give the strongest hug.”

Brendan’s arms flew around Earl’s neck and squeezed for all their worth. The embrace had the restorative power of a resuscitation. “Night, Daddy,” he said.

Earl gently held him a second longer, pronounced him the winner, and turned out the light.

A quarter of an hour later, alone in his own bed, except for Muffy sprawled on her back, he once again wrestled with what to tell Janet. There’d been small follow-up stories on the evening newscasts, and other New York papers posted updates on their web sites. The only new development was that the NYPD had turned the investigation over to the local authorities in the Adirondacks who had found the remains. Anyone with pertinent information on the case should contact Sheriff Dan Evans or Dr. Mark Roper, coroner. Earl recognized a slough when he saw it, having had his own share of unwanted work dumped on him.

At first he’d felt relief. Recalling the sleepy countryside surrounding Chaz Braden’s estate, he couldn’t imagine there being much of a police force there. Any attention to her murder would probably focus on local acquaintances of hers. It might even be directed at Chaz again, and this time subject his alibi for the day she disappeared to the rigors of small-town scrutiny. After all, weren’t rural murders more apt to get solved than urban ones, what with everybody being into everybody else’s business? It was their equivalent to live theater. Rather than draw the curtains and remain uninvolved, people noticed things, stored them up, and kept them at the ready for later tellings. As long as the case was out of the NYPD’s hands, no one would be stirring up old memories in his former classmates, and he might be home free. So why say anything to Janet and worry her for nothing?

Because he felt as if he was betraying her by staying silent.

He rolled over and picked up the original, well-creased New York Herald article from his nightstand and studied it again. The name of the local coroner, Dr. Mark Roper, seemed vaguely familiar. Now why, he wondered, did it resonate?

Then he remembered.

Kelly had sometimes talked about a Dr. Roper. He was the man who encouraged her to go to medical school and whom she often visited, confiding her problems to him whenever she went up to Hampton Junction. He even counseled her to escape her marriage to Chaz.

Could this Mark Roper be the same man? Hell, if he was, he must be in his early seventies. And that would mean trouble if Kelly had told him everything. The guy could be making a beeline to find him right now, which would take about a day. Shit, he might already have contacted the Buffalo authorities and a cruiser could be on the way to pick him up.

Earl lay still. Feeling his heart start to race, he fought the compulsion to get up and peek through the bedroom window to make sure that a squad car wasn’t pulling up to the front door.

But had she referred to that doctor as Mark? It didn’t sound right. Yet a second physician called Roper in so small a place was unlikely.

He got out of bed and went to his study to check the directory of licensed physicians for New York State. He skimmed through all the Ropers, finding only one whose office address was Hampton Junction. Except it couldn’t be Kelly’s Dr. Roper. This man’s license number indicated he’d been in practice only seven years.

The original Dr. Roper’s son? he wondered. That could also be problematic if the father were alive and capable of discussing what he remembered about Kelly. The name Earl Garnet might still come up.

He undressed and returned to bed, hoping he could escape into sleep, but thoughts of Kelly persisted. He found himself drifting back to 1974.

It had been the time of Watergate, Nixon’s ignominious slide toward the disgrace of his resignation, when the anatomy of the president’s self-destruction, like the Vietnam War, was documented in wall-to-wall television coverage. His downfall seemed suited to the little screen, running daily as it did with the incremental revelations of a soap opera, something Earl and his classmates could tune in to after skipping weeks of episodes without feeling behind in the story. As medical students in their most clinical year yet, they had little time to pay it more attention. But they never missed M*A*S*H.

At the movies, portraits of evil topped the big box office hits. Robert De Niro emblazoned himself on everyone’s memory in Godfather, Part II; but for making them cringe, nobody topped Roman Polanski when he sliced open Jack Nicholson’s nose in Chinatown.

As for music, they couldn’t get through a day on the wards without hearing the radio blast Paul Anka’s “Having my Baby” or Barbra Streisand’s “The Way We Were.” In the OR surgeons cut and sewed to newcomer Elton John’s big hit, “Bennie and the Jets.”

But to Earl’s gang, only one troubadour counted.

Thousands of tiny flames, each a point of light held aloft, filled the darkness.

Bob Dylan stepped forward on the stage.

Robbie Robertson stood to the right of him, lean as a silhouette hunched over a guitar, The Band at his back.

You say you love me,

And you’re thinkin’ of me,

But you know you could be wrong.

He snarled the last word, loud and long.

The crowd roared the words with him.

“You sing that like you mean it,” Jack MacGregor called to Kelly. Shadows played over his thin face, resculpting its hollows.

“You better believe I do,” she yelled back. Her eyes danced in the flicker of the tiny fires.

Earl had rarely seen her look so radiant.

… you go your way

and I go mine.

It was at that moment she slipped her hand into his and simply held it, the darkness preventing anyone from seeing.

Melanie Collins leaned toward him from his other side. “Some study group,” she said, then laughed.

“And we’ll be payin’ dearly for it, children,” Tommy Leannis added from his end of the row, the musical lilt of his Irish sounding false. His constant fear of failure emanated off him like a bad smell and made him a fifth wheel. Yet he insisted on tagging along whenever they knocked off the books for a night, as if he was just as afraid to be alone with all the material they still had to learn.

“It’s all right, Tommy,” Kelly hollered back at him, never letting go of Earl’s hand. “If an old woman like me can get through, what have you got to worry about? Top five, all of us,” she predicted, sounding confident in the din.

… Then time will tell just who fell,

And who’s been left behind…

Earl’s senses had contracted solely to the feel of her fingers entwined in his. He kept his eyes on the stage, uncertain how to respond. He already knew he loved her, and before that night had wondered if she felt just as strongly about him. But he’d never dared to speak his feelings, frightened that the crystal clarity of such words would shred the fragile, amorphous limbo in which they remained close friends, able to speak intimately of everything else, without ever trespassing on her marriage. Yet this sudden overture – her fingers played over his like flames – invited him to risk that step, and the possibility exhilarated him. Feeling her start to withdraw, he immediately tightened his grip, and she gently squeezed back. He stole a look sideways and saw her staring straight ahead, apparently enraptured by the music. Then she smiled, slowly, as though savoring something delicious, and her hand clung hard to his.

After the concert all of them trooped toward the subway, arms linked and voices raised in loud renditions of what they’d just heard.

Jack, Melanie, and Tommy scooted across the intersection at Forty-second Street ahead of them. “I don’t want to go home,” Kelly whispered, as she and Earl waited at the red light.

“Where then?” said Earl, trembling inside, all the time wondering, What about your husband? But he was too intoxicated by her to put the brakes on.

“Offer to stay behind until I get a taxi,” she whispered before they rushed to join their friends.

He nodded.

“Guys, I’m going to take a taxi tonight,” she announced when they reached them. “It’s too late for a woman alone.”

“You three go ahead. I’ll make sure she gets one,” Earl said, certain they’d see through him. “No cabbie in his right mind would stop for a gang of rowdies like you.”

“Well, I’m insulted,” Jack quipped.

“Come, children. ‘Tis back downtown where we belong,” said Tommy, linking arms again with Melanie. Then all three of them disappeared down the entrance to the Forty-second Street station, their voices echoing back above ground until the noise of traffic swallowed up their off-key singing.

Earl felt acutely self-conscious. What now? he wondered, turning to look at Kelly.

She studied him a few seconds, then moved closer and took his hand. The wind played with her long hair, and strands of it brushed against his face.

“Earl, whatever happens between us, just remember that my marriage to Chaz is finished.” Her voice sounded as steady and matter-of-fact as if she were giving a case history on one of their patients. “He’s a brute, and I intend to leave him. That mess has nothing to do with you.”

Her face upturned to his, the glitter of the streetlights captured in her eyes, the scent of her – all drew him in. He lowered his head and gently kissed her.

He awoke to find Janet leaning over him, her lips caressing his. “Hi, love,” she said, glancing down to where the covers slipped below his waist. “You seem happy to see me.”

Wednesday, November 7, 2:30 A.M.

Geriatric Wing,

New York City Hospital

Bessie woke up shivering.

God, had they turned the heat off?

She huddled deeper under her blankets, and realized her nightgown was soaked, her skin clammy.

What was going on? She’d never had night sweats before.

And they weren’t welcome, usually being the portent of a serious problem. An infection, some inflammatory condition, even an occult carcinoma – her mind automatically scrolled through the list, until she put a stop to it. No point in getting ahead of herself. The proper thing to do would be to see if they kept recurring, then tell her doctors. A solitary sweat didn’t necessarily mean much. But she should take her temperature. Whether she had a fever, and if so, how high, would be important to know. A big spike would shift the diagnosis toward an infectious cause; low grade, it could signify anything.

But she didn’t feel feverish.

If anything, she was really freezing, as in cool to the touch, not hot the way someone feels when they have a fever with the flu or pneumonia.

And she was hungry. Her stomach seemed clamped in on itself because it was so empty. That was new. Since entering the hospital she’d practically no appetite at all.

She reached for her call button to summon her nurse and ask for a thermometer.

Then hesitated.

The night shift here were often a bitchy bunch. Most were floats, especially on geriatric floors where the mission was custodial, not nursing in the curative sense. Always understaffed, they rarely missed an opportunity to express what a burden the elderly were. Most requests for the simplest of items, like a bedpan or medication for pain, they met with rolled eyes and exaggerated sighs. They saved outright contempt for those who committed the ultimate crime of placing extra demands on them by being sick as well as old.

No, better she not invite the witches to her bedside. Leave everything until morning rather than risk trouble now. Not that she’d tolerate any rudeness from one of those shrews. She felt uncharacteristically aggressive tonight.

Curling into a ball, she drew the covers over her head, trying to conserve body heat.

It didn’t help.

He skin continued to feel slimy. The pain behind her eyes grew worse.

She emerged and reached to where the call button was pinned to her bedding. Her hand shook as she gathered it into her palm and pressed.

“They better not mess with me tonight,” she muttered, staring through the gloom at her closed door, waiting for one of them to arrive.

No response.

Bloody cows!

She pressed again.

The silence of her room became a rushing noise in her ears. The moon outside her window shone unusually bright. It hurt her eyes to look at it, yet the darkness closed in on her, immune to illumination.

She pushed the call button over and over.

It mustn’t be working, she thought, tugging on the end that looped past the head of her bed to where it attached to the wall.

It came freely as she pulled, until the plug itself lay in her hand. Staring at it, she had to make a massive mental effort to realize it wasn’t hooked up anymore. Her thoughts all at once shattered into fragments, and she couldn’t thread them together.

“Help!” she screamed. “Help me!”

No response.

“Come and help me.”

Still nothing.

That’s right, she remembered, her mind working again. People shrieked and yelled all night on this ward, yet no one paid them any heed.

With great effort she kicked off her covers.

The shivering increased, and she could feel her limbs twitch in the cold. Somehow she managed to get them over the edge of the bed.

Now to sit up.

Her vision dimmed, and she became locked in the black confines of her own skull. Then tiny explosions of light, like stars scintillating in space, invaded the darkness. These stars grew taller and wider, becoming squares of white, each encroaching on the night and peeling it away in strips. The experience seemed vaguely familiar, but her mind couldn’t piece her symptoms into a diagnosis. Neither could she see where to plug in the disconnected wire.

She pushed herself erect until she perched on the side of the mattress, her bare feet brushing against the floor, her thinking reduced to shreds of instinct until she felt only the impulse to launch herself forward and walk.

She levered herself off onto the cold tiles and took a step, flailing ahead with her arms like a blind person.

She took another step, and flailed some more, seeking something to lean on.

But she found nothing.

She tottered forward.

And slapped her palms against a wall.

Her thinking cleared enough to remember where the door should be and, feeling her way along, she lurched toward it. When her fingers found the handle she steadied herself, took a deep breath, and pulled it open. “Help me!” she cried, barely able to keep herself upright. “Help me! Help me! Help me!”

Her voice blended in with the howls and shrieks of the senile old crones on the ward, the ones whom a phenothiazine cocktail never seemed to knock out and whose pleas to go home reverberated ceaselessly up and down the halls.

She felt certain that their calls sounded louder tonight. How could she have ignored such cries before, the way the nurses did?

She tried again to make herself heard, yelling as she sank to the floor, half-in, half-out of her room. Her mind vacillated between lucid seconds of frantically attempting to figure out what could be happening to her and timelessly floating through a searing light that she still found familiar – something some patients had once described to her, yet she couldn’t quite remember their disease.

The plaintive wailing grew in volume, closed in and swallowed her.