Night Film

92

The neon lights of the hospital washed out Cynthia’s face, made it pale and soft as she stared back at me as if she were underwater.

“The doctor said she’ll have bruising and black eyes for six weeks,” she said. “Some swelling under her chin.”

“What about the stitches?”

“Four on her hand where they removed some glass. But it will heal.”

I numbly stared down the hall to Sam’s curtained cubicle, fighting the lump in my throat.

Bruce was in there with her. Though he’d pulled the curtains, I could still see Sam through a crack between them. She was snug in bed under a mound of blue blankets, her face puffy and red, a square white piece of gauze taped to her chin. The hospital emergency room attending physician stood beside her, talking to Bruce.

The doctor was more comfortable speaking to him. I didn’t blame her. When I’d come running in here, shouting for help, Sam crying in my arms, the nurses had doubtlessly thought the worst, that I had hurt her.

And I had. Even when I was reassured that she’d be all right, I was still racked with the terrible understanding that I was responsible, bringing Sam into that hideous shop. Even more gutting was my growing certainty that Villarde had somehow orchestrated it. I didn’t know how and I didn’t understand it, but I sensed that he’d sat down and willingly talked to us only in order to put us under the black spell of his story, and all the while he was working on a way to hurt Samantha. I wondered if he’d done it as a means to distract us, make his escape, because in the chaos of her fall, Villarde had sprinted clear out of the shop. Hopper instantly took off after him, but when he reached Third Avenue, the man was gone.

The emergency room staff sensed from my agitation I hadn’t told them the whole story and thus were understandably relieved when Cynthia and Bruce arrived. I’d called Cynthia from the cab, and their private plane, minutes from taking off at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, headed back to the terminal. She showed up within an hour and a half, and I’d been gently ushered by a nurse into the hallway.

Or was I wrong? Had it been a simple accident? It was possible I’d been sucked so deeply into Villarde’s story, the horror of what he’d done to Ashley, that I was no longer thinking clearly.

“She was playing,” I said to Cynthia. “She tripped on the electrical cord.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

She said it in a monotone. I stared at her, bewildered, but there was nothing to see. Her face was so drained of feeling, it was startling to behold, as if a room I’d lived in all my life was suddenly without furniture, barren; piece by tiny piece, it had been dismantled, carted away, such a gradual progression into emptiness I hadn’t noticed it until now.

She shook her head, her bloodshot eyes electric green. “The doctors said you ran in here, shouting about someone hurting her? A priest? Have you lost your mind?”

I didn’t have a response.

“We’re finished with visitation.”

“I understand.”

“No. I’m going to the judge so it’s official. You’re not going to see her anymore. Ever.”

“Cynthia—”

“Stay. Away.”

She shouted it angrily, causing a nurse who’d just walked past to turn and frown at me.

Cynthia smoothed down the front of her blouse and started back toward the curtains, but then she turned back.

“Almost forgot.” She fumbled in the pocket of her blazer. “The nurse found this in Sam’s coat pocket.”

She held out a small figurine. I took it.

It was a black wood carving of a serpent. I realized, after a dazed moment, that I’d seen it before; it was the same figurine that had belonged to the deaf child back at 83 Henry Street.

He’d dropped it down the stairwell. I’d found it, given it back.

And now Sam had it.

“This is a toy that you consider fit for your five-year-old daughter? I can’t wait to show this one to the judge.”

The sounds in the hospital, the intercoms, the clicks and phones ringing, the squeaks of a gurney wheel, footsteps on the floor — they all grew deafeningly loud in my ears, then, almost as quickly, silent.

Again, I could feel the sucking back of that black tidal wave rising over me. It was still rising, growing stronger.

Bruce had pulled the curtain aside, and I could see Sam staring up at a doctor, her tiny bandaged hand lying atop the blankets like a lost mitten.

I turned and suddenly sprinted down the hall.

“Come back here!” Cynthia yelled after me. “I want to keep that!”

I raced past an old man lying on a gurney, blinking at the ceiling, a doctor in a white coat. I pushed open the doors to the waiting room. Hopper and Nora, sitting on the seats under the TV, glanced up at me.

“Scott?” shouted Nora.

I didn’t stop, racing through the revolving doors, emptying me back into the night.