Journals of Eleanor Druse, The (Digital Picture Book) (20 page)

“Pain only hurts while it’s happening,” I said. “If it hurts just for a second or two and then goes away, it’s really not so bad, is it, Dr. Gottreich?”

The bottle of brown fluid that Gottreich had used to soak the cloth had spilled, and the liquid had made a tongue-shaped puddle on the floor that almost reached to the fire.

I looked for the little girl. She was still ringing her bell. Louder. She stood at the door to the Pain Room and waved me toward her again. Hurry!

I ran out the door and into the hallway.

Boom! A flash, and the heavy wooden door banged open and splintered.

An explosion. I ran down the hallway and looked for the stairwell to get out of there.

The little girl was gone. I couldn’t see her, but I could hear her bell ringing. Always just ahead of me, leading me down the hallway and up the stairs to the main floor.

An old nurse in a gray uniform, white nylon stockings, and a white nurse’s cap was coming down the stairs to the laundry room. She watched me running up to her.

She heard the bell ringing, too. She smelled the smoke.

“Fire!” I cried.

Chimes ringing. Electronic beeps. Radio static.

A woman’s voice.

“Is that normal sinus rhythm?” she asked.

“I got rhythm,” a man sang, and I recognized the voice. It was Bobby’s friend, Danny Odmark, the nice EMT from Castleview Rescue.

“I got music,” said another voice. It was Ollie! Danny’s partner. What were those two goofballs doing bending over me in the elevator?

The boys were sure being silly. A lot of people were huddled around and staring down at me. Somehow I’d gone from the wheelchair to the floor, as in flat on my ancient back and staring up at the ceiling.

“I got my gal,” sang Danny, “Who could ask for anything more? I’ve got daisies in green pastures…”

“I’ve got my gal,” Ollie sang, “Who could ask for anything more?”

“There was a fire, “I said. “I was yelling fire, wasn’t I?”

A good-looking young man in a white coat leaned over me and listened to my lungs with a stethoscope. It was Dr. Hook. I recognized him. He had never worked on me per se, so this was my first close look at him. What a handsome devil. The scuttlebutt around the hospital was that he and another doctor, Christine Draper, were sweet on each other.

“The first amendment does not give you the right to cry ‘Fire!’ in a crowded elevator,” said Dr. Hook.

Well, they all thought that was pretty funny, and I have to admit I did, too, even though I didn’t quite have my bearings yet.

“What happened?” I asked. “If I maybe so bold.”

“There was another one of those shakers, Mrs. D.,” said Danny. “Not a bad one, mind you, but enough to make the elevators kick off. Once they came back online, Ollie and I were going to the roof to watch the winter storm coming in. And there you were. AGA.”

I looked at Ollie.

“Acute Gravity Attack.”

“You’re breathing and you got a pulse, Mrs. D.,” said Danny, “so you don’t need us.”

“I think you just went DFO again,” said Ollie.

“Done Fell Out,” I said. “Right?”

“There you go, Mrs. D.,” said Danny. “You’ll get your EMT certification before too long.”

I smiled at them. Such nice boys.

I could see the fluorescent tubes all lit up above their heads. Somebody had all of them working again.

Medical equipment and sterile packaging, and beeping monitors were strewn all around me—all at the ready, but fortunately not needed this time. More chimes, coming from the equipment, I guess. But I also heard a bell ringing, or the echo of a bell ringing.

A mask covered my nose and mouth, and air, or oxygen, I guess, rushed against my face and sounded like the roar of thunder…or flames.

“You’re gonna be all right, Mrs. Druse,” said Dr. Hook.

Danny hurried around to the foot of the gurney I’d been placed on, and Ollie took the head.

Then I heard them both count, “Mississippi one. Mississippi two. Mississippi three!” and I was hoisted aloft and hauled out of the elevator.

“Wait!” I said. “My papers! The files!”

“I got them, Mum.”

“Bobby! Is that you?”

He was just outside the elevator, waiting to see if his dear old mum was okay.

“I got all the papers,” he said wearily.

“Good boy, Bobby! And the tape recorder. Where’s the tape recorder?”

“I got that, too, Mum,” he said. “I got it all right here.”

“I’m so proud of my best boy,” I said. “I love you, Bobby.”

“I love you, too. You had the tape recorder pressed right up against your ear, Mum. Were you trying to listen to it?”

“I don’t remember, Bobby. I’m sorry. Bobby, keep those papers safe for me.”

“I’ll put them in my locker, Mum. They’ll be safe.”

God had blessed me with the finest son, a comfort in my old age, the anchor of my life.

ALL I WANTED TO
do was go back to my room and study the papers Hilda Kruger had thrown at me on the elevator. I wanted to read all about that nasty old Gottreich and the fire; see if I could determine what he’d done to poor Madeline, God rest her soul. As my memory of the unspeakable, unthinkable events had been restored, it was clear that in my case the beast had only made a partial attempt at one side of my brain, had clearly not severed the white fibers that connect my left frontal lobe to the rest of me, and instead had inflicted only the minor scar that the doctors had seen on my scan images in Boston. It could have been much worse for poor Madeline. I had no way of knowing unless she left papers relating to the brutal procedure and her experiences at the hands of that diabolical man. Worst of all, it was apparent that here at the Kingdom, the borderlands between life and death were inhabited not just by the lost soul of a nameless innocent, but also by Evil itself. Dr. Rat could strike again at any time. I put on my druse crystal and my crucifix for protection. I’d killed him before (and scarred him for eternity, from the looks of that livid zigzag decorating the left side of his spectral skull), and if need be I would kill him again using any weapon, natural or supernatural, that came to hand.

Madeline knew that I’d repressed it all, blocked and blackened over the nightmare of Gottreich and his Pain Room. “God has blessed Sally Druse with a memory more merciful than mine. I will not disturb her peace with cruel remembrance.”

And God bless you, too, Maddy Kruger. Clearly she intended to leave this world without ever disturbing my peace with cruel remembrance. She tried to rush into the secret house of death and failed. When she woke up at Kingdom Hospital, built on the site where Evil touched us, where she had received her “still festering wounds”…what happened then? She must have seen the little girl before the beast did his work with the ice pick. Yes, and that’s why she wrote me that urgent note: “The little girl is back among the lair of the living. She needs our help.” Until Madeline saw the little girl there that night, she must have believed that the child had perished in the fire: “The fire did not kill her.” But the little girl I saw in the Pain Room was insubstantial, a presence, not flesh and blood. How would a ghost die in a fire? Maybe Madeline didn’t know the little girl was a ghost? Maybe Maddy had just heard her cries? Had not seen her presenceor felt her screams reverberate in the very stones of the foundation, the way I had.

There was an earthquake the night Madeline died, too! Maybe the little girl’s screams made another earthquake that full moon Friday in December of 2002. Maybe she tried to save someone else by—

The ringing bell! The Lewiston
Sun Journal
article: “Ringing Hospital Bell Blamed On Malfunctioning Elevator Chimes.”

Maybe the little girl had tried to save Madeline? Or someone else? I thought back to the many disturbances of that Friday. What about the little girl who died that night? The heart patient, who died because of the cardiologist? Egas. The cokehead cardiologist. The
Sun Journal
article had a photo of her—and him!—the one Bobby had told me about, Theresa Bradley, and he said that she had died from a botched procedure. Had the ghost girl tried to save Theresa? Is it the suffering of innocents that disturbs the ghost girl’s rest?
Why must I, an innocent child, suffer so horribly?
Those were the words that I’d imagined I had heard in her inarticulate misery. Was it the suffering of the innocents at the Kingdom, her own suffering, or the suffering of other children in the name of medical research or scientific progress? Is that what inspired her fear and confusion, caused her to lose her way between life and death, and brought her back to the lair of the living whenever it happened again?

All questions that had to wait. Why? Because medical science owns us body and soul and holds our poor, frightened age in its fearsome sway. There was no time for researching matters of the spirit just yet, because armies of people in white lab coats wanted to know what my hemoglobin count was, my creatinine levels, the partial pressure of oxygen in my blood, and my pH. First, a battery of flatlander tests had to be conducted to determine what had happened to me in elevator 2. If I voiced any objection, I was given to understand that I would be summarily discharged and sent home.

No expensive care unit on this go-round, but Dr. Massingale examined me thoroughly, had my precious bodily fluids drawn and analyzed. She sent me up to the brand spanking new MRI facility, where the tech slid me into another big beige hair dryer and scanned me.

The manufacturers of these devices know that human beings in mortal fear of their lives are going to have their heads stuck in here for twenty minutes at a time, waiting to have their medical destinies revealed. So why not inscribe something inspiring or comforting on the casing of the device, instead of
SERIAL NO. 4D617279204A656E73656E?

After that, the techs came in and put electrodes and paste all over the old brain box for another EEG. Cranial checks. Not once, not twice, three times, by three different doctors.

Finally I made it back to my room, only to find Dr. Massingale there and impatiently waiting. She seemed less friendly—dare I say put out? She said that the results of all the testing would take several days to assemble and digest, but that after she had all of her data, she was planning what she called “a Sally Druse summit.” I could tell she was convinced that I’d had another seizure, which to her way of thinking had happened only because I’d stopped taking my medications. As soon as she established that, she was going to lay down the law and tell me that if I was not going to cooperate with my treatment, I would be discharged and sent home.

Just as I was thinking that I really wouldn’t mind going home, she also mentioned in passing that Hilda Kruger had seen to it that my privileges as a Kingdom Hospital volunteer had been revoked. I was no longer a volunteer, no longer permitted on the sunshine ward or anywhere else I had no business being as a patient, and I would not be allowed to visit anyone in the hospital without explicit permission from the patient and the attending physician of the patient.

All I could think of were Madeline’s words in the note she’d written to me that night. Probably the last words she’d written in her life: “The little girl who saved us is still lost. She needs our help. Come see me.”

This was a fine predicament. To continue my investigation of the poor child’s sensed presence (whose existence was as real to me as the floor beneath my feet) I was going to have to play sick and pretend I was having seizures to keep the medical materialists happy. Otherwise the esteemed physicians of Kingdom Hospital would discharge me and not let me back in the hospital to help the poor child find rest.

Dr. Massingale, typically a woman of almost infinite patience, had apparently exhausted her tolerance when it came to my not taking my medicine.

“If you aren’t going to accept treatments or take the medications we prescribe for you, then there’s really no reason for you to be here, is there?”

I’d have to do my very best to contact the child’s spirit within the time remaining before Dr. Massingale got my test results. I was certain those would prove to them once and for all that my brain was as right as rain, and then they’d send me home and not let me back in the front door without explicit permission. A catastrophe, and not just for the child’s restless spirit. At my age, I usually have at least one close friend who is in extremis and dying, and I naturally wanted to be near them, especially dear Lenny. Surely I could get in to see him?

I had a thousand questions about Madeline, the fire, the evil Gottreich, the little girl’s sensed presence, the creature who seemed to be the little girl’s familiar or pet, but I was sore all over, my joints throbbing, my old bones and brain cells wearied by my journey back to the place where Evil touched us.

The only craving left in my empty head was for the death of each day’s life, mother night, sister sleep.

The morning brought a respite from the lab tech vampires and medical technicians and the prying rays of scanning devices, but who knew how long it would last? Before long, some ambitious young physician (with a new family and medical school loans due and owing) would notice that I wasn’t having any billable procedures performed upon me, whereupon more tests would be ordered.

I summoned Bobby because I wanted to review the documents Hilda Kruger had thrown at me, and I wanted to find out what, if anything, his trip to the Ladd Library at Faust College had turned up.

He came in fresh off the night shift, in the usual pother of scrambled biorhythms, aggravated by sleeplessness, sugar, and nicotine.

He sat down and rubbed his head with his right hand. Then his left joined in, and I became concerned.

“Mum, this is the end.”

“Don’t say it, Bobby.”

“Don’t say what?”

“You’re not going to run away from home again, are you, Bobby?”

“Mum, this nonsense must stop. Even the doctors all say it has to stop.”

“What has to stop?”

I tried to look innocent, but he wasn’t taken in. Instead he gave me the hardest look I’d seen, well, probably since I burned all of the girlie magazines I’d found under his bed.