Disclaimer: I neither own nor profit from these characters/ stories.
Days and nights tend to blur together. The windows are no help – in fact they're surprisingly sparse – the little good they would do her anyway. The hospital must be some sprawling, twisting thing with too many empty courtyards, because every window she's found has looked out on a blank and unimpressive brick wall of windows, identical, she's sure, to the wall she's peering from. She half expects to see a dark-haired figure across the way, surreptitiously pulling the curtain back to steal a glance outside, like some mocking mirror.
When she can see it, the sky is always steely gray and empty. After a while, she stops looking for windows, the glass becoming as repellant to her as that of a real mirror, and the stranger reflected within.
Days and nights tend to blur together, but she has some markers. Days are brighter and more active, with more faceless people moving and bustling about and the disembodied, faintly static voice from the ceiling mumbling codes and numbers and names and PAGING DOCTOR WHALE, PAGING DOCTOR WHALE, as insistent and senseless as a bird's cry.
In the days, they shuffle her from the bedroom and permit her to sit in a different room, slightly larger and with uncomfortable wood-framed chairs and couches and a droning television and a half-walled station on the side where a nurse sits guard. Sometimes they let her have visitors, like the golden-haired woman with the badge, clearly on her way somewhere else, who spared her a few words of well-wishing. Or the tall, fashionable woman, Ruby, with her long limbs and long dark hair, who gave her a sad smile and a book and more lies. That woman was long gone, and she sat alone in the room again, the television flickering and unwatched. One leg was folded beneath her, and she held the paperback on her lap, unopened. She had tried reading it, but her mind was always such a fog. It was too hard to concentrate, and she never got far.
The day after she had gotten the book – or was it two days, or three?– she had sat in this room for hours, staring at the cover, flipping through the pages, willing herself to remember something, anything, from before the hospital. All she could find were small disjointed scenes, some on the border between dream and memory. She knew had been injured – some sort of car accident, they kept telling her, where she got scraped up and hit her head. But what she remembered was a sudden sound, deafeningly loud, and immediately a sharp pain in her shoulder, not her head. Of course her shoulder bore no marks – she had checked – and she had other mad, impossible things in her head, so why should this be any different? Often she woke in the bed, drifting slowly up from all the drugs, convinced she had just come up from the basement in the hospital, but when she asked the nurse to stop taking her there, the sharp-faced woman just stared at her blankly and denied that the building even had a lower level.
Days and nights tend to blur together, but she knows she has more of those fitful sleeps at night. Sometimes she wakes quietly, palms sweating, heart pounding, trying to capture the thoughts and images racing through her head in case any of them are real. She can't hold any of them, so in the end it doesn't matter. When she wakes quietly enough, the nurses don't even come.
Days and nights tend to blur together, and the fact that she spends all day drowsing doesn't help. But by the small hours of the night, she's sure some of the drugs have worn off. Her body is tired, still weak, but somehow she thinks she is a little sharper. She can push out of bed and pad barefoot down the half-lit hall, passing the night nurse who barely spares her a glance from behind the tall desk at the corner. The first few times they tried to stop her, prick her with the drugs and send her back to bed, but if she is quiet and blank they pay her no attention. At the far end of the hall, a janitor is mopping the floor, the slop and swing of his work echoing louder than it should. She bears right, turning in to the visiting room, which is lit only by the flickering light of the television. She wonders if that device is even capable of being shut off anymore, but doesn't really care because she has come to enjoy its consistency. She settles into a chair and stares as the enthusiastic, unfamiliar faces try to sell her things that cook, things that clean, things that can make her beautiful or ageless or stronger or healthier or more organized. She's seen most of these before, and revels in the novelty of familiarity. She wonders idly if these miracle-workers or charlatans (she can't tell which) could sell her something for four easy payments that would let her heal without a scar, or hold a ball of fire in her hand.
She's watching a loud-voiced chef use a knife to saw through a tin can when light suddenly floods the room. She jumps in her seat, whirling to look at the doorway behind her.
"Sorry, sister." A stocky man is in the doorway, one hand sheepishly still on the light switch, the other holding the long handle of the mop. "Didn't realize anybody was in here."
"It's okay," she says impulsively, before he can turn to leave. "Don't let me keep you from your work."
He flashes her a grin and drags the yellow mop bucket into the room. "Truth is, I don't actually work here anymore," he says. "They just get shorthanded sometimes, and I come fill in."
"In the middle of the night?" she scoffs.
"What can I say?" he shrugs, lifting the streaming mop into the wringer. "I got a day job and insomnia. This town's gone through a lot lately – they're not gonna turn down a volunteer." He straightens the lever and plops the mop down, continuing his work.
She studies him curiously. He is short, probably shorter than she is, with wide workman's hands, and a shaggy salt-and-pepper beard in contrast to his balded head. The breast patch on his faded gray coveralls reads "Leroy."
"You said you don't work here anymore," she says, suddenly realizing how starved for conversation she is. "Why'd you stop?"
"Job opened up in the mines," he answers without looking up at her.
"I didn't know there were mines around here."
He glances up at her. "You've been down there, sister."
"I—There was an accident," she frowns. "I'm afraid I don't remember anything past a few weeks ago." She pauses, wanting to continue. "You keep saying sister. Are we….are we related?" She cannot imagine any familial bond between them, but she can't help thinking there might be some connection.
Leroy gives a short laugh. "I call everybody sister. We saw each other around a few times, that's all." He stops mopping and looks up at her. "Actually, you helped me a lot. I'm sorry you don't remember."
"Well I don't!" she cries, familiar anxiety rushing to the surface. She bites her lip, trying to contain herself. "I don't remember anything. I don't remember you or anyone else that keeps trying to help, and I wish you'd all stop!"
"Hey, I know it's hard—"
"How could you know!" she fairly shouts.
"Easy, sister!" Leroy says with a harsh edge in his voice. "Don't take it out on me." She buries her face in her hands, suddenly feeling very tired, ashamed to be fighting back tears. She realizes belatedly that unlike the others, he hasn't insisted on using that name.
He leans on the mop and sighs. "Look, one of my brothers was in an accident a few months ago. Total retrograde amnesia, doc said – same as you. He doesn't know who any of us are. Now I ain't trying to excuse anybody, but as someone who's been on the other side…" He passes his hand over his face, and she sees a distant pain well up in his eyes. "It hurts like hell for someone you care about to be so different, to look right through you. My own brother…." He trails off. "Look sister, people who hurt can do dumb things, even if they mean well. Believe me, I know."
They fall silent a long moment. Behind them, the television announcer repeats a telephone number with manic ferocity.
"I'm sorry about your brother," she says finally. Leroy shrugs and lifts the mop back to the bucket. She lets him work a few minutes. "Were…were we really friends?" she asks hesitantly, already steeling herself against another lie. She's started to doubt she had any friends.
He smirks. "Not really, although I think I would've liked that."
She gives a small smile, heartened by his honesty. It gives her the courage to ask what she's been dreading. The television gives a quick blare of enthusiastic music as the commercial loop begins again. "Can- can I ask you something?" she says quietly. "Will you tell me the truth?"
Leroy looks up at her expectantly, and she takes a deep breath and lets the words tumble forth. "Before I was brought here—I don't remember much, but I know I was hurt. There was a man, and he – he healed me, and then I saw him holding fire in his hand. I know what I saw – I know it wasn't the drugs – so what – what was it?" She holds her head up, defiant.
To her great relief, there is no uncomfortable hesitation, no flash of fear behind his eyes. He simply shrugs and shifts the mop. "I got no idea what it was you saw, or didn't see. More things in heaven and earth, sister."
"What?" Her brow furrows at the almost-familiar line.
"There's all kinds of stuff that can't be explained. Tricks, magic, miracles – hell, it's all around." He gestures toward the television, where the loud-voiced chef was again using the miracle knife to saw through the tin can, now pushing the severed halves aside, now using the undullable blade to cut razor-thin slices from a ripe tomato. "I've seen things you wouldn't believe, sister," he says quietly.
And he tells her about the fantastical things that happen all the time. About the love of a mother for a son she never knew. About a scorned woman who teamed up with the town drunk to sell candles to impress a nun. About a hill far away where fireflies gleam like tiny suns that stay behind your eyes long after you've turned away from that place. About a brave young woman, not afraid of monsters, bruised by love but still kind enough to remind him who he should be. He says the last part hopefully, a little sadly.
She seems about to speak, but the drone of the television is interrupted by the clip-clip-clip of neat-heeled shoes as a night nurse makes her rounds. She pokes her white-capped head into the room. Her eyes fall on Leroy and she gives him a disapproving look. "Stop bothering our patients," she says, moving towards the girl in the chair. "Come along now. Back to bed with you." The girl shakes off the nurse's hand but doesn't struggle more, rising meekly. Leroy notices the dark bruising of the track marks lining her arms as the nurse leads her out, and when they are gone, he attacks the floor with renewed vigor, his mouth set in a hard line.
When he leaves the hospital later, the floors shine brighter than the diamonds in the mine, but Leroy storms angrily from the doors. He's heading to the late-night drug store where his brother works, the brother that doesn't know him. Damn the sober weeks behind him – he's going to buy something strong and sharp and cheap and he's going to drown all this out again.
A store window across the street catches a glint from a streetlamp, and from the corner of his eye it shines, small and gold, like the trail of a firefly. He stops, steps frozen by flashes of memory – glimmers of light on a distant hillside, tiny fires against a sky dark as bruises.
He turns around, hands fisted, and heads down a different street. A few minutes later he arrives, bangs his fist on the door until Mother Superior appears, blue robe tied tight around her, hair uncharacteristically mussed.
"You make two," Leroy says without preface. "When you figure out how to make it work, whatever it takes, you make two – one for my brother, and one for Belle."
She blinks once, a brief moment of confusion passing over her features before they again assume their serious and serene posts. "I'll need more fairy dust – with what's left, I'm not sure there's enough for one cure, much less two. And there's no telling how long it will take to find something that works – if it's even possible."
"It's possible. You'll find it," he says stubbornly. "And when you do, you'll make two. Don't worry about the fairy dust – I'll take care of it." He is already calculating extra shifts in the mine, extra hours he won't be spending in the hospital anymore.
Mother Superior nods carefully. The bargain is struck. He turns away and starts for home before she finishes closing the door. On his way back, the street lights catch in the corners of his eyes, flecks of gold in the dark.