Nancy gave up and shut her laptop. "I'm losing my mind, trying to type these service plans. These Medicaid word games are both harder and stupider than anything I had to do in college."

Her colleague Tracy grinned knowingly and returned to her own paperwork. "I know, it's like they want us in here doing paperwork instead of out there helping the people. Don't take Dennis's rules seriously, just turn in your service plans on Friday at 4:00 and they'll get approved right away."

"I heard that," Dennis, the Quality Assurance Reviewer, said to Tracy as he entered the room. "Nancy, can you follow me to my office for a minute, please?"

Nancy followed. This had better not be another lecture about risk management.

"I got a call from Zane late yesterday afternoon," Dennis said, once he had Nancy cornered. "He didn't sound too good at all. An uncle of his passed away, one that helped raise him. It was pretty sudden."

"Oh, no," Nancy breathed. "He was doing so well, too."

"He said he'll be okay, it's just a shock," Dennis explained. "He said that he could really use some support at the funeral, though. He burned a lot of bridges with his family when he first got sick, and he'll have to see some people that he hasn't seen since he was a kid."

Nancy frowned. "Are you saying that I can go with him? I thought that wasn't billable with Medicaid, it's not a skill building service."

Dennis waved away the suggestion impatiently, as if he had not spent years of his life passionately arguing that exact assertion. "I got an exception for this one, Nancy. The funeral is the day after tomorrow, Friday, October 9th, and the company will pay for your train tickets. The team can cover your other appointments."

"Train tickets? Where's the funeral?" Nancy asked.

"Somewhere in center city Philadelphia, he said you can walk to it from the PATCO line."

Nancy's breath caught. "Excuse me—I mean, thank you, I'll get the details on my own," she managed before stumbling down the hallway. At the first empty office, she entered and shut the door. Dialing nine to get out, she followed it up with seven digits that she'd memorized a long time ago.

"Zane?" she asked cautiously when he picked up.

"Boo-hoo—hoo….mwah-haw-haw…ha-ha-haaa!" Nancy felt slightly disturbed to hear the easy transition he made between fake crying and laughing.

"Mary and Joseph!" Nancy hissed, pacing rapidly back and forth. "I can't believe you would do something like this!"

"What? You're saying you think I might be crazy? They gave me that label a long time ago, and now I'll use it to my advantage."

"I mean, what am I supposed to do with this, Zane?" Nancy asked, still overcome with shock. "Dennis is bleeding his heart out all over for you, they cleared my calendar, and they're giving me money for train tickets!"

"Then it sounds like you have a choice to make. You can throw me under the bus, tell them I made the whole thing up to go visit Poe. I could call, say that I decided to go to the funeral on my own. Or…" He didn't have to finish the sentence.

Nancy rolled her eyes. "I still can't believe you did this. They did not tell me in school how to deal with this situation."

"Work on your feet, you've got to meet the crazies where they're at. I don't think the company will go bankrupt to lose you for one day, and, God forbid, it might actually be helpful to my mental health to get out of this hellhole once in a while. New Jersey sucks."

Nancy remained silent. She was afraid to admit even to herself that she was considering it.

"Yeah, I thought that deep down you were the risk-taking type," Zane said. "Not that there's much risk. Worst-case scenario, if something goes wrong, you can tell them when we get back that I was fooling you the whole time. Even if I get mad at you later on and throw you under the bus, which is not something I would ever do, who are they going to believe? Staff, or the mental patient?"

Nancy chewed her lower lip.

ndndnd

Nancy couldn't help giggling, still dazed with herself for going along with this.

"Yeah, better looking every day," Zane said, messing up his hair in the PATCO window's reflection. "I wonder if this place will offer me the senior discount."

"Forty-eight is not old, I keep telling you, Zane," Nancy said automatically, knowing he wouldn't listen. "Besides, it's free."

"So how much time do we have? Don't think I did any research. God, shut up, shut up, I'm not talking to you."

"I wouldn't expect you to have done research, I think I know you by now," Nancy grinned. "We'll only have maybe an hour and a half at the Poe house, what with the train transfer and the long walk. What do you want to do about lunch?"

"Hot dog stand." And so they did, Nancy treating of course, paying for overpriced mystery meat at a side vendor. After a thirty-five minute walk through questionable neighborhoods, Nancy stopped mid-step. "It's gorgeous," she breathed.

"Oh, yeah, that bird," Zane said with mock enthusiasm. "Let's take a selfie."

"What, are you cra-?" Nancy stopped herself just in time. "There will be absolutely no evidence of this day! We should probably print a fake funeral bulletin, too."

"Have it your way." Zane pretended to snap a picture as Nancy hugged a very large bronze statue of the famous Raven.

"Look at this, I love it," Nancy squealed, entering the Poe house. "Such an ordinary historical house, although they did have to remodel a lot of it."

"Perfect timing," a park ranger said cheerfully to the two of them. "I'm just giving an orientation to all the others that are here."

Nancy looked at Zane, and he shook his head. Crowds and sitting still tended to make his voices louder.

"That's all right, thanks though," Nancy said, taking a laminated map from the front counter. "We'll have the place to ourselves while we go exploring, Zane."

They started with the basement first, Nancy barely covering her mouth before she screamed. There, hidden behind stones in the fireplace, was a stuffed version of the infamous cat from Poe's appropriately named short story, "The Black Cat."

Zane laughed at her. "Good one."

Nancy laughed at herself too, then they headed up the stairs to the sparsely-furnished bedrooms. "That story is about guilt catching up to a murderer, unless it's read literally," she said. "Oh, look at this. Just imagine Poe writing stories, right here in this room. It says here that he might not have been able to sleep in bed with his wife, since her tuberculosis was already advanced by the time they lived here."

Zane shook his head. "Life is too hard," he muttered. "I wonder sometimes if this is another planet's hell, like maybe all us bad people died and had to come here." He appeared to be distracted.

Nancy looked at him sadly, but he was gazing out the window. She wished that she had the power to heal him of the struggle he went through every day. "Poe would have loved to make a story out of that idea," she said, and they headed up another set of stairs.

"They think that this was his mother-in-law's room," Nancy said, more to herself but also to Zane in case he was interested. "That woman had an awful lot on her shoulders, what with her daughter's TB and her son-in-law-slash-nephew always tortured over his writing, living in poverty. She may have been the glue that held them together. Edgar married his thirteen-year-old cousin when he was twenty-six."

"Daaaaaaamn."

"A bit more socially acceptable back then, but they still wouldn't have wanted to advertise that fact," Nancy said. She heard a sound and looked up from what she was reading. Zane had begun to pace. "Oh, no, Zane, we've got to get out of here."

"Correction: I've got to get out of here," Zane said, agitated. "I've got to get outside and cuss out these damn voices, but they will not ruin our day. Come out when you're ready, I want you to have a good time."

"Well, I think we've seen most of it anyway," Nancy said as the stairway down left them off by the entrance. She saw a room labeled Reading Room on the right-hand side.

Zane noticed her glance. "Go in there and have fun. Meet me out front."

"Wait," Nancy said. She handed him her cell phone. "Put this up to your ear. Then people will just think you're having an argument."

"Good idea, thanks, sweetie." Zane took it and walked quickly away.

Nancy knew that she should only stay a few minutes. Heading through the doorway and down a few stairs, she entered a room that immediately softened her mood. The old-fashioned furniture and earth-toned lighting combined to create a nostalgic feeling, not too ostentatious. A booklet of Poe's poems and correspondences lay on the table in the center, and Vincent Price's soft, haunting voice wafted toward her from a CD player in the corner.

"I was a child, and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea: But we loved with a love that was more than a love…a wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee; So that her high-born kinsman came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulcher In this kingdom by the sea."

Nancy's breathing became shallower. She sat at the table of poems, opening it randomly.

See on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore! Come! Let the burial rite be read—the funeral song be sung!—An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young—A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.

Nancy heard a ringing in her ears. The soothing red hue to the room now appeared sinister to her, the color of blood, the bewitching voice from the CD player now grating to her nerves. Frantically she turned the page and covered her ears, but the words on the next yellowing page only seemed to grow larger and larger.

Nevermore….Nevermore…NEVERMORE….

ndndnd

The next thing that Nancy was aware of was a sickly yellow room. She forced down her alarm at waking up in a strange place, plus her shortage of memories on how she got there, and then gasped in realization.

"Oh, no," she moaned. "Oh, no."

Seeing that she was awake, an aide walked into the room. "Remember how you got here?"

"Not the details, but the basics, yes," Nancy said, panicking. "The man I was with, is he okay? Is he okay? What day is today, anyway?"

He held up his hands. "You got here yesterday, miss, that's all I know. Today is Saturday, October 10th, 2015."

Thanks for assuming that I don't know the year. Nancy breezed past him in her hospital gown and no-slip hospital socks, making a beeline for the nurse's station. "The man I was with, where is he?"

"That was yesterday's shift, we're the weekend crew now, but there is a man who's been calling for you. Does this look familiar?" The nurse held up a note with Zane's name and phone number.

Nancy took the paper with relief, but still felt guilt and trepidation. After receiving permission to use the phone, Nancy dialed in record speed.

"Nancy, are you okay?" Zane's voice came in clearly.

"I'm fine, yes, sometimes these kinds of things happen to me and I'm fine later, but what about you? Zane, I'm so sorry. And to think that we thought you were the one who was doing poorly. I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry—"

"Stop it, Nancy. I've been in the mental health system for thirty-three years, and I know when somebody needs time to cool off. One of the park rangers came and got me, said that you were standing in the middle of that reading room totally unresponsive. You followed me when I took your arm, though, and you let me walk you out of that Poe house while we waited for an ambulance. The pricks didn't even want to take you at first, but they had to when you were still completely out of it."

Nancy leaned against the nurse's counter, pinching the bridge of her nose. How could she have put a client through this? How could she expect Zane to keep secrets for her? How stupid, how irresponsible. "Thanks, Zane, and I'm so sorry. You shouldn't have to do that for your staff, how messed up."

"Stop beating yourself up, it was my idea to go. I left your phone and my information with the ambulance guys because I couldn't go with you, I had to use that train ticket to get back home myself or I would have been stranded. I called Dennis and told him that the funeral went fine, but that you had to go right home from there because of a family emergency."

Nancy paused, not trusting herself to hope. Was there some way that she could move past this? Could she keep her job?

"The hospital drill is always the same," Zane continued. "They only have to give you 48 hours to cool down, and then you have to pass the verbal test. Tell them that you're fine now, detailed reasons you have in your life to get better, like family and pets and school and whatever. When they ask if you want to hurt yourself or anyone else, look at them like they have ten heads, like you've never thought about it before in your life. They don't want to keep you any more than you want to be there."

"Thanks, Zane." Nancy didn't tell him that, unfortunately, she knew the drill quite well already. "Good trip, huh?"

"I had fun if you had fun, young lady. And don't worry, you don't have to tell me what happened in there. I'll see you next Tuesday and we'll act like nothing ever happened."