Chapter 29: Easter Lilies


The nurse checked her reflection in the side mirror of an old Ford as she passed. She had walked to the hospital from her small apartment four blocks away, and while the day was windy, the cold did not bother her. It gave her cheeks a lively glow that she was certain would turn heads in the hospital today.

Sorrow watched the nurse, who must have been at least forty, pat her rosy cheeks and straighten her cap. The parking lot was mostly empty this early in the morning, and the only people were the nurse and the Sorrow. If Sorrow wanted her spirit to cooperate, he would have to kill the nurse before she saw him. He approached silently from an angle so that she would not see him in the mirror. Joy had never made him kill. He had helped the other Cobras when they killed. He had even shot and wounded men, but now he had to kill an innocent woman simply for information she knew about the hospital. He had searched for someone already dead to give him Joy's fake name and the layout of the facility, but it was too new to have the spirits of workers attached. The only option would be to kill a nurse.

As Sorrow lifted his silenced pistol, he summoned the spirit of a hardened Red Army soldier. Taking on the spirits of the dead rather than simply listening to them was a new skill, but he had practiced since the times he had been possessed in Germany and Italy. In his everyday tasks, he sometimes allowed spirits into his mind to see how much control he could retain, and while it was still an imperfect art, Sorrow used this new power confidently without fearing that the spirit would steal his body.

He gave the soldier control of his hands, but his eyes saw everything – the aim, the bullet entering the nurse's skull below her white cap, and the steadiness of his hands while he watched the woman fall against the glass window and crumple the ground, leaving a smear of blood and brain matter down the side of the Ford. He ran.

From the bushes planted neatly around the front of the hospital, he watched for a few minutes. No one left the hospital. Sorrow heard the nurse's voice rise around him, high and indignant. As he had expected, she was preoccupied with her looks. She whined that there was blood on her uniform, that she might lie there all day and be a disgusting sight when someone found her. Sorrow interrupted her as she wondered whether the handsome Dr. Farren would go to her funeral.

The layout was second-nature to the woman who had to navigate its corridors sometimes in darkness when the hospital blacked out most of its lights in order to save electricity. Sorrow stored the layout in his mind and asked the name of the woman in a coma.

"You're the one who killed me!" the voice cried.

No, Sorrow lied. But she is my wife. I need to see her.

"If she is your wife, you should know her name."

The woman's spirit was weak, and under her words, Sorrow heard another, quieter version of her voice say, "Does he mean Mina Berksen? Didn't she wake up two weeks ago?"

Sorrow was startled for a moment to hear that Joy was awake, but he could not allow himself to believe it. If her injuries were as grievous as Astrus said… and yet it seemed right that she had awakened at the moment she disappeared from the world of the dead.

Sorrow had all of the information he needed, so he shut out the trilling of the dead woman's voice. He tucked the small pistol into a holster under his sweater and marched through the door of the hospital.

"Good morning, sir," a receptionist said dully as he entered. "May I help you?"

The lobby sparkled with modern utility. The floors were gleaming tile, virginally white without even a scuff. The couches where family members could wait looked futuristic and uncomfortable in blue leather. If there had not been a faint scent of ammonia in the air, it could have been a contemporary hotel.

Sorrow tried to sound like an American, but his Russian accent and limited knowledge of English could not even fool a weary early-morning receptionist.

"I am here to… see Mina Berksen."

"She isn't taking visitors."

"Hmm… I see… I… must see her. Is quite important."

Damn his English. He was out of practice, and his nerves did not help.

The woman squinted at him. The young man looked harmless enough with too-long blond hair, a high-collared black sweater, and a bouquet of white flowers. He was handsome enough, if a little skittish. Perhaps he was the father of Ms. Berksen's baby, having risked the perils of wartime travel to visit her from some faraway country.

"Where are you from?" Sorrow noticed a misty, far-off look in her eyes and decided to play on her fantasy.

"Cold Russia," he said, shivering to illustrate.

The receptionist giggled.

Sorrow continued, "Mina was my beautiful American lover, but her… her father hidded her… hides her… hid her. I travel the world to find her. We have a child together that is still inside her."

He hoped that was the story she wanted, and then he added, for emphasis, "I bring flowers… her favorite flowers."

The woman could not hide her blush. "In room 302, end of the third-floor hallway. There are often military men around. Be careful. Her father must be a powerful man."

Sorrow thanked her with a deep bow and found his way to the third floor. As he walked, he used the nurse's layout of the hospital to form an escape route. There was a shortcut to the outside just past room 302. He passed nurses bustling down the corridors in starched white gowns and a few doctors ambling between rooms. No one gave him a second glance. He had a talent for going unnoticed when he wanted to. Sometimes Marina would pass him reading under a tree three times as her cries of "Misha! Misha!" went entirely past him without being heard.

On the left was 311, 309, and finally 305, and then a pair of heavy-looking doors blocked the hallway. Sorrow pressed against one of the doors, but it was locked. Above the knob was a row of dials with numbers – a combination lock. Sorrow had not expected the hallway to be locked, and he hoped that he could still talk to the nurse. He found her still moaning that no one had found her body.

What's the combination for the doors on the third floor? he asked.

"Why didn't you at least tell someone I was out here, murderer?" the woman said, but her subconscious rattled the numbers: four, nine, nine, twenty-five.

Sorrow shut her out again and tried the combination. The door clicked, and when he turned the knob, it opened on an almost-vacant hallway. A woman in a white coat and fashionably uncomfortable heeled shoes stepped through a doorway and into the hall. Without looking toward Sorrow, she clicked down the other end of the hallway and through another door. Although he could not see her clearly, Sorrow recognized the woman's walk. She was the person he had trained himself to think of only as "the target".


Fear spat in the brown grass before he stepped onto the smooth pavement of the hospital parking lot. Even the air here was gritty; the salty dust stuck to his tongue. The sparse bushes around the hospital offered nowhere for him to hide, and the windows looked reinforced. He would have to find another way in.

A faint odor filled the dry, chill air, and Fear saw congealed blood in a stream between the back tires of one of the few cars on the lot. He crept to the other side and gritted his teeth when he saw the body of a nurse leaning awkwardly against the driver's door. Blood matted her brown hair from the bottom of her cap to the nape of her neck. She had been shot from behind.

Fear heard a car approach and stop at the edge of the lot. A door opened and slammed, and the car puttered away. Fear peeked through the Ford's windows and saw a woman crossing the lot. He wished there were some trees, even an awning, for him to drop from, but at least he could grab her from behind. Fear sprang silently toward the woman until he could throw his arm around her neck and hold the tip of his crossbow under her chin.

"Madre de - !" she cried.

"Speak and you die," Fear hissed in Spanish.

She nodded and fell silent.

He dragged her behind the car and turned her head roughly so that she could see the body.

"See that?"

She nodded. "Anne…"

"That could be you. You don't want to die like her, do you?"

"No no no!"

"Then listen to me. I am your cousin who has come to visit from Mexico. You wanted to show me the hospital, understand?"

"Yes, I understand."

"Good," he grunted, tossing her savagely against the car so that she almost touched the body.

The Mexican woman crossed herself and continued toward the entrance.


Joy slept with her head cradled in a bleached white pillow when Sorrow entered room 302. In an uncharacteristic display of vanity, she seemed to be wearing her bandanna to disguise the wound he knew she had on the side of her head. She opened her eyes as he approached. The nurse had been right. She was awake.

"Joy," he said simply. She looked haggard under the hospital lights, and he wished she had a window in the room so that he could see her in the sun. It was like watching an animal in a zoo.

"Sorrow," she said wistfully, "am I still in a dream?"

She rolled onto her back, and the bulge of her abdomen was apparent through the sheets. Tears streamed unfettered down Sorrow's face, and he reached for her stomach. She took his hand in midair and grasped it with both of hers.

"How did you get in here? How did you find me?"

"I… I had ways." He lifted the bundle of flowers so that she could see it. "Easter lilies. The man at flower stand took all my money. He says the Japanese do not send… bulbs, I think."

"Yes. They grow from bulbs." Joy smiled at Sorrow's timid use of English.

"In old icon paintings," Sorrow said more confidently, "Gabriel brings the Easter lilies to Mother Mary."

Joy laughed, but it sounded strange echoing in the small room. "I'm no Virgin Mary." As she took the flowers in her hands, Joy saw the glint of a long, thin knife among the leafy stems. "In China, white is the color of death."

Sorrow had been blushing, but his cheeks were suddenly cold. He had killed today. With a white bouquet in his hand, he had killed a woman in a white dress. He would kill another in a white coat. Marina would have told him that it was all superstition. She was practical, "a future mother of many", their father would say proudly. Joy was not at all like Marina, but she lay in front of Sorrow, a mother in white.

Sorrow changed the subject. "Mina Berksen. It is a strange name."

"They put me under a fake name. Did the Philosophers send you?"

Sorrow swallowed. "Yes."

"You can't have come all the way here just to see me. What's your mission?"

"I – nothing. I wanted to see you."

"You're shaking." She laid the flowers on the table and took his hands to steady them. They were icy, as cold as they had been the night, four months earlier, when the RAF was bombing Berlin. "Sorrow, are you here to kill someone?"

"Yes," he sighed resignedly.

"Did you already kill someone?"

"Yes. To get your name and the layout of the hospital."

"Who?"

"A nurse."

"What was her name?" Joy's eyes gazed, steely and intent, at Sorrow.

"Anne." As he said her name, he understood that, though Anne Lucille Faberly still existed, in fact had only begun to exist, for Sorrow, she was gone in every other sense. She had an adult daughter, and her mother was still alive; she was gone for them. For the patients who expected Nurse Faberly to bring their morning medications, she would never come.

"Sorrow," Joy said gravely. "This is what it feels like to kill an innocent person. A soldier like you and me expects to die in battle, but it is sometimes necessary to kill others – scientists, women, even children. Don't dwell on their deaths, but remember their names."

He nodded. It seemed so easy when she said it – "don't dwell" – but though she called him a soldier, he felt like a child. His hand had pulled the trigger, but a real soldier had done the killing for him.

"I must go," he said. "I have been here too long."

He touched the bandanna, and though Joy lifted her hand to stop him, she dropped it with a smile. Her smile was different, Sorrow noticed as he slid the bandanna over her hair. The first time, he thought it was just a sign of fatigue, but now that she seemed wide awake, he realized that the weary smile did not spread beyond her lips. Even her lips seemed a little hesitant, unsure if they should dare to form a smile. Sorrow lifted the layer of hair that almost hid the scar and kissed the raised pink line across her scalp.

He folded the bandanna into his palm and tucked it in his pocket. "Do not cover your scar. You are like the Pain."

She stared at him, taken aback. Then her lips curled into another conflicted grin. "Have you seen the other Cobras?"

"One of them. Fury said that he will… join again if I bring… what is the word?"

"Would it be more comfortable if we spoke German?"

"Yes. Thank you. Proof. Proof that you are alive."

"So you took my bandanna?"
"Yes."

"It means little to Fury, but I can give you something that will mean a lot more. Tell him that I said, 'Chao ni zu zong shi bad ai.'"

Sorrow repeated the phrase. "What does it mean?"

"He'll know."

"Joy. I really have to leave. Can you walk?"

"Yes." The word lacked her usual confidence.

"You are not going to escape?"

"You don't understand, Sorrow," she said like a teacher using him as an example.

"Don't you want to come back to your unit?"

She gave him a look of anguished pity, and Sorrow noticed again that she had the same eyes and cheeks as her mother.

"When I first awoke," she said, "all I thought of was escaping, but… I was wounded, Sorrow."

"You have been wounded before."

"This is different. It's not my body that's injured. I had to learn to walk. I had to teach the muscles in my left leg to obey my brain again. I'm not ready to fight yet." It hurt her to tell him, but if she went back to the front now, she would only be a burden on the Cobras and a liability for the Allies.

"There is still a war to be fought!" Sorrow cried.

"Oh, Sorrow… if you reunite the Cobra Unit, I swear I will do everything in my power to return to you." She raised herself, and he could see that she move differently than before, like some of her body was slower to react.

Sorrow heard something metallic slam against a wall in the hallway.

"Go, Sorrow! I'll see you in Europe," Joy cried, pushing him away.

"If you need to defend yourself, there's a - ."

"I know."

Sorrow nodded and turned to leave. At the door, he looked back and saw the Joy feigning sleep, one arm covering the scar across her head. She may moved differently now, but she was just as quick.

He stepped casually into the hallway with this hand ready to draw his pistol. A Mexican woman and a lanky man were talking in front of the combination-locked door. Sorrow dashed the other direction, toward the room into which he had seen his target disappear. A plaque on the door read, "Ladies". A restroom. Sorrow drew his pistol and pushed the door.


Historical Notes

Although Easter lilies have been illustrated in Raphaelite paintings being given to Mary by Gabriel, I could find no record of them in Russian Orthodox icons. I just thought it sounded nice. "Icon" in the Eastern and Russian Orthodox churches means paintings of saints and Biblical figures.