Chapter Five
Elena returned to work on Monday morning filled with a missionary-like zeal to help String get better. Tucked in her bag was another library book, this one a recognition guide to aircraft, with plenty of photographs. She wanted to try him with a helicopter this time.
What she saw when she opened the door to his room made her feel as if she'd just been punched in the stomach. This wasn't the same man she had seen the last day she'd been here, who had talked easily and knowledgeably about the old Beaver float plane. This was the man who had arrived at the clinic in the summer as little more than an apathetic shell. It was as if the months in between hadn't happened. "String, it's me, Elena," she said to him tentatively. "How are you?"
Nothing.
She came over to the bedside and folded her arms around him gently. "Stringling, what's happened to you?" She knew she was talking to herself.
She had to get one of the orderlies to help her bathe him, because he couldn't or wouldn't move a muscle for himself. Afterwards she put his hospital gown back on him, because it was easier than getting him properly dressed and she doubted that he would care today about what he was wearing. She poured enough milk on his breakfast cereal to make a thin mush and slowly and laboriously spoonfed it into him, then got him into his chair and wheeled him out to the lounge, where he could look out the sliding glass doors. His head lolled. After a while she turned the chair around so it faced the TV, which several of the other patients were already watching, lined up in a glassy-eyed row. A cartoon cat was being outsmarted by a mouse. She hoped the sound or the movement would catch his attention. They didn't.
Four weeks later, she returned the book to the library, unread. String had barely made a sound the entire month. He'd only spoken three times; each time it was when a helicopter had flown past overhead. Then he'd had a fit, screaming incoherently. "The black machine" were the only words anyone could understand, that and the fact that he seemed to think it was coming to kill him, before a nurse shot him full of sedatives and he lapsed back into his zombie-like state.
Dr. Fairling came to see him two days before Christmas, and announced to the clinic staff that she would be away for three months and was only to be notified if there was an emergency. Elena figured sourly that she was heading somewhere warm for the winter. Nevertheless, she was glad the woman was gone; she was sure her so-called therapy sessions had done String no good whatsoever.
The day before Christmas she cut his hair; the military-short style he'd been sporting when he'd arrived had gotten relatively shaggy. She trimmed his nails, shaved him especially carefully, and dressed him in the Christmas present she'd gotten for him, a pair of warm flannel pyjamas. She told him as she worked that maybe someone would come to see him on Christmas Day, and she wanted him to be ready for company. What the hell, it was supposed to be the season for miracles, wasn't it? Was it too much to ask that someone from the outside world would be able to find their way in here?
Nobody came on Christmas Day. But at the beginning of January, Tommy Vine finally had a visitor.
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"I'm sorry, ma'am," said the receptionist to the woman standing in front of the glass partition in the entrance lobby of the Green Hills clinic. "But all visitors have to have an appointment. And Mr. Vine isn't allowed to see anyone at all. Doctor's orders."
"Oh, that's all right. I've got written consent from Dr. Fairling ‒ it's in here somewhere . . . " The woman rummaged briefly in a large leather shoulder bag and produced a letter. She handed it over and waited patiently while the receptionist perused it, frowning, then called one of the nurses. While they waited for her to arrive, the receptionist covertly inspected the stranger. She was probably in her early thirties, very pretty, with long blonde hair, large blue-gray eyes, and lightly tanned, exquisite skin, dressed in silk trousers and a lightweight leather jacket that was no match for the New Hampshire winter. There was a nasty wind outside that was blowing the snow in furious eddies, and the woman looked chilled to the bone.
The nurse arrived and scanned the letter in turn. It was certainly signed by Dr. Fairling, and gave consent for the bearer, one Ann Strete, to visit with Tommy Vine. The nurse looked at her. "Are you a relative, Miss Strete?"
"No. Just an old friend."
"I see. Could I see some ID, please?"
Ann handed over a driver's license. The nurse glanced at it briefly and handed it back. "All right. Come this way, please." She pressed a button under the counter; there was a buzz and the click of the heavy glass door unlocking. Ann stepped through and into the clinic.
She followed the nurse to the lounge, her eyes darting from side to side, taking in the soothing color scheme, the cheery prints on the walls, the heavy locked doors. They cringed away from the sight of the patients: a fairly representative sampling of the people living there, but not a very cheery, upbeat group. One elderly man sat rocking ceaselessly back and forth, while another man, much younger, walked around and around the room on his own predetermined track, muttering to himself. Two old ladies were watching cartoons on the TV, while a middle-aged woman dozed, slack-mouthed. It looked to Ann like some kind of junkyard for wrecked and worn-out human beings.
The nurse noticed her distress. "A lot of our patients have some form of dementia," she explained. "We need to make sure they don't wander off. All these locks are for their own safety, really. And this weather, you know, it tends to make everyone a bit depressed."
Ann wasn't sure she believed that. She had reason to know that not every patient here suffered from dementia.
The man called Tommy Vine was in his wheelchair, staring out through the sliding glass doors of the lounge at the winter landscape, his back turned to the doorway. The nurse went over and turned the chair around. "Look, Mr. Vine, here's an old friend of yours to see you. Do you remember Miss Strete?"
Whether he did or didn't, there was no change in the unfocussed stare. Ann hung back as if afraid to come any nearer. The nurse gave her a professionally encouraging smile. "It's okay. You can come closer."
Karen, who until now had been paying far more attention to the TV than to her patient, looked at Ann in amazement.
"This is Karen," said the nurse. "She's one of Mr. Vine's caregivers. She'll help you if you need anything." She offered another smile and left.
Well, I hope she doesn't think I'll be able to interpret Blank Stare for her, thought Karen, or get a message to whatever planet this guy's living on.
Ann Strete came a few steps closer. Unexpectedly, she found that her heart was hammering in her chest. A moment ago she'd been shivering in her light jacket; now she'd broken out in a sweat. "Um ‒ Tommy?" she said hesitantly. "Do you remember me?"
There was no reply, not even a hint of recognition. Oh God, she thought. I didn't think it would be this bad. "Is he always like this?" she asked Karen.
The other woman shrugged. "He has good days and bad days. He seemed to be doing a bit better back in the fall. The last month or so, he's been mostly like this." Except when he's screaming the place down, she thought, but prudently didn't say so.
"Uh ‒ is there anywhere I could just talk to him in private for a few minutes?"
Karen wasn't supposed to leave him unattended, but her favorite soap started in ten minutes. "Sure. I'll take him to his room." She pushed the wheelchair out of the lounge, Ann following behind, eyes still nervous. She flinched at the sound of the heavy door closing and locking behind them at the entrance to the bedroom area.
Karen parked the chair in the middle of String's room, pointed out the button on the wall for Ann to push if she needed help, and departed.
Ann forced herself to take a good long look at the man in the wheelchair. She'd thought she'd known what to expect; after all, she'd seen Dr. Fairling's reports. But she hadn't been ready for this.
She came closer and knelt down in front of him, taking one of his cold hands in hers. "Hawke?" she tried. "Do you remember me? It's Angelica. Angelica Horn."