"For the last time, Lynn, I will not have you coming in with me," Blanche said determinedly as she looked straight ahead down the corridor. "They wouldn't let you in anyway."
"And I'm telling you for the last time, Miss Blanche," Lynn replied, mimicking her employer's tone of voice, "that I'm not going to leave you alone with her." They weren't exactly arguing, but sometimes Lynn could be quite stubborn.
"You're forgetting she's my sister," Blanche said, gesturing for Lynn to stop at the last door. "And in her current state she wouldn't take kindly to strangers."
Lynn stepped around the wheel chair and crouched down in front of Blanche. "But I'm worried for you," she said quietly, looking up at the older woman.
Blanche had decided to come dressed in one of her loveliest pale pink dresses and with her hair done up rather neatly. To anyone else she'd have probably looked like the personification of beauty, but Lynn saw the nervousness and the pain in her eyes, noticed the stiffness in her body and the almost disguised tremor in her voice. Lynn knew for a fact that the dress Miss Blanche was wearing was a tad too tight for her. She had noticed a while ago that on her worse days, when she was upset or unsure of herself, the actress liked to wear rather tight clothing, as if she was depending on the clothes to keep her contained facade up.
Blanche's eyes softened. "Thank you," she spoke tenderly. "But I'll be all right," she assured the girl. "After all, it's just Jane. I've lived with her all my life, and besides, she's getting better."
"You don't know that," Lynn reminded her carefully.
"I have to give her a chance," Blanche breathed just as the office door behind Lynn's back opened.
"Miss Hudson," the doctor greeted the actress with a nod and reached out his hand to the girl on the floor. Lynn accepted the hand silently and let the man help her up. "I'm Dr. Brown, Miss," he introduced himself to the young woman.
"I'm afraid Miss Hudson is quite right," Dr. Brown said as he led the pair of women down the hallway towards the sitting room. "I couldn't possibly allow you to join them. Miss Jane is quite fragile these days, and she has only prepared to see her sister. Meeting her, shall we say, replacement would almost certainly be devastating for her."
Blanche was having a hard time imagining Jane as fragile. Throughout her entire life that was the one word she had never associated with her sister—the frightfully cool-headed and stubborn, loud and strong woman. But she was relieved to have the doctor on her side in this matter. In spite of the anxiety she was trying so hard to ignore, Blanche was determined to face her past and her problems by herself.
"But you can't possibly trust her enough to leave her alone with Miss Blanche," Lynn replied with a desperate note in her voice.
The small group stopped in front of a pale green door the women supposed led to the sitting room where Blanche was set to meet with Jane, and the doctor turned to face the young woman with a reassuring smile. "There's nothing for you to worry about. There is a guard and a nurse in there with them, just in case our judgement has been incorrect," he explained calmly.
"That's all right, doctor," Blanche piped up, forestalling Lynn's heated response. "I'm not afraid of my sister." She could sense an unmistakable doubt in both the doctor and the girl standing next to her, and she willed her hands to stop shaking in her lap. "N-Not any more." She felt Lynn's hand on her shoulder and although she appreciated the girl's strength, she wished her friend would allow her the independence she needed to take this step on her own.
"Now, Miss Hudson," Dr. Brown said softly, "there's no need for you to keep up heroic appearances. As I've told you, your sister is not cured. She has just been asking about you daily and we think she's well enough to see you. However, you can still turn back and leave if you want to. No one would hold it against you."
"No," Blanche replied quickly, and Lynn's hand fell from her shoulder. "No, I… I want to see her. I really do."
There was a beat of silence, and Blanche enjoyed the warm pleasant feeling that revealing this intimate truth brought her. Dr. Brown gave her an approving nod and stepped over to the door.
Lynn's voice was faint when she said, "I'll be waiting downstairs in the lobby, Miss Blanche."
The door opened to reveal a spacious sunlit room with houseplants and flowers in every corner and on all the windowsills, a small coffee table with two armchairs by one of the windows and a beige couch in the middle of the room. A hunched figure in a plain white dress was sitting on the couch, her face turned towards the windows, her coarse blonde hair catching the light and creating a glowing halo around her head.
Blanche knew that unique profile well; in the warm silence of the sitting room she had to grip her chair's wheels with practised determination to keep herself from instinctively backing away. She could hear her own breath trembling as she prepared to make her presence known. In spite of the guard at the door and the nurse beside her, Blanche felt as if she were back at her old house on Hillside Terrace, alone, with Jane as mysterious and as unpredictable as ever.
"Jane." Blanche's soft voice rang though the room, but there was no answer and she thought perhaps she had merely imagined herself breathing out the name. She moved forward, hesitantly speaking again, "Jane? Can you hear me?"
She stopped right next to the old girl sitting on the couch and barely managed to hold back a gasp of surprise when she saw the ashen wrinkled face and the blissfully distant look in those big baby blue eyes. "Jane," Blanche called carefully, although she had a feeling her sister couldn't hear her, for she kept staring out of the window for another minute or two, admiring some beautiful unearthly miracle far away in the tall trees of the sanatorium park.
Blanche watched her in stunned silence, marvelling at the complete peace she had seldom seen in her sister during the last decade. She considered reaching out and touching her hand to bring her out of her tranquil reverie. But there was something holding her back—a cold fear of ending this peaceful moment, an unwelcome sting in her skin where she unconsciously expected a senselessly violent lash.
In a while, without further encouragement, the older woman's head turned slowly and her eyes travelled to Blanche's face. They studied her apprehensive eyes, the sharp shadows of her cheekbones, the familiar curve of her voluminous lips. A hand rose haltingly, reaching with timid hesitation for the face stony with alarm.
From the corner of her eye Blanche saw the guard shuffling in his place, ready to rush forward at the first sign of discomfort on the lady's part. For that reason and to refrain from startling her sister Blanche kept deliberately still as Jane's fingers gently touched her cheek.
Jane's lips were moving, but only when she had moved her hand across Blanche's cheek, her fingertips reaching into her hair and under her pink silken scarf, did she breathe quietly, "Blanche?" Her expression one of profound and hopeful fascination, Jane traced her thumb over her sister's cheekbone, over her full lips and back across her jawline. Her touch was tender and hesitant, exploring the person she hadn't seen for over five months—the longest they'd ever been apart from one another. It was as if she was trying to pull her younger sister's face out of the deceiving fog of her blurred memory. Her expression was slowly clearing. "Blanche…" she uttered with assured relief.
"Yes, dear," Blanche replied quickly, not quite daring to nod. She had held her breath with uneasy anticipation while Jane had studied her face and even now she only dared to take a shallow breath. It was so incredibly strange to feel her sister's hand, dry like sandpaper and yet gentler than ever, on her skin. "It's Blanche," she assured Jane.
"Blanche," Jane sighed again blissfully, pure delight in her tone. She looked a lot younger than Blanche had remembered and certainly a lot more peaceful. It was probably the sobriety that had caused this, and perhaps some sense of reality.
"Where have you been?" Jane asked in a light voice, carefully turning Blanche's head from side to side, her keen eyes studying every inch of her face.
Blanche raised her hand to take hold of Jane's on the side of her face, preventing her fingers from loosening her scarf. She was searching for an answer and trying desperately to keep images of Bill, Lynn and Danny from invading her mind's eye in a rapid order. "I've been looking for a new home for us," Blanche settled for the simplest of answers and held her breath in anxious suspense as gradual realization crossed Jane's white face.
"For us?" she asked gently, blinking her eyes twice. Her hand along with Blanche's own dropped from her sister's face and into Blanche's lap. "Me and you? You mean I could live with you?"
Blanche was entirely surprised to see a spark of joy in her eyes, to hear a hopeful note in her voice, and she squeezed Jane's hand in her own. "That's right, dear," she promised the old girl sitting opposite of her in a practised tone of sincere conviction. "One day. I don't quite know when."
Jane looked up at her with an innocent expression of childlike trust. "Soon?" she asked, a nearly pleading note of hope in her voice.
"I hope so." Blanche had barely gotten the lie out when she saw Jane lunging at her. Her first reflex was to lean as far away from her sister as possible. But had she done so, the guard would certainly have stepped between the two of them and separated them. And in spite of the remembered cold dread that had suddenly crept into Blanche's heart, at that same fickle heart she did not want to scare off the sweet and quiet girl that Jane was today. So, squeezing her eyes shut, she didn't move when her sister's body pressed against hers and her arms wrapped themselves around her.
It took the stunned Blanche a few seconds to recognize the gesture as an embrace rather than a vicious trapping grip. And once she had, she felt the sharp sting of tears in her eyes and quickly slid her hands across Jane's back, returning the hug. "Oh, Jane," she heard her own voice whispering against her sister's hair, "I've missed you so much."