Exit Light

by Megan Hart

  “Spider’s never been afraid of anything before. Not that I’ve seen. But that was different.” Tovah shrugged and picked a blade of grass. She put it between her thumbs and blew, making it bleat. She looked up at Ben. “Were you here when it happened?”

  He hesitated, then nodded. “Yes.”

  “Was it the same for you?”

  “Black sand? Black sky?” He reached for his own blade of grass and whistled with it. His worked better.

  “Yes. Lightning. And the ground shook.”

  Ben looked away from her. “It was the same for everyone I’ve talked to, no matter what they were doing.”

  Of course he spoke with others. There were plenty of times she entered the Ephemeros and didn’t see Ben or Spider. There was no reason for her to believe they weren’t here when she wasn’t. The sudden flare of jealousy surprised her.

  “Was it something from a shaper, do you think? Or something bigger?”

  Ben shot her a frown. “How should I know?”

  Though Spider had explained the Ephemeros to Tovah and she’d seen firsthand how it worked, she didn’t exactly understand it. She didn’t think Spider fully did, either, nor had she expected Ben to hold the key to its secrets. Even so, she frowned at his reaction.

  “Sorry. I thought you might have a theory or something, that’s all. Spider’s told me a lot. I figured he’d told you the same things he’s told me.”

  “What things?” Ben had shredded his grass whistle, but didn’t pick another.

  “That the Ephemeros is shaped by the collective unconscious. That we all enter it, but not everyone can manipulate it. Not even sleepers who know they’re dreaming are always shapers. That some people think it’s Heaven, or Hell—”

  “Yeah, he told me that, too.” Ben got up and strode away from the patch of grass he’d shared with her. Pacing, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his worn tan cords. He turned to look at her. “Do you believe him?”

  “I don’t believe he was lying to me, if that’s what you mean.”

  Ben shook his head. “I didn’t say he was lying. He believes it. I asked if you do.”

  She took a moment to ponder that. “I saw Jim Morrison in the club, once.”

  Ben laughed. “That’s not proof. Besides, Morrison’s not really dead. Just like Elvis and Marilyn Monroe. What was Mr. Mojo Rising doing?”

  “Nothing. I mean, we didn’t speak. He was at the bar, just watching everyone around him.”

  “Was he old and fat?”

  Tovah smiled. “No. He was young and lean and gorgeous.”

  “That’s not proof of anything. If you’re going to represent as a famous rock star, you’re not going to do the bloated version.”

  Tovah raised a brow. “It’s not proof. You’re right. It could have been someone shaping to look like him. Is this a philosophical discussion about whether or not Jim Morrison really died or are you arguing with me for kicks?”

  “I’m just saying that you know as well as I do the face anyone wears here isn’t necessarily his own, and seeing someone who died—supposedly or otherwise—means nothing. I mean, really, do you think the Ephemeros is Heaven?”

  She ignored his deliberately taunting tone. “I’m not convinced it isn’t.”

  “Because you saw Jim Morrison in a club.”

  “Because I think Heaven has to be somewhere,” she told him. “And this is as good a place as any.”

  “So you think what happened the other day…the ground shaking…was what? God?” Ben didn’t sound taunting now, he sounded downright scathing.

  “I didn’t say that. And no. I don’t think it was a god.”

  Ben stared at her. More tension crackled between them. Tovah took a slow breath and let her eyes wander over his face, the planes and lines and curves of which had become so familiar to her in so short a time.

  “Maybe it was Jim Morrison, then.”

  Tovah shrugged. “It didn’t feel shaped. He felt like he was representing true.”

  “You can’t tell that.”

  The way he scoffed got under her skin like a sliver. “C’mon, Ben, you can tell sometimes, can’t you? When someone’s representing true or not?”

  He stopped pacing to pierce her with his gaze. “I can tell when someone isn’t.”

  Now he was deliberately trying to get on her nerves, and Tovah put her hands on her hips. “Oh, really?”

  “Yes.” Ben moved two steps closer as though daring her to move away.

  Tovah didn’t move. He got to his knees in front of her and traced her eyebrows with the pad of his thumb while she shivered at his touch. His fingertips whispered over her cheeks, the bridge of her nose, the curve of her jaw and down her throat.

  She swallowed hard. He wasn’t looking into her eyes. His gaze followed the path his fingers made as they mapped her. His hands stopped briefly on her hips, and one moved across her thigh.

  Tovah, trembling, closed her eyes. She thought he’d kiss her again. She wanted him to kiss her.

  “Almost everything about you is real,” Ben whispered into her ear. “Almost.”

  Tovah opened her eyes, breaking at Ben’s words not because he meant them to be cruel but because she thought he meant to be kind. “What are you looking for in the water, Ben? What’s so important about those fish you’re always catching and throwing back? What do you want to pull out of there?”

  Now he looked into her eyes. Inches apart, his hand still on her thigh just above where her scars began in the waking world. There, but not here.

  “It doesn’t matter, Tovah.”

  “It does to me.”

  That first time he’d crashed into their space and shaped her and Spider within moments. Now Tovah relaxed, opening herself to the tendrils of Ben’s desire. The grass beneath them became soft white sand and the stream turned into the immortal and inexorable push-pull of the sea.

  But though Tovah waited for him to change her, she stayed the same.

  Ben turned his face when she leaned to kiss him. She stopped herself a breath from brushing her lips against his cheek. Stunned by the rejection, she watched as Ben got to his feet to pace again.

  “I’m not like you, Tovah.”

  Embarrassed, ashamed, she got up too. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He wouldn’t even look at her. They’d known each other for months, and now he was making her a stranger. Tovah swallowed bitterness and thought about simply willing all this away. Running away.

  “I can’t afford to jerk around in here, that’s all,” Ben said. “I don’t spend all my time in here avoiding the real world.”

  “Is that what you think I do?”

  He sighed. “Isn’t it?”

  Stung again, Tovah stepped back. “Why do you always do this?”

  “Do what?”

  “Pick a fight with me.” She crossed to him.

  He still had his hands in his pockets, but he took them out when she moved toward him. She stopped. Did he think she was going to hit him?

  “I don’t, Tovah.”

  She didn’t believe that for a second. “I don’t avoid the real world, Ben. But there’s not a damned thing wrong with enjoying this one. I’ve been given a gift in here, and so have you. I don’t know if it’s Heaven or Hell, but I’m glad I’m here.”

  “Tell that to all the people who’ve been having nightmares they can’t get away from.”

  “I can’t help that!”

  “You could help them,” he pointed out.

  “What were you doing when it happened?” She’d meant to ask only for basis of comparison, to get him to admit he hadn’t done a lot of guiding either, but his expression made it clear he didn’t want to tell her.

  “I was doing the same thing I’m always doing in here.”

  “Which is what?”

  Ben looked grim. He backed up a step or two, and the Ephemeros blurred around him, going gray. “Trying to wake up.”

  Then he left her alone in the meadow.

/>   Chapter Five

  Sometimes the week passed fast. Sometimes, as this one had, slow. But now it was Sunday again, and Tovah was going to see Henry. The fact Henry had a new doctor who was good-looking and seemed sincere in his desire to help shouldn’t have mattered as much as it did. Even so, Tovah took an extra five minutes to apply fresh lipstick and chew a few breath mints before she got out of her car.

  Fall was definitely on its way out, she thought, pulling her sweater closed tighter around her. Though it was only early October, the wind already had a wintry chill. The dark sky didn’t help. It was too early in the season for it, but as she pulled her tote bag from the back seat, Tovah sniffed the air and swore she smelled snow.

  It would be warm inside the hospital. It was always too warm. Once she’d joked to Ava that the administration was trying to sweat out the crazy. Ava hadn’t laughed.

  She braced herself for the smell as she always did. No matter how many times she came back, the pungent odor of antiseptic, human waste and stale food never failed to wrinkle her nose. Today the elevator smelled so strongly of sauerkraut her eyes watered. She put her sleeve over her nose, not taking it away even when the elevator stopped on the second floor and a pair of nuns in black habits got on.

  They smiled and nodded at her, and she returned the silent greeting. These were not the Sisters of Mercy, though their mission here might have been merciful. There was no actual Sisters of Mercy convent, and the hospital itself was no longer affiliated with any church. It had kept the name when it became a privately funded institution. Nondenominational, Sisters of Mercy Hospital was a place open to all faiths and therefore providing none to anyone.

  The sisters got off on the third floor and Tovah on the fifth. The smell abated the instant she got out of the elevator, though the odor replacing it wasn’t much better. Someone had spilled something, and the sharp scent of ammonia stabbed her nostrils.

  The fifth floor was quiet but for the murmur of the television coming from the common room at the end of the hall. Her footsteps sounded too loud as she crossed to the nurses’ station. Ava wasn’t there. Nobody was, actually, though an off-white cardigan hung on the back of the chair. Even though Ava often complained about the floor being understaffed, there was always someone around. The desk was certainly never supposed to be left unattended. Tovah signed in anyway with Ava’s purple pen.

  The nurses’ station and elevator sat at the head of a T formed by three long corridors. Straight ahead was the meds room, staff lounge and common room. Down the left and right were patient rooms. She looked down both corridors but saw nobody.

  This was strange.

  Tovah waited, listening, hesitant to call out and draw attention to herself if nothing was out of order. She hitched her bag higher. Still nothing but the murmur of the television. It sounded like a game show.

  Henry’s room was at the end of the right-hand corridor. She should just go there and visit him. Read the book she’d brought, check to see if he needed anything, make sure he was all right.

  The empty nurses’ station bothered her. Five was for long-timers, but even though they fretted about Henry being violent, the ward had light security. She’d never seen the nurses’ station empty unless there was an emergency that needed all the staff, like an attempted suicide. Those weren’t supposed to happen on Five, where the patients were mostly shuffling zombies wearing necklaces of drool, but sometimes they did.

  She followed the noise of the television down to the common room, which had been divided into several smaller sections. Laminate tables and plastic chairs bore the remains of the glue and glitter left over from projects. Several worn couches made three sides of a square, the fourth completed by the TV.

  She knew the names of Five’s other residents, but didn’t know the residents themselves. It wasn’t unusual to see them staring into nothing, or repeatedly putting the same peg into the same hole in the board, over and over, or laughing at The Weather Channel.

  Today, two men and a woman sat watching a game show Tovah didn’t recognize. Another man and two women sat together at one of the tables, putting together a puzzle that seemed to have a great many pieces, all of them the same shape. Nobody looked up when she came in. It was the quietest she’d ever seen the common room.

  She saw Dr. Goodfellow right away. He leaned over the puzzle-makers, a hand on one woman’s shoulder, and spoke into her ear. He moved to the couch, pausing to speak briefly to each of the patients sitting there. They acknowledged him with smiles and nodding heads, which told her a lot. They liked Dr. Goodfellow. They trusted him, she thought, watching one of the men pat the hand Dr. Goodfellow had put on his shoulder. In a ward for paranoid schizophrenics, trust was hard to come by, yet all these patients smiled and looked serene in his presence.

  “Dr. Goodfellow.”

  “Miss Connelly.” He looked up, smile arrested by surprise. “How did you get here?”

  “I…drove?” Tovah laughed a little to show she was being silly.

  Dr. Goodfellow didn’t laugh. He smiled after a long moment and moved toward her. “Of course. That was a stupid question. Hi.”

  He was dressed as neatly as the first time she’d seen him, again in dark trousers and a deep blue shirt. He had a clipboard in one hand and, remembering his previous hesitation at shaking her hand, she didn’t offer it.

  “Hi,” she said. “Nice to see you again.”

  “You too. I was just finishing some rounds.”

  “I’m here to visit Henry.”

  “I know,” he said.

  Duh. Of course she was. They stared at each other until heat crept into her cheeks. Dr. Goodfellow stuck his pen into the clipboard’s metal clip and tucked his free hand into a pocket. The sound of a laugh track punctuated the too-warm silence.

  She shrugged off her embarrassment. “How’s he been this week? Any changes?”

  Dr. Goodfellow shook his head, the corners of his mouth turning down a little. “No. I’m sorry. But I’ve been looking into some new treatments for him. Old treatments, really. Just not used so much any longer.”

  “Really? You’re not going to give him shock treatment or anything, are you?” She hadn’t meant to sound so suspicious, but Henry’d had it all before. Shock, cold water, restraints. Some of the things he’d told her about were barbaric but had once been considered cutting-edge psychiatric care. She counted herself lucky that when she’d done her time it had only been drugs and therapy sessions.

  Dr. Goodfellow blinked, then shook his head. “No. Of course not.”

  He said it so mildly she felt silly for jumping to a conclusion like that. “Sorry. It’s just—”

  “I know.” He took his hand from his pocket and hooked the fingers into claws. “Shrinks are the big, bad bogeymen.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Witch doctors?” He grinned, bouncing a little on his toes.

  “Not that, either.”

  From down the hall came the soft, muted sound of talking and the thud of a door closing. Dr. Goodfellow turned to look over his shoulder. When he looked back at her, his confident smile had become a little strained and he passed a hand over his forehead, brow crinkling.

  “You okay?” Tovah asked.

  “Fine. Just a little headache. It’ll pass.”

  The blare of the television became suddenly loud enough to make her jump. One of the people at the puzzle table muttered an invective and tossed the box lid to the ground, earning complaints from her companions. One of men who’d been watching TV got up and began to pace in front of the windows.

  “So much for the peace,” Tovah said with a small smile.

  Dr. Goodfellow looked around the room and gave a somewhat weary shrug. “I can’t make it last. Nothing ever does.”

  The people at the puzzle table erupted into a frenzy of squabbling and throwing puzzle pieces. Tovah took that as her cue to leave as Dr. Goodfellow went to deal with the problem. She found Ava at the nurses’ station and stopped, tho
ugh she’d already signed in.

  “Dr. Goodfellow might need a hand,” Tovah said.

  Ava looked up with an expression Tovah’d never seen on her before. Confusion. “Tovah? When did you get here?”

  “Fifteen minutes ago, I guess. Nobody was here.”

  “What do you mean, nobody was here?” Ava frowned. “You know someone’s always at the desk.” She tilted her chair to call back into the meds room. “Marco? Did you go somewhere?”

  Marco, a tall bald man who liked to play solitaire and kept his pockets full of peppermints, stuck his head around the corner. “No.”

  Ava looked back at Tovah. “You still need to sign in.”

  “But I—” Tovah looked at the clipboard Ava was pushing toward her. The last signature had been written with the same memorable purple ink she’d used, but it wasn’t her name. “I thought I signed in already.”

  Ava sniffed. “Well, you didn’t. C’mon, don’t give me a hard time. You know the rules.”

  Tovah thought about making a smart comment about the rules saying someone had to be at the station at all times, too, but she didn’t. She just signed her name, making sure each letter stayed in its place, and handed the clipboard back to Ava. “See you.”

  “He could use some new air fresheners, next time you come,” called Ava after her as she headed down the hall to Henry’s room. “And take away some of those books today. They’re gathering dust, that’s all they’re doing.”

  Tovah nodded and moved toward the hall to Henry’s room. She looked over her shoulder, hoping for another glance at Dr. Goodfellow. She had a clear view into the lounge, but he must have left it because she didn’t see him anywhere.

  “Did you see the paper?”

  Tovah’s sister meant well, but that didn’t make Tovah feel any better about the article she had, indeed, seen. “I saw it.”

  The real question was how Adina had seen an article from the Harrisburg Patriot-News from her home in Syracuse. “Tessie’s cousin’s sister-in-law sent it to Ma. Ma said we shouldn’t call you about it, but I told her you’d have seen it.”

  Tovah smiled into the phone. Her mother was a big fan of avoiding uncomfortable situations. She routinely ignored Tovah’s prosthetic leg and referred to her daughter’s hospital stay as the time Tovah had “been away.”