“Almost nine-thirty. Now you say good night to Thomasine and let’s get upstairs.”
“All right,” she said, trying to sound mortally wounded. And succeeding. “Good night, Thomasine,” she said.
“Good night, Abbie.”
They kissed, and then Abbie and Brad went upstairs.
Brad brushed his teeth with her. He’d had one of his rare cigars, and he expected to be kissing Thomasine very soon. Brad tucked his daughter in, then read her One Morning in Maine, her favorite story since he’d outlawed dinosaur books. He kissed her good night, left the door open “a crack,” as Abbie had requested (a crack you could drive an eighteen-wheeler through), and went downstairs to Thomasine, who was tending the fire.
They were barely settled on the couch when the nightmare revisited.
It had been two weeks and one day since Abbie’s last one. Brad knew exactly because he’d been crossing his fingers and keeping count. He hadn’t admitted it to anyone, not even Thomasine, but the nightmares had made his blood run cold. They were so graphic, so powerful. They could only signal some deep-rooted emotional problem, the kind that could cripple for life.
Two weeks and one day. Almost to the point where he could breathe more easily.
Abbie’s screams shattered the quiet.
Brad bolted for the stairs, gesturing Thomasine to stay put. He rounded the corner and exploded into Abbie’s room. Her back was to the bedboard, her knees to her chest, her hands clasped over her ears. She was hysterical. Brad took her in his arms.
“Shhhh.” He soothed her. “It’s all right. All right, Apple Guy. Everything’s all right. Daddy’s here, and it’s all right.”
“Rham-fo-ram-for . . .”
“Shhh. It’s OK.”
“Rhampho . . .”
He dreaded the word. “There are no dinosaurs, honey,” he said. “Not here or anywhere. Not for millions of years.”
“Rhampho . . .”
“Only in museums.”
“Rham-pho-ryn-chus.”
“It was only a bad dream.”
“But . . . it wasn’t.” Her sobs were subsiding, but he could feel her heart, hammering away inside her chest. Her whole body seemed to reverberate from the force of it.
“Yes, it was, honey. Only a bad dream.”
“No.”
It was senseless to argue. “Shhhh,” he said. “Shhhh.”
But she was compelled to continue. The nightmares—they were real. She knew it, and Jimmy knew it. She couldn’t understand why the grown-ups didn’t know it, too. Why they didn’t believe it when it was so . . . awful.
“It talked again, Daddy.”
“See?” he said hopefully. “It had to be a dream. Because dinosaurs don’t talk. Even if there were any anymore,” he quickly added, “which there aren’t.”
“It said my letter to Santa was stupid. It said why did I bother, ‘cause it was going to get me before Santa could bring me my toys.”
“But you’ve been a very good girl, honey,” he explained. “You’re going to get lots and lots of toys.” He was treading water now. Kicking hard and fast to stay afloat. “Santa told me so himself.”
Abbie just shook her head. “It said I won’t be here because it’s—it’s . . . going to take me away.”
“Oh, honey. Nobody’s going to take you away.”
“It said it hasn’t been around because it’s so . . . busy. With all the other kids. The kids who are sick. Kids who are dead. Kids like . . . Maureen . . . and Jay McLaughlin.”
And then the tears returned, with more fury than before. Brad held her, saying nothing, until they passed and his daughter had fallen into an uneasy sleep. It took more than an hour, plenty of time for Brad to think. He thought he had never been so powerless in his life.
Or scared.
PART THREE
HOBBAMOCK
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
December 11 to 15
A Long Weekend
Brad was at his computer terminal. Every few seconds his left index finger would tap the “next story” key. He was flipping through the wire queue, trying to find something to plug a hole that had just popped up on an inside page.
The stories flew by. Brad barely absorbed the datelines, never mind the gist of the pieces.
His thoughts were on Abbie.
He’d known all along, hadn’t he?
At least for several weeks, as the sickness had spread and the first two children had died, Brad had known. That’s what was giving him his own nightmares, wasn’t it? What was making him reconsider his move to Morgantown on an almost hourly basis, what was driving him to bury Transcript readers with news of the “Mystery Disease,” as his headline writer had taken to calling it, what was . . .
. . . what was making him wonder how much longer Abbie could tempt fate.
Because that’s really what this horror show was all about, wasn’t it? Strip away all the medical jingo and bureaucratic breast-beating, and this is the bare bone you were left with: Every morning Abbie woke up healthy was simply another morning of reprieve. Screw Gosselin’s cheery little lecture about the Black Death’s striking down only one out of three, or two out of five, or whatever the Christ he’d said. Deep in his heart—a place he didn’t dare probe anymore—Brad feared it was only a question of time before . . .
. . . before Abbie came down with It, too.
And yet—and yet, when she came home sick from kindergarten two weeks before Christmas, like Ginny Ellis, he denied it had anything to do with the Mystery Disease. A part of his mind—a big, strong, stubborn part—wouldn’t let him even consider it, not for more than a fleeting moment.
“Brad?”
It was Rod Dougherty, yelling from across the room, where he’d answered the city desk line.
“Yeah?”
“It’s for you,” Rod said gravely.
“Who is it?”
“Dorothy Garland.”
“Who?”
“The school nurse.”
“Jesus,” Brad said. “What’s she want?”
“I don’t know. She said it was an emergency.”
These had not been the best of times for Dorothy Garland. She’d wound up several times on the front page of the Transcript, a place she hated to be, but that wasn’t the worst part of the last two and a half months. The worst part was the kids. Dorothy liked kids—no, loved kids, had six of her own to prove it—and to see so many so sick was not only depressing but very frightening. To think that now, with some fifty children sick—fully fifteen percent of the school—and the authorities were no closer to solving it than before . . . It was enough to make a school nurse a nervous wreck. And it had. She was seriously considering quitting.
There was something else, too, and Nurse Garland was far from the only one noticing it. Before all this Morgantown had been the very epitome of an elementary school, a Norman Rockwell-ish celebration of learning and eternal youth most graduates recalled tenderly into their dotage. Now it was more like hell. Oh, games still went on, and the sounds of tag and red rover filled the playground at recess, and Principal Mancuso still personally greeted every student getting off the bus, but there was an underlying gloom, as if they all were actors doing the best to read their parts and really not being very convincing at all.
Lately a new act had been added: the concerned call home. Time was long past when Nurse Garland or Mancuso took chances. The slightest complaint from a kid nowadays, and that kid had an automatic ticket home.
That kid’s name was also automatically given to Bostwick.
Abbie was in the school sickroom, lying on the antique black-leather examining table. The roll of white paper at the head was crumpled evidence that she’d not been resting easily.
“I’m glad you came,” she said to her father when he rushed in, out of breath, but she didn’t sound glad. She sounded beat.
“How do you feel, sweetie?” he asked.
“My stomach.”
“It hurts?” he said, rubbing her abd
omen.
She nodded. “I threw up.”
“I know. The nurse told me.”
“Maybe I’m going to throw up again.”
“Nah. Probably something you ate, that’s all. Probably all done throwing up. Why, I bet when we get you home all nicely tucked into bed, by tomorrow I bet you’ll feel fine.”
“That’s what I told her,” Nurse Garland said, but there was no more conviction in her voice than in Brad’s.
And in fact, Abbie was not better the next day. She was worse. She’d had another of her nightmares Thursday night, even though Brad had kept all the lights in her room blazing, and it took her more than two hours to get back to sleep. Two hours of hand-holding, and drinks of water, and endless verses of their favorite song.
My, oh, my, she’s my Apple Guy!
Give her a kiss, won’t you try?
Give her a monkey, I don’t know why.
Take her to a movie, but let’s not cry.
Climb on a staircase, way up high.
Along with my favorite little old Apple Guy!
She managed a smile once or twice before finally falling asleep. When she awoke Friday, her eyes were bleary, her voice scratchy from a sore throat. Her face had deep, craggy lines Brad had never seen on a child. Yesterday’s nausea seemed to have moderated, but now she had stomach cramps. By noon her temperature had climbed to 101. Except for trips to the bathroom, she did not budge from the living room couch, where she was huddled under a comforter.
“I think it’s my tooth, Dad,” she ventured weakly as Brad waited for Mrs. Fitzpatrick to spot him Friday afternoon so he could go to the Transcript for an hour or so.
“Why do you say that, Apple Guy?”
“Because it’s loose. See?” She opened her mouth wide and wobbled one of her lower front teeth.
“Does it hurt?”
“Yeah, some. Is it gonna fall out?” she asked anxiously.
“Sooner or later. But a new one will be right behind,” he hastened to add. “It’s normal. Everyone goes through it. It’s called getting your permanent teeth.”
“Oh.”
“You know what happens when it falls out, don’t you?”
“No.”
“You put it under your pillow, and while you sleep, the tooth fairy takes it and leaves money.”
“Money?”
“Usually a dollar bill.” In his day it had been a quarter.
“A whole dollar?” she asked, brightening momentarily.
“A whole dollar.”
“Goody!” She sounded excited, interested.
But in another five minutes she’d forgotten about the tooth fairy. Another ten, and she had drifted off to a semisleep.
Does getting new teeth knock the hell out of you like this?
Brad pondered that one, with a desperate hope that was indeed the case. He remembered Abbie as an infant, the holy war he and Heather had gone through when their daughter cut her first set. It really had been the beginning of the end of the married Gales, hadn’t it, those awful three or four months when Abbie was awake every night, seemingly all night, bawling uncontrollably? That was the time Heather had been trying to get back into acting and finding out just how few doors were open to her.
Yes, Abbie had been miserable cutting her first set of teeth. He didn’t remember ever hearing such a thing happening with the second, but it didn’t seem so ridiculous. So why was he avoiding an informed answer? Why wasn’t he pulling his Dr. Spock off the bookshelf to see what old reliable had to say? Friday evening, back from the paper, he finally thumbed through Spock. There was, as Brad suspected, a chapter on permanent teeth.
But there was no mention of accompanying sickness. Not like Abbie’s.
Saturday morning Thomasine came by with a bag of goodies: ginger ale, orange Crush, lemon sherbet, Campbell’s chicken with rice soup, and Mary Poppins for the VCR. Abbie managed to keep some soup down, and she actually seemed to enjoy the orange Crush. Mary Poppins wasn’t such a big hit.
Thomasine didn’t need a weatherman to know which way this wind was blowing. Brad was distant and preoccupied—more than she’d ever seen him. Which was saying a lot. Although charming when the situation demanded, Brad would never be accused of being happy-go-lucky. He was intelligent, and like most intelligent people, he could be moody, withdrawn, especially when bothered or . . . Thomasine hesitated to say scared. She didn’t know if she’d ever seen him scared. She didn’t know if that’s what she was seeing now. She only knew he didn’t want to talk about Abbie. Didn’t want to commiserate or armchair-diagnose. Didn’t want to acknowledge that his daughter had been sick going on three days and showed no sign of improvement, none at all.
Only once was her sickness really mentioned, when Thomasine came in the door.
“It’s probably the flu,” Brad said, anticipating her.
And I’m probably the Virgin Mary, Thomasine almost quipped, but didn’t.
“Probably is the flu,” she agreed.
Thomasine stayed through lunch, and then walking on eggshells got too much. Fabricating some excuse about an overdue report to Brown, she apologized and left. Driving to her apartment, she wondered how long it would be before Brad had noticed she was gone. She was worried about him.
And Abbie.
Saturday night Brad let Abbie sleep in his bed.
She woke three times crying, but there were no nightmares.
The denial continued into Sunday evening.
That’s when Bostwick called.
“I heard Abbie’s pretty sick,” the doctor said.
“Just a cold or something,” Brad said, then added suspiciously: “Who told you?”
“Mrs. Garland,” the doctor lied. Thomasine had made Bostwick swear he’d keep her out of this, but it was she who had called Saturday evening.
“Oh.”
“Is she still running a fever, Brad?” he demanded.
“Just a little one.”
“What’s ‘just a little one’?”
“You know, just a little bit hot when you touch her forehead.”
“In degrees, Brad. Did you take her temperature? With a thermometer?”
“Yes. It was a hundred and three last time I took it.”
“And when was that?”
“This morning.”
Bostwick was floored. He didn’t pretend to be Brad Gale’s bosom buddy, but he thought he’d gotten to know him more than superficially as the Mystery Disease story had unfolded. Someone who did well under pressure, maybe even throve under it. And here he was acting and talking like someone who was borderline retarded.
“This morning?” Bostwick echoed. “Don’t you know temperature is lowest in the morning?”
“Is it?”
“Yes, it is,” Bostwick snapped. “Now tell me what else is going on.”
Brad did—truthfully.
When he was done, Bostwick ordered him to have Abbie at Berkshire Medical Center first thing in the morning.
Brad held Abbie’s free arm. The nurse who was about to draw blood promised it would hurt only “a little bit.”
Abbie knew better. Two years ago she’d been hospitalized for an operation to straighten a crossed eye. The operation had been a success (you would never know looking at Abbie today that anything had ever been wrong with one of those pretty green eyes), but Abbie had learned a thing or two about hospitals during her three-day stay. She’d learned that when someone said, “This will only hurt a little bit,” what he really meant was, “Nothing ever hurt this bad.” She’d learned that the steel instruments they touched you with were cold, as if they kept them in the freezer. She’d learned that when you felt well enough for a soda, they brought you too little. She’d learned that there were rules for everything, including when people could come see you, and who could come see you, and what you could wear, and what time you had to get up.
She’d learned that people in hospitals could Pass Away.
It was a horrifying concept, Passing Away,
one nobody had ever told her about. Discovering it, she was sure, was accidental. Passing Away was obviously the kind of thing kids weren’t supposed to know about, one of those things that grown-ups clam up on because “you’re too young to understand.”
Abbie found out about Passing Away from Gina. Gina was the girl in the room with her, a pig-tailed, freckled girl who kept her up late the first night, laughing and talking. Abbie liked her, even if she did talk too much. She was a couple of years older, and she’d been in hospitals lots and lots of times because something was wrong with her heart. She bravely assured Abbie there was nothing to worry about. An operation was just like going to sleep, recovery just like waking up. Gina’s operation was down for early the next morning, and her bed was empty and freshly made when Abbie, scheduled for midafternoon, woke up.
Gina never returned.
Without being able to explain why, Abbie knew she would never see her pig-tailed new friend again.
And she was right. By the time Abbie regained konk-shus-ness the next morning from her own operation, a new girl already had taken Gina’s place. Gina, Heather later informed her, had Passed Away, God rest her soul.
That’s what they call it, Abbie thought as she waited for the Berkshire Medical nurse to take blood, the memory of Gina terrifying her again. Passing Away. Maureen Passed Away, too. Daddy said so. She went into the hospital, I know because Daddy took me there to visit, but she didn’t come out. I hope I never Pass Away. I don’t ever want to Pass Away.
“I want to go home,” Abbie sobbed to her father as they sat in Berkshire Medical’s hematology clinic. “Please. Please, Daddy.”
“We will, honey,” Brad said, “very soon.”
“Ready?” the nurse said cheerfully. Brad wondered how people like her could be so goddamned cheerful, jabbing needles into people for a living.
“Daaaad!” Brad felt his daughter’s body tense.
“It’s OK, sweetie,” he said. “It only lasts a minute.”
“Now you’re going to feel a little jab, like a mosquito bite,” the nurse said, removing the needle from the package.
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