by S. L. Horne
“Child, are you all right?” exclaimed a soft voice, calm and shifting.
Looking up at the sky once more, the boy’s face lit up with pure joy. Dancing above him was the Northern Lights in their full glory! “Oh, yes, Sir. I am very much so all right, thank you.” Sitting up to get a better view, he gazed upward.
“What were you looking for when you took that awful fall?” the Northern Lights questioned with deep concern.
“I was looking up at the sky, Sir.” The boy’s voice reflected his awe.
“Well, that is an exquisite place to look.” Although he could not see the face of the Northern Lights, the boy could hear a proud smile in the words. “You look exhausted, do you have anyone else with you?”
The boy was not so sure how to answer this question as he was expecting to be asked where his mother was. “I have no one with me, Sir.”
“Well then, we have no one to wait for to join our company. You must rest. Pray tell me, what is your name?” the lights asked.
“I have no name, Sir.” Settling down in the field, the boy soaked in the beauty of the colors.
“If you have not been given a name, then, what would you prefer I call you?” the Northern Lights spoke softly.
The boy placed his hands behind his head and smiled up at the Northern Lights. “You may call me Denton, for it means happy home.”
Elara looks around the room, her painting finished, the story told and captured in one singular image. Paint splattered beautifully on the canvas, and messily on the table, floors, and wall, her anger and frustration of everything expressed in her carelessness. She wipes some off her face, smearing the color like war paint across her brow and freckled cheek, then gathers up the paintbrushes to clean them for the day.Chapter 10
Pulling her vehicle up to the curb outside of yet another hospital, Elara opens her glove box and searches around for her paper. Unfolding a printed list, she scans the names left untouched. Top to bottom and front to back, scattered names of hospitals appear, some scratched off, others left to still speak to. She reaches into her purse for coins, her hand searching the mess like a ravenous rodent. Unsuccessful, she dumps the contents on the passenger seat and finds the money she is looking for. Scooping the remaining contents back into her bag and getting out of the car, she locks the door behind her and feeds the parking meter.
Double checking the name on the list to the name on the building, she makes her way inside. Stuffing the paper into her bag and slinging it over her shoulder, she follows the signs to the receptionist’s desk. “Um, excuse me?” Elara peers over a desk where a tall counter runs a horseshoe shape around the workers, and she struggles to see over it.
“Yes, can I help you?” She hears an obligatory greeting over the desk and stands on her tiptoes, only succeeding to see the top of the speaker's head.
“I was hoping you could help me with some information?” She rocks back and forth on her toes, still trying to see the hospital employee.
“Possibly, what’s your question?” the voice asks.
“Well, I’m trying to find a record of my birth and I believe I was born in this hospital.” She pauses to reword her question. “I was hoping you could check your records… if they go back that far. I’m nineteen.” Elara suddenly feels the exact opposite of an adult. She feels like a child begging for a parent’s permission to go outside and play. She grips the counter's edge and tries to pull herself up far enough to see.
The voice asks bluntly for her I.D. to verify her birth date and she hears typing behind the counter. “Your mother’s name?”
Stunned to get further than she did with the first several hospitals, Elara is momentarily speechless. She looks up hopefully.
“You gonna tell me the name or what?” the voice snaps.
“Oh right, yes. Um, my birth, I mean, my mother’s name is Io Belmont. I… O…” she begins, spelling out the full name.
“I have your records. The birth certificate shows no father listed. I can print out a copy of the records for you, but your mother is no longer at this facility. Of course, you already knew that.” A printer hums in the distance and Elara sees an envelope slide over the top of the counter.
“What do you mean, ‘no longer at this facility’?” Elara asks, puzzled by the lady's comment.
“I can’t release that information ma’am. You’re only entitled to your own records, no one else’s.” A chair slides across the floor.
“I don’t understand though.” Elara jumps up to look over the counter but gets no response. “Hello? Hello?” The person behind the voice appeared to have left her spot and Elara turns around frustrated.
“Thank you?” She tucks the envelope under her arm and returns to her car.
She climbs back into her vehicle, the parking meter still counting down the time, and muddles over the strange interaction while absent-mindedly driving home.
She opens the door to her apartment, sliding it open with a loud bang and tosses the paperwork onto the counter of her kitchen. Can this really be it? she wonders. The hunt for answers to her questions feels anticlimactic, and she turns to her art room. She takes her time figuring out what music to play and procrastinates picking up her brush. Feeling undecided and unable to think of a clear image in her mind she wishes to paint, she grabs the closest paint colors. It is as if the image is fighting to get out and be made clear, yet she cannot see what it is until the story tells itself to her.
Blue runs from the bottle into a cup, melding with the other paints already poured from their containers. The cup fills to the top with acrylic paint and thinning medium, a random set of colors chosen for the project. Setting the small strainer in the canvas's middle, she pours its contents directly into the colander. Gushing from the holes, the pigments glide over the canvas in a pattern. She removes the strainer and places if off to the side. Tilting and assisting the copious amounts of paint on the canvas to finish falling over the edge, Elara steps back and surveys her work. The medium mixed into the cup separates the colors and the pattern from the strainer becomes more blurred.
“Prithee, look back, look back. There’s blood on the track.” The bright white hallway flickers with the swinging fluorescent lights. “Look back, look back. Blood. Blood on the track. Track!” An incessant scratching slows to a halt. “Choo Choo! Track! Train on the track. Chug chug, Choo Choo!” The scratching returns, faster this time, whispering, “Blood on the track. Hee hee! I see it! Turn back!”
A youthful unnaturally white-haired nurse pushes a bed through the hallway. Wheels squeal and moan as the bed rolls past. “Move aside, Katherine. I need to get through.”
“Prithee, do you see it?” A face with golden skin and almond eyes looks down at her fingers, picking at the tip of her middle nail, over and over. “Chugga chugga!”
“Tristen, I need you to move her. Get her out of here, now!” The nurse gestures widely to a male nurse with spiky black hair, directing him to move the patient she called Katherine. “I said, now!”
A wailing competes with the overbearing white walls of the hallway and the banging of a metal cup against brick sets the crescendo. “Breath, Honey, breath. In and out. Do it with me now.” The nurse pushing the bed picks up her pace and slams the double doors open. She addresses others in the next room. “She’s already at 10, it’s coming, whether we’re ready or not! Let’s make sure it’s not the latter.” Sternly she finishes her address and fits her hands into a pair of gloves.
A laugh chortled and low, followed by a whispered conversation that returns itself comes in from the hallway. Another scream escapes the woman bound to the bed on wheels. Skin bruises below the ropes on her wrists and the grips of a deep red soak the sheet draped over her body and drip color onto the floor.
“All right, I’m in place, give me a push now.” A ringing sound fills the ears of the woman giving birth as she empties her lungs to the skies. “I see the head, one more push! You can do this, you’ve got this.”
Holding up a towel
to wrap around the freshly born child, the nurse looks up at the birthing mother. “Well, there we are. You need to deliver the placenta and you’re all done.” She hands the wailing baby to the male nurse, whose tattoo of a sun and moon sits conspicuously upon his cheekbone. The white-haired nurse returns her head underneath the sheet.
“You can’t take my baby! No! You can’t take my baby!” Rattling the bed, the woman fights against her restraints. Pulling the sheet back, the nurse nods her head at another standing at the side of the bed and inserts a needle into the woman’s arm. The woman falls out of consciousness until the following day.
Rich red wavy hair cascades down the back of the woman sitting in the corner, falling to rest on the seat next to her. A monotone tan outfit drapes over her petite body and she rocks on the chair, back and forth, holding her only possession in her hand. Random noises come from outside the room, a thick door with a metal mesh window separates her from the hallway. She runs her fingers over the delicate golden designs carved into the tapered cylinder.
“You have a visitor.” A staff member in a white coat with a multicolored tie-dye undershirt opens the door and announces the woman’s guest. She does not look up from her hands.
“Hey, how are you?” a lanky sharp-featured man steps into the room and asks her, his voice calm and gentle. He pulls a chair across from her closer and sits down, perching himself on its edge. Concern stretches along his face and he attempts to coax an answer from her. “You look a little tired today, are you getting enough sleep?” He notices the item held possessively now in her hands.
“I’m fine,” she says.
“You know I’m just worried about you because I care, right?” Reaching forward to hold her hand, the man lowers his head to make eye contact with the downcast woman. The hems of his shirt are damp and quickly she jerks her hand away, turning her body in the chair.
“That isn’t fair, Dear. I’m your husband, and you’ll need to talk to me eventually.” The softness in his voice is now gone.
“You let them take her, Thyone.”
He lets out a long sigh and sits back in the chair. “We talked about this. There was nothing any of the doctors could do. She was stillborn. I’m as upset as you are, but she wasn’t taken from you. They told me you couldn’t see her because it would have upset you even more and you were already in such a fragile state. I almost lost the both of you! Please, Dear, let us move past this. We both lost our daughter and I need you. I need you to get better.” He sits forward in the chair again and takes the golden tapered cylinder from her hands, placing it on the table beside her. “And please forget about this silly thing! I need you to get better, Love, I need you.” Lacing his fingers in hers, he leans in and places a gentle kiss on her forehead.
Some of her hair falls over and around her as her body quakes with sobs. Abruptly, she launches herself forward and embraces her husband. “I want to see her. I miss her! They took her away from me, from us! Please believe me, Thyone. Please believe me. I am not crazy!”
He pulls her closer and strokes the back of her head, placing her hair back over her shoulders as his eyes threaten to allow the tears welling in them to spill.
“Shhh, Love. Shhhh. Of course, I believe you, of course, I do. I believe you. You just need to get on some medicine and things will go back to normal. The pregnancy… it complicated things. Remember, the doctor said you had to go off your meds because they weren’t safe for the baby? Give it some time. We’ll get your meds balanced and you’ll get better. You’ll be fine. We’ll both be fine.” She pulls away from his embrace and stares up at him, betrayed and horrified. Standing up from her chair, she points her arms at the door and backs up against the wall.
“Get out! Get out, now! Get out, get out, get out!” Over and over she screams at him to leave, and staff rush into the room. “Get. Him. Out!” she says separating each word with disdain and spitting them from between clenched teeth. “I am not crazy! I do not need medicine! I need my baby!”
Two male staff members rush past the patient’s husband. They grab each arm of the woman.
“You need to calm down, Ma’am, or we’ll have to sedate you again,” one man explains to her as he tries to calm her down. “That will be the third time this week, and you know that means no more visitors. That will be your third strike. Your husband cannot visit for an entire month.”
“Good! Get him out!” Leaping at her husband, the men tighten their grasp and her legs catch nothing but air. Flailing about, the men pin her up to the wall and one pulls a readied syringe from his pocket. The room goes blurry and then dark.
Waking up, she fights the heavy fog that weighs on her mind. She tries to sit up, but they have strapped her arms to the bed. Blinking hard, she calls out between dry lips, “Hello? Nurse!” A hand grasps her shoulder firmly and pushes her back onto the bed in a prone position.
“Ma’am. Ma’am, everything is all right. You were sedated.” The nurse in the white coat with the multicolored tie-dye undershirt appears in her vision. This is her favorite nurse who speaks to her with the most respect. She never talks down to her, regardless of her ‘mood swings’, as her therapist calls them.
“Where is it?” the woman asks, looking around and trying to sit up again.
“It’s on your nightstand. I am going to release you from your straps now, all right?” Slowly the nurse removes the Velcro straps from her wrists. “You know the routine. I need you to tell me your name, where you are, and what day it is for me to allow you to be completely unrestrained. Go ahead and tell me while I continue, please.”
The patient states her name, sighing heavily. The nurse looks at her, tilting her head as if telling her to continue. “I am in my room, number 48 of the psychiatric ward in Whittington State Hospital. I do not know what today is because you haven’t given me a calendar,” she says, smiling smartly at the nurse.
“Fair enough to me.” The nurse continues to unfasten the straps, making her way to the woman’s bound feet and chuckles softly. “Sometimes, even I don’t know what day it is.” The woman looks at her sympathetically and rubs her wrists. “I will leave you until dinner to gather yourself. I can allow you to join the others in the recreation room tomorrow, not that you ever do,” the nurse adds sourly. “But you have hit three strikes and I can’t bring any more visitors by for the next month. I’m sorry, Ma’am.” Making her way to the door while tucking the straps away in a bag slung over her shoulder, she looks back for a final glance. “I do wish you the best.”
As the woman sits up in her bed, the room returns to its normal stillness. No longer dizzy from the medicine, she swings her legs over the edge of the bed and feels for her slippers. She picks up the golden piece from the nightstand and returns herself to her rocking chair again, gently laying it in her lap. Sitting in her chair, she wonders how different everything would have been if she had just kept her secret. So excited she was to tell her husband of her magical discovery, she was ignorant to think he would have taken the time to listen to her. Now, everything is lost, including her beautiful daughter. Sorrow overcomes her, and she weeps again, her stomach still soft from delivery, and stretch marks turning white on her skin.
Reaching for the golden piece once more, she lifts it up, the tapered end facing her eye, and the larger end away, she spins the larger side slowly. Looking through it, colors dance as she turns them, and images appear from the patterns. A scene plays out before her, like those on television or rough waters in a storm smashing foam into the air. Twisting the end again, she gasps in utter shock. The image is of a beautiful baby girl, freshly entered into the world. Bundled in a peach cloth and feeding sweetly from a bottle in the arms of an unknown woman. The baby's face is unmistakable, and she realizes she is holding her breath. Patterns of color enter her vision once more and the image is gone. Frantically, she twists the kaleidoscope, searching for the scene again.
She spends all night gazing through her golden glass, telling no one what she has discovered. She
’s happy that her husband cannot visit, and angry at him for never having believed her. From the first day she found the scope in the flea market, no one had believed her. In a bin of seemingly harmless children's toys, she had picked it up in hopes of finding a special toy for her daughter who would soon come into the world. Six months pregnant she was in her nesting phase. The young attendant to the stand looked at her knowingly and had encouraged her to purchase the piece. This did not stand out as unusual to her as every flea market seller was always eager to make a sale. It was easy to convince her; the item was truly beautiful. The intricate designs and substantial weight gave it a feeling of undeniable quality.
