by Nevada Barr
“Too bad it didn’t turn into pneumonia, the old person’s friend.”
“Stomach flu rarely turns into pneumonia,” a woman says dryly. “The point is, she vomited up her meds. These don’t stay in the system long. They need to be kept to a certain level. Besides, these things can happen too fast and too often. We need to be careful of our special needs patients. When we get her back in the Secure Community, and get her medications stabilized, I’ll be a lot more comfortable.”
Rose collects a few available words and attempts speech. Air whispers over the cracked desert of her tongue, puffing like dust between stiff lips. “Thirsty,” she tries to say. The knack of speaking eludes her; she only manages a small sighing sound.
“She’s coming around.”
“I’ve been here too long as it is. I need to get back to the office.”
Rose wanders back into the clouds roiling in her skull.
When the Magic 8-Ball again turns up consciousness, Rose opens her eyes to an op-art nightmare of shapes: hangmen’s nooses, sharps, bulbous-eyed heads. The texture of panic is not ice cold and ice blue. Instead of carving through her cranium, this terror leaks, filling gaps in the mist with nauseating sludge as thick, black, and evil-smelling as tar.
Breathe, she tells herself. Relax into the moment. Inch by inch her breath reclaims mental real estate, blows fear back into the corners.
Right View: She is in a hospital bed, looking at a ceiling in a hospital room, side-lit from lights in the hallway. “I am confused and disoriented,” Rose whispers. “I am in a hospital. I am back in the hospital again.”
Right View: Not a hospital. A nursing home. Like scraps of shredded paper, images flutter behind her eyes: people slumped in empty sacks of wrinkled skin, staring, spittle at the corners of their lips, the stench of urine and hopelessness.
Right Intention: Get out.
Rose had gotten out. Now she is back in.
She tries to lift her hand to scrub the sand from her eyes. The motion is aborted; her hand jerks like a little dog reaching the end of its leash. Her other hand meets the same fate.
Breathe in, calm the mind. Breathe out, calm the body. She can breathe; a cause for happiness.
Inner clamor and confusion lessen. Monsters on the ceiling are a simple play of light and shadow. Craning her head up until her neck aches, she can see her hands. Both wrists are cuffed to the sides of the bed with wide soft bands. The cuffs are tethered to the rail.
They have tied her down.
* * *
Rose’s eyelids glow orange. Daytime. The sun has risen. Miracles abound, Rose thinks groggily. She forces her eyes open a little. People. People she should know. She is beginning to hate this. That she hates it means it has happened before. Emotion attached to thought equals memory.
“Good morning.” A man in a white coat and tie—a doctor, Rose supposes—smiles down at her. “You’re looking much better.”
Rose isn’t feeling better, but, she realizes, she is feeling. Before there’d been numbness, gray featureless brain-scapes.
“Wanda, what kind of meds do we have her on?” the doctor asks.
“Just antidepressants,” Wanda replies. Rose recognizes Wanda. It is she of the luna moth eyebrows. She works here. Not a nurse. Her teal pantsuit screams management.
“She will have purged any medications with the vomiting,” the doctor says. “Now that she’s out of the woods as far as the flu goes, and back in a secure environment, get her levels back on par slowly. Half for a day or two, then, if she’s doing well, up them.”
Rose doesn’t want her levels back on par. She had gotten out because her levels were below par, because, pathetic as the process is, without the “meds” she can think. She is thinking now. Not clearly, but, with concentration, she can feel her way from A to B.
The doctor and Wanda leave the room.
With more effort than she would have expected, Rose manages to keep her eyes open. She needs to see her body if she is to remain in it. An IV is plugged into her right arm, the long metal sharp taped down to her right wrist. Her eyes move to her crotch. White and gray, a hilly landscape of blankets obscures her body. Her feet are two hillocks away.
Risking the sirens’ song of oblivion, she lets her eyes close and focuses on the sensation between her legs. Moving her hips slightly, she feels a sting and a tug. A catheter, she guesses, its tube taped down to her leg to minimize irritation.
Fog slips into sinuous shapes, trying to lure her back into the deeps. Opening her eyes again, she takes in a breath, then sighs some of the mist out, winning a clear small space. Holding herself in that space, she studies her left wrist.
The padded cuff is firm but not tight. Gently she begins working, pulling her elbow up until the tether is tight, then, thumb tucked to palm, fingers gathered to a point, she twists her hand back and forth.
Right Intention: Free herself.
As her mind clouds and her vision grays, Rose clings to that with the desperation of a drowning woman clinging to a log.
Time flaunts its versatility, flying, passing in a petty pace, racing, standing still. Rose’s arm wrenches and turns. Rose remembers and forgets, pulls, twists, remembers, forgets.
At some point she realizes her left hand is free.
With a hazy sense of triumph, she lifts it and holds it before her sticky eyes. Behind spread fingers a monitor flashes a shard of green light.
Kryptonite, she thinks. Lex Luthor is keeping her prisoner with kryptonite.
Willing strength into that left hand, that free agent, she moves that marvelous hand across her body and watches as it pulls the tape off her right arm, then eases the needle from her flesh. Clumsy fingers claw at the buckle, scrape at the strap, and her right hand is free.
Exhausted, Rose lies back, eyes resolutely open, and waits for a semblance of focus to return to body and mind. Intention. Isn’t there something she is supposed to be doing? The Land of Nod calls seductively.
“No,” Rose whispers. A hand gripping the rail to either side of the bed, she drags herself into a sitting position. The room slides sideways, does a half turn, then settles. Her brain is clearer than when she was lying on her back, with it flattened in her skull like Silly Putty left too long in its egg.
Silly Putty. A fragment of memory tries to tug a smile from the corner of her mouth. Before she can catch it, it vanishes. She scans the room, trying to pry the real from the unreal with the force of her gaze. Bedding, rails, hoses, bags, metal trees, monitors: her eyes wander over them. Apparatus are on her and in her and around her, attached to one another, attached to her. She and the machinery inter-are.
All phenomena are devoid of a separate, individual self. Empty.
This is not helpful.
Moving slowly, lest she and the medical detritus should interfere with one another, Rose peels back the bedclothes. The rest of her white-and-blue hospital gown is crumpled in her lap. Extending from beneath it are legs so pale, fragile-looking, and unbelievably bony, it takes her a moment to realize they are hers. White-and-blue-striped socks cover her feet.
For an inestimable time she sits holding on to the rails. Why she sits, why, much as she craves rest, she is afraid to lie down, slips from her mind.
She can’t remember why she is where she is, how she’s gotten here.
Who are you?
Rose Dennis.
When were you born?
1952.
What day is it?
I don’t know.
Who is the president of the United States?
I don’t know, but I know I hate the son of a bitch.
A litany from somewhen.
Rose squeezes her eyes shut and rubs them with her fists. That had been a test for sanity. Evidently Rose had failed.
Right View: Nursing home.
Right Intention: Get out.
For long moments, she considers that intention. The shackles are off. But the doctor said she was back in a secure environment. There will be lock
s and watchers. No walking out.
Rose lowers herself back to the bed and painstakingly buckles her wrists back into their cuffs. There is nothing she can do about the IV. They’ll just have to work that mystery out for themselves.
Fear is all around her, fear that this place, these people, are keeping her against her will. Perhaps for her own good. Perhaps not. Rose does not like people imposing unpleasant things on her “for her own good.” Until she has a plan, one that will carry her farther than a couple of football fields from this place, she will play possum. She will watch. She will be mindful.
She will resist having the level of her meds raised to par. Her mind must be allowed to clear. Then:
Right Action: Very carefully and mindfully get out.
CHAPTER 3
Rose is wearing a nightgown and robe.
“Up and around.” Wanda, the woman with the luna moth eyebrows, leads her from a hallway into a waiting room. “Is it good to be home, Ms. Dennis?”
Rose is Ms. Dennis. This is home. On one side of a large room is a couch. A nurses’ desk is on the other. Three brown Barcaloungers line the far wall. An old man and two old women in nightgowns and robes crumple like deflated dolls on the furniture.
“Ms. Dennis is officially out of the woods,” Wanda says cheerfully.
“You had quite an adventure,” says a woman behind the desk.
“Stomach flu is nobody’s idea of fun. Her meds got purged—along with everything else,” says Wanda. They laugh. Rose does not.
“She’s sedated now, but it will wear off. Be sure she gets her meds at dinner. Give her her lunch meds as well. We need to restore her levels as soon as we can.”
That’s not what the doctor said. Rose can remember. He said slowly restore her levels.
“Of course,” says the nurse. She comes from behind the desk. Rose is handed off.
Package delivered, Rose thinks. The Rose Dennis package has been delivered “home.”
“Thanks, Wanda,” the nurse says.
Wanda presses a plastic card against a black plastic square beside the door. It slides open. She leaves, heels clicking on the vinyl flooring.
“Someone will sure be glad to see you,” says the woman who now holds Rose’s elbow. “Let’s get you settled with your friend, then get some dinner in you.” The nurse prattles as she guides Rose around the chest-high desk and through a wide arch into another room. “You are skinny as a scarecrow. We’ll get some meat back on those bones.”
The second room is dominated by a long scarred wooden table. At the far end, an ancient man in pajamas and a white cotton robe like the one Rose wears puts a puzzle together.
“That’s Mr. Buschbaum,” the nurse says. “Mr. B, Rose is back on her feet.”
Mr. B does not look up or respond.
The nurse pulls out a chair and seats Rose in it, patting her into place as if she’s made of Play-Doh. In the center of the table are a mug of colored markers, several pairs of children’s snub-nose scissors, and sheets of paper with the outline of a sailboat. One is colored green with a blue sail.
The nurse whisks out.
Rose wonders if she is supposed to draw a picture.
“She’s right in here, Chuck. I know you’ve been worried.” The nurse returns, leading a man by the elbow. “This is your friend Chuck Boster,” the nurse says as she maneuvers the man into a chair beside Rose. “See, Chuck, Rose is well and back among the living.”
Chuck is six feet tall, Roses guesses, and thin. Beneath the loose skin is a defined musculature. His hair is thick, with lots of salt, and cut short. He would be handsome if lax muscles weren’t dragging down his cheeks and his eyelids. He isn’t much older than Rose is.
Than Rose was. She doesn’t know how old she is now.
Smiling at the two of them, the nurse says, “Chuck has been missing you. Haven’t you, Chuck?” Chuck does not respond. The nurse turns her happy face to Rose. “Since you’ve been sick, he’s moped and asked, ‘Where’s the rose?’ half a million times.”
Uncertain what to do, Rose does nothing. The nurse doesn’t seem to notice. She pats Chuck’s upper arms as if fluffing up a pillow. “You two get reacquainted. Dinner in a minute. Good to be home?”
The question is aimed at Rose. She feels it hit, but doesn’t know what to do with it.
The nurse walks away.
Side by side, Rose and Chuck sit staring at the pens in the coffee mug. Rose doesn’t know Chuck; still, she feels a knowingness, an ease, familiar, pleasant. Concentrating hard, she digs words out of her brain and offers them one at a time. “How long have you been here?” Her voice is barely above a whisper. The phrase feels out of place, but it is all she has.
Chuck moves his gaze from the mug to her face, mild concern livening his features. “Where is this?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” Rose admits.
Chuck reaches over and takes her hand from where it lies on her knee. Rose doesn’t snatch it back. The gesture feels as if it has happened before, and no harm has come of it. He folds her hand in his and sets them both on his own knee. His grasp is gentle, his skin warm and dry.
Rose is comforted. Tears fill her eyes. She cries because she hadn’t known how desperately she needed comforting, and because there are so many people in the world with no warm hand to hold.
“You are Chuck,” she says, trying the words out for hidden memories. There are none.
He nods. Again he asks, “Where is this?”
Again, Rose has no answer. “I am … I am the rose?” she asks.
“You grow here,” he says.
Rose hears that. Tears tumble from her bottom eyelids. “I guess.”
“My good wife loved roses,” Chuck says, giving her hand a squeeze.
After that, they don’t speak. Chuck holds her hand, and though parts of her mind skitter along the misty track that led to this room, more parts stay in Chuck’s hand, averse to disturbing him, the way she is averse to disturbing a sleeping cat on her lap.
Pushed by an orderly in a white shirt and trousers, a cart rattles into the activities room. Tweedle, Rose thinks, and remembers being dragged along the sidewalk. Moving her feet in her slippers, she can feel the irritation where the tops scraped along the ground.
The sedatives are wearing off. The “meds” have been purged from her system.
“The puzzle will still be there after dinner,” the orderly says to the old man impersonating a hank of hair and a bag of bones. With practiced ease, he moves Mr. Buschbaum to another chair, then sets a plastic tray with a rectangular plate divided into segments in front of him. Identical trays are placed in front of Rose and Chuck.
“Mr. B.” The orderly sets a tiny paper cup containing blue pills in the puzzler’s hand. “Mr. Boster.” Another little cup with two red capsules is put in Chuck’s hand. “Ms. Dennis.” Chuck releases her hand. She watches as it floats up, nearly transparent but for the veins, and takes a paper cup with four red capsules in it.
Mr. Buschbaum dumps blue pills into his mouth. Rose stares at the capsules, pretty as drops of blood on snow.
“Dry, aren’t they,” the orderly says. “This’ll help.” He holds out a small plastic glass filled with orange juice.
Rose takes it. The juice sloshes, catching light from the window.
Poison. The word clangs, a clapper banging against the bell of her skull. Orange juice to wash down her “meds.” She puts the capsules in her mouth. Lifting the glass to her lips, she pretends to drink, then swallow. Clumsily, she sets the orange juice back on the tray, spilling half of it.
The orderly sighs and walks heavily from the room. Rose scrapes the dry capsules from her tongue and closes them in her fist.
Stumping back with a handful of paper towels, the orderly mops up most of the spill. A couple of tablespoons of juice slop into the mashed potatoes. Rose thinks poison and stares out a window half obscured by a hedge. Beyond are parked cars, a street, and houses. Rose presses her fingertips to the pills in her
palm. A plan is beginning to form in her mind.
The orderly continues around the table. He pours orange juice into a cup for Mr. Buschbaum, then for Chuck. It’s all from the same pitcher. This orange juice is not poisoned.
The red capsules are poisoned.
Rose eats her food and marshals facts in her mind. She had the stomach flu. She was moved to general population. She woke up and wandered off. She was caught and returned. She is ancient, frail, and in a home for old demented people.
She has been here long enough to make a friend.
She will not be staying long enough to make another.
CHAPTER 4
Dinner eaten, Rose and Chuck are parked in side-by-side loungers facing a large flat-screen TV over the sliding glass entrance door. A big woman, KAREN, her name tag reads, comes in bearing a can of Diet Pepsi.
“How many does that make for today, counting the one you probably drank in the car on your way to work?” a nurse wearing the name SHANIKA asks, vacating the chair behind the desk.
“Five. I’m trying to limit myself to eight a day. They help me stay alert on the night shift,” Karen replies.
“I read—” Shanika begins.
“Don’t bother. I’ve heard it all. Diet anything causes cancer, heart failure, car crashes, and female erectile dysfunction,” Karen says.
“See you later,” Shanika says, letting herself out. Karen waves.
Rose looks at the television. Cartoon characters infect the screen. Grotesques, they would once have been called. Since the Muppets, children’s fiction has gotten surreal. Why cartoons? Why not the news? Dementia as a second childhood?
A woman on the couch slips a few more degrees right of center. The man in the third lounge chair snores. Chuck struggles up out of his chair.
“Where are you off to, Chuck?” Karen, the big nurse, asks pleasantly.
“Home,” Chuck says.
Karen gets out of her chair and tugs the top of her scrubs straight. “I’m headed that way. Can I walk with you?” She takes Chuck’s arm. Rose watches from the corners of her eyes as Karen, chatting companionably, walks Chuck into the activities room, around the table, and back to the abdicated easy chair. “What a long walk! You must be as tired as I am, Chuck. Oh, look, what luck, your favorite chair is right here waiting for you.” Without taxing her strength, she helps Chuck to sit. He lies back, eyes closed. He looks like a corpse.
