by Nevada Barr
Neither nurse pays her further attention. Taking her time, willing her pulse rate down, Rose removes the tissue box from beneath her arm and sets it on the table behind the snack tray. The last thing she wants is one of the residents grabbing tissues.
Even in dementia, people remain creatures of habit. Each citizen is in the same place they were when Rose jumped ship. The woman who sat atilt, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and her vacant-eyed companion are on the sofa where Rose last saw them. Both perk up at the advent of snacks. Rose feels a stirring of joy at having brought them a piece of life they still have the capacity to enjoy.
“Holy smoke,” Marion breathes in Rose’s ear. “Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Promise me you’ll kill me and see that my cats get good homes.”
Rose twitches so badly, the items on the tray start to cascade. She has forgotten Marion is with her. Collecting herself, she brightly says, “Okay!” and wraps Ms. Pisa’s bird-boned hand around a box of apple juice.
“You don’t have to sound so cheerful about the prospect,” Marion says dryly. Rose surreptitiously turns the tissue box so the camera faces the nurses’ desk.
“Have a good night,” Shanika says. Her keycard smacks plastic; the doors shush open.
“The night nurse is logging in,” Marion says.
“Yours will be better than mine,” the night nurse answers Shanika.
Mid cracker-serving, Rose freezes. Ms. Pisa is reaching for the crackers, her mouth working like a baby bird’s. Rose knows that voice. Glancing over at the snack tray, she sees it, a can of Diet Pepsi hiding amid the juice boxes.
Mechanically, she places a cheese-and-cracker pack into the expectant fingers. “It’s the cola nurse,” she whispers.
“The one you drugged?” Marion asks.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Not in ICU.”
“Hunh-uh.”
“She’s back at work in record time,” Marion says. “What do you bet she never was in ICU? Either that, or she has one hell of a constitution. She’s coming,” Marion warns.
Rose makes sure she is busy as Karen comes over to lift a couple of the boxed drinks from the tray.
“Lovely Lily!” the nurse says when she spies the diet cola. Two boxes of juice in one hand, she catches up her soda in the other.
“She is one big girl,” Marion says.
Rose suppresses a giggle. Hysteria, she tells herself.
“So poor Lily got stuck with cleanup,” Karen says amiably. She sets her soda on the nurses’ desk and returns with the patients’ juice boxes.
“Looks like.” Rose keeps her chin down so the wig hair falls around her cheeks. “Here you go.” Crackers are delivered to the vacant-eyed woman.
“My name is Karen,” the cola nurse says. “Did Ms. Lopez borrow you from the hospital?”
“My supervisor doesn’t mind,” Rose says, hoping that is vague enough to be unchallengeable. She turns back to the tray. If Karen wants to shake hands or indulge in hospital gossip, Rose is doomed. With a stranger, she might be able to get away with it. With somebody who has likely bathed her, changed her, and fed her for weeks, she doubts the disguise will hold up for long.
Never has Rose felt so miserably, wretchedly three-dimensional, so hopelessly visible. If a red light began flashing FAKE, FAKE on her forehead, she could scarcely have felt any more obviously a fraud. Had she a keycard, she would make a run for it.
Fear turns into a cat and gets Rose’s tongue. Words rattle in pieces behind her skull bone. None can be made whole. None can get down to her mouth. Silence grows until it becomes an active force whining in her mind like a guitar string ready to snap. Social awkwardness on steroids.
“Yeah,” Karen says, reaching past Rose to collect two packets of snacks. “They trade us like they used to trade maids in Myers Park. ‘If you’re having the ladies in Tuesday, I can lend you my Tilly,’” Karen says in a high-pitched genteel drawl, and laughs. Rose manages a form of snicker.
“Stop that!” Marion says irritably. “No more trying to laugh. Get out of there. The woman will figure out you’re you in a heartbeat. Keep your mouth closed. Don’t look at her. This whole thing is off. Go. Go. Go!”
“Plan B,” Rose whispers.
“There is no plan B,” Marion fumes.
“I know,” Rose snaps.
“Sounds like you’ve been lent out once too often,” Karen comments.
“All finished?” Rose asks sweetly, snatching the snack and juice from the leaning woman’s hands.
“Candy from a baby,” Marion says. The old woman claws feebly in the direction of the stolen foodstuffs. Rose dumps them back on the tray.
“Ready for bed?” she coos, prying the poor thing away from her unfinished treat. Keeping the woman between herself and the cola nurse, Rose asks, “Which room?”
“Second on the left,” Karen says. “Need help with toileting or teeth?”
“No thanks,” Rose replies, nearly frog-marching the unfortunate lady out of the main room.
As she and her prisoner pass Rose’s former room, she looks in. Nothing has been altered. Pictures are on the walls; the rocking chair with the decorative cushion is there. All Rose’s personal items are in place. The bed even has a new floral-print coverlet much like the one she’d cannibalized for her escape ensemble. Longwood expects Rose to be returned. Or they want it to look as if they expect it, therefore not assumed dead, or as good as.
Rose deposits the old woman in bed untoileted, teeth unbrushed. Abusing the elderly can now be added to her rapidly growing criminal résumé.
“Let me know where the nurse is,” Rose says softly.
“She’s helping a little guy—looks like a mummy—out of a big brown chair,” Marion reports. “Now she’s headed in the direction you disappeared in.”
“Thanks,” Rose says. Her back to the door, she fusses with the bedcover until she hears Karen pass the room.
“Get out of there now,” Marion says.
“Can’t. No card. Besides, I have an idea,” Rose murmurs.
“For God’s sake,” Marion hisses. “The nurse knows you! Ask her to buzz you out while she’s busy.”
“I can still make this work,” Rose says.
“Don’t expect any damned cakes with files baked in them from me,” Marion grumbles. “I’ll hang up. I’m not getting caught.”
She doesn’t hang up.
Hooray, Rose thinks. To the frail old lady she says, “Sorry.”
“What did you say?” Marion demands as Rose whisks out of the bedroom.
In the social area, she grabs the tissue box, then runs to the nurses’ station and sets it on top of a pile of files, the hole facing the computer screen.
“Oh Lord. You’re going to do this, aren’t you?”
“Yup. I do have a plan B. Half baked, but still…”
Marion groans. “Higher.”
A manual for troubleshooting printer errors is tucked between the printer and the counter. Rose slips it beneath the tissue box.
“Left,” Marion orders.
Rose turns the box to the left.
“Too much.”
Rose rotates it back slowly.
“Good,” Marion says. “Don’t let her move me.”
Not that Rose can do anything should the nurse choose to rearrange the desktop. Seating herself in the nurse’s chair, Rose lays her fingers on the mouse.
Like an irate drill sergeant, Marion barks, “Upper right screen, scroll up. Up, damn it. There. See that box on the far right?”
Rose doesn’t see it. The screen is a scramble of boxes. Karen will be headed back by now. “Where?” she whispers desperately.
“There. There. There,” Marion insists.
The advice is not helpful. Past, future, fear: Rose breathes it out, breathes in the stillness of the moment.
Screen. Upper right. There it is: LOG OUT. Rose clicks on it.
“Jesus! How hard was that?” Marion hisses as Rose leaps from the chair.
; “Good night, sleep tight—”
Rose hears the cheery chant from down the hall. “Got to go,” she tells the tissue box.
“Where are you going? What are you going to do?” Marion demands.
“It’s a surprise,” Rose says, afraid Marion will abandon her if she figures out what she is going to attempt.
Chuck is the last remaining resident yet to be put to bed. In the short time since Rose last saw him, he has visibly diminished. No single dramatic event; he is just less corporeal, less substantial. Life force has leached from skin, hair, eyes, and muscles. He looks like an oak tree rotting back into the earth with the speed of time-lapse photography.
“Hi, Chuck,” Rose says, laying her hand gently on his shoulder. A smile starts at the corners of his mouth. Opening his eyes, he sees the wig and the heavily made-up face. The smile fades.
“Where is this?” he asks piteously.
Rose’s throat tightens with tears.
“What are you doing?” Marion asks irritably.
Rose ignores her.
“This is where you’re going to sleep tonight,” she tells Chuck. “Are you ready to go to bed?”
“Where is my good wife?” Chuck asks.
“You’ll see her soon,” Rose says, hoping he will, if not in dreams, then in his next incarnation.
Chuck makes no reply but allows Rose to guide him to his feet. As they go to his room, Karen meets them in the hall. “Night, Mr. Boster,” Karen says. “I didn’t catch your name,” she says to Rose.
Name. Rose’s mind goes blank. But for her own, and that of the nurse, no female names are available to her.
“Alice!” Marion shouts in her ear. “Mary, Peg, Carol, Kathy, Patty!”
“Alice Mary,” Rose blurts out, then laughs. “I mean Mary Alice. Touch of dyslexia there. Come on, Chuck.” She leads her unsuspecting accomplice farther down the hall. Whether Karen is satisfied, suspicious, still standing in the hall, or striding off to dial 911, Rose has no way of knowing.
Chuck wakes up a little at the sight of his room. He wanders away from Rose.
“Can you see the nurse?” Rose whispers to Marion.
“No. What—wait. She’s sitting down at the computer. She’s—damn it! She set something in front of the lens.”
“Wait,” Rose says to Marion. To Chuck, she says, “Be back in a sec.” She darts from the room and down the short hallway. At the entrance to the room with the nurses’ station, she slows and begins sneezing.
Hand in front of her mouth, she trots to the desk. Kachoo! Snort. “Got a snoot full of something.” Kachoo! Sniffle. Rose grabs the tissue box and sets it atop the counter.
As she plucks tissues from the top, Marion shouts, “Left! Other left. More. Stop.”
“Sorry about that,” Rose says through a wad of tissue. “I’ll finish Mr. Boster, then I’m out of here.”
“Thanks for the help,” Karen says, popping the top of the can of Diet Pepsi. She doesn’t take her eyes off Rose while she does it. The cola-loving nurse is getting a bad vibe.
Wiping and sniffling, Rose hurries back to Chuck’s room.
He is gone.
Before she can panic, the bathroom door opens. He is wearing only his pajama bottoms. Toothpaste speckles his chin.
“Good man, Chuck,” Rose says.
“The nurse is still staring after you,” Marion tells her, and, “Who’s Chuck?”
“Chuck is my good friend,” Rose says, smiling at him. “Want me to find your pajama top?” Chuck says nothing. Rose finds it on the hook on the bathroom door along with a bathrobe like the one she’d butchered.
“She’s reaching for the phone,” Marion says.
“Darn!” Rose goes to the room’s door and sticks her head out. “Karen, does Chuck get any meds before bed?”
“She’s stopped reaching for the phone,” Marion says. “She looks annoyed.”
“I’ll deal with it,” Karen calls back.
“Now she looks totally pissed off,” Marion says. “She’s gulping Pepsi.”
“Is she going for the phone again?” Rose asks.
“Wait. No. She is logging in.”
“Hallelujah!” Rose whispers.
“She’s going to patient records!” Marion shouts in Rose’s ear.
Chuck is standing in front of his dresser. A picture frame made for an eight-by-ten photo holds only a snapshot. White tent in the background, a younger Chuck, forties or fifties, crouching beside a campfire, grins at the camera.
“Get the nurse to buzz you out,” Marion commands. “We’ve pushed this as far as we can.”
“Can you get what we need now?” Rose asks.
There is a moment’s silence. Then Marion says, “I’m not a hacker. Maybe. Get out of there.”
“One more thing,” Rose says.
“Out!” Marion yells so loudly, it hurts Rose’s ear.
Ignoring her sister, Rose steps into the bathroom. She removes the wig, wets her fingers, and fluffs up her hair. Looking more like herself, she returns to Chuck’s bedside and lays the wig on the bed. His lamp is still on, but his eyes are closed. Rose takes his hand and holds it between hers.
He opens his eyes, sees her, and smiles.
“Hi, Chuck. I’ve missed you,” Rose says, and is surprised to find she is telling the truth.
“You’re the Rose,” he says. Squeezing her hand, he lets out a long slow sigh.
“The nurse is back to staring down the hall,” Marion warns. “I’m going to hang up if you don’t get out now.”
“Are you doing okay here?” Rose asks Chuck.
“Where is this?”
“She’s getting up,” Marion says. “Rose? Do you hear me? Get the hell out of there!”
“I’m in trouble, Chuck,” Rose says gently. “The nurse wants to catch me. Please, could you yell or cry or anything to keep the nurse from getting me?”
Chuck closes his eyes. “My good wife loved roses.”
“She’s out of my sight,” Marion says.
Rose jams the wig back on, then squeezes Chuck’s hand. “Good night, my friend.”
Karen is nearly to the room when she emerges into the hall. “Night,” Rose says cheerily, and hurries past.
The big nurse stops. “Alice, Mary, Mary Alice, we need to talk.”
CHAPTER 17
“We don’t need to talk,” Marion declares flatly. “Run.”
Rose agrees with her sister. Unfortunately, there is no place to run to.
Karen turns and walks back down the hall to where Rose is halted in her tracks. Big, the woman is big. Huge. Rose resists the urge to fall on her knees, crying, I did it, I did it. I poisoned your Pepsi, and robbed you, but I’m just a little old lady who didn’t mean any harm. Please don’t lock me up with the crazy people.
“Sure,” she says with a smile.
Karen plants meaty hands on sturdy hips, staring down at Rose. “First, I’d like to see—”
“Help!” comes a faint cry from Chuck’s room.
In a flash, Rose is forgotten as Karen runs to her patient’s room.
“Help!” Chuck calls again, louder this time.
Dashing into her old room, Rose promises herself that if she lives, and stays out of jail and the nuthouse, she will visit Chuck every week of his life. She jerks open the drawer of her bed stand. Latex gloves. She throws the box on the bed. Tissues. Another box tossed onto the bed. Sure enough, tucked behind them are six red capsules. The cleaning lady never gets this far.
Rose scoops the pills up and runs for the nurses’ desk.
“Help me!” Chuck is bellowing. Karen can be heard muttering soothing nothings. “Fire!” Chuck yells.
Rose fumbles the first capsule open and dumps the tiny white beads into the Pepsi.
“Stop that!” Marion says, horrified. “Are you crazy?”
Rose dumps in the second capsule.
“I can’t believe you are doing this again,” Marion cries. “This is criminal. You are a criminal. You
will be sent to prison. Ask for San Quentin so I can visit.”
Hands shaking, Rose spills half of the third capsule, tiny beads scattering over the desk. The fourth goes in, and the fifth. Half of a red capsule falls to the carpet. No time to retrieve it; Rose kicks it under the desk.”
“Fire!” Chuck yells again.
Karen murmurs.
“Chocolate!” Chuck cries.
Rose laughs. “A fan of the Smothers Brothers,” she says.
“I get it,” Marion says without a trace of amusement.
“Six,” Rose says. She blows away the loose beads, then moves quickly around the wall into the activities room.
“Where did you go?” Marion asks.
“Hiding. With luck, she’ll think Mary Alice slipped out and went home.”
Chuck is no longer yelling.
Karen can be heard stomping down the hall, making every footfall count.
The lights are out in the activities room, but nowhere in the lockdown unit is it ever truly dark. Streetlight filters through the windows. Night-lights glow in at least one socket in every room. The hall and the nurses’ station are brightly lit day and night.
The activities room is like, but not identical to, the room Rose remembers from when she was an inmate there. It is smaller, dimmer, the table a bit bigger. A sofa she hadn’t noticed sits beneath the room’s one window. The wall opposite the arch is covered with a bookcase. No closet, no drapes, nothing that can conceal a grown woman.
Not that Rose ever noticed Karen check the activities room, but the nurse has her radar on tonight. She obviously suspects Alice Mary Alice is not on the up-and-up.
In the dimmer half of the room, away from the arch and the window, chairs are neatly tucked under the big wooden table.
Quick and quiet, Rose pulls out the chair farthest from the light. She crawls under the table. In the shadowy forest of chair and table legs, she folds down, butt on her heels, nose between her knees, tucking herself into a stony heap no more than eighteen inches high and consuming less than three square feet of floor space. Grasping the horizontal brace on the displaced chair, she pulls it in as far as she can. Folding her elbows to her sides, hands over her face, she listens.
“Are you hidden?” Marion asks.
