Nightingale

by Amy Lukavics

  “All right, sugar,” Joya said, and looked down to the chart for just a moment. Her voice was gentle, like Dad’s had been. “The first word is: June.”

  “Hardie,” she said immediately. Good job, she told herself.

  “Fred.”

  “Brother,” June said, again feeling like she’d given a correct answer, even though she knew there was no such thing in a game such as this.

  “Eleanor.”

  “Love,” June said, and she felt herself go red.

  “Don’t be embarrassed,” Joya insisted. “That was good. We’re just warming up here.”

  The doctor watched it all in silence.

  “Home,” Joya said.

  “Not here.”

  “You’ve got that right.” The nurse scribbled something on the chart. “Let’s do that one again. Home.”

  “House.”

  “Again. Home.”

  “Upstairs.”

  “Again. Home.”

  “Stars.”

  More scribbling. The doctor leaned over to peek at Joya’s notes, then nodded in approval.

  “We’ll move on from that one now,” Nurse Joya said after she was finished. “The next word is writing.”

  June hesitated. “Fun,” she settled on.

  “No pauses,” Joya said firmly. “Writing.”

  “Typewriter.”

  “Writing.”

  “Me.”

  “Writing.”

  “Necessary.”

  “Why do you feel as though it is necessary?” the doctor cut in, and Joya nodded and looked to June for an answer. “Do you feel like you have to do it? Even if it’s against your own will?”

  June thought about the period after her parents had grounded her to her room after graduation. She remembered how the typewriter had been her only friend, how she’d been almost manic in her love for it. She thought about how many hours she went straight without sleeping, just to write. She thought about how it used to make her cry at times.

  “No,” June said quietly, realizing fully that she was outing herself for having tried to lie about writing during her last appointment. She had to do what she could, she realized now. If she was lobotomized for telling the truth, maybe that’s the way her life was supposed to turn out. “It just made me feel whole.”

  “But was it a feeling beyond you?” he pressed, looking deeply concerned. “Did you feel like there was an outside force pulling you to it?”

  Yes.

  “No,” June said, and the nurse cleared her throat.

  “The next word,” she cut in, “is God.”

  “Bible.”

  “God,” Joya said again, more harshly.

  “Fake.”

  “God,” the nurse insisted, as if June was knowingly holding something back.

  “Spaceship,” June blurted, bewildered at her own answer. “I’m sorry. I have no idea why I said that.”

  But it seemed to be the answer that interested Joya the most.

  “Have you ever seen a spaceship?” the doctor interrupted again, curious. Very curious indeed.

  “No,” June said slowly, unsure as to whether he truly expected her to say she had. “I’ve written about one.”

  Don’t tell them, don’t tell them, don’t tell them...

  “In your story,” Nurse Joya prompted, nodding eagerly. “The story you were working on when you applied for the scholarship to the writing retreat. The one you finished the night before you came here.”

  “Yes,” June admitted, feeling like she had committed a great crime against herself. There was nothing left just for her now. She felt like a snake that had shed its skin too soon.

  “What was the main character’s name?” Joya said. “In your story.”

  “She...” June paused, thought back to the image of words appearing on white paper, the tap-tap-tap of each letter as her fingers hit the keys. “She didn’t have one.”

  “She did, though,” the nurse said, so matter-of-factly it chilled June’s blood. Had this woman somehow gotten access to her story?

  “No, she didn’t,” June insisted, speaking much more steadily than she had for the rest of the session. “I think I would know. I’m the one who wrote her.”

  Her heroine hadn’t had a name. It was a choice June made before she even started. She thought it’d help keep things strange. And mysterious.

  “She did,” Joya said, her voice suddenly on edge. “I want you to say it. Out loud.”

  June had no idea what to say or do. What were they playing at? Were they purposefully confusing her? “I... She didn’t have one!” June insisted angrily, and suddenly the trials of the day caught up with her and she swayed in her chair, light-headed. Had she really been talking to Robert only an hour ago? It didn’t seem possible.

  “That’ll be enough for today,” Joya said, and the doctor silently moved his lips along as she talked.

  “What is this place?” June blurted out, over it all. Let them kill her on the spot if they needed to: she couldn’t take any more. “What do you want from me? From the other girls? Was that you eating the person in the tunnel under the hospital? Was that you with the holes in your face?”

  The nurse calmly stood from the desk, set the closed chart down, and smoothed her skirt down. “You’ve been seeing monsters in tunnels, have you?” she asked, mocking, bending down so her face was at June’s level. “I wonder what that’s all about.”

  “Let me out of here!” June screamed in her face. “Either let me out of here or kill me!”

  She expected them to hold her down in the chair, call for Nurse Chelsea to bring a dose of something heavy. She was ready for it, willing for it to happen maybe, desperate to turn the lights out in her head and succumb to the peace and quiet.

  “You poor thing,” Joya said, making a pitying tsk-tsk sound with her tongue and standing up to go to the door. “It’s been too much for you today, hasn’t it?”

  June sat in the chair, breathing hard.

  “I think you should take the rest of the day to relax,” the doctor suggested. “We can keep working on you another day.”

  Keep working on me?

  “Please return to your room,” Joya said, opening the door and waiting for June to leave.

  So June left.

  From the hallway leading to their room, she saw Eleanor, but June didn’t feel up to facing the other girls right now. She didn’t want them to ask what had happened, didn’t want to end up screaming and raving and jumping through the window. Eleanor’s eyes met June’s, and then June went into their room and collapsed on the bed.

  After a moment she heard footsteps approaching. The softness of the steps told her it was Eleanor in her slippers. She didn’t move or open her eyes, even when Eleanor slid into bed next to her. June felt an arm snake around her side, a hand gently cradle hers. “I was so scared that they got you,” Eleanor whispered, and June could hear she was crying. “I was so scared they did something to your brain.”

  Maybe they have, June thought to herself, still unmoving. Her mind raced with theories and images and memories. Maybe they should. She let herself squeeze Eleanor’s hand just the slightest, and then she let herself fall asleep.

  When she woke up, Eleanor was still there. It was dark, which told June that they’d slept through dinner and through lights-out. It was so quiet that she could hear the nurse opening and closing doors for checks, somewhere very far down the hallway. There were probably ten or so minutes before their own door would open and shut with alarming intensity.

  How long had June been running on disrupted sleep? Longer than she could remember. She almost felt like she was getting a little more now that she was at the institution, which was saying something considering how many checks there were each night, and how each and every one of them woke June up. The other
girls had sworn that she’d get used to them, that she’d learn to sleep right through them, but that time had not yet come, and June doubted that it ever would. Still, before June had come to the hospital, she’d been getting even less rest.

  “Are you awake?” Eleanor whispered.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you all right?”

  June breathed in deeply through her nose, let her feet rest against the top of Eleanor’s. “I don’t know.”

  “I’ve been thinking about something,” Eleanor said. “I’ve been afraid to bring it up because it’s...weird. And very possibly untrue.”

  “And what’s that?” June seriously doubted that there could be anything more weird or untrue than their current situation.

  “I had a really weird dream,” Eleanor said. “After Simpson died.”

  June couldn’t help but feel just a little bit disappointed; dreams could make lasting impressions on people, but they didn’t really mean anything, did they? And June had been hoping for something to work with, anything. But she wanted for Eleanor to feel heard, so she listened.

  “Oh?” June said, encouraging her to go on.

  “It didn’t feel like any dream I’ve ever had in my life,” Eleanor whispered. “I stopped having dreams after I died.”

  June didn’t know what to say. Eleanor’s deadness seemed to weave in and out of relevance in a confusing and inconsistent manner. There was something not quite right about it, aside from the obvious. She suddenly remembered that Simpson had claimed to be able to speak with the dead.

  “But then one night I woke up and Simpson was in our room,” Eleanor went on. “You couldn’t hear her. Her face was...” She didn’t say anything, and June’s heart skipped a beat. She thought of when she had seen Simpson’s face, melted off and left red and glistening from the steam burn. But she’d never told Eleanor those details. “Her face was missing. I could see her teeth.”

  “What did she say?” June asked, very interested now.

  “She smiled at me.” Eleanor gave a weak little laugh as if she still couldn’t believe it. “She said, ‘I was right about them,’ and she knelt down on the floor. She said that they’d found out she knew too much because of the worm in her brain. That the worm made her kill herself, against her will, but that it allowed her to visit me in the land of the dead. She pointed to a space on the wall over there...”

  Eleanor sat up in bed, pointed directly to the spot where the tunnel had been during June’s drug trip. “She said, ‘They’re looking for something. If we’re here, it’s because we might have it or know how to find it. And they will do whatever they can to find it first.’”

  “Did she say what it was?” June asked, deeply unsettled. She had yelled in Joya’s face about the tunnel before. At the time she’d felt like she had nothing to lose, but now she remembered, lying here with Eleanor in the dark, that she still did.

  “No.” Eleanor lay back down, crossing her hands over her chest. June turned onto her side to get a better look at her. “Just that whatever it is has the power to destroy this place.”

  This place, destroyed. What a wonderful vision indeed.

  “There was another thing,” Eleanor continued as June turned this over in her head. “She wanted me to thank you for her.”

  “For what?” June was almost reproved by the message. She had done nothing for Simpson. She could have done so much more.

  “For not being as afraid of the truth as everyone else is. For being strong. She seemed to believe that you were going to be the first one to find the lost thing, whatever it is. She said to tell you not to let them get it, no matter what happens, or else the consequences will be more dire than any of us can comprehend.”

  “That is a very specific dream,” June said, not knowing what else to say.

  Was it real? Was it not? June couldn’t know either way. On one hand, it made a sick sort of sense. On the other hand, who knew what Eleanor’s brain was capable of coming up with in reaction to the death of a beloved friend?

  No, June thought. Be honest with yourself—you completely believe Eleanor right now.

  “That wasn’t the end of it.” Eleanor squeezed her eyes shut. “Simpson showed me a book.”

  “A book?”

  “She said she’d stolen it from the library. That there was a library here at the hospital somewhere, but that nobody knew about it except for the staff.”

  June thought of the hallway she’d gone down to see Robert and her parents earlier. Was she ever going to tell Eleanor about that? She thought maybe, especially after hearing all of this, that it wasn’t exactly safe to. She could tell Eleanor all about it once they escaped from this place.

  The opening and closing of doors for checks were much closer now. It’d be any minute when a nurse stuck her head in.

  “It was a book about illnesses of the brain.” She rolled off her back, so they were facing each other on their sides. “Simpson pointed out two things. One, that there is such a thing as other people who are convinced they’re dead.”

  “Really?” June’s eyes widened. “So you’re saying you understand better what’s happened to you? That you’re actually alive?”

  Eleanor’s eyes darkened. “No,” she said. “But after reading all about the disease, I realized that it didn’t describe me really, except for the dead thing. There are other characteristics that most all other patients shared that I don’t. Big ones.”

  “Eleanor,” June said softly, becoming overwhelmed. “You read all of that during a dream?”

  “Listen to me,” she urged, and June was sad to see that Eleanor’s eyes were wet. She must have known how it all sounded. “After I was done, Simpson showed me a page all about people who believe their loved ones have been replaced by exact duplicates. But I’m not so sure they were quite like you either. I think...whatever’s happened to us isn’t as simple as a medical diagnosis.”

  The door to their room was suddenly thrown open. A nurse stuck her head in, mumbled, “Checks,” then slammed it again. June had expected her to scold them for being in the same bed like she’d done before, but this time it was like the nurse had barely taken time to look or care. At any rate, they’d be free from interruption for a while.

  “What do you think the dream was trying to tell you?” June asked after Eleanor didn’t go on.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she answered finally. “What if it really was Simpson? I can’t explain it, June. I know it just as much as I know I’ll get to live forever because I’m dead. She came back to try and help. Whatever they’re looking for...do you have any idea what it could be?”

  “No,” June said honestly. “I have no idea.”

  “Simpson said that once you find it, you’ll know without any doubt.” Eleanor gave a soft laugh. “To hear that you might be the one who’s supposed to save this place, well...it doesn’t surprise me, I guess.”

  June didn’t like it. She didn’t know what the thing was, she didn’t know how she was supposed to find it, and she had no faith in herself to find it before Nurse Joya did. All she and the doctor had seemed to truly want from June was information about the party, and about her writing. Was it possible the thing they were looking for had something to do with either of those?

  “Don’t frown,” Eleanor said, wiping a tear off June’s face with her finger. “I feel so much better now that I’ve finally told you about the dream. You were supposed to hear it. I know that now. One last trick from Simpson.”

  “I don’t understand,” June whispered.

  “I don’t either,” Eleanor admitted, “but I do know that you and I were meant to meet each other. Ever since you came, things have been different here. It’s less cloudy, less uniform. I actually notice when days pass. I remember to think about the outside world. It’s like you’re the only thing that counteracts this place...”

  June kissed
her then. She hadn’t meant to, not necessarily, but it’d been something she’d been thinking about for a while, and she couldn’t stop herself any longer. Eleanor kissed her right back, and the girls found themselves nearly clawing at each other in their newfound excitement. Unable to find fulfillment with every rushed touch, they slowed down.

  Eleanor’s mouth opened, and June tasted the inside. She ran her hand up Eleanor’s thigh, then under her dress, then up the side of her ribs and over her breast. Eleanor shivered in pleasure. They kissed luxuriously, June’s hand staying where it was, her thumb rubbing over Eleanor’s nipple with gentle rhythm, and soon Eleanor reached down and hitched June’s leg up and over herself. They leaned into each other as they sucked and bit at each other’s lips and tongues.

  June couldn’t help but think of the time she’d opened herself to Robert in her bedroom, what felt like lifetimes ago, and all the times they’d fooled around after that. The intimacy then had felt wonderful, just like this did, but she felt the difference almost right away in that Eleanor was somebody she cared about more than she could ever care about Robert.

  If only Eleanor had been the son of Stewart Dennings, things might have turned out very different.

  She felt Eleanor’s hands work their way down, slipping through the top of June’s panties, and June lifted her leg even more to accommodate. She felt Eleanor’s fingers slip inside of her and moaned.

  “Do the same to me,” Eleanor whispered eagerly as she moved her fingers in and over June. And so June did. The girls worked their hands over each other, whimpering through their kisses, and June felt like she was going to melt from the ecstasy of it. Eleanor abruptly stopped kissing June’s mouth and moved down her neck and chest and stomach before pulling her fingers out of June and putting her mouth there instead. June pulled her legs apart even further, lay back, and grabbed at the sheets on her bed as she writhed.

  Everything bad about the world disappeared then. She peered down for just a moment, but the sight of Eleanor was almost too much to bear. June arched her back, craned her neck, and cried out as her mind exploded into stars—her favorite thing in the world: stars. She swam in them, relished the feeling of falling freely through them, not a prisoner, not a patient, just her and Eleanor in deep space.