Night Chill

by Jeff Gunhus

  Jack stared into the fireplace and watched small flames lick at the wood. He hadn’t slept since the crazy events of last night. How could he? The whole experience was so vivid to him, as clear as any waking memory. Each time he closed his eyes the images came back to him, that voice.

  “Hello Jack. How are you?”

  Jack pushed himself up from his seat and spun toward the door. Dr. Scott Moran, dressed casually in cords and a tan button-down shirt, held his hands up, “Easy there. Didn’t mean to startle you.” He crossed the room and held out his hand, “I’m Scott Moran. Good to meet you.”

  Jack smiled as he shook the doctor’s hand. “Sorry, I didn’t sleep much last night.”

  “I guess that’s why you’re here,” Moran said as he motioned Jack back to his chair. “If you want I could prescribe some sleeping pills and just call it a day. Maybe go golfing together? What do you say?”

  “What?”

  “Do you golf?”

  “Yeah, a little.”

  “So. What do you want to do? Golf or therapy?”

  Jack sized up Scott Moran. The psychiatrist seemed only a little older than himself, maybe in his mid-forties. His sandy blonde hair was either expertly dyed or just hid any grey hairs the man possessed. He had a dark complexion, one of those rare blondes who tanned well. Moran had a runner’s build, lean and muscular. He carried himself with a fluid, country-club self confidence. Jack was used to this kind of easy-going arrogance, it was practically a required attitude in Southern California, but that didn’t mean he liked being around it. Besides that, he wasn’t in the mood for jokes, so he sat and waited for the psychiatrist to continue.

  Moran sighed, “I guess we’ll scratch clever banter off the agenda then.” He took a poker and stirred the fire until the flames crackled and spit. He spoke without looking at Jack, “Listen, I know you’re a reluctant guest. But from talking to your wife, I think it’s a good thing you’re here.”

  Jack shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He noticed Moran study him out of the corner of his eye. Jack cleared his throat. “Thanks for making a spot for me on short notice. I appreciate it.”

  Moran shrugged, “I wasn’t busy. Between you and me, I’m not a very good therapist.”

  Jack gave him a thin smile. Under different circumstances he might have given Moran a break and played along with the weak comedy act but the psychiatrist’s shtick was getting on his nerves. The guy was like a golf course pro crossed with a Vegas lounge act. Not exactly a confidence inspiring combination. Still, Jack forced himself to continue. “So what did Lauren tell you?”

  “That you’re crazy.” Moran waited a few beats, watching Jack’s serious expression. Finally, he said, “I’m just screwing with you, Jack. You’ve got to lighten up a little.”

  Jack shook his head and started to stand up, “Maybe this—”

  “Post traumatic stress disorder. That’s what’s causing these hallucinations. You’re not crazy, Jack. You’re just a little freaked out by what happened to you. Happens all the time.”

  “Lauren told you—”

  “No details. Just that you’ve had troubling dream-like images. Sleep walking. The works.”

  Sleepwalking? I took a baseball bat and almost beat my dog to death in front of my family and she told you I was sleepwalking?

  “You want to tell me the details of what you saw?” Moran asked.

  Jack shifted his eyes and stared into the fire, his fingers tapping the wooden armrest.

  Moran changed tack. He spoke in a lower, softer voice. “Jack, whatever you saw compelled you to walk around the house and do some things you didn’t want to do. I’m guessing there is no way you would be here right now unless whatever you saw and whatever you did scared you and your wife pretty bad. I can help you. I really can. But that only happens if you let me in on the details.”

  “I haven’t even told Lauren everything.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Tell it to me. What’s the worst case? That I think you’re nuts? You don’t give a damn what I think of you, right? So that’s not a big deal. Best case, we figure some stuff out, I give you some answers, and you get better. You’re a businessman. That’s a low cost of failure with a huge upside potential. Listen, I have a family too.” He pointed to the picture on the mantle. “A daughter, Cathy. I know what it’s like to be a father. The responsibility you feel. I can help you with this.”

  Jack glanced at the photo of Moran’s daughter. She smiled back at him and made him feel better. Then he remembered Lauren’s look in the bedroom. She had been so scared of him. Worse, he hadn’t been able to reassure her. He didn’t know what he might have done next with the bat. He had no control over his actions. Over the hallucinations. Moran was right about one thing. He did owe it to Lauren and the kids to at least try. Without taking his eyes off the fire, Jack recounted every detail he could remember.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  “I won’t be very long,” Lauren assured the emergency room nurse who volunteered to watch after the girls. “Page me if you need me or if you get busy.”

  “Take your time Dr. Tremont. We haven’t seen a patient here all day,” Nurse Haddie said.

  Lauren kissed each of the girls on the cheek. They were already tearing through the box of medical supplies the nurse had given them. Lauren knew how the game went and soon band-aids and gauze would be everywhere as the girls took turns being the patient and the doctor. It always made a mess but she preferred it to when they played house. She wanted her daughters to know from an early age that they could do anything they wanted. She didn’t believe in pressuring them and she respected women who stayed home to raise their kids, but it secretly delighted her whenever the girls said they wanted to be doctors like their mom.

  “Just remember that you ladies are going to clean up whatever mess you make.” The girls paused for a second and then went back to their game with a new set of giggles. “Be good.” She turned to the nurse, “They had Krispy Kreme doughnuts for a treat on the way here. Good luck.”

  The sounds of the girls playing faded as Lauren walked down the hallway toward the elevator. With the waning sound, Lauren felt her mind shift from being a mother to being a doctor. And one persona was no less protective than the other. She had promised Jack that she would drive straight down to Baltimore but she couldn’t resist making this quick stop at the hospital. A patient of hers had died and she wasn’t satisfied with the answers she was getting.

  She flipped through Felicia Rodriguez’s file as she waited for the elevator to arrive. She saw the notation where the blood was drawn to be sent to the CDC. Below that were notations by various nurses regarding IV changes, temperature, blood pressure readings. All seemed normal. Then the entry that made her stomach turn. “Massive coronary. Attempts to resuscitate unsuccessful. TOD 17:14 hr” TOD stood for time of death. Lauren recognized the handwriting. Dr. Stanley Mansfield.

  She shook her head. Something felt wrong. Felicia was her patient and no one called her when it happened. Stanley had even been the attending physician when the girl died, and still he hadn’t called. She rationalized that Stanley had just been looking out for her, trying to give her time to be with her family. But still, something felt out of place. As she worked through the problem it did occur to her that with so little sleep and the stress from last night, the only thing out of place might be her.

  The elevator door opened. Lauren walked in, thankful to have the elevator to herself. She didn’t think she could bring herself to engage in small talk today. She pressed ‘B’ and the elevator dropped down toward the basement, down to Midland Hospital’s morgue.

  The basement was one area untouched by the renovations to the building over the years. The walls were still bare brick just as they’d been for over a hundred years. A maze of pipes ran in crisscross patterns overhead, attached to the ceiling with thick metal brackets drilled into the masonry. The floor was painted a no-skid industrial yellow in a poor attempt to brighten up the gloomy surroundings. The morgu
e was at the far end of the hallway that extended from the elevator. To get there, corpses were treated to a gurney ride past laundry rooms, supply cabinets and storage areas.

  The end of the road for the bodies was a large stainless steel door, similar to an oversized subzero refrigerator, large enough to fit a gurney through. The door appeared surprisingly modern in the turn of the century basement, more a high-tech bank vault than a door. On the other side of the sub-zero doors, bodies found refrigerated temperatures and a choice of ten separate ‘beds’ for their temporary resting places. Morbid as it was, Lauren knew that the nurses and orderlies who had access to a key sometimes came down here on their breaks during the hot summer days. A strange place to eat a sandwich, but at least it was cool. The morgue was small but Midland had only run out of room once.

  Stanley Mansfield had told her the story on her first day. There was a freak storm in early December back in 1986. A freezing rain coated everything with a full inch of ice, turning the Interstate into a demolition derby. A semi truck lost control and did the most damage, wiping out a whole row of cars pulled over to the side of the road to wait out the storm. After rescue workers sorted through the mess all ten beds in the morgue were spoken for. Somehow two terminal patients, a Mrs. Gunther and a Mrs. Brookside, both ready to get on with dying, found out about the predicament. The women were southern belles of the old breed and they proclaimed they would not die until a space was available for them. True to their words, they held on for a few more days. They died the same day they were told the morgue was ready for them. Stanley swore that he believed they would still be alive today if he had just kept telling them there was no room for them in the morgue.

  Like many of Stanley’s stories, it was charming, but always with a disturbing undercurrent. Lauren brushed it aside. Most of the doctors she worked with developed gallows humor over time. It was just a way of coping with some of the horrible sights that came with the job. She had just never become comfortable with the jokes. She never laughed about death.

  Lauren fished in her pocket and found her keys. The morgue was always kept locked since security into the basement was minimal. The days of bodysnatching were long gone, but the morgue was kept under lock and key because of an over eager reporter eleven years earlier. The reporter, a kid from the local paper, snuck in through the basement and photographed the bodies. He had thought it would make a great story about lack of hospital security. Instead the prank landed him in jail for a few weeks. Still, once the story got out there was a public outcry for better security which led to the space age doors in front of her. Lauren smiled. Another Stanley story with a twist.

  There was a soft whoosh of air as she opened the stainless steel door. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. She checked the log book to find which drawer contained Felicia Rodriguez’s body. With a grunt, she pulled open drawer three and slid it from the wall. Empty.

  Lauren slid the drawer back in a rechecked the log book. She had read it correctly. Felicia was supposed to be in number three. Lauren sighed. Someone must have entered the wrong drawer. It happened sometimes, but it was sloppy.

  She heaved on the handle for drawer number one. Empty. Drawer number two. Empty. Again and again, she tugged open the heavy drawers only to find them empty. By the time she got to number nine there was sweat pouring down her face and she was out of breath. She pulled hard at the handle and groaned on seeing that the drawer was empty. She laughed in spite of herself, wishing she’d started with drawer ten instead. “Murphy’s law,” she said to herself, pulling open the last drawer.

  Empty.

  Lauren went back to the log book. It clearly indicated the date and time when the body was brought down to the morgue. There was no indication that the body had been removed for any reason. There were strong protocols in place when bodies were moved, especially when the body posed a possible public safety threat. She and Stanley had discussed that on the phone. The body would need to be kept at Midland until results of the blood work were back from the CDC.

  She threw the log book back in place and went to the door. She pulled on the handle. The door didn’t move. She tried again.

  Nothing.

  She was locked in.

  She grabbed the handle and leaned her weight on top of it. She grunted with the effort. No matter how hard she pushed, the handle wouldn’t budge. Someone must have locked the door from the outside.

  She stepped back from the door, tears welling up in her eyes. She was trapped. She felt her heart thumping in her chest. Her hands shook.

  Then she noticed the sign on the side of the door. She rubbed her eyes to clear away the tears and started to laugh. God, she was tired. She needed to be careful that she didn’t make any mistakes that could hurt someone. She promised herself that she wouldn’t treat any patients today. Definitely not today. Not until she got some sleep. Not until got a hold of herself.

  She reached over and pushed the large button marked, “Open Door.” The morgue door clicked and swung open.

  Lauren sucked in a deep breath to calm her frayed nerves. There was too much going on. Jack’s hallucinations, Sarah’s bizarre writing, strangers stalking her house and now her patient’s body going AWOL. She was stretched too thin. Maybe Jack was right. Maybe she should have gone straight down to her friend’s house in Baltimore. She needed to get some perspective and a little time and distance would give her a chance to sort things out, come up with an explanation for what was happening to her family. But she felt a responsibility to Felicia too. She needed to understand what had happened to her.

  As strange as the last few days had been at home, she expected to deal with emotional issues there. It was part of marriage and part of raising a family. She and Jack had brought their marriage back from the edge of the cliff they had found themselves on in California. All the resentment and alienation brought on by their jobs and fast lifestyle seemed now like a lifetime ago. Seeing Jack deal with the death of Melissa Gonzales and helping him cope with it had reminded her of how much she loved him. The result of that horrible experience was that they were a team again. The decision to move to Prescott City and work on rebuilding their lives proved it. She started to believe that they could handle anything life threw at them, just as long as they stayed together.

  But the hospital was supposed to be different. Her work was her constant. The calm methodology of science was her refuge. Now, when she could really use the reassurance of normalcy, she faced another mystery. As tired as she was, she wasn’t about to give up. If anything, her lack of sleep had made her more emotional. Now she was beyond being curious. She was angry.

  Lauren headed down the hall back to the elevator, the heavy clacking of her low heeled shoes hitting the concrete floor telegraphing her mood. She had every intention of finding out what happened to Felicia Rodriguez’s body and she knew where to start asking questions.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Steam rose up through the small hole in the coffee lid as Joe Lonetree raised his cup to his lips. He slurped at the hot liquid, savoring the bitterness of the dark roast. There was a time when he wouldn’t have allowed himself this caffeine fix, but that was also a time when he wouldn’t have needed the pick-me-up either. He’d only slept eight hours in the last forty. That much sleep would have once seemed a luxury, but he felt the fatigue wearing on him. Now, sitting in the Ford Bronco across from Dr. Scott Moran’s office, he fought against the urge to nod off. When this was all over, he planned to sleep for a week. Some place warm with white beaches and fruity drinks.

  The last year was a blur to him, a series of bizarre revelations that let him to this sleepy mountain town from half way around the world. He’d come a long way in a little time. And the change in geography was nothing compared to the other changes he had endured. In the last twelve months his belief system had been stripped bare and then rebuilt with the old stories he thought he’d abandoned long ago. The old beliefs, for years sealed away in a remote corner of his mind, had escaped their ban
ishment and lived once again. His father would have been proud to know his wayward son had finally returned to him, finally believed in his life’s work after so many years of doubt.

  Too bad the old man wasn’t around anymore.

  A quick look through the parking lot confirmed that Jack Tremont was still in the shrink’s office. Lonetree leaned his head back and allowed his eyes to close. They burned at first, but the darkness soothed his tired eyes and the burning faded into a comfortable inkiness.

  He allowed his mind to wander through the flashes of childhood memory that had been dredged up since returning to America. Small flashes of his father’s face, snatches of conversation, images from a past he had worked hard to forget. There was the living room back in Arizona. Not in the nice house they lived in before his mother died, but the other place. The place his father took them to hide. A couch that slumped in the middle from broken springs. Fake wood panels that peeled off the trailer walls. Bright orange carpet that didn’t reach all the way across the floor. A few landscape watercolors that hung on the wall, each one hanging at a crooked angle, the frames covered with thick dust. And brown bottles everywhere. Old Milwaukee. Empty, but with enough left in them to fill the air with the reek of stale beer. His mother would never have allowed the house to look like that. When she was alive they had dignity as a family. After her death, they were poor. Worse, they were reservation poor. Two boys, six and ten, with a father who seemed intent on living out every Native American stereotype he could.

  There, in that living room, his father sat him down and explained his mother’s death to him. His father was a big man, wide enough to have to turn sideways to fit through the trailer’s small doorways. Tall so that he had to bow his head to walk in his own house. That day he bowed his head even though he was sitting on the couch, his face dark and brooding, his breath stinking from alcohol and cigarettes. Lonetree still remembered every second of the encounter. It was the first time he had been scared of his father. And ashamed of him.