Lonely Path

by Melissa F. Miller

  “Tatiana?” Eliza said her name in a gentle voice.

  Her eyes flickered.

  “Do you remember us? I’m Eliza. This is Bodhi. We found you by the roadside last night and brought you to town.”

  Tatiana examined Bodhi’s face. Then she turned back to Eliza.

  “Tatiana,” she croaked in a voice that was hoarse from disuse.

  “Hi, Tatiana,” Bodhi said.

  Eliza glanced at him. He suspected she was feeling the same inadequacy he was. This woman couldn’t tell them what had happened to her, and they lacked the tools to find out. They were both experienced in coaxing stories from the dead, but their familiar methods of examination and analysis were severely hampered by the fact that Tatiana was alive.

  Change the lens.

  He stepped closer to the bed. “May I see your hands?”

  She watched his face as he spoke but didn’t give any indication that she understood the request. He glanced at Eliza, unsure if he should proceed without Tatiana’s explicit permission. Eliza stretched out her own hands, palms up, toward the bed.

  Tatiana leaned forward and looked down at Eliza’s hands. Then she mirrored the movement, reaching out with both hands, palms up. Bodhi took her right hand in his. Her skin was dry and papery. She had no callouses or blisters. He turned her hand over. Her fingernails were neatly trimmed and clean, but it was impossible to tell if that was the result of Nurse Grace’s ministrations.

  He returned her right hand to her lap and took her left. He saw no difference. When he released her left hand, she began to move it absently. Pinching together her thumb and forefinger, then moving her hand to the left. With each motion, she mouthed a number. ‘One, two, three, four ….’ When she reached twenty, she stopped.

  Bodhi met Eliza’s eyes. Eliza shook her head, as unsure as he was as to what Tatiana might be doing.

  After a beat, Tatiana repeated the movements and her silent twenty-count.

  When she finished, Eliza asked, “What are you counting, Tatiana?”

  Tatiana cocked her head to the side and frowned at Eliza, concentrating intently. Then she said, “Pills.”

  Pills?

  While Bodhi mulled over this answer, Eliza took Tatiana’s chin in her hands and gently turned her face from side to side.

  “Will you open your mouth for me?”

  Tatiana did as she asked. Eliza examined the inside of the woman’s mouth.

  “Thank you.” She looked at Bodhi. “No visible tooth decay, no gum inflammation. Wherever she’s been, I think she’s been brushing her teeth.”

  Bodhi mimed toothbrushing. “Tatiana, do you brush your teeth?”

  After a delay, she slowly shook her head. “He does.”

  Bodhi’s heart thumped behind his breastbone. Before he could ask about the he in her answer, a soft knock sounded on the door, and it swung open.

  A man and a woman stood in the doorway, just behind Nurse Grace. The couple could only be the Viants, judging by their twin expressions of desperate hope and anxiety. The woman wrung her hands together. The man spotted Tatiana in the bed, and his jaw hinged open.

  “What a busy day, dear. You have more visitors,” the nurse chirped with a wide smile.

  “Tatty?” the man rasped, frozen in the doorway.

  His wife rushed past Bodhi and Eliza to the bedside and stared wordlessly at Tatiana with tears streaming down her cheeks.

  Tatiana regarded the woman gravely. Then her gaze shifted to the man.

  The air in the room grew still with anticipation. Time turned to thick syrup. Nurse Grace had one hand at her throat, waiting.

  Tatiana’s expression was blank. She looked from one to the other again, and still she did not speak.

  She was silent for so long that Mrs. Viant’s shoulders fell, her face crumbled, and she let out a soft moan of disappointment. Eliza took her by the elbow and guided her into a nearby chair. The woman covered her face in her hands and sobbed.

  Her husband crossed the room and dropped a hand on her shoulder. “Shh, shh, now, lovebug,” he comforted her.

  Tatiana watched this exchange with naked interest. Then, to no one in particular, she announced. “Lovebug. Mom. Dad. Lovebug.”

  The rain had stopped. Eliza and Bodhi stretched their legs, taking a brisk walk through the damp neighborhood surrounding the hospital while the Viants reunited with their daughter in privacy. The hospital was located on the edge of Old Quebec’s Upper Town, so they strolled toward the historic area.

  They wandered through the wet, narrow streets, admiring the stone buildings, many of them fronted with colorful shutters and window boxes. They stopped to peek into a dim arched alleyway that hinted at long-ago military excursions or smuggling routes. Before they reached the steep stairs leading to Lower Town and the Quartier Petit-Champlain, with its art galleries, boutiques, and restaurants aimed at the tourist trade, they skirted the foot traffic and headed back toward the hospital.

  Eliza broke the silence. “Tatiana was being held somewhere by someone who brushed her teeth.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “We don’t know the level of cognitive impairment she’s suffered. The things she says may be real to her, but are they real?”

  She shot him a dark look. “Is this a Zen koan? What is real?”

  “Point taken,” he chuckled. “But we do need to be cautious about attaching too much weight to her words right now. We need to better understand her current condition so we can be sure she’s got her mental faculties.”

  “I agree with that.” Eliza stopped to read a historical plaque affixed to the front of a building. Then she added, “When we get back to the hospital, why don’t you talk to the Viants, and I’ll have Nurse Grace walk me through the tests that have been ordered and what the medical team knows about Tatiana’s condition?”

  “Okay. I’m interested in talking to the Viants about how Tatiana came to be declared dead and the process that took place at the funeral home. Shouldn’t someone have noticed she was alive when they were preparing the body for burial?”

  “One would hope.”

  The list of unanswered questions stretched far beyond who might have brushed her teeth during the eight months she was believed to be dead. But he couldn’t shake the thought that if they could answer that one question, the pieces of the puzzle would fall into place.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Virgil ignored his mounting despair over Tatiana’s disappearance and focused on packing the chemicals and equipment properly. Given the expense and importance of both items, he didn’t dare trust the workers to pack them.

  The workers. Moving several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise and manufacturing supplies was far less of a worry than moving the workers. But it couldn’t be avoided. Assuming Tatiana hadn’t wandered off somewhere and died, she would be found. And although he seriously doubted she had the capacity to lead someone to the house, he had no interest in testing his belief.

  The only option was to abandon the property in Sainte-Anne and set up at a new location where a building full of the walking dead wouldn’t draw attention. He lifted his head and watched as a worker shuffled past.

  Virgil did not care for the word ‘zombie.’ Although it accurately described his workers’ situation, it brought to mind gruesome brain eaters from a campy horror film. He preferred to think of the workers as automatons or industrious insects, not unlike bees or ants. But even those analogies weren’t fully correct.

  He took care of them beyond what was required to keep the drug production clicking along. In addition to feeding them, he tended to their hygiene. He helped them wash their hands, feet, and faces every night before he brushed their teeth. He’d even combed Tatiana’s long, dark hair for her when it became hopelessly tangled. Once their states became regulated, he gave them maintenance doses of Solo. Enough to keep them docile, obedient, and productive, but not so much that they couldn’t also attend to their toileting needs and
feed, bathe, and dress themselves—once he’d retaught them those skills.

  He’d even been experimenting with lowering the dosage to see if there was a way to strike a balance between their reliance on him and their ability to form some autonomous thought. He could imagine a time when some of them might function as low-level managers of his enterprise, carrying out basic instructions and perhaps even answering questions that arose on the assembly line.

  Had he gone too far? Could Tatiana have affirmatively decided to leave? What would happen if his walking dead began making their own decisions?

  He pushed the thought away, unwilling to imagine the horrors that might come to fruition in that scenario. Just then, the college student shuffled by. Virgil realized with a pang that he didn’t know the man’s name. He’d have to ask Christian if he’d looked at the guy’s identification before tossing it into the river. In the meantime, he decided, he’d settle on Bud. He had to call the guy something. It was important to Virgil that he keep in the forefront of his mind the fact that his workers, while no longer fully human, had once been people.

  “Hey, Bud,” he said.

  The man kept walking, his eyes glued to the floor. Virgil reached out and touched his arm.

  “Bud.”

  The guy slowly lifted his eyes to Virgil’s face.

  “That’s you. Bud.” Virgil pointed toward the man’s chest.

  The college student frowned then shook his head. “No,” he rasped. He jabbed his thumb toward himself. “Mike.” He paused then nodded at his own words.

  “Mike?”

  “Mike,” he repeated.

  Virgil watched Mike shamble away. The college student remembered his own name. And he was the first of Virgil’s workers to retain verbal ability.

  As the sound of Mike’s halting, gravelly voice echoed in his ears, Virgil’s heavy dread over Tatiana’s disappearance and his compromised drug warehouse was replaced by a bracing splash of adrenaline and excitement. This development could lead to exciting possibilities for expansion of his Solo operation and for better understanding the minds of the handful of people he’d managed to revive.

  He returned to the task at hand, swathing jars and bottles in thick layers of bubble wrap. His hands moved automatically, but his mind was elsewhere—working through a series of tests to determine Mike’s level of cognition.

  Chapter Sixteen

  When they returned to the hospital, Eliza and Bodhi split up to gather as much information as they could about Tatiana Viant.

  Eliza found Nurse Grace typing notes into a computer. She stood by the nurses’ station and waited quietly until the woman had finished her work.

  “Oh, Dr. Rollins, can I help you?” she asked, looking up in mild surprise.

  Eliza wondered briefly who’d told the nurse she was a doctor but didn’t dwell on it. After all, she was about to ask Nurse Grace to share Tatiana’s private health information. Having an air of authority could only aid in her goal.

  “How’s our patient doing?” Eliza asked, tilting her head toward the door to Tatiana’s room.

  “She’s resting. Her parents are in the media room talking to a pair of police officers who turned up right after you and Dr. King left. I held them off as long as I could, but they desperately wanted to interview Tatiana. That mother of hers is a real spitfire, though. She herded those officers out of her daughter’s room like she had a cattle prod.” Nurse Grace laughed approvingly.

  “I’m sure her maternal instincts are on overdrive at this point. Could you imagine how she must feel, finding her daughter alive after all these months?”

  “My word, yes. Do you have children?”

  “I’ve not been blessed.” Eliza gave the nurse her stock answer to a question that had long bedeviled her.

  “Oh. I’m sorry,” the nurse murmured. After a respectful pause, she continued, “Well, mine are teenagers. My oldest is seventeen, not that much younger than Tatiana Viant. I have to say, I’d be doing everything in my power to protect her if she were in this wild situation.”

  “Speaking of Tatiana’s situation,” Eliza segued, leaning across the shelf that separated the work station from the public space, “what tests has the team ordered to assess her mental and physical condition? She appears to be stable, but what do the test results reveal?”

  Nurse Grace exhaled a slow, leaky breath of air. “I imagine procedures are quite a bit different back in the States. But the admitting physicians didn’t order any tests at intake.”

  Eliza was sure she’d misheard. “I beg your pardon?”

  The nurse smiled. “As you said, she’s stable. Her vitals are good. She’s eating. The current care plan is to monitor her and keep her comfortable. We have no idea what that poor girl’s been through, but it’s safe to say it was a nightmare. She may just need some time to recover. Quiet, rest, and food are the priorities. Later in the week, the psychiatric team will stop by to see her.”

  Before responding, Eliza reminded herself that she was a visitor here, with no actual authority, and that she was a coroner, with limited experience treating breathing patients. Keeping those two facts firmly in mind, she managed to speak in an even tone of voice rather than screaming.

  “While Tatiana Viant’s comfort and safety are of the foremost importance, surely the physicians here can order some basic blood work to make sure she hasn’t been exposed to any contagious illnesses or other pathogens. What about the safety of the rest of your patients?”

  A shadow of doubt crossed the nurse’s face. “I’ll mention it when the doctors round.”

  Eliza smiled. “You may also want to mention that there’s an active investigation into her disappearance and reappearance. Surely the team here would prefer to get out in front of the issues that might be relevant and control which tests this young woman is subjected to, rather than leaving it to law enforcement to decide. Their priorities will be on administering justice, not helping Tatiana to heal. I mean, unless policing is very different here than it is in the States?”

  Nurse Grace frowned. “No, you make a good point. I’ll … I’ll share it with the team. If you’re here when they round, perhaps you could talk with them?”

  “I’d be glad to.”

  “Just in case you aren’t, can you tell me what testing you’d recommend?”

  “Of course. I’ll write it down. Do you have a pen?”

  The nurse handed a blank pad and a pen across the counter. Eliza scrawled the abbreviations for the most comprehensive battery of tests she thought the nurse would be able to sell to the medical team then signed her name with a flourish.

  “Thank you.” Nurse Grace took the sheet Eliza tore from the pad and studied it.

  “My pleasure. I’d like to visit with Tatiana while her parents are being interviewed by the police. She might welcome the company.”

  The nurse regained her footing and managed a warning tsk sound before Eliza walked away. “Be sure you don’t upset her,” she urged.

  Eliza opened the door to Tatiana’s room and stepped into the silent room. The young woman was sleeping on her left side with her cheek resting on her hands. Her face was relaxed. Her breathing even.

  Eliza lowered herself into the fake leather chair beside the bed and leaned forward. She watched Tatiana’s chest rise and lower with each breath and tried to imagine the path that had led the woman from a casket in Ottawa to the side of the road in the Quebec countryside.

  Bodhi had positioned his chair slightly behind and to the right of the Viants. He sat and listened. The two police officers, who hadn’t bothered to introduce themselves to him or otherwise acknowledge his presence when he’d entered the room, were peppering the couple with questions.

  It didn’t seem to Bodhi that they were actually processing the answers the Viants gave. They just marched their way down their endless list of questions. He somehow doubted this uninspired routine was what Inspector Commaire had intended.

  Mrs. Viant shifted in her chair and glanced at her
husband.

  Mr. Viant cleared his throat then interrupted the younger of the two policemen mid-sentence. “Pardon me, but we’re done for now. My wife and I would like to spend some time with our daughter. I’m sure you understand.” Although his words were conciliatory, there was no hint of negotiation in his tone.

  The older of the two police officers, a tall, broad-shouldered man with cropped salt-and-pepper hair and a military bearing, nodded gravely. “We do. And, as we’ve explained, we’re quite interested in speaking to Ms. Viant ourselves.”

  “No.” Mrs. Viant said the word in a firm yet quiet voice.

  “No?” the senior officer repeated.

  “Not yet,” she amended. “Our Tatiana’s been through an ordeal. Please, give her a few more hours to rest. She’s really not even speaking yet. A handful of words have come back to her, but she’s not communicative. Not really.”

  The younger officer twisted his mouth into a pucker of disbelief.

  “It’s true,” Bodhi volunteered. “Tatiana Viant appears to be slowly regaining her verbal ability, but she’s not in any condition to talk to you right now.”

  Mr. Viant twisted in his seat to give Bodhi a grateful smile.

  “And how exactly are you qualified to make this judgment, Mister …?” the senior officer trailed off.

  “It’s Doctor, actually. Dr. Bodhi King. Inspector Commaire asked me to consult on this matter in conjunction with Dr. Guillaume Loomis. Surely you were informed?”

  Bodhi watched as the men processed the series of names he’d dropped and reached the conclusion that their interview was over.

  “We’ll leave you to visit with your daughter for now,” the older one said in a gracious voice. He stood and doffed his hat to the Viants.

  His younger partner handed Mr. Viant a business card. “We’ll be in touch to arrange for a formal interview with your daughter. In the meantime, don’t hesitate if you think of something that will be useful to our investigation. I assume you want to establish what happened to Tatiana just as much as we do.”