Ghost Country

by Sara Paretsky

  On the stretcher next to her Madeleine Carter struggled to sit up. “Holy Mother,” she choked. “You’ve come to save me.”

  A hand tugged on Harriet’s sleeve. She shuddered, still feeling the weight of those breasts, and was astonished to find Mara at her side.

  “Harriet, did you come to find me? Harriet, look at her hair. It’s like mine. Harriet, it’s Mother!”

  27

  Starr

  Ominous weather all day. Masses of sparrows huddled on asphalt in front of hospital to stay clear of the rising wind. On locked ward, patients agitated, splintering—the brain breaks into a thousand crystal shards as the atmosphere descends.

  About midnight the storm broke. A monster. People flooded the emergency room to escape the torrents. One woman hid under a gurney and screamed every time thunder sounded, rigid with fear—took four men to remove her.

  Then in came the car wrecks, new head cases, new spinal fractures from would-be immortals who roared down expressways at eighty on slick roads. Left those to the knife-happy neurosurgeons, retreated to residents bunkroom, an hour of blissful sleep when I got beeped to the locked ward: teenage boy had cut open his left wrist. Wondered what he’d got hold of, then saw he’d chewed through the veins.

  They kept paging me to the phone while I was with the poor kid. Almost an hour before I could leave the boy, though, and then it was to a disaster with Madeleine Carter. Paramedics were phoning to say Madeleine attempted suicide, by sticking her head into a broken main. Imagined gas, but they said no, broken water pipe, she was in bad shape, semiconscious, feverish, but needed authorization to bring her to hospital: no beds anywhere in area. Knew if I actually went to admissions to discuss they would say absolutely not, so I told them bring her in.

  Ambulance arrived with an entourage attached, like that Russian peasant tale of the woman dangling from the heavens by an onion, with all the damned clinging to her: in this case, Jacqui, Nanette, Luisa Monteriez

  And also—

  Every time he tried to write about the fourth woman with Madeleine his skin curled, like a sea anemone poked with a stick. He tried to calm his mind, to force himself to confront what it was that so repelled him—was it the woman, or the excitement she created in him—but it was too painful. He couldn’t think about it.

  “Dr. Tammuz, what in hell were you up to last night? How did a simple patient consultation deteriorate into a brawl that put Millie Regier’s neck into a brace, landed us with work comp claims for her and one of the security guards, and all, I might add, for three unfunded patients?” Hanaper was swelling with fury, his face a round red ball that might explode at any second, brains, blood all over the room.

  Hector, thankful to turn his attention to the purely practical, murmured, “We may be able to get the city or the Hotel Pleiades to pay for Madeleine Carter, sir.”

  “Oh, well, if you got it down to two unfunded patients, that would make a difference, Dr. Tammuz, an enormous difference. The cost containment committee will be glad to know of your thoughtfulness.”

  Hanaper, bowing across his vast walnut desk (where has the hospital come up with funds for this antique monster, when it cannot afford patients without insurance?), at his most insufferable in irony. Hector imagined him in restraints, tied to his black captain’s chair with the Harvard University seal. Perhaps when he bought his diplomas, framed like Old Masters behind his head, the school threw in a captain’s chair as a bonus.

  Wanted to ask, have you ever worked in a psychiatric hospital during the kind of storm we had last night? Have you ever been on call for thirty-six hours when everyone in town was disintegrating? Were you ever on call anywhere where people were in anguish?

  Like the Red Sea under Moses’ hands, the waves of psychotics would flee at Hanaper’s approach—Hector saw them flinging themselves from the casements in hordes, rather than endure Hanaper’s brusque contempt.

  “For someone who believes in the talking cure you don’t seem to have much to say, Tamrmu. Will it help if I tell you that Millie Regier says you were on the verge of improper contact with one of the women, an aphasiac patient?”

  “Millie was rattled last night, sir. She doesn’t usually slap patients, or rush them into restraints. But we were both exhausted. One of the women was the opera singer, Luisa Montcrief, whom we saw here a few months ago. She was so drunk I don’t know how she stayed upright, let alone spoke. The paramedics thought she belonged in a detox unit, which is why they brought her. And the other one—”

  “Arrived naked. Yes, I heard about that from three different people before Millie came to see me this morning.”

  Naked from the waist up until one of the orderlies found an old T-shirt for her. Her breasts were large and golden, like ripe gourds, the nipples glowing cherries. Even after Millie Regier, the psychiatric charge nurse, managed to cover them—a struggle, since the woman’s hair was piled high with heavily waxed curls that looked like horns; she was tall, too, so that Millie, panting and heaving, maneuvering long bronze arms into sleeves, stretching to pull over curls and braids, the woman not resisting, but not helping, staring around at the attendants, the machinery, Tammuz himself—even after those dugs, which looked as though they might suckle the whole world, were covered, Tammuz found his gaze returning to the woman’s bosom, looking past the red cotton, with its gaudy pictures of athletes, basketballs, trophies, seeing those ruby nipples.

  Millie coughed warningly. Hector flushed. With an effort—a man pulling his legs from a tar pit—he withdrew his gaze, looked at the woman’s face. Hawk’s eyes, under brows like overhanging cliffs, he had the uneasy fancy that they stared with merciless amusement into his soul.

  Angry at the notion—the result of exhaustion merely—he lost his carefully constructed professional demeanor (detached compassion, to impose trust without attachment), and snapped, “What were you doing with Madeleine, Ms. Montcrief?”

  To his fury, the diva clapped her hands ecstatically. “My dear boy, how wonderful that you know me. You saw my Aida? Or was it Leonora?”

  “I met you here, in Dr. Hanaper’s office, two months ago. I’m one of his residents. I’ve never seen you perform.”

  Her face crunched up like a disappointed child’s. “I was—I am—the greatest interpreter of Verdi of this century. Die Zeit wrote that. In German, of course. You have, I presume, heard of Verdi, Doctor? You know what opera is? You should take the time to listen to music: it will expand your mind, turn you into a more rounded polished person than your Dr. Hanaper—a vulgar ignoramus, I’m sorry if he’s a friend of yours. And Verdi in particular is the richest of all composers.”

  Taking a breath she began to bellow “Sempre libera.” Hector, whose mind it’s true had never been expanded by Verdi, couldn’t believe such noise had ever won international acclaim.

  Millie Regier leaned across the Amazon and slapped Luisa’s mouth. “A dozen people are waiting for a chance to see the doctor. We don’t have time for playacting.”

  Luisa drew herself haughtily up. “I am not playacting, my good woman. Nor am I trying to steal the doctor’s affections from you—yes, I see you’re in love with him. Twenty-five years in professional opera, with all the loves and hates and jealousies, I know it when I see it—”

  “Ms. Montcrief—can you spell your name?” Hector interrupted, before Millie snapped completely. “One J thank you. We’ll try to find a bed for you in detox—Millie, call up there, will you?—but in the meantime—”

  Color surged into the veins around the drunk’s nose. “I am not an alcoholic! Who has been spreading lies to you? Was it my ultra-pious sister-in-law? I’ve seen her knock back her share of martinis, whey-faced butter-won’t-melt-in-my-mouth bitch! Or was it Cesarini, always angry because—”

  In the midst of that outburst the Amazon grunted, seemed to grunt in some purposeful way, at least the drunken diva interpreted it so, for she pulled herself up midsentence. “It’s not worth wasting breath on,” she finished regaily. “Suffice
it to say I do not go into any detox unit—what an ugly word, conjures up rows and rows of bureaucrats all thinking of ways to demean one, start with the language, turn it into harsh insulting sounds, and everyone lines up obediently to take orders. The Nazis were like, that, you know, Doctor: I presume you have heard of the Nazis?”

  “If you cannot be quiet and pay attention to the doctor’s questions we will have to put you in restraints.” Millie couldn’t contain herself; still furious at the secret of her heart being blasted out loud by this woman, smelling of stale vomit and Scotch, her yellow silk blouse so stained it looked like dried mustard.

  “Millie, thank you, but let’s try to get through this interview without that, so that we can move on to some of our other customers.” Hector trying to smile, through lips wobbly with the effort of holding himself upright. “Can we start with Madeleine Carter? Do you know what happened to her?”

  Luisa leaned forward and spoke to him behind a cupped hand. “She’s a poor, sad creature, Doctor: mad, delusional. She thinks the Virgin Mary is speaking to her through some crack in the wall. The Virgin Mary haunts my life, you know. I made a career out of singing her praises, and then—then—”

  She clutched her head, as if in a spasm of pain, and Jacqui spoke from the doorway. “Something went wrong down there, Doctor. Maybe Maddy is right, and that wall is haunted. Because Nanette here saw the rust, you know, that Maddy thinks is blood, was still oozing out around that cement the hotel put on her crack. So I dug at it a little with my knife, and the whole wall started pouring out water. It was like the rock that Moses struck. Then poor Maddy stuck her head in it, I don’t know why, maybe she was trying to drink the blood or something. But she almost drowned. That Brian Cassidy from the hotel, he was going to just let her die right there, but a Good Samaritan in the garage, he sometimes feeds her on the sly when Mr. Cassidy isn’t watching, he called for an ambulance.”

  “The storm was terrible,” Nanette ventured—she rarely spoke, seemed to shelter herself behind Jacqui’s stronger personality. “It was thundering the whole time, and we was wondering what to do with Maddy, on account of they’d gone and chopped up our little house, our Westinghouse box. Then, this woman came”—she gestured toward the terrifying stranger without looking at her—“and Maddy, well, Maddy thought—”

  “She thought it was the Virgin,” Luisa cut in, almost smacking her lips with excitement. “To me she looked like Vashti, but Maddy, or whatever her name is, screamed, ‘The Blessed Mother is here, She has appeared to me, She forgives me and is calling me Her own pure daughter.’”

  Hector shuddered, Luisa so perfectly recreated Madeleine—not just her voice, with its nasal whine and singsong intonation, but also her jerking uncoordinated movements.

  Delighted with his reaction, Luisa got to her feet, her flopping arms sweeping Hector’s papers to the floor.

  “So Luisa Minsky knocked your papers off the desk, Tammuz—that seems like a minor irritant to set off a major catastrophe, a major violation of professional standards. You’re going to have to do more to persuade me that you are capable of carrying out your duties.”

  But hard put to explain it to myself, let alone him. Not the first time we had a patient, or even a staff member, out of control. So why was this so much worse?

  The Amazon never spoke. I wondered if she might be aphasiac, but Millie thought she was involved in some elaborate con with Luisa, because the singer seemed to interpret her grunts, give meaning to them. It started when I asked Amazon for a name. She stared at me, then grunted—a guttural noise, not a word at all, but Luisa piped up, “Her name is Starr.”

  “Stop playing games with us, Luisa, it’s a busy night in an overworked hospital,” Millie snapped, when Luisa began instructing Hector that the name had two r’s. “You and your friend may think it’s funny to come up with this kind of routine—”

  “I wouldn’t call her my friend,” Luisa said.

  “Where does she live?” Hector demanded.

  “Dear boy—Doctor—I don’t know. I suppose someplace on Underground Wacker, since that’s where she appeared. But I never saw her before tonight.”

  “Then I’d like to know how she communicates with you. So far she has not spoken an intelligible sentence. How do you know her name?”

  “She told me. In the ambulance when we were riding over here.” Luisa cocked her head. “You need to know how to listen, Doctor. Surely that’s the first thing they teach a psychiatrist when you start training. Listen. I have perfect pitch, so I understand her from the tone of her voice.”

  Millie couldn’t contain herself any longer. “Hector—Dr. Tammuz—either do a proper exam or put them back on the street where they belong!”

  This outburst totally unlike Millie, usually the most empathic, least judgmental of nurses. Startled me into losing what was left of my poise. I turned to Starr, said we needed to check her reflexes, see if she had brain damage, do some blood work to check for drugs. Luisa on edge of desk, swinging one leg, eyes drooping, suddenly perked up at this, said, No need, nothing wrong with Starr’s brain, but Millie and I ignored her.

  Bracing himself, his hand on the back of Starr’s head, the mass of coiled braided hair like a nest of snakes, the breasts brushing his arm, a tightening across his groin which embarrassed him; he tried to forget the weight of flesh touching him through the fabric of her T-shirt, his hospital coat, his shirt sleeve, his skin.

  He shone his flashlight into the hawk’s eyes. Starr jerked her head away and uttered a noise—a word in some language she alone spoke, or the grunt of an outraged animal, he was far too tired, too near the edge of his own collapse to know, but the sound was loud, unexpected, and he dropped the flashlight.

  Starr picked it up, inspected it as though she had never seen one before, played it over his face, Luisa’s and Madeleine’s; as the light reached her eyes Madeleine whimpered and tried to sit up. Hector moved over to make sure she didn’t fall from the gurney.

  A couple of orderlies arrived to wheel Madeleine to a bed. Millie snapped at them to help her with Starr first, to put her in a chair so Millie could get a blood sample. The orderlies, big gentle men, not like some on the service who liked to throw their weight around, usually kidded with Millie. Tonight her edginess startled them.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Millie,” Hector tried to interject, but she overrode him.

  Since he was a transient—just the resident on call—while she had been the night charge nurse for eight years, the orderlies followed her directive, not Hector’s. They took Starr’s elbows and shifted her gently to the chair on the far side of the small desk. The hawk eyes were frowning, wary, but she offered no active resistance until Millie tied a length of rubber tubing around her biceps and advanced with a needle.

  Starr knocked the syringe away, ripped the tube from her arm, picked up the chair and dashed it to the floor; rubbery plastic, it bounced but didn’t break. Madeleine howled from her gurney. Hector and the orderlies, trying to seize the aphasiac’s flailing arms, were buffeted about the head with a boxer’s fists. Millie raced off to summon security.

  From the cart Madeleine suddenly spoke in her nasal singsong. “They want your blood. Next they scan your brain to see whether you have waves or pulses there, they study you for aluminum, bitumen, chromium, your brain is like the fender of a car.”

  The aphasiac stopped flailing; she seemed intent on Madeleine’s voice. She grunted. Hector felt the hairs on his neck stand up, as if she had delivered a personal warning to him.

  “You can’t take her blood.” Luisa, who had been cackling at the battle, suddenly spoke. “It’s some kind of religious thing, I don’t know what. She isn’t allowed to give you her blood.”

  I felt like smacking Montcrief myself; she was carrying on as if we were putting on an entertainment for her. Managed to restrain myself, just.

  Millie returned with two security guards. She ordered the guards to put Starr into a Posey. The furies of a momen
t earlier were nothing compared to the battle that erupted then. The Amazon hurled herself on Millie and tried to strangle her, but the guards and orderlies managed among the four of them to wrestle her into a restraining jacket. Usually I hate these damned dehumanizing Poseys, they humiliate the patients, restrict their arm movements so they can’t even feed themselves unaided. Tonight I felt a most horrible surge of savagery, an exultation to have power while she sat helpless in her swaddling clothes; I was glad to be the one to tie her to a wheelchair.

  I injected the Amazon, Haldol and Ativan, guessing at her weight—over-guessing, in my bestial gladness—pleased instead of dismayed with the power to sedate.

  As they started to wheel Starr away the drunk flung herself onto Starr’s lap. Put her arms around her neck, weeping against the Posey. So disgusted with both of them I told the orderlies to take the drunk to the locked ward along with the aphasiac.

  28

  Escape from the Booby Hatch

  A hot summer day in the thirties, driving down a dusty farm road in the South. At first the scene ordinary, bucolic: high crops on either side block any view. No people—insects buzzing in underbrush the only life besides me. Road unpaved, dust billowing around me. I’m driving an old black jalopy.

  Feel uneasy in the car, and realize that I’m fleeing someone very dangerous. Who or what not specified, but my car will go only seven miles an hour and my pursuer is in a modern car, doing ninety and gaining on me.

  I drive into the field, thinking the plants will shelter my little car from view. And there in front of me, rising from the soil, are Jacqui and Nanette. Come, they say, Starr is waiting for you. They lead me to a glade, where Starr is lying at her ease. She offers me her breast. She says, Drink, you’re very thirsty. I kneel beside, but my pursuers are upon us. She sees them over my shoulder, and vanishes, leaving me kneeling there, my mouth open, begging for her milk. And then whoever was following me is filling my nose and mouth with dirt.