The Color of the Season

by Julianne MacLean

“No,” I explained. “Your family moved out of our neighborhood just before you were born. That’s when your father bought this house.” I glanced toward the stairs. “Is your mom here? I’d love to say hello to her.”

  I wasn’t hopeful, because the house seemed eerily quiet.

  Holly spoke in a low, monotone voice. “She and Dad went to the cottage for the weekend.”

  “What about Leah?” I asked. “Is she around? I was hoping to talk to her about something.”

  Holly frowned again. “No.”

  “Do you know when she’ll be back?”

  Pushing her hair back off her forehead, Holly took a deep breath as if to brace herself for something. “She’s not coming back. I’m sorry Josh. You obviously don’t know.”

  I shook my head. “Know what?”

  A chill, black tension moved across the floor and swirled around me like a snake.

  “Leah died two weeks ago,” she said. “The funeral was last Tuesday.”

  The grandfather clock in the front room began to chime, and I could do nothing but stare at Holly in disbelief.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  “That can’t be right,” I said with a rancor that sharpened my voice. “I spoke to her a week ago. In the hospital.”

  “What hospital?” Holly asked with a shake of her head.

  “Mass General,” I replied. “I was taken there after I was shot. I’m a police officer.”

  My words seemed to freeze in Holly’s brain, then slowly, she began to nod. “Oh yes, I recognize you. You were on the news. It was a carjacking, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s right. I had to have two bullets removed in surgery and I was in a coma for five days. When I woke up, Leah was there. She was assigned to my case.”

  I didn’t mention that I’d required a psychiatric consult because it wasn’t exactly something I wanted to broadcast to the world with a megaphone.

  “That can’t be,” Holly said, “because Leah’s gone and she was sick for a long time before that.”

  By now my heart was pounding like a sledgehammer. “What do you mean…sick…?”

  Holly closed her eyes briefly, then opened them. “Let me take your coat.”

  She reached out her hands. I immediately shrugged out of my rain jacket and handed it to her, then followed her to a back corridor with hooks on the wall.

  “Would you like something to drink?” she asked. “A cup of coffee or a glass of water? I think we have some ginger ale.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “No, you can’t be,” she asserted. “You can’t be fine, because I’m not fine. Not after what you just said to me.”

  Still not completely believing that Leah was gone, I followed Holly to a large modern kitchen at the back of the house with white cabinets and shiny granite countertops. She opened the stainless steel fridge and pulled out two bottles of beer.

  “Would you like a glass?” she asked.

  “The bottle’s fine.”

  While she used her sweater under the palm of her hand to twist off both caps and hand the beer to me, I felt like I was awake in some sort of strange dream.

  “There has to be a mix up,” Holly said, leaning her hip against the center island. “Maybe you dreamed it. Were you medicated?”

  “At first, yes,” I replied, “but I didn’t dream it. She was real.”

  But how could this be? Leah couldn’t possibly be dead. She absolutely couldn’t.

  “Tell me about her being sick,” I said.

  Holly took a swig of her beer. “Leah had ALS. She was diagnosed a few years ago when she first started her psychiatry residency.”

  “ALS,” I repeated. “That’s Lou Gehrig’s Disease?”

  She nodded. “It affects the nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord, and then the brain loses the ability to control muscle movement. Eventually the patient can become totally paralyzed, which is what happened to Leah. She was at home with us for the last few months, but we had to send her to the hospital because of complications when she got pneumonia.”

  “That’s when she died?” I asked, finding it difficult to say the word.

  Holly nodded.

  “Did she work at Mass General as well?” I asked, still feeling confused by all this.

  “No. She was doing her residency at a hospital up in Chicago but she had to quit over a year ago when the disease began to progress. She’d been home with us ever since.”

  I set down my beer, shut my eyes and cupped my forehead in a hand. “God, I’m so sorry. I’m in shock. I swear I talked to her the day before I was discharged, or maybe I did dream it. I was pretty out of it when I woke up.”

  I began to feel slightly nauseous as the news settled in.

  Leah… Gone…

  Neither of us said anything for a moment until I opened my eyes.

  “But it couldn’t have been a dream,” I insisted, “because she told me things—like the fact that she was doing a psychiatry residency. I wouldn’t have known that. She said she was in third year. She also told me about your brother, Riley.”

  Holly stared at me with bewilderment. “What exactly did she tell you?”

  “That he went to prison for five years. I swear I didn’t know that either, and I know it’s true because I had my partner look him up and everything Leah told me checked out.”

  Holly studied my face for a moment, then cleared her throat and turned away. She moved to the other side of the kitchen, as if to put the center island between us. “Are you sure you didn’t talk to her…like a year ago? Maybe you’re confused because of what happened to you. You were in a coma, weren’t you?”

  “I was.” I held up a hand. “Please don’t worry. I’m not crazy and I’m not here to harm you.” Reaching into my back pocket, I withdrew my badge which I always carried, even when I was off duty. I laid it on the granite countertop between us. “There’s my badge number if you want to write it down.”

  She stared at it hesitantly, then met my gaze. “It’s all right. You can put that away.”

  I picked it up and slipped it back into my pocket.

  We swigged our beers and regarded each other warily.

  “What did she look like?” Holly asked. “Can you describe her for me?”

  “Sure. Long brown hair, green eyes, slim, about five-foot-seven. I’d estimate a hundred and twenty pounds.”

  Holly continued to watch me, then gestured for me to follow her out of the kitchen. “There’s a picture of her in the living room. Come and see it.”

  We moved into a large formal room with dark yellow painted walls, cherry oak wainscoting and columns. Holly crossed to the mantelpiece which displayed at least a dozen framed family photographs.

  “Here she is,” she said, handing me an 8x10 graduation photo. “This was taken when she finished medical school a few ago.”

  My stomach clenched and I nodded. “Yes, this is her and there’s no way I could have known what she looked like, because I swear I haven’t seen her since I was ten.” I handed the picture back.

  Holly ran her fingers over the glass.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. “I’m still in shock.”

  “Me, too,” she replied as she carefully set the photo back on the mantle. “But this still doesn’t explain what you saw. Or think you saw.”

  “No,” I replied, “and I’m a little freaked out right now.”

  We moved to the sofa and sat down on opposite ends, facing each other.

  “I remember seeing something about the carjacking and the shooting on the news,” Holly said, “but we were all pretty distracted because it happened right about the time Leah passed. I believe it might have been the same night.”

  I told her the date and she confirmed that yes, Leah had passed away on the same night I was brought in by ambulance.

  Feeling more than a little anxious, I raked my fingers through my hair. “Leah told me that she was working the night they brought me in and that she recognized me on the gurney. She was the fir
st person I saw when I opened my eyes. She was right there, leaning over me, shining a penlight in my eyes. Then she visited me every night and conducted a series of psychiatric interviews.”

  “Did anyone else see this person who claimed to be Leah?” Holly asked, and I wondered if she thought there might be a doppelganger out there—someone who had stolen her sister’s identity. It made more logical sense than the alternative which neither of us dared to acknowledge.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “There were always nurses and orderlies coming and going. She’d pass them on her way in and out sometimes.”

  “I’m going to call the hospital right now and ask,” Holly said, pulling out her cell phone and dialing the number, which she obviously had on speed dial.

  After waiting a moment to be connected to the psych department, Holly asked if there was a resident doctor on staff named Leah James. “No? Are you sure? She might have just started in the last week or two.” She paused. “Okay. Thank you.”

  She hung up and set her phone down on the coffee table. “There’s no resident at Mass General by that name. So either you dreamed it or someone is pretending to be her, which would really piss me off.”

  I thought of the movie Catch Me If You Can, where the main character masqueraded as pilots, doctors and lawyers—a true story, apparently.

  But none of that seemed right. I could have sworn I was talking to the real Leah I’d known as a kid. Even her voice was the same.

  “You said she performed a psych consult?” Holly mentioned. “Did she write things down in your chart?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then that would be in the records department at the hospital. If I could take a look at it, I’d recognize her handwriting.”

  “I could go in today and ask to see it,” I suggested. “You could come with me if you want.”

  She shook her head. “They won’t just release it to you. It’s against hospital policy. They’ll get you to fill out a form and that could take awhile. Did they give you a discharge summary when you left?”

  “Yes, I have it at home.”

  “Did you read it? Did Leah sign her name to it?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I read over the whole thing but there was no mention of the psychiatric interviews, only the physical stuff and some details about follow-up physio treatments. They said they would send a copy to my regular doctor and I’m supposed to book an appointment with him next week.”

  Holly nodded as if none of this was a surprise to her.

  “I shouldn’t suggest this,” she said, “but I could get my hands on it if you want me to.”

  “How would you do that?”

  “I’m a medical student,” she casually explained. “I’m in my second year at Harvard and I have a badge for Mass General. I’ve been helping out in the ER this semester.”

  “You’re going to be a doctor, too?” I asked. “Does medicine run in your blood or something?”

  She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I doubt that. What I really think is that Dad always knew how to pull our strings, like a great puppet master. Sometimes I think he made monsters out of all of us.”

  I wasn’t sure I understood what she was referring to, exactly, and I didn’t get the chance to ask.

  “Never mind.” She rose from the sofa. “Do you want to go to the hospital now? Because I really want to know what’s going on here.”

  I stood up as well. “This won’t be breaking any rules, will it? I’m a cop. I don’t want to get you into any trouble.”

  “We’ll be fine as long as I have your express permission to look at your chart. Do I?”

  I hesitated a moment. “Yes.”

  “Okay then. I’ll just go into the records department and say your doctor wants to check on something. They’ll see my badge and give me the chart, no problem. I’ll take a look, then I’ll return it. At least we’ll know what we’re dealing with. If someone is pretending to be my sister, I’ll alert the hospital.”

  I nodded, but somehow I doubted that would be the case. Every instinct in my body was telling me this was something else entirely. Something that might be just cause for committing me to a psych ward for good.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “There’s probably something else I should tell you,” I said to Holly as we pulled out of the driveway.

  “Something else?” she asked, watching my profile.

  “Yeah. If I’m going to let you look at my chart, you might see why they ordered the psych consult in the first place, and it’s a bit… It’s kind of way out there.”

  “Way out there,” she repeated. “Now you have me curious.”

  I flicked the blinker and pulled onto the street. My tires hissed noisily through puddles on the pavement.

  “It’s not something I’ve told anyone except for Leah,” I said, “because I’m not comfortable with anyone at the station hearing about it. I want to get back to work as soon as possible and I don’t want anyone to think I’m…well, delusional.”

  “I hate to tell you this,” Holly said. “But it’s a little late for that. Since the moment you walked into my house, you’ve been suggesting you had conversations with my sister’s ghost. I’m wondering if I’m a bit short on common sense, because maybe I shouldn’t have gotten into a car with you.”

  Not knowing whether she was kidding or not, I slid her a look. “I never said ghost. That’s your word, not mine.”

  “Fine.” She held her hands up in surrender. “I just think we should call a spade a spade. That’s all. So what is this ‘other thing’ that’s further out there than what you’ve already told me?”

  I gently pressed on the brake as we approached a stop sign, then tried my best to explain.

  “When I was in surgery having the bullets removed,” I said, “my heart stopped and I flatlined. They had to take steps to resuscitate me, and as that was happening, I think I had one of those…” I paused. “Near-death experiences. Have you heard of them?”

  “Of course,” she resolutely replied. “Did you see a white light?”

  Not sure how she was taking this, I glanced at her again and nodded.

  “Yes.”

  “What else happened?” she asked with curiosity. “Can you describe everything to me?”

  Turning left onto a busier street, I increased the wiper speed.

  “I felt like I was floating out of my body,” I explained, “and I watched the operation from a place near the ceiling. When I woke up later I knew they had removed my spleen because I saw them do it, and the doctor confirmed it.”

  “So you witnessed things you couldn’t have known about in your unconscious state.” She waited for me to respond.

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me more about the light. Did you move toward it?”

  She seemed genuinely fascinated and I was relieved she wasn’t looking at me like I had two heads.

  “Yes. Listen, you’re not going to tell anyone about this, are you? I’d prefer if you kept it just between us.”

  She made the form of a cross over her chest. “Scout’s honor.”

  “That’s not the sign for Scout’s honor,” I said, recalling that I’d spoken those exact words to Leah not long ago.

  “No, I guess not,” she replied with a half-smile. “But I promise I won’t tell anyone. Mum’s the word. Now go on.”

  Feeling strangely captivated by her interest in my story, I checked my rearview mirror and changed lanes.

  “You know all the stuff you hear about your dead relatives greeting you at the pearly gates?” I asked. “It was kind of like that. I saw my grandmother and a bunch of other people I couldn’t really recognize. Then I saw what was sort of like a fast motion movie of my life. It was very bizarre.”

  Holly turned her body slightly on the seat to face me. “It’s more common than you think.”

  “Is it? How would you know?”

  “Because I wrote a paper on
it during my final year of undergrad.”

  “No kidding. What did you study?” I asked.

  “Neuroscience at Harvard.”

  Geez. Was she like…a genius?

  I turned to look at her with wonder and felt slightly intimidated, intellectually. “Well, I must say that’s convenient. Maybe you’re the one person in the world who can actually explain what happened to me.”

  Holly shrugged apologetically. “Sorry. I wish I could, but I was only in second year at the time and my conclusion was that the jury’s still out. There are plenty of religious and scientific theories and I could present them all to you—or just let you read my paper. In the end, I suggested that each of us has to make our own choice and believe what makes the most sense to us. It depends on whether you’re a person of religious faith, or a person who needs scientific proof of something tangible.” She looked out the window. “It wasn’t a terribly scientific paper. I got a B minus. It brought my grade down.”

  “Sorry to hear that, but that’s pretty much what your sister said to me.”

  At the mention of Leah, Holly faced forward again and fell silent.

  I drove up the turnpike ramp and merged onto the center lane. “I’m sorry. That sounded flippant. I didn’t mean it to be. I still can’t believe she’s gone. It doesn’t seem real. What seems real is that I was talking to her a week ago and I swear, she wasn’t a ghost. She was always clicking her ball point pen and I touched her hand and wrote my phone number on her arm. She was flesh and blood, I’m telling you.”

  Holly turned her attention to me again and let out a soft chuckle. “Seriously, you wrote your phone number on her arm? Were you trying to pick her up or something?”

  I gave a sheepish look and winced. “Maybe I kind of thought we might start something up when I got out.”

  “And that’s why you came by the house today,” Holly said, as if to clarify my intentions. “To see her again because you liked her.”

  I nodded, and decided to leave the news about Riley for another time, because we had enough on our plate for now.

  “At least you had good taste,” Holly said. “Because she was the most amazing person I ever knew.”