Olivia approached the gurney. Doctor Scanlon moved quickly to get beside her.
"Let me see her," Olivia demanded.
He lowered the sheet to her neck and Olivia gazed for a long moment.
Now, now that she was here and they were around her, she would make demands.
"How did this happen?"
Doctor Scanlon was prepared.
"Another patient with whom she had developed something of a relationship snuck up to our special floor and helped her escape down a stairway used by the employees. He knew of the one door we don't keep alarmed and showed her the way out of the building. He claimed she wanted to go home."
Olivia turned with interest.
"Home? Then how did she end up in the ocean?"
"You have to understand," Doctor Scanlon said, "that this other patient is a seriously disturbed young man himself. It's taken an enormous effort to get him to be lucid enough to give us any sensible details. This entire event has put him into a regression that--"
"I'm not here to discuss him," Olivia said sharply. Doctor Scanlon nodded.
"Apparently, from what I've been able to garner, she heard voices."
"Voices? What voices?"
"Mainly the voice of her young man, the one who drowned. Lawrence--that's this other patient's name-- said she kept calling for Robert. He said as soon as he showed her the way out, she turned toward the sea and ran. He tried to stop her, but she was determined."
"She went down to the ocean and deliberately drowned herself?" Olivia asked incredulously.
"That's not uncommon, suicidal tendencies in cases such as hers, Mrs. Logan."
"Then why wasn't she guarded, day and night?" Olivia snapped at him.
"I . . well, she was on our most secure floor."
"Secure floor? And yet this other patient was able to get to her and take her away?"
"No one expected . ." He looked to Mrs. Roundchild, who stepped forward.
"She was strapped in, medicated. We had just looked in on her. He must have been hiding in the doorway, watching," she explained.
"Send them away," Olivia commanded with a wave of her hand.
Doctor Scanlon nodded at the nurses and they all backed out of the room. As soon as they had, Olivia turned on him.
"You know I could sue this clinic and you for every penny you are worth. Word of this sort of negligence would destroy you," she said, her eyes small, but full of fire. Doctor Scanlon could barely swallow. He nodded. Olivia held her hateful glare on him like a spotlight, hot and intense. Finally, she turned back to Laura.
"It's your good fortune, however, that I don't want word of this to leave these premises."
"What? But in any death, there's an inquest, reports . ."
"It's your problem," she said. "I don't want this in any newspaper. We're going to give her a proper burial and that will be all. This could devastate my family," she added and turned, "and I won't permit it."
"I understand. I'll do the best I can."
"No, you'll do what I ask, not the best you can." She looked at Laura again. "We see the results of the best you can do. I want more than that."
He nodded, sweat trickling down his brow.
"Do you want any of her things, anything you sent?"
"Not at the moment, no," Olivia said. "I hesitate to ask, because I have some doubts about your competence now, but was she making any progress?"
"Oh, yes. I think in time I could have effected a complete recovery," he bragged.
"What did she recall before . . . before this?" Olivia asked.
"Her family, her parents, her brother and sister, and most of the tragic event," he replied.
"She said nothing about me?"
"Not a word during my sessions and from what I see of Southerby's results, not a word with him either," Doctor Scanlon said.
"What about him?"
"That's taken care of," he said quickly.
"Good. I want it all taken care of, Herbert." She turned again and fixed her piercing eyes on him, turning his spine to ice. "I mean it."
"I understand. Is there anything special you want at the gravesite?"
"No," she said. "Leave me for a moment," she ordered. "Yes, of course. I'm sorry, Mrs. Logan. Truly."
She said nothing and he left.
For a long while, she stared at Laura's face. Then she took a short, deep breath and looked up at the ceiling.
"I'm sorry about you," she said. "I know you won't ever understand now, but what I did, I did for my family. Family is all that really matters, family name, family loyalty. It's who we are when we come into this world and who we are when we leave it, and we must cling tenaciously to it all the time in between, Laura."
She gazed at her granddaughter and thought how beautiful she looked, even in death.
"Somehow I knew that after you lost your precious Robert, you would never have a really happy moment, Laura. Maybe . . maybe you weren't so mad, as sick as the doctors think. Maybe you heard him calling.
"In a strange way," she whispered, "I envy you, my dear."
She reached out and touched Laura's cold face. Then she turned and left the room.
Doctor Scanlon escorted her to the front entrance.
"My lawyer will be in contact with you to be sure all is done as I instruct," she said.
"Yes, I understand," Doctor Scanlon said with a small nod.
"I want you to do something else for me."
"Of course," Doctor Scanlon said without hesitation, without hearing it first.
"I want you to tell that young man, that other patient something."
"Yes?"
"I want you to tell him I don't blame him for anything. Tell him I thank him for being her friend. Will you do that?"
"I will. It will help him, Mrs. Logan. It's very kind of you."
"I'm not doing it for him. II doing it for Laura and," she said, looking at the Rolls-Royce, "for myself."
She started down the steps. Raymond got out quickly and opened the door. Doctor Scanlon wiped his face with his handkerchief as he watched her get into her automobile. When the door closed, he backed up and closed the clinic's front door.
Raymond got in and started the car. It moved slowly toward the driveway.
The sun escaped from under another cloud and shot its rays downward over the car, over the grounds, over the ocean, where the waves were now gentle, the whitecaps glimmering. Two terns lifted into the warm air and flew side by side, sweeping down together toward the sea, and then rose toward the sun as if it were a promise kept between them.
In moments, they were gone.
Music in the Night Page 31
