by Anna Quon
Someone changed the channel to an old sitcom Adriana had never seen before. It was stupid. She got up to leave, pushing the table with the puzzle away from her. The puzzle slid off, onto the floor. Everyone in the room turned to look, and Adriana began to cry. She started to pick up the pieces and to put them back together but nothing fit. Other patients tried to help. The depressed woman that Adriana had seen combing her fine brown hair as she walked down the hall bent down and picked up a few pieces and an old man shuffled some pieces into a pile with his feet. Marlene sat impassively and rocked.
Adriana escaped as soon as she could, returning to her room. She climbed into bed. Really, she didn’t care about the puzzle or the hurricane or anything else. She was aching for Jazz, and for Jeff, both lying in beds in the hospital just up the street. She hoped the evening would bring them peace. She wished she could shake the sense of dread that gripped her.
Chapter 27
Adriana lay awake until a nurse called, “Medication time.” She went to stand in line with the other patients from the unit. The woman who combed her hair was there, but Jeff was missing of course. So was Redgie.
Redgie’s nurse Tony, the one that Samantha was smitten with, examined the sign-out book. When he straightened up, his smile was gone, and he quickly walked toward the nursing station. Adriana overheard him on the phone, talking to security. “He’s been gone for hours,” he said, pulling his hand over his face. “No, I didn’t notice. The sign-out book says he’s going to stop the hurricane.”
Adriana, standing at the window in the common room, watched security combing the grass below the hospital and disappear over the bank down to the railway track. The police had been alerted, and were checking the bridges. Adriana wondered if they thought Redgie would try to make a human sacrifice of himself. Elspeth was long gone for the day and Adriana didn’t feel there was anyone else she wanted to talk to. She went to her room and sat on her bed.Please let them find Redgie, she prayed.Please let Jazz be okay. Let Jeff be fine.
Adriana felt she had done all she could. She lay down on her unmade bed, exhausted, and slipped into unconsciousness.
At midnight she was awakened by the enormous sound of the wind and rain lashing the windows. It was a wild and unholy sound, as though the hospital were being attacked by ravenous animals
Adriana, quaking, got up to go to the toilet. In the nursing station, Tony was on the phone, his face taut with anxiety. The other nurses were speaking to one another in hushed tones that she couldn’t hear through the glass that encased the nursing station offices. Adriana had never heard such wind before. The wind often moaned around the building, like a pack of ghost wolves. Now it was the booming, hysterically angry voice of her mother writ large. It had been weeks since her mother had bothered her and now here she was, circling the hospital and shrieking accusations. Adriana sat on the toilet, her hands over her ears.
When she came out of the washroom, she saw Marlene sitting in a chair by the common room window. Adriana thought she watched out the window the way women have for centuries when their men went to sea. Was Redgie out there somewhere, battling the elements? She imagined him standing on the stony finger of land on which the McNab’s Island lighthouse was built, arms upraised shouting into the hurricane to stop, be calm, to return whence it came. And the hurricane, like a dragon, encircling him.
Back in her bedroom, Samantha was pacing between the bedroom door and window. She barely acknowledged Adriana’s return, except to shorten her path on the way to the door. She was keyed up, ready to explode. Adriana slipped under her covers, and closed her eyes tight, hands over her ears.
There was a sudden flash of light and the sound of sparks like an old-fashioned camera bulb going off. One of the outdoor lights had blown and the room grew darker. Samantha stopped in her tracks like a deer in the headlights, and then she began to howl. “Make it stop!” she cried, as though in agony, then moaned as she collapsed to the floor. Adriana threw the covers off the bed and stood up. But what could she do? Samantha was too big to lift.
Adriana knelt down beside Samantha and stroked her hair with a trembling hand. She began to hum a lullaby, whose words she knew, but didn’t understand. It was a Slovak song her mother used to sing to her. Adriana’s voice jerked when she jumped at the sound of tree branches cracking and power lines come loose and sparking. Samantha muttered and blubbered till her sobs grew quiet, and her breathing slowed. Adriana, calmer now herself, followed the lullaby with another mournful tune about the Slovak countryside and then with “Let it Be” and “You Are My Sunshine.” Samantha lay quietly, her enormous knees pulled up to her chest. Adriana took the blanket from Samantha’s bed and covered her with it, leaving her asleep on the floor, then crawled back into bed herself.
But Adriana stayed awake, eyes dark and fearful. The violence of the storm—overwhelming, unrelenting—had driven patients out of their beds. She heard them moaning in the hallway and the nurses trying to soothe them in low tones. Someone, perhaps the brown haired woman, sounded inconsolable. Eventually Adriana managed to tumble unconscious, as though into a lightless passage. Sleep had always been her refuge, and it remained so, even in the face of a hurricane.
Adriana woke up slowly when the sky began to lighten, afraid almost to open her eyes. Outside, the sun was burning its way through the cloud. She sat up slowly, pulling her blanket around her. The trees had been partially stripped of their leaves , which were strewn all over the ground or plastered to the windows. Branches had come down, some of them blown across the parking lot. Everything looked new, freshly washed, chaotic. Adriana felt a surge of feeling in her throat that she couldn’t recognize.
Her watch ticked loudly, as though it were the only thing that had survived the storm. It was almost 7 a.m. and Samantha was gone. Eventually, Adriana made her way to the kitchen, past a few people in the common room, stunned and dishevelled as refugees. As they waited for breakfast in the kitchen, patients looked out the window and shook their heads, exclaiming, in voices thick with medication and dulled by illness. Marlene was on the phone. “They didn’t find him. No,” she said, blowing her nose, her voice loud and teary, ending in a howl. “I thought he’d be back by now.”
Adriana realized she hadn’t called her father and that he hadn’t called her. After Marlene finished, she dialed her home number on the kitchen phone. It rang and rang, but her father didn’t pick up.
She tried to reassure herself. The battery charger for the phone at home was plugged into the wall and it was unlikely it was working. Her father had Beth to occupy his thoughts and it was likely they were busy surveying the storm damage and cleaning up the yard. She pictured her father shaking his head at the downed trees and power lines. That’s about as upset as her father would get about a situation like this. It was only if the people he loved were in danger that he would worry, and he would know she was in a safe place. At least it was as safe as the patients it sheltered. She shivered, realizing he had not yet heard what happened to Jeff.
Adriana made an instant decaf, then toast slathered with Cheez Whiz. From the kitchen window, she watched a handful of security guards survey the damage to the trees, cars and buildings. A few nurses also stood in a group, including Elspeth, who was just coming on shift, and Tony, whose shift just finished. They spoke together in what looked to be low and urgent tones. Elspeth put her hand on Tony’s arm and he wiped his eyes with the palm of his other hand.
Adriana wondered if they had found Redgie. Maybe that’s why Tony was crying—maybe they’d found him. Maybe he had washed up under the bridge. Maybe he was pinned under a tree. But maybe they hadn’t found him and they didn’t know where else to look.
Marlene had hung up and was making herself two cups of coffee. She wore her parka as usual, but now completely zipped with the hood up. Her hands shook, and coffee sloshed onto her fingers and the floor. She carried the two styrofoam cups to the table where Adriana stood, and sat do
wn across from her. Marlene didn’t say a word to her but drank the coffee in small, regular slurps. Then she drank the next cup, more quickly, since it had cooled, but with the same mechanical motion. After she was finished she threw the Styrofoam cups in the garbage and stalked from the kitchen. As she left, she let out a tremulous wail, which continued down the hall. The sound sent ice through Adriana’s blood.
Adriana made her way to the common room. Everyone at the nursing station was discussing the storm. “They’re telling people to stay off the roads,” one woman said.
Another snorted and said in a loud whisper, “No way I’m staying here all day! I’ll end up crazy like the rest of them.” Adriana straightened up as she walked by them, glancing disdainfully at them, her head in the air like a queen. She hoped they felt ashamed of themselves.
On television there was news that a paramedic had been killed when a tree fell on his vehicle. Adriana couldn’t imagine what that would be like, to be crushed to death in the back of an ambulance. She wondered, aimlessly, whether there had been a patient with him. What if Redgie had been in that ambulance?
Adriana’s brain jangled. What were things like at the Dartmouth General, she wondered. There were no trees to come crashing down on an ambulance or pierce a window. Surely they had generators to keep the place going. She imagined Jazz, a small bump under the covers of her hospital bed, pale and exhausted. And Jeff, taut and fearful after being awake all night, gradually loosening his grip on consciousness, now that the wind and rain were over.
Adriana made herself have a shower and put on a clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt, with a johnny shirt around her shoulders. She combed her hair, which was growing out but still lopsided, and gathered it into a ponytail. She felt as ragged as a leaf torn from a tree. This year, she would turn 20 and her father was already 50. She had noticed the wrinkles around his eyes, and saw the same crow’s feet beginning at the corners of her own. How was it possible that she had grown up, and her father had grown old? It seemed like her mother’s funeral happened yesterday. But that was what everyone said, about the passage of time. It must have some mysterious property, which allowed the seconds to contract, until they barely seemed to mark time at all. Like a thread pulled tight, bunching fabric into a series of pleats.
Elspeth was in the nursing station when she finished. It was a quarter after 11, almost lunch time. Adriana realized that she like everyone else had begun to mark time by hospital meals. Elspeth looked determined and purposeful, Adriana thought; maybe even grim. But her face softened when she spotted Adriana hanging forlornly by the nurses’ station. “How did you sleep in the hurricane?” she asked. Adriana realized, with wonder, that she’d had remarkably undisturbed sleep. “It was fine,” she said, eyes wide. Elspeth laughed. “Maybe you are one of those people who could sleep through a train crash,” she said. “And that’s not such a bad thing.” Adriana nodded. It had saved her the trauma of seeing the physical world thrown about like a rag doll in the mouth of a dog.
“Can I talk to the doctor today about my privileges?” she asked, her voice wavering slightly. What if Elspeth said no.
But to Adriana’s relief, she answered, “Of course. I’ll ask him if he can see you this morning.”
Samantha drifted on to the unit in a daze, her arms full of bags of ketchup chips and a can of diet Coke in each fist. Adriana felt something like relief leap in her chest, but Samantha didn’t acknowledge her. She flopped down in a chair in the common room, and stared at the wall. Adriana tried to catch her gaze but Samantha, in her trance, did not respond. Adriana wondered if she had slept, or if she’d gotten up and paced the hall all night. Samantha looked old too, Adriana thought. Her face sagged, and the light had gone out of her eyes.
Marlene walked into the common room and turned on the television. Samantha seemed to wake up enough to put her hands over her ears, and begin to rock. Adriana sensed her distress, and after taking a moment to find her courage, she motioned to Marlene to turn the sound down. “Please,” she said, gesturing to Samantha.
Marlene stood up and began to throw whatever she could get her hands on, screaming “This is my hospital and I want to watch TV.” Samantha cowered and moaned, while Adriana, shocked, tried to protect herself from the books and magazines and board games that Marlene was launching into the air. “You can kiss my ass,” she screeched, dancing around in her red parka. Elspeth in the nursing station picked up the phone to call security. Marlene at the height of her anger, shrieked, “You’re not even a real woman! You’re a disgusting, a…. a stupid freak!” Then, having exhausted her anger, sat down in a rocker and began to watch the television. The hurricane was all over the news. Pictures flashed across the screen—trees down, cars smashed, and rocks as big as shopping carts tossed from the harbour onto the shore.
Marlene began to cry, a loud, blubbering sound. When security arrived, with a stretcher, Elspeth motioned for them to stand back so she could talk to Marlene. They stood back and, while Elspeth crouched beside her and spoke quietly, patting her hand; patients stopped in the hall to see what was going on. The security guards waved them on, as though directing traffic. Samantha’s eyes closed as she tried to shut out the noise and sights around her. The payphone began to ring, but no one answered it.
Surrounded by magazines that lay where they landed, Adriana, traumatized, sat rooted to her spot on the couch. Samantha, whose moans had died to a mutter, seemed almost amphibian to Adriana—barely human, her features thick, smooth, and damp like the limbs of a salamander. It was hard to imagine only yesterday she was coquetting with Tony, excited as a school girl on her first date.
Elspeth knelt beside Marlene, whispering to her when the hospital chaplain, a young, clean-shaven man dressed casually in a short sleeved shirt and cargo pants, appeared at her shoulder. Elspeth got up off her knees, heavily, with the chaplain supporting her elbow. Marlene’s face, blurry and smudged, looked up at him, beseeching. “Is he gone? Is Redgie gone to Heaven?” she asked in a voice thick with grief.
The chaplain spoke quietly. “We don’t know where Redgie is,” he said, truthfully. “Maybe we can say a prayer for his safe return.” Marlene clutched his hand in both of hers, and closed her eyes, tears still streaming down her cheeks. “Father, you say a prayer for him… I can’t.” The chaplain smiled and nodded, and in a low voice which Adriana could barely hear, began to intone the Lord is My Shepherd. The security guards drifted away and Elspeth turned her attention to Samantha .
Adriana could only half hear what Elspeth was saying to Samantha, who held a pillow to her cheek and sucked her thumb. From what she could gather, Elspeth was trying to reassure Samantha that Marlene was distraught over Redgie, that she lashed out without thinking, that Samantha could disregard Marlene’s words as those of a woman who was ill and in great emotional pain. Adriana could see that Samantha, glassy eyed and unseeing, was in a world of her own, driven there by the hurricane and Marlene’s fury. Elspeth encouraged her to get to her feet and led her to the bedroom. Adriana hoped sleep would help Samantha find her way back to this world, as bleak as it was.
Adriana found her way to the kitchen phone. After a few rings her father answered with a breathless hello. Adriana felt a rush of happiness. “Hi Dad,” she said.
“Adriana, thank God! I couldn’t ring you till the power came back on.” He told her that the neighbour’s tree had fallen in front of his car and some smaller trees had blown sideways to rest against the roof, doing some damage to the eavestrough. “But we’re okay,” he said. He lowered his voice. “Though Beth is a little traumatized. We won’t come to visit you yet, not until the roads are cleared. They’ve called in the army,” he said incredulously. Adriana pictured him shaking his head.
“Give Beth a hug from me,” she said, before she hung up.
Her Dad would be fine, but she wondered about her sister. She imagined Beth huddled in a chair with a blanket around her. The similarity with Sama
ntha’s state disturbed her. Beth was so vulnerable, so fragile and Adriana feared that if anything upset her, Beth would lose her mind. Their father was not equipped to look after her by himself. Adriana wanted to go home.
Chapter 28
Lunch came and went. Adriana felt antsy, waiting to talk to Elspeth and the doctor about leaving the hospital grounds to see Jazz. Elspeth seemed to have disappeared. Perhaps she was with Samantha, who had also vanished. Adriana saw Dr. Burke a few times, striding purposefully down the hall, always hurrying somewhere else. She tried to ask when he would see her, but he put his hand up and said, “I’ll talk to you soon, Adriana. Just hang tight.”
As the afternoon wore on, Adriana felt more and more stressed. It seems that the nurses and doctors were rushing around putting out emotional fires, talking to everyone except her. There was nothing for her to do except to look out the window, and survey the damage. Desperate for a distraction, she went to her bedroom to knit.
The sound of the needles clicking always calmed her. She turned on the small radio her father had brought her. She tuned it to a station that played bland and tinny pop tunes, avoiding any news of the hurricane. Adriana was surprised at how absorbed she was in her task—an hour had passed and she had barely noticed. Strangely though, she felt like she was on display, being watched by an audience that was holding its breath. She wished Samantha was there to distract her.
There was a knock and Dr. Burke stuck his head in the bedroom door. “Adriana, I can talk to you now.” He smiled, tipping his head toward her. “Knitting are you?” Adriana nodded. She felt awkward. Usually Elspeth would be there to act as a buffer. As though reading her thoughts, Dr. Burke said, “Elspeth isn’t able to join us as she got called away because of an emergency,” he said. Adriana wondered whether her daughter, in bed with depression, had needed her to look after the baby. “But Fiona will sit in for her,” Dr. Burke nodded. Fiona, Adriana thought, startled. It hadn’t occurred to her that Fiona might work anywhere but on Short Stay.
