Someone had placed her arms on the outside of her bedcovers. She was wearing the same pink-flowered pajamas I had seen her in at my parents’ house. Her neck was taut as if a scream had been frozen inside it. A slight rise and fall of her chest was her only movement.
Oh Betsy, beautiful, beautiful Betsy, where are you?
A small portrait picture of her before the injuries was set next to the lamp on her bedside table.
I placed my travel bag on a chair and stood next to her with the pandas clutched to my heart.
Help me out here, Hank.
Smiling, I leaned over her, looked into her eyes.
“Hello, Betsy.”
I then playfully wiggled the two pandas in front of her. She gave no response.
The nun delicately cleared her throat to signal me. Nothing had changed. She couldn’t let me stay on longer. Smiling sadly, she whispered, “Say goodbye.”
I sat the two pandas alongside Betsy, leaning them against the bed’s guardrail. Touching her hand in farewell, I wished I could hold it forever. “Betsy, Hank sends you a gift.”
Her right wrist twitched slightly. The sister noticed it immediately—her head snapped forward, eyes riveted on Betsy’s arm.
We didn’t say a word.
Betsy’s hand began to flounder and flop. Then she bent her elbow purposefully and moved her fingers to touch one of the stuffed toys. She grasped a black stubby panda leg and pulled the bear determinedly onto her lap.
“Pandas.” A croak, but audible.
The skin color of her face and neck flushed pink. A light appeared in her eyes, and the corners of her mouth lifted in a slight smile. A rush that felt like cleanliness swept through me.
She shifted her head slightly, to get a better view of the twin stuffed animals.
“I love pandas.”
The sister went wild—her hands flying back and forth, up and down, from her forehead to her heart, across her chest, dabbing at her shoulders. After the locomotion of crossing herself, she clasped her hands together, and poured forth a torrent of prayer. She exchanged a look with me, and a brief, puzzled smile flickered across her wide-eyed face before she stammered, “You...”
Then she became a flurry of movement again, touching Betsy’s forehead, looking into her eyes.
“I’ve got to get the doctor.” She raised a crucifix dangling from her neck, kissed it, and hurried to the door. “Holy savior, oh blessed savior, hold this child in your heart of mercy. Thank you, thank you, dear Lord.“
I could hear a commotion starting to reverberate through the small hospital—rapid footsteps and a gathering murmur of voices. Outside the room’s window, I saw a car pull into the parking lot. A man and woman climbed out, and I knew immediately that the woman was Betsy’s mother.
“Betsy, your parents are here.”
“I...” She took a long breath, then finished her sentence as she exhaled, “...thought I saw Hank.”
I leaned over and kissed her forehead. The door to the room flew open and two nuns, a civilian nurse and a doctor bustled in.
“Excuse me, young man. Sister Carmelia, no visitors are allowed.” The doctor busied himself, shining a pen light into Betsy’s eyes.
She flinched away, and the doctor looked startled, almost insulted. The nurse was slipping a blood pressure cuff on Betsy’s arm. The doctor stepped back, pursing his lips, deep in thought, as his gaze fell on Betsy’s hand clutching the panda.
“You say she spoke and moved her arm?”
Sister Carmelia nodded.
The doctor felt Betsy’s hand and wrist. “Betsy, can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
The second nun blurted out, “Dear God.”
The doctor mumbled, “This isn’t possible.”
Sister Carmelia stepped up to the bed and laid a protective hand on Betsy’s shoulder. “Yes, it is.”
The doctor looked embarrassed. “Of course. It wasn’t expected was what I meant.”
“She really likes her pandas. Don’t you Betsy?” The newcomers in the room all turned their heads in unison to look at me as I spoke, then swerved them back around towards Betsy when she answered.
“Pandas...are cool.” She hugged the bear, dragging it with tremendous effort up to her chest. With a grimace, she added, “It feels really hard to do things.”
The blood pressure cuff lay wrapped around Betsy’s arm unpumped, the doctor was staring hard at me, Carmelia looked like bliss incarnate, her hand still on Betsy, and the other nun had backed into a far corner with a prayer stuck in her throat that sounded like a pigeon cooing. The door opened again.
Professor Polczewski and his wife entered the room.
“Mom, Dad.” Betsy’s voice found strength, rose excitedly. She looked at Sister Carmelia. “I’m thirsty.”
Her parents huddled by her side, holding her hand, crying with a shocked happiness. Despite Betsy’s obvious exhaustion, she spoke with a smile, even shifted her position and lifted her head. The rest of us stood aside and watched for a brief moment before the doctor began to usher us out into the hall. Professor Polczewski looked up briefly as we stepped away, his face contorted with choked-back tears, his lips trembling in an unconscious thanks to whatever god he worshipped.
As the door closed, I heard Betsy say, “Hank brought me some pandas.”
“Oh honey, I’m so glad he did.” Her mother’s sweetness filled the room.
Chapter 36
The two nuns flapped down the hallway and left the clinic through the main entrance. Through the glass doors, I watched them turn in the direction of the chapel outbuilding. The nurse busied herself with a steel cart full of supplies, rolling it in and out of the other rooms on the floor. I sat on a green vinyl couch around the corner from Betsy’s room smoking a cigarette, thinking about Hank’s quest.
You pulled it off, Hank. I don’t know why all the roundabout maneuverings are necessary, but obviously there are different rules that coordinate the currents of mystery. Man, why doesn’t that power that revitalized Betsy, just do it. Or is it all some kind of team effort?
Hearing two men talking, I turned my attention to the doctor and Betsy’s dad standing in the corridor, just outside her door. I started to rise to introduce myself and ask about Betsy when I heard the Professor reveal, “Doctor Vinelli, I’m astounded by the circumstances unraveling today. You may have a more technical explanation, but for Betsy to show such marked improvement on the same day a suspect is arrested for the attack on her, well, it makes me thank divine providence.”
“I understand. It’s quite a remarkable coincidence. Be assured we will do all the necessary tests, but she certainly has made significant progress very swiftly. It certainly allays the fears of her remaining in a near-vegetative state.” Vinelli coughed nervously. “I’ve seen people come out of comas and be perfectly functional, but for her to establish the ability to talk after the injuries she sustained is, like you suggest, near miraculous. I had checked on her not ten minutes before Sister Carmelia informed me of the change in her status.”
I sat back, hidden from their view, feeling the time wasn’t right to interrupt their conversation.
A suspect arrested?
“Tell me what happened again.” Betsy’s dad’s voice was worn, tired of two months of tears.
“I haven’t got it all clear, but from what I gather, Sister Carmelia allowed a visitor into her room. The young man, he was the one wearing the purple costume jacket, placed some stuffed bears next to your daughter. Betsy responded by moving her hand to touch the toys and then spoke. Sister said her first word was panda.”
“She seems to adore those two toy animals. This is such a blessing. Where is that boy? Betsy called him Hank. She was just talking about him again.”
I became aware of fearful thoughts gathering and coagulating into a shadowed presence nex
t to me on the couch. Chills crawled across my skin as I sensed serpents slithering within the darkness.
“It would be best to leave, you’ve done what you can.” The voice was that of the impenetrable shadow which had directed me to reach into Greg’s heart back in the fall.
Despite my trepidation at being snared by the irresistible power of the Shadow Creature again, I managed to overhear more of the conversation between the professor and the doctor.
“She’s saying things which make me believe she is confusing him with an old boyfriend of hers. Hank was also the name of her first puppy love. Shame. He died tragically in a terrible bus crash about seven years ago.”
“Well, Professor Polczewski, her head trauma is significant, so she might be suffering a great deal of confusion, but I’m seeing reasons for great hope.”
“Thank God. Now, where is the young man you spoke of? I’d like to meet him.”
The shadow next to me surged with an energy I knew could mold my every action. It stretched a finger, a finger unmistakably aching with the pain of eons, and pointed down the hall. “It won’t help to talk. You really have no choice.”
I took it as a command.
I walked away from the professor, away from the ghost stories I could’ve planted to haunt that Catholic hospital. I left them all to mystery.
The time the shadow had instructed me to touch Greg’s heart, Greg benefited from it. With it’s presence in the clinic, I understood it to be an integral power in healing troubled or injured souls. My uneasiness at its presence was due to its otherworldliness, not its intentions. An essence seeped from the living darkness, encircling me with promises of revelations and imaginings from before the birth of the existing universe.
I had arrived at Saint Roses’ by taking a conscious step into a world I did not understand. I was leaving the same way, obeying a voice from an unknown entity—a shadow that spoke and I had no impulse to question.
After working myself through a maze of labs, offices, and a locker room where several nun habits hung, I pushed on a metal door. It opened onto a stone pathway leading to the rear of the chapel. Skirting the building in a full run, I descended a steep granite-speckled incline, then walked alongside a stream that trickled through a valley of tall pine. The water led me to a culvert outside Concord.
I caught a bus to Boston, then a train to New York. Riding through the night wondering about the afterlife and God, my thoughts were sometimes mixed up, sometimes jubilant, but always in awe of a power that had moved, caught me in its current, and swept into Betsy’s mind and body.
I let myself into our apartment about three in the morning and was shuffling around in the kitchen munching on some chocolate chip cookies when Teresa appeared—yawning, scratching her ass, hair disheveled. We sat up talking about Hank and the pandas and Betsy’s first stirrings.
“I don’t like that you left the Polczewskis without an explanation.”
“I don’t think it’s possible to refuse the Shadow Creature.”
“It was a bit melodramatic.”
“Things were kept simple. I’ve been thinking how it would have been otherwise. When Pop Polczewski started to talk about Hank dying seven years ago, hightailing it was the right course of action. Man, that would’ve been a scene. Imagine if I had gotten into telling nuns and priests about ghosts on a bus.”
“Afraid you’d get a phone call from the Pope?”
“No, more like the Inquisition.”
Chapter 37
In the morning, Teresa showed me some new products she had ordered while I was gone. A guy from California had stopped by with a van filled with Arabian hookahs, glass bongs, and hand-dyed T-shirts Teresa called batik. She described to me how they were created and thought we could find a local artist to produce more.
Having never seen a bong or used a hookah, we gave them a test run, stuffing the bowls and smoking ourselves into a stupor when Teresa came back from class at noon. She said the salesman told her a group of stoners in California held an event called the Acid Test. They rented out auditoriums in San Francisco and Los Angeles and handed out LSD. There were hundreds of people dropping acid each night. Thousands of people had begun tripping.
“I think I’m ready to try it.” Teresa looked serious.
“Okay, I’ve still got three cubes. But not today. You gotta figure we’ll be out of our minds for about eight, maybe even twelve or more hours. It’s not like just getting stoned.” I guffawed. “If you were trying to run the store, you might end up giving customers money and standing behind the counter naked.”
“Really? Cool.” She giggled.
“Hey, are you ready to show Daisy your work?”
“Yes, I’ve got four watercolors picked out.” Teresa dropped her eyes, fidgeted with the rings on her fingers.
“I’ll call her, see if she’ll be around tonight. Stop being nervous about your work. Your stuff is great. Are you going to show her Doggie with Cookies?”
“No, I don’t want to sell it. It means too much to me.”
The store phone rang.
“It’s your mom.” Teresa handed me the phone and whispered, “Something’s wrong.”
Richard had been arrested in Boston and charged with attempted murder. My mother, obviously flustered, frantically tried to explain the situation. Dad and Uncle Ted had flown to New England to do what they could about bail and hiring a lawyer. Aunt Maddie, after drinking all day, was now asleep in my room. Mostly, I kept quiet, asked her a few questions about evidence against him and told her I had seen Betsy and she was responsive and able to talk. She asked me if Betsy had identified Richard. I didn’t know, but I was sure we would find out soon enough. Reminding her to keep me informed, I hung up.
“Bastard did it, I’m sure of it.” Any remorse that had gnawed at me for giving the police Richard’s name flared into anger. I ranted about violence against innocent, fun-loving people and loudly voiced my theories about Richard’s jealousy sending him over the edge. When I started muttering about a dog in Cambridge who could hang Richard, Teresa told me to go take a walk or I’d scare away the customers.
She steered me out the door and hugged me. “You’re doing all you can. You’ve done good. Go breathe the air and get us a pizza.”
I placed the pizza box down and called Daisy. Maybe she’d want to join us for a slice while looking over Teresa’s work.
Before I mentioned pepperoni or anchovies, Daisy asked us to meet her for dinner, her treat, at her favorite restaurant.
“Champagne tonight,” I exclaimed. I grabbed Teresa and we danced around the store, laughing and hollering about lobster and filet mignon.
She was excited about going out for fine dining and put on a velvet top with lace at the collar and the wrists. Her skirt reached her ankles, was black with a large flower pattern running down one leg. It sparkled now and again, but to me, the little flashes of light didn’t originate from the fabric, as I assumed I was catching glimpses of her soul radiating out into the world.
She put on some lipstick and stood before me. “Notice anything?”
“You’re really pretty.”
“I’m not wearing a bra.”
“Yeah, I like that. Not only do I get champagne and lobster, but I get to watch your boobs jiggling around at dinner. Cool, it’s like paradise.”
While sipping wine and waiting for appetizers, Daisy looked over Teresa’s watercolors, interspersing her concentration with an “Hmm,” and an “Ooh, that’s lovely,” then an excited “What a beautiful shade of blue.” She beamed at Teresa, pulled out a notebook, and said she could hang the four paintings as soon as they were framed and asked Teresa if she wanted to show about ten pieces with two other artists in January of the coming year.
Teresa answered with a bob of her head and a smile. “Of course.”
Daisy ordered champagne to celebrate, then
asked me how I was progressing. I wanted to finish at least six more drawings and was starting to think about framing. Daisy knew I struggled with frames and shook her head negatively when I said I wanted to use some kind of unconventional material like bits of powdered stone or brick glued to a backing.
“It could come off as junky. How about barn wood?”
“Yeah, it’s not the look I was thinking of, but it should work.”
She rummaged through her purse and pulled out a blue and yellow pamphlet with pictures of cabins, snow covered mountains, and pine forests.
“Why don’t you two spend a weekend at my cabin in the Poconos? Skiing season is over, it’s paid for through May and there are some wonderful little towns nearby filled with antiques, barn supplies, and fascinating country thingamajigs. I’m sure you’d find unique frames or materials to use.”
I turned to Teresa questioningly.
Teresa bobbed her head enthusiastically. “Let’s go this weekend. Phuong says she’d watch the store anytime. If not, I’ll get my sister to.”
Daisy laughed and softly grabbed Teresa’s arm. “Oh my gosh, he’d be a fool to refuse a weekend in a cabin with a beautiful woman.”
On Friday afternoon, we closed the store early and drove west in the van. About an hour after crossing the Delaware River, we were twisting along a cliffside road, Teresa yelling at me to double-check Daisy’s directions, with me rummaging around everywhere looking for the flashlight I packed when I spotted a pickup truck moving up behind us fast.
As I climbed back into the front with the flashlight, the truck pulled close to our rear bumper.
“What? Deets, this jerk’s right on our tail.”
“Slow down and let him pass.”
“I’m afraid I’ll stall out on these hills.”
“Pull over the next chance you can.”
“I’m not going to stop. I don’t trust anyone who drives like that. He’s crazy. Maybe drunk.”
“Turn next road you see.”
Mayhem (The Remarkable Adventures of Deets Parker Book 1) Page 18
