For Love of Audrey Rose (31 page)

“Come,” he said simply; they walked into the lobby.

As the mist turned to an uncertain rain, the lights went on throughout the lower wings. A nurse walked briskly past them, ignoring Hoover’s question. Then a young man in casual clothes and a security pass stapled to his sweater pointed them toward a conference room.

Dr. Geddes was bent over a stack of folders at a long table. A damaged fluorescent light flickered fitfully on his white coat, his pale hands, and his broad, pale forehead. He seemed to have aged in the two months Janice was gone. He looked diminutive, fussy.

“Dr. Geddes,” Janice said.

He looked up at them, studied the tall man, examining him carefully but nervously.

“Mrs. Templeton,” he said, as graciously as possible. “You’re looking very well. Please, won’t you and Mr. Hoover sit down?”

Dr. Geddes closed the topmost folder, pulled a chair closer to them, and said nothing. It was his habit not to rush into an encounter, to maintain silence until he felt ready, but even so, Hoover’s presence disturbed him. He stared at the pale blue eyes that did not flinch, the foreign-made brown suit so incongruous against the sunburned face and neck.

Dr. Geddes stood up and lit a cigarette. As the smoke curled up past his balding profile, he pressed a switch at the base of a coffee-maker and the machine began to gurgle. He stood without speaking during the entire duration of the process. At length black liquid trickled into a glass beaker, steam rose, and Dr. Geddes filled three cups. He carried two cups to Janice and Hoover.

Hoover ignored his cup, studying Dr. Geddes with the same dispassionate, cool analysis with which Dr. Geddes examined him. Dr. Geddes slowly drank his coffee, and then he sat down again and turned to Janice.

“I showed Bill your cable,” he said. “But there was no mention of Elliot Hoover.”

Janice faltered, looking down at her own hands intertwined nervously in the straps of her handbag.

“I was afraid to tell him.”

Dr. Geddes nodded, sipping his coffee slowly. An eternity of silence passed as he studied her. He no longer acknowledged Hoover in the seat next to Janice.

“Why were you afraid to tell him?” Dr. Geddes asked.

“Because…You know why. Because of what happened. Because Bill holds Elliot responsible.”

“Sensible,” Dr. Geddes agreed. “Then why do you wish for this meeting to take place now?”

Janice swallowed, found the courage to face Dr. Geddes, and leaned forward on the table until their faces were less than two feet apart.

“Because Bill does not listen to you. He does not listen to me. He does not listen to anybody in this hospital. But he will listen to Elliot Hoover because he’s the only man who could have saved our daughter’s life, and Bill knows it!”

“Did Bill tell you that?”

“He didn’t have to.”

“I see.”

Dr. Geddes found his cigarette was out. He relit it and exhaled slowly toward the ceiling. For a long time he said nothing. Hoover leaned forward, but Janice restrained him by putting a hand on his knee. Dr. Geddes caught the gesture.

“Mr. Hoover.”

“Yes, Dr. Geddes?”

“What is your purpose in seeing Bill Templeton?”

“To cure him.”

Dr. Geddes raised a sardonic eyebrow.

“Are you a psychiatrist?”

“No.”

“A psychologist? A medical specialist of any sort?”

Hoover licked his lips, though whether in irritation or nervousness Janice did not know. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the long conference table, and stared directly into Dr. Geddes’s eyes.

“I have been through exactly what Bill has gone through,” he said. “And I know his pain.”

Hoover swallowed his coffee, more to buy time, to feel the situation, than for any taste for the bitter brew.

“I too lost a daughter,” he continued with difficulty. “Like Bill’s, an only daughter. I searched for her—for a justification for her death. And I know the torture that Bill must feel.”

“Do you? And how do you propose to help him?”

“What I have learned from my own ordeal,” he said distinctly, “is the error I committed in the name of love. Bill must not make the same error. He must renounce the child. Give her up.”

Dr. Geddes softened. He nodded. But then his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“But suppose one believes in reincarnation?” he asked. “What then?”

“All the more reason to give up the child. The scriptures are clear. One does not possess a child’s life. A child is only an honored and much-loved guest in one’s home.”

Janice seized the opportunity and leaned closer to Dr. Geddes, in front of Hoover.

“And this is what Bill must learn, and accept,” she pleaded. “To let the child go.”

“
Especially
if he believes she has returned,” Hoover added.

Dr. Geddes examined them both, his eyes darting back and forth from Hoover’s face to Janice’s. Janice touched Dr. Geddes on the wrist to get his attention.

“The point is that Elliot Hoover and Bill both believe in the doctrine of reincarnation. They have that in common. They are linked by their beliefs.”

Dr. Geddes backed away. He went to the coffee machine and wiped up some spilled coffee with a paper towel.

“The sick treating the sick,” Dr. Geddes muttered.

Janice rose to her feet and stepped closer to him.

“That too is the point,” she said earnestly. “
You
don’t accept the doctrine. I’m not sure what I believe. That’s why Bill rejects us both.”

“True.”

Hoover came to his feet, sensing Dr. Geddes’s weakening position.

“And Bill and I are intimately connected. We were together through it all.”

“At least,” Janice persisted strongly, “it could open an avenue, just a little. Just to make Bill feel there are human beings who believe and are ready to help him.”

“Could you sit down, please? It’s disquieting to have everybody jumping around the room.”

After a long silence, Dr. Geddes daubed perspiration from his forehead.

“What, actually, would you
say
to Bill?” he asked. “Assuming that I let you see him?”

“Exactly what I’ve said to you. That he must renounce the child. He must accept his loss.”

Dr. Geddes nodded.

“That is what we’ve been trying to tell him,” he observed somewhat doubtfully.

“The difference is,” Hoover said, smiling, “that Bill understands my language.”

“The jargon of religion, you mean?”

“Yes. He will respond to that. He’s been studying it for months now. That’s all he
will
respond to.”

“Will you wait here?” Dr. Geddes asked.

Then he turned and abruptly left the room. Janice and Hoover waited in silence. The conference room was a chilling, antiseptic environment.

After ten minutes no one had come to the room. Then there was a distant, low-rolling rumble. Janice and Hoover looked up.

“Even in this hospital nature finds its voice,” he murmured.

Janice stopped fidgeting. Once again the deep bass reverberated in the clouds piling over the island.

“Like the thunder before the monsoon?” she said softly.

For a moment they smiled at one another, exhausted by the long day of waiting, and remembering the subcontinent that devoured them, changed them forever, and spit them out again.

The door opened. Dr. Geddes walked in, and behind him was Dr. Boltin, the director of the hospital. Behind the director were two more physicians and a lanky staff assistant who carried the relevant files in his arms as though they were religious totems. The door closed.

“Be seated, gentlemen,” Dr. Geddes said, extending a cursory hand at the chairs around the table.

As the thunder rolled Dr. Boltin reached for the pile of folders at his right hand. Looking through them, he pulled out a stapled pair of tissue-thin, typed reports.

“Templeton, William. Severe depressive and delusionary. Well, you gentlemen know the case as well as I do,” the director said, turning his attention to Janice. “Mrs. Templeton, before we proceed you should be made aware of certain changes in the direction of the case. During your absence your husband attempted suicide.”

Hoover’s face blanched. Janice rose, stunned.

“Suicide…?” she stammered.

“Attempted asphyxiation,” Dr. Boltin elaborated.

Janice’s hand involuntarily went to her mouth.

“The facts are,” Dr. Geddes interrupted, “that Bill was able to procure some matches and oily rags from the kitchen. He barred himself in the room by pushing his bed against the door, and sealed the windows. He filled the air with fumes and smoke.”

“He was unconscious when we broke the window from the ledge outside,” Dr. Boltin concluded.

The director and the rest of the assembled physicians seemed to wait for a response.

“The same death as Ivy’s,” Hoover said. “He was trying to atone.”

Dr. Boltin eyed him balefully. “For what, Mr. Hoover?”

“For feeling himself responsible. For allowing the death of his daughter. Which he might have prevented.”

“We consider this was a serious act toward suicide,” Dr. Boltin said, peering first at Janice and then at Hoover. “It was not a mere gesture, a cry for help, as it were.”

“I understand,” Janice said, barely audible.

“That is why we are willing to let you talk to him, Mr. Hoover,” broke in one of the physicians.

“We’re very grateful for your understanding,” Hoover said.

“Yes,” Dr. Boltin said ambiguously as he drummed his fingers on the table, exchanging glances with Dr. Geddes. Neither Janice nor Hoover could decipher what the signals were, but after a long pause, Dr. Boltin raised an eyebrow and the lanky assistant went quickly from the room.

“When Bill comes in,” Dr. Boltin said more kindly, “he may be disoriented. He may not know you, or feel uncertain about expressing his feelings at seeing you, Mrs. Templeton. He may break into tears. You must just accept whatever he does as natural and support him.”

“Does he know I’ve come?” Hoover asked.

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And what did he say?”

“I don’t believe he said anything at all, Mr. Hoover.”

The door opened. Janice gasped. A travesty of Bill stood blinking in the doorway. His collarbones protruded sharply and his shoulders bent inward. His trousers hung loosely at the waist. He looked as though he were recovering from an operation.

“Bill!” Janice whispered, standing up, taking a step closer.

He gazed at her blankly, and then his face made a mask with a smile on it.

“Hello.”

Pathetically, he took a step closer to her, tried to mumble something, but only blinked rapidly. He looked around at the assembly of white-coated physicians and seemed terribly ashamed to be under their scrutiny.

“I’m so happy to see you,” he whispered, edging still closer.

As though he had recognized one friend out of the multitude, Bill shuffled in tiny steps sideways toward her, to protect him from the onslaught of the eyes that examined him and dissected him.

“I’m—okay,” he whispered confidentially. “Just—just a bit cold—and—and—it’s good to see you….”

He stood now next to her, his arms uncertain whether to touch her or not, until she put her hands on his shoulders and pressed him forward. Suddenly he trembled like a baby.

“So—good to—see you,” he cried into her shoulder, shaking.

“Oh, Bill. Darling Bill. I’ve worried so much about you.”

“Don’t go away again. Please don’t go away….”

Hoover, much affected, now felt the attention of the assembly shift slowly but inexorably onto him. Bill, with Janice holding his hand, was seated next to Dr. Geddes. It took Bill a full two minutes to realize that they were not going to ask him any questions. Slowly he became aware of the tension filling the room. Overhead, the thunder cracked abruptly, viciously.

Bill turned slowly, following his instincts, following where Dr. Geddes stared, where the two physicians gazed, where Dr. Boltin had stationed the lanky staff assistant. Down at the other end of the table, perspiring in the humidity, confident, boldly immobile and staring back, was Elliot Hoover.

Bill blinked rapidly. He looked at Janice, then at Dr. Geddes. He looked back down the long table at Elliot Hoover. He smiled an awkward, pathetically inappropriate smile. Then the smile vanished. He simply stared.

“Hello, Bill,” Hoover said softly.

Bill rubbed violently at his eyes, the way an infant might, as though some piece of grit had gotten lodged under the eyelids. It was an abrupt gesture, as though he tried to rub out what he was seeing.

“I’ve come to talk to you,” Hoover said hesitantly. “Do you mind?”

Bill pressed his lips together, stared down at the table, and his fingers violently pressed into the cheap veneer and polish. He looked up quickly at Hoover, opened his mouth, but said nothing.

Janice put a hand gently on Bill’s shoulder. A tremulous shudder rolled through Bill, and he brushed the hair from his forehead.

“I—I knew you were here,” he said in a stilted voice. “They told me.”

“Things have changed, Bill. For both of us.”

“They told me,” Bill said, louder, fighting off the mental anarchy by raising his voice against the confusion. “They told me Elliot Hoover was here.”

Hoover leaned forward, his features softened by compassion.

“Listen to me, Bill. We’ve suffered. Both of us. In the same way.”

“What?”

Bill turned, his face in a grimace, as though he was hard of hearing. His movements were jerky, exaggerated, like an abnormal child who playacts his aggression.

“I can’t
hear
you!” Bill complained.

Hoover slid into a seat closer to Bill, and kept his voice soft and distinct.

“We must help each other, Bill. We must forgive each other.”

“What?”

Janice had never seen a display of willed autism before. Bill was only partially in control of himself, driven by some twisted mechanism inside, some machine perpetually breaking down, trying desperately to defend itself against one more wound.

“I’ve come to talk to you, Bill—in humility—about what happened—and why.”