Ghost Country (26 page)
Authors: Sara Paretsky
“She thought it was the Virgin,” Luisa cut in, almost smacking her lips with excitement. “To me she looked like Vashti, but Maddy, or whatever her name is, screamed, ‘The Blessed Mother is here, She has appeared to me, She forgives me and is calling me Her own pure daughter.’”
Hector shuddered, Luisa so perfectly recreated Madeleine—not just her voice, with its nasal whine and singsong intonation, but also her jerking uncoordinated movements.
Delighted with his reaction, Luisa got to her feet, her flopping arms sweeping Hector’s papers to the floor.
“So Luisa Minsky knocked your papers off the desk, Tammuz—that seems like a minor irritant to set off a major catastrophe, a major violation of professional standards. You’re going to have to do more to persuade me that you are capable of carrying out your duties.”
But hard put to explain it to myself, let alone him. Not the first time we had a patient, or even a staff member, out of control. So why was this so much worse?
The Amazon never spoke. I wondered if she might be aphasiac, but Millie thought she was involved in some elaborate con with Luisa, because
the singer seemed to interpret her grunts, give meaning to them. It started when I asked Amazon for a name. She stared at me, then grunted—a guttural noise, not a word at all, but Luisa piped up, “Her name is Starr.”
“Stop playing games with us, Luisa, it’s a busy night in an overworked hospital,” Millie snapped, when Luisa began instructing Hector that the name had two r’s. “You and your friend may think it’s funny to come up with this kind of routine—”
“I wouldn’t call her my friend,” Luisa said.
“Where does she live?” Hector demanded.
“Dear boy—Doctor—I don’t know. I suppose someplace on Underground Wacker, since that’s where she appeared. But I never saw her before tonight.”
“Then I’d like to know how she communicates with you. So far she has not spoken an intelligible sentence. How do you know her name?”
“She told me. In the ambulance when we were riding over here.” Luisa cocked her head. “You need to know how to
listen
, Doctor. Surely that’s the first thing they teach a psychiatrist when you start training.
Listen.
I have perfect pitch, so I understand her from the tone of her voice.”
Millie couldn’t contain herself any longer. “Hector—Dr. Tammuz—either do a proper exam or put them back on the street where they belong!”
This outburst totally unlike Millie, usually the most empathic, least judgmental of nurses. Startled me into losing what was left of my poise. I turned to Starr, said we
needed
to check her reflexes, see if she had brain damage, do some blood work to check for drugs. Luisa on edge of desk, swinging one leg, eyes drooping, suddenly perked up at this, said, No
need
, nothing wrong with Starr’s brain, but Millie and I ignored her.
Bracing himself, his hand on the back of Starr’s head, the mass of coiled braided hair like a nest of snakes, the breasts brushing his
arm, a tightening across his groin which embarrassed him; he tried to forget the weight of flesh touching him through the fabric of her T-shirt, his hospital coat, his shirt sleeve, his skin.
He shone his flashlight into the hawk’s eyes. Starr jerked her head away and uttered a noise—a word in some language she alone spoke, or the grunt of an outraged animal, he was far too tired, too near the edge of his own collapse to know, but the sound was loud, unexpected, and he dropped the flashlight.
Starr picked it up, inspected it as though she had never seen one before, played it over his face, Luisa’s and Madeleine’s; as the light reached her eyes Madeleine whimpered and tried to sit up. Hector moved over to make sure she didn’t fall from the gurney.
A couple of orderlies arrived to wheel Madeleine to a bed. Millie snapped at them to help her with Starr first, to put her in a chair so Millie could get a blood sample. The orderlies, big gentle men, not like some on the service who liked to throw their weight around, usually kidded with Millie. Tonight her edginess startled them.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Millie,” Hector tried to interject, but she overrode him.
Since he was a transient—just the resident on call—while she had been the night charge nurse for eight years, the orderlies followed her directive, not Hector’s. They took Starr’s elbows and shifted her gently to the chair on the far side of the small desk. The hawk eyes were frowning, wary, but she offered no active resistance until Millie tied a length of rubber tubing around her biceps and advanced with a needle.
Starr knocked the syringe away, ripped the tube from her arm, picked up the chair and dashed it to the floor; rubbery plastic, it bounced but didn’t break. Madeleine howled from her gurney. Hector and the orderlies, trying to seize the aphasiac’s flailing arms, were buffeted about the head with a boxer’s fists. Millie raced off to summon security.
From the cart Madeleine suddenly spoke in her nasal singsong. “They want your blood. Next they scan your brain to see whether
you have waves or pulses there, they study you for aluminum, bitumen, chromium, your brain is like the fender of a car.”
The aphasiac stopped flailing; she seemed intent on Madeleine’s voice. She grunted. Hector felt the hairs on his neck stand up, as if she had delivered a personal warning to him.
“You can’t take her blood.” Luisa, who had been cackling at the battle, suddenly spoke. “It’s some kind of religious thing, I don’t know what. She isn’t allowed to give you her blood.”
I felt like smacking Montcrief myself; she was carrying on as
if
we were putting on an entertainment for her. Managed to restrain myself, just.
Millie returned with two security guards. She ordered the guards to put Starr into a Posey. The furies of a moment earlier were nothing compared to the battle that erupted then. The Amazon hurled herself on Millie and tried to strangle her, but the guards and orderlies managed among the four of them to wrestle her into a restraining jacket. Usually I hate these damned dehumanizing Poseys, they humiliate the patients, restrict their arm movements so they can’t even feed themselves unaided. Tonight I felt a most horrible surge of savagery, an exultation to have power while she sat helpless in her swaddling clothes; I was glad to be the one to tie her to a wheelchair.
I injected the Amazon, Haldol and Ativan, guessing at her weight—over-guessing, in my bestial gladness—pleased instead of dismayed with the power to sedate.
As they started to wheel Starr away the drunk flung herself onto Starr’s lap. Put her arms around her neck, weeping against the Posey. So disgusted with both of them I told the orderlies to take the drunk to the locked ward along with the aphasiac.
Escape from the Booby Hatch
A hot summer day in the thirties, driving down a dusty farm road in the South. At first the scene ordinary, bucolic: high crops on either side block any view. No people—insects buzzing in underbrush the only life besides me. Road unpaved, dust billowing around me. I’m driving an old black jalopy.
Feel uneasy in the car, and realize that I’m fleeing someone very dangerous. Who or what not specified, but my car will go only seven miles an hour and my pursuer is in a modern car, doing ninety and gaining on me.
I drive into the field, thinking the plants will shelter my little car from view. And there in front of me, rising from the soil, are Jacqui and Nanette. Come, they say, Starr is waiting for you. They lead me to a glade, where Starr is lying at her ease. She offers me her breast. She says, Drink, you’re very thirsty. I kneel beside, but my pursuers are upon us. She sees them over my shoulder, and vanishes, leaving me kneeling there, my mouth open, begging for her milk. And then whoever was following me is filling my nose and mouth with dirt.
He woke choking, wet with sweat. It was three in the morning. He was shaking, aching, as though he had a fever in his joints. He
carne back to the room only slowly, discovered he was wearing his clothes, vaguely remembered coming home at six, thinking he would lie down for just half an hour before eating supper. His belt buckle was digging into his belly and his tie, which he’d loosened without removing, had twisted itself behind his ear. Maybe that had led to a dream of choking.
He sat up in bed, but was so thick with, the dream that he couldn’t even move enough to undress. He hugged himself, rocking, needing some basic comfort that no one could give him.
“Starr,” he whispered in the dark, tears swelling out, covering his face like glass. “Starr.”
She had disappeared, along with the diva, and he felt unaccountably bereft. When he remembered his own behavior—was it only twenty-four hours ago?—stuffing her full of Haldol and Ativan, waves of shame swept through him. He sobbed as he had not since he was a child.
That morning, when he followed Hanaper up to the locked ward, they found Dr. Stonds in angry conversation with Venetra Marceau, the ward head. Morceau was black, so dark that the planes of her face were swallowed by the neon lights. Next to her Stonds looked pale and insubstantial.
“Because this hospital lets you get away with acting like Jesus Christ up on the cross,” the ward head was saying as Hector drew within earshot, “I had to send two patients down to see you. Any other doctor in this hospital would have come up here. If you can make it now, to chew me e ut, why couldn’t you come two hours ago? Then we might still have them on the premises.”
“How dare you speak to me in that tone, young woman? I hold you responsible for the fact that no proper escort was sent with them. Two orderlies must accompany any patient leaving this ward. Is that not hospital policy?” Stonds shook an open policy manual under the ward head’s nose
“Two orderlies?” She slapped the manual onto the counter of the nurses’ station. “We have three orderlies for this whole floor in the mornings, thanks to the brilliant insights of the hospital finance
committee, and all three were occupied when your summons came,”
Hanaper stood on one leg, like an anxious stork, while we waited for the great man to notice our arrival. Venetra saw us first. She must be the only person at Midwest who tells Stonds what she thinks of him; why he hasn’t had her fired I don’t know. Maybe he’s scared of her, too.
She snapped out a question to H, who assumed a lofty tone to hide his own disease: we’re here to examine the women young Tammuz saw fit to admit last night.
“That’s what Dr. Stonds and I are discussing right now,” the ward head snapped. “He wanted to interview them, and he got one of my poor overworked nurses to agree to send them down to his office with only herself in attendance.”
The nurse was huddled behind Venetra, eyes red, still sniffling. She couldn’t explain how it happened. They were moving slowly, Starr, who was still groggy with antipsychotics, in a wheelchair, Luisa walking next to her. When the elevator started moving, Starr seemed to panic. She got out of the chair and knelt on the floor, almost as though she was trying to steady the elevator cage. The nurse tried to lift her back into her chair, but Starr was much stronger than her attendant. When the elevator stopped, the two patients shoved the nurse aside and disappeared down a stairwell.
“Disappeared?” Hector echoed foolishly.
“Yes, Dr. Tammuz. As in gone, vanished,” Marceau said. “This hospital being a labyrinth like every other old hospital I’ve ever served in, there are fifty ways to get in and out, assuming these women weren’t too disoriented to find one of them.”
Hector was already close to swooning from fatigue. The loss of Starr made him feel as though he were falling through space. He’d been counting on the sight of Starr to vindicate him in Hanaper’s eyes. Her overwhelming sexuality would unnerve Hanaper as it had Hector; the department head would shrink quietly away to his
office with no more talk about putting his junior resident on probation. Now the disappointment of losing his prize exhibit made Hector’s knees buckle. He only stayed upright by clutching the counter, Hector tried to pay attention to the argument between Stonds and Marceau, because Hanaper was bound to throw the blame on him, but they sounded far away, like ducks quacking on a distant pond: women were dangerous … knocked nurse over leaving elevator … security hunting … Chicago police notified … might harm someone…might harm selves … liability of hospital.
“Dr. Tammuz said the aphasiac was something special,” Hanaper said, his lips glistening with anticipation.
Marceau flicked a glance in his direction. “That could be, Doctor. I only saw her when she was drugged.”
Special. Hector was furious when he realized his chief was hoping for a peep show. Step right up, see nipples that glow in the dark, free to a man with a badge on his gown. Starr, I’ll protect you from those greedy eyes, and then he was awash with longing, wanting to bury his face in her breasts and so lose all bonds of fear, of adulthood, of responsibility. He thought he could feel her flesh, warm and firm, but yielding to his tongue.
“Dr. Tammuz admitted them. Maybe he knows something of their associates.”
The mention of his name startled Hector. Stonds and Marceau weren’t quacking ducks, but barking wolves in need of raw meat. Hanaper would throw his junior resident into the fight just for the pleasure of seeing him devoured.
“Dr. Tammuz, have you lost your senses?” Dr. Stonds was beside, himself with fury, and the naked longing on the resident’s face only enraged him further.
“Sorry, sir: it’s been forty hours since I was last in bed.” Hector’s voice came out in a husky whisper. “If you could let me know why you want to interview the women maybe I could help?”
“Where has your mind been these past twenty minutes, Tammuz?” Hanaper said, “Dr. Stonds wants to interrogate these women about his granddaughter. She’s been missing for nearly a week, as you should know.”
Why should he know? Hector was about to ask, then remembered his conversation with the glacial elder granddaughter. Her younger sister, who’d tried to see him in clinic last Wednesday. She’d run away.
“But I don’t think Starr or Luisa could help locate her,” he said aloud, “I know some of their behavior last night seemed as though they might be psychic, but Starr doesn’t talk at all, and Luisa was falling-down drunk.”
