Godspeed (19 page)

Schuyler turned to me, shook his head, and then looked up at Penn. “Fetch the doctor, Penn. Hurry.”

I looked at Schuyler with concern in my eyes; in his I saw a dreadful fear I had not seen since my own condition had stabilized. “Schuyler?” I whispered.

He did not speak, only locked eyes with mine in a glance that communicated more clearly than any words could just how afraid he was for the boy.

“What's wrong?” Quinn asked, his medical bag gripped tightly as he grasped hold of Jib's wrist and felt for his pulse, glancing at the clock on the wall and sighing as he set the boy's swollen hand back down into his lap.

“Why did they bring you out today? They should have sent for me.”

“I wanted to come.” Jib said, his voice strained and weak.

“I know, but we have got to get you to bed, straight away. Schuyler,” Quinn began removing Jib's boots and unbuttoning the top buttons of his shirt and coat. “Contact the Magistrate, immediately. Tell him that he must hurry to fetch his son.”

All thoughts of Lilibet's machine had come to a halt in my mind, until I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard words softly whispered in my ear. “Try her on the machines, see if you can convince her.”

“Me?” I shook my head. “But, Doctor, you are the one that she—”

“She must eventually learn to trust someone else, and that should be you. I will expect a full accounting of your tests when I return.”

Quinn grabbed his coat off the hook on the wall and hurried to shrug it on over his shoulders.

“When will that be, sir?”

“I don't know,” Quinn said, his tone grave. “I'm hoping not too quickly.”

No one else in the room understood his meaning quite as I did: the only reason that he would return from Jib's house quickly tonight would be if he no longer had a patient there to care for.

“I hope not, sir.” I whispered, tears falling down my face as I watched Schuyler and Quinn roll Jib's chair back into the foyer, there to await his father and their carriage.

C
HAPTER
21

IT WAS WITH MUCH TREPIDATION
that I asked Schuyler to let me into the doctor's laboratory, and it was only because he'd heard Quinn's instructions to me that he deigned to do it.

Even so, he did not leave Lilibet and I alone there; he took up a seat in the corner of the room and pretended to drink his tea, though I knew from the length of time he'd held the cup that it must have long since gone cold.

We were joined as well by Penn and Marielle, though they seemed to be in their own world, off in the opposite corner, speaking in whispers. Once I heard Jib's name spoken between them. I watched as Marielle began to cry and Penn did what he could to comfort her, though the look on his face betrayed that he was just as desperately worried as she was.

We all were.

Still, I had been given a task to perform: I would stick with it and complete it to the best of my ability.

Moments turned to hours as I stood there, explaining patiently in one way after another just what the machines were intended to do, and how Lilibet should go about trying to use them.

She stared blankly ahead, ignoring me, or so it seemed, until finally in frustration she sat down on the floor and began tapping her fingers against her leg again.

Just as I had noticed before, when I spoke to her directly, using her name as part of the question, she would wait a moment after I'd finished speaking and then she would begin to tap. I was determined now to take advantage of this, and I begged Schuyler's assistance for a moment.

I asked him to help me move the modified keyboards down onto the floor, one at a time, and sit them to the right and left of Lilibet.

I then demonstrated each to her, one at a time.

“You see, Lilibet? This one has all the consonants on the left and the vowels and numbers on the right,” I explained. “The doctor says he knows you can read, Lilibet. Won't you show us how you can write as well?”

Lilibet kept rocking back and forth, and then finally, she began tapping on her leg.

In that instant, I had an idea.

“Look, Lilibet,” I said, typing out each word as I spoke it, “This is how you use the keys to talk. You can tap out your words like you already do only this way, we will hear you. We will listen.”

I tore off the strip of paper that had unrolled from the machine and held it up before her. “Do you see? The words I just spoke to you are right there. Right there.”

After another hour of trial and failure, I was worn out. I dropped my aching head into my hand and marveled at the patience Quinn must have had to get her to the point where he knew her well enough to know she could read.

“Please, Lilibet.” I took hold of her face gently and she seemed to ignore me completely. I released her, not wanting to antagonize her in what was already a clearly agitated state. I sighed, closed my eyes and then after a long moment, opened them again.

“I know that you must have so much to say, so much you want us to know. Or so much you want to ask.” I noticed that her hand started tapping faster against her leg at the mention of answering questions. “There is something you want to know, isn't there? Something you want to ask us. Well,” I picked up her right hand and tugged it away from her, placing it on the keys of the machine to her right. “Ask, and I'll do everything I can to get you an answer. Come on,” I urged her desperately, my heart aching from exhaustion and my head swimming from working in such circular patterns of thought for hours. “Ask!”

I dropped her hand onto the keys and she struck one, randomly. She jumped as it snapped against the roll of paper, yet seemed to relax when it didn't make a noise as loud as a normal, everyday typewriter would.

She slowly turned in the direction of the keyboard and stared at it for a long time. I didn't move or speak now, except to raise my eyes up to see that Schuyler, Penn, and Marielle were all silent, the two men watching with rapt attention.

We all waited, and waited, a seeming eternity before we heard her fingers tap against those keys again; the first time just as if to get the feel for them, the second with much more intention in an attempt to make a word.

I waited until her slow, methodical tapping ceased, and she went back to staring ahead into nothing and rocking back and forth.

Schuyler's eyes begged me to tell him what I saw on the paper, and as I looked at the unfurled roll before me, tears formed in my eyes; not just because the girl had made an attempt, neither simply because she had succeeded.

The hardest part was seeing the question she had asked, using only consonants.

The scroll read: “jb gt bttr”

“What does it say?” Penn asked excitedly, grasping Marielle's hand as she gasped with surprise that her sister had managed to communicate somehow.

“She wants to know if Jib is going to get better,” I replied, and I could not stop myself from reaching out and touching Lilibet's face softly. “Oh, Lilibet, how I wish your very first question was one for which I had an answer.”

“I have the answer.”

We all turned to see a ghostly, haggard Doctor Godspeed standing in the doorway.

“Quinn?” Schuyler leapt from his chair and approached.

Quinn ignored him and moved slowly toward Lilibet. He looked at the paper in my hands, then at me, for a long moment. Then he dropped down to one knee beside Lilibet and spoke very softly the words we had all feared might come.

“I'm sorry, Lilibet, but the answer to your question is no.”

A long and heavy silence overtook the room, each one of us lost in our own thoughts until the muffled sound of tapping upon bastardized typewriter keys sounded once more. After it ended, and the girl's hand withdrew back into her lap, Quinn reached out and tore off the end of the paper.

He gasped an incredulous, emotional burst of air into his lungs and shook his head when he saw the text it contained.

I swore that I saw the glint of unshed tears in his beautiful eyes, as he handed the paper to me next. He hung his head low as he battled, struggling to contain his emotions in a way I had never seen before.

“Don't thank me for trying, Lilibet. I wish there was more I could do,” Quinn whispered, stopping suddenly to clear his throat. “So much more.”

I looked over at Schuyler, tears streaming silently down my face and threatening to track down his as well. His eyes begged the question that he could not bring his lips to speak.

Before I could give Schuyler his answer by explaining what the paper said, Quinn cleared his throat again and then sat down from his kneeling position, right alongside Lilibet.

“So, I see that our young friend has gotten in there, at last, and you've found your way to the surface, haven't you, Lilibet?” Quinn again sounded overwhelmed, and had to stop speaking a moment to regain his composure. As he did he reached over to me and grasped hold of my hand. He squeezed it once, slowly and tenderly.

My heart pounded beyond belief, straining against the limits of the mechanical as he whispered into my ear the words, “Well done.”

I closed my eyes, soaking them in, taking in his nearness, and found some small comfort in our victory over Lilibet's internal prison even in this moment of such unfathomable sorrow.

When I opened my eyes again, I found that Penn and Schuyler were staring at me directly, both looking somewhat startled by the exchange between Quinn and I. Penn simply seemed surprised. Schuyler's expression was something entirely different; he was upset by it.

“So, Miss Lilibet favors only the consonants, does she?” Quinn noted that she had completely ignored the machine to her left and only used specific keys on the one to her right. “This allows us more freedom for the case design, as if she's only going to use the consonants there is no need of including the vowels. Neither does she seem to have any interest in using the keys with short words I created for her, look.” He indicated the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ keys, as well as the one that was designed to type in one stroke her entire name.

“Show me, Lilibet. Show me if you want me to make this so you can take it with you everywhere.”

Lilibet began to rock more quickly; she actually appeared as though she was afraid of something.

“You don't have to use it any more than you want to, Lilibet,” I promised, putting my hand upon her shoulder for a moment. “You can get lost in there, like you always do, as much as you must. It's just sometimes…” I let my words trail off, watching her for some indication she was listening, and sure enough her rocking began to slow. Quinn nodded to me, indicating with his eyes I should press on. “We'd like to know more about you. What you think, what you want, what you don't want. Who you are.”

Tears burned my eyes anew as I looked down at the slip of paper that Quinn had handed me. It showed such depth of concern for others did lurk inside this girl, locked in her own head and heart for so long. I yearned to know more about her. “Who are you?” I whispered again, and collectively we held our breath as her hand crawled slowly across her leg, then the floor, over to the keyboard of the machine once more.

Four distinct keystrokes were heard, and upon the paper was the simple, and simply profound, answer to my question.

I began to sob softly now, resting my forehead against the girl's shoulder. She sat there, unaffected by my nearness, a gesture of affection she would previously have shrunk away from.

“For the love of God, Quinn, what does it say?” Schuyler blurted.

Quinn shook his head once again. He tore off the strip of paper and held it aloft.

“The question asked was, ‘who are you’,” Quinn whispered. “The answer, of course, is this.”

Schuyler approached and saw that upon the paper were four consonants, forming the framework of a name.

The paper said: “llbt”

“Of course, you are Lilibet,” Schuyler whispered, reaching out and placing his hand atop the girl's head. “Who else in the world would you be?”

C
HAPTER
22

THE DOCTOR ROSE
and moved toward the decanter of spirits at the opposite end of the room. He poured himself a glass and drank deeply from it before speaking again. “Schuyler, take them upstairs.” He gestured toward Penn and Marielle, who was weeping, softly but still loud enough to be distinctly heard.

“What can I do, Quinn, anything?”

“You can take them upstairs, as I asked,” Quinn replied evenly, his eyes warning Schuyler off as he considered making an approach.

“Penn,” Schuyler said, and Penn obeyed, offering his arm to lead Marielle away. “If you change your mind,” Schuyler offered, his expression at once hopeful that Quinn might, but certain he would not.

Assuming that ‘them’ included me, I made my way toward the door, Lilibet in tow. She did not go along easily, but kept turning back in the direction of her new communication device. This did not escape Quinn's notice.

“I shall get it finished and back to you directly, Lilibet, my word upon it.”

That was all it took to satisfy the girl and she fell in step with the others as we moved toward the exit.

As I was about to shut the door behind us, I noticed Quinn's eyes staring out blankly ahead of him, in my direction, and he seemed to consider, for a moment, speaking.

Since he did not, I took the liberty of doing so. “If there is anything you require of
me
, Doctor Godspeed, you have but to ask.”

He opened his mouth but no words issued forth. His lips opened and closed several times, and then he merely nodded before taking another long draw from his drink.

Finally I could bear it no longer, the thought of him carrying and battling such an all-consuming grief alone. I had to know exactly what he was fighting; I had to know exactly what was wrong with Jib.

“Doctor,” I approached him again, in slow, stunted steps.

“His organs are failing,” he declared, before tilting his head back and draining his glass empty. “It will not be long now.”

I was a little startled that, given this fact, he had left the boy's bedside at all. As if able to read my mind, or at the very least correctly gauge my reaction and the accompanying emotions, he spoke again. “I had no choice but to leave him tonight. You see, officially I was never his physician, and so in his waning hours, when none of my
experimentation
…” He spoke the last word as if doing so left a bitter taste in his mouth; clearly he hated the word and the darkness it implied. “…could further aid him, then the palliative care offered by standard, licensed physicians was called for.”