The Girl in a Coma (13 page)

Twenty-two

Lizzie

As Lizzie sat on the stump with Will on the boulder beside her, it occurred to her they made a handsome couple. But they were outlaws. He was a dangerous renegade. Until she figured out a way to turn him in, she could be considered an American sympathizer.

The treasure he had stolen had been entrusted to her by the people of the Grand River Purchase. Unless she figured out a way to get it back, she was almost as guilty of treason as he was. Treason was punishable by death.

Will Richardson rose to his feet.

“It's time to get moving, Miss Erb.”

“Don't Miss Erb me, you scoundrel.”

“Right then, Lizzie. Let's get a move on. I want to cross over the river before dark.”

“I'm not moving.”

“Suit yourself.”

That surprised her.

“I thought you promised my Aunt Rebecca you'd protect me.”

“I'm only a man, Lizzie. A humble Canadian. I can't make a fierce and determined woman do anything against her will.”

“Indeed, you cannot.”

“Of course, I'm Will, and where there's a will there's a way.”

She wondered whether she should be amused by his wit. She decided not to give him the pleasure.

She thought, Will Richardson, you're a
will-o-the wisp
, one of those ghostly clouds of light seen hanging over the Beverly Swamp that some people believe illuminate demons at play. She was sure they were glowing bubbles of gas with no substance at all. Just like her companion. Both of them looked up at the hullabaloo down the road where they had come from. Lizzie's heart soared, then sank a bit when she saw only two men emerge through the dust and the din. Still, she would ask for their help to overpower her captor. She recognized Cameron and Beazley.

They looked like they had been drinking, although it was only midday. And they certainly weren't going in the direction of the British forces at Queenston Heights.

“Well, well,” exclaimed Beazley, “what a welcome surprise.”

“Isn't it?” Will Richardson responded. His voice made it clear their arrival was perhaps a surprise, but not at all welcome.

“And Miss Erb,” said Cameron, bowing slightly in her direction, “it's a good thing you're here. There is much fighting in the other direction.”

“Which you're managing to avoid,” she observed.

“There is no point joining a lost cause,” said Cameron, blushing. “We're on our way to Fort Erie, like you, I expect.” She caught a strange look in his eyes but she couldn't make out whether it was shame or regret.

“I guess we're all heading the same way,” said Beazley. “We'll walk along with you. We want to join up with our friends, like we told you, Miss. We're going to turn in Captain Blaine. We're still counting on you to say we was innocent of killing Mr. Whittington and only guilty of setting a fire by the mistake of our own stupidity.”

That was the most she had ever heard Beazley say. With his thick Yorkshire accent she had to guess at his meaning.

“No!” declared Will Richardson.

“No what?” asked Cameron.

“No, we will not travel with you. We prefer to go on our own. We have things to do on the way.”

“Is that the story, Miss?” Cameron stared deep into her eyes. There was no mistaking a genuine sympathy. He wished her to know he cared what happened to her.

Lizzie was concerned for the two soldiers. They would be no match for the big frontiersman. She was concerned for herself. Will Richardson was a brute, he wanted her money, he didn't care what promises he'd made to Rebecca Haun. She tugged at her blue scarf. She clutched the silver medallion against the coarse material of her dress. Then, in spite of her determination to wear it publicly, she tucked it down inside her dress for safekeeping. She could feel the coolness of the silver press against her beating heart.

She rose from her stump and directed the two soldiers to proceed to Fort Erie. She would follow them soon and speak on their behalf. They nodded politely and moved on down the road.

“Good girl,” said her captor.

“Don't call me a girl, you blackguard.”

“That is a mean term, Miss Erb. I may be a villain by your lights, but I'm not a
blackguard
.”

Since she had no idea what the word meant, Lizzie mumbled an apology.

“Now here's the situation,” he said. “You may trot on and catch up with your soldier friends. They will escort you to the fort, which the British still hold. You may come with me while I deliver the money to General Van Rensselaer. But then you'll be stuck for the rest of the war on the American side of the river. I suppose you could travel south to Boston to stay with your Aunt Rebecca. Or you can turn around and go home. You came through the Beverly Swamp on your own, you may surely return with no problem.”

“Except for the treasure being lost.”

“Exactly. You may say it was stolen by a handsome rogue.”

She wanted to box the man's ears for his arrogance, but he was too big and too strong.

She glanced down and saw a good-sized rock by their feet. She could use it as a weapon. She did not feel bound by her Mennonite heritage to avoid violence altogether.

Will Richardson gazed down the road. Someone was coming from the direction of Fort Erie. She picked up the rock. As her captor turned back to face her, she swung the rock against his head. He collapsed at her feet.

Suddenly, Cameron was at her side.

“Well done, Miss. Now give me that strap from his saddle and we'll bind him up before he knows what hit him.”

Lizzie did as Cameron said. He hadn't ordered her, merely offered advice.

Once Will Richardson was secured, with only a little blood on his buckskin jacket, she turned to the Scot.

“Thank you,” she said. She brushed the dust off her dress. “The man is a traitor and a thief.”

“You are most welcome, Miss Erb.”

“You are not surprised?”

“Well, I was never quite sure which side this fellow was on. By the look on your face when we passed just now, I realized it wasn't ours.”

“Do my feelings show so clearly, then?”

“For those who can read them, I suppose they do.”

Cameron stood straight and tall. In spite of his shabby clothes and unkempt appearance, there was something noble about the man.

She gazed at him quizzically. She didn't know how to ask but she wanted to know more about him.

“There's nothing to tell,” he replied to her unspoken inquiry. “I'm a soldier from Lochiel, plain and simple. Now let's get this rascal to Fort Erie so I can get back to the battlefront before the war is over.”

This dark stranger was no longer a ruffian deserter. But who he actually was—that was still a mystery.

Allison

I've spent the day opening and closing my eyes. It's like working out at the gym, only for eyeballs.

When Maddie O'Rourke comes in, I open my eyes really wide.

I can tell she's excited. She doesn't say anything. She perches on the edge of my bed and cleans off yesterday's mascara and eye shadow and liner. She's shifted around so I can make out her face. She is so beautiful it hurts.

“Now then, Allie. Prove I'm not crazy. Are you ready?”

I think furiously about good and bad things. I decided today, good stuff would be a sausage breakfast sandwich from Tim Hortons. Then I worried I'd gain weight so I switched to sunflowers in Nana Friesen's garden. Choosing a very bad thing was easy. I would think about the flash of the gun when I was shot in the head.

I focus on sunflowers, then the gunshot, mixing them up.

“Allison, your pupils are shifting, I can't figure out what you're saying.”

I think only about the sunflowers.

“Your pupils dilated! You can hear me!”

Dilated?
I'm not a nurse, girl. Dilated, that means getting big.

“I did a web-search on pupils,” Maddie explains. “They're nothing but holes that swallow the light, and they get big when they want more light, so they dilate, and they get small when they want to cut the light down, they contract or constrict.”

She pauses to let her lesson sink in. I signal, sunflowers, no change, then gunflash, let's get moving, here.

“Now they're small, they're constricted.”

Okay, the sunflowers and big black pupils is
Yes
. Gunflash and small black pupils is
No
. But I've got to pay attention. When I'm happy, it's a Yes. Big eyes are Yes. When I'm upset it's a No.

Maddie explains our code the other way around. Big means No. Small means Yes.

I don't like that. When I'm relaxed I want to be sending Yes as a message.

I think Yes, with sunflowers. Relaxing my thoughts.

“No?” she asks.

I think Yes thoughts again.

“Two No's. A double negative. So Yes is No, and No is Yes. Are you playing games with me, Allison?”

I give her my version of Yes.

“I love you right now, Allie Briscoe. Don't take that in the wrong way. But I love you, I really do.”

I can see Maddie's blueberry eyes shining as she leans over. They are filled with tears. And I love you, Maddie O'Rourke.

“Okay,” says Maddie, “we've got an hour. I didn't get off work until nine. So let's get busy.”

I try to relax.

“Are you Allison Briscoe?”

Sunflowers, Yes.

“Am I the Easter Rabbit?”

Gunflash, No.

“Am I Madeleine O'Rourke?”

Sunflowers.

“Am I absolutely beautiful?”

Yes.

Maddie goes all quiet. I can hear her take deep breaths.

“Should we keep doing Yes or No questions?”

Gunflash, No.

“Alphabet?”

Sunflowers, Yes.

“You need to explain something?”

Yes.

“Is it urgent?”

Yes.

“Okay. When I reach the right letter, you say Yes. You got it?”

Yes.

Maddie begins to recite the alphabet very slowly. When she gets to M, I signal Yes.

“Okay, it starts with M.”

Yes.

“Let's go again.”

Maddie works her way so far through the alphabet she seems worried, until I signal U.

“M, U. Mud, mum, mut, mugwump? No? Okay, continue.”

Maddie goes through the alphabet again, and twice more.

“M,U,R,D,E. That's French for poop. No, they spell it
merde
. So, what's up Allie? We're running out of time. The buzzer went five minutes ago. I've got to get out of here.”

I can tell Maddie has slipped off the bed.

“I'll be back tomorrow. I haven't finished your eyes. You go to sleep now. You're real, you know. As real as anybody in the whole world. Night, night.”

At the door she switches out the light and calls back into the darkness. “Good-night, Allie, and good-night Kate.”

I had forgotten all about my roommate.

The door closes and I stare into the darkness. Suddenly the door bursts open again.

“MURDER! That's the word isn't it, Allie? Allison Briscoe, I hear you.”

As the door swings closed again, I listen to the final bell tolling. I close my eyes, feeling strangely uneasy. The killer is working night shifts. She will come in soon. I will be waiting.

What else can I do?

Twenty-three

Lizzie

Working together, Lizzie and Cameron lifted Will Richardson's unconscious body and draped it over Fleetfire's back. Their burden groaned as they tied him in place.

“Good,” said Lizzie. “He's not dead yet.”

“Well, I suppose we all die eventually,” Cameron responded in a surprisingly cheerful tone. “But he's a good fellow, really. We don't want to hurry him along to his Maker, not before his time.”

“When they hang him—or do they shoot traitors?—will that be what you call
his time
?”

“It's a pity if they have to execute him, Ma'am. He's a good man at heart. He is confused about whether he is an American, a Canadian, or a Brit. I can understand that. He didn't hurt you, did he?”

“No, but he wanted to steal my treasure.” Too late, Lizzie realized she had said too much. She waited for the inevitable query.

“Ah,” he said, “you're carrying a treasure, are you?”

She had no reason to trust a polite young Scotsman who passed himself off as a ruffian. She had no reason not to.

“It belongs to Major-General Sir Isaac Brock.”

“Well does it, now. Then what are you doing with it?”

“I've brought it from the good people of the Grand River Purchase. It's our way of supporting the cause. We're mostly Mennonites. The British and their Canadian militia are fighting for our right
not
to make war. That includes you, if you ever find your way back to the battlefront.”

“Fighting for your freedom to be British?”

“To be Canadian.”

“You're as confused as your friend, here. As far as I can see, they're exactly the same thing, Miss Erb. To be Upper Canadian is to be British and you can be Mennonite, too.”

“I am, more or less.” She wondered if it was possible to be less Mennonite, rather than more. Her father had given up Mennonite teachings and fought in a war; her stepfather had turned from counting his blessings to running businesses which included a distillery. Like her father and her stepfather and many of their friends, she embraced the present, if not the future. She did not want to live in the strict, austere and limiting past.

“He was going to turn the money over to the Americans,” she said. “To fight us.”

“Us! So you admit you are British, lass.”

They were talking in circles. It was time to move.

Cameron helped Lizzie onto the smaller horse, then he took Fleetfire's reins in hand and began walking. After a while, he paused to fill his pipe and light up. Then he kept walking, with Lizzie following behind.

They caught up with Beazley, who was leaning against the upended stump in a fence. He was smoking his pipe and seemed in no hurry to move. Beazley said nothing about Fleetfire's burden. It was apparently the most natural thing in the world to be transporting an unconscious Canadian dressed in a buckskin jacket over a country road.

About half a mile from Fort Erie, when they could see the palisade rising in the clearing ahead, Cameron stopped. He turned and boosted Will Richardson into an upright position, straddling the horse. Lizzie wondered how long their prisoner had been conscious. His face was flushed from riding slung over Fleetfire's back. There was a small trickle of dried blood on his forehead.

“I think now is the time, Miss Erb.” There was something awkwardly formal in Cameron's voice. He wasn't asking her a question, he was giving her a command. Politely, but firmly.

“For what?” she asked. But she knew.

Cameron helped Will Richardson down from Fleetfire. Lizzie watched as he untied the prisoner's hands. The two men embraced briefly. Will turned to Lizzie.

“I truly did not try to murder your Aunt Rebecca,” he declared. “She is on her way to Boston.”

Before Lizzie could say anything, Will Richardson slipped into the thick trees by the side of the road and disappeared down toward the river. Instinctively, she reached behind her to feel that the saddlebag full of treasure was still there.

She looked at Cameron. He wasn't smiling. She could turn him in for letting a traitor escape. He could be courtmartialed and executed. He took a firm hold of Fleetfire's reins. He began walking slowly toward the fort, staying close to the old horse's side. Beazley trudged behind him.

Lizzie sat quietly for a few minutes, until her little horse became restless. She urged it forward and caught up with her two soldiers. Together they passed through the gates in the thick stone wall of the fort. It was late in the day.

The Union Jack was flying at half-mast.

Bad news.

Allison

After Maddie left, three nights ago, the word
murder
hung in the air. I waited. It didn't take long. My night visitor came in. She turned the light on, then turned if off quickly. She would rather talk to me in the dark. She is afraid of my eyes.

She whispered in her strange rasping voice. She knows I know she's there. She wanted me to understand, she needs more time. She has death on a schedule. She will release me from suffering but the time must be right.

She said, “Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.”

Spare me your kindness.

She's nuts.

But she can't be completely insane because no one knows what she's doing. She seems normal. I've heard the craziest people often seem normal, just ordinary like everyone else.

Glory, good God, I hate this. I don't want to die. I'd refuse if I could. But I can't. Not if she has her way. The agony, the horror, I know when it's coming.

Imagine a twist in time so you knew you had only a week to live. Then only three days, then it's tomorrow, this evening, in an hour, a few minutes, ten seconds, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two…you take a deep breath. You never exhale. Not ever. Everything stops. You never reach zero.

I could hear her voice after she'd gone. I can hear her inside my head right now.

Two nights ago, Maddie brought nurses in to show that she could read my eyes. A male nurse and a female nurse. They watched. They left.

Maddie O'Rourke is, as you know, outrageously beautiful and very short, with a twisted back, but as far as they were concerned, she is not a doctor.

So much for that.

Last night Maddie didn't come in. My night caller did.

I was miserable but I survived.

It's evening again.

Maddie returns with Jaimie Retzinger tagging along.

She hoists herself up onto my bed and kisses me on the cheek.

“Sorry about last night. I'm really sorry. They kept me at work until after eleven.” She's talking about the People's Drug Mart on Chemong. They have a great cosmetics section.

“Jaimie's here,” she says. “He's going to help us.”

Jaimie? Help us? Oh really.

Maddie asks, “Are you ready?”

Sunflowers in Nana's garden. Yes.

“You said
murder.
”

I try not to think bad thoughts.

“Is that a No?

Sunflowers, sunflowers.

“Yes! Okay, who? You, Jaimie Retzinger, pay attention. Write this down.”

“It's not exactly like the words are pouring out of her,” he says.

Creep.

“Who, Allie? Who is being murdered?”

Two runs through the alphabet and I spell out U and then S.

“The United States? No, oh,
us
? Patients? Sorry
, clients
?”

Yes. It's hard to do Yes when I feel No.

“Clients are being murdered?”

“Oh, come on,” says Jaimie. “She's staring at the ceiling.”

I take the time to spell out J, R, K.

“It's her,” says Jaimie. “You're a
jerk
, too, Allison Briscoe”

I ignore him. I spell out B, D, G and a long pause, then N, S, E.

“She's a lousy speller,” says Jaimie. “She's spelling out
nose
and bidge
, bitch
, bitch, now that's a surprise.

He's never heard me say
that
word, not ever.

“She's saying
bridge
and
then
nurse
.” Maddie says. She is excited. “The woman killed last week walking over the Otonabee foot-bridge. I wonder if a nurse did it? What else, Allie?”

“M, E.

“You! You're next?”

It's hard to think sunflowers when you're talking about being murdered. I focus hard on Nana's garden.

“Yes!” I can hear Maddie catch her breath. “Oh my God, Allison. When? How do you know? Who is the nurse? Oh, my God, I'm sorry. One question at a time. When, Allie? Tomorrow?”

Gunflash, No.

“The next day?”

Gunflash.

“No.”

I'm thinking this could go on for a while. How many days are left? I've lost count. Now that's a stupid thing to do. I just don't want to know my life has a deadline. Dead line.

Oh, good glory, I'm explaining my jokes to myself.

“Tonight, Allie? Are you in danger tonight?”

“You just asked her that,” says Jaimie.

“No, I asked her ‘tomorrow.' You talk directly to her if you want. She can hear you, you know.”

I can tell Jaimie is upset. Knowing I really am in here, his ex-girlfriend inside a living corpse. Listening, thinking. I'm a zombie, undead. It scares him.

I want to tell Maddie, Yes, maybe tonight. But I don't think so, my killer won't strike yet. She's teasing with terror in small doses, even if she means to be kind.

I signal No.

“No what, Allie? No, you're all right tonight. Good. The buzzer will go off any minute. We'll come back tomorrow. Jaimie will come, too. Whether he wants to or not.”

I manage to communicate the number “seventeen,” which doesn't mean anything to her, of course. They leave.

I wait with the lights off until my night visitor slips into the darkness. Let's get this over with so I can go to sleep. I'm exhausted. Her harsh voice creeps me out. Is she talking to Kate in the next bed? No, she's talking to me. She's whispering. Her voice rumbles and squeaks.

“Your friend with the beautiful hair told us she speaks to you, Allison. I believe her. That makes my work more important. I want you to understand.”

She pauses. She needs to pull herself together.

“Seventeen, Allison. It took my baby seventeen days to die. I burned my little girl, I set her on fire. In the garage, Allison. My baby walked into spilled gasoline. She came up behind me. I was startled. I dropped my cigarette. We burst into flames. I tried to save her. She screamed
Daddy! Daddy!
She screamed over and over. We were on fire, Allison. It took seventeen days of agony before they let her die. She was six years old. Do you understand, Allison? They made her suffer, they kept her alive. I don't want you to suffer like my little girl. I love you, Allison. I don't want you to suffer.”

I do understand. My killer nurse is a man. A small man. His voice is pitched high and muffled from burns. From scars around his mouth. In his throat. He tried to save his six-year-old daughter. She took seventeen days to die. The accident was his fault.

As he goes out, my visitor whispers: “Not tonight, Allison. But I'll be back soon.”