The House of Thunder (10 page)

But she didn’t think so.

Was there a chance that the two men here in the hospital were the sons of Harch and Quince? No. That was a ridiculous theory. While they were too young to be Harch and Quince, these look-alikes were too old to be the children of those men. Neither Harch nor Quince would even have reached puberty by the year in which Richmond and Johnson were born; they couldn’t possibly have sired children that long ago.

But now that the concept of blood relationships had arisen, she wondered if these two might be brothers of Harch and Quince. She didn’t know if Harch had a brother or not. At the trial, his family had been there to offer him their support. However, there had only been his parents and a younger sister, no brother. Susan vaguely recalled that Randy Quince’s brother had shown up at the trial. In fact, now that she thought hard about it, she remembered that the two Quince brothers had looked somewhat alike. But not exactly alike. Besides, the brother had been several years older than Randy. Of course, there might have been a younger Quince brother at home, one who had been too young to come to the trial. Brothers ... She couldn’t rule it out altogether. These men could conceivably be brothers to those who had terrorized her in the House of Thunder.

But, again, she didn’t think so.

That left only one explanation: insanity. Maybe she was losing her mind. Suffering from delusions. Hallucinations. Perhaps she was taking the most innocent ingredients and cooking up bizarre paranoid fantasies.

No. She refused to give much consideration to that possibility. Oh, maybe she was too serious about life; that was an accusation she would be willing to consider. Sometimes she thought that she was almost too well balanced, too much in control of herself; she envied other people the ability to do silly, spur-of-the-moment, irrational, exciting things. If she were more able to let herself go now and then, more able to let her hair down, she wouldn’t have missed out on quite so much fun over the years. Too sober, too serious, too much of an ant and not enough of a grasshopper? Yes. But insane, out of her mind? Definitely not.

And now she had run out of answers to the doppelgänger puzzle. Those were the only solutions that had thus far presented themselves, but none of them satisfied her.

She decided not to mention Peter Johnson to either Mrs. Baker or Dr. McGee. She was afraid she’d sound ... flighty.

She huddled under the covers, watching the churning, sooty sky, wondering if she should simply shrug off the look-alikes, just forget all about them. Wondering if she should merely be amazed by them—or frightened of them. Wondering ...

 
 
That afternoon, without asking for help, she got out of bed and into the wheelchair. Her legs almost failed to support her even for the two or three seconds she needed to stand on them; they felt as if the bones had been extracted from them. She became dizzy, and sweat popped out on her brow, but she made it into the chair all by herself.

Mrs. Baker entered the room only a moment later and scowled at her. “Did you get out of bed alone?”

“Yep. I told you I was stronger than you thought.”

“That was a reckless thing to do.”

“Oh, no. It was easy.”

“Is that so?”

“Easy as cake.”

“Then why did you break out in a sweat?”

Susan sheepishly wiped a hand across her damp brow. “I must be going through the change of life.”

“Now don’t you try to make me laugh,” Mrs. Baker said. “You deserve to be scolded, and I’m just the grouch to do it. You’re a stubborn one, aren’t you?”

“Me? Stubborn?” Susan asked, pretending to be amazed by the very notion. “Not at all. I just know my own mind, if that’s what you mean.”

Mrs. Baker grimaced. “Stubborn is what I said, and stubborn is what I mean. Why, for heaven’s sake, you might have slipped and fallen.”

“But I didn’t.”

“You might have broken an arm or fractured a hip or something, and that would’ve set your recovery back weeks! I swear, if you were twenty years younger, I’d turn you over my knee and give you a good spanking.”

Susan burst out laughing.

After a moment in which she was startled by her own statement, Mrs. Baker laughed, too. She leaned against the foot of the bed, shaking with laughter.

Just when Susan thought she had control of herself, her eyes met the nurse’s eyes, and they grinned at each other, and then the laughter started all over again.

At last, as her laughing subsided to giggling, Mrs. Baker wiped tears from her eyes and said, “I can’t believe I really said that!”

“Turn me over your knee, would you?”

“I guess you must bring out the mothering instincts in me.”

“Well, it sure doesn’t sound like standard nursing procedure,” Susan said.

“I’m just glad you weren’t insulted.”

“And I’m just glad I’m not twenty years younger,” Susan said, and they both started laughing again.

A couple of minutes later, when Susan wheeled herself into the hall to get some exercise, she felt in better spirits than she had been at any time since waking from the coma. The spontaneous, uncontrollable fit of laughter with Mrs. Baker had been wonderfully therapeutic. That shared moment, that unexpected but welcome intimacy, made Susan feel less alone and made the hospital seem considerably less cold and less gloomy than it had seemed only a short while ago.

Her arms still ached from the morning’s tour in the wheelchair, but in spite of the soreness in her muscles, she was determined to make at least one more circuit of the second floor.

She wasn’t worried about encountering Richmond and Johnson. She felt that she could handle such an encounter now. In fact she rather hoped she did meet them again. If she talked with them and took a closer look at them, their amazing resemblance to Harch and Quince might prove to be less remarkable than she had first thought. She didn’t believe that would be the case, but she was willing to keep an open mind. And once she’d taken a second look at them, if they were still dead ringers for Harch and Quince, perhaps talking to them and getting to know them a bit would make them seem less threatening. In spite of what Philip Marlowe, that inimitable detective, had said, Susan very much wanted to believe that this was all just an incredible coincidence, for the alternatives to coincidence were bizarre and frightening.

By the time she had wheeled around the halls to room 216, she hadn’t seen either of the look-alikes. She paused outside Peter Johnson’s open door, finally worked up sufficient courage for the task at hand, and propelled herself inside. Going through the doorway, she put an unfelt smile on her face. She had a carefully rehearsed line ready:
I saw you in the hall this morning, and you look so much like an old friend of mine that I just had to stop by and find out if...

But Peter Johnson wasn’t there.

It was a semiprivate room, like her own, and the man in the other bed said, “Pete? He’s downstairs in radiology. They had some tests they wanted to put him through.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, maybe I’ll stop by later.”

“Any message for him?”

“No. It wasn’t anything important.”

In the hall again, she considered asking one of the nurses for Bill Richmond’s room number. Then she remembered that he’d just had surgery today and probably wouldn’t be feeling too well. This was the wrong time to pay him a visit.

When Susan got back to her own room, Mrs. Baker was pulling shut the privacy curtain that completely enclosed the second bed. “Brought you a roommate,” she said, turning away from the closed curtain.

“Oh, good,” Susan said. “A little company will make the time go a lot faster.”

“Unfortunately, she won’t be much company,” Mrs. Baker said. “She’ll probably spend most of her time sleeping. She’s sedated right now, in fact.”

“What’s her name?”

“Jessica Seiffert.”

“Is she very ill?”

Mrs. Baker sighed and nodded. “Terminal cancer, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Well, I don’t suppose she’s got many regrets. Jessie’s seventy-eight years old, after all, and she’s led a pretty full life,” Mrs. Baker said.

“You know her?”

“She lives here in Willawauk. And now, what about you? Do you feel up to taking a couple of steps, exercising those legs a little?”

“Absolutely.”

The nurse pushed the wheelchair close to Susan’s bed. “When you get up, hold on to the railing with your right hand, and hold on to me with your left hand. I’ll walk you around nice and slow to the other side.”

Susan was shaky and hesitant at first, but with each step, she gained self-assurance and moved faster. She wasn’t ready to challenge anyone to a footrace—not even poor Jessica Seiffert—but she could feel the muscles flexing in her legs, and she had a pleasant, animal sense of being whole and functional. She was confident that she would spring back to health faster than McGee thought and would be discharged from the hospital well ahead of schedule.

When they reached the other side of the bed, Mrs. Baker said, “Okay, now up and in with you.”

“Wait. Let me rest a second, and then let’s go back around to the other side.”

“Don’t tax yourself.”

“I can handle it. It’s no strain.”

“You’re sure?”

“I wouldn’t lie to you, would I? You might spank me.”

The nurse grinned. “Keep that in mind.”

As they stood there between the beds, letting Susan gather her strength for the return trip, both of them let their gazes travel to the curtain that was drawn tightly around the second bed, only two or three feet away.

“Does she have any family?” Susan asked.

“Not really. Nobody close.”

“That would be awful,” Susan whispered.

“What?”

“To die alone.”

“No need to whisper,” Mrs. Baker said. “She can’t hear you. Anyway, Jessie’s dealing with it damned well. Except that it’s been quite a blow to her vanity. She was a beautiful woman when she was younger. And even in her later years, she was handsome. But she’s lost an awful lot of weight, and the cancer’s eaten at her until she looks haggard. She was always a tad vain about her appearance, so the disfiguring part of the disease is a lot worse for her than the knowledge that she’s dying. She has a great many friends in town, but she specifically asked them not to come visit her in the hospital this time. She wants them to remember her as the woman she was. Doesn’t want anyone but doctors and nurses to see her. That’s why I drew the curtain around her bed. She’s sedated, but if she woke up even for a few seconds and saw the curtain wasn’t drawn, she’d be terribly upset.”

“Poor soul,” Susan said.

“Yes,” Mrs. Baker said, “but don’t feel too badly about it. That time comes for all of us, sooner or later, and she’s held it off longer than a lot of folks.”

They retraced their path around the bed, and then Susan got up into it and leaned back gratefully against the pillows.

“Hungry?” Mrs. Baker asked.

“Now that you mention it, yes. Famished.”

“Good. You’ve got to put some flesh on your bones. I’ll bring you a snack.”

Raising her bed into a sitting position, Susan said, “Do you think it would bother Mrs. Seiffert if I switched on the television?”

“Not at all. She won’t even know it’s on. And if she does wake up and hear it, maybe she’ll want to watch, too. Maybe it’ll draw her out of her shell.”

As Mrs. Baker left the room, Susan used the remote-control box to turn on the TV. She checked several channels until she found an old movie that was just beginning:
Adam’s
Rib with Spencer Tracey and Katharine Hepburn. She had seen it before, but it was one of those sophisticated, witty films that you could see again and again without becoming bored. She put the remote-control box aside and settled back to enjoy herself.

However, she found it difficult to pay attention to the opening scenes of the movie. Her eyes repeatedly drifted to the other bed. The drawn curtain made her uneasy.

It was no different from the privacy curtain that could be drawn around her own bed. It was hooked into a U-shaped metal track in the ceiling, and it fell to within a foot of the floor, blocking all but the wheels of the bed from view. Her own curtain had been pulled shut on a couple of occasions during the past two days—when it had been necessary for her to use a bedpan, and when she had changed pajamas.

Nevertheless, Jessica Seiffert’s closed curtain disturbed Susan.

It’s really nothing to do with the curtain itself, she thought. It’s just being in the same room with someone who’s dying. That’s bound to make anyone feel a bit strange.

She stared at the curtain.

No. No, it wasn’t the presence of death that bothered her. Something else. Something that she couldn’t put her finger on.

The curtain hung straight, white, as perfectly still as if it were only a painting of a curtain.

The movie was interrupted for a commercial break, and Susan used the remote-control box to turn the sound all the way down.

Like a fly in amber, the room was suspended in silence.

The curtain was motionless; not even the slightest draft disturbed it.

Susan said, “Mrs. Seiffert?”

Nothing.

Mrs. Baker came in with a large dish of vanilla ice cream covered with canned blueberries. “How’s that look?” she asked as she put it down on the bed table and swung the table in front of Susan.

“Enormous,” Susan said, pulling her eyes away from the curtain. “I’ll never finish all of it.”

“Oh, yes, you will. You’re on the road back now. That’s plain to see. You’ll be surprised what an appetite you’ll have for the next week or two.” She patted her gray hair and said, “Well, my shift just ended. Got to get home and make myself especially pretty. I’ve got a big date tonight—if you can call bowling, a hamburger dinner, and drinks a ’big date.’But you should get a gander at the guy I’ve been dating lately. He’s a fine specimen of a man. If I was thirty years younger, I’d say he was a real hunk. He’s been a lumberman all his life. He’s got shoulders to measure a doorway. And you should see his hands! He’s got the biggest, hardest, most callused hands you’ve ever seen, but he’s as gentle as a lamb.”