The House of Thunder (12 page)
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...
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.
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.”
Susan smiled. “Sounds like you might have a memorable night ahead of you.”
“It’s virtually guaranteed,” Mrs. Baker said, turning toward the door.
“Uh ... before you go.”
The nurse turned to her. “Yes, honey, what do you need?”
“Would you ... uh ... check on Mrs. Seiffert?”
Mrs. Baker looked puzzled.
“Well,” Susan said uneasily, “it’s just ... she’s been so silent ... and even though she’s sleeping, it seems as if she’s too silent ... and I wondered if maybe ...”
Mrs. Baker went straight to the second bed, pulled back the end of the curtain, and slipped behind it.
Susan tried to see beyond the curtain before it fell back into place, but she wasn’t able to get a glimpse of Jessica Seiffert or of anything else other than the nurse’s back.
She looked up at Tracey and Hepburn gesticulating and arguing in silence on the TV screen. She ate a spoonful of the ice cream, which tasted wonderful and hurt her teeth. She looked at the curtain again.
Mrs. Baker reappeared, and the curtain shimmered into place behind her, and again Susan didn’t have a chance to see anything beyond.
“Relax,” Mrs. Baker said. “She hasn’t passed away. She’s sleeping like a baby.”
“Oh.”
“Listen, kid, don’t let it prey on your mind. Okay? She’s not going to die in this room. She’ll be here for a couple of days, maybe a week, until her condition’s deteriorated enough for her to be transferred to the intensive care unit. That’s where it’ll happen, there among all the beeping and clicking life support machines that finally won’t be able to support her worth a damn. Okay?”
Susan nodded. “Okay.”
“Good girl. Now eat your ice cream, and I’ll see you in the morning.”
After Thelma Baker left, Susan turned up the sound on the TV set and ate all of her ice cream and tried not to look at Mrs. Seiffert’s shrouded bed.
The exercise and the large serving of ice cream eventually conspired to make her drowsy. She fell asleep watching
Adam’s Rib.
Adam’s Rib.
In the dream, she was on a TV game show, in an audience of people who were wearing funny costumes. She herself was dressed as a hospital patient, wearing pajamas and a bandage around her head. She realized she was on “Let’s Make a Deal.” The host of the show, Monty Hall, was standing beside her. “All right, Susan!” he said with syrupy enthusiasm. “Do you want to keep the thousand dollars you’ve already won, or do you want to trade it for whatever’s behind curtain number one!” Susan looked at the stage and saw that there were not three curtains, as usual; there were, instead, three hospital beds concealed by privacy curtains. “I’ll keep the thousand dollars,” she said. And Monty Hall said, “Oh, Susan, do you
really
think that’s wise? Are you
really
sure you’re making the right decision?” And she said, “I’ll keep the thousand dollars, Monty.” And Monty Hall looked around at the studio audience, flashing his white-white teeth in a big smile. “What do you think, audience? Should she keep the thousand, considering how little a thousand dollars will buy in these times of high inflation, or should she trade it for what’s behind curtain number one?” The audience roared in unison:
“Trade it! Trade it!”
Susan shook her head adamantly and said, “I don’t want what’s behind the curtain. Please, I don’t want it.” Monty Hall—who had ceased to look anything like Monty Hall and now looked distinctly satanic, with arched eyebrows and terrible dark eyes and a wicked mouth—snatched the thousand dollars out of her hand and said, “You’ll take the curtain, Susan, because it’s really what you deserve. You have it coming to you, Susan. The curtain! Let’s see what’s behind curtain number one!” On the stage, the curtain encircling the first hospital bed was whisked aside, and two men dressed as patients were sitting on the edge of the bed: Harch and Quince. They were both holding scalpels, and the stage lights glinted on the razor-sharp cutting edges of the instruments. Harch and Quince rose off the bed and started across the stage, heading toward the audience, toward Susan, their scalpels held out in front of them. The audience roared with delight and applauded.
really
think that’s wise? Are you
really
sure you’re making the right decision?” And she said, “I’ll keep the thousand dollars, Monty.” And Monty Hall looked around at the studio audience, flashing his white-white teeth in a big smile. “What do you think, audience? Should she keep the thousand, considering how little a thousand dollars will buy in these times of high inflation, or should she trade it for what’s behind curtain number one?” The audience roared in unison:
“Trade it! Trade it!”
Susan shook her head adamantly and said, “I don’t want what’s behind the curtain. Please, I don’t want it.” Monty Hall—who had ceased to look anything like Monty Hall and now looked distinctly satanic, with arched eyebrows and terrible dark eyes and a wicked mouth—snatched the thousand dollars out of her hand and said, “You’ll take the curtain, Susan, because it’s really what you deserve. You have it coming to you, Susan. The curtain! Let’s see what’s behind curtain number one!” On the stage, the curtain encircling the first hospital bed was whisked aside, and two men dressed as patients were sitting on the edge of the bed: Harch and Quince. They were both holding scalpels, and the stage lights glinted on the razor-sharp cutting edges of the instruments. Harch and Quince rose off the bed and started across the stage, heading toward the audience, toward Susan, their scalpels held out in front of them. The audience roared with delight and applauded.
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