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...But though princes pressed for her hand, she chose none of them. Then the next day she felt in a wandering mood...

 

HIS

 

After an insanely hectic week, on Friday evening Fish received a call from the dean, who told him the meeting with Donna had seemed productive. She had admitted to writing the note and seemed to understand the gravity of the situation in light of her previous actions. Her father had come up to get her for the three-day weekend, so the dean had a chance to speak with him, too. The father told him that Donna had been put back on medication for depression, and that he and his wife would be watching her closely.

Fish expressed his strong disappointment that more disciplinary action hadn’t been taken, but thanked the dean for his trouble. Still wary, Fish drummed his fingers on his desktop. He decided to call Rose, just to see how she was.

Rose answered the phone on the second ring. “Hello?”

“Hi. It’s me.”

“Hi Fish,” she said, her voice picking up. “Nice to hear another human voice!”

“Why, is everyone gone?”

 “It’s practically deserted here,” she admitted. “All my friends have gone home. It’s almost scary walking around here.”

He didn’t particularly like that scenario. “Have you been nervous?”

“Well, not really,” she said. “It’s been a quiet day. I got a chance to spend some time in the chapel and the library. But mostly I’ve just been cleaning lavatories. For custodial. That’s my job.”

“Sounds refreshing.”

“It is, in a way. I’m all for manual labor, to a certain extent. It’s a good change from mental work. So—what are you up to this weekend?”

“Working on a paper, of course,” he said with a sigh. “The biggest one of the semester.”

“I’ve got one too. What is yours on?”

“John Keats. I had to choose a long poem of his and compare it with the work of the other Romantics. Not one of my favorite poets, but he did write an occasional really good verse.”

“I love the ‘Eve of St. Agnes,’” Rose said.

“Do you?” he asked, feeling suddenly self-conscious. “That’s the one I picked. It’s one of my favorites, too. Very sad, though. One hopes for a happier ending than that—if you follow the interpretation that the lovers die in the storm at the end.”

“Or a happier ending than Keats himself had—dying of consumption before he could marry the love of his life,” Rose said with a sigh. “Why is it that unrequited love always seems more serious and more real than...well, than ‘requited’ love?”

 “I’m not sure,” Fish said. “Probably because of this fallen world we live in. Too many stories in real life end with tragedy—or at least with lonely struggles in the dark and silent crucifixions. So tragedy sounds like reality to us. Comedy always seems a bit artificial.”

“It’s not artificial, Fish, it’s supernatural,” Rose said. “At least, that’s what Professor Dawson says. It points to heaven.”

“Interesting,” Fish said, “particularly that a theology professor would have something to say about literature.”

“That’s what I like about this place—all the different subjects are kind of mixed up with each other,” Rose said. “It’s neat.”

“Glad to hear it,” Fish said, rubbing his neck. “So what are you doing?”

“My big medical ethics paper I’ve got to do interviews for. I’m scheduled to go see a doctor tomorrow, and then I have to figure out someone else I can interview. So that will occupy me most of the day.”

“Would you want to do something tomorrow night?” He almost couldn’t help himself.

“I would really like that.”

“Good. Give me a call tomorrow afternoon and we’ll talk. Call me if you get bored, or for any reason whatsoever, okay?”

 “Okay.”

 

Hers

 

Hanging up, Rose felt buoyant. A sort-of date with Fish, for the first time. Still no Katerian proof, but this was hopeful, wasn’t it? At least he wanted to be friends with her. But in the meantime, she had something less pleasant to do. There were only a few students staying here over break, which meant she was very limited in her ability to get a car to go out for the interview tomorrow. She had been invited out to a facility for comatose patients and felt she really shouldn’t pass up the opportunity.

 Bracing herself, she dialed a number she knew far too well.

“Paul? Hi, it’s me, Rose. Yes, I’m doing okay. I was wondering if I could borrow your car again tomorrow?”

She hated to ask him because she was afraid he would read it as a fact that she was interested in him, when she wasn’t.

But Paul didn’t seem to mind. “When do you need it?”

“Tomorrow at nine?” Rose winced, waiting.

“Actually, that would be cool. I have to go someplace at three tomorrow. So long as you could be back by three, you can have it.”

“I’m sure I could,” she said. “If I’m lucky, I might find someone else to interview tomorrow too, but I’m sure I’ll be done with my interview with the doctor by the early afternoon.”

“Doctor? What doctor?”

Rose flipped through her notes in her special yellow notebook. “Dr. Madelyn Murray of Graceton Long-Term Care Facility. She specializes in treating comatose patients. Dr. Cooper said it’s one of the best facilities of its type in the country. I was lucky to get an interview with her.”

“Excellent. So you’re speeding right along with comatose patients?”

“Yes, I guess I am.”

“That’s a shame you couldn’t find those notes of your dad’s. Are you going to go out to that old barn sometime again?”

“Maybe. Actually, maybe I could on the way back from the interview. I think it’s in the same direction. But I have to find at least one other person to interview, and I haven’t found any. I thought I would ask Dr. Murray and hope for some luck.”

“Well, stop by my room tomorrow and I’ll give you the keys. Glad it’s going so well.”

“Okay. Thanks a lot, Paul. I really appreciate it.”

She hung up and sighed. If only she hadn’t had to ask him. She could tell he still liked her.

Saturday at nine sharp, she arrived at Graceton Long-Term Care Facility. It was a vast, handsome Victorian mansion with wings stretching out in either direction, set high on a wooded hill in a secluded section of the country. It certainly seemed peaceful.

When Rose walked inside, she was struck by the hush of the place, with all the residents entombed in sleep. Rose hesitantly found the receptionist and told her about her appointment. The nurse ushered her into a small room, and after a minute, a woman of medium height, with curly blond hair cropped short and a furrowed but pleasant face and somber eyes walked into the room. She wore a white coat over a dark green pantsuit.

“Hello. I’m Dr. Madelyn Murray. You must be the student, Rose—?”

“Brier,” Rose said, shaking her hand.

“Brier,” the doctor repeated, as if the name sounded strange to her.

“It’s a German name. My dad’s family is German. Actually, they’re from this area.”

“I thought I’d heard the name before,” the doctor said. She gestured to two chairs and sat down in the larger one. Rose took the other. “So what got you interested in comatose patients, Ms. Brier?”

“Well, actually, I didn’t start out on the topic. My dad, who used to be a reporter in town, had done an interview with a nurse about patient abuse at the hospital near here and at first I wanted to find his notes and follow up on that.”

“Really?” Dr. Murray said. “You mean Robert Graves Memorial Hospital?”

“I guess so. Would you know about anything going on there?” Rose couldn’t help being a bit intrigued.

Dr. Murray hesitated. “There had been rumors,” she admitted. “But that was a long time ago. I’m afraid I don’t know much about what goes on there now. Certainly no one there was ever charged with abuse. So you were trying to re-open your father’s investigation?”

“Not really,” Rose laughed. “Well, my dad died a number of years ago, and all I would have had to go on were his notes he stored in our family’s old barn. But I went out there and dug through them and couldn’t find them. There was a lot I just couldn’t get through. So, you know, I sort of put that aside and picked comatose patients instead. My sister was in a coma once,” she added. “After an accident.”

“How long?”

“About two days.”

Dr. Murray nodded. “That’s typical for a short-term coma. Most people who are going to come back, come back in that time. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.”

“How long have most of the patients in your facility been comatose?” Rose asked.

“It varies. We are a research facility in that area, so we get referrals from all over.”  She stood up. “If you’d like to come with me, I can give you a short tour. Then I’m afraid I have to get back to work.”

Remembering that the doctor was very busy, Rose flushed a little and got up. “Thanks very much.”

The tour was interesting, and Dr. Murray was kind and complete in her answers to Rose’s questions. She gave Rose some other recommendations of nurses and doctors in the field. She even let Rose use her phone to call a few of them and ask if she could come and talk to them that morning.

Thanking Dr. Murray, Rose drove out for the interview with the other doctor, who was more busy and less happy to talk with an undergraduate about medical ethics. He could only spare a few moments for questions and seemed to have said yes to the interview only because Dr. Murray had recommended her.

The third interviewee, a nun named Sister Genevieve who worked at a small Catholic hospital, was also busy, but gave Rose a short interview. When Rose asked for any further people she could interview, the nun said reflectively, “Well, you could try talking to Dr. Murray at the Graceton Long-Term Care Facility, but she’s so busy I doubt she’d see a student.”

“Actually, I just met with her this morning,” Rose said.

The sister smiled. “Did you? Well, I’m sure you have some wonderful material for your paper. She’s the most knowledgeable specialist in the field that you could find in this area. A truly brilliant doctor.”

Rose was glad to hear that. The only other person the nun could recommend was a local doctor, and when Rose called his office, she found he had no Saturday hours. But maybe she had enough right here, and it was barely noon. She decided to take some time to go back to the barn.

Rose drove slowly back towards the barn, thinking hard. Inevitably, thoughts of Fish dogged her mind again, as they usually did. He was coming to see her tonight, and of course that was a very distracting thought... She was so deep in distraction that she missed the exit for her family’s farm.

“Darn it!” she moaned, seeing a sign that read, “Next exit 5 miles.” She would have to turn around and go back.

But as she drove on, she realized she was starving. What she really needed to do was find someplace to eat.

It was perhaps not too surprising that when she saw the mall at the next exit, she was extremely tempted. Additionally, in a mall, there would not only be things to eat, but clothing—she was feeling the urge to go shopping again, especially now that there were no classes. And she did have a little bit of money left from cashing her student work check.

She parked the car at the mall and hurried inside, her stomach crying for food. There was a Chinese food place right inside the door and she ordered three egg rolls and a carton of stir-fried chicken.

Rose sat by the mall fountain and ate her lunch, licking her fingers meditatively after she had finished. If she spent some time typing up notes from the interviews and then did some more research on the Internet, there was a chance she could actually start writing this paper tomorrow. There was really no need for her to go back to the barn. But she decided to go anyway, the thought of her dad’s research nagging at her for some reason. It might be interesting just to find the notes, even if she couldn’t use them.

All the same, she still had some time, and there was no reason why she shouldn’t do a bit of browsing in the mall first.

Throwing out the empty containers from her lunch, she sighed and passed dreamily into the first fashion store she passed. As she wandered around the racks of clothes, her mind drifted over the lyrics of a soft pop song, and she fingered garments and wrinkled her nose at the badness of this year’s clothing. She found that shopping in a mall, as tempting as it was, was rarely rewarding in terms of finding something she could both like and afford.

She wandered around the first store and passed into the second, casting her eyes around for something remotely beautiful. The sales rack looked interesting, so she started to slide hangers aside and study different items.

It was only after a few minutes had passed that she began to feel as though someone were watching her. She looked around, perplexed, but saw no one, and returned to her shopping, but more aware. Then she looked up abruptly, and her eyes met a girl’s eyes across the store. Donna.

The blond girl was also going through a rack of clothing. Seeing Rose, an odd smile crossed her face. Rose dropped her eyes, and felt the chill again. Tara had told her at the cast party that Donna’s medication was helping her, but that sometimes she was unpredictable. Rose didn’t like dealing with unpredictable people.

Feeling as though she were running away, she shouldered her purse and walked out of the store. I’m only being prudent, she told herself. She passed into the next store, an Indian boutique which had caught her eye when she first walked in.

Here at last were clothes that reminded her of New York City. She found a black dress that was so sleek that she had to try it on, and a beaded jacket. With eager anticipation, she went into the large dressing room to try on the clothes.

They fitted well, and Rose studied herself in the mirror, wondering if there was any way she could justify buying them. There was no way she could afford them now, but some stores had layaway plans, and perhaps she could leave a down payment...she ruminated, and decided at last that as gorgeous as they were, she didn’t need them now.

A bit sadly, she patted the fine garments and hung them back on their hangers. But before she opened the door of the dressing room, something made her pause and crack it open.

Peering through the slit, she could see that Donna was in the store, looking around. There was a strange-looking thug-like girl, wearing a nose ring, whom Rose didn’t recognize, standing next to her. Rose remained still, watching them. After a moment had passed, Donna turned to her companion and nodded, and they both walked out of the store.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Rose slipped out of the dressing room, and returned the garments. She thought to herself that she might as well return to the sales rack she had left so abruptly in the other store. There was a purple sweater there that had interested her.

Now feeling a bit foolish, she sidled out of the store, glancing around, and when the coast was clear, she went back into the store.

She found the sales rack and chose a position where she could see the entrance but where she was partially obscured. After a moment, she found the purple sweater and was just considering it again when she caught sight of Donna and her friend coming into the store. It wasn’t clear whether or not they had seen her.

Without a second thought, she shrank down beneath the sales rack. She saw two sets of legs walking towards her, and felt behind her. There was a rack of long formal dresses, and she slid between the folds and backed against the wall, completely hidden.

Her heart pounding, she listened. The footsteps came closer, passed around her. She heard Donna blowing out her breath.

“I could have sworn she was just here,” Rose heard Donna musing.

“Why are we following this girl?” her friend asked.

“She made my life miserable this past semester. A real snob. I wonder what she would do if we cornered her someplace?”

“She looks like the type who would freak out easily.”

“Yes, she is. Come on, let’s go back and check that other store.”

The footsteps passed away from Rose’s hiding place, but she still tensed, listening. After a long moment, she crept out and got to her feet.

“I am not the type who freaks out easily,” she said under her breath indignantly. But all the same, she was uneasy. If Donna had been a completely sane person, Rose would have defiantly remained where she was, daring a confrontation, but in this situation, she thought that Fish would recommend caution.

Fish...if only she could contact him. She peered out the door and saw that there was a sign for a phone booth just across the mallway.

Swiftly, she walked out of the store and glanced around the mall. No sign of Donna. There was a group of teenagers passing by, and she joined the fringes and crossed to the phone booth, slipping out of the group as they passed the corridor.

She hurried to the recess where the phone was, pulling out her purse and finding her phone book and a phone card, wishing that she had her own cell phone. Rapidly, she dialed Fish’s cell phone.

There was no answer, just an electronic message saying that the cellular customer was out of range. Frustrated, she slid her phone card again and tried calling his home.

After three rings, the answering machine came on. She cleared her throat, feeling a little silly, but said relentlessly, “Hello? Fish, this is Rose. I wanted to call you because...I’m at the mall in Meyerstown, and Donna is here, following me around. Right now I don’t see her... but, well, you’re not there, so I can’t ask you what I should do. I guess I’ll just try to get out and go home. I’ll give you a call later on. Bye.”

She hung up the phone, watching the passing people. Still no sign of Donna.

Hastily, she walked down the corridor and hurried towards the entrance. She tried not to look around too obviously as she walked, but she was scanning the crowds all the same. As she passed the fountain, her eyes traveled up to the second level where more crowds walked. Then she saw a familiar blond figure looking down at her from the balcony, as though she had been waiting for Rose. Donna pointed at her, and Rose’s throat tightened. She saw Donna and her friend race away—probably towards the escalators to get back downstairs.

Now Rose threw decorum to the wind and ran. She sped down the slippery tile floor and turned the corner to the exit more quickly than she should have and almost fell.

But she recovered, quickly exited the building, and made her way back to Paul’s car. I’m not scared, she told herself, I’m just extremely anxious to leave.

As she pulled out of the parking lot, she caught a glimpse of Donna and her friend standing at the entrance of the mall. Then the girl pointed in her direction. Rose drove out of the mall parking lot at a pace that was slightly above the speed limit.

By the time she had passed through two lights and gotten back on the highway, she had started to relax again. She was trying to decide whether she should just go back to her dorm rather than returning to the barn. I shouldn’t have gotten so nervous, she chided herself. You’re starting to behave like Blanche. As a teenager, her older sister had a rather timid nature, and to Rose, had always seemed to be shying away from some as yet unseen peril.

The words of Donna’s friend echoed in Rose’s mind: She looks like the type who would freak out easily.

“No, I’m not,” Rose said out loud. She wasn't going to let Donna win by going home now.

This time she was sure to take the correct exit, and she drove up to the old farm without further mishap and parked the car in front of the abandoned house. She got out of the car, and the wind rustled through her hair and skipped onto the grass around the barn, waving to it as though in greeting.

Returning to the barn was now like returning to an old friend, and she patted the worn doors as she slipped inside. “Hello again,” she said softly. Talking out loud when she knew she was alone—or should be alone—always reassured her.

She climbed up the ladder to the hayloft easily, whistling. There was a faint rustling above her, and she knew she was frightening mice. “Boo!” she said as she reached the top, and grinned at the empty loft. Since she was all alone in the place, as an extra precaution, she pulled up the ladder after her and set it on the rickety boards at the top.

Continuing to whistle, she pulled out the stack of boxes where she had left off, and started to go through them. The very first new box she pulled out was filled with notes from her father’s work. She sifted through them rapidly since they were clearly organized. As she worked, she was barely aware of the wind whistling through the old barn, rattling the windows and bumping the door.

After getting sidetracked in the next box of miscellaneous newspaper clippings that her dad had found interesting, which Rose also found interesting, she had to stop and remember exactly what she was looking for. After going through the box, she replaced the lid and reached for the next box.

To her surprise, it was filled with photos and mementos from the family—children’s drawings, play programs, birthday cards. She looked through them briefly, recognizing members of her dad’s family—cousins and uncles and aunts. About halfway through the box was a curious package—a large leather envelope, tied with a black string.

Rose pulled at the knot and it came undone a bit grudgingly, and the four points of the front opened like a large leather bud to reveal a neat stack of assorted papers. On top was a letter that began, “Dear Dan,” in a handwriting that Rose was convinced was her own. But as she read it, she realized that this must be a letter from her mom, when her mom was her age. It was a summer letter to the boyfriend she had just met the previous semester, chatty, faintly romantic, with a wistful last sentence: “Looking forward to your next letter—boy, you write long ones! I’m so glad. Sincerely, Jeannie.”

There was no date, but Rose was sure that this must have been one of the first letters her mom had written to her dad. It was clear that this folio was for documents of special importance. She looked at the next one. It was another letter from her mom, this one from further on. At this point, they must have been talking about getting engaged. It was a bit more serious in tone. “I think that I’m ready for whatever God has next for us both,” her mother had written. “I’m so glad to have found you, as silly as that sounds.”

It didn’t sound silly at all, Rose thought. She wished that she had some of her dad’s letters to read. Maybe Mom had them somewhere.

The next few letters were business letters—one informing her dad that he had won a scholarship, the next a Christmas letter from an employer that said, “Your bonus check is enclosed.” The next, a note from a publishing office saying, “We’ve accepted your article for publication.” Maybe Dad’s first writing job, she thought. She set the letters aside to take with her.

The next thing was a white lined pad, and on the top line was a sentence reading, “Interviews with Tennille, Nurse at R.G.M.H.”

Rose took a deep breath. Here it was, the material she had given up looking for. Her dad had separated it from his other notes because he must have felt it was significant. Why had he left this behind? Possibly it had gotten mislaid.

Feeling the bumpy surface of the pad with her fingertips, she scanned over it, but quickly got lost. There were too many medical terms for her to follow. It didn’t seem to be much about patient abuse, but there were a lot of references to organ surgery. She turned to the next item and found a single sheet of paper, also in her dad’s handwriting. It was more of the interview, done at a later date.

“Proof of what I saw is the following: there was a man in a coma, a poor man in good health, who had gone into a coma during an accident. I had started to suspect that something was strange about his case...”

Then followed a lot of medical information. Rose’s eyes jumped to this sentence, “I realized that the comatose patient had symptoms similar to withdrawal…” More medical terms. “But he was never left alone.” 

There was a margin note scribbled in a tense masculine hand. “Saw doctor administering dose. Only eyewitness?”

More medical terms. “Then the patient’s family was found. They wanted him transferred…Change in his chart…The following drugs were apparently given. I collected them from the trash can. Five vials propofol…”

The barn door slammed in the wind, but Rose ignored it.

There followed another list of drugs with names Rose didn’t recognize.  Just then a sound broke into Rose’s consciousness, distracting her. There was a car outside.

Abruptly she closed the folio, swiftly retied the cord, and silently thrust it into the box. She crouched down, listening.

There was no further sound, and she wondered to herself if she had imagined it all.

She waited. The wind rushed over the hill again, and the door of the barn thumped open and shut. Silence. The timbers creaked—or was it footsteps? She didn’t dare to move.

As she listened, she suddenly began to wonder if she had indeed been alone all this time, as she had assumed. Was there someone here? The moaning breeze continued to work its noisy way through the barn, and she found it hard to figure out if there was someone moving through the barn in addition to the invisible hand of the wind.

I’m being silly, she told herself. There’s no one here. Maybe I even imagined that car.

But suppose she hadn’t? Thoughts of Donna and her weird friend flitted through her mind again. More nonsense, she told herself, licking her lips. But the pit in her stomach told her that there actually was some danger—real danger—here.

Steadily and silently, she rose to her feet and peered around the edge of the loft. There was no sign of anyone. Tentatively, she lifted her foot and took a step forward, noiselessly. She had more of a view of the barn below, but still no one.

Another step. Another. She made herself breathe normally, expecting to see Donna’s grinning face hovering below any moment. At last her foot stepped onto the creaking loose boards at the edge of the loft. She stood in silence, looking down. There was still nothing.

On edge, her eyes traveled slowly over the contents of the barn, sensing that something was amiss. The door banged open and shut again, and was still. The old machinery and scattered hay looked the same as before.

Then she saw a brown snake lying coiled up on the barn floor and caught her breath.

No, stop it, she told herself sharply. It wasn’t a snake, it was just a coil of brown hemp rope.

Rope. She stared hard at it, feeling a tremor in her stomach unexpectedly. There was something wrong. When she had just walked past that post about an hour ago, that rope had been hanging from a nail on a post. Someone had taken it down. As if getting ready to use it.

A very real fear came over her as she looked at the coiled twine. It would be very easy, too easy, to come upon someone alone in a barn, and overpower them. Especially if you had mischief in mind... And she was trapped up here, away from her car, away from human help. If she screamed, no one would hear her. Yes, it would be too easy for her to get hurt...

Inundated with mental terrors, she took a hasty step backwards.

The board beneath her feet suddenly cracked and tilted forward, throwing her off balance. She stumbled, fell, and tried to grab the edge of the loft.  But instead she grabbed the ladder lying on the edge, which started to slide over the side—

There was someone—standing right behind her—

The ladder toppled, her hands holding uselessly onto it.

She fell, helplessly, into a dark dungeon, whose painful bonds clamped over her abruptly and she was still.