“Sure. Could you pick us up on your way over?”
“That would be fine. I’ll be through here around five.” Fish glanced at his watch. “We’d better go get those boxes for Jean.”
“Okay,” Alex said, retreating from the car. “See you Friday.”
16
…Many young men sought to rescue the princess, as she lay in sleep.
HIS
“Hey, it’s snowing. Sure feels like Christmas is coming now,” Paul observed as they drove up to see Rose on a Friday night, in what had become a usual routine.
“You going home?” Alex asked.
“Of course,” Paul said. “Got my plane tickets to Chicago. Good cheap flight too.”
“James, when are you going back down to Virginia?” Alex turned to the sandy-haired quiet boy whom Fish had just met on this trip.
“Thursday. You need a ride back home?”
“Yeah, if you have room.”
“I’m going with my older sister, so I’ll have to see if the car’s full or not,” James said.
“You going home, Fish?” Alex said.
“I’m staying here for Christmas, if that’s what you mean,” Fish said.
“Where are your parents from?” James asked.
“They were from New York,” Fish said, and added in explanation, “They’re both dead.”
“Oh,” James was surprised. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. I’m sure it wasn’t your fault,” Fish said, passing a car on the road that led to Graceton Hall. He hadn’t looked forward to Christmas for a long time, and this year was certainly no exception.
“Snow, Rose!” Paul had scooped up a pile of it in his hands and presented it to the unconscious girl as they walked in the room. She was lying beneath white sheets, but her quilt was folded at the foot of the bed. Her room looked more homey now, with the addition of an antique end table and floral reading lamp, and more of her personal effects were distributed throughout the clinical setting, out of the way of the techs but still visible.
“She looks thrilled,” Alex said, sitting down in the chair beside her bed and taking off his black trench coat. “Hi Rose. How are you?”
“Hi Rose,” James said, a bit tentatively, imitating the others.
Fish said nothing to her, but squeezed her limp hand as he passed. He took up his post against the wall near the bed. There were only three chairs in the room, one of them Rose’s famous blue chair, which Fish had brought up himself.
They all watched as Paul carefully put a few snowflakes onto Rose’s outstretched hand. They dissolved rapidly.
“Can you feel that, Rose? The first snow of the year,” Paul said softly. “Wish you could see it. It looks beautiful.”
Paul was always doing that—finding something that could be smelled or heard or touched to bring to Rose. He took seriously the therapeutic effects that it might have, and was creative in coming up with unusual items to show her. Fish had to admire his efforts, and had privately copied them. For instance, the last time he had brought Rose flowers, he had put some of the petals into her hands so she could feel them, and brought them up to her nose so she might be able to smell them.
It was definitely an exercise of faith to do these things for a person who didn’t show the least signs of responding. According to Paul, sometimes people in comas could flutter their eyelashes, respond to touch, or communicate in other ways. Rose, rather enigmatically, did none of this. Dr. Murray, when asked, had agreed that her coma was peculiarly deep.
“Well, things have been quiet around Sacra Cor this week—everyone’s getting ready for finals,” Alex said. “Paul’s been an absolute bear this week, enforcing silence at all times. And it’s not even quiet hours yet.”
“Everyone’s compliant except for Leroy, who’s been periodically letting off fireworks just to get me to thrash him,” Paul laughed to himself, “—Oh boy, Rose, you would appreciate this. Leroy’s pyromania took over at last.”
He recounted the story. “I was studying in the courtyard today when Leroy suddenly stormed out of his room with a pair of pants. He hurled them on the ground and shouted at them, ‘And I never want to see you again!’ Then he stormed back inside.
“Needless to say, he got my attention. So I watched, and he came outside with a pizza box and lighter fluid...”
“Why’d he have lighter fluid?” James interrupted.
“Don’t ask,” Alex directed, rolling his eyes.
“Anyhow, Leroy put the box on the sidewalk between Lumen Christi and Cor and put the pants inside and doused them with lighter fluid. Then he lit a match to them. Naturally, the pants quickly sprouted flames and Leroy tucked them into the unsuspecting pizza box. He went over to Lumen Christi and pounded on the door, yelling, ‘Pizza, get it while it's hot!’ By this time, the box was also on fire. So he dropped it on the dirt beside the door and ran back to Sacra Cor. The box just blazed away while Leroy ran back with a tiny cup of water to douse it. Just as he reached the box, he tripped and spilled it. So he got up and ran wildly back into the dorm again.
“At this point, Patrick Frankham came out of Lumen Christi in a big huff, saw what was going on, and ran back into the building. Meanwhile, Leroy ran back out with another cup of water and just as he got to the pizza box, he tripped again and spilled all the water. He ran back inside to get more water. Pat came out with a fire extinguisher but stopped when he saw Leroy coming with a bucket of water. He relaxed, but then Leroy tripped again, and spilled the water all over Pat instead of the fire. Then Pat was furious. Leroy said, ‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’ And hurried back to get more water. But when he came out, he just had a tiny cup and he dropped three drops on the fire. That’s when Patrick started freaking out.
“Everyone was looking out the windows watching and I was on the ground rolling around laughing. Pat yelled at me to do something, but I couldn’t even get off the ground—I just couldn’t stop laughing. He started screaming, ‘I’m going to report your whole dorm to the dean!’ He was trying to get the fire extinguisher to work and finally succeeded. Leroy kept on bringing out cupfuls of water. In the end, Pat put the fire out and Leroy even took pictures of him saving the campus from an inferno—Anyhow, it was crazy.”
“See what I missed because I was in the library working on a paper,” Alex shook his head.
Fish had gotten to know Leroy a bit on some of the trips to see Rose, and could picture this all fairly vividly. “Quite a character.”
“There are plenty of Leroy stories,” Alex said. “Like, there was the time when Tony Firenza dumped water on him when he was asleep, and Leroy came up with this revenge scheme that was so complicated and insane that we spent two days trying to talk him out of it. Then there was the time he tried to convince the history professor of the continued existence of dinosaurs using material from the tabloid on-line archives.”
“And the time when you and Leroy dressed up as ninjas freshman year and attacked the proctor of Mater Dei during a dorm raid,” Paul added. “And the time we all went to the spring formal dressed as superheroes and no one would dance with us.”
“I thought that was the whole point!” Alex said in dismay. “The girls on campus throw fits if all the guys don’t show up at the school spring formal. So we knew we had to go, but we wanted to make it fun for ourselves. I thought it was the most interesting formal I had ever been at.”
“You spent most of your time hiding beside the refreshments table and shooting rubber bands at people who took more than two cookies at a time.” Paul said. “At least I was actively engaged in hero work.”
“Like, racing through the dancing couples shouting ‘Chastity Patrol!’” James laughed. “And Heather danced with me, even if I was in costume.”
“I told Rose all about that,” Paul said, a bit wistfully. “You thought it was great, didn’t you, Rose? She promised that if we did it again at this year’s spring formal, she’d come as Wanda the Space Girl.”
“Still might happen
,” Alex said, positively. “Right, Rose? You wouldn’t want to miss that.”
When Fish dropped the college kids back on campus, he noticed two figures hurrying through the falling snow towards Rose’s old dorm. He turned away without acknowledging them to anyone, but he had taken note. The shorter figure was Kateri, and the taller one was Donna. They were talking together easily, and laughing.
So Kateri has kept up her crusade to befriend Donna, he thought coolly. I hope it makes a difference.
Hers
Once again, she had pulled herself free and found herself walking in the dark palace, looking to the right and to the left. The water rippled around her as she walked, distorting images and tangling her senses. She gazed at the tall high tapestries in their elaborate frames, hanging pictures of branching trees in the darkness. On the other side, there were rows and rows of closed doors. It was a labyrinth she never seemed to come to the end of.
If I could escape this castle, she thought, I might be free. Providing this castle is actually in this world, and not just another phantom of the dream world.
Now she came to stairs, marble with an iron balustrade. She saw herself put her hand on the balustrade, and tried to imagine that it felt cool to the touch. But in this enchanted world, she could feel nothing except the occasional ripple of water.
I’m still asleep in a coma. I’m dreaming. Perhaps I’m sleepwalking. Yes, this is what I imagine that sleepwalking must be like. Randomly moving, not really seeing, not really feeling, playing out patterns my body remembers from before. I must have been here before. In a dream? I must remember this place.
As she walked down the steps and confronted another barren passageway of tapestries and closed doors, a sense of loneliness deepened around her. Why bother to walk, unless I can get out? If I walk, will I find a way out? I have to keep on searching...
Then once again, she felt a current pulling at her, propelling her back up the stairs and back down the hallway, as though her life was being played backwards. An enforced weariness came over her. Back down the corridor she was propelled, back into the darkness and shadows until once again she was prone on the bed. The inexorable pull of the waters seemed to mold itself into a personified form that materialized above her, part of the water, part of the unearthly light. A creature of vapor with a human shape.
…Escaping us again, are you?…I’ll have to watch you more closely…
Who are you, she tried to ask, but she was voiceless: only puffs of air. Once again she sank down beneath the silent sting of a serpent’s fang.
HIS
On Christmas, the family gathered by Rose’s bedside once again and attempted to hold their usual celebration, opening presents around the sleeping girl. For Fish, it was sad, but not over-melancholic. Usually on Christmas, he and Bear had gone to Steve Foster’s house for Christmas dinner, but now his brother was married and would be spending future Christmases with the Briers. Fish had already thought that on this Christmas he would have to find a new tradition, and he wondered dully that perhaps this—keeping vigil by Rose’s side—was going to be it.
On Christmas morning, he and Bear sat by Rose’s bedside. Blanche, her stomach rounding out, sat on the other side with her mother, opening Christmas cards.
“This seems so hard to believe,” Bear said heavily in a quiet voice to Fish as he stared at the ventilator wheezing away. “I never thought I’d see her like this.”
“I know what you mean,” Fish said.
Bear hesitated. “It’s not like when Blanche was in that short coma a couple years ago. We all feared the worst, but she was only down for forty-eight hours. It’s hard to believe that Rose might…be like this…for the rest of her life.”
Fish swallowed. “I still can’t believe it myself,” he said at last. Rose, who was always so full of life—now lying on a bed, pale and wan, with tubes keeping her nourished and breathing—his mind still couldn’t comprehend the finality of it.
“I know it means a lot to Jean and Blanche that you’re visiting her every day,” Bear said softly.
“Yeah,” Fish said. “It means a lot to me, too.”
Bear looked at him, curious.
“It’s something I can do for her,” Fish said with an effort, to explain himself.
Bear seemed to have something in his eye. “I’m glad. Very glad.”
A few hours later that afternoon, Fish sat by Rose’s side, reading her A Child’s Christmas in Wales, one of his favorite books. The others had gone for a walk out in the snow since Blanche got uncomfortable if she sat still for too long.
Now he paused at the end of a section and looked at Rose, her face framed in the background of the small potted tree and Christmas lights and crèche they had brought. She was lovely, even in her stillness. The glow of the small white lights of the tree added a new glow to her smooth skin and her red hair, which her mother had curled into Victorian ringlets and tied with a red ribbon.
He put a hand out and touched the end of her hair. He admitted to himself that her red hair was fascinating to him, particularly now. All at once he remembered the cascade of her hair sliding down her neck, and the unexpected blooming of attraction.
For the past few weeks, he had often wondered what that had all been for—a pointless exercise in frustration, but now, imbued with the spirit of the Incarnation, he thought to himself that perhaps there was a reason for it after all. Not that he knew what it was, but he could sense a purpose.
“I’m sorry, Rose,” he said, with an effort.
He stroked one of the long curled strands in his hand. Maybe God had wanted to strengthen the connection he felt towards Rose, knowing that she was about to undergo this trial. She needed her friends more than ever now that she was helpless in oblivion. He remembered his words with Bear. The Cor guys had talked rather flippantly about her being their lady, but they showed it in a depth of commitment. Maybe he wouldn’t formalize his own feelings with a medieval term, but Rose was definitely more than a friend to him...he was not quite sure what to call her. Sister? Comrade? Loved one? Gently he lifted the thick strand of her hair to his lips and kissed it.
There was a step in the doorway, and he looked over, dropping his hand. It was only Dr. Murray who had come in. She murmured an apology and crossed over to the side table where she kept her instruments. He had already wished her a Merry Christmas earlier in the day, and had nothing to say to her now. Coloring slightly, he picked up his book. She had seen his unguarded moment of affection. Maybe he had imagined it, but there was something faintly disapproving about her manner, as though she thought it improper for someone to be so familiar with one of her patients. He fixed his eyes on his book until she left the room.
At church the day after Christmas, he saw Sister Maria again.
He had seen her a few times at church since the Mass for Rose, but had been avoiding her. Still, when she approached him today he greeted her with a courteous, if somewhat formal “Merry Christmas.”
“Any change since I last saw her?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “There’s not much else to say.”
“Have you thought about the history we told you?” she inquired.
“Yes, but frankly, I’m not sure there’s a connection,” Fish said. “Someone at the hospital might have had something against her father, but why should they care about his daughter once he was dead? It just doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“But Fish, you mustn’t just discount our theory because there’s no evidence of it yet,” Sister Maria said, taking his arm.
He was tempted to point out to her the definition of the word “theory” but restrained himself.
“You need to keep it in mind, and as things start to turn up, you’ll see how they start to fit in the puzzle’s gaps,” Sister Maria assured him. “The truth will come out.”
“Will it?” Fish asked skeptically.
She raised her eyes to heaven. “I am sure of it,” she said tranquilly. “A blessed Christmas to you.”
/>
Two weeks after Christmas, Bear and Blanche and Jean went home. The college students were still on break. So Fish was alone with Rose.
When he arrived, a technician was removing the IV pole that attached to the feeding tube in Rose’s stomach. He waited politely by the door for the woman to finish, and noticed something different.
“What’s that in the IV?” he pointed to a bag of white liquid hanging from the IV pole.
The tech glanced over and shrugged. “Don’t know. Dr. Murray set it up. It might be medication. Some patients have had the flu lately.”
When the tech left, he glanced at the bag. It looked like milk, and it was unmarked. Wondering if he should ask Dr. Murray about it, he looked at the doorway and stiffened. Someone was standing there, half-hidden in the shadows.
Feeling déjà vu, he strode forward. It was Donna.
But this time, she didn’t run away. She flinched, but remained standing when he faced her. “Can I come in?” she asked. “I wanted to see her.”
Although he wanted to say no, he knew he didn’t have the authority to make an issue of it, if the staff had signed her in. “All right,” he said a bit stiffly, and followed her in, tense.
The tall girl almost sidled into the room. She didn’t look very good—her face was heavier and she looked older. It was a shame, he thought, because in an objective manner, Donna was fairly attractive.
She stood by Rose’s bed, looking down, her lips trembling. The only noise was the ventilator, and the artificial breaths from Rose’s nose and mouth as the air was forced in and out. He looked at Rose, then looked back at Donna and saw she was crying. Out of politeness, he felt in his pocket for a handkerchief and passed it to her. “Here.”
She took it with a surprised glance at him, and wiped her nose hurriedly. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“No trouble,” he murmured.
“No, I mean I’m sorry,” she said again. “For everything.”