The Haunting of Anna McAlister (13 page)

“Why?”

Detective Malmann kept on smiling. “Why?” He shook his head. “Let me lay it out for you Ms. McAlister. I have one dead body and one that’s pretty close to it.”

He saw the pain in Anna’s eyes but continued talking.

“Yesterday I find you at the murder victim’s apartment. Then, I find you there again tonight. Do you think that maybe those things might give me a reason to start to wonder?”

Anna didn’t say a word. She kept her eyes on Jeffrey.

“And as for your boyfriend? Let’s just call that a case of suspicion by association.”
 

“We didn’t do anything. I love Jeffrey.” Anna started to cry.

“Look,” Detective Malmann moved over and put his arm around Anna to comfort her. She didn’t pull away. “I shouldn’t say this, but I don’t think you did anything either.”

The ambulance pulled into the hospital’s emergency entrance.
 

“But I do think you know more than you’re saying. Maybe a lot more.”

Chapter 12

What occurred over the next few minutes made Anna feel as if she were back in her dream. But, she knew full well that it was all very real and literally a matter of Jeffrey’s live or death. As soon as the ambulance stopped, its back doors were pulled open from the outside. Everything and everyone moved very fast. The emergency technician gave the waiting doctors Jeffrey’s blood pressure, heart rate and a description of his wounds as they wheeled him into the hospital. Anna half ran along side the gurney. Jeffrey, although completely unresponsive to the doctors, wouldn’t let go of her hand.
 

They moved into a special area of the emergency room, an area reserved for the most serious cases. A nurse closed a curtain around them. It was a pale blue curtain with a white mesh strip about a foot wide along the top. Anna focused on the curtain as a doctor removed the temporary covering from Jeffrey’s left arm.

“Oh, my lord,” the doctor said before calling out orders to the nurses and interns. “Do you know his blood type?” he asked Anna.

“I’m sorry, no,” Anna answered.

The doctor seemed annoyed and gestured with his head and eyes to the nurse next to Anna.
 

“I’m afraid you’ll have to leave now,” the nurse said. “Have a seat in the waiting room.”

“Can’t I stay?”
 

“No,” the nurse said. “To be honest with you, you’ll just be in the way. Please, it would be best for the patient if you waited outside.”

Anna tried to pull her hand free, but couldn’t break Jeffrey’s grip. The nurse had to pry his fingers from Anna’s hand one at a time. “We’ll let you know as soon as we can.” The nurse opened the curtain just enough for Anna to step through.

* * *

Anna waited in the emergency room waiting room and then in an area designated for family members of patients having surgery for just over fourteen hours. Tom had come and, at Anna’s suggestion, gone. At 8:30 that evening a doctor walked into the surgical waiting room still wearing his green scrubs. His mask was hanging from his neck.
 

“Jeffrey Robinson,” he called out to all of the people who had looked expectantly and hopefully in his direction.

“Here,” Anna raised her hand as if a teacher had just called out her name at school. All of the other people returned to their magazines or naps. Anna walked quickly to the doctor. “I’m here for Jeffrey Robinson.”

“Step this way, please.” The doctor ushered her into a small room a few steps down the hall.
 

Anna felt her knees get weak. She had waited while her mom had heart surgery, and again when she had surgery to repair a broken knee. Both times the surgeon had told her the good news right in the waiting room. She knew this little room had been designed to give surgeons who had other kinds of news a place to deliver it.

She turned around as soon as she and the doctor entered. “Tell me,” her voice quivered.
 

“Have a seat Ms. . .”
 

“McAlister.”

“McAlister.” The doctor motioned to a chair. He took one facing it as soon as Anna sat down.
 

“I’m Doctor Markris. I performed the surgery on Mr. Robinson’s arm.”

“Is he. . .is he okay?” Anna held her breath.

“To be truthful, Ms. McAlister, we just don’t know yet.”

Anna sighed loudly and closed her eyes. She had been certain the doctor was going to tell her that Jeffrey was dead. When he didn’t, she whispered, “Thank you.”

“His wounds are very serious,” the doctor said. “In fact I think they’re some of the most serious I’ve ever seen.”

“In what way?” Anna didn’t want to hear the answer to her question. Yet somehow, she knew that she needed to know.

The doctor hesitated. “What is your relation to the patient.”

“I guess you would call me his best friend.”

“Does he have any immediate family in the area?”

“No,” Anna said. “There’s no one.”

Jeffrey’s mother had died in childbirth, his father had been killed in a train accident two years later. He and his older brother had been raised by his grandmother. The woman had died several years ago and Jeffrey and his brother hadn’t spoken in over a decade. Jeffrey had once told Anna, with tears in his eyes, that he had no idea where his brother was and that he didn’t care.

“I’m the only one he has now,” Anna said. “It’s just me.”

“Very well,” the doctor said. “Then I think I should tell you what I’m going to tell the police.”

Anna felt her front teeth biting into her lower lip.

“Those wounds were not self inflicted in any way. No one could do that to themselves, they’d pass out first. At places, whoever did this, cut completely through the arm. That person would have to be very strong. I’m sorry to tell you all this, but I thought I should before I told the authorities. I thought you needed to know.”

Anna was surprised by the doctor’s choice of words. “When will you be able to tell if he’ll be okay?”

The doctor shook his head. “As I said, his wounds are severe. He lost a great deal of blood. We’ve done everything we can to stabilize the injury and prevent any more damage. He’s had several transfusions, and will probably need more. The next day or two are obviously the most critical. Then, later he’ll have to have several more surgical procedures. Even so, I doubt very much that he’ll ever regain anything even close to full use of that arm.”

“You mean if he lives,” Anna said softly.

“Yes,” the doctor’s tone was just as soft. “If he lives.”

* * *

The doctor escorted Anna to the intensive care unit where Jeffrey had been taken shortly after surgery. He was unconscious, and the doctor said he would probably stay that way for at least a day, maybe longer. “If I were you I’d get some rest. There’s nothing more you can do here.”

“Can I stay with him for a few minutes.”

“For a few minutes.” The doctor took Anna’s hands in his own. “We’ll take good care of him. Again, everything that can be done is being done.”

“Thank you, doctor.”

“Remember, just a few minutes,” the doctor said as he left the room. “No more.”
 

Jeffrey was attached to monitors and punctured by tubes of various sorts. It didn’t look like he was breathing, but the heart monitor kept up its steady beat. Anna avoided looking at his arm, even though she knew it would be covered.

“I’m so sorry, Jeffrey,” she sat down next to him. “I’m so, so sorry.” Anna thought she was going to cry. Instead, she made a fist with her right hand and hit her upper leg. She then hit it again, harder. Then again, and again, and again. Each hit was harder than the one that preceded it. She didn’t stop until an ICU nurse came up to the bed.

“I’m sorry, but I have to ask you to leave now. Visitors aren’t really allowed in here. You understand.”
 

Understand?
Understand?
She understood Duncan was dead and that Jeffrey was lying on this bed with only a chance of survival and no chance of resuming his life as he had lived it. She also understood for the first time that it was all her fault.

Anna nodded to the nurse and stood up. Now she started to cry.

The nurse put her arm around Anna. “Don’t worry. Nothing’s bound to change before morning. If anything does happen, we’ll give you a call.”

* * *

On the way out of the hospital, Anna stopped at a pay phone, she had forgotten her cell when she raced to Jeffrey’s apartment. She dialed Tom’s number and left a brief message on his machine. Her words were short and angry. “I’m going home.”

* * *

Anna didn’t remember the cab ride from the hospital to her house. All she kept seeing in her mind was Jeffrey attached to those machines in the intensive care unit. She remembered how cold his skin felt on her lips when she kissed his forehead before leaving. It felt like her Father’s did when she bent over and kissed him before they closed the coffin at his funeral.
 

The more Anna thought about Jeffrey, the angrier she became. She gave the cab driver twenty dollars for an 8 dollar fare. Anna ran to her house and started shouting as soon as she stepped inside.

“Stop it, stop it, stop it!” Anna yelled at the top of her voice. She yelled it as she walked from the front door toward the dining room. She didn’t wait for, or want a response.
 

Anna made a quick detour into her kitchen before continuing on her pre-determined course. The house felt as if it were breathing, as if it were alive, just like the Paris street in her dream. But, this time, Anna just didn’t care. She thought she saw a figure in a doorway. She gave it the finger and kept walking. Anna wasn’t afraid, not now, not this time. Anna’s anger had taken her where she needed to go, beyond the point of all fear, reason and restraint.

When she got to her dining room door, she tossed the table and chairs away and threw it open. For a moment she was blinded by the light that poured through. Had she left the light on? No. She knew she hadn’t. “So what?”

Anna saw the music boxes glimmering, sparkling in the light. “Fuck you!”
 

Pulling open the black garbage bag she had gotten from her kitchen, Anna started throwing in the music boxes, one at a time. Some of the boxes opened and started to play when they hit. Anna moved quickly, desperately. Each successive box slammed into the one that had been thrown in before.
 

Anna screamed at the last box, the one with the rose. “This is for Jeffrey and Duncan! Remember that!” She threw the box in with the others as hard as she could. Then, she quickly tied the end of the bag in a double knot.
 

Anna didn’t hesitate for a moment. She quickly carried the bag to the alley behind her house. The music boxes chimed loudly as she walked. Anna kicked open her back gate and almost ran to one of the large dumpsters the city had put in several years earlier. She had always hated those dumpsters, but now she thanked God for city hall. Anna swung the bag behind her and heaved it up into the air. She heard it clang down onto to the bottom of the dumpster. The music boxes seemed to be playing louder.

“Go to fucking hell, you shit! ” Anna screamed and slammed down the lid on the metal bin.

The discordant sound from inside the dumpster stopped.
 

* * *

Anna made a pot of coffee. She made it in her own kitchen, something she hadn’t been able to do since the recent insanity had begun. Because that’s what it was, Anna thought. That’s what it all had to be.
 

Anna opened every window in the house and turned on every light. She would occasionally look out a back window at the shadowy outline of the dumpster in the alley. She had to fight against an almost overpowering urge to go and just check to make sure the trash bag was still inside. Instead, she lit fragrant candles and put on an old CD of Miles Davis’s “Bitches Brew”.

Anna sat back in her living room with a cup of hazelnut coffee and simply enjoyed her house again. She thought about Jeffrey and Duncan and felt guilty about feeling so good at the moment. The thought that her music boxes were responsible was starting to be replaced by logic-inspired denial, and recalled newspaper articles on PMS.

“The imagination and hormones just don’t mix,” she said out loud as she tried to calculate when she was due for her next period.

The air in Anna’s home was now fresh and clean. She was amazed at just how stale, musty and barely breathable it had become.

Anna got up and walked to the kitchen to refill her cup. As she did she put her hand in her jeans pocket and felt a paper. She pulled it out and saw that it was the same piece of paper that she had drawn and written on at Jeffrey’s apartment after Duncan died.
 

She looked at the French words written in flowery hand writing, and the beautifully drawn portrait of a woman. “Tom was right,” Anna said. She crinkled the paper into a ball and threw in into the garbage can next to her sink. “I must have just gotten lucky with the drawing. That’s all.”

Anna tried to walk away, but the thoughts of that paper just wouldn’t go away. “Oh what the hell.” She took the paper from the trash and flattened it out as best she could against the kitchen table. Anna found a pen and writing pad, and tried to copy the handwriting and the drawing. She couldn’t come close on either.