The House of Thunder (31 page)
She squeezed her eyes tightly shut.
“Susan, it’s all right.”
“He’s still there.”
“No.”
“I can
feel
him.”
feel
him.”
“There’s no one here but you and me.”
“But...”
“Would I lie to you, honey?”
A drop of cold sweat trickled down the back of Susan’s neck and slithered like a centipede along her spine.
“Susan, look.”
Afraid to look but equally afraid to keep her eyes closed, she finally did as Mrs. Baker asked.
She looked.
She was standing at the threshold of the bathroom. Bleak fluorescent light. White walls. White sink. White ceramic tile. No sign of Ernest Harch. No staring, rotting head perched on the white commode.
“You see?” Mrs. Baker said cheerily.
“Nothing.”
“Never was.”
“Oh.”
“Now do you feel better?”
She felt numb. And very cold.
“Susan?”
“Yeah. Better.”
“You poor kid.”
Depression settled over Susan, as if someone had draped a cloak of lead upon her shoulders.
“Good heavens,” Mrs. Baker said, “your pajamas are
soaked
with sweat.”
soaked
with sweat.”
“Cold.”
“I imagine you are.”
“No. The head. Cold and greasy.”
“There was no head.”
“On the commode.”
“No, Susan. There wasn’t a head on the commode. That was part of the hallucination.”
“Oh.”
“You
do
realize that?”
do
realize that?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
“Susan?”
“Hmmm?”
“Are you all right, honey?”
“Sure. I’ll be all right. I’ll be fine.”
She allowed herself to be led away from the bathroom and back to her bed.
Mrs. Baker switched on the nightstand lamp. The huddling, late-afternoon shadows crept into the corners.
“First of all,” Mrs. Baker said, “we’ve got to get you into something dry.”
Susan’s spare pajamas, the green pair, had been washed just that morning and were not yet ready to be worn. Mrs. Baker helped her strip out of the damp blue pair—they really were heavy with perspiration; you could almost wring them out as you would a washcloth—and helped her into a standard-issue hospital gown that laced up the back.
“Isn’t that better?” Mrs. Baker asked.
“Isn’t it?”
“Susan?”
“Hmmm?”
“I’m worried about you, honey.”
“Don’t worry. I just want to rest. I just want to go away for a while.”
“Go away?”
“Just for a little while. Away.”
13
“Susan?”
She opened her eyes and saw Jeff McGee looking down at her, his brow lined with concern.
She smiled and said, “Hi.”
He smiled, too.
It was funny. The slow reshaping of his face from a frown into a smile seemed to take an incredibly long time. She watched the lines in his flesh rearrange themselves as if she were viewing a slow-motion film.
“How are you feeling?”
His voice was funny, too. It sounded distant, heavy, deeper than it had been before. Each word was drawn out as if she were listening to a phonograph record played at the wrong speed; too slow.
“I’m not feeling too bad,” she said.
“I hear you had another episode.”
“Yeah.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
“No. Boring.”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t be bored.”
“Maybe not. But I would.”
“It’ll help to talk about it.”
“Sleep is what helps.”
“You’ve been sleeping?”
“A little... on and off.”
Jeff turned to someone on the other side of the bed and said, “Has she been sleeping ever since?”
It was a nurse. Mrs. Baker. She said, “Dozing. And kind of disassociated like you see.”
“Just tired,” Susan assured them.
Jeff McGee looked down at her again, frowning again.
She smiled at him and closed her eyes.
“Susan,” he said.
“Hmmm?”
“I don’t want you to sleep right now.”
“Just for a while.”
She felt as if she were adrift on a warm sea. It was so nice to be relaxed again; lazy.
“No,” Jeff said. “I want you to talk to me. Don’t sleep. Talk to me.”
He touched her shoulder, shook her gently.
She opened her eyes, smiled.
“This isn’t good,” he said. “You mustn’t try to escape like this. You know it isn’t good.”
She was perplexed. “Sleep isn’t good?”
“Not right now.”
“‘Sleep ravels up the knitted sleeve of care,’” she misquoted in a thick voice.
And closed her eyes.
“Susan?”
“In a while,” she murmured. “In a while...”
“Susan?”
“Hmmm?”
“I’m going to give you an injection.”
“Okay.”
Something clinked softly.
“To make you feel better.”
“I feel okay,” she said drowsily.
“To make you more alert.”
“Okay.”
Coolness on her arm. The odor of alcohol.
“It’ll sting but only for a second.”
“Okay,” she said.
The needle pierced her skin. She flinched.
“There you go, all finished.”
“Okay,” she said.
“You’ll feel better soon.”
“Okay.”
Susan was sitting up in bed.
Her eyes were grainy, hot, and itchy. She rubbed at them with the back of one hand. Jeff McGee rang for a nurse and ordered some Murine, which he applied to Susan’s eyes himself. The drops were cool and soothing.
She had a sour, metallic taste in her mouth. Jeff poured a glass of water for her. She drank all of it, but that didn’t do much good.
Drowsiness still clung to her, but she was shaking it off minute by minute. She felt a bit cross at Jeff for spoiling her nice sleep.
“What did you give me?” she asked, rubbing one finger over the spot where he had administered the injection into her arm.
“Methylphenidate,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“A stimulant. It’s good for bringing someone out of a severe depression.”
She scowled. “I wasn’t depressed. Just sleepy.”
“Susan, you were heading toward total withdrawal.”
“Just sleepy,” she said querulously.
“Extreme, narcoleptic-phase depression,” he insisted. He sat on the edge of the bed. “Now, I want you to tell me what happened to you in the bathroom.”
She sighed. “Do I have to?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
She was almost completely awake. If she had been suffering from a form of depression that caused her to seek escape in sleep, she certainly wasn’t suffering from it any longer. If anything, she felt unnaturally energetic, even a bit edgy.
She thought about Ernest Harch in the bathroom. The severed head on the commode.
She shivered. She looked at Jeff and was warmed by his encouraging smile.
She forced a thin smile of her own. Trying hard to make light of what she’d been through, she said, “Gather ‘round the old campfire, children, and I’ll tell you a scary story.”
She had dinner an hour later than usual. She didn’t want anything; she wasn’t hungry. However, Jeff insisted that she eat, and he sat with her, making sure that she finished most of the food on her tray.
They talked for more than an hour. His presence calmed her.
She didn’t want him to leave, but he couldn’t stay all night, of course. For one thing, he intended to go home and spend a couple of hours with her EEG printouts, her cranial X rays, and the lab reports on the spinal workup.
At last the time came for him to go. He said, “You’ll be all right.”
Wanting to be brave for him, braver than she felt, Susan said, “I know. Don’t worry about me. Hey, I’ve got a lot of moxie, remember?”
He smiled. “The methylphenidate will start wearing off just about by bedtime. Then you’ll get a sedative, a stronger one than you’ve been getting.”
“I thought you didn’t want me to sleep.”
“That was different. That was unnatural sleep, psychological withdrawal. Tonight, I want you to sleep soundly.”
Because when I’m sleeping soundly, Susan thought, I can’t have one of my hallucinations, one of my little expeditions into the jungle of insanity. And if I have one more of them ... one more safari into madness... I very likely won’t come back. Just be swallowed up by the lions and tigers. One gulp. Gone.
“The nurses will stop in and out all evening,” Jeff said. “About every fifteen minutes or so. Just to say hello and to let you know you aren’t alone.”
“All right.”
“Don’t just sit here in silence.”
“I won’t.”
“Turn on your TV. Keep your mind active.”
“I will,” she promised.
He kissed her. It was a very nice kiss, tender and sweet. That helped, too.
Then he left, glancing back as he went out the door.
And she was alone.
She was tense for the rest of the evening, but the time passed without incident. She watched television. She even ate two pieces of candy from the box of chocolates that Jeff had brought her a couple of days ago. Two nightshift nurses—Tina Scolari and Beth Howe—took turns checking in on her, and Susan found that she was even able to joke with them a little.
Later, just after she took the sedative that Jeff had prescribed for her, she felt the need to go to the bathroom. She looked at the closed door with trepidation and considered ringing the nurse to ask for a bedpan. She hesitated for a few minutes, but she grew increasingly ashamed of her timidity. What had happened to the stiff backbone on which she had always prided herself? Where was the famous Thorton pluck? She reached for the call button. Stopped herself. Finally, reluctantly, driven more by her protesting bladder than by her humiliation, she threw back the covers, got out of bed, and went to the bathroom.
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