The Legend of Safehaven (8 page)

The sergeant hit the siren and flashers, made a quick U-turn, and headed to the outskirts of town. They approached the business district, just as a dark-green sedan pulled away from the State Bank & Trust building, wheels squealing.

Local police joined them in pursuit down the highway bordering the town. At one point just on the verge of boxing in the fleeing sedan, the green car suddenly crossed the median and moved into the opposing traffic stream.

Neither the fleeing driver nor the driver of the small, tan-brown coupe saw each other as their cars fused together.

The sergeant pulled the patrol car onto the median strip. Both officers jumped out and rushed to the tangled mass of what had been two vehicles. Ben stared at the small brown coupe for the shortest moment before screaming, “No, No! Irene, Irene!”

He tried to lunge forward to the wreckage, but the sergeant’s powerful arms restrained him.

“I’m sorry, Officer Castle, there was just too much damage to your wife’s head. If it means anything, she didn’t feel any pain. Your daughter is in our neonatal-intensive-care unit. With the premature birth, she’ll need to be watched for quite a while. The accident may have disrupted her blood and oxygen supply. We don’t know if there will be any lasting effects.”

*   *   *

“Dr. Drake, he’s ready.”

He felt something moving inside him, and then a sudden rush of liquid heat moved up the left side of his neck. It created a sensation inside his head like crawling ants.

He heard Galen’s voice again, this time strangely exuberant.

“That’s it, you’ve got it Ken! The damned clot’s lysing!”

Then, nothingness.

Nine anxious people crowded into the patient’s room of the county hospital’s special-neurology-intensive-care unit. One was a young blind boy led by what looked like a large dog. Not exactly by the book, but this case was different.

The nurses said nothing, as they stared at the harnessed guide animal, although one, older and from the Midwest, kept muttering, “That ain’t no dog, that’s a wolf!”

“Tio Galen, will Sergeant Castle be okay now?”

Tonio stood next to Faisal, while Carmelita and Freddie flanked the other side of Castle’s hospital bed.

“It’s going to be a while before we can tell how much function will return,” Galen said. “His face isn’t sagging like it was, and that’s a good sign.

“Whatever happens, Ben is going to need therapy for both his body and his mind. It’s not unusual for someone who has had a stroke to become very depressed afterwards. The physical part is easy to handle—it’s his emotional outlook that can become tricky.”

They heard sounds coming from the semiconscious man. Edison and Carmelita seemed the most aware of what was going on.

“It’s Polish! He’s trying to talk, but in Polish.”

Edison turned to the others.

“My grandmother on my mother’s side was Polish.”

Carmelita bent her head toward Ben’s face and listened intently then stood up when the sounds stopped. She began crying, as she told them what she had learned.

“He had a wife and a daughter. His wife died in an auto accident. He saw it happen. His daughter’s name is Miriam.”

Galen turned and walked out of the room.

Diana looked at Nancy, who said quietly, “The same thing happened to him.”

Silence reigned for a few moments, and then Freddie spoke.

“Carm, where’s his daughter? Did he say anything about her?”

Carmelita shook her head, as Lachlan, now holding his wife and standing next to their adopted son, interjected, “I never knew. Ben never talked about his personal life. But I can find out.”

Freddie grinned. “I bet I can find out quicker than you can.”

Nancy shot a scolding glance at Edison, who looked at Lachlan then at Freddie.

“Searching—no hacking!”

Faisal guided himself to the head of the bed. He bent over and whispered into Ben’s left ear.

“I will come and play for you, Tio Benny. My music will make you better.”

What the hell you doin’ in bed, Honky? Thought you were tougher than that!

Sheeit, the way you took that ol’ mamasan’s head off, you should be joggin’ by now
.

He tried to focus on the voice in the darkened room. The shadows seemed even darker as they took shape.

Bandana? Bandana! But I thought you were…

Dead? Yeah, man, I am. But you ain’t, least not yet. You gonna let a lotta folks down, you keep lying on yo’ ass like that. The lady here, too bad I never got to meet her befo’. She’s gonna be pissed off, too
.

Suddenly the darkness brightened, and the air filled with the scent of mock orange blossoms.

My dearest Ben. I loved you in our brief life, and I will love you after death. But you have much to do
.

The music of the Pani Mloda filled his ears and his soul.

The old floor nurse made her rounds of the cubicles in the stroke intensive-care unit then stopped by the secretary’s desk.

“Millie, I thought flowers weren’t allowed in here.”

The secretary looked up at her.

“They aren’t, Ms. Pratt. Why?”

The battle-hardened nurse took the young girl by the arm and led her to cubicle three. The scent of orange blossoms wafted toward them.

The night air was still on the mountain, and even the wolves seemed subdued. The six residents of Safehaven sat around the dinner table as usual, but the normal, give-and-take conversation didn’t seem appropriate. Finally Freddie broke the silence by asking Galen the question everyone wanted to ask.

“Tio, what happened to Ben? What made him so sick?”

“His heart betrayed him. No, not love, but turbulence. Ben’s heart started to beat funny. The heart is a four-cylinder engine and, just like a car motor, its cylinders have to contract in sequence to squeeze blood through our bodies in just the right way. The two smaller chambers of Ben’s heart, the atria, started to act independently from their big brothers, the ventricles. That created a disturbance in the flow of blood, which allowed some of it to harden into clots.

“Those clots are like bullets, and when they form, they can break off and travel up into the brain, disrupting the blood flow to critical areas. That’s why Ben became paralyzed.”

“Will he have permanent damage?”

Tonio wore his worried look well, Galen thought.

“We don’t know yet, Tonio. Sometimes, when the food and oxygen supply is cut off too long, chemical changes happen that cause the death of brain tissue. We’re trying an experimental drug on Ben. It’s called a Lazaroid, to try to block that chemical destruction. Now we have to wait and see.”

Carmelita looked puzzled.

“Tio, why is it called a Lazaroid?”

Galen smiled.

Of course, she wants to know the meaning behind the word.

“Do you remember Lazarus in the Bible?”

Her face lit up in understanding.

Edison looked at the others.

“Nancy and I were talking this over earlier. We’d like to have Ben stay here when he’s discharged from the hospital. He has no one at home. Lachlan and Diana have offered to help out, but we think it would be too much of a strain on her. We have the room, and the mountain air will do him good.”

He waited. One by one, the children nodded agreement. Then he looked at Galen, who shut his eyes and nodded as well.

He lay in the bed, feeling his right hand opening and closing. Feeling the pillow on the right side of his face. Feeling his tongue move, but with lingering numbness, like a visit to a dentist would produce. But his mind dredged up thoughts he had not harbored in years.

Ben, you’re just like your old man. You couldn’t stand school. You couldn’t apply yourself. You couldn’t discipline your mind. Just like old Jerzy, you always craved action. And it cost you your daughter
.

Tears welled up as he remembered…

*   *   *

“She’s a beautiful little girl, Officer Castle, but … well … you see…”

The doctor had no good way of telling Miriam’s father.

“We think she may be autistic.”

Sophie Zamek had become mother to her granddaughter the way she had been mother to her son. It was she who noticed the detached manner of the child, when Miriam was almost two.

“Ben, I took her to the doctor. He wants to talk with you.”

He accompanied his mother and his daughter, the woman still wearing widow’s black, the young girl in a red-and-blue-colored jumpsuit, trailing the uniformed Ben, as he entered the doctor’s office. He listened, but most of what the white-coated man had to say made no sense. What was wrong with his daughter? Nothing!

He couldn’t see anything wrong with her.

Miriam sat in the play area of the waiting room. Lights reflecting off the ceiling fan cast a kaleidoscope of colored shapes on the light tan rug. Seemingly fixated on the moving shadows, the girl sat and watched the multihued variations, and she began to rock back and forth.

Ben sat down next to her on the carpeted floor.

“Miriam, show Daddy how you can play. Show Nana and the nice doctor how you play, please, Miriam.”

His voice was rising, desperate to hear his daughter call him Daddy. The doll-size reminder of Irene appeared to ignore him, as he picked her up and held her in his arms.

“Miriam, my little Miri, Daddy loves you, Daddy loves you!”

The little doll’s eyes remained fixed, but not on him.

*   *   *

He watched Miri grow up and his mother grow old. The strong Warsaw lady eventually could no longer handle the energies of a girl with the pervasive developmental disorder of autism entering adolescence.

He used up his savings and insurance benefits for special therapies, none of which helped her to interact with other people. She seemed intractable within a world of her own. She was one of the soulless ones.

Then, on a starlight night in late August, in Miri’s sixteenth year, Jerzy Zamek came to reclaim his Sophie. Ben was alone once more, now facing the terrible decision of whether to try to raise his daughter on his own or place her in a facility for those with her condition.

What haunted him most was that Miri suddenly looked directly at him as he left her with the attendant of the home. Those hazel eyes pierced him to his very core, as he kissed her and whispered, “Daddy loves you.”

He thrashed in his bed, and his voice howled in agony.

“Daddy didn’t mean to leave you!”

*   *   *

“The hospital is discharging Ben.”

Galen had just sat down in the living room with Edison and Nancy, who were sipping tea in the quiet of the evening. The children, their homework completed, were preparing for bed. The next day was a Saturday, but rules were rules: Homework assigned must be finished.

Nancy nodded.

“The back guest bedroom is set up and aired out. Are we picking him up in the morning?”

Edison joined in.

“I’ve set up the van to take a wheelchair in the back. Does he need any other adaptive devices?”

Galen shook his head.

“He’s moving very well now. His speech seems to be just about normal. It looks like the clot-busting and Lazaroids did the trick. But he’s definitely showing signs of depression. Has Lachlan had any luck tracing the whereabouts of his daughter?”

They said no.

Just then Carmelita and Tonio, both in pajamas, literally dragged a similarly clothed Freddie into the living room.

“Tell him, Freddie,” Carmelita growled at her younger brother, who was starting to tower over her.

“Tio Galen, I … uh … I did some research and came up with this.”

The boy offered him a piece of paper then backed off sheepishly.

Galen examined the paper and handed it to Edison.

“St. Ignatius Home,” Edison noted. “Isn’t that a custodial home for children and adults with developmental and mental disorders?”

Galen nodded.

“I’ll call them in the morning, before we head over to the hospital.”

Saturday morning entered with the cool crispness of late fall. Galen was on the phone, as the five others filed into the dining room for breakfast.

“This is Dr. Galen. Do you have an inpatient by the name of Miriam Castle? Yes? Good. I’ll be coming by later today. Her father has been ill, and we needed to contact her. She’s what? I see. I’ll come by this afternoon.”

He replaced the phone and walked slowly to the table. The others saw the frowning concern on his face.

“Stranger and stranger,” he muttered, as he took his seat. “Ben’s daughter, Miriam—she’s autistic.”

It was quiet in the van, as they drove down the mountain road toward the Douglass home. They would form a caravan—patrol car and minivan—to the hospital, an honor guard to bring the old trooper to his new living quarters.

Galen turned back toward the children.

“You heard me say that Ben’s daughter is autistic. I’ll explain more to you later, after I see her at St. Ignatius. For now, though, I don’t want you to say anything to Ben or the Douglasses—and that includes Faisal. I want to see for myself what’s going on. With everything that’s happened, I don’t want to stir up an emotional hornet’s nest for Ben. Promise?”

Edison added, “That includes you, Freddie.”

Ben was dressed in the civilian clothes that Lachlan had picked up for him. He wasn’t used to the loose-fitting, pale-blue shirt or the khaki trousers and the flat, rubber-soled shoes. Where were his boots and uniform?

Diana picked out that shirt
, he thought.
Shows what a good woman notices!

He wanted to walk out of the hospital, but the nurse in charge must have taken classes in bullying from his old sergeant. It was her way—the wheelchair—or no way.

The unit secretary gave him the envelope with his discharge instructions, and the attendant wheeled him to the pickup site the hospital staff had nicknamed “The Loading Doc.”

“Tio Benny, Tio Benny!”

Four children and one wolf-dog crowded around Ben, as five adults endeavored to help him into the police cruiser.

“Ben, think you can ride in the back seat?”