The Long Sleep (9 page)

“That means he’s alive,” I said, mostly to
myself.

“Of course he’s alive,” said the nurse. “He’s
just not conscious.”

“Will they move him out of ICU?” What if they
sent him someplace too far away for me to visit?

“That’s up to the doctors. We’ll have to wait
and see.”

If they moved him to another room that wasn’t
ICU, I could visit. I could hold his hand and talk to him. That
thought gave me a warm feeling.

I asked the nurse, “Is he allowed to get
flowers in here?”

“Not here,” she said. “But in a regular room
he can.”

I had another idea. “If I make a tape, could
I bring it and have somebody play it for him? There’s something I
want him to know that I think would encourage him, if he can hear
it.”

That made her curious. I explained about the
newspaper, the series, and that we were going ahead with it. She
thought it was worth a try. I promised her a copy of the issue when
it came out.

With that incentive, I went home to make the
tape. I had a small pocket recorder. Not very good sound quality
but it was something I could leave there with them. Its mini tapes
only ran for fifteen minutes.

I closed my door so Ben wouldn’t hear and
laugh at me. But I had to talk loud enough to record something.

Hank, it’s me, Maddie Canfield. The new
girl with
The Tiger’s Roar.
I’m so sorry about what happened
to you. I’m sorry it was my car.

I said that so he’d remember who I was, if he
could remember anything.

But you’re getting better. I know you are.
Anyway, I wanted you to know that we’re going ahead with the
newspaper and the series you planned on the right to die.

I sort of choked at that point, wondering if
I should even say it now that he was there himself.

Anyhow, I thought you should know we’re
using your research as well as mine, and I wish you could be
working with us. I hope you don’t mind that we’re not waiting for
you to come back. It’s such a good idea, I figure we should just do
it and get it out there.

I didn’t want to wait on delivering that
message to him. I wanted to be sure that it was the same nurse, so
I went back to the hospital.

She was still there. And Hank had a visitor,
an older woman who must have been his mother. The nurse expected me
to know her, probably thought I was a close family friend since I
came so often. I ducked out of there before his mom could see
me.

It was all so strange, so weird, and so
unreal. I wondered what it seemed like to Hank. I hoped he could
remember me. I’d heard that when a person suffers head trauma they
often have no recollection of what went on right before it
happened. Since we’d only just met that day, there wasn’t any
history of me to remember.

Once he regained consciousness, we could
catch up. On everything.

The elevator took its time. I was about to
look for some stairs when it opened. I had to wait while a couple
of orderlies maneuvered a gurney out with somebody on it. A few
other people collected and one of them was Rick Falco, not in
uniform.

His eyebrows went up. “Are you living here
now?”

I could have asked him the same question, but
he had a better reason to be there. I tried to think of something
clever to say.

“Only sometimes.” That wasn’t very
clever.

I wondered how old he was. Maybe his early
twenties? I glanced at his hand and remembered that I’d already
done that a few times. He didn’t wear a ring, but that proved
nothing.

“He’s still out of it,” I told Falco, and
added, “They extubated him.” Was that the right word? It was what
the nurse said.

“Good. Good. That’s progress.” Apparently
Falco knew what it meant. “He’s doing okay without it?”

“I guess they’d put it back in if he wasn’t.
Anyway, I could see he was breathing.” I rushed on to explain my
presence there at the ICU. “I was bringing him something. From
school. A tape to let him know we’re carrying on with the
newspaper. The nurse said she’d play it for him. If he can hear it,
it might cheer him up.”

“That’s very thoughtful.”

Was he patronizing me?

“I’m sure he can hear it,” Falco went on.
“They usually can, as I understand it. We talked about that, didn’t
we?” He moved us both aside as the elevator came back and another
gurney waited to get on.

“Busy place,” Falco observed. “Are you in a
hurry, or how about some lunch?”

That startled me. “Aren’t you on duty?”

“They allow me to eat now and then. How about
it?”

“Um . . . sure.”

He pressed the elevator button. We went down
to B for basement. The hospital must have been carved into a
hillside because the back wall of the cafeteria was all glass and
looked out on a sloping rock garden.

“People eat out there in warm weather,” he
said as he picked up two trays and handed one to me.

“Do you spend a lot of time here?” I
asked.

“More than enough since that shooting.”

I took lasagna and a small green salad. Falco
had lasagna and a side of fries. No greenery. He dietary choices
needed work. We took a table next to the glass wall. It was late
enough that the big lunch rush was over.

I thought of Hank upstairs, out cold. Even
colder when I compared him with Falco, who was so competent and
full of life.

“Have you found any—” I almost said clues,
“—any leads yet?”

“As a matter of fact, after the fiftieth time
we looked . . .” A smile quirked his mouth. “Maybe it was only the
fifth or sixth, and the first time, you’ll remember, it was dark.
They looked again and found a small piece of fuzz stuck on one of
the middle branches. Dark red. Maroon? Wine?”

“Burgundy?” I tried.

“Isn’t that wine, more or less?”

“Yes, but there are different shades of
wine.” He should know that. Unlike me, he was of legal drinking
age. But I probably knew more about fashion colors.

“Okay, we’ll call it maroon,” he said. “Dark
red with a hint of purple. Do you know anybody who wears something
like that? I did say fuzzy, didn’t I?”

I tried to think. Maybe Evan bought new
clothes when he went to Garson Academy.

“I’ll look around,” I said. “On Monday. It
might not be anybody from Southbridge High.”

“I’m aware of that. It seems the most likely.
Have you had any more phone calls? Other nuisances?”

I looked out at the rock garden. It must have
been really nice in summer.

“I don’t know if it’s a nuisance or a
threat.” Nuisance seemed too mild. “He sent some pictures. Of him
and me. Six different pictures, all taken last summer with him. In
every one of them my face is marked up. There’s an X or a beard or
blacked out teeth. Anything to make me look ugly. It’s as if he
wants to obliterate me. That time at the police station, I thought
he was going to throw acid in my face.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have them with
you?”

“I should have thought of that. I tossed
them, but I can fish them out. It makes me feel so stupid. Why
didn’t I know what he was like before all this happened? By the
time I did, I was in too deep and he wouldn’t let go.”

Falco reached across the table and put his
hand over mine. “How could you know? Guys like that can be very
charming.”

“Psychopaths.”

“I thought the newer term was sociopath,” he
said.

“I just happen to like the word psychopath.
It sounds so—psycho. My mom’s a psychologist. I keep asking her how
they get that way. She doesn’t have any easy answers.”

He smiled. “Does she have any
un
easy
answers?”

I laughed. “My mom’s too careful for that.
She wouldn’t say anything she can’t prove.”

As we left the cafeteria, he rested his hand
on my back. It was a comforting gesture and felt a lot better than
when Mr. Geyer did it. I wondered if Hank and I would ever be able
to touch one another. If he’d ever so much as wake up.

Chapter Eight

Hank came up behind
me in the hospital—or was it at school? —and put his arms around
me. All the bad thoughts vanished from my mind as we stood hugging.
And kissing. I couldn’t taste him the way you usually can when you
kiss somebody. Maybe he had no taste because he’d been asleep so
long. I was about to ask him, when the dogs started
barking.

That woke me. I didn’t want to wake because
it meant Hank was still in the hospital, still unconscious. Before
I had time to think about it, a shower of rain hit my window.

Not rain. It was more like sleet. The first
time I heard it was back in October when sleet wasn’t so likely,
although sometimes you can get a winter storm as early as that. But
this was November, when you could have sleet, but I knew it wasn’t
that. It was pebbles.

Evan had done it before. He did it the time
in October when he broke into our house. He’d made a point of
cutting a hole in the glass in the mudroom door so he could reach
in and turn the lock. He threw pebbles to make me go downstairs,
and I fell for it. I was such an idiot.

I would put that in an article I planned to
write on how obsession isn’t love. I would put in all the times I’d
done something stupid, so other girls could learn from my
stupidity.

Rule number whatever: Girls, THINK TWICE!
Don’t follow your first impulse and rush downstairs to see what’s
going on.

I hadn’t actually rushed that October night.
I had tiptoed. But it got me where he wanted me, right by the
door.

Stupid, stupid. As I lay there reliving the
whole thing, another shower hit the window. Did he really think I
was dumb enough to fall for it a second time?

I turned cold all over just knowing he was
out there. Not in New Hampshire, but right outside my window. How
long had he been home? Was he back here to stay?

I lay not moving, not even getting up to get
my cell phone. I couldn’t trust Evan not to see me, even though the
room was dark and the blinds were closed. It wasn’t that I thought
he had superhuman powers, only a sharp, malicious mind.

The red digits on my clock said 2:20. Even if
I had the phone, Rick would be sleeping. Unless he had night duty.
I could have called the station, but Evan would be gone before they
ever got here.

I was never going to fall asleep in that
lonely room. I crept to the head of the stairs and called softly,
“Petey! Pumpkin!” They were comfortably snoozing on their cushions
in the den, or more likely on the living room sofa. But they came
when I called.

“Good dogs.” I should have brought up their
cushions, but I didn’t want to go downstairs. He might be right
outside.

I invited them both onto my bed. It left
scarcely any room for me, but I felt safe. I didn’t care what Rhoda
would have to say about dogs on beds.

* * * *

In the morning, I went out to see if there
were pebbles in the back yard under my window. I couldn’t help
hoping it was all part of my dream, although it seemed very
real.

It was real. The pebbles were there, the kind
of gravel people put on their driveway. I wanted to call Rick right
away, but it was too early. The pebbles weren’t going anywhere.

I called him in mid-morning. He got back to
me an hour later.

“Hmm,” he said. “Where does this guy
live?”

I had to admit I didn’t know, exactly. “I
never went to his house. He always came here. He made friends with
my dogs, but I think they’re beginning to catch onto him.”

Rick said he would look into it. That made me
feel a little better, but I wouldn’t be entirely safe until Evan
was caught. And sent to Devil’s Island, where the French used to
exile their worst criminals.

After finishing my homework, I baked cookies.
It hardly seemed an adequate payment for a whole new windshield,
but it was something I could do. I’d have been thrilled if Rick had
gotten bulletproof glass, but what were the odds of being shot at
again?

I called the police station to ask if he was
on duty. He wasn’t, and they wouldn’t tell me where he lived. I
would have to take my chances on Monday after school.

Ben wandered into the kitchen to make a
baloney sandwich. He peeked in the oven. “Is that for your sleeping
giant?”

“Hardly. Cookies wouldn’t go through the
feeding tube and I doubt he could taste them anyway.”

“He has to eat through a tube?” Ben slathered
mustard on a piece of bread.

“Not eat, exactly. It goes in through the
nose or the tummy.”

“You saw them do that?” He got out the rest
of his ingredients. Baloney, provolone, pepperoni. He knew
processed meat wasn’t all that good for you, but he liked the way
they rhymed.

“Of course not,” I said. “They wouldn’t let
me in. I read about it in my research.”

“Through the nose? I hate things going up my
nose.”

I lifted out the first batch of cookies.
“Well, then, you’d better have an advance directive. We’ll be
showing an example in our final installment. People can use it as a
model to write their own, or get a printed one and check things
off. Then you sign it and have it notarized.”

“Too much trouble,” Ben said.

“It’s not that much trouble. You’ll probably
never need it, but if you wait until you do, then it’s too
late.”

“Does your sleeping giant have one?”

“I don’t know. He’s the one who brought it
up. But if he doesn’t, then he’s a good example of people thinking
it won’t ever apply to them.”

I had tried Glyn earlier, but didn’t get an
answer. After the cookies were done, I tried again. That time she
was there.

“Girlfriend,” I said. “Are you sure Evan is
in New Hampshire?”

It took her a moment to answer that. “Last I
heard. Why? What happened?”

“Somebody threw pebbles at my window last
night and nobody’s ever done that before except him.”