Chapter 32

Chapter 32 of 56 · 10-minute read

Early October

Friday – Moon in Capricorn, First Quarter

“Lauren? Honey, wake up.”

Still drifting in sleep, I think I hear my mother’s voice. I sit up, still groggy, before I open my eyes to a vaguely familiar face.

Her name is Niecie. It’s short for Deniece, but everybody calls her by her nickname, which was originally her husband’s pet name for her. She’s about my age, and she moved here at least twenty years ago to be with a local good ol’ boy who met her when he went off to college. Like Virgil, Dixon, Pamela, and a few others, she and her younger sister, Dottie—short for Dorothy—have all been checking in on me daily while I’ve insisted on staying here in the ICU waiting room.

Every few days I’ve run back to the house for a quick shower and then rush back here hoping I’ll get to spend some time sitting by my mom’s bedside. She’s been sedated most of the time she’s been here. Her doctor says she’ll pull through this fine, though whatever trauma the sheriff’s visit has caused her, we don’t quite understand. Her dementia won’t necessarily worsen because of it, but it doesn’t improve the situation at all. The only saving grace right now is that the sheriff can’t get in to question her further as long as she’s in the ICU or sedated. It’s been three miserable weeks of this, and I suspect she’ll be transferred within the next day to a hospital room of her own, and that will mean the sheriff will visit.

Niecie leans forward, her pale red hair falling into her eyes until she can push her tortoise shell glasses upward as a headband. She has an oval face and green eyes. Her nose is small, and her cheeks and lips are round, giving her a youthful, “cute” look. She smells of cigarettes and coffee, coffee being her addiction. She can’t go any longer than an hour without a cup in her hand, cup after cup, like she can’t get enough of the stuff.

She presses a damp, brown paper towel folded over four times into my hand. I can hear the ICU waiting room’s television playing in the background as she speaks. “Here you go, honey. Press this against your face to help you wake up and feel better. Virgil needs to talk to you in his office. He’s worked something out with your doctor. I mean, your mom’s doctor.”

Nodding, I struggle to my feet. Niecie grabs my elbow to steady me. My back hurts like crazy after sleeping on four hard plastic straight chairs for weeks on end. Dix has left me a pillow and a ham and cheese boxed lunch with a drink from the vending machine down the hall as well as the light blanket that I vaguely recall him pulling over me as I slept last night.

“Just leave it,” Niecie tells me as I reach for the blanket and the trash from the last meal I ate. Her voice is soothing and calming, like that of a favorite aunt. “I’ll take care of that for you.”

I’m all at once grateful and uncomfortable with how much time Dottie and Niecie have spent with me over the last three weeks. One or both will stop by for at least an hour a day each to lift my spirits. Sometimes they’ll ask questions about the local history and things that happened before they moved here. Sometimes they’ll talk about Niecie’s husband who died not long after she and their children moved here and about what she might decide to do with her future now that her children have left home and all she has here is reminders of how things used to be at home. That’s partly why Dottie, a retired hospital administrator, moved here and into Niecie’s house to keep her company.

The first time I met them both, Virgil had brought them to the ICU waiting room to help me navigate the legal and medical paperwork related to Mama’s growing hospital bills, which were mostly paid for through her Medicare and supplements but still had to be reviewed and occasionally corrected. Not that I couldn’t figure it out on my own, but that I was too weary to endure anything more.

They also tried to help me locate my brother, but he’s under deep cover in whatever deployment he’s away on now. Unreachable. This burden is mine to carry without him. I know my brother loves our mom dearly, but wearing a uniform means he belongs to Uncle Sam and his mission has to come first. And that means he has to bear the heaviness of not being able to be here, just as I have the weight of watching every minute of the long goodbye.

After thanking Niecie, I stumble out of the ICU waiting room and attempt to compose myself. The Intensive Care Unit isn’t a fun place to spend a lot of time. I see way too many families come in and sit anxiously for a few hours and then leave forever as does their loved one. There are others who are here for four or five days at a time, waiting patiently with me, sharing stories, just trying to make it through. But I’m the only one who’s been here for three weeks. Somehow, my mom is still holding on.

She follows me. “You want me to walk you over to Virgil’s?”

I shake my head. “I can make it on my own. Thanks.”

Niecie laughs. “Of course, you can. But I can still walk with you if you’d like me to.”

I can’t help but appreciate the offering of support. I can’t deny that I’ve received a lot of compassion since I’ve come back home, though from unexpected corners. The strongest support has been from people who have been through deep loss. They just know. They’re not demanding of me, but rather, loving and gentle, knowing how close I might be to breaking because they still see the world through their own cracks.

I thank her again and remind her that she has work to do that doesn’t include me, and that I’ll be in Virgil’s capable hands, so to speak, within the next ten minutes.

It’s funny now, but when I first met Niecie, I had thought she must’ve been Virgil’s new girlfriend, despite his insistence that he hadn’t been in a relationship since Kimber died. Then two days later, I met Dottie, and thought maybe she was Virgil’s new girlfriend. Even with Dixon by my side and attentive as ever, I’d felt a twinge of jealousy that Virgil had so many female friends who doted on him. He must’ve sensed my unspoken inquiries because, out of the blue, he blurted out to me that he was bringing all these delightful women around to help me make friends with some of the more positive and open-minded people in my little town. I might’ve grown up an outcast here, according to Virgil, but I didn’t have to remain one.

It may be the sweetest thing anybody’s done for me in a long, long time. At least as sweet as Dix bringing me bag lunches, blankets, and pillows in the ICU waiting room.

I take the shortcut to Virgil’s office through the hospital, from the ICU and then through a long hall of private and semi-private rooms for inpatients. I exit the back way across a lawn filled with picnic tables where staff and family take their meals in nice weather. Finally, I pass the emergency room where Virgil had brought my mom three weeks ago, with me in the backseat, her head in my lap and my arms around her frail shoulders. Anyone who has spent less than twenty-four hours sitting in the ICU and not being an employee of the whole medical complex would have no idea that this odd route is a shortcut, and it would take them considerably longer to reach the nursing home and assisted living facilities on the premises. I’ve made this trek enough times now, and I know that following the foot path between two rows of azaleas, which are bright pink when they bloom in March every year will lead me directly to the back route to Virgil’s office.

Tapping on the glass pane of the back door, I wait for Virgil to answer. He doesn’t come. No one does.

This short corridor is the one with the lowest bidder carpet with the orange and lavender swirls that I’ve seen in my visions. I suck in my breath, both to steady myself and to wake myself up. The boost from Niecie’s wet paper towel that gave me an initial spurt of energy is long gone.

I stumble back around the building to the front door and wait to be buzzed in, once again announcing myself as if I’m ashamed of being so needy of being there because Virgil has summoned me to discuss my mom’s case. He’s identified her as a possible candidate for assisted living or, more than likely, memory care, even though I’ve resisted. Thanks, however, to his insistence on taking care of some advance paperwork, he’s had access to her doctors and her records, and has been able to pull a few strings to make an unbearable burden just a little more bearable.

As I sprint past five resident octogenarians in comfortable recliners with automatic lifts, all of them wave at me. I guess they all recognize me by now. Makes sense. I’m here often enough to visit with Virgil.

I always hate this last twenty feet before I reach Virgil’s office. Just beyond, the corridor twists into a shorter section with the crazy-colored orange and lavender carpet that I can also see from the back door. I know that this is where, unless I can figure out how to stop it, someone who intends to kill me will chase me, and I will fall. I don’t mind being here as long as Virgil is around. One thing about being an intuitive is that when my guard is down, I’ve become even more of a receiver for psychic downloads. I’ve known this for several years now. A medication that makes me drowsy. A muscle relaxer. A glass of wine. Just simply being so damned tired that I can barely keep my eyes open. I’m able to control my psychic gifts, in general, but not under those circumstances, and they gurgle to the top of my brain and get my attention.

In the last three weeks that Mama’s been in the ICU, I’ve had at least one vision a day. Thankfully, they’re repeats, but in all of them I am running from someone who is intent on murder. I’ve done my best not to put myself in the situation where I would encounter that person, but the one in the short corridor with the bad carpet scares me the most when I’m alone as I am now and can see it only a few steps ahead of me.

I glance over my shoulder, but I’m alone.

Out of breath, I run the last few steps into Virgil’s office. Disappointed, I was expecting to see him working at his desk in front of the credenza of old books and weird journals that look more like grimoires than medical histories. I see Virgil so often that it sometimes feels as though he doesn’t have a life outside of our interactions.

I’m alone.

The clock ticks loudly on the wall over the door I burst through. Outside, down the hall, medical equipment beeps. Two residents argue about their great-grandchildren and which one’s smarter and which one’s prettier. Inside Virgil’s office, however, the only sounds are those of the clock ticking and my breath thundering in my ears.

Virgil couldn’t have been gone for long. If he’d left for the day, everything on his desk would’ve been tidy and put away, something we’ve joked about from his days in the military where the practice was called a “clean desk policy.” Instead, on his desk is an inkwell. An actual inkwell! Definitely not something I see every day. Beside it, a pen, the kind used for calligraphy, or at least for real liquid ink. Old school.

He can’t have been gone long because dead-center of his desk is an open leather-bound journal, and the latest entry is still shiny and wet. An ornate dagger, visibly dull enough to be nothing more than a letter opener, holds the pages wide so the entry can dry untouched. I bend in for a closer look.

Dates. Names. Locations. And then words. Sometimes only one. Sometimes a short phrase. Many are some form of mother. I can barely make out another word. Virgil’s penmanship is worse than mine.

“Light”

“Angels”

“Pretty music”

“Jesus”

Under each entry is a couple of lines of what looks like a foreign language except I recognize the symbols as something else. I know my runes well enough that I can almost make it out⁠—

Something bumps behind me. Shrieking, I grab for the letter opener and whirl.

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