[3]

Kim was sitting cross-legged in her bed when I arrived. She looked at me like she hardly recognized me, barely lifting her gaze when I entered through the single-wide doorway.

I rushed to her and took her between my arms at the shoulders, trying to squeeze to tightly, not to do anything drastic that might send her back over the edge.
“How are you?” I tried.

She shrugged, classic Kim, but her lips didn’t move. Her eyes pulled away from me slowly, as if absent mindedly, and she focused straight ahead at the bare eggshell wall. Only it wasn’t focused. She wasn’t gazing at the wall at all, but through the wall, as if she could watch the cars pull out of the tree-spotted parking lot into the street.

When I looked over my shoulder, I noticed Dr. Le had disappeared into the hallway. I pulled up a chair - another hard plastic one - resting in the corner up to Kim’s bedside and lifted an elbow onto the edge her bed. I tried to meet her gaze over the next two hours, but it was fruitless. She wouldn’t utter a word. From her low-rising, twin-sized bed she only stared while I asked questions, told stories.
At the end of our visit, I bent down to brush her dark brown hair behind her ear and kiss her forehead, her clammy skin sending a chill down my spine.

I noticed Dr. Le standing at the nurse’s desk outside Kim’s room in the patient lounge area when I left Kim’s room. The tiny patient rooms surrounded the sprawling lounge area on three sides with the circular nursing station plastered at the far end of the room. In the center of the common area, a set of four wood-backed sofas circled a TV, and a double sided bookshelf some twenty feet away held only doctor-approved reading material.

I tapped Dr. Le on the shoulder and thanked him for his time. Did I not enjoy the visit, he wanted to know, I looked slightly upset. I was always welcome and Kim would enjoy my visits even if she didn’t seem to, he assured me.

I nodded and walked briskly towards the end of the common room without a word, my eyes down the whole way, avoiding the glossy-eyed stares, mindless whispers, and laughs from worlds completely unknown outside the patient’s own minds.

When I reached the half door at the end of the room, a foot shot out in front of me, blocking my path. I raised my eyes to meet the intent gaze of a young man about my age with died yellow-orange hair and a wrinkled blue Nirvana t-shirt. I gawked a little, raising an arm up to say, what the hell, let me through.

He shifted his weight between his two socked feet, his eyes refusing to leave mine. “Kim’s going to be fine, you know.” His hands dug deeper into his pockets.

Oh great, she’s already got some ex-crack addict as a crazy stalker, I thought. “Yeah. I know,” I said, although I didn’t. “If you’ll excuse me.” I made a motion to the door, but the rocker punk stopped me.

“I’m Ben.” He extended a scrawny tattooed arm in my direction, completely ignoring my desire to leave.

“Great, thanks.” Did I even need to introduce myself to this crazy? “Madeline.” I cautiously took his hand in mine, making a mental note of the hand sanitizer dispenser at the nurses station.

Ben’s eyelids lowered a bit, tenderly, and I couldn’t help but smile when he attempted some kind of clumsy bow. “Thanks for the update, Ben,” I emphasized his name so I wouldn’t forget it. “I’ll be seeing you.”

The temperature outside was still chilly, and I pulled my button-up sweater tighter across my chest to block the steady spring wind. Did I really park this far out, I whispered, trudging through the visitor’s spaces at the back entrance of the hospital. I saw my dirty black Toyota on the far end of the lot and made a beeline over grassy medians. The sky was beginning to darken already, and the visitor’s lot had emptied quite a bit from earlier that afternoon as broken families headed home for Saturday night dinners while their loved ones sat isolated on the third floor, eating sticky, smelly hospital food.

Dr. Le told me I couldn’t bring outside food for Kim when I asked him earlier. We have to be very careful about what we allow in, he reminded me. Some patients were recovering drug abusers; you never knew what people would hide chemicals in. I could, however, bring something calming to Kim, an old stuffed animal or her favorite book, he said, dependent on it being approved by the staff first. No, this wasn’t a prison, he assured me, but patients were not always in the right state of mind. It’s safety, he said.

I unlocked my car as I approached, two clicks and a ring of lights responding to the remote. I pulled the driver’s side door open and launched my purse across to the passenger’s seat. As I let my weight fall into the driver’s seat, I began thinking back upon that strange guy that met me on my way out. I had been quick to dismiss him at first glance, but maybe he had talked to Kim. Maybe she had told him something she hadn’t told me. I clicked the seat belt across my chest, angrily. How could she dare open up to a complete stranger, some psychotic nutball, and she wouldn’t say word to me, wouldn’t even look me in the eye.

I swerved out of the Tucker’s lot onto the pavement that would wrap me back around to the hospital’s main entrance. Just as I was pulling up to the stop sign near the emergency room entrance, I noticed a small slip of paper stuck to my windshield between the wiper and the glass. “A ticket?” I growled. Really? Hoping it was only some cheap advertisement for lawn services or low-end legal advise, I pulled off to the side of the road and hopped out to the grab the slip of paper.

“Dr. Montague, Adult and Child Psychology,” the text at the top of the slip read. At the bottom, some pseudo-religious quote about wings and hope invited me “let my true self fly,” and the middle held only a phone number with a local area code. I chuckled and shoved the crumpled piece of paper into the console cup holder. What kinds of people actually believe this bogus? What kind of business does not give you an address when they’re trying to sell you their services? At least their marketing strategy was good, tackling the parking lot of the psychiatric ward.

It was 6:18pm when I pulled up to Kim’s apartment building in Church Hill. She lived in a 1920’s revival, a three story mansion that had been converted into three separate apartments during the eighties then updated just a few years ago to add such luxuries like stainless steel appliances and recessed lighting. That was one thing Kim and I both enjoyed. Maybe it was our obsession with HGTV or the fact that we grew up in the old South, but when it came to living spaces, history was key. I remembered when Kim moved into this apartment two years ago, how we lied with our backs on the wide wood floor, planks rescued from the original construction and refinished to shine like new, how we stared up at the ceiling, making up stories about the people who lived here originally.

The key turned easily in her apartment door. I was glad she made this emergency copy even though I told her I’d never need it. When I pushed the door back, I hit the light switch closest to the door and the overhead light fixture in her living room illuminated a tan leather sofa, a green and tan color block rug, a suede loveseat and two Wasili chairs around a non-functional fireplace topped with a flat screen.

Quietly, I wandered the living room, running my hands over the sofa, the chairs, spinning my feet on the rug, a strange dance to music only I could hear. The mantel above the fireplace held thirteen photos: six of me and Kim, chronicling our years from diapers to engagements and the awkward spaces in between, four of my parents, three of Kim with various friends from elementary school to her current job as a high school teacher. I blew the dust off one of Kim and me at the Biltmore sometime when I was in middle school. In the preserved color shot, we were holding each other in a full arm embrace, our smiles sincere and our childish giggles completely oblivious to the giant mansion in the background.

My feet lead me to the other side of the living room, past the kitchen in the back. I hit the kitchen light as I passed and let only the overflowing light guide me down the dark hallway while my fingertips ran over the smooth cream-colored sheet rock walls. I regretted then, not spending enough time here with Kim in the last few months. She had called me for dinner countless times, only a few in which I partook and each of those had been only routine. At the end, I would always rush out to meet my friends for drinks or catch the end of a TV show I just had to watch. At the time, I reassured myself that Kim had her own life, that she’d be okay without me, but each time I wound up with a pit of deserved guilt eating my stomach.

When I entered Kim’s bedroom, the familiar scent of her perfume tickled the underside of my nose. The light above her bed shone on her neatly tucked sheets and immaculately stacked pillows. I remembered then that my mom had been here a few days ago when Kim was still at the hospital. Like my typical mother, she had come with an arm-full of cleaning supplies to dust, scrub, and disinfect the entire house, and specifically the bathroom. With a heavy stomach, I imagined the blood that must have filled the shallow tub water, the rink of dark red crusting the hard plastic after the water dried. Kim had left the mess like a confirmation of her struggle, her cry for help encoded in the blood stained towels. Then my mother had come to clean up as usual, as if scrubbing away the evidence might scrub away the memory as well.

I sat down on the wooden trunk at the edge of Kim’s bed, an heirloom from the grandmother that passed away just last year. The cedar-lined oak trunk had always been a favorite of Kim’s as a child, and I could recall more than one game of hide-and-seek at my grandparents house that ended in Kim’s laughter erupting from amongst the spare sheets and blankets inside the four foot long box.

I ran my hands along the underside of the top, my fingers searching for the latch. I knew there was a trick to this old thing. When my thumb finally found the brass fixture near the middle, I pushed in hard and stood up so I could pull the heavy top open. A few blankets were folded neatly and stacked next to two spare pillows and sheet sets. Kim loved Pottery Barn. I was surprised the trunk wasn’t bursting with sheets in every color and pattern. I pushed the lid back down with a thud, pulling up just once to check the latch.

I looked around Kim’s room, not knowing what exactly I was looking for. When I turned onto E Grace St earlier that evening, I told myself that I was just going to stop by, to pick something up that I could bring my sister in the hospital. But somewhere darker, somewhere truer, I was just looking for some evidence. A blood stain, a note. A reason, an explanation. Anything to connect the our safe, quiet past with this startling, thunderous present.

From inside my pocket, my phone began ringing. My mother. “Maddie? Dad and I are just getting to the restaurant. Are you still meeting us?” Shit. I glanced at the clock hanging above Kim’s desk. It was already seven o’clock.

Sure, yes, get me an iced tea. I’ll be there soon. What? The back of the restaurant. Sure sure, I knew how to get there. I began rambling off something to buy me time, but I had already lost track of the words escaping my mouth. Something glossy and thin was peeking out from the modern, silver-framed clock in Kim’s room.

I shoved my phone back into my jacket pocket and hurried to the clock. I wasn’t sure what I expected to find, but I knew whatever it may be, Kim was trying to hide it. When I reached up to grab the clock, I ended up pulling the whole thing off its nail on the wall. It clattered to the ground to with a bang, a piece of aged paper and two photographs fluttering behind it like ash.

I didn’t move right away. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see the pictures. I had stumbled into this place of privacy and now I was barging through, my own needs the bull in the china shop. But my curiosity won. I knelt to the floor and lifted the first photograph, careful to keep my fingerprints from smudging the surface. The picture was old. It was yellowed around the corner and square in shape. The three sepia toned figures posed in the center were dressed more conservatively that seen nowadays and the counter in front of which they stood – was it grocery? butcher? – held an expansive vintage register with large steel keys.

I studied their faces for a moment. Did they look vaguely familiar to me? I caught a glimpse of the clock. 7:12. My parents would be anxious by now. I grabbed the second photo and mystery paper, and hurried out the door, careful to replace the clock and turn out the lights as I left.