[Oxrun Station] The Orchard Page 15

  He looked up and over his shoulder, but the damned light had turned the woman's face to shadow. "Cora?"

  "Yeah. Hi, Mr. Kolle!" Brightly. Smiling, though he couldn't see it. "How are you doing?" A high-pitched laugh, a young girl's laugh, and the wheelchair swerved when she covered her mouth.

  He looked straight ahead, shading his eyes, wondering what the hell was going on outside. Cora said she didn't know, probably just a break in the clouds.

  "What clouds?"

  "What clouds? It's been raining all morning."

  How nice, he thought, angry that he hadn't even noticed the damned weather.

  "Mr. Clayton," she said a few yards later, "wants me to tell you everything's okay on the insurance. If they try to charge you for something, sue them."

  One of the wheels needed oiling. He shifted the crutches until they were lying across the armrests. It didn't matter. No one was in the hall but them it seemed.

  She talked rapidly, almost nervously, telling him about the weather, the work on Centre Street that was replacing blacktop with brick, the way the boy with the bandaged ear wouldn't talk to her even though she'd brought him some candy.

  "Rory," he said. "His name is Rory."

  "Weird."

  "Scared, Cora."

  They paused at the corner, swung left, and moved on, through the light, soft and soothing, turning the few passersby into silent, nunlike shadows that were swallowed again as soon as they moved on.

  He was reminded of cloisters and didn't know why.

  "Scared? No kidding. Of what?"

  "I don't know. That's why you're going to help me."

  She leaned down, her lips close to his right ear. "Me?"

  "Well, sure. Aren't you supposed to be my legs?"

  "Oh. Right."

  They passed the middle corridor, and he heard an elevator's door hiss open, hiss shut. No footsteps. No gurneys. No chatter at the nurses' station.

  The medicine, he thought then. His stomach churned briefly; he swallowed bile and took a breath.

  "What do you want me to do?"

  He started, not realizing he had almost dozed off, and had to think a moment to remember what she was talking about. "The children's ward is where, upstairs?"

  "Down," she said. "In back. Upstairs are the operating rooms and the labs, stuff like that."

  "So go downstairs," he said. "Talk to the nurses. Find a doctor and talk to him. See why they're moving the kids out."

  When she didn't answer right away, he thought she hadn't been listening; then she grunted, and moved a little faster. On the left were windows, most of them blanked by white blinds, the dying behind them and "No Smoking" on the doors.

  "Mr. Kolle?" Whispering now, as if in deference to the place, and to the silence it commanded.

  "What?"

  "Why'd you come to the Station?"

  Mike, his former editor had said, you do not walk up to the mayor of Boston, shove a pad and pen in his face, and ask him flat out if he knew, when he bought that harbor-front parcel, that they were going to kick out the lobstermen and bring in the condos.

  "I didn't much like the city."

  You're too eager, Mike. You gotta be patient when you' re fishing for the big ones.

  "You like this place better? Really?"

  Patience, he had thought, was for cowards, and for people who had buckled to the weight of the system; patience, he discovered, was the hardest thing to learn.

  "I like it okay."

  Around the corner, toward his own room, the light fading, colors returning, noises once again unmuffled and sharp.

  Cora wheeled him in, careful of his extended leg, and he saw that Rory was gone, his bed still unmade. She said something about the kid going for an ear test or exam, helped him onto the mattress, and put the chair beside the window. Then she reached down by the door and with a smile held up a large white wicker basket filled with fruit and cheese, covered with cellophane she tore off with a flourish.

  "From the office," she said. Smiled shyly. "And me. I know what it's like to be stuck in a place like this. It's awful. The pits."

  She was, he saw now, much younger than he'd first thought. Barely out of her twenties, rather pale, and too slender. She looked ill and too proud to give in to it; she looked, he thought, as if she were dying.

  "Cora, you all right?" Fussing with his bathrobe, holding his leg above the cast to subdue the pain.

  Startled, she tried a smile. "I'm tired, that's all. Mr. Clayton's a real slave driver. He says, if I want to learn the business, I have to learn all of it, even back where they print it. I told him I just wanted to learn investigative reporting, and he said that was redundant." A melancholy frown as she placed the basket on the table. "I don't think I'm gonna stick around very long."

  "You could learn from worse," he said. "Marc Clayton's a hell of a man."

  Working five years for the Globe, from the time of his graduation, wanting it all before he was thirty, before he was too old to enjoy it. Running around like a jackass, hunting the elusive scoop that would bring him his fame, his fortune, his gold-plated place in the journalistic sun.

  Playing at Clark Kent without the costume underneath.

  Christ, he thought when he looked at the girl; Christ.

  Music from the next room until a nurse turned it down; an orderly shambling behind a broom and a bow wave of dust.

  "Hey," she said suddenly, and pushed a hand through her hair. "If I'm gonna get what you want, I'd better move it, huh?" She reached into the basket and grabbed an apple, shined it on her breast and kissed it, and winked. "I picked this one myself," she said as she tossed it into his lap. "I didn't think you wanted all that garbage they spray on them in the store, y'know? They even have artificial coloring, for god's sake."

  He didn't wince when it landed on his groin, didn't say anything about organic versus cheap. He only picked it up, saw himself in the red that was deeper than a mirror, and winked back as he took a bite.

  "Pretty good, huh? An apple a day, right?"

  "I should have had one before." She looked away, and he raised an eyebrow. "You have trees in your backyard?"

  It was sweet, juicy, with a slight afterbite.

  She grinned and walked to the door. "Are you kidding? My father can barely grow grass. No, it's from the orchard. You know it, on the other side of Mainland?"

  He thought, and shook his head. "I'm still new, I guess."

  "That's all right. I only found out about it when my sister dragged me on this really gross picnic last spring. Jesus." Her mouth twisted in disgust. "Kids, you know what I mean?"

  "Yeah," he said solemnly. "Pains in the ass."

  A laugh, a blown kiss from her palm, and she cautioned him not to eat it too fast. With the food he was getting now, he'd probably throw it up. Then she was gone, and he lay there with the bed cranked up and the bed beside him empty and the apple turning warm as he turned it over in his hand.

  He slept, woke just before dinner, and jumped when he saw someone standing beside him. It was Rory, huddling in his bathrobe, and he'd been crying.

  Michael repositioned the bed up so he could sit without strangling, realized he still had the apple in his hand, and laid it on the table.

  "Mr. Kolle?" the boy said, wiping a sleeve under his nose. "Mr. Kolle, I want to go home."

  He didn't know what to say, and couldn't say a thing when the orderly wheeled in the supper cart, cheerfully spreading the good word from the gloomy outside, hustling Rory to his bed, and serving the trays with a flourish. After he left, they ate in silence, and when the remains were taken away, he didn't object when Rory, with a pleading look, climbed onto the bed beside him, shivering, his freckles so dark against the pale white of his face they made his cheeks hollow, his nose too sharp.

  "I hate hospitals too," he said softly.

  Rory nodded, curled up, and snuggled against his side. When he looked down, he saw the boy with a thumb in his mouth.

  The window was dark
, and in the panes a wavering reflection of the floor's central hall. A ghost at the nurses' station, ghosts leaving the elevator, no Janey, no Carolyn, and he wondered what was wrong.

  Rory shifted, and he felt awkward, not knowing whether to stroke his hair, his back, say anything more and try to make a joke about the horrors of temporary living in a place that only knew your name by the chart on your bed. But it was more, he suspected, than not being able to play with his friends.

  "Did you see what happened?" he asked after a while, looking to the open door, looking up the hall at the white-dressed traffic that passed the room in silence.

  Rory shook his head.

  "Did the police come?"

  The boy shook his head again.

  "Just a bunch of doctors and things, huh?"

  Rory nodded once, his forehead thumping Michael's ribs.

  "I'll bet," he said after a few minutes more, "it was a kind of sickness. I mean, sometimes kids get things that spread real fast, like measles and stuff. Some little dope brings it in from the outside and the next thing you know a zillion people are walking around with red spots all over their faces. It happens. So they move the other kids out for a while, until everyone is better."

  "Really?"

  "Would I lie to you, kid?"

  And when he looked down, the boy was shaking his head, wanting and not knowing how to tell him he was wrong.

  "Thank you."

  Michael turned his head and saw Carolyn at the door. "Thanks for what?"

  "For helping," she said, coming in, nodding to Rory as she looked at his chart. "A hospital is bad enough for a kid without crap like this." She was annoyed, almost mad, but she made an effort to be friendly as she examined the cast, eyed the crutches with a faint frown, then moved Rory to his own bed with a promise he could return. "These," she said then, pointing at the bandages, "can go."

  "Thank god. Will I be able to play the violin?"

  She unwrapped the leg, tossed the soiled bandages into the trash can, wrinkled her nose, and straightened. "God, you could use a bath, Mike."

  "Ready when you are," he said.

  The leg was crossed with scabbed scratches, and a large yellowed bruise spread from his knee to his instep. He almost gagged when he saw it, and when he reached down, it was tender, the odor like something he would expect to find in the morgue.

  "I'll have someone come in," she told him, pushed him flat with the flat of her hand, and listened to his heart, took his pulse, checked his eyes with a light that reminded him of that afternoon. When she was finished, she scribbled something on the chart and looked at his face.

  "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I didn't mean to snap at you before."

  "My fault. I'm . . ." He shrugged. "I hate being cooped up, helpless, you know?"

  She kissed his forehead, brushed a finger over his lips, and he watched as she attended to Rory, tickling him, mussing his hair because she knew how much he disliked it, finally telling him not to pay any attention to what the ape in the other bed said because he's only a reporter, and everyone knows that reporters have to take a college course in advanced lying before they get their diplomas.

  "Hey!" he protested.

  Rory looked around her arm and grinned.

  "Doc, that's slander."

  She rose and smiled without showing her teeth. "Sue me."

  He appealed to the boy, who was trying not to laugh, then widened his eyes when Carolyn left and Janey came in, pushing a cart in front of her with a large chrome bowl filled with steaming water. "What the hell is that?"

  "Your bath, sir," she said. And looked at Rory. "You want to help me scald him to death?"

  It was the best five minutes he'd spent since he'd arrived-Rory kneeling on the bed, giggling and holding his arms down while Janey scrubbed his leg, swearing at the bits of adhesive that wouldn't come off, comparing the smell of his wizened flesh to charnel houses she had known. He complained, he threatened, he told Rory he would pluck his freckles off one by one if he didn't let go.

  Rory laughed.

  Janey laughed.

  And he played the martyr as well as he could until in his feigned tossing he saw the dark window.

  There was something out there looking in.

  Bending his right arm to bring Rory over his chest, he stared and realized it was only a reflection. A figure in the hall just out of the elevator, looking down to his room, darker than the night that framed it, larger than it should have been, and vanishing as soon as a nurse with a bedpan approached it, walked through it.

  "There!" Janey said, slapping his knee hard. "You are now almost civilized." And exchanged glances with Rory when she saw he wasn't paying attention. "Hey, Mike, I'm done."

  Rory looked at the window, and scrambled off to his own bed.

  Janey looked at the window, back to Mike, and adjusted her cap. "It's dark out, you know. You can't see anything."

  "Yeah," he said. "I was just looking, that's all."

  She gathered washcloths and towels, told him not to walk too much-she had heard of his around-the-world trip this afternoon and didn't think it was a good idea to practice every day-and she'd be back in the morning.

  She kissed him lightly.

  He didn't kiss her back. The affection in her touch wasn't anything like the blank look in her eyes.

  Then Rory's parents came for a visit, and he was left alone, finally wishing he had gotten Cora's home number so he could find out what she had learned from the ward downstairs. If anything, he thought sourly. She probably just flirted with an intern, was intimidated by the head nurse, and decided on her own there wasn't anything there. Which meant, if he was right, he would have to do it on his own.

  He tried calling Marc, but no one was home.

  He tried calling Chief Stockton to see if anyone had demanded ransom for the missing Jasper boy, and was told that the chief and the detectives on the case weren't giving out information, at the family's request.

  By the time he was finished, four fruitless calls later, he was angry and ready to pack his crutches and leave. It was dumb. It was stupid. How the hell did Marc expect him to work when he was tied down like this? And how the hell, he asked himself, did he expect to get anything done now, at night, when he'd done nothing that afternoon but play hero in crutches?

  That one was easy-he was afraid. He was creating obstacles where none existed because he didn't want to know if, in all his years of learning, he had learned anything at all.

  Listen, Marc had said, you should know all this stuff already. You don't belong here, you belong back in Boston.

  What he didn't say was obvious-as soon as you grow up and stop running.

  The leg under the cast began itching, and he squirmed, reached down, and wasn't surprised when his fingers were just too short to reach far enough under the cast. He drummed. He gritted his teeth. He hummed a prayer for a miracle to banish the torment. Then he grabbed for his crutches and hauled himself off the bed.

  "I thought you were supposed to stay there."

  He spun and nearly fell, gaping until he recognized Rory lying in his bed. "Jesus, I didn't know you were back."

  "My mom says I'm as quiet as a mouse. Where are you going?"

  He pointed to the cast. "It itches. I am going to hold a nurse hostage until they get me something I can stick down there. Then I'm going to scratch like crazy."

  The boy should have laughed, he thought; at least a smile. But he lay there, bathrobe still on, arms down at his sides and fingers grabbing the sheet, his bandaged ear looking twice as large as when he'd left.

  "See you in a little while."

  Rory blinked for a nod.

  And as he stepped out into the hall, he heard: "Mr. Kolle, where do monsters come from?"

  He made it to the nurses' station without falling, testing his newly unbandaged leg and finding it wobbly but reasonably strong. Then he begged the woman on duty to demolish a coat hanger he saw on the desk behind her. She laughed and deftly twisted the wir
e into something he could use, laughed again when he instantly shoved it into his cast and probed until he found the right place. He worked at it slowly, not wanting to break the skin, and sighed loudly when at last he pronounced himself cured.

  The woman shook her head and ordered him politely back to his room.

  He bowed as best he could, gripped the hanger in his teeth, and turned around with a brisk salute. Then he turned back and asked how the children were doing, if everything was okay downstairs in the ward.

  She stared at him blankly. "What children?" she said.

  He lifted a hand to point, grabbed the crutch quickly when he felt himself tipping, and shrugged. "Nothing," he said, tasting the hanger as his tongue flicked against it. "Don't listen to me, I'm hysterical."

  She sighed and ordered him away again.

  He considered arguing. Someone else on the floor might know what he was talking about, but she was losing patience and good humor, and he decided not to press his luck. A nod, then, a farewell smile, and he steadied himself for the trip home. His foot slipped on the knob at the bottom of the walking cast, and by the time he had righted himself, sweating, cursing, he saw Rory in the doorway, arms tight across his chest and his hair in disarray.

  "Hey," he called out. "Hang on, kiddo. I'll be there in a minute. Long John Silver to the rescue, what do you think?"

  Rory ducked back into the room with a quick shake of his head.

  A look to the nurse and a shrug, and he thumped his way past the elevators, glancing at the unlit numbers over the doors, remembering the figure he'd seen, and not seen, here last night. Much more of that, he thought, and they'd be putting him in the psycho ward, brilliant reporter or not.

  At the T-intersection he paused and leaned against the wall. A glance to his left at the visiting room showed him it was empty; to the right, and the window at the end of the hall was blacker, for the dim lights recessed in the ceiling. Then he looked straight ahead, into his room, and saw Rory sitting in the wheelchair. Staring out. Not moving.

  Hobbling to the door, he tilted his head side to side to display the hanger in his teeth and deliberately mumbled something he knew the boy wouldn't understand.

  Rory didn't move.

  "Hey, pal," he said gently. "What's up?"