“This is the ICU,” Teresa Alvarez said, holding the latest set of fire doors open. “From here on in, we’re under the direction of the head ICU nurse. If she wants to get rid of us, we go.”
“Of course,” Julianne said.
The head ICU nurse was a tall black woman in a uniform so white, it could have been the Virgin Mary’s soul. She came forward as soon as Dr. Alvarez brought Julianne and Tiffany through.
“It’s all right to go back,” she told them. “I’ve informed Mr. Walsh that you’ll be coming. And Mrs. Hiller.”
“Mrs. Hiller is the nurse,” Teresa Alvarez explained.
“I’ve been trying to hire her away from her temporary agency.” The large black woman sighed. “She’s very good at her work. But we don’t pay enough.”
“We never pay enough,” Teresa Alvarez said.
Down at the end of an antiseptic-looking corridor—of course the corridor looked antiseptic, Julianne told herself, it was supposed to look antiseptic; this was a hospital—a small figure in wire-rimmed glasses came out of a room. Teresa Alvarez waved her hand to greet him.
“That’s Mr. Walsh,” she said. “We should go in now. But not for long. You do understand that?”
“Yes,” Julianne said.
Suddenly, however, all Julianne wanted to do was to leave. Karla wouldn’t be able to recognize her. Even if everything Teresa Alvarez said was true and Karla was conscious in there under all the blankness, there would still be nothing for Julianne to see but blankness. And then what? It was as if this were some kind of official visit, the kind Julianne hated most, like when the president of the United States took Air Force One out to some disaster area and stood among the wreckage looking concerned.
“Miss Corbett?” Dr. Alvarez asked, polite.
Evan Walsh was shuffling along like an old man. His clothes looked wrong somehow, like the clothes Ozzie Nelson used to wear on that old television program, which Evan Walsh was probably too young ever to have seen. Julianne suddenly wished she had a good stiff drink.
Evan Walsh held out his hand. “Miss Corbett,” he said. “Miss—?”
“Shattuck,” Tiffany said.
“She’s talking,” Evan Walsh said. “She talks nearly all the time now. I wish I understood what she said.”
“She mumbles in her sleep,” Dr. Alvarez explained. “This isn’t unusual in relatively mild cases of this kind.”
“Relatively mild cases of this kind can go on for months,” Evan Walsh said. “There was one a couple of years ago in England. Girl in a car accident. Didn’t even know she was pregnant. And by the time she woke up, she’d had the baby. They say she was happy about the baby.”
“That kind of case is very unusual,” Teresa Alvarez said firmly. “Miss Corbett would like to see Miss Parrish, Mr. Walsh. She’ll be only a minute.”
“Oh, I know. I know. It’s all right. Maybe she’ll be able to understand what Karla is trying to say.”
“I doubt it,” Dr. Alvarez said.
“I think she’s singing,” Evan Walsh said. “Do any of you know a song about Marrakech?”
“No,” Tiffany Shattuck said. “What’s Marrakech?”
“Karla was in Marrakech once,” Evan Walsh said.
Then he turned and walked away from them. Julianne watched him go, feeling sick to her stomach. It was just the hospital, really, the smells and the tension. She didn’t usually get sick in the middle of tragedy. She was used to dealing with trouble. Evan Walsh’s back was bent over so far, he looked like he had a dowager’s hump.
“Well,” Teresa Alvarez said. “Shall we go?”
3.
Halfway across town, Liza Verity, having gotten home from work, put her groceries down on her kitchen table and then sat down herself, as if getting off her feet for a moment would mean more to her than just relieving the pain in her feet. She had been thinking and thinking about things for days now. She had been reading the newspaper accounts of the explosion at Julianne Corbett’s reception. She had been reading and rereading all the articles about the murder at Fox Run Hill and the explosion in the parking garage. She had been looking and looking and looking at the pictures they kept printing of the woman they kept calling Patsy MacLaren Willis. She didn’t know what she was waiting for, or what she wanted or from whom, or what she thought was supposed to happen next to make it possible for her to move.
“I’m just being ridiculous,” she said to herself now, out loud, so that her voice bounced off the walls of her apartment and the soft pile of her carpet. Everything in this apartment sounded muffled. It was that kind of place.