After Uncle Eric's tumultuous visit, I had to lie down and collect my nerves. I loved the old guy, but his forceful personality and strong opinions were often hard to deal with. He'd come blustering in like a Nor'wester and blown out like a backfiring Ford pickup. It had left me dazed and befuddled.
Of course, the fact that he was right about a lot of things didn't help much.
I knew what I was like. I had no misconceptions about that. I could be a sarcastic bastard at times, and I didn't let people into my little headspace. That was the way I was, and I didn't imagine that was going to change anytime soon. I also knew I had problems. One would have to be a blind idiot not to see that I had problems. That was what had ended me up here in Short Stay.
Add one more thing to list of things at which I sucked: Killing myself.
I closed my eyes and lay back. I'd cranked up the head of the bed for reclining and reading, and that position suited my perfectly at the moment. I put my hands behind my head, shifted slightly on the horizontal, and prepared for a bit of a tune-out.
But it was not to be.
Just seconds before I would have closed my eyes, I sensed the edge of the shadow of a movement. I figured someone had just walked by briskly and ruffled the curtain with their wake, but for some reason my eyes darted right to the spot.
It was no curtain ruffle.
I took in a sharp breath and sat up straight as my eyes took in my third sighting of the woman in the long retro coat. She was standing in my alcove, staring at me again. The curtain was dead still. The only movement I'd seen had been hers.
"What do you want?" I asked.
She took a step closer to me. Her eyes were boring into me, searching for something. Her frown was deeper than ever, and her expression was one of perplexed bewilderment.
She was quite close to me this time, so I could actually make out her features. Her hair was dark, shoulder-length, and wavy. Her eyes were green. Her mouth was small, but her lips were accentuated by a bright red gloss. She was pale, with a rosy patch on each cheekbone. She wore a dark green beret, and her long, full coat was a deep burgundy color. The coat came nearly to her ankles and revealed what I presumed were the lower part of some very elegant boots. On her hands she wore black leather gloves.
She looked as if she had just stepped out of a Raymond Chandler novel. I almost expected her to light a cigarette and tell me that her husband was cheating on her. —I want you to find out who the rat's two-timin' me with— she'd say. —The no good lug's gonna pay for what he's doin' to me—
But no such words came out of her mouth. Which was a good thing, because for some reason, my internal movie studio had made her sound rather uneducated. Which would have completely spoiled the elegant vibe she was giving off as she stood there, silently gazing at me.
I slid my legs off the bed and leaned further forward. "Who are you?"
She took a step backward in response to my forward movement. She looked suddenly frightened, as I posed some kind threat. Not to her physical person, but to her worldview. It was as if I represented something she couldn't comprehend.
My internal movie studio was a fairly active one. Staff of fourteen in the front office, seven soundstages, four editing suites.
I stood. She stepped back again. I stepped forward. She stepped back.
"Will you please say something?" I asked.
I went to take another step, but my foot caught the leg of the chair. I reached out to balance myself and glanced down to navigate my foot back out into the open.
When I looked up again, she was gone.
The curtain was still. Not so much as a flutter.
How the hell did she do that?
I pulled the curtain back and walked out to the nurse's desk. I looked up and down the unit, but there was no one there other than the three other patients.
"Something wrong, Mister Richmond?" Norma asked from behind the desk.
I walked up to her. "There was a woman in my room just now," I said. "She came in, stared at me, and then left. She didn't say a word. Do you know who it was?"
Norma looked at me with a neutral expression. I imagined it was fairly well-practiced neutral expression, born of many dealings with people of questionable mental stability.
I found it infuriating.
"I didn't see anyone come in," Norma replied. "I've been at the desk for the last twenty minutes. Nobody's come in or gone out that whole time."
I put my hand on the desk and looked at the floor. "How did I know you were going to say something like that?"
"What do you mean?"
I sighed and looked back up at her. "That's three times I've seen her now. Once when I was still lying in the bed in Emergency. The second time when I was being taken out of Emergency and down the hall to Psychiatric. And the third time just now, in my little curtained alcove. At no point has anyone else confirmed my sightings by indicating that they, too had seen her. So, either there's a strange woman in 1940s clothing wandering the hospital unseen by anyone other than myself, or I'm losing my mind. And considering where I am right now, the first option is not the one a betting person would go with."
Norma straightened in her seat and looked at with a soft smile. "Well, I can tell you one thing. People who are 'going crazy', as you put it, are usually quite convinced that they're perfectly fine. If you thin k you're going crazy, you're very likely not."
I tried to get my breathing under control. "Yeah. I've heard that before. I hope it's true. Because I don't feel at my most stable right now. And I still have no idea who this woman is. That is, if she's not a figment of my imagination."
Norma pursed her lips and unfocused her eyes for a moment. "Well, did she remind you anyone? Did she look like anyone you know?"
I thought about that for a moment. "Well, you know, now that I think about it, she did look a bit like Susan Hayward."
"Susan Hayward?"
"Yeah. She was an actress back in the forties."
"Yes, I know who Susan Hayward was. I just found it odd that you would come up with her name, that's all."
"Oh, I'm a movie buff. I'm surprised I didn't come up with someone more obscure than that."
"So you're saying that this woman, who looks like Susan Hayward, came into your room and stared at you?"
My shoulders sagged. "It sounds so patently insane when you say it like that."
"Mister Richmond, I'm not making fun of you. I want to help you figure this out. You don't sound like a man who's having hallucinations, but considering that visitors have to be buzzed into the unit, we have to consider the possibility that you slipped into a vivid daydream for a couple of minutes."
"Yeah. Pretty damned vivid."
I ran a hand through my hair and started back for my little curtained alcove.
——————–
Lydia returned just before suppertime, bearing one my duffelbags and an armful of magazines.
"The cavalry," I said, getting up from the chair and taking both from her. "You have no idea how glad I am to see these." I held up the magazines. "These especially." I nodded towards the bed, where sat the copy of Woman's World I'd been leafing through. "That was slowly removing brain cells from my head."
I put the deliveries down and gave Lydia a giant hug.
"Well, this is a nice change," she said.
"When people bring me things, I get all gooshy inside," I said.
She rolled her eyes. "Should've known better on that score."
I took her face in both my hands and gazed at her for a moment. "Thank you," I said. "I really appreciate everything you've done for me these last couple of days."
I leaned forward and gave her a kiss on the lips. She leaned into it and kissed back.
After a moment, our faces parted slightly.
"You really are in a better mood," Lydia said. Her eyes had suddenly acquired a slight luster.
"The thought of feeling like a human again," I said, "is cause for nothing short of celebration."
I practically tore off the johnny shirt and dove into my duffel bag. I pulled out a blue t-shirt, discovering to my delight that it was my favorite Star Trek shirt, acquired at a fan convention in Toronto. "Bless you, my love," I said, glancing over at her. I put the t-shirt on the bed and pulled out my favorite pair of jeans, a pair of beige socks, and a fresh pair of boxer shorts.
I peeled off the boxers I was wearing, fully cognizant of the fact that I was now naked in a strange place, and reveled for a moment in the near-naughtiness of it. I turned to Lydia and waggled my dick at her. She rolled her eyes and turned away, but not before I noted the sly smile that made its way to her lips. I hoped that smile held the promise of possibilities when I got out of this place.
I pulled on the fresh shorts and sat down on the bed to don the socks. A moment later I was fastening the jeans and pulling the t-shirt over my head. Digging in the duffel bag once again, I pulled out a pair of sneakers.
The ensemble was complete.
"Let's go for a walk," I said.
Lydia turned around to face me again. "Oh, good, you're decent at last. I thought maybe you wanted to give the staff a little show."
I sneered. "Nah. Too cold in this place. I'd look like a poorly-hung mutant. Or a man with a gummi worm between his legs."
"Will you stop?" Her face was now beet red. "They can hear you out there, you know."
"Yes. Isn't it exciting?"
She shook her head and moved to the curtain. "Come on, then. I thought you said you were stir crazy."
I pulled a sweatshirt out of the duffel bag and followed her.
Norma gave us an odd look as I signed my name in the log book and wrote in the time.
"About half an hour?" I asked.
Norma nodded. "Just push the buzzer when you want to come back in."
We strode down the hall and exited the unit.
"Where to?" Lydia asked.
"Well, there's a Tim Horton's over in the main building. I could sure use a sour-cream-glazed."
"Creature of habit, you are."
"I need my doughnut, woman."
As we moved through the corridors and up the elevator, I told Lydia about the strange woman I'd seen, or at least thought I'd seen. She was attentive to the story, but I could seen concern creep into her expression as I recounted the latest encounter.
"I know it sounds crazy," I said, "but even if I was hallucinating, or daydreaming, or whatever, it felt real. Absolutely real."
"I just hope those drugs you took haven't damaged you in some way," she said.
"It was Gravol and Sleep-Eze-D, for Christ's sake. What kind of damage could they do?"
"Well, they were supposed to kill you, now, weren't they?"
I stopped in my tracks. "Uh… Yeah… I'd kind of forgotten that part."
"Oh, that's lovely. Forget the whole reason you're in here to begin with, why don't you?" She shook her head. "You daft ponce."
"Hey. No fair. I don't understand all those slippery English insults you seem to produce so readily. And they sound so pretty on that lovely accent of yours, that I hardly feel like I'm being insulted at all. So stop it."
"I have to take what advantages I can, you know. Because your barrage of wordplay hardly ever stops for a breath. I'd've thought you'd've published sixteen novels by this point."
I put my hands to my chest. "Ouch. You strike straight at my heart. Have you no mercy at all?"
"No if I can help it."
"Strumpet."
"Arsehole."
"Okay, that one I understand."
