Waking Rose: A Fairy Tale Retold (36 page)

Will it stop you from killing me?

Perhaps.

The serpent lazily hovered over her arm, then stung.  Rose watched the silver needle sink into her arm, though she could feel nothing.

Now talk. I know you like to talk. You must be yearning to talk to someone.

Am I awake?

No. You’re still dreaming.

Dreaming about speaking with serpents.

Do I look like a serpent to you?

Right now you do.
  A serpent, a dragon in disguise.

What imagination. Do you always see things this way?

Sometimes. Are you going to kill me now?

No, you’re in no danger. Just relax, and talk.

About what?

About yourself. It would be interesting to know more about you. Why don’t you tell me about the last thing you remember doing before you came here?

First, can I ask you something? Have you seen Fish?

A  fish?

Not a fish. Fish. My friend.

Who is Fish?

He’s a man who always rescues me whenever I’m in trouble. He has a veritable habit of doing it. I was thinking I could use him now.

Was he working with you in the barn?

I don’t think so.

The serpent bit her arm again and she flinched.
You can tell me.

Why should I tell a serpent?

I’m not going to tell anyone. And you want to tell me everything, don’t you? It will be so much easier if you tell me everything. You’ll feel better.

I don’t understand why I am here. Why is everyone here asleep?

Because you are asleep, and this is all part of your dream.

So if I wake up, will they all wake up?

But you’re not going to wake up, and there’s no one you can see or talk to except for me. And I’m afraid you’re not going anywhere, because you’re in a coma. No one can help you.

Rose flexed her fingers uselessly against the serpent’s coils, and felt despair eat away at her.
 The serpent is right,
she realized.
There’s no escape.

17
...And round the castle, a hedge of thorns grew high and wide...

H
IS

He wandered alone along the silent hallways of Graceton, a Styrofoam cup of tea and sandwich bag in his hand. The late afternoon January sunlight was slanting in the massive Victorian windows that ranked the walls, fragmented by the winter-bare trees. All around him was silence. Except for the occasional passing technician, he might have been alone in this world of slumbering souls.

When he had arrived, Dr. Murray was giving Rose a medical exam, so he had taken himself for a walk. He paced up the side staircases with their marble steps and then stepped down the central stair that broadened into a grand promenade on the first floor. As he walked, he listened to his footsteps, echoing.

He had thought he knew the meaning of solitude. But this kind of isolation was more intense. Perhaps before, he had never been so acutely aware of lacking a companion.

At last he journeyed back to her room, and found her alone again. He sat down in his usual chair beside her bed and put down his tea on the bedside table.

 “Rose,” Fish said to the face of the immobile girl. “Can you hear me?”

There was no answer but breathing. He curled his fingers around her hand. Their hands were nearly the same size, he realized, his and hers, but hers were a girl’s hand, with long delicate fingers, and his was a man’s hand, rougher, bulkier, the knuckles more pronounced.

He massaged the center of her palm, looking at her eyes for a response. As usual, there was nothing.

It seem'd he never, never could redeem

From such a steadfast spell his lady's eyes;

“I’ve got time on my hands now. I’m still out here on break for another week,” he said, putting down his lunch and taking a sip of his tea. “And none of your strange friends are around either. Surprised that I miss them. The good news is that I found an apartment that’s halfway between Graceton Hall and the University. I’m moving there next week. It’ll mean I can stay longer, since I’ll be closer. So you’ll be seeing more of me. Well, at any rate, I’ll be seeing more of you.” 

He paused. “I’ve been trying to figure out what you were doing in that barn, Rose,” he said in a low voice. “I don’t suppose you can tell me?”

He addressed the blank mask of a face once more. “It’s funny, you used to tell me so much, and I seldom told you anything. Now, it seems, it’s the other way around. If I knew you were listening, I’d tell you more. But it doesn’t seem like you can hear me.

“Now Rose, I’m figuring out that you were after those ‘top-secret’ interviews of your dad’s. But maybe you were just looking for memories. I’ve been to the barn and looked through some things—not all of it. Your dad must have saved every scrap of paper with writing on it that came his way. Far worse than me. It would take me months to go through it alone. But I’m doing it whenever I can find time.”

He rubbed her hands again. “I’ve never told you this, Rose, but you have lovely hands.”

Having no response, he remarked, “And that’s the first time I’ve never seen you blush when I gave you something that could be possibly construed as a compliment.”

His eyes traveled over to his cup of tea, and the unopened sugar packets beside them. It occurred to him that he was still grabbing two packs of sugar automatically every time he bought tea, but that he always forgot to put them in. He had to smile wryly. Rose would be pleased.

He leaned towards her and brushed back the hair from her head. “Well, kiddo, you better keep on trying to find your way back to me. Because I’m not getting very far without you.”

Next week, as he was finishing moving his belongings into his new apartment, he was pleasantly surprised to get a call from Kateri on his cell phone.

“I’m back at school,” she said cheerfully. “I wanted to go see Rose, and I don’t have a car this semester. Are you coming out this way any time soon?”

“I can come out now,” he said, wiping his forehead. He had been moving crates of books up the flight of stairs to his new rooms. “Actually, I need to talk to you. Something happened with Donna.”

“Want to tell me now?”

 “I’ll tell you when I see you.”

He cruised onto campus and picked up Kateri from her dorm. He noticed that she actually had red and green thread on her braids. “Do you ever wear jingle bells on them?” he remarked.

“Sometimes,” she said, with an impish smile. “Did you have a good Christmas?”

“Quiet. But my life is lot quieter since Rose fell asleep,” he said.

“I can understand,” Kateri said soberly. “Well, mine, as usual, wasn’t quiet. Maybe next year we can bring Rose to our house for Christmas. A Kovach Christmas, with all twenty-seven of us in our old farmhouse, would wake anyone.”

“We might just explore that possibility,” Fish said. “I know Jean wants to have Rose transferred to a facility in New Jersey as soon as she can find one with an opening. Most of them don’t want to take anyone who hasn’t been in a coma longer than six months. In retrospect, we’re lucky that we got her into Graceton Hall so quickly.” When Rose was transferred up to New Jersey, his daily visits to her would be over. But he didn’t want to think of that.

“So, what’s up?” Kateri was businesslike once more, leaning against the seat.

He told her about Donna. She was silent as he finished.

“That’s amazing,” she said after a silence.

“So you didn’t know she was going to tell me that?”

“No, not at all. We talked about Rose whenever she wanted to bring it up. But I didn’t know she had this on her conscience.” She paused. “I guess this changes things distinctly.”

“Sure does,” he said grimly.

 “So do you think it was a tramp or some random mugger like the police said?”

“I might have, if it weren’t for this extra strangeness that I was told about before, but it didn’t seem probable until now. Remember those notes that Rose was looking for?”

“An interview her dad did with a nurse?” Kateri recollected.

“Well, here’s their significance.” He told her about the nuns’ tale.

Kateri’s eyes sparked. “So you’re saying that someone from Robert Graves Memorial Hospital might be behind Rose’s accident?”

Internally Fish groaned, realizing the connection. “That’s the hospital where you’ve been protesting, isn’t it?”

“Yes. And I bet I can narrow down the suspects to a single person. Dr. Ellen Prosser, director of the Robert Graves Memorial Hospital. She’s been working there for the past twenty years at least. And she’s unethical. If there was any kind of weird business at the hospital years ago, if she was there, you can bet she would have been involved. And I can guarantee you that going to a baby’s christening party and making threats is something that she would do. Just in her distinctive meat-handed style.”

Fish had to admit he agreed with Kateri on the last point. “But still, there’s a big gap to bridge. If we’re going to hypothesize that Rose was attacked by someone from the hospital who was afraid of her uncovering their grimy secrets, we’d have to prove that someone from the hospital knew what Rose was doing.”

“Well, Rose was interviewing doctors and nurses for her paper,” Kateri said. “She might have mentioned her dad’s papers to them.”

 “Possible, knowing how much Rose tends to talk,” he winced. “At least, in the past. Do you know if Rose talked to Dr. Prosser or some of her staff about her paper?”

“Well, I doubt it. She’s been to protests with me there, so she wouldn’t be inclined to ask them for any favors.”

“We need to find her notes on that research paper she was writing. I can call Jean and have her look for them.” Fish shook his head. “It still seems ridiculous to me to be basing an inquiry on something said at a christening party twenty years ago. But all the same, I’m glad Rose isn’t in that hospital anymore.”

They had arrived at Graceton Hall by now, and got out of the car. “I’m very glad she’s out of that hospital too,” Kateri remarked. “For another reason.”

“What’s that?” Fish asked.

“I can come and visit her. There was no way I could go and visit her before.” Kateri said. “Unless I wore a disguise of some kind.”

“Ha! Forgot that,” Fish said.

They went up to her room. Dr. Murray was sitting in a chair next to Rose, writing something on a clipboard.

“Sorry, are we in your way, Dr. Murray?” Fish asked politely.

“No, not at all. Hello. I’m just doing a check on her chart,” Dr. Murray glanced up at them with a small smile. “Come on in. I’m almost done.”

“Hi Rose,” Kateri said easily, sitting down. “Hey, you’re looking good, Rose! Isn’t she, Fish?”

 “She is.” Fish saw the doctor’s eyes flicker at him. Maybe she had never heard his nickname before: the Cor guys usually called him Ben. “Rose, you’ve been pinking up. Has that new medication been helping?” He turned to Dr. Murray. “I saw something new in her IV the other day. I wanted to ask you about it.”

“Oh, that?” Dr. Murray shook her head. “I’m afraid that was just cold medication. We’ve had some infections going around this time of year. Sorry, I wish I could say I had found a new drug to try.” She nodded and went to the medical cabinet in Rose’s room.

“Well, she certainly looks better,” Fish said.

Kateri said, “Rose, you been getting some exercise while we were gone?”  She punched her former roommate lightly in the arm. “Fish saw your godmother the other day. Did he tell you?”

Letting her chat to Rose privately for a few minutes, Fish got up and walked over to Dr. Murray. “Dr. Murray, you said that Rose interviewed you for her paper, correct?”

“Yes, that’s right,” the doctor said, without turning around. She finished what she was doing, closed the cabinet, and looked at him.