Chapter 45
Every Rose
Maryanne
Maryanne looked at the time on her cell phone. It was nearly 2 a.m. At least the phone wasn’t ringing now. Mrs. Betts’s last call had been at ten p.m.
Yes, she’d take a taxi home to Harvell House first thing in the morning. Yes, Alex’s doctor was being very kind and understanding in letting Maryanne stay the night with Alex. Absolutely, the nurses had given her one of those roll-in cots and that extra blanket. Thanks, Mrs. Betts, for asking them to.
A line of light shone underneath Alex’s hospital room door. Green numbers glowed from the equipment, still humming by Alex’s bed. The last nurse who’d been in there, a matronly type, had left the bathroom light on for Maryanne. She’d started to close the room’s curtains, but Maryanne had asked her to leave them open. She found a comfort now in the night beyond. And with Connie’s diary tucked under the blankets with her, Maryanne lay quietly.
She’d read Alex’s words. Every one of them. She’d read some of the pages over several times, especially the last few. And her own tears had fallen on the paper to join Alex’s that had dried there.
Talk to her. About big things and little things.
Those instructions that the nurses had given in the early days of Alex’s coma rang through her thoughts once again. And Maryanne knew she might never get another chance to talk to Alex Robbins, about anything.
She sat up, tossed aside the blanket, and looked down at the yellowed diary that rested on her thigh. Maryanne touched the drawing of the tiny rose on one of the lower corners.
Big things it was, then.
“I... I read the diary, Alex. Most of Connie’s words, and all of yours. It wasn’t just curiosity. I had to.
“I’m so sorry for what you went through, and that you thought you had to go through it alone. No one should. But I guess I can understand that—keeping it inside like you did. You’re a good writer. I know this is just a journal, but you’re good with putting your thoughts down. No wonder you love English class so much!”
Maryanne turned to the back of the diary, the very last page that Alex had written on. She got up from her cot to sit on the edge of Alex’s bed. She pulled the chain to snap on the light over Alex’s head, watching her eyes carefully. But Alex didn’t flinch under the sudden glare.
“This is what you wrote, Alex. Remember?”
Oh, please remember.
Maryanne cleared her throat, twice, before she began reading Alex’s words.
I’ve got almost all of it now. The memories of that night trickle in bit by bit each time I cast back into my body, until finally it’s about to become clear. The last critical bit. I just have to be brave enough to face it. And I’m ready to. I’ll tuck you away in a minute, dear diary, and then, by myself this time, I’ll cast out and then cast back in. And then... then I’ll know everything.
Scared? Shitless! But I will remember. And when I do, I’ll go to the police and do what I have to do. And I’ll no doubt scream, and I’ll absolutely cry, but I WILL survive this no matter what. I know I will—I SWEAR I will. If Connie Harvell taught me anything, she taught me this.
Sometimes survival’s all we have to start with. All we have to build on. But we find our strength in such strange places! Like way down deep inside... or way out in the darkest nights...
“Alex,” Maryanne whispered. “Come back to us.”
She closed the book. Maryanne stared down at Alex and gently pushed the dark bangs back on her forehead. The bandage was gone now; the bruises were subsiding.
A flash in the periphery of her vision caught her attention. Maryanne’s head snapped toward the wide window. Nothing. Just a flicker of reflection on the glass no doubt, from when she’d moved her hand. She stared into the glass. Alex’s room faced the back of the hospital, toward the woods. There were no street lights to shine against the glass from the outside. The full moon barely glowed in the sky on this cloudy night. But the lights shone bright in the hospital room. And so in the window, Maryanne could see the bed, the monitors, and much of the room dully reflected in the glass. And she could see herself and Alex reflected there too.
It felt suddenly strange. Yet it was nothing out of the ordinary, just the play of the light on glass she’d seen a million times before. There was always a kind of emptiness there at night when a room was well lit and you peered a certain way through a window into the darkness outside. And so it was tonight. One moment Maryanne could see their pale faces—hers and Alex’s—reflected in the glass, then a moment later, when she looked a different way, she could see through their images to the outside world. It was just a visual shift. But there was a kind of emptiness there, when you looked through. Not pitch black emptiness like a caster emptiness... but maybe one that could be.
Oh, God, could it be...?
Maryanne jumped up quickly. Finding the brakes on the hospital bed, she disengaged them. Carefully, she began rolling the bed closer to the window, a process that also involved rolling some of the equipment Alex was tethered to. Fortunately, everything was on wheels. Eventually, she managed to get the hospital bed close enough to the glass.
“This is nuts! This won’t work in a million years.”
Maybe this was a million and one.
Maryanne held Alex’s hand in her own, raised it up to the cold glass. She held her breath, then she tapped Alex’s hand on the window.
“My sister wants out,” Maryanne whispered, her voice thick with tears, yet with an underlying conviction. “Please... she wants out. She wants out. She wants out.”
Maryanne could feel it—she could see it as it happened. In a whoosh, Alex was out.
Alex’s cast was there. Beyond the glass, that glorious black cast emptiness hovered in the Mansbridge night. While her original still lay motionless on the hospital bed, outside, Alex’s cast looked around, disoriented. Maryanne, who sat crouched on the bed, put both her hands flat to the window pane. Seeing her, Alex came close. She set her own hands on the glass, opposite Maryanne’s, but of course, they pressed right through the glass. Maryanne smiled at the strange, heavy press of Alex’s caster hands on hers. Though she couldn’t make out Alex’s features in her empty face, Maryanne could tell that she was looking at herself lying so helpless on the bed. Then slowly, Alex nodded.
Please let this work! It has to work! Maryanne moved aside, clearing the way for Alex. She waited. She hoped!
Alex’s cast shot through the window and into her body. She’d have shot right off the bed if Maryanne hadn’t been prepared. As soon as she’d seen that dark rippling, Maryanne had flung herself atop Alex, pinning her to the bed. Even at that, the bed lurched several feet backward.
Alex’s whole body was trembling. Maryanne peeled herself off her friend and stood again.
“Alex? Are you okay?”
Alex sat upright, still shaking, and pulled in what looked to be a painful lungful of air. Her hands went to her chest as she panted. She drew air, deeply, deeply down in. With a look somewhere between terror and elation, she stared at Maryanne. Her pupils were caster wide, but her eyes were open. She was alert. Out of the coma.
She was back.
“Connie!” Alex croaked.
Maryanne nodded. “It’s okay. We did it. Connie’s at rest now.”
Alex barely relaxed a moment. “C. W. Stanley. He was the one who—”
“He’s dead. Connie killed him and she saved me. He was the one who attacked you in the attic, we know. And he was the one who abused Connie all those years ago. It was one and the same guy! C. W. was Billy! Can you believe it? But he won’t hurt anyone ever again.”
“I don’t understand. C. W. is Billy? He’s dead? Connie killed him?” Alex held a hand to her throat, which probably felt like hell. It certainly sounded like it was full of gravel. “How is that even possible?”
“It’s a long story, and I’ll tell you everything,” Maryanne promised, “but I’ve got to get your bed back over there where it belongs
so we can call a nurse.”
“The nurse can wait,” Alex rasped. “I need to hear what happened.”
“I’m not sure the nurses will wait,” Maryanne said, already pushing the bed. “God knows what your monitor readings are saying out there at the nurse’s station, if anyone cares to look. They could come running in here any second.”
“Okay.” Alex laid her head back against the pillow. Her breaths were coming steadier now. Her shaking was subsiding. “Put this sucker back in place, and let’s get the medical circus over with.”
Maryanne grinned. “Amen to that.”
The silence lasted just a moment before two nurses raced into the room.