Some Can See, page 23
part #1 of Northern Michigan Asylum Series
“Is it possible that I look worse than you?” she asked, lifting a hand to her throbbing throat.
“Considerably,” he said, wincing as his eyes trailed from her face to her neck down to her bandaged arm.
“You saved me,” she breathed, closing her eyes and calling the memories back to her. The night before had the surreal quality of a bad drug trip, likely thanks to whatever pain killers the nurses administered. She remembered Dale’s hands, strong, merciless squeezing and then…
“Yeah,” he agreed, rubbing a hand over his face.
“You hurt him? Dale?”
Kurt nodded.
“I put him in a choke hold. He passed out and I cuffed him and left him there. I called for back-up and they took care of the rest. I brought you here.”
Jude had a vague memory of babbling as Kurt carried her through the woods.
“How? How did you know where to find me?”
“I didn’t,” he admitted. “After you showed me that picture, I went to Dale. That was stupid of me. He’s my brother, and I assumed you were playing a game. He acted funny, but I didn’t think much of it. Later on, I drove back to his house, the house we grew up in, and his truck was gone. I drove around, thinking, and…” he paused as if reluctant to add the rest. “I heard Rosemary speak as if she were sitting right next to me.”
“What did she say?”
“Cabin.”
“That’s how close I came to death,” Jude murmured, dumbfounded. What if he had ignored the call of a sister buried thirty years before?
“Don’t think about it,” he told her, reaching for a cup of water with a straw and stepping toward the bed. He held the cup out and she leaned forward, taking a painful sip.
“About what?” she asked.
“The other possibilities. It’s a block against recovery. I know because I’ve seen enough victims do it. The perpetual cycle of what if? It happened the way it happened, end of story.”
She leaned back against her pillows and studied him.
“I’m surprised a detective in Mason, Michigan would have seen a lot of victims. That wasn’t meant to be as insulting as it sounded.”
He smiled and sat back down.
“I’m getting used to your insults. But it is my line of work after all. I’m not exactly spending my days with old ladies knitting. I don’t see a lot of homicide. That’s true enough. But accidents, assaults, robberies. Every crime has a victim.”
“Except victimless crimes.”
“I’ve yet to see one of those.”
Jude might have argued, she loved to play devil’s advocate, but her throat hurt; in fact, her whole body hurt, and she wanted to cry.
As if sensing her distress, Kurt spoke. “I called your sister last night.”
“Hattie?” Jude asked training her eyes on the little window that showed the pale light of dawn creeping into the sky.
“Yeah. You gave me her number. Not sure if you remember. You were pretty dazed. I left her a message.”
“She didn’t answer?” Jude asked, surprised. Hattie rarely went out at night.
“I thought I’d call your parents, but you said they were dead. Is that true? Did your mother die in the asylum?” He looked crestfallen as he asked and cast his eyes towards the floor. It wasn’t his fault that the town blamed Jude’s mother for Rosemary’s death, but he shouldered the guilt, anyway.
Jude closed her eyes and shook her head.
“My dad is dead and my mom escaped from the asylum almost two weeks ago.”
His head came up.
“Really? And you don’t know where she went?”
A tear slipped down her cheek. Kurt pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and stood, but the door opened and Hattie burst in.
****
Hattie
“Jude?” Hattie stared at her sister in disbelief. Jude’s face was mottled with yellow and purple bruises. Her lower lip was split, both her eyes filled with tiny red cracks, her left arm in a sling. A fiery red ring marked the tender skin of her sister’s neck. Hattie stood, speechless, one hand on the door, one foot in the room, the other still rooted in the hall where the world made sense, where her sister did not look like someone had used her as a punching bag.
A man stood near Jude’s bed, a hankie in his hand, his eyes studying Hattie. He looked beaten as well, a black eye, bloody knuckles, bloody shirt. The stains stood in sharp contrast to the white room. A slender pole held a bag of fluid steadily drip dripping down to a tube attached to Jude’s un-bandaged arm.
“It’s okay, Hattie. Come in,” Jude croaked.
Hattie started to walk in and then remembered Damien. He hovered in the hall behind her, his hands shoved into the pockets of the slacks he’d pulled on that morning. She’d watched him moving around his room, naked, his body long and lean in the amber glow of his bedside lamp. They’d left his house early; he wanted to take her horseback riding in the mist of dawn, but when she’d stopped at her apartment, she’d heard the message from Kurt and they’d rushed the two-hour drive to the hospital in Lansing, covering the one-hundred thirty miles in record time.
“Damien,” Hattie said, and he looked up, his face unreadable. Did hospitals make him uncomfortable too?
“Damien?” Jude rasped.
Hattie turned back to her sister.
“Is he here?” Jude asked, and Hattie stared at the puzzled, and perhaps hopeful, expression on her sister’s face.
“Hattie, I…” Damien started, his eyes downcast.
He looked like Jude’s dog when he’d chewed her favorite gold pilgrim pumps.
The florescent lights bored down on him. His skin appeared waxy, like a fake person, a man in a wax museum posing as shame. Yes, that was the word, he looked ashamed.
Chapter 33
September 20, 1965
Hattie
The man in Jude’s room nudged Hattie out of the way and pushed the door open exposing Damien to Jude. Hattie looked at Jude’s raw face, the scratches and bruises, but it was her eyes that held a story. When she saw Damien they opened wider, and lit with a hesitant smile.
“What are you doing here?” Jude asked him, and Hattie heard her attempt to sound angry, overshadowed by the deeper truth - joy. Joy that Damien stood in the hospital hallway.
“Do you know each other?” Hattie asked, wondering at Damien’s rigid posture, his eyes that too told a story - not of joy - but regret.
“Of course,” Jude whispered, her voice growing fainter each time she spoke. “Isn’t that why he’s here?”
But Hattie recognized the edge in Jude’s voice, the dawning of an idea that a moment earlier had not existed.
“I’ll give you some time alone,” the man with the beaten knuckles told Jude. He nodded at Hattie and walked down the hall.
“I need to tell you something, Hattie,” Damien said, as if he’d finally remembered her, remembered the night before.
“How do you know my sister?” Jude said, lower this time, venomous. Her eyes had turned to brown slits in her puffy face and her hands held the sheet at her waist like she might rip it in two.
Hattie hung suspended, adrift in a torrent of strange sensations, one moment flying high on the euphoria of the night, and the next crashing, plummeting to the cold, sterile truth of Jude in that big white bed, her skin a million colors. A painting covered in black getting stripped away, Damien’s scarlet blush, Jude’s narrow eyes, Hattie in the middle, and yet nowhere at all.
Damien moved closer, touched Hattie’s elbow, and stepped into Jude’s room. He pulled Hattie in after him and shut the door.
Jude watched him with sharp eyes, and her gaze slid toward his hand where he held Hattie’s arm.
“I screwed up,” Damien told them. He was glancing back and forth at their faces, his gray eyes studying Hattie with each pass. “Hattie,” he took her hand in his, squeezed. “Jude and I know one-another.”
“You do?” Hattie glanced at Jude who stared at Damien as if fireballs might explode from her eyes.
He shifted to Jude, cringed at her gaze, and continued. “I work closely with several doctors at the Northern Michigan Asylum. It’s expected that I seek their guidance for my research. I also need a letter of recommendation. I started working with a doctor a few months ago and recently he asked me for a favor.”
Hattie frowned, not following. Jude did not look confused, something like understanding was turning her features.
“That doctor asked me to contact you both.”
“Dr. Kaiser,” Jude hissed.
Damien looked wearily at Jude as if he feared she might lunge from the bed.
He nodded.
“Dr. Kaiser has been working with your mom at the asylum for a decade. When she escaped, he thought she might go to her children.”
“You fucking rat,” Jude seethed.
“You knew about Mama?” Hattie asked, her voice trembling. She blinked at him, noticing how the longer she stared the less solid he become, a little blurry, more like a ghost than a real man.
Hattie stepped away, and he released her hand, but his eyes stayed locked on her face. She turned and moved closer to Jude, but Jude stared angrily at Damien.
“I did,” he confessed. “I was only meant to speak with you a few times, keep tabs in case your mother made contact, but…”
“But you fucked us instead,” Jude said, and the word exploded in Hattie’s head. She walked, dazed to a chair and slid down into it, pulling her knees to her chest.
She stared at the white tile floor, the white walls crawling up to the white ceiling. The white blotted out the color of the previous night, the color she felt rising in her cheeks, the color splattering her sister.
Damien moved towards her, squatted, tried to take her hands, but she balled them and stuffed them behind her knees where he couldn’t reach.
“I didn’t intend it that way, Hattie. You have to believe me.”
Hattie didn’t look at his face, she focused on that white, empty space. If she stared hard enough, she might disappear into the white abyss, wake up in a room she only vaguely remembered that smelled of her mama. A little paper hot-air balloon hung from the ceiling, a fan whirred on warm nights, and Hattie could curl beneath a quilt with her cat Turkey Legs.
A knock sounded on the door, and a nurse in a white uniform with a white hat perched on her caramel colored hair swept into the room.
“Look at all these visitors, you have,” she exclaimed going to Jude’s bedside and touching her wrist.
“Get out,” Jude snapped hoarsely.
The nurse drew her hand back, shocked.
“Not you,” she said. “Them.” She nodded her head toward Hattie and Damien.
Jude did not look at her, and Hattie’s insides curdled. She wanted to hug Jude and cry and run away all at the same time.
The nurse pursed her lips and nodded.
“She needs her rest. It’s been quite an ordeal,” she told them.
Damien stood, offering Hattie his hand. She didn’t take it but followed him into the hallway.
The man from Jude’s room stood near the nurse’s station. He stepped forward when they walked out.
“Hattie Porter?” he asked, extending a hand.
She nodded and limply shook his hand.
“I’m Detective Kurt Bell.”
Her eyebrows shot up.
“What happened to my sister?” she asked, glancing back at the closed door to her sister’s room.
“She was attacked last night and nearly killed.”
Hattie sagged to the side and Damien caught her around the waist.
“I’m fine,” she murmured, pushing him away. “Because of my painting?” she asked.
“In part, yes. I would like to interview you about that, but I’m sure this has been a tough morning.”
He gazed with hard green eyes at Hattie but glanced toward Damien.
“I’m not related,” Damien told him. “I’m…”
“A liar,” Hattie interrupted him.
He turned crimson but said nothing.
“Do you need help, Miss Porter?” Detective Bell asked, squaring off against Damien who took a step back.
“No, I…” she trailed off. Did she ask Damien to take her home? Stay and wait for Jude to allow her into her room? “I don’t feel so well,” she murmured, touching a hand to her clammy forehead.
Damien hesitantly reached a hand up and touched the back of her neck.
“You’re warm,” he said. “Let me take you home, Hattie. You can drive back down this afternoon.”
“Is that what you want, Miss Porter? If not, I can arrange a driver for you.”
“No,” she said, turning toward Damien. “It’s okay. I’ll be back. I need to… I’m so tired all of a sudden.”
****
Jude
Jude stared at the closed door. The pain in her body was miniscule compared to the pain blooming in her chest. A weird hollow sensation landed in her belly coupled with a vice holding her heart hostage so that every beat took an effort she could barely muster. The nurse had given her a sedative and soon she would slip out of the discomfort of her body, the rawness of her emotion, the churning of her mind.
The door opened, and a tiny hopeful flicker ignited within her. Who did she want to walk through? Damien? Hattie? But no, Kurt peeked in, a cup of coffee clutched in one hand.
“May I?” he asked.
She nodded.
“I spoke briefly with your sister, but she wasn’t feeling well. I believe she’ll be driving back this afternoon.”
“My fault,” Jude muttered, bunching her sheet in her hand. “I was mean to her. Hattie is delicate.”
“Seems that way,” Kurt admitted, returning to his seat. “I had the sense I shouldn’t say too much, plus she had that fella with her.”
“Damien,” Jude said his name and a word floated to her lips, but she didn’t say it: rejection.
“Is that her boyfriend?”
Jude scoffed, which hurt her throat. She shook her head without answering. On second thought, she didn’t know, did she?
“I get the feeling you have a complicated life, Jude,” he said.
“These days,” she murmured, settling back on her pillows, a heaviness crawling through her limbs.
“I’m going to stay a little while longer if that’s okay?” he said.
She closed her eyes and mumbled a sound, but never heard his reply.
Chapter 34
September 20, 1965
Jude
Jude woke to sun streaming through the hospital window. The chair beside her stood empty, but perched on the corner of her bed was Clayton.
He grinned when she opened her eyes.
“Your Knight in Shining Armor has arrived,” he announced.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, smiling despite herself.
Her body ached. She tried to sit up but winced as pain shot through her arm.
“Slow down, Annie Oakley, the nurse on duty looks like a mean one. I don’t want her to come in and stick me if you fall out of bed.”
He helped her into a sitting position and stuffed several pillows behind her back.
“How did you know?” she asked.
“I called that detective this morning. Bell? I was hoping to put a little pressure on him about your mother’s case and he told me what happened. I knew you were tough, but stalking a murderer seems a bit rash,” he joked, patting her leg sympathetically.
“I was more prey than predator last night,” she rasped. “Can you hand me a drink?” She pointed to the cup of water next to her bed.
“My pleasure.”
She took a sip and closed her eyes as the lukewarm liquid flowed down her inflamed throat.
“I feel terrible,” she grumbled.
“Well you don’t look pageant-ready by any means, but you’re still beautiful, Jude. I hope it’s okay to say that.” Clayton blushed.
She smiled and sighed.
“I appreciate it, Clayton. I don’t care all that much right now, but it’s still nice to hear. Did you meet Detective Bell?”
Clayton nodded, studying her eyes.
“Handsome guy,” he said. “I relieved him of his bedside vigil. He seems rather taken with you.”
“Hardly,” Jude muttered.
“I had another reason for coming, Jude. And let me preface this by saying we’re not doing anything crazy. I just wanted you to know.”
“Speak sense, Clayton.”
He lifted his leather case from the floor and unzipped it pulling out a single paper.
“I went to the government building in Cadillac and inquired about tax information on the property your parents owned.”
Jude stared at him.
“My grandmother must have sold it, right? After my dad died?”
“Well for starters it wouldn’t have been hers to sell, without a will it would have passed to your brother, Peter. But that’s assuming both your parents had actually died and we know now that…”
“My mother is alive.”
“Exactly. And,” he laid the document on her lap. “The property is in your mother’s name. She owns it.”
“I’m not sure I get what that means. It’s great, it is, but….”
“That’s where she’d go, Jude. To her home, the home she shared with her husband and children.”
Jude’s eyes opened wide as she gazed at her mother’s name on the document - Sophia Anne Porter - her true name.
“We have to go there.” Jude pushed the sheet to the floor and started to swing her legs off the bed.
Clayton shook his head, putting a hand on her arm to stop her.
“I already spoke with the nurse. You’re approved for discharge after one more check by the doctor. Sit tight and we’ll make this happen.”
****
Sophia
There were half a dozen jars of canned food, but everything else had gone stale. Despite her days eating from the trees she still hungered for fresh food and had woken that morning with the most intense desire for pumpkin sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon.
