I don’t want to leave the room, in case she wakes, but I’m getting a headache from the smell — like isopropyl alcohol and feet. I step out into the hall to ask the sister at the nurses’ station whether I can open the windows. She says she doesn’t see why not and follows me back into the room. I crank the windows open, and the smell of the rose garden comes wafting in. The sister places a hand on Janet’s wrist to feel her heart rate, and after a moment she leans down and tells her, in a voice so soft I can barely hear, that it’s time to change her “trousers.” This sister is younger than the others — maybe my age, maybe younger — and she has a Spanish accent; her name is Monica. Janet grunts and looks confused to see both of us.
“Your friend Lucie is here to help us,” she tells Janet, and she continues to speak softly, telling her that we’ll be done soon and she can rest again or eat, if she’s hungry.
Sister Monica reaches into a drawer under the bed and pulls out two purple latex gloves for me. I put them on while she gathers the supplies from below and pulls a trashcan near. She pulls down the blankets and carefully pulls up Janet’s gown and unfastens the diaper, folding it down on itself. Watery yellow stools leak out onto the bed pad, and I hold my breath automatically, but the smell isn’t overwhelming. It’s sour, milky, almost like a baby’s. Janet has been refusing solid food for a few days. Sister Monica asks me to hug Janet to me and rock her to her side. She passes gas with the shift of body, but Sister Monica doesn’t move away or make a face. She keeps working, steadily, gently. She disposes of the soiled diaper and pad quickly and cleans Janet’s backside while I cradle her upper body, her breath rattling out into my neck, sour and cold, my breasts pressed into the crater of her chest. I feel each of her ribs with every inhale, the vibrations in her trachea.
“Lucie will lower you back to the bed now,” Sister Monica says, and I do. “And now we clean the front.”
Janet closes her eyes as I slip my arms from under her shoulders. Sister Monica carefully wipes the pale, wiry hair clinging to the mons pubis, ashen pink labia pressed out, the crevasse below the hipbone, the inner thighs. I watch, listening to Sister Monica’s voice, the romantic tilt of her accent on odd syllables. I roll Janet again, to put on clean “trousers,” and when we’re done, I release her to the bed and pull her gown back over her knobby bird legs, pull her blankets back up, lift her arms so that they can rest atop the bedding. Sister Monica offers me the trashcan for my gloves, and when I turn back to the bed, Janet is staring at me.
“Have you been here the whole time?” she asks.
I look to Sister Monica, who just nods and smiles as if this is usual.
“I just got here,” I say. “How do you feel?”
“Has there been an earthquake?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Do you think they’ll remember to let me out when it happens?”
“I think so,” I say. I’m not sure what she means. Sister Monica has left us, and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do.
“I hate it here.” She has a look of disgust I’ve never seen on her before. On the island, she looked unflappable, joyous. In court she looked beatific and calm.
“I like it all right,” I say.
“You would,” she says, but her look has softened.
“Sister—,” I say, “Janet, why did you ask me to come? Why did you want me?”
She closes her eyes and sighs. There’s such a long pause I think she has fallen asleep again.
“Do you know who I am, Sister?” I touch her shoulder.
“I’m not brain-dead.”
“If you’re going to treat me like this, I’ll just go.”
“Go back to the woods. Go hide.”
“Okay.” I don’t move. I’m still holding her hand.
We sit in silence for some time. Sister Monica brings one tray of food for Janet and returns a few minutes later with a tray for me. The smell of cream of mushroom soup fills the room. We don’t eat.
“It’ll seem impossible for most of your life,” she says finally.
“What will?”
“Not running to hide.”
She slips in and out of consciousness all day. I leave her side only to use the toilet. After I send the cold, congealed mushroom soup away, uneaten, they send cold, congealed chocolate pudding. Janet won’t eat or drink, so I eat both dishes and ask Sister Monica for some coffee. My insides feel raw from the sugar and coffee, but I think about my peanut butter — cereal balls and beer by Cougar Lake and decided I’ve prepared my body for this kind of fast.
When she talks, it’s in snapshots of her life, some names and places I don’t know, some I do, all on a slow loop, certain words and phrases stressed for reasons I can’t decipher. When she talks about the Colony, it’s mostly about Maggie. Maggie was the one who was there for the dying. At the end, she was the midwife who ushered the living out of the world. But there’s more to it for Janet. I suspect there was only one bed in their cottage, and in the end they were separated; sent to different facilities.
“Is Maggie getting some rest?” she asks.
I wonder what I am supposed to say to a dying woman. Is this a time to play along with the delusion, or is that condescending? Is the lie worse? Will she realize that Maggie can’t be here? I think about what it might feel like, to be surrounded by women, but not the one woman you believed would be by your side when you went.
“Yes,” I say. “She went for a walk. And she’s having some tea and some of that cake with the honey and dried berries.”
She smiles.
“Good woman. It’s good of you to stay, Kate,” she says.
My heart catches in my throat; I haven’t heard about Kate since the sentencing, and even then, it wasn’t from her. She didn’t write me. My mom called to give me the news.
“Of course, Sister. I’m glad I could be here with you.”
“I thought you were gone for good.”
“You did?”
I watch her eyes focus on me — she’s struggling to make sense of something — and I wonder if I’ll be caught in the lie.
“You shouldn’t have run off like that. They’ll be looking for you all over those islands.”
“Why would they do that, Sister?” Kate’s in Bellingham with her parents: house arrest; community service. Tuck is serving fifteen to life.
“Because you told me in your letter.”
“I don’t remember what I wrote.”
She groans and closes her eyes.
“You wanted to die.”
“That was horrible of me. I’m so sorry if I gave you a scare.”
She looks more alert again, suddenly. Her eyes clear and I see Sister J. in them for a moment.
“Lucie,” she says, louder. In her fatherly voice from the island, like she’s about to deliver a sermon.
“Yes, Sister.”
“I knew you’d come.”
“I’m here.” I sigh. This loop. This loop again.
“Kate is gone; she’s long gone,” she says. “She was going to bring me what I needed. She was going to tell them her name was Lucie, so they wouldn’t know.”
I wait for her to say more. She’s staring me down. I see her grasping at thoughts, but unable to speak them.
“She’s not with her parents?”
She shakes her head.
“Did someone tell you she was missing?”
A nod.
“How long ago?”
Nothing.
“You don’t remember how long?”
She squeezes my hand. She opens her eyes, and I can see she’s in pain. It’s been painful, remembering. Maybe she remembered everything at once — the whole picture of where she is and why, and what is left.
I pull the tin of mushrooms from my pocket and open it.