I finally did move forward. I traveled the rest of the way down the hall to the closed door of Ronnie’s room. I paused again, but immediately thought of what Mom would have wanted. And I knew she’d want me in that room, visiting Ronnie.
I pushed the door open and said, “Knock, knock.”
The curtains were drawn, and only a small light burned by the side of Ronnie’s bed. As I came into the room, my feet lightly shuffling over the linoleum floor, Ronnie didn’t move. He lay on his side, his back to the door. I stopped near the bed and studied him. For a long moment he lay so still I worried there was something wrong with him, and I waited, my anxiety rising along with my heartbeat, until I saw the slightest movement in his body. It rose and fell, ever so slowly, as Ronnie breathed. He must have been deeply asleep thanks to whatever medication they had given him.
I felt the relief, let it ease through me.
Don’t be silly, I told myself. He’s fine. He’s doped up, but he’s fine.
I moved around to the far side of the bed, the side Ronnie faced. A functional wood-framed chair, its leather back a sickly orange color, sat in the corner. I pulled it out, closer to Ronnie’s bed, and sat down. Ronnie didn’t move while I did these things. Air whistled through his nose, and a thin ribbon of drool hung from his lower lip. I looked at his bedside table. I pulled a tissue from the box and gently wiped the drool away. When I did, Ronnie stirred a little. He turned his head a couple of inches and scrunched his facial features into a mask of irritation.
I threw the tissue in the trash and said, “Ronnie? It’s me. Elizabeth.”
He moaned and didn’t open his eyes.
I leaned back in my chair, thinking of giving up, of just leaving him alone. But Janie’s story had me thinking.
Who had come to talk to Ronnie? Was it someone who worked with him? Someone from speech therapy? But then why would he get so upset?
I leaned forward again, lowering my face closer to Ronnie’s. His eyes were still closed. “Ronnie? Can you hear me? Can you talk to me for just a minute?”
He moaned again, but this time his eyes opened a little. “Mmph,” he said.
“Good,” I said. “Can you tell me who came to see you today? Did someone come into your room and talk to you today?”
His eyelids fluttered. He looked like a drunk losing the battle against unconsciousness.
“Ronnie?” I said.
“Mmph.”
“Shit,” I said.
“Paul.”
“What?” I asked.
“Paul,” he said.
“Paul?” I said. “Paul was here?”
“Mmph.”
“Okay, I figured Paul came by. Did someone else come by? A woman? The nurse said a woman came by to talk to you. Do you remember that?”
“Mmph.”
“Ronnie, stay with me. Who was this woman who came to see you?”
A long pause. Then he said, “Elizabeth.”
“Yes?”
“Elizabeth.”
“I’m here.”
He didn’t say anything else, so I said, “Who came to see you today, Ronnie? Please?”
“Elizabeth.”
“I’m here, Ronnie. I’m right here. I wasn’t here earlier. I was at school. But I came as soon as I could to see you.”
He seemed to be gone then. His eyes closed and his breathing returned to the rhythm of a sleeper. I let out a long sigh. I reached out and pushed the hair out of his face. I didn’t know whether it brought him any comfort or not, but I wanted to do it. He looked so small and defenseless. I tried not to think of him as a child and to never treat him as such, but seeing him there looking so vulnerable just made me want to protect him. And I was the younger sister, the baby. But he needed it much more than I did, at least in that moment.
“Mmm,” he said.
I leaned closer. “What, Ronnie?”
“Mom,” he said.
I thought that’s what he’d just said, but I wasn’t sure.
“What about Mom?” I asked.
He took a long time to answer, but he finally said, “Mom… here…”
A shiver shot up my back with such force I raised my chin, tilting my head and retracting it into my shoulders. When it passed, and my jangling nerves lost some of their electric charge, I said to Ronnie, “Mom wasn’t here.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Did you have a dream about Mom?” I asked. “Is that why you got upset today?”
“Mom,” he said. “Here.”
“Ronnie, no. Mom’s gone. Remember? You found her. She’s gone.”
But he didn’t say anything else. Whatever had allowed him to come out of the drug-induced sleep closed him in its grip again—if he had even been truly awake in the first place. Maybe everything he said had been sleep-talk and nonsense.
But it wouldn’t easily be forgotten.
I leaned back in the chair again. Not easily shaken off or forgotten at all.
Chapter Fifteen
On my way out, I stopped at the nurses’ station. Janie was gone, so I talked to someone else. She looked to be my age or even younger, and she was tapping away at a computer when I walked up. She stopped what she was doing and smiled up at me.
“I had to sign in when I came in,” I said. “Does everybody have to do that?”
“Yes,” she said. “It used to be only after nine, but we have staffing shortages because of state budget cuts, so now all day.”
I scanned the names above mine on the sign-in sheet. I didn’t recognize any.
“My brother is Ronnie Hampton. Did you see the woman who visited him earlier?”
“I’m sorry. I just started at five.”
She eyed the keyboard like it was a juicy steak. I knew I was keeping her from her work.
“I spoke to another nurse—Janie Rader—who said they had to put my brother on something to calm him down. He got a little emotional earlier apparently.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Is it possible for something like that to cause hallucinations? Or make someone so out of it they might see things that aren’t there?”
Her eyebrows went up. “If your brother is seeing things or hallucinating—”
“No, no,” I said. “I’m not saying anything is wrong. Not really.”
“Then what is it?” she asked, her impatience starting to show. I wanted to get mad at her but couldn’t. I would have acted the same way if someone had shown up and interrupted my work with questions. I felt the same way about my students all the time.
“Our mother just died, and Ronnie said he saw her. And this woman came to visit him apparently…”
“He probably had a dream about your mother,” the nurse said. “And the drug may have made it more difficult to tell the dream from reality.”
“Yeah, that’s probably it.”
“I talk in my sleep all the time,” she said, dropping the businesslike air for just a moment. “My boyfriend thinks I’m crazy.”
“You’re probably right.”
She turned to the keyboard and started popping the return key as if it had done something wrong and deserved to be punished. Then she started typing.
“I’ll note it in your brother’s chart,” she said. “It can’t hurt to have the doctors check it out. Maybe they can give him something else.”
I didn’t leave. I took a pen from the top of the nurses’ station and found a scrap of paper. I scribbled my e-mail address and cell phone number. “Can you give that to Janie when she comes back? She wanted it.”
“Of course,” she said. “She’ll be back later.”
“Thanks.”
Walking away, I felt even crappier. Had I just made Ronnie’s life worse, consigned him to an even deeper drug-induced oblivion?
Paul called me as I was getting into my car. Visions of my tiny apartment danced in my head. The fluffy couch. The criminally small TV. I had work to do, lots of it. But when I left the hospital, all I could think about was being flat on my back, my brain shifted to neutral. But Paul knew which button to push to change my mind.