I knew the way to the motel quite well; it was across from the hospital, where I worked. “Have you been in town long?” I asked.
“No. I just got here.”
“Are you visiting someone?”
“Not really. I’m here with my mother. She’s consulting with some of the doctors at the University Hospital.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I hope it’s not serious.”
She shrugged. “It’s been going on a long time. There’s a research program here for multiple sclerosis, an experimental treatment. That’s what she’s here for.”
I nodded; I knew about it. In particular I knew one of the research assistants, a young doctor named Tyler Mackenzie, whom I had admired from afar for months.
“So what happened with the car?” I asked. “Did you lose control?”
Lilly shook her head.
“Then what happened?”
“I wanted to feel it,” she explained, “but there wasn’t anything to it, really. I thought it would be more exciting.”
“Exciting?” I said blankly.
She shrugged.
“Lilly, are you sure you’re OK?”
“Oh yes,” she said, a little sadly. “I’m fine. Really.”
When we got to the Broadmoor Johnny and I walked Lilly to her motel room; I was still worried that she might have some kind of head injury, and I wanted to make sure that someone was there to look after her. Lilly found her key, opened the door, and awkwardly invited us to come in.
In the room a woman was sitting at the table with a book in front of her; she looked up when we entered, and seemed startled to see us. But she could not have been half as surprised as I was.
And I knew why Lilly had reminded me of one of the great ballerinas. The woman at the table was wearing a red blouse and a black skirt, and for an instant I pictured her on stage, in a red costume with black sequins sparkling in the lights, a brilliant smile on her face as she danced. I blinked, and the image was gone, but I knew who she was: Vanessa Ahrensen, one of the most brilliant dancers to ever grace the stage.
I realized that I was staring at her almost as blatantly as Johnny had gazed at Lilly during class; quickly I looked away.
Lilly said, “Mother, this is Heather. And Johnny. They gave me a ride home from class.”
“A ride? Lilly, is something wrong with your car?”
“Not really. Just a few dents.”
“She, ah, hit a tree,” I put in. “Her car seems OK except for the body work, but we didn’t think she ought to drive home.”
Vanessa winced, but said no more about the car. She thanked us for helping her daughter. I suggested that she keep a close eye on Lilly tonight, and we said good-bye. In a daze I followed Johnny out into the parking lot.
“Do you think she’ll be all right?” Johnny asked.
“What?”
“Lilly. Will she be OK?”
“Oh, yes. I think she’ll be fine. Johnny, can you believe it? Her mother is Vanessa Ahrensen.”
“What about it?”
“You play piano for the ballet and you don’t know her name? Hurry up; I’ll show you when we get home.”
Back at our apartment I dug out one of my videos of Vanessa Ahrensen and popped it in the VCR. “Look at her,” I whispered to Johnny, and turned up the sound. Vanessa appeared on stage, in a flowing white dance dress, with flowers in her hair. She seemed to float across the stage, to fly into the air. Johnny watched intently, taking in her charisma and magnetism, her style and verve.
“She’s extraordinary,” Johnny murmured.
“Yes. She is.”
We watched her dance through half the tape, then Johnny sat down on the couch beside me, picked up the remote, and pushed the mute button. On the screen, Vanessa went on dancing, in silence.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Look.”
I looked. Vanessa spun in a pirouette, leaped in grand jeté, held a long beautiful pose in arabesque. I shook my head, not understanding what Johnny wanted me to see.
“When you watch her dance,” Johnny said, “you can see the music. She’s part of it.”
He turned the sound back on, then off again, and suddenly I understood what he meant. The music was still there, in every move and pose. Music in motion.
“Does she still dance?” Johnny asked.
“No. She hasn’t for years. She’s got multiple sclerosis; she can’t even walk any more.”
Johnny was silent for a long time. Then he said, “I can’t imagine what that would be like. Suppose I could never play an instrument again? I think I’d go mad.”
“I know.”
We stayed up together and watched the video to the end, and then we played all the other videos I had of Vanessa’s dancing, and when I finally got to sleep that night, the dance went on in my dreams.
The next morning at work I felt like the walking dead. I don’t function at all well on two hours of sleep. I stumbled through my rounds, drawing blood samples from one patient after another, thankful that I was skilled enough to hit veins even when half asleep. I’ve been drawing blood for two years now and I’m good at it; I usually find the vein first try even on the most difficult patients. But it’s rather a thankless job. People seem to find phlebotomists even more terrifying than dentists.
Finally I came to the last patient on the morning list. I checked my list against the card on the door, noted the match, and only then recognized the name. Inside the room, Vanessa Ahrensen was waiting for me.
She sat by the window in a sporty motorized wheelchair, looking out at the lawns and parking lots below. When she heard me knock she turned and smiled.
“Why, hello,” she said. “Heather, isn’t it? Don’t tell me you’re one of the vampires.”
I set down my tray of collection tubes on the bedside table. “I’m afraid so. Sorry.”
“I’m grateful for what you did for Lilly last night.”
“Is she all right?”
“Yes, she’s fine. A few bruises, that’s all. I’m glad you were there to help her.”
I said, “I’m glad we happened to be there. It was such a freak accident.”
Vanessa frowned slightly, and held out her arm for me. I was suddenly nervous—I had never before drawn blood from someone I idolized—and I sighed with relief when I saw her veins, lying along her arm in a beautifully visible pattern. The tourniquet lifted the vein I wanted nicely, and I slipped the needle in with ease in spite of the attack of nerves. The first Vacutainer tube began to fill with blood.
“Lilly seems to think of you as a friend.” Vanessa said suddenly.
“Well, yes. I suppose so.” I switched tubes and started filling the second one.
“I think I should tell you something about her, then.”
“Tell me what?”
“To start with, what happened last night wasn’t an accident. She did it deliberately.”
I glanced up at Vanessa’s face, thoroughly confused. I said, “Surely you don’t mean she ran into a tree on purpose.”
Vanessa shrugged. “She’s done such things before.”
“But why—” I broke off, remembering the odd look on Lilly’s lace, and her words, I thought it would be more exciting.
“If you watch her dance for long enough,” Vanessa said, “you’ll see it. What she lacks.”
The second tube was full of blood. I switched to the third one, thinking of what I’d seen of Lilly’s dancing. The uncanny precision, the way she danced through Johnny ’s musical mistakes without even noticing.
“You mean musicality,” I said hesitantly.
“More than that. Passion, joy, excitement… these are things she doesn’t feel. She doesn’t understand music. All her dance is done to a count inside her head. When she was little her doctors thought she had autism. Then they watched her move and dance, and they said well, perhaps not autism, but something like it. They criticized me, you know, for pushing her into dance, but I did not push. She asked for classes when she was five.” Vanessa paused, looking down at her arm as I switched to the fourth tube. “Good heavens, how much blood are you going to take?”