The Second Mouse - Archer Mayor [41]
He resumed walking and laughed at her, understanding her reservations. “It’s over now, Nance. It’s safe now. That’s why we came. Because they’re done and she can see people again. This is sort of a welcome-back visit.”
“She in really bad shape?” she asked, her voice small.
He remained upbeat, totally at ease with the patient, the disease, and the routine. “She might be a little shaky after this round. She’s just a skinny little thing, so it sort of takes it out of her, but you’ll like her. I wouldn’t have brought you otherwise.”
Nancy kept silent.
He tried to make her feel better. “It bummed me out at first, but she’s really been a trouper. Made me realize that if she’s okay with it, I should be, too. Here we are.”
He held open a door leading into another hallway, this one clearly not shared by a lot of people—narrower, quieter, and with more ominous-looking signs on the walls warning against contamination. Nancy got the distinct sensation of being swallowed deeper inside a building containing dangers she didn’t want to know about. There had been a time when not much had given her pause, from barroom brawls to men better suited to post office walls. And though she was tiring of that life now and becoming more vulnerable to its downside, she still had an instinctive kinship with it.
But this was very different. Places like hospitals were all about the lack of knowledge, coded information, and the maintenance of a hard, placid sheen over the human business of wasting, dying, and despair. It was very far from what she knew, and it made her anxious.
“Okay,” Ellis finally said, stopping before a door with a movable wardrobe beside it. “Here we are.” He opened the wardrobe and handed her a white jumpsuit. “Gotta get into one of these. Just this time, since it’s so soon after. And you can’t get closer than six feet today. Doctor’s orders,” he added with a laugh.
Dreading what she was about to see, Nancy covered up and stepped over the threshold.
The room was spare, larger than she thought it would be, and dazzling white, the outside sun reflecting oddly off a sculpture on the lawn and shooting straight at the door. Nancy stopped dead in her tracks and shielded her aching eyes. Her headache, almost gone, got a sudden jump start.
“Come in, come in,” said a small, frail, distant voice. “It’s nice to see people, even space walkers.”
Squinting, Nancy identified the problem and sidestepped the shaft of light.
“Wow,” Ellis said, coming in behind her. “Like walking into a spotlight.”
“Here,” said the voice. “I can fix that.”
With a mechanical snapping sound, the room suddenly went so dark, both visitors were left walking with outstretched arms in a twilight brought about by a striped line of vertical venetian blinds.
A thin, reedy laughter greeted their reactions. “God, this isn’t working out at all.”
“No, no, Mom,” Ellis said, stepping farther into the room, with only one hand out now. “It’s okay. It’s getting better already. How’re you doin’?”
Nancy came up behind him, using his bulk to stay half hidden, the jarring entrance having undermined her attempt at self-confidence.
“I’m fine, Ellis. A little beaten up, but fine. Introduce me to your friend. Don’t be rude.”
Her eyesight recovered, Nancy was ushered forward and saw a small, emaciated woman dressed in a hospital gown and sitting in a fake-leather armchair by the side of the window.
“How do you do?” she asked, not daring to approach for fear of breaking a rule. All around her, as Ellis had described, everything was wrapped in plastic, from the furniture to the phone to the TV on the wall. She felt as if she were surrounded by invisible killer rays, all watching for a chink in her rustling white armor.
The old woman’s face broke into a wide smile. “Dangerous question to ask around here. But I’m fine. I’m Doris Doyle, by the way, since my son has totally forgotten his manners.”
“I’m sorry,” Nancy said, remembering her own. “Nancy Martin.”
“The thing with the sunlight threw me off,” Ellis tried to explain.