Charlotte Reecer was a twenty-one-year-old waif of a girl who’d been a patient at Waverly for nine months. She had a boyfriend on the fourth floor named Chip, and they wrote as many letters as Frederick and Mary Sue. One night Charlotte and Chip were caught having relations on the rooftop. Rumor had it they’d performed the act on the swing set—while swinging. The next day they were both released from the sanatorium, deemed healthy enough to leave, since they were, according to Dr. Barker, “healthy enough to be acrobats.”
“Charlotte told me about Lover’s Lane.” Mary Sue eyed Wolfgang for a reaction. “And how some of the patients liked to sneak out at night to neck.”
All the staff knew about Lover’s Lane—all except Wolfgang at one time—but they simply couldn’t justify using needed staff to police it. Susannah had informed him of its existence years back on a walk through the woods toward the pumpkin patch just before Halloween. Susannah chuckled and then said, “Better close your eyes, Wolfgang.” When he’d asked why, she’d told him, “We’re about to pass through Lover’s Lane, and I don’t want you to see anything you shouldn’t.”
A parallel run of trees on the north side of the property between the pumpkins and the tomatoes, Lover’s Lane offered some real privacy. Columns of bark for the walls and leaves for the ceiling. There were logs to sit on and plenty of room to be alone.
Mary Sue went on. “I informed Frederick about it in one of our letters. We began to sneak there in the middle of the night. It was stupid, I know…” Mary Sue’s eyes moistened. “Five months later I missed my period.” Tears trickled down her cheeks.
It was Wolfgang’s turn to grip her hands. “Frederick has had a very rough time of it the past several months. For whatever reason, he has continued to grow sicker just as you continue to improve.”
“Can he not even write?”
“No,” said Wolfgang. “Believe me, he barely has the strength to speak more than a few words. A month ago, we were forced to collapse his left lung, hoping it would help it heal.”
She bit her lower lip. “Have you removed ribs?”
He looked her in the eyes. “Yes, three of them. And now I’m afraid that on the last x-ray a small lesion showed up on his right lung.”
She began crying.
“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how difficult this all must be.”
“Where is he now?”
“He’s on the fourth floor, Mary Sue.”
“Is he on the porch?”
Wolfgang shook his head. “No, he’s on the other side of the hallway.”
“The terminal rooms, huh?” she whispered.
“We must not give up hope,” Wolfgang said. “We’re doing all we can to help him.”
“Not all,” she said.
Wolfgang knew what she wanted.
“I must see him.”
Wolfgang stood. “I’ll see what I can do, Mary Sue.”
The life in her eyes all but died. “I know what that answer means.”
“You know me better than that.” Wolfgang placed his hand on her forehead. “Now please rest.”
“Until then, Doctor.”
He nodded. “Until then, Mary Sue.”
Miss Schultz was probably Wolfgang’s biggest fan. He played his harmonica for her, one of the hundreds of short tunes he’d come up with over the years. The song had no title and, like many of the others, it changed depending on the day or the instrument chosen, the notes existing only in his mind and therefore never right or wrong. He pulled the harmonica from his lips and leaned back in his metal folding chair. Miss Schultz was lying back on her fluffy white pillow, staring at him with two rheumy eyes glazed by cataracts. Her charts said she was seventy, but her skin looked younger. Only her eyes dated her, but when she smiled her youthful side always won out.
“Thank you.” She gazed out toward the woods from her third-floor spot on the solarium porch. Wolfgang put the harmonica inside his black bag, placing it right next to a piccolo his father had given him when he was five years old. “You had a nice homily this morning,” she said. “It made me appreciate what I have.”
Wolfgang’s hair blew in the light breeze. It was beautiful out, sunny and mild. He felt as if God had rewarded them for enduring the roller-coaster weather at the beginning of the month.
Miss Schultz tugged on the sleeve of his lab coat. “You think I need a haircut?”
“It looks fine to me.” Her hair was brown with hints of red and gray, pulled back from her pale forehead with a black clip.
“Oh, applesauce!” She waved her hand at him. “You’re just being kind.”
“The color in your cheeks is better,” he said. “You look stronger. And your weight gain has been consistent for the first time in years.”
She touched her hair, checking for bounce. “Is the new barber very good? I’ll miss Anna Mae. She knew exactly how I liked my hair, and I’m very particular.”
Wolfgang stood. “I think you’ll be pleased with the work Dolores does, Miss Schultz.” He touched his own hair. “She cuts mine, you know.”
“With those bangs you could be a Roman Caesar, you know that?”
A slight chuckle. “Get some rest.”
Miss Schultz touched her hair again. “I’ve been considering getting it bobbed.”
Wolfgang blinked. He took a deep breath, hoping Miss Schultz didn’t notice how her harmless comment had struck him. “I think a bob would look nice.”
“Father?” She nodded downward. “You know Mr. Jenkins on the second floor? Your music helps him relax at night. He misses his wife.”
Wolfgang sighed. “I’ll see if I can pay him a visit.”
“See if it doesn’t make him smile.”
“I will pray for him as well.”
“Where do we go when we die?”
“I’m asked that question often,” he said. “Where do we go when we die?”
“That’s not what I’m asking. What do you do with our bodies when we die here? The ones who don’t Make the Walk.”
“Don’t worry yourself with such details, Miss Schultz. By the looks of your improvement, you aren’t likely to be among them. But I assure you they’re properly taken care of.”
“Do you believe there really is a heaven?”
“Why, yes, of course I do.”
She shook a finger at him and gave him a wry smile. “A priest shouldn’t hesitate when asked that question.”
Nurse Cleary, a perpetually slow-moving nurse with wide hips, hurried with flushed cheeks toward Wolfgang. It was uncommon to see her moving so quickly, and the sight of it started Wolfgang’s heart racing.
“Dr. Barker needs you,” she said. “Quickly. Room two-oh-seven.”
***
Dr. Henry Waters was dying.
Wolfgang hadn’t been summoned to Room 207 as a doctor or a friend but as a man of the cloth. Lincoln moved hastily about the crowded room as sweat dripped from his hair. The room’s bright light glistened off Dr. Barker’s high forehead, making the red in his face more prominent, the strained veins in his neck more visible. “Dr. Pike. Hurry!”
Henry’s chest rose from the bed. Blood spewed from his mouth and rolled down his convulsing neck. His lungs were probably on fire, his chest feeling like it was about to explode, his throat closing up. His lungs had already begun to disintegrate. His roommate, a new patient whose name Wolfgang had failed to memorize, watched in horror from his bed across the room. It was in his eyes.
Is
that
going
to
be
me
next?
Wolfgang pointed. “Roll him outside, Lincoln—now.” Lincoln quickly pushed the roommate’s bed out to the solarium porch.
Wolfgang gripped Henry’s hand. He showed no signs of feeling the touch. Some patients, shortly before death, had said they heard a buzzing in their ears—a dizziness caused by constant fever and lack of oxygen to the brain. Henry choked on more blood, some of it landing on Wolfgang’s hand.
Dr. Barker felt for a pulse.
Henry’s face was pale, ashen. His eyes were red, opened wide. “I see—” And then he stopped moving. His hands fell limp, and he stared unblinking at the bright ceiling.
Dr. Barker wiped his hands on a towel and dropped it to the floor.
Wolfgang drew the sign of the cross over Henry’s body and closed his eyes.
“Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua eis.”
Wolfgang looked upward. “Grant them eternal rest, O Lord.” He touched Henry’s forehead. “And may everlasting light shine upon them.”
Dr. Barker walked toward the solarium porch and stopped at the threshold. He was tall; probably six three or six four, and the top of his head nearly reached the frame over the doors. “Wolfgang,” he asked. “Where were you?”
“Upstairs. With Miss Schultz.”
Barker shook his head. “What was it this time? The violin, the trombone?”
Wolfgang was silent.
“These patients need medicine, Wolfgang. They need rest, not music.”
“I got down here as fast as I could.”
Dr. Barker pointed his long finger toward the bed. “Henry said he had sins that needed to be cleansed.”
“I played for him last night. He mentioned nothing.”
“Perhaps you couldn’t hear him over the sound of your
harmonica
.” Barker was practically sneering. “You are their doctor,” he said. “Just—stop wasting time.” Barker pulled a small flask from his coat pocket and tossed it to Wolfgang, who caught it awkwardly. “I found that under Henry’s pillow. Know anything about it?”
“Henry liked his bourbon,” said Wolfgang. “It was a dying wish.”
“Of course he did.” Dr. Barker left with a swift turn that spun his white coat in a dove-like swirl.
Lincoln stepped back in the room.
Wolfgang handed him the flask and sighed. “Help me clean him.”
Lincoln was usually a jokester, but now his face just sagged as he stared at the bed, Henry’s body, and the bloodstained sheets. They’d all lost a dear friend in Dr. Waters, and the hurt was no less painful for Lincoln just because he was lower down on the totem pole. A big part of his job was to see to the bodies after they were dead. Lately, if not chasing after escaped pigs, he spent most of his time in the morgue. “The morgue is full, Wolf. I need more help in the chute.”
“I’ll see that you get it.”
“I’m calling it the Death Tunnel now,” he said. “I spend all day in there. It never stops. The smell is getting to me, Wolf.”
Wolfgang nodded as if he understood, but he didn’t. He wasn’t stuck in the chute all day long, accompanying the dead as they descended the hillside, unseen, all hours of the day. Wolfgang handed Lincoln a clean towel, and together they began to wipe blood from Dr. Waters’s neck.
Wolfgang spent the rest of the bright day in a somber mood. He had an afternoon gathering in the chapel, where he gave a sermon on hope to seven patients—three Catholics, two Protestants, a Jewish woman, and an atheist searching for answers. Susannah showed up afterward to help two elderly patients back to their rooms. Before leaving the chapel, she waved to Wolfgang and smiled.
Wolfgang returned the gesture and then eyed a patient in the back row, a hulking farm boy with a crew cut named Jesse Jacobs. The baby-faced young man, who appeared barely over twenty, had been with them at Waverly for almost four months with not one appearance in the chapel. Every morning during rounds, though, he’d ask Wolfgang to pray for him and his roommate, Ray, a dark-haired young man who was as thin as Jesse was large, a man whose name never failed to escape Wolfgang’s overtaxed brain.
Jesse’s skin was naturally pale, his cheeks pink and scattered with freckles. He had a toothy grin that filled out his box-like jaw. Jesse had already gained much of his pre-tuberculosis weight back. His arms were thick, strong, one of those kids who could lift a Buick over his head but still look fat doing it.
Jesse approached Wolfgang and offered a hand. “Hello, Father.”
Wolfgang grinned, and shook it. “Not quite ‘Father’ yet, I’m afraid.” Wolfgang lowered his arm, flexing his hand and wiggling his fingers to make sure they hadn’t been crushed by the young man’s grip. “Don’t tell me. Jesse Jacobs, fourth floor. You prefer to call the violin a fiddle, if I remember correctly.”
“That’s right…Doctor.” Jesse reached down toward the seats and grabbed a copper cross about two feet tall and textured with carefully placed dents throughout. “Made this at workshop. It’s for the chapel.”
“Thank you, Jesse. I’ll find the perfect place for it.” Wolfgang held the cross at arm’s length as if analyzing the artwork. “Haven’t noticed you in the chapel before.” Wolfgang had to lift his gaze upward to meet Jesse’s eyes. “Glad you could join us. You’re welcome any time.”
“Well, I like how you play music here…for the patients.” Jesse rubbed his hands together, as if nervous. “I was wondering, since I’m starting to feel a lot stronger, if you needed any help in the chapel. I’ve prayed for my recovery and He seems to be listening. I’d like to give back somehow.”
Wolfgang sized him up. “If nothing else I could use you to intimidate my boss. He doesn’t believe in my musical medicine.”
Jesse looked downward, perplexed.
Wolfgang waved it away. “Oh, never mind. Of course, Jesse, I would be happy for any help you could give in the chapel.”
Jesse nodded, smiled. “Thank you. I once thought about becoming a priest myself. You know, after I’m fixin’ to get out of here.”
“Great,” said Wolfgang. “I’m not sure I’m the best role model yet for a budding priest, but I’ll do my best.”
“Okay, then,” said Jesse, but instead of moving to the side, he just stood there.
“I have an extra Bible.” Wolfgang pointed to the back of the chapel. “Under the altar over there. Feel free to borrow it any time you like. I’ve got theology books back at my cottage as well.”
“Only I don’t know how to read, though, Doctor.”
“You don’t know how to read,” said Wolfgang, his voice trailing away while big Jesse stood there with an innocent grin. “So it’s safe to say you don’t know Latin?”
“Is he a patient here?”
Wolfgang stared for a moment, and when he realized the young man wasn’t joking, he said, “Let’s meet here tomorrow, Jesse, and I’ll show you around.”
***
In the evening, Wolfgang granted Miss Schultz’s request and stopped on the second-floor solarium for a visit with Mr. Jenkins. He played the harmonica for ten minutes while Mr. Jenkins listened silently with a smile, his spotted hands clutching and releasing his bed sheets, clutching and releasing. His fever was high. His skin was chalky, his eyes dark around the sockets. He was an old man who seemed ready to go.
“Thank you.” Mr. Jenkins craned his head toward Wolfgang’s chair. He coughed. Blood trickled from the left corner of his mouth. He wiped it on his shirtsleeve and settled his bald, spotted head on a flat pillow. Behind them the woods were silent. The night was dark, the moon concealed by layers of cloud cover. It was much cooler now. Dozens of patients remained out on the porch, some sleeping and some talking. Plumes of steam escaped from their noses and open mouths.
“The night has a chill to it.” Wolfgang was lost for words. The patients looked to him for conversation, comfort, even wisdom, but often he felt empty and fake, like an impostor. And then he’d remind himself that he’d assisted on surgeries before he’d officially become a doctor. Was this any different?
Mr. Jenkins looked up at the ceiling. “When I was a boy, my father used to take us to the Ohio River to fish. I loved to sit and watch the barges.”
“I was in awe when I first saw the
Idlewild
dock when I was a boy,” said Wolfgang. “It was so big and it held so many people. The paddle wheel spinning that water like foam. And with all the steam coming out, I thought it was on fire.”
Mr. Jenkins smiled. “Nothing like the river noises. At night we’d sit around the campfire. We could hear the water crashing from the falls in the distance. I’d go to sleep to my father playing the harmonica.”
Wolfgang thought of his own father and how he’d play the violin and piano at night and how their living room was full of musical instruments. And how his father, despite all his faults and eccentricities, had been taken from him too early.
Mr. Jenkins’s hands shook noticeably. That was why he was clutching and releasing the bed sheets. To give his hands a job. To keep them from shaking. Wolfgang opened Mr. Jenkins’s left hand, pushed the harmonica into his palm, and closed his fingers around the small instrument. The old man’s hands stopped shaking. All the lines in his face seemed to soften.
Wolfgang started to get up.
Mr. Jenkins touched Wolfgang’s arm. “I’m not a Catholic.”
“And I’m not technically a priest yet,” Wolfgang said.
“Well, can you hear my sins?”
Wolfgang sat back down. “Of course.”
“I’ve never been to any kind of confession.”
“Contrition is the beginning of forgiveness,” said Dr. Pike. “I can see the sorrow in your eyes. You must regret your sins, resolve not to repeat them, and then turn back to God.”
He looked Wolfgang in the eyes. “I used to drink a lot.” He moved the harmonica inside his grip. “I hit my wife one night when I was drunk. She has forgiven me, but my daughter never will. We don’t speak. She won’t see me.” He sighed, still watching Wolfgang. “I can’t go to my grave without the forgiveness of my little girl.”
Wolfgang extended his right hand toward the elderly man’s head. “I absolve you from your sin in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Wolfgang lowered his hand. “The absolution may take away the sin, Mr. Jenkins, but it does not fix all that the sin has caused. You must—”
“There’s a box in my room,” he said. “On a shelf above the bed. I write to her every day. Her name is Amy. And in the box…are letters.”
“You don’t send them?”
He shook his head. “Can you see that she gets them?”
“Of course.” Wolfgang placed his hand on Mr. Jenkins’s frail shoulder.
“Will I be forgiven, you know, when I’m gone?”
“The Lord has freed you from your sins. Go now in peace.”
“Am I supposed to say something here?”
“Most would now say, ‘Thanks be to God.’”
“Thanks be to God, then.” He wrinkled his brow. “What about some kind of penance?”
“Those letters you’ve written to your daughter are penance enough, Mr. Jenkins. I’ll see that she gets them. Your heart is pure.”
Mr. Jenkins made the sign of the cross, more than likely because he’d seen Wolfgang do it at the beginning of the confession. His eyes were wet. He closed them. Without another word Wolfgang stood and walked away.
In the hallway, Susannah stepped out of the shadows. “Wolf?”
Wolfgang jumped back.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”
A little boy stood by Susannah’s side, a brown-haired, ten-year-old patient named Abel Jones. Abel with the dimples. Wolfgang gave him a wink. “How’s it going, Abel?”
“Swell.” He licked on a lollipop.
The three of them walked along the second-floor solarium. With each bed Wolfgang passed, his mind wandered back to the brick crashing through his window. Could any of these men have been the culprit?
Abel walked near the edge of the porch, looking down toward the front lawn below and the woods beyond. Like many of the children, he’d shown improvement since his arrival at Waverly.
“Wolf,” Susannah whispered as they passed a male patient who was snoring loudly. The noise coming from his clogged nostrils sounded like a whistle. Susannah covered Abel’s mouth to keep the boy from laughing. “Wolf, you gave Mr. Jenkins your harmonica.”
“I’ve got several.” He walked on. “I need to make a stop before we go.”
“Where to? I’m tired.”
“McVain.”
“Wolf, do you have to befriend every patient who arrives here?”
“He pushed me in the mud.”
She laughed.
“And he’s missing fingers,” Wolfgang said. “I’m curious is all.”
“You just can’t stand it when someone doesn’t like you.”
“Who’s McVain?” Abel asked.
“A mute,” Wolfgang said.
Abel chuckled. “What’s a mute?”
“Same thing as a McVain.”
“What’s a McVain?”
“You’ll see,” said Susannah.
Wolfgang whispered to Susannah. “You’re not completely correct, by the way. I can stand it as long as that someone has a reason for not liking me.”
“So as soon as you have a reason, you’ll leave him alone?”
“Of course.”
They took the nearest stairwell to the fourth-floor solarium and quietly passed the beds lining the porch. Some patients slept. An old man with very little hair waved. A middle-aged man stared out the windows, oblivious to everything around him. Wolfgang found Mr. Weaver asleep on the porch, snoring in a much deeper octave than the man two floors below. Even so, Abel thought it funny and stifled his laughter with his own hands this time. Susannah gently placed her hands on his shoulders and he continued to lick his lollipop. Wolfgang looked inside the room and found McVain on his bed in the far corner, still in civilian clothes. He’d seen it many times before, patients thinking if they dressed the part, somehow they would remain healthy. A subtle denial. Wolfgang inched closer. It was dark, but he could still make out McVain’s hands.
Abel and Susannah stepped closer. “Where’d his fingers go?” Abel whispered.
Susannah put her finger to Abel’s sticky lips.
Wolfgang watched McVain. “I’ll be damned…” McVain’s eyes were closed. His hands were raised above the covers, slightly bent at the wrists. His fingers, long and arched, moved side to side, up and down—precisely, gracefully, with authority. Even the nubs from his three missing fingers moved ever so slightly from muscle memory. It was as if he were playing a piano.
Wolfgang backed away with his mouth open.
“What is it?” asked Susannah.
Wolfgang tiptoed from the room and they followed.
Abel looked over his shoulder toward McVain’s room. “Is he a monster?”
“No,” Susannah said in a hushed voice, although it had a twinge of humor in it. “He’s not a monster.”
“My Lord, did you see that, Susannah? He was playing the piano.”
“Yes, I saw it.”
“Now we should have something to talk about.”
“And what if he continues to ignore you?” Susannah had taken off her nurse’s cap. Her hair had lost some of the morning’s curl, but it was still enough to get Wolfgang’s attention.
“Look,” he said. “I have a plan for tomorrow night.” As he leaned closer and whispered in her ear, a tinny sound floated up from a floor below.
Mr. Jenkins had begun to play his new harmonica.