past the creature that used to be Rascal, I’d lose it all over again. “I can’t see him, I just can’t.”
“It’s all right,” Prairie said gently. “He’s gone. He’s… at rest.”
“What do you mean?” I demanded. “What did you do to him?”
“
I started to shake, and tears dotted the corners of my eyes. I put my hand up to Anna’s, covering it, trying to find a way to say thank you, but I was afraid my voice would betray me. “All right,” I managed to get out.
“Anna is letting me borrow her car,” Prairie said. “Let’s go, and we can talk on the way.”
We didn’t talk much, though. Anna’s car was only slightly newer than Kaz’s, and it sputtered at every intersection as though it was about to die. Prairie fed it gas, revving the engine, as we made our way through the neighborhoods, away from the lake, back to the cloverleaf and onto the highway.
“Where are we going?” I finally asked as she headed north, away from the distant skyline.
“Not far now.”
A few minutes later, she exited into a neighborhood of tidy brick bungalows and the occasional church or tavern. There were no signs on the brick building she pulled up to. It had neat white shutters at the windows and tulips pushing their way up from planters out front. Long sloping ramps were the only clue to what kind of place it was.
“Is this a nursing home?” I asked as we made our way to the front doors, which glided open at our arrival.
“A convalescent home,” Prairie said. “A very good one, with some of the top doctors in the country on call.”
“Ms. Gordon,” a woman at a desk called out cheerfully. “Vincent’s having a good day. He’ll be so glad you’re here.”
Prairie exchanged a few words with the receptionist as she signed in. Looking over her shoulder, I read
“And who have you brought with you today?” The woman smiled at me with open curiosity.
“This is Hailey. Her family just moved to the area and joined the church. She’s interested in doing outreach ministry too.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful! Hailey, we love our volunteers here. And so do our patients. Especially the ones who don’t have family. Visits just do them a world of good.”
“What was that all about?” I demanded after Prairie thanked the receptionist and guided me across the lobby. We were buzzed through a set of doors and walked down a hallway with a shiny waxed floor and rooms opening up on either side that held hospital beds, many with patients in them. Some sat, others appeared to be asleep. None looked our way.
“I visit every week. I use a fake identity, as you saw. They don’t ask a lot of questions when it’s church people visiting. And I’ve been coming to see Vincent for years, so they’re used to me.”
“Who’s Vincent?”
She slowed as we reached the end of the hallway and took a deep breath. Then she gestured for me to enter the last room on the right.
“Vincent was my boyfriend,” she said as she followed me into the room.
A man sat in the bed, a thin blanket covering his body, his hands folded neatly on its surface. There was something wrong with him. His skin was puffy, with an oily sheen, and his color was off. He had a network of fine scars on his face and also on what I could see of his arms, below the cuffs of his shirt. His dark hair was thin and it hung lank in his face.
But the worst part was his eyes. They stared straight ahead at nothing, blinking slowly every few seconds. They were the emptiest things I’d ever seen. There was no emotion, no evidence of dreams or hopes or plans or disappointments in their depths. As we entered, they flicked over and looked at us without a trace of interest or curiosity, and I had to fight an urge to run from the room and get as far away from him as I could.
“I never told you why I left Gypsum,” Prairie said softly. “I never told anyone but Anna. And I lied to you earlier, when I said I never healed someone who died. The truth is that I did. I healed Vincent. I was sixteen and we were in love. We were going to run away together-Alice never knew. We were just waiting until we had enough money to get someplace far enough away that Alice could never find us, and we were going to take Clover with us.”
She walked to Vincent and put a hand to his face. I couldn’t imagine how she could stand to touch him. He didn’t seem to notice.
“We had an accident on prom night,” Prairie said, adjusting the collar of Vincent’s shirt before she stepped away from the bed. “He was thrown from the car, and he died. And unlike you, Hailey, I should have known better. I had been warned about what would happen if I ever tried to bring someone back.”
“How could you…”
“I loved him. I thought I would die without him. I wished it, I actually wished I was dead too, but I didn’t have the courage to make that happen. So I brought him back instead. I think there was a part of me that believed if I prayed hard enough, if I wanted it badly enough, that just this one time it would work, that God would take pity on me and let him live. A
“How did you get him in here?” I asked, horrified.
“We came to Chicago by bus, on the night of the accident. I had a little money, enough to get a change of clothes and the bus tickets. It was the next day when we finally got there. All night long, all he did was stare ahead, sitting in that bus seat…”
“But what about his parents? When he didn’t come home, didn’t they freak?”
“I’m sure they were upset, Hailey, but unlike Alice, they knew about me and Vincent. They knew he loved me, and he’d told them if they didn’t give their blessing he was leaving with me anyway, as soon as we graduated. They’d argued about it; they wanted him to go to college, not to spend all his time with me, but he wouldn’t listen. I think they-everyone who knew us-just assumed we’d run away together. And I’m sure they looked for us, for a while. But Vincent was eighteen. Legally, there wasn’t anything they could do.”
“They must have been heartbroken,” I said, imagining how his parents must have worried-after all this time, if they were even still alive, they had no idea what had happened to their son. From the misery in Prairie’s eyes I knew it was a thought that haunted her as well. “Where did you go when you got to Chicago?”
“I took him to a hospital, the best in the city. I made sure of that. I spent almost the last of the money for a cab and took him to the emergency room. There was no one there, so I sat him in a chair. I pretended to be there for myself, which wasn’t hard, since I’d been in the accident too, and unlike Vincent, my cuts and bruises weren’t healed. I told them my parents were undocumented and they treated me as an indigent. I stayed around long enough to eavesdrop on what they were doing with Vincent.”
“Wait, so they didn’t know you were together?”
“No, and he couldn’t tell them. He didn’t even look at me once. After that, I kept track of him, which wasn’t easy, since I was trying to find a room and a job, but I found ways. I… learned to be creative. And convincing. One of the doctors on ER rotation was a young resident who studied immune disorders. That’s what they think he has, by the way… after all this time they still think Vincent has some rare immune problem, and they’ve got him on all these clinical trials.”
“They can do that? Just experiment on him like that?”
“Technically, it’s not allowed, since no one ever claimed him, and they never made contact with his family. He’s a John Doe, but he had an ID bracelet with his name engraved on it, so they’ve always called him Vincent. I used to find that… a comfort. Anyway, as you’ll learn yourself someday, when money’s involved, lots of things are possible. The doctor I mentioned-the one who studied immune diseases-had plenty of funding, and arrangements were made.” She shrugged. “They’ve found ways to keep his skin and organs functioning all this time.”
“But how…?”
“The miracles of modern science.” Prairie’s voice was heavy with regret. “It’s ironic. I’ve often wondered what would happen if the doctors here got together with Bryce, what they might be able to accomplish. But I could never tell them about each other. They work at cross-purposes, I guess you could say.”
“What do the doctors here do to him?” I asked, my throat dry.
