And so she began to make his room her office. She brought in a music box; found a small chair she could borrow from the clinic to use as a footstool; added a pillow to the chair she sat in, to give her back more support.
After that she began every day with a quick breakfast in her safe house, filled a thermos with coffee, then went to the office to check in, then continued on to Frank’s room. There she settled into her chair with her pad, started Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue on the music box to announce her arrival, and got to work on her pad. If she had to make a call she stepped out into the hall and spoke as briefly and quietly as she could. Her bodyguard detail, almost always Thomas and Sibilla, got comfortable in their own ways out in the clinic reception area. Their job had to be boring, she judged, but they did not complain. When she mentioned it they just shrugged. We like it that way, they said. Better that way. Hope it stays that way.
These days, Frank spent most of his time asleep. This was a relief to both of them. When he woke, he would stir, groan, blink and rub his eyes, look around red-eyed and confused. His face was swollen. He would see Mary and say “Ah.” Sometimes that was all, for minutes at a time. Other times he would ask how she was doing, or what was happening, and she would reply with a quick description of the latest news, especially if it pertained to the refugee situation. If it was about Switzerland in particular, she read to him off her pad, so he could get as much information as there was. Otherwise she gave him her impressions.
Most of the time he slept, uneasily, fitfully. Drugged. Sometimes he lay still, but often he shifted restlessly, trying to find a more comfortable position.
Sometimes he would come to suddenly and seem fully awake, although eyeing her from a great distance. Once when he was like this, he said out of the blue, “Now you’ve got me kidnapped.”
She growled at that, a little nonplussed. “A captive audience is never very satisfying,” she replied at last, trying to keep it light.
“You could help me escape.”
“That’s what I’m doing.”
“You’re not very good at it.”
“Well, you’re in maximum security here.”
“Still visiting me in jail then.”
“ ’Fraid so.”
Another time he woke and stared at her, then knew her, and where he was. He said quietly, “I’ll be sorry not to see what happens next. It sounds like things are getting interesting.”
“I think so. But, you know. No one will live long enough to see an end to it.”
“More trouble coming?”
“For sure.” She looked at her in-box; she would have to scroll down for a couple of minutes to get to the bottom of it. “Something this big is going to go on for years and years.”
“Centuries.”
“Exactly.”
He thought it over. “Even so. The crux, you called it once. The crux is a crux. You might see an end to that anyway.”
She nodded, watching him. Instinctively she always shied away when he talked about his death. She recognized that fear in her— that some barrier would crack and they would fall together into an unbearable space. But she had learned to stay quiet and let him go where he would. There was no point in keeping someone company if you wouldn’t follow them where they wanted to go.
This time, he fell asleep while still formulating his next thought. Another time when she walked in he was already awake, sitting up and agitated. He saw her and reached out for her so convulsively she thought he might fall off the bed.
“I just jumped through the ceiling,” he exclaimed, wild-eyed. “I woke up and I was standing on this bed, and then I jumped up through the ceiling, right up there!” Pointing up. “But then I still couldn’t get away. I tried to but I couldn’t. I fell back down and then I found myself here again. But I jumped right through the ceiling!”
“Wow,” Mary said.
“What does it mean?” he cried, transfixing her with his look, his face vivid with dismay and astonishment. “What does it mean.”
“I don’t know,” she said immediately. She reached out and touched his hand, both twining her fingers with his and shifting him back toward the middle of the bed. “Sounds like you had a vision. You were trying to get out of here.”
“I was trying to get out of here,” he agreed.
She let go of him and sat in her chair. “It’s not time yet,” she ventured.
“Damn,” he said.
“You’re a very strong person.”
“So I should be able to do it,” he objected.
She hesitated. “Well,” she said. “It cuts both ways, I guess. It wasn’t your time yet.”
He stared at her, still completely rattled. Of course, to have a real vision— to hallucinate— to try to fly out of this world— it was bound to be upsetting.
She didn’t know what to say. Now he was weeping, looking right at her still, tears rolling down his cheeks. Seeing it she felt her eyes go hot and tears well up. Something leaping the gap from face to face, some kind of telepathy, some primate language older than language. It was like seeing someone yawn and then yawning yourself. What could you say?
She tapped on the music box and got Kind of Blue going. Their theme music now, this album, flowing along in its intelligent conversation. She sat back in her chair, let the familiar riffs flow over them together. She reached out and they held hands for a while. He clutched her hand from time to time. After a while he relaxed, fell asleep, and was deeply out the rest of the day.
Another day, struggling unconscious on his bed,
