Chapter 17 Mariella
I open the typed letter from the hospital and read the contents with wide eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Anna asks.
I swallow against the tightness in my throat. “It says—” I release the letter, and it flutters down onto the sofa. “It says she wasn’t a patient there.”
“There must be a mistake,” Anna says, reaching for the discarded letter.
I jump to my feet, banging my knee on the coffee table.
The pain doesn’t register. I grab my phone and find the hospital’s number, following the prompts to speak with the medical records department.
Thirty minutes and four transfers later, a woman with a nasal tone apologizes and tells me there is no record of my mother ever attending Massachusetts General Hospital.
I’m so lightheaded I barely hear her lengthy explanation about misplaced records during the digitization process seven years ago.
“Is there anything else I can help you with?” the nasally voice asks. “Hello?”
“No. Thank you.”
“Have a nice day.”
The phone cuts out, and a heavy silence rings in my ears.
“What did they say?” Anna asks. She’s hovered close by for the whole ordeal.
“Either she wasn’t a patient there, or they’ve lost her record,” I say, biting my lip. I need to do something. But what? “I’m going back to the hospital,” I say.
“Ma’am, if you don’t calm down, I can’t help you,” the receptionist at the hospital front desk says. “I’m going to give you a form to fill in—”
“No.” The backs of my eyelids burn with unshed tears. “I’m not filling in another form and waiting another month. I want to speak to someone about my mother. Now.” I unclench my fists and blood rushes back into my fingers.
“I can see you’re upset. I’m going to give you the email for our complaints department. Send them an—”
I scrunch my eyes shut, blocking out the low-grade hum of people ambling past and the squeaking of wheelchairs. A barista froths milk at the busy coffee cart to our right, hospital chairs scrape against vinyl, and a woman scolds her children for misbehaving. “You’re not helping me,” I snap.
The woman leans back in her chair, taking me in. “I’m trying to help you,” she says. “You’ll receive a case number via email when the complaints department receives your ticket.” The woman pushes a business card through the rectangular gap at the bottom of the glass.
I snatch it up and storm past the desk, my feet carrying me along the hospital’s bare labyrinth-like walls.
It’s been ten years since I walked these corridors, but my legs complete each step from memory.
Ahead of me, a nurse opens a pair of security doors and I slip in behind her, marching toward a desk in the middle of the ward.
“Can I help you?” asks a blonde, middle-aged nurse in navy scrubs.
“I want information on Evelyn Adams. She was a patient here ten years ago, but the records department lost her chart.” My palm hits the counter with a smack, and I slide the letter toward her.
“I need to know what happened to her,” I say between heaving breaths. “I was told she killed herself here.”
The nurse picks up the paper, and I scrutinize her face as she scans the letter.
Am I imagining the perspiration on her brow?
The slight dilatation of her pupils? Did this woman know my mother?
She passes the letter back to me. “Even if we had her file, I can’t give out confidential information, sweetie. ”
The tears I’ve been holding back spill onto my cheeks. “Please,” I beg, splaying my hands on the desk. “I’m her daughter. Please just look her up and tell me how and when she died. Please?”
“You said ten years ago?” she asks, and I nod. “Even if I wanted to help you, we didn’t have electronic records back then. I’m not even sure the hard files of deceased patients are kept on the premises. You’ll need to check again with the records department on level four.”
“The medical records department won’t help me.” The level of my voice has crept up, my words rebounding off the walls.
“Calm down,” the nurse says in a soft voice.
“Don’t tell me to calm down when the hospital lost my mother’s record,” I yell.
“I understand you’re upset, but you’re disturbing our patients.”
I follow the nurse’s gaze to a number of patients in hospital gowns, watching from their open doorways. I catch an elderly nurse with silver hair staring, and she averts her eyes.
I tug at the front of my sweater, the scratchy fabric sticking to my skin. “Never mind,” I say, storming away from the desk.
Rectangles of fluorescent light reflect off the hospital floor, and I count them instead of meeting each patient’s unapologetic stare.
Arms clutching my chest, I follow the signs back to the foyer and duck into a small public washroom.
I hurl open the door, and a strangled sob escapes me.
I wish my mom was here. Or Anna. Or Parker.
Silas’s name flitters through my mind and my stomach shrivels.
Tears gush down my cheeks as I enter the first cubicle and shut the door.
“You don’t need me anymore.”
I grit my teeth. No. I don’t.
I drop onto the toilet and stifle my cries in my knees. I’ve dreamed of my mother every night for weeks. She was well. Healthy. She wanted to come home. To take care of me. She wouldn’t have killed herself.
Behind my wet eyes, I see the memory of my mother, peering through her bedroom curtain. Was she in danger? Is that why she sent me to boarding school? To keep me safe?
I wipe the tears from my face. I need to see her death certificate.
I’ll go down to the records department and force them to find it and show it to me.
I fumble with the cubicle lock and hurl the door open, catching my reflection in the mirror.
My eyes are red and puffy, trails of black eyeliner bleeding through patches of lingering foundation from last night.
I lower my face toward the sink and splash handfuls of freezing water over my skin, scrubbing at the makeup until my cheeks feel raw.
I’m smothering my face with a paper towel, palms pressing into my eye sockets, when a shiver races down my spine and the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.
My head whips from the three empty cubicles in the mirror’s reflection, to the closed bathroom door.
“No one’s watching you,” I mutter at my reflection with the vigor of a mother scolding her child.
I storm out the door and almost collide with the elderly nurse I caught staring in the mental health ward.
“Didn’t mean to startle you,” she says in a deep, croaky voice. Her wrinkled face breaks into a knowing grin. “You look like her.”
My breath catches in my throat. “You knew my mother.”
She extends a weathered arm toward me. “Walk with an old lady during her tea break?”
I link my arm through hers, and she urges me toward the main foyer, limping with every second step. We exit the hospital in silence, and part of me wonders if this is a ploy to move me away from the hospital doors.
“Who are you?” I ask once we’re halfway across the green front lawn.
“My name’s Marg. We’ve met before. But you were much younger then. You look more like her now.”
My cringe is second nature. I’ve spent my life to date wanting to be the furthest thing from my mother. I even enrolled in psychology to try to diagnose her, to stop myself from following in her path. Has it all been for nothing?
“What’s your name, girl?” Marg asks.
“Mariella.”
Marg smiles, filling her face with deep crinkles. “Mari,” she says, and I wince. “That’s right. I worked nights while your mother was here.”
“Do you remember all of your patients?” I ask.
“No,” she says with a laugh. “But your mother was… unique.”
“How?”
“She had the highest number of escapes in the ward’s history.
And she was only with us for a short time.
Couldn’t count the number of times the east wing went into lockdown while they tried to find her.
” Marg lets out a blunt, gravelly laugh.
“She was smart, too. She talked about you a lot.” We walk past an elderly man in a wheelchair watching his grandson dig in the garden.
“Were you working the night she died?” I ask.
Marg’s voice drops. “No, but I remember it was Christmas Eve. Broke my heart, knowing she left you behind.”
I stop walking and turn to face her. “Do you believe she killed herself?”
The woman’s forehead crinkles. “I was told she did.”
“But did you believe it, at the time? Did she seem unwell enough to do it?”
The woman shakes her head. “It’s been so long. The mind has a way of selectively remembering some things and forgetting others. But I remember the change in her on the days you visited. You and that handsome fellow.”
“What?” A man visited my mother? Was it my father? “Who was he?”
“Couldn’t say. But the way the nurses would stare when he came in…” Her creased face tilts to the sky, and she lets out another harsh laugh. “A face like that doesn’t come along very often.”
“What did he look like?” I ask, tracing every wrinkle as if they might hold the clues I desperately seek.
The woman shakes her head. “I don’t remember, darlin’. Tall, dark and handsome?”
“Well, how old was he? Around her age or…?”
“Too old to be her son. Too young to be her lover.”
My shoulders drop. Not my father, then.
“Why are you here? Waving that around.” Marg dips her head to the letter clutched in my hand. “No mother would want their daughter suffering so many years past their death.”
“I don’t think she died here.” It’s the first time I’ve spoken the words aloud, and it loosens the band of tension wrapped around my chest for the past ten years, my lungs expanding a little easier with each breath.
The hospital doors open, and two security guards step outside. Holding them off with a stern glance, Marg encourages me to keep moving. “Mariella, your mother wanted the best for you, as any mother would. Don’t waste your life here searching for answers you already have.”
“But I don’t have answers. I haven’t even seen her death certificate. I’m going back to speak with records on level four.” I try to pull my arm from hers, but her iron grip tightens, her sharp gaze flashing to the front entrance.
“You step inside that hospital again and those security guards will be all over you.”
We reach the bus stop, and Marg turns to face me, wrapping her wrinkled hands around my own. “I’ve watched too many people wither inside those walls. Your mother’s gone, but you can live the life she didn’t. Don’t come back here.” Marg pats my hand. “Goodbye, Mariella.”
“Goodbye,” I say.
Marg limps across the yard and reenters the hospital, swatting at one of the security guards holding out his arm to help her.
I sit on the cold metal bench at the bus stop and stare at the empty street.
Vacant faces drift past as I sift through distorted memories of my mother, muddled by time, and compare them to my vivid dreams. I need to know what happened to her, and if the hospital won’t give me the information I need, I’ll find someone who will.
I pull out my phone and enter a number from memory, with trembling fingers. The call goes straight to voicemail, as always.
“Silas, it’s me. I need a favor.”