The Children on the Hill(29)

She had that same sense now, of soaring and looking down on things from far away. Like she wasn’t really attached to her body anymore.

The mice and rats rustled and chewed and chattered little warnings in their cages behind her. Round and round they went on squeaky wheels. Round and round went Vi’s thoughts as she looked at her grandmother’s notebook.

Do it.

Don’t do it.

Do it.

She turned, searched the shadows again. Saw the red eyes of the rodents watching, the eyes of the fetal pig in the jar closed, yet seemingly waiting to see what she might do.

Gran’s notebooks were off-limits. Never to be opened or read. Even touching them was against the rules.

But Vi had promised Iris.

And promises meant something.

She opened the notebook to the first page, dated nearly two months ago.

Who are we without our memories?

Without our fears?

Without our traumas?

What does the body remember that the mind does not?

Is it possible that memories exist on a cellular level? If so, is there a way to wipe the cell clean, to make it forget?



There were drawings of cells, notes Vi didn’t understand, some in Latin, with what looked like a chemical formula.

Vi flipped to another page:

L.C. not doing well lately. Sending her down to B West.

May need to consider more extreme measures.



She flipped ahead again and came to the last entry, dated yesterday:

Mayflower Project Notes:

Patient S continues to show tremendous progress. She seems to have no memory of anything that came before, or of her time in B West. She is learning new things every day and tests above level in all areas. I plan to continue medication regime and hypnosis. She is, by far, my greatest success. Perhaps, one day, I’ll be able to show her off to the world, to truly—



The lights went off, then on again.

The signal!

Vi slammed the notebook closed and put it back where she’d found it, replacing the pen resting on top. She turned out the light by the desk and the one above the surgical table. Scanning the basement, she searched for anything else she might have touched, anything out of place. But there was nothing. She was sure. The overhead lights flickered again, off-on, off-on, faster, more desperate.

Vi took the stairs two at a time. Iris, waiting at the top, gave Vi a panicked look. They could hear Gran and Eric talking on the front porch. Flicking the lights off, they hurried into the living room and turned on the TV, leaping onto the couch. The Price Is Right was on, a woman in a flowered dress spinning a big wheel.

Gran walked through the front door with Eric on her heels.

“I’m telling you, Gran, I saw Big White Rat. He—”

“Not now, Eric,” Gran snapped. She wasn’t usually so short with them. Maybe something bad had happened at the Inn.

“But I—”

“I’m going into my study. I need to make a call and do some work. I’m not to be disturbed. Not unless it involves a true emergency, which most certainly does not include any rodent sightings. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Gran,” Eric said.

She walked down the hall toward her study, her feet shuffling along in her slippers. The door closed, and Vi heard the scratch and thump of the brass dead bolt on the other side being slid into place.

Eric came into the living room, whispered, “Did you find anything?”

Vi didn’t answer. She jumped up, headed for the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” Eric asked, again in a whisper. He and Iris followed her to the wall phone in the kitchen, where she put her finger over her lips: shhh.

Vi waited a second, then lifted the handset of the wall-mounted phone while holding down the metal cradle, keeping it hung up. She covered the bottom of the handset with her palm, held her breath, and slowly eased up the metal cradle.

Gran was speaking sharply. “—don’t need this, Thad.”

Vi could hear Dr. Hutchins breathing, fast and a little wheezy. She pictured his funny ostrich head, his beady eyes that blinked a little too often.

“She’s new, isn’t she supposed to ask questions?” His voice was higher than most men’s, and Vi thought it could easily be mistaken for a woman’s.

Gran sighed. “Yesterday she asked where the charts and records for patients down in B West were kept. Why no nurses were assigned rounds down there.”

Eric moved closer, trying to hear. Vi shook her head, took a step back.

“These are all understandable questions, Dr. Hildreth,” he said. Gran called him by his first name, but Vi had never, ever heard him call her anything but Dr. Hildreth.

“I know,” Gran said, sounding exasperated. “But Patty doesn’t ever seem satisfied with my answers.”

Patty.

The new nurse at the Inn, the really young one, just out of school. Vi hadn’t met her yet, but she’d seen her driving up to the Inn in her little yellow Volkswagen Beetle, her long hair feathered back, the skirt on her uniform a little shorter than the skirts of the other nurses. Patty was Dr. Hutchins’s niece, and he’d pushed hard to get her the job. Vi had heard him and Gran discussing it for weeks. Gran was against it from the beginning, saying she lacked experience. Dr. Hutchins said that was exactly what made her perfect—that they could train her, could mold her into the ideal employee for the Inn.