As Bright as Heaven(99)

I must get out of this room. Out of this building.

My first steps away from Ursula are even and measured. But a guttural wail is soon tearing its way to the top of my throat and I quicken my pace as I enter the main corridor. My eyes burn with tears that I simply must not release until I can get out of the hospital and away from the patients and my coworkers. With effort, I swallow the cry that wants to erupt from the core of my being. I insert my key with a trembling hand into the locked door that leads to the hospital’s main lobby and which prevents the patients from wandering away. In my haste, I don’t wait for the door to close behind me. I can barely keep my mouth shut as I cross the foyer. A few people in the waiting area look my way, as does the nurse at the front desk. I disguise my behavior as a bit of a coughing fit, soon to be brought under control by a breath of cool autumn air.

I burst from the building into the frosted afternoon, and the tears immediately begin to course down my cheeks. I must find a place to let them have their way, for there will be no reversing them now. The full weight of what Maggie had done—what I let her do—is falling on me heavy as iron and blistering as fire. Ursula Novak’s pitiful existence is because of us. We are to blame for the last seven years of her tormented life. Only us.

I race for the hospital’s garden shed at the far end of the front lawn. It is set back from the pea-gravel driveway and partially hidden by trees that have lost their leaves. In the spring and summer, the shed disappears into the landscaping. The tools inside are too dangerous for it to be located on the back lawns where the residents are encouraged to spend part of their day.

I had seen the groundskeeper raking leaves earlier that afternoon, so I am confident the shed will be unlocked. My heels crunch on the frozen grass as I half run, half walk toward it. I throw open the door and pitch forward toward a chest-high shelf loaded with clay pots that have been brought in for the winter.

I toss the pencil box onto the shelf and release the pent-up sob through clenched teeth. My torso begins to shake with the force of my tears. The image of Ursula Novak slipping the noose over her head, kicking out the stool, and then her anguish wanting to wrench the life out of her plays relentlessly in my head. It is my fault Ursula tried to hang herself and now sits in the asylum wishing she was dead. My fault. I should have demanded that Maggie tell me the truth about where she found Alex. I was the older one. I was the wise one. I was the one who knew she was not telling the whole truth.

God, help me, I whisper. And it’s a prayer and a confession and a cry for help. I must gain control of myself and return to the solarium. I can’t leave Ursula in the room the way I did. But I have no idea what I will say to her when I go back in. I need to talk to Maggie. I need to know the truth at last.

In my turmoil, I don’t hear the footsteps behind me. The voice is the first thing that lets me know I am not alone in the garden shed.

“Miss Bright, are you all right?”

I spin around, nearly losing my footing. Conrad Reese reaches out to steady me. There is only one explanation for why he is here in the shed, asking me if I am all right. He had been watching me in the solarium as I spoke with Ursula. He had been watching me like I watch him. He had seen that Ursula had said something that upset me. Me, the psychiatrist. The one who is supposed to be in control. The one who is supposed to be listening to the patient and offering wise words in response. He had seen me leave the room with my hand over my mouth. He had followed me down the hall. He must have caught the inner door that I’d failed to secure and trailed me out the front door, across the lawn, and into the garden shed.

I want to know why he would do that and yet I think I already know why he would do that.

He takes a step forward. “Miss Bright, what has happened? Is there anything I can do to help you?”

He has never looked more beautiful to me than in this moment. His gaze, alight with compassion and longing, is tight on mine. He is standing so close to me that I can smell his cologne, the scented pomade in his hair, and the starch in his collar. I fight for the words to tell him that I am fine, I just needed to clear a cough, and that I’m so very sorry to have alarmed him. But those words don’t come.

“I’ve done something terrible,” I whisper.

“Oh, I’m sure that’s not true.” His eyes don’t widen even a fraction. He doesn’t believe such a thing to be possible of me.

He’s been watching me like I’ve been watching him.

“But it is true. It is!” Fresh tears spill from my eyes and I want him to pull me into his arms and whisper that all will be made right in time. Not to worry. Everything will be made right. You’ll see.

“We’ve all made mistakes, Miss Bright.” He roots about in his coat and trouser pockets for something. A handkerchief, no doubt. But he doesn’t have one.

“Not like this.” A fresh vision of Ursula swinging by a rope, her brain causing her legs to jerk and flail, fills my mind. “Not like this.”

Lacking the handkerchief, Conrad extends his hand tentatively toward my face and catches my tears with his fingertips. “We’ve all done things we wish we hadn’t,” he says, so gently.

I look up at him, in awe and wonder and agony. I see the ache he also carries, the grief at the slow loss of his wife, at the death of the dream he’d had for their life together. We had wanted happiness for our lives. We’d pursued it the way everyone did after the flu and after the war, and we thought we’d caught it. He’d done nothing wrong, though. His pain was different than mine because it was undeserved. I tilt my head into his palm and before I know what I’m doing, I am kissing it. His strong hand is wet with my tears and I taste salt. A second later Conrad’s arms are around me and his lips are on mine, tender and hesitant. It’s as if we both sense that we’re poised above a dam about to burst, and the water could sweep us away if we let it. If we want it to.