The Elizas: A Novel(19)

I stare into the middle distance, prickles dancing up my spine. When I purchased my phone, the setup prompts urged me to assign a security passcode, but I’d declined—I had a knack for forgetting numbers, and it seemed inevitable that I’d lock myself out again and again. I’d tried to set up fingerprint recognition, but the technology couldn’t read my print right away, so I gave up. In other words, anyone could have accessed my phone without any trouble at all. Someone easily could have recorded the video . . . but who?

I click the Details button, but all it says is that the video was taken at the hospital. I stare at the little map of Palm Springs on the screen. I’d never realized the town was such a grid.

My throat is dry. My head is throbbing. But all of a sudden, it seems foolish of me to be just lying here, inactive. I have proof now. Someone was running away. Someone followed me to that pool. Someone could still be following me now.

I push off my covers and head down the stairs. I’m still in the acid-washed jeans from the hospital, but there’s no time to change. I find my house keys at the bottom of my purse and ready them at the door. My car isn’t here, so I’ll have to take an Uber, but that won’t be a problem. Where I’m going, I’m not sure. I just have to go somewhere. I have to figure this out.

Then a hand clamps on my shoulder. I squeal and jump back. “You’re not going anywhere.”

I turn around. It’s my roommate, Kiki Ross. She slides around me, grabs my keys from my hands, and blocks the door. Her eyes are wide. Her mouth turns down with fear and possibly anger.

“Come here, Eliza,” she says in a low voice. “We need to talk.”





From The Dots


A few months later, Dot was in the hospital again. The doctors at the new hospital thought they’d fixed her with a new mixture of medications, but her seizures returned one spring day at home, shortly after lunch. The first one came on strong, with bright lights kaleidoscoping in her eyes. Her mind peeled away from her body and lay in flakes on the floor.

Dorothy hurried her back to the hospital. Back to Dr. Osuri and the children’s ward with the cheerful yellow walls and hot-air-balloon mural. Back to the same room with the television remote that only worked sporadically. Dot waited for her mother to show up. Hours passed. Finally, she rushed in, still in scrubs.

“I’m sorry,” Dot’s mother said in a begging tone. “I came as soon as I could. There was an emergency patient. I didn’t have my phone. And no one told me.” She bit her lip. “Your aunt should have called the front office like I always tell her to.”

“It’s fine,” Dot said, calmly, distantly. Dorothy was here, after all. She was off buying magazines at the gift shop.

More tests, a few days of feeling better, and then a relapse. Dot wondered what Stella, the look-alike from St. Mother Maria’s, was up to. Now, a sad-eyed woman in a brown headscarf took her blood pressure most days. She had very cold hands and made a funny sniffing sound as she checked the gauge.

All the nurses were distant this visit. Unsmiling and serious, as if they were keeping a grave secret from Dot. Dot asked Dorothy what was going on. Dorothy sniffed.

“They’re just snotty, jealous bitches. They can’t stand that we’re so pretty.”

“But they’re nice to the other kids. That one girl down the hall, Sarah? They give her lollipops, like, all the time.”

“Yes, but that’s because Sarah has a wealthy father. There’s always an angle, Dot.” Dorothy waved her finger. “Always an angle.”

And then, a good-ish day—Dot could see straight, she could eat. At lunch, an aide wheeled in a cart from the children’s lending library across the street. She must have been going to an adult ward next, because Dot noticed a Los Angeles magazine on the top of a stack on a lower shelf. When Dot saw her own face on the cover, she drew in a sharp breath. She looked shorn and dopey, her arms the circumference of pencils, her veins visible through translucent skin. Next to her was her aunt, her black hair sleek and straight, her skin flawless and her violet eyes wide. Fighters, read the big yellow caption. And then: Dorothy Banks, Magnolia Hotel resident, puts her hopes and dreams on hold to save her dying niece’s life.

Dying. The word sliced through Dot’s veins, hot as coffee. She’d certainly thought enough about death, even her own death, but she hadn’t realized she was actually, literally, dying. It seemed impossible.

She thumbed through the pages. The story was embedded among slick pieces about Beverly Hills home renovations and ads for plastic surgeons. Dot read every word of the piece, focusing on words like cancerous and inoperable and terminal. She’d never heard the doctors describe her illness in those terms before.

She ran to the bathroom and threw up pinkish, gummy chunks in the sink. When she returned to her room, Dorothy had reappeared. She was fluffing up the pillows and humming. A nurse named Lisa stood in the corner, pretending to busy herself with Dot’s medications. Then Dorothy noticed the magazine on the bed.

“Ah,” she said to Dot. “So you’ve seen it.”

“When was this picture taken?” Dot demanded, so angry her teeth were chattering.

Dorothy lowered her eyes. “A few months ago, dear. When you were at the other hospital. Don’t you remember?”

“No.” Dot tore through her memories. She tossed useless visions aside like limp T-shirts she had no interest in wearing. There was nothing in her brain about a photo shoot. She would have never allowed a photographer to take a picture of her when she looked so grotesque. But that was the trouble with her brain: sometimes, memories dropped out of her entirely, like water through a sieve.