All Will Be Well
THE EMERGENCY ROOM in Royal Tredway teemed with bodies today; seasonal, explained the triage nurse grumpily. General practitioners get overloaded with bronchitis and walking pneumonia and send them to us—so we get overloaded. Andrew swiftly introduced the code words coughed up blood to earn her attention. He then followed up with Our school was visited by the Health Protection Agency, they’re afraid of a TB outbreak, in order to jolt her from her seat. She moved into the corridor behind the triage room, where she and another nurse conferred; the words Dr. Minos were spoken, and the triage nurse came back with instructions to place a mask over Persephone’s face. She took them to one of the side treatment rooms until Dr. Minos arrived. The nurse eyed the bloodstains on Andrew’s jacket and trousers warily, and helped Persephone change to a gown.
“I’ll go fetch the doctor. Please do not leave this room,” admonished the nurse. Then she departed.
Andrew and Persephone sat in silence a moment. Persephone sat on the examining table, leaning against the wall.
“How are you feeling?” Andrew asked for the fiftieth time since they left Cambridge. A part of him stupidly hoped she might leap to her feet, wink, and chirp, All better now.
“Chest hurts.” She winced.
They sat silently again, this time for a long while. Persephone coughed. It seemed to pass at first. Then she coughed some more. More blood. This was taking on the feeling of a nightmare. It stained her white face mask. They peeled it off her, gingerly, as if the blood were a toxin. Andrew disobeyed the order to stay in the room, bursting out of the doors to call for help. The triage nurse returned, and seeing Persephone’s state, moved quickly to clean her up. Andrew felt useless, miserable. His cell phone buzzed, informing him he had voicemail. He looked at the screen. He had three, in fact. This could not be good. Despite the abundant warnings not to use mobile phones in the emergency room, Andrew furtively placed the phone to his ear.
Andrew, it’s Piers. I’m in your room . . . and it’s empty. Ring me.
The second was the same, only Fawkes’s voice was half an octave higher.
Andrew . . . where are you? It’s Sunday night. Contact me. Please. As soon as you can.
The third had a graver tone:
Andrew, it’s Piers. Monday. The story about Roddy is all over the school. People know it’s tuberculosis. Father Peter is away, damn him. You’re the only one who can help with the ghost and all this turmoil. I’m covering for you in the hopes that you’re at Trinity and finding out something good. We’re nearly out of time. Come back!
Andrew pulled the phone from his ear in a daze. The nurse had eased Persephone back onto the examining table. The girl had wilted, her face totally drained of beauty or humor.
In that instant, Dr. Minos entered, with his shiny pate and his heavy-lashed eyes. Andrew snapped his phone shut. The doctor approached Persephone without even a glance at Andrew, strapped his own face mask on, took hers off, and began asking questions in a low, soothing voice. He pressed his stethoscope to Persephone’s chest. Dr. Minos frowned. He seemed to have found what he was looking for, too quickly. He gave a long command to the nurse. She nodded and scampered off.
Dr. Minos turned to Andrew.
“Almost didn’t recognize you without your uniform,” he said. “You were in here yesterday. For the TB tests.”
“Hi.”
“I suppose you saw the signs about mobile phone use,” the doctor said. “But the rules don’t seem to apply to you, do they?”
Andrew’s heart sank.
“This one your girlfriend?” the doctor said.
Andrew hesitated. He had the feeling anything he said would incriminate him.
“As I remember it, you were supposed to be back at your school, not seeing anyone, not going anywhere. Yet here you are in central London with another sick friend. I told you yesterday, didn’t I? About involuntary confinement?” The doctor’s eyes blazed. “I told you if you didn’t listen to what I said, I would put you in isolation.” Andrew’s eyes widened. “Well, I think you’ve met my criteria.” The doctor’s words were bitten off in suppressed anger. He nodded to Persephone. “She’s in bad shape.”
“I know.”
“You’re a doctor now, are you? Let me see your arm.” Before Andrew could move, the doctor stepped close, to corner him. “Take your jacket off.” He did. “Roll up your sleeve.”
Dr. Minos held Andrew’s wrist tightly and rubbed the spot where Andrew had received the injection the day before. The doctor looked at Andrew in surprise.
“What?” Andrew demanded. “Is it bad?”
“Nothing,” said the doctor, puzzled. “A positive test creates a raised bump. You’re smooth.” He frowned. “Doesn’t matter. We get false negatives in fifteen percent of cases. And I’ve got your bloods.” He glared at Andrew. “I’ll keep you anyway. As soon as we get her settled, I’ll start the paperwork. You stay right here.”
“I can’t!” Andrew squeaked. “I have to get back to school!”
“So you can spread the disease some more? Not a chance.”
“I have to write an essay!”
Saying only part of it sounded absurd. But saying everything—I need to confront a ghost with the murder he committed, and I’m the only person who knows enough to do it—sounded outright insane.
Dr. Minos shook his head in disgust. “Now I’ve heard it all,” he scoffed.
The nurse returned. She dragged behind her a small wheeled trolley bearing a slender tank with a meter and a long, transparent tube. She began unwrapping the tube. Another nurse followed with a wheelchair. Dr. Minos found a floppy plastic face mask hooked to the tank and popped it from its plastic casing. He affixed this to the tube. The nurse started calibrating the release of the oxygen. Dr. Minos reached behind Persephone’s head to affix the gas mask. Andrew felt a sense of violation—that something so precious as Persephone’s curly black hair should be treated so unceremoniously.
But he came to his senses.
The doctor, the two nurses, were distracted. Their attention and first priority went to the sick patient. Andrew would be able to get away.
Yet he wavered.
He had been with Persephone, touching her, alongside her, continually, for almost twenty-four hours. His whole reality had shifted, adjusted to having her near him. The prospect of leaving her anguished him.
But if he left, he would be able to return to school. He would tell Fawkes and Dr. Kahn what he had found out at Trinity. They could help him piece together the story of John Harness. They could hold their makeshift séance at Essay Club, confront the spirit, and expel him. They could save Roddy and Persephone.
But would it work?
John Harness—gaunt, morbid—now lingered over Andrew’s every move. He had followed Andrew from Harrow to Cambridge. He had suffocated some mysterious youth in the past. He had killed Theo in the present. Now he was clearly intent on killing more.
Maybe I should just leave, Andrew thought. Flee. Get on a train somewhere and draw the ghost along with him. Or hail a taxi to the airport and leave everything behind. Show up in New York with nothing but the clothes he was wearing.
No, that was no good. For starters, his passport was back at school. And he would be abandoning Persephone and Roddy. He could not just leave them here, clinging to their lives so flimsily.
Their setup complete, the nurses pushed the wheelchair and pulled the oxygen tank; Dr. Minos held the door. The trio pushed Persephone into the corridor.
Andrew was momentarily forgotten.
He clutched Persephone’s clothes to his chest. It was the moment of decision. He slipped through the door behind the group. Where the others turned right, he veered to the left. He headed toward the crossing of corridors thirty feet away, where the cold daylight poured in through the front doors. He tossed Persephone’s clothes onto an information counter. The attendant shot him a quizzical look. Andrew sprinted. The attendant stood and called out. Andrew reached the doors and banged through them. The cold air smacked him. The noise, the rush of traffic. An open thoroughfare. Sky. Choose a direction. He leapt down the stairs. He made the corner. In a few moments he would be lost in the urban wilderness. He crossed the street and began to run. As he hurried, he pulled his phone from his pocket and clumsily texted her, his eyes filling with tears, his thumbs misspelling
I liove u
I love tiuu
I love you
He checked behind him to make sure no ambulance or anyone in a white coat was pursuing him. He had to get back to Harrow. If he wanted to stop Harness, he needed to get closer to where SD—Speech Day—was. He needed to understand what Harness had done. Who and why he had killed, on that June day two hundred years before.
I will find you, destroy him, and all will be well.