P. Parrish - An Unquiet Grave

“Anything you can remember about Claudia DeFoe.”

“I can’t tell you much. That’s all confidential.”

“Can you at least tell me what she died of?”

“It’s not in the file?”

“Not that I can find.”

Again, Dr. Seraphin’s eyes moved to the file in Louis’s hand. Then she thrust out a hand. Louis wasn’t sure he wanted to give the file to her, but if she was going to help at all, he had to trust her.

He gave her the file, and she opened it on her lap. She pursed her lips, then slipped a tiny rubber thimble on her forefinger and started flipping through the pages.

“Pneumonia,” she said, looking up. The fluorescent light caught her face, paling it, and suddenly he could see a thousand fine wrinkles.

“Winter, seventy-one and seventy-two,” she added. “I remember now. We had a flu epidemic. I recall we lost almost twenty people that month.”

“Twenty people died from the flu?”

“Actually, most would have died of pneumonia and other forms of respiratory failure. The conditions in the wards weren’t the best. They were damp and cold, and all the patients were confined to the indoors, which can take its toll on the elderly.”

“Claudia DeFoe was only thirty-seven when she died.”

Dr. Seraphin gave a small shrug. “Anyone with a compromised immune system can be susceptible.”

“Okay,” Louis said. “But why wasn’t she in her grave?”

Dr. Seraphin ran her nails through her short hair, then closed the folder, keeping it on her lap. “I can only speculate,” she said.

“Please.”

“Patients did most of the menial labor at the hospital. It was part of their therapy,” she said. “They would cook, clean, tend some of the elderly, do lawn work, or work in apple orchards, things like that. Some dug graves in the cemetery.”

Dr. Seraphin fell quiet, and he gave her a second to travel back. When she started speaking again, her voice was gentler.

“Some of the higher-functioning patients, those we could trust with tools, had other jobs. They worked in the carpenter shop and built tables, and shelves and caskets.”

Louis didn’t know where she was going with this, but he stayed quiet.

“Of course, in the mortuary, we had orderlies to do the work,” Dr. Seraphin went on. “Their job was to clean the bodies and prepare them for burial. And in the wintertime, it was also their job to keep the bodies organized, tagged, and cold enough to prevent decomposition.”

“Excuse me?”

Dr. Seraphin looked at him, and it took her a second to understand his question. “The hospital had so little funding, so money was always a problem,” she said. “Until the late seventies, we didn’t even have any mechanical equipment and all the graves were dug by hand. We couldn’t bury anyone in the wintertime so remains were stored in a cooler from around mid-December until April.”

Louis turned away from Dr. Seraphin, a sourness in his throat that he knew showed on his face. Dr. Seraphin was quiet for a moment, and he could hear papers rustling and the squeak of her chair as she rocked. Then her voice.

“That December, with the flu outbreak, anything over five or six bodies would have been more than we could store.”

“So what happened to them?” Louis asked.

“I am sure we cremated as many as possible,” she said. “We had the permission of the families, of course. It was routine admission procedure that families signed a form about disposition of remains should their loved one pass away while institutionalized. Some chose burial, some cremation.” Dr. Seraphin hesitated. “Given the state of our workforce and our storage problem that winter, it is possible a few remains were cremated by accident.”

Louis pointed to the file still in the doctor’s lap. “What does it say about Claudia DeFoe?”

Dr. Seraphin knew right where to look. “It says burial.”

When Louis said nothing, Dr. Seraphin went on. “My guess would be that someone made a mistake and cremated her along with the rest of the flu victims. Not wanting to lose his job, he probably put rocks in a casket before turning it over to the grave diggers to bury.”

Louis drew in a tight breath.

“The grave diggers would not have known the difference,” Dr. Seraphin said softly. “They were barely functional.”

Louis rubbed a hand over his face. He had known from the moment he walked into E Building that whatever he found out about Claudia was going to be tragic. He hadn’t even told Phillip about E Building yet. How in the hell was he ever going to tell him this?

There was one shred of hope here. “Doctor,” Louis said, “I didn’t see a mausoleum in the cemetery. Where did they keep the cremated remains?”

“The place you’re thinking of is not called a mausoleum,” she said. “It’s called a columbarium. We kept the cremated remains in a vault in the mortuary.”

Dr. Seraphin was quiet, her eyes steady on face. He had the feeling she was evaluating him, trying to read something into his questions or the expression on his face.

“You think we were monsters,” Dr. Seraphin said.

Louis wanted to say, no, I don’t think that. I know you did the best you could . But there was a part of him that did think what had happened to Claudia and the others was inhuman.

Dr. Seraphin rose suddenly and picked up her coat. As she slipped it over her slender shoulders, she looked back at him.

“In some ways, it was barbaric, just as much of medicine was,” Dr. Seraphin said. “But we did the best we could with what little money we had. We learned and we found better ways of helping people.”

When Louis still said nothing, Dr. Seraphin picked up her briefcase and motioned to the door. “I’m sorry but I have an appointment. Will you walk out with me?”

She picked up Claudia’s file and they started down the hall toward the stairs. Dr. Seraphin spoke as they walked.

“People always focus on the horror stories,” she said. “But we had many other benign therapies you don’t hear about-relaxation techniques, audio and visual stimulation. We used to try to treat depression by having the patients watch love stories, and episodes of shows like I Love Lucy .”

She paused and turned to him. “People did get better at Hidden Lake. Many, many people went home better than they came in.”

They reached the bottom of the stairs and Louis held the door for her. She stopped to slip a pair of sunglasses from her pocket. They were large and black, covering her eyes completely.

“How long were you at Hidden Lake, Doctor?” Louis asked.

“Nearly twenty years,” she said, as she started walking again. “I rose up through the ranks and I was instrumental in correcting many deficiencies. But there was only so much I could do as assistant deputy superintendent. As third in command, I had no real power to move the board toward more progressive treatments. And as a private institution, we were always strapped for funds.”

Again, Louis was quiet. They were walking toward a shiny black Volvo. There was a man standing next to it. Beefy and tall, and wearing a dark suit and hat.

Dr. Seraphin suddenly stopped, about ten feet from the Volvo. Louis could see the driver watching them intently.

“May I ask your background, Mr. Kincaid?” Dr. Seraphin asked.

“Nearly three years a private investigator and before that, a cop. Why?”

“You have that look of someone who is dealing with mental illness for the first time.”

“And what kind of look is that, Doctor?” he asked.

“Appalled, somewhat fearful.” She smiled when she saw his disbelief. “Please, it’s perfectly normal to feel that way,” she said gently. “I’ve worked with the mentally ill all my professional life and I learned a long time ago the line between what is real and what is not is very thin. Sometimes it is even invisible.”