Gillian Anderson - The Sound of Seas

“In the pillow?” Nancy exclaimed.

“I’m not putting that back in, so don’t even ask,” Caitlin said. “I need my wits.”

Nancy shook her head. “What am I even doing here?”

“Helping me,” Caitlin said. “Mom, I’m always out on a ledge, I know it. That’s why I need you.”

Nancy’s shoulders had tensed. They relaxed. Exhaling loudly, she went to the closet and retrieved her daughter’s phone from the top shelf. She looked at it.

“I have no idea how to work this,” she said, stepping forward and thrusting the smartphone at her daughter. Nancy was the very image, then, of when Jacob was younger, broke a toy, and handed it to his mother to fix.

Caitlin took the phone and texted Barbara. The exchange was brief. Caitlin did not explain why she was in the hospital, only that she needed her psychiatrist… and friend. Barbara promised to come over at five thirty, after her last appointment. Caitlin thanked her then called Anita.

“Honey, it is good to hear your voice!” Anita exclaimed.

“Sorry to wake you, if I did.”

“You didn’t,” Anita said. “Who can sleep? Besides you, I mean.”

Caitlin laughed. Nancy seemed surprised. It felt good.

“First, a huge thank-you ,” Caitlin said.

“You’re welcome. I never take sick days, was overdue. More important, how are you ?”

“I truly do not know how to answer that,” Caitlin said. “Physically, fine. But tell me about Jacob.”

“Relying on just the medical evidence, he’s manifesting a form of hyper-sopor. I would have taken him to the emergency room except that there are no obviously actionable symptoms, he did not have any trauma, and the only food he had was what he hadn’t finished yesterday. His tendon reflexes are normal, there’s no fever, resting heartbeat and respiration are consistent with clinical lethargy, it’s not drug-­induced, obviously, and I wanted to talk to you first. Anyway, a relative would have had to sign off on further evaluation.”

“That is absolutely what I would have done,” Caitlin told her. “Has he moved, said anything?”

“Moved—he was half-awake, rapping on the wall, then back asleep. That was about—dawn, I guess. Since then, very little. Opened his mouth slowly as if he was cracking his jaw. Eye movement. Not like REM, only sporadic and definitely deliberate.”

“Like lucid dreaming?”

After considering that for a moment Anita said, “Yes, that’s actually what it’s like. As if he’s awake and consciously, purposefully looking at something. But with his eyes closed.”

“Bless you again for not moving him,” Caitlin said. “It’s a form of trance, like the one I experienced.”

“I figured, but hold on, Caitlin—there’s more,” Anita said. “You had visitors.”

“Who?”

Anita said quietly so Caitlin’s father wouldn’t hear, “From Haiti. A Vodou priestess and her son.”

Caitlin felt a sudden boiling in her gut. “Go on.”

Anita told her about Madame Langlois and the snake, both of which surprised Caitlin but also comforted her in a strange way: the Galderkhaani Priest Yokane was dead and the transcended spirit of the Galderkhaani Azha was gone. Caitlin was glad to have someone around who understood. And there was another snake: a physical manifestation, unlike the others. That was information, even if she did not yet know what to make of it.

“Did Madame Langlois say anything about the serpent?” Caitlin asked.

Nancy frowned, deeply. Caitlin waved her hand as if the question were irrelevant.

“Nothing that made it any less creepy,” Anita said. “A conjurer’s trick, I suppose, though she kept referring to the snake with a plural pronoun—‘they.’”

Then she told her how the Vodou-summoned snake was made up of smaller parts, just like the snake in her own recent vision. That too was fascinating… but elusive.

“I don’t assume they are still there,” Caitlin said. “I can’t see my father allowing that.”

“No,” Anita said. “Ben found somewhere to put the madame and her son, though he didn’t tell me where.”

Caitlin quickly scrolled through her e-mails, saw nothing from Ben. He was probably afraid someone else might look at it. She worked hard to remain calm. She had to fight the pressing urge to be with Jacob, to see the Haitians, to get back to Flora Davies, to find out why all the stones on the planet seemed to have gone quiet, to return to Galderkhaan somehow . Instead, she took an uncharacteristically small, single step:

“Ben is at work?” Caitlin asked.

“Yes. He called here at least a half-dozen times asking if I’d heard from you, making sure Jacob was still the same.”

Just talking about him brought a sudden, welcome equilibrium, as if she’d downloaded all the cautions and safeguards and different points of view that were lodged in his sane British brain. Her mother was a mother, loving and concerned with a strong vein of I know better , but Ben had been a comrade in all this… in so many things going back to their university years.

Caitlin heard dripping then, saw that her pillow was getting soggy and had started to overflow. Caitlin hadn’t expected to be here still, and reluctantly shut the flow. A few moments later a nurse entered.

“I gotta go,” Caitlin said to Anita and ended the call after thanking her again.

The young nurse frowned when he too heard the dripping and looked at the bed.

“Dr. O’Hara—”

“It—came out,” Caitlin told him.

“Did it?”

“Well… clearly.”

“I see.”

“And as you can also see, I’m okay now,” Caitlin went on. “Except that I need a fresh pillow.”

The nurse scowled. He summoned an orderly and a fresh pillow was brought in. Dr. Yang followed briskly with a look that was half-concern, half-disapproval.

The physician made quick work of his patient, finding nothing in her eyes, blood pressure, or chest to alarm him. He agreed not to replace the IV if Caitlin promised to stay in bed. Nancy O’Hara assured him that she would.

“If we weren’t understaffed—” he began.

“I’d help, if you’d let me,” Caitlin said. She was serious.

“Thanks, no. Management prefers when their doctors aren’t also patients.”

“Phuket and the Philippines weren’t so picky,” Caitlin muttered to his back. Sometimes, American health care—and liability—just got to her.

The physician left, along with the nurse, the orderly, and Caitlin’s considerably medicated pillow.

Nancy sat heavily and gratefully in the chair. “This is your life, isn’t it? Urgent, urgent, urgent.”

“ ’Fraid so.”

“I’m too tired to keep up,” Nancy said. “I only slept for three hours last night. I’m going to shut my eyes.” She fixed those eyes on her daughter. “You will stay there?”

“I will,” Caitlin said. She wiggled her smartphone. “Barbara will be here in an hour or so. I’m just going to send e-mails while there’s still life in the battery.”

Her mother nodded agreeably, folded her hands on her waist, and settled back. Caitlin looked at her a moment longer. She understood the woman’s concerns for her daughter because Caitlin shared them for her own child. She could not let on how concerned she was. If Jacob were in Galderkhaan—spiritually, at least—she only hoped Standor Qala had believed what she told her, and that the commander’s physician was a man of curiosity and caution who would do nothing rash or extreme. Caitlin prayed—to a dead man in a dead civilization—to try to understand rather than undo what had occurred. Restoring Vilu by some dramatic, potentially traumatic means could cost Jacob his soul.