The Safety Zone (A Novella by Bob Racine) - Chapter 6

Chapter 6     A Rude Awakening and a Cruel Demon

A few hours later Cara is disabused of her new affection for Dagne, when unsettling events beyond her control intervene and start her on a desperate and harrowing journey of the mind.

She was zooming across an ice pond in a state of supreme exhilaration, her soul and spirit let loose, not knowing whether she was skating or levitating or flying at low altitude – and not caring.  All she knew was that she was in motion, and the ice beneath her was cooling and soothing.  She had bounding energy and wished she could keep it up forever, until the clamor of a voice belonging to a person or persons unknown resounded across the ice and put an abrupt end to her flight of fancy. 

She awoke and knew at once that she had been dreaming and that the voice was that of Dagne hollering from behind the curtain that still concealed her bed.  “I want to see my daughter.  Will you get her here?”  She was being belligerent and demanding.  Another and more moderate voice replied to this demand, a male voice, but it was too soft for Cara to understand it. 

Apparently not pleased with what the unknown individual had said to her, Dagne then raised her pitch a few decibels higher and repeated what was by that point clearly an ultimatum.

“I want my daughter.  I want her right now!  You can’t deny me the right to see my daughter.”  Again a reply came forth from the male present, this time evidencing more irritation but still too muffled for Cara to determine the exact words. 

Dagne barked back at the man.  “I don’t care if she is at work or how far she has to travel.  I want her called at once, and I want her to come here immediately.  I want her by my side.  I NEED HER.”  With each sentence she had grown louder and more emphatic, until on those last three words she was virtually screaming.

The male then raised his own voice loud enough for Cara to decipher every word. “We will call her, but we can only deliver your request; we can’t make her come any quicker than she decides to come.”

Cara checked her watch on the side table and learned that it was shortly past 2:00 in the afternoon.  She had eaten her lunch and then settled nicely into a nap.  But now nothing inside her mind or body felt settled at all. 

Dagne did not sound delirious to Cara, more like angry and autocratic.  She was giving an order to the unseen person, not muttering or whimpering in a half conscious state or in some fog of drug-induced helplessness.  She was doing it in full control of her faculties.  And it did not take Cara long to realize that the male present was a member of the hospital staff, not another relative. 

At first she was inclined to assume that it was Chuck, but the voice did not sound like Chuck’s and was too direct in tone and too authoritative to belong to anyone other than a physician.  It was apparently Dagne’s surgeon with whom she was contending.  He was visiting her bedside to check on her.

Cara was bewildered and a bit shattered by what she had heard.  Why was Dagne in such distress?  Could this really be the same woman?  Maybe the real Dagne had been moved somewhere else and Cara had a new roommate!  The disposition of the hollering hoyden behind the curtain did not match that of the needy, humble and vulnerable person with whom Cara had interacted on such intimate terms the night before or with the friendly jester, however momentarily indiscreet and overbearing, who had first introduced herself to Cara. 

Worst of all her insistence on a family member did not match her claim that no one in her family understood what she was going through.  What Cara heard next from the unseen woman was a murmur loaded with invective, as garbled as the communication was. 

A wave of despondency and disappointment swept over Cara, as she ascertained that the voice was indeed that of Dagne Denison.  Once again, as on the previous day, she began to hyperventilate.  Only now it was not some black magic threat that she faced.  It was an emotional holocaust that she sensed approaching, a severe anguish of heart and mind. 

It sounded as if Dagne had forgotten all about her or perhaps had second thoughts about the new friendship.  If she had meant all she had disclosed to Cara those many hours before, how could she now be calling for a daughter who was allegedly insensitive to the nature and extent of her mother’s crisis?  Why was she not summoning Cara, her preferred helpmate, who was inches and feet away?

The surgeon stepped out from behind the curtain and started toward the door, obviously having finished his examination of his patient.  He was a forty-ish looking man and a bit diminutive of stature.  Perhaps, Cara thought, his unimposing size had given Dagne the fearless incentive to run roughshod over him the way she had.  Cara saw her narrowing opportunity and grabbed it. 

“Did she say she wanted to see her daughter?” Cara asked the surgeon.  She did not need him to tell her it was so, but she knew no other way to stop him.  She hoped to get some indication from him that what she had heard out of Dagne’s mouth was an aberration, something short lived, the effect of her high-powered medicine perhaps or some such thing – something not to be taken seriously.  

“Yes, that’s what she wants” was his terse reply.  He said no more, just paused, looking at Cara as if he expected her to ask him something else but itchy to leave the scene. 

“Are you-   ?”  She was not sure how to phrase what she wanted to ask. 

“Yes?”  She sensed a little impatience on the doctor’s part. 

“Are you-   going to call her?”

“Of course we’ll call her, assuming the desk has her number.”  His remark sounded a little condescending to Cara, as if he took her to be an idiot or took her inquiry to be a questioning of his medical ethics, even though he spoke in a level tone of voice.

“Do you think she’ll come right over?” Cara was sorry for the question the instant it rolled off her tongue.  She half expected the man to turn angry and defensive with some version of How should I know what the daughter will do?  Am I a clairvoyant?  But all he said was “That’ll be up to her,” sounding quite official. 

“Do you have to leave that curtain around her like that?” Cara asked, surprised at her own nerve.  “I can’t see the window.”   

“She requested it,” replied the doctor.  “I’m sorry.  She wants privacy.  Maybe after a while she’ll be willing to pull it back.”  With that he stuck his clipboard tight under his arm and left. 

Cara knew she could leap out of bed and go around to Dagne, but something stopped her.  If Dagne was in a bad mood, she did not want to be abashed by it.  Better to leave her be, until the thunder and lightning had ceased.  The last thing Cara needed was to make a fool of herself.  Neither did she want to get herself unduly excited or run up her blood pressure. 

The curtain reminded her of the bed covers her second husband would wrap around himself as he faced away from her, signaling an unwillingness to converse or interact.  An end to talking!  A game of silent takeaway!  She remembered the emotional severity of that action and the pain it caused her – being shut out and consigned to invisibility. 

Was that what Dagne was doing?  If so, why?  What had she, Cara, done or left undone to offend her?  What was Dagne’s gripe with her?  To do this just for the hell of it or just to be mean or thoughtless would be unreasonably cruel.  She could not imagine that the friendly, playful Dagne would be capable of such a thing. 

Certainly, she reminded herself, to have one’s breast removed was no picnic.  Certainly Dagne was not expected to be on top of the world at this juncture.  She was in pain surely, and not just physical pain.  She was suffering from the pain of feeling diminished.  Yes, “diminished”!  Wasn’t that the word Dagne had used to size up how she felt after the breast came off? 

But if she was fighting anguish behind that curtain at that moment, as she had fought loneliness and anxiety the previous night, why would she not be doing the same thing about her present struggle and turmoil that she had done that night before – talk to someone about it?  And she had the same person to talk to that she had had before – namely, Cara Hutchins.  Cara could not imagine someone like Dagne just withdrawing from everybody, whatever her crisis.

And if she was withdrawing from everybody, why was she demanding to see her daughter?  Well, her daughter was a woman, yes!  Cara knew that this “female” operation was the sort that would make a woman feel less like a woman.  A man’s comfort would do less for her than a woman’s.  But she, Cara, was a woman.  Why send for a daughter so far away when she had female companionship just in the next bed?  It seemed to Cara that Dagne preferred the daughter to her, even though she had claimed the night before to get no understanding from any of her relatives.

Then the thought rocketed through Cara’s mind that perhaps Dagne wanted her daughter present so that she could confront that daughter.  Maybe she had a gripe with the daughter and wanted to give her a piece of her mind.  Maybe she was calling the daughter out for a fight or a showdown.  Even so, one would think that Dagne would want somebody backing her up in that confrontation.  Could she not have called upon Cara for that support?  Unless she didn’t want to drag Cara into a family squabble! 

Yes, maybe she was trying to be considerate of a fellow surgical patient!  Oh, but who would pick the day after surgery to have a showdown?  How could one argue in such a drugged condition, with all that weakness and wooziness after being cut on?         

Again, Cara’s thoughts turned to that ominous thing Dagne had said to her about her roommates dying, about being a curse on her fellow hospital residents.  What if she killed them by manipulation?  Had Dagne been setting her up for the emotional kill – creating intimacy, coaxing her into a trusting bond, then ripping the bond asunder with one carefully calculated, nasty rebuff?  Softening up her prey before lowering the boom? 

Emotional devastation could conceivably be the prelude to physical death.  Cara knew that, and she feared at that moment that if this new friendship that had been formed in the barren, friendless crucible of her present life were now to be snatched abortively from her, she would either die or be rendered a paralytic of spirit for the foreseeable future, maybe forever.

Death!  Oh my God, is this how it comes?  Your body gets broken along with your heart?  All transmissions cut off at one time – love to the intangible nucleus, oxygen to the blood?  And where was the oxygen she needed for that moment?  Her breathing was beginning to labor, her lung muscles groping for air – sensations that in her judgment approximated slow dying, the agony of depletion, of looming defeat.  Desperation, though she could not have named it that, began to take possession of her. 

She called out in a gravelly thin voice, “Dagne!”  There was no answer.  She recalled how late the night before Dagne had called to her to see if she was awake and she had played possum.  Does Dagne’s failure to answer mean the same thing – that she is pretending to be unconscious just to avoid contact?  “Dagne!  Are you awake?  Can you hear me?” 

Still no reply from behind the curtain! 

Better no answer at all than any of the ones she dreaded to hear: Go away!  Don’t bother me! Or I’ve had enough of you.  Or Forget all we said before; you mean nothing to me.  Or Why didn’t you help me last night?  Anything but mean or cruel words like that!  Anything but a verbal slashing or an accusation!  She wanted Dagne to speak to her, but not in the tone of voice she heard a few minutes before with the surgeon! 

But all Cara said out loud was “Dagne, can’t I speak with you?” 

Dead silence once again! 

Was that the best of all possible worlds for Cara at that moment?  What was Dagne hiding?  Ill will?  Self-reproach?  A dirty secret?  Unmitigated pain?  Despair?

She felt her heart pumping progressively harder.  She raised up her head and shoulders, as was her habit when she felt the need of getting more air down into her lungs, even though she had learned in the past that doing so did not help the problem at all.  It was just as difficult to inhale in a vertical position as it was in a horizontal one.  But out of habit, and a slight sense of that desperation, she found herself pushed up once again.

All at once the room seemed to change shape.  The curtain surrounding Dagne’s bed looked as if it was bending sideways and shrinking, then stretching back and shrinking again.  The metal tubing from which it hung started to curl and dip.  The television set jutted farther out from the opposite wall and seemed to thrust in her direction like a clenched fist. 

She squeezed her eyes shut for a few seconds, hoping that when she opened them again she would find everything settled back into place, but when she permitted herself to look, things were even more distorted.  Now the ceiling was no longer straight and rectangular; it sagged and rippled.  Her own bed looked as if it was on an incline, with her feet higher than her head. 

The floor was slanted beneath her; it buckled, it undulated, it rose and fell in tandem with each blink of her eye.  The chair next to her bed was apparently within her reach, but when she groped for it, her arm had grown shorter and was of insufficient length to touch it.  The serving table had become a knife slicing at the air in her direction.  She lost all sense of dimension.  The room was rapidly becoming liquid inside a bubble, rolling and roiling like an overactive amoeba.

Then, bringing shock but no surprise, the familiar dizziness began, and behind it, within the space of a few predictable minutes, the headache.  Not a headache, but the headache!  The pounding started just above her eyes, her vision shifting from distortion to outright blurriness.  She knew that any movement she now made would require her to grope almost blindly for the slightest object or surface.

She fell back upon her pillow, the pounding of her head accelerating.  The concentration of pain began to spread all across her cranium, as if a garrote had been applied.  Her skull within an iron vise could not have felt more exposed to torture, or so she surmised. 

Gradually, over the following half hour or so, the pain spread to her jaws, her gums, and her teeth, her body riveted to the bed.  She knew from past experience that to try to bite anything or bring her uppers and lowers together would add to the pain.  She had to lie with her mouth agape and trembling.  All she could do was lie there, as her invisible tormentor ratcheted up the heat and the electric-like current that made its way through cranial bones and muscles and passageways she forgot most of the time she even possessed. 

For the first time since she was admitted, she felt sick and afflicted and helpless.  Dagne now had nothing on her.  That woman’s mastectomy and post-operative could not be causing her more agony than Cara was now suffering.  Surely Dagne needed to know that.  Dagne would not be so oblivious to her roommate, if she knew the torment that roommate and confidant was going through.

She had chosen, after all, to stay with Dagne rather than move to other hospital quarters.  An irreversible decision!  And because of that choice she knew that a part of her was now over there on the other side of that curtain.  Dagne had gathered a piece of Cara to herself.  A piece of the patchwork quilt she now reckoned herself to be had been stretched across between the beds and if stretched too far, she feared it would be rent in two. 

How could she be comfortable when the greater part of her emotional life support, however new, was being denied her?  How could she be at peace under this cloud of uncertainty?                 

She knew that the moment she stood on her feet she would be dizzy and probably unsure of her footing, maybe even nauseous.  But she told herself that it was not that far around to the other side of Dagne’s bed. 

First, her head off the pillow!  She raised it up, then leaned on her left elbow to support herself, as she shifted her weight to the edge of the mattress, bending the legs that were fast losing circulation and pushing her torso into a sitting position.  She hardly felt any sensation in her feet, as they dropped over the edge and dangled above the tiled floor.  Had her whole body grown shorter over these last minutes?  Was the floor still undulating?  Was it actually there?  If only she could see something definite, bring some pivotal object into focus! 

Her sense of balance eluded her; her head, with all its hammering pain, began to swim and swirl as if it would fly off her shoulders and crash into the wall.  Then the nausea, as expected – deep, revulsive, bitter, bracing nausea – overtook her.  She thought for sure she was on the verge of vomiting, that everything liquid and loose inside her was about to erupt.

She grabbed at whatever bedding was under her.  With her right hand she clutched the covers, as she groped and scratched helplessly at the taut sheet with her left hand, unable to get a grip on it, then with the same left hand she grabbed up the pillow and squeezed it against her left side, as she pulled the top sheet against her on the right side.  She felt as if she were holding everything back with these bed linens, pressing their soft and yielding surfaces against her spasmodic midsection to keep it from convulsing.  She was a child again clinging to her security blanket.

For what seemed to her like an eternity she sat, her eyes pressed shut, and waited for her dizziness and nausea to ease and her gag reflex to abate, which they did to a tenuous point.  She then slid her derriere closer to the edge of the mattress and touched the floor at last with her feet.  Yes, it was still there!  It felt solid and level.  To get her footing she knew she would have to let the pillow go, and she knew that once on her feet she would have nothing to depend upon for upright support but her own legs. 

On her first attempt she let go of the bed covers but held tightly to the pillow.  Her knees in an instant began shaking.  To keep from collapsing she quickly lowered herself back down to a sitting position and drew a few deep breaths in an attempt to increase her strength, but this effort was undercut by a sudden tremor that passed from her legs all the way up through her arms and shoulders. 

Then, for what seemed like many minutes she kept shaking, and she knew it was not from any chill, because the room was, if anything, too warm.  Her head was now pounding as well as searing with pain.

Again she attempted to reach her roommate, this time increasing her volume and sounding a little frantic.  “Dagne, please help me.  Say something.  Anything!  I must hear from you.  I’m in great pain.”  Her mind was racing so fast it too sounded loud and boisterous to her, along with her deep labored breaths.  “Dagne, please!  Just let me know you’re there and awake.  You don’t have to move a muscle.”  She waited about fifteen seconds, hoping that, if Dagne did answer, she would actually save Cara from having to take that dangerous walk. 

But not a word wafted from the other side of the curtain barrier.

Every muscle and nerve and fiber of her body demanded that she lie back down.  But she had not yet gotten all the way into a standing position, and she refused to listen to this visceral chorus of command until she had given herself the full test.  Could she maneuver her feet to transport her or not, once she was on them?  She had to know. 

Once again she gripped her pillow tight to her side, before sliding it all the way up to her bosom, then with her right hand she pushed down against the surface of the mattress to give herself the needed leverage to straighten her legs and stand.  This time she felt a little more nervy, as she let the pillow drop to the floor.  Oh, my God, is it really gone?  If I fall, what do I grab hold of?  

She did not know how sturdy the blood-thinning machine, still at her side, would be.  Once completely vertical, she took a deep breath that turned suddenly into a gasp.  She was a ship without any ballast.

The room began to smell much more like a typical hospital than at any time previous.  All kinds of odors assaulted her.  Was one of them the smell of blood?  Was she bleeding somewhere?  Was she out of her mind?  Was her body inventing repulsive sensations just to prevent her from taking this plunge? 

She did not dare close her eyes; she had to see before her and around her to identify what was familiar or she knew she would lose her balance altogether and crash.  There in front of her was the wall.  To the right of it was the vestibule leading to the door, just off the bathroom.  Diagonally to the left side of her was the upholstered straight chair that Vernon had been occupying. So far, so good!

The seconds and minutes ticked by as she stood perfectly still, waiting for the next bulk of courage to rise within her and overtake her beclouded wits.  Mind over matter, they say!  She did not remember when that formula had ever been so difficult for her or so exhausting.  Courage would not find her; she had to find it. 

She had to move, to talk back to the wrenching pain, to place one dubious foot in front of another and make her way toward – toward what?  Affection?  Renewed trust? Reassurance?  Peace of mind?  Simple connectedness?  Or (God forbid!) a rude awakening?  Where was this journey taking her?  Her brain was in turmoil.  She was going to visit somebody – somebody she hardly knew.  A simple courtesy?  Or a ridiculous intrusion?     

She could not recall clearly how her body got into motion, but she saw that she had turned at the foot of her own bed in Dagne’s direction.  She was walking. She had to push; nobody was going to pull her.  Push – against the wretchedness and nausea and dizziness and searing headache that tried to ambush her with every motion she made.  Push through the agony, the fear.  Push!  Push!  Nobody was going to root for her or cheer her on.  Push!  Push through the heat. 

Why was the room so much hotter?  Did she have a fever? 

Push – against all resistance!  Her legs were beginning to shake.  Her walk was becoming a wobble.  But she was almost there.  In front of her now was the window she had not seen clearly for many hours.  At her right was the curtain.  Dagne’s curtain!  The curtain that obscured the truth she was seeking to know!  The truth shall set you free.  Will it, and free from what?  To whom was she in servitude? 

Get past the curtain!  Get past that confounded, stubborn, mute curtain!  One more turn around one more corner of one more bed!  A few more steps and the last thrash of the furies!  Or so she supposed!  But the awakening she had feared turned out to be more rude than she could ever have imagined.  She had to look away from what she was seeing.   

Right next to her a deafening, hair-raising scream split the air.  It took her a few beats to realize that the scream was coming from her own throat.  Sirens went off in her head, tremors that far surpassed anything in recent minutes seized her.  What she was seeing was like an acid poison flung into her face.  The gag reflex she had been suppressing broke through all barriers, and out of her mouth spewed a torrent that was soon awash in the floor and all over everything in sight.

Her screaming continued until she literally screamed herself hoarse.  The room began to whirl around her and her legs turned as soft as clay underneath.  She lost all sense of balance and safety and felt what was tantamount to an invisible hand grab her by her head and her guts all at once and knock her to the floor.  Her face smashed against something hard.  She felt what she thought might be the flames of hell surging over her.  On the floor she was gasping for air, the last ordeal she remembered, as she lost all consciousness.