Page 73 - WTP VOl. X #6

“You might not be ready, Maggie. If they sense fear, they might leave to protect you. To lessen your pain.”
Maggie tries to calm herself, to clear her vision.
There is a vast blackness, and then a woman—a
clear, vivid picture of the elderly woman without a home, her mouth contorted into a scream or sigh, streaks of sadness splotched with color. She breathes in as if inhaling smoke, tasting the cigar, exhaling as if offering a ritual up to the sky.
“A voice is trying to break through. It is distinct, not Pete, but someone I believe we should listen to.” Maggie’s aggression begins to move its way outward, as if being siphoned from her stomach, drained from her body. Released into this room where minerals and music and the humming of the fake waterfall instruct her to be calm, when she is anything but.
She doesn’t want to know any more details about this mystery person. She doesn’t care about the sound of the strange voice, or the words Charese believes will be like gospel. She only wants the smell of Pete’s hair, the sound of grease splattering when she cooked him fried chicken, the blister of cold when they emerged from the house during winter storms, pushing sleds and building snowmen, and
in the later years, throwing balls of packed snow at one other, roaring with laughter. “I’m done,” she says. “This was a huge mistake.”
Before Charese can respond, Maggie sits erect and jumps off the table. She digs her hand into her purse and drops a few crumpled bills onto a mantel, in between burning candles. She pulls the curtain open and walks into the lobby where reggae music plays and Sal looks at her inquisitively, as if about to speak. The wind chimes sound as she blasts out the door, the bitter aftermath of winter biting at her skin.
~
A couple of weeks after her session with Charese, Maggie walks through the hospital parking lot. After days of rain, streaks of peach light ribbon across the sky. A sign of spring.
In the oncology ward, she rolls the medical cart down the hall as Chelsie waddles toward her. “Still here?” Maggie asks.
Chelsie stops and places her hands behind her waist to support her lower back. She stretches her neck from side to side. “I know. I’m beginning to feel ridiculous. I can barely get in and out of my patients’ rooms. I’m ready to pop, as they say. Not that I’m not
grateful.”
“I know you are.” Maggie hangs her coat, clips her ID badge to her scrubs.
“Have you heard about Mrs. Gallagher?” “I was just thinking of her. Why? What?”
Chelsie bites her lip, hesitates just long enough for the contents of Maggie’s stomach to shift. “She’s gone.”
“Gone? But I just saw her.” She feels the blood leave her face.
“She transferred her records out to Colorado. She’s continuing her treatment out there.”
“Colorado?” She remembers the woman’s face, the way it beamed when she mentioned her daughter who “talks to the spirits.” Her words in the lobby: Until we meet again.
“Yeah. I’m not sure what’s out there. Something on her bucket list? I’m sorry. I know you’ll miss her. I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else.”
“She’s okay though?”
“Seems to be. I think she’s feeling pretty good from what her sister said. She’s the one who dropped off the box. A gift for you in the nurse’s station.”
Maggie looks past Chelsie, toward the desk and filing drawers at the end of the hallway.
“Here, before you run off.” Chelsie hands her an enve- lope with Maggie’s name and address written in calligraphy.
“What’s this?”
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