You are being provided with a book chapter by chapter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chapter. After reading the chapter, 1. shorten the chapter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any important nouns in the chapter. 3. Do not translate the original language. 4. Keep the same style as the original chapter, keep it consistent throughout the chapter. Your reply must comply with all four requirements, or it’s invalid.
I will provide the chapter now.
CHAPTER 34
They took Slick to the Medical University on Tuesday. On
Wednesday, they started making visitors wear paper gowns and
masks.
“We don’t know precisely what’s going on,” her doctor said. “She’s
got an autoimmune disease but it’s developing faster than we’d
expect. Her immune system is attacking her white blood cells, and
more red blood cells than we’d like are hemolytic. But we’re keeping
her oxygenated and screening for everything. It’s too early to hit the
panic button.”
The diagnosis simultaneously excited and horrified Patricia. It
confirmed that whatever James Harris was, he wasn’t human. He’d
put a part of himself inside Slick, and it was killing her. He was a
monster. On the other hand, Slick wasn’t getting better.
Leland visited every day around six, but always seemed like he
needed to leave the moment he arrived. When Patricia followed him
out into the hall to ask how he was doing, he stepped in close.
“You haven’t told anyone her diagnosis?” he asked.
“She doesn’t have one as far as I know,” Patricia said.
He stepped in closer. Patricia wanted to back up but she was
already standing against the wall.
“They say it’s an autoimmune disease,” he whispered. “You can’t
repeat that. People are going to think she has AIDS.”
“No one’s going to think that, Leland,” Patricia said.
“They’re already saying it at church,” he said. “I don’t want it
coming back on the kids.”
“I haven’t said anything to anyone,” Patricia said, unhappy to be
forced to participate in something that felt wrong.
Friday morning, they taped a sign to Slick’s door that had been
photocopied so many times it was covered with black dots saying
that if you had a temperature, or been exposed to anyone with a cold,
you were not allowed in the room.
Slick looked pale, her skin felt papery, and she didn’t want to be
left alone, especially at night. The nurses brought blankets and
Patricia slept in the chair by her bed. After Leland went home,
Patricia held the phone so Slick could say bedtime prayers with her
kids, but most of the time Slick lay still, the sheets pulled up almost
to her chin, her doll-sized arms wrapped in white tape, pricked with
IV needles and tubes. She sweated out fevers most of the afternoon.
When she seemed lucid Patricia tried to read to her from Men Are
from Mars, Women Are from Venus, but after a paragraph she
realized Slick was saying something.
“What’s that?” Patricia asked, leaning over.
“Anything…else…,” Slick said. “…anything…else.”
Patricia pulled the latest Ann Rule out of her purse.
“‘September 21, 1986,’” she read, “‘was a warm and beautiful
Sunday in Portland—in the whole state of Oregon, for that matter.
With any luck the winter rains of the Northwest were a safe two
months away…’”
The facts and firm geography soothed Slick, who closed her eyes
and listened. She didn’t sleep, just lay there, smiling slightly. The
light outside got dimmer and the light inside got stronger, and
Patricia kept reading, speaking louder to compensate for her paper
mask.
“Am I too late?” Maryellen said, and Patricia looked up to see her
pushing open the door.
“Is she awake?” Maryellen whispered from behind her paper mask.
“Thank you for coming,” Slick said without opening her eyes.
“Everyone wants to know how you’re feeling,” Maryellen said. “I
know Kitty wanted to come.”
“Are you reading this month’s book?” Slick asked.
Maryellen pulled a heavy brown armchair to the foot of the bed.
“I can’t even open it,” she said. “Men Are from Mars? That’s giving
them too much credit.”
Slick started coughing, and it took Patricia a moment to realize she
was laughing.
“I made…,” Slick whispered, and Patricia and Maryellen strained
to hear her. “I made Patricia stop reading it.”
“I miss the books we used to read where at least there was a
murder,” Maryellen said. “The problem with book club these days is
too many men. They don’t know how to pick a book to save their lives
and they love to listen to themselves talk. It’s nothing but opinions,
all day long.”
“You sound…sexist,” Slick whispered.
She was the only one not in a mask, so even though her voice was
weakest, it sounded loudest.
“I wouldn’t mind listening if any of them had an opinion worth a
damn,” Maryellen said.
With three of them in Slick’s little hospital room, Patricia felt the
absence of the other two more acutely. They felt like some kind of
survivors’ club—the last three standing.
“Are you going to Kitty’s oyster roast on Saturday?” she asked
Maryellen.
“If she has one,” Maryellen said. “The way she’s acting they might
call it off.”
“I haven’t spoken to her since before Halloween,” Patricia said.
“Give her a call when you have a chance,” Maryellen said.
“Something’s wrong. Horse says she hasn’t left the house all week
and yesterday she barely left her room. He’s worried.”
“What does he say is wrong?” Patricia asked.
“He says it’s nightmares,” Maryellen said. “She’s drinking, a lot.
She wants to know where the children are every second of the day.
She’s scared something might happen to them.”
Patricia decided it was time more people knew.
“Do you want to talk to Maryellen about anything?” she asked
Slick. “Do you have something you need to tell her?”
Slick shook her head deliberately.
“No,” she croaked. “The doctors don’t know anything yet.”
Patricia leaned down.
“He can’t hurt you here,” she said, quietly. “You can tell her.”
“How is she?” a gentle, caring male voice said from the door.
Patricia hunched as if she’d been stabbed between the shoulder
blades. Slick’s eyes widened. Patricia turned, and there was no
mistaking the eyes above the mask or the shape beneath the paper
gown.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come earlier,” James Harris said through his
mask, moving across the room. “Poor Slick. What’s happened to
you?”
Patricia stood and put herself between James Harris and Slick’s
bed. He stopped in front of her and placed one large hand on her
shoulder. It took everything she had not to flinch.
“You’re so good to be here,” he said, and then gently brushed her
aside and loomed over Slick, one hand resting on her bed rail. “How
are you feeling, sweetheart?”
What he was doing was obscene. Patricia wanted to scream for
help, she wanted the police, she wanted him arrested, but she knew
no one would help them. Then she realized Maryellen and Slick
weren’t saying anything, either.
“Do you not feel up to talking?” James Harris asked Slick.
Patricia wondered who would break first, which one of them would
cave in to niceties and make conversation, but they all stood firm,
and looked at their hands, at their feet, out the window, and none of
them said a word.
“I feel like I’m interrupting,” James Harris said.
The silence continued and Patricia felt something bigger than her
fear: solidarity.
“Slick’s tired,” Maryellen finally said. “She’s had a long day. I think
we should all leave her to get some rest.”
As everyone shuffled around each other, trying to say good-bye,
trying to get to the door, trying to get their things, Patricia worked
spit into her dry mouth. She didn’t want to do what she was about to
do, but right before she said good-bye to Slick, she spoke as loudly as
she could.
“James?”
He turned, his eyebrows raised above his mask.
“Korey took my car,” she said. “Could you give me a ride home?”
Slick tried to push herself up in bed.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she told Slick. “But I need to go home and
get some groceries in the fridge and make sure the children are still
alive.”
“Of course,” James Harris said. “I’ll be happy to give you a ride.”
Patricia bent over Slick.
“I’ll see you soon,” she said, and kissed her on the forehead.
Maryellen insisted on walking with her to James Harris’s car,
which was on the third level of the parking garage. Patricia
appreciated the gesture, but then came the moment when she had to
go.
“Well,” Maryellen said, like a bad actor on television. “I thought I
was parked up here but I guess I was wrong again. You go on, I’ll
have to figure out where I put my car.”
Patricia watched Maryellen walk to the stairwell until all she could
hear were her heels, and then those faded, and the parking garage
was silent. The door locks chunked up and Patricia jumped. She
pulled the handle, slid self-consciously into the front seat, pulled the
door closed, and clicked her seat belt on. The car engine came to life,
idled, and then James Harris reached for her head. She flinched as
he put his hand on the back of her headrest, looked over his
shoulder, and reversed out of his space. They drove down the ramps
in silence, he paid the attendant, and they pulled out onto the dark
Charleston streets.
“I’m glad we can have this time together,” he said.
Patricia tried to say something, but she couldn’t force air through
her throat.
“Do they have any idea what’s wrong with Slick?” he asked.
“An autoimmune disorder,” she managed.
“Leland thinks she has AIDS,” James Harris said. “He’s terrified
people will find out.”
His turn signal clicked loudly as he made a left onto Calhoun
Street, past the park where the columns from the old Charleston
Museum still stood. They reminded Patricia of tombstones.
“You and I have been making a lot of assumptions about each
other,” James Harris said. “I think it’s time we got on the same
page.”
Patricia dug her nails into her palms to make herself keep quiet.
She had gotten into his car. She didn’t need to talk.
“I would never hurt anyone,” he said. “You know that, right?”
How much did he know? Had they cleaned his stairs completely?
Did he know she’d been in his attic, or did he just suspect? Had she
missed a spot, left something behind, given herself away?
“I know,” she said.
“Does Slick have any idea how she got this?” he asked.
Patricia bit the inside of her cheeks, feeling her teeth sink into
their soft, spongy tissue, making herself more alert.
“No,” she said.
“What about you?” he asked. “What do you think?”
If he had attacked Slick, what would he do to her now that they
were alone? The position she’d put herself in began to sink in. She
needed to reassure him that she was no danger.
“I don’t know what to think,” she managed.
“At least you’re admitting it,” he said. “I find myself in a similar
position.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
They mounted the Cooper River Bridge, rising in a smooth arc over
the city, leaving the land below, soaring over the dark harbor. Traffic
was light, with only a few cars on the bridge.
The moment Patricia dreaded was coming soon. At the end of the
bridge, the road forked. Two lanes curved toward the Old Village.
The other two veered left and became Johnnie Dodds Boulevard,
running out past strip malls, past Creekside, out into the country
where there were no streetlights or neighbors, deep into Francis
Marion National Forest where there were hidden clearings and
logging roads, places where occasionally the police found abandoned
cars with dead bodies in the trunk, or babies’ skeletons wrapped in
plastic bags and buried under the trees.
Which road he took would tell her if he thought she posed a threat.
“Leland did this to her,” James Harris said. “Leland made her
sick.”
Patricia’s thoughts fragmented. What was he saying? She tried to
pay attention, but he was already talking.
“It all started with those damn trips,” he said. “If I’d known, I
never would have suggested them. It was that one last February to
Atlanta, do you remember? Carter had that Ritalin conference and
Leland and I went on Sunday to take some of the doctors out golfing
and talk to them about investing in Gracious Cay. At dinner, this
psychiatrist from Reno asked if we wanted to see some girls. He told
us there was a place called the Gold Club owned by a former New
York Yankee, so it must be on the level. It wasn’t my kind of thing,
but Leland spent almost a thousand dollars. That was the first time.
After that, it seemed to get easier for him.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Patricia asked.
“Because you need to know the truth,” he said, and they were
coming down the last rise of the bridge. Up ahead, the road
branched: right or left. “I became aware of the girls last summer.
Leland would be with a different one almost every trip. Sometimes,
when it was places like Atlanta or Miami where we went a few times,
he would see the same girl. Some of them were professionals, some
weren’t. You know what I mean by that?”
He waited. She nodded stiffly in acknowledgment, eyes on the
road. He drove in the middle lane, which could go either way. She
wondered if this was a full and final confession because he knew she
wouldn’t be able to tell anyone soon.
“He got a disease from one of them and gave it to Slick,” James
Harris said. “There’s no way to know what it is. But I know that’s
what happened. I asked him once if he used protection and he just
laughed and said, ‘Where’s the fun in that?’ Someone needs to tell
her doctor.
He didn’t put on his turn signal to change lanes; his car just came
down off the bridge and then drifted, so slightly she almost didn’t
notice, and they were on the road to the Old Village. The muscles in
her back unclenched.
“What about Carter?” she asked, after a moment.
They rode Coleman Boulevard’s gentle curves toward the Old
Village, passing houses, streetlights, then stores, restaurants, people.
“Him, too,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She hadn’t expected it to hurt so much.
“What do you want from me?” she asked.
“He’s treated you like a fool,” James Harris said. “Carter doesn’t
see what a wonderful family he has, but I do. I have all along. I was
there when your mother-in-law passed, and she was a good woman.
I’ve watched Blue grow up and he’s having a hard time but he’s got so
much potential. You’re a good person. But your husband has thrown
it all away.”
They passed the Oasis gas station in the middle of the road and
entered the Old Village proper, the interior of the car getting darker
as the streetlights became spaced farther apart.
“If Leland gave Slick something,” he said, “Carter could do the
same to you. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but you need to
know. I want you to be safe. I care about you. I care about Blue and
Korey. Y’all are a big part of my life.”
He looked earnest as a suitor asking someone to be his bride as he
turned from Pitt Street onto McCants.
“What are you saying?” she asked, lips numb.
“You deserve better,” he said. “You and the children deserve
someone who knows your true value.”
Her stomach slowly turned inside out. He passed Alhambra Hall
and she wanted to shove open the door and jump out of the car. She
wanted to feel the asphalt slap and cut and scrape her. It would feel
real, not like this nightmare. She made herself look at James Harris
again, but she didn’t trust herself to speak. She kept quiet until he
pulled up in front of her driveway.
“I need time to think,” she said.
“What are you going to tell Carter?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Patricia said, and made her face a mask. “Not yet. This
is between us.”
She fumbled with the door handle, and as she did, she dropped
Francine’s license onto the floor of his car and slipped it beneath the
passenger seat with her foot.
It wasn’t his wallet, but it was the next best thing.
—
She woke up in the dark. She must have turned off the bedside light
at some point and didn’t remember. Now she lay there, scared to
move, stiff as a board, listening. What had woken her? Her ears
strained, scanning the darkness. She wished Carter were here, but he
was on another drug company trip to Hilton Head.
Her ears wandered through the dark house. She heard the higher-
pitched heat coming through the air registers, the ticking sound it
made deep in the tin ducts. Behind the ticking came the high-pitched
rush of warm air, and the drip from the bathroom faucet.
She thought about Blue. She needed to reach him, somehow,
before James Harris got him further under control. He’d lied about a
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