six

Danny poked his head into Ellen’s hospital room before entering. He didn’t normally arrive this late in the day on a Sunday, and he had a fleeting thought that he’d catch Ellen at something. If a coma patient’s fingers twitched while no one was watching, did they really twitch?

Ellen lay on her hospital bed the same as always, with her tubes and wires and monitors for company. The head bandages had come off long ago and three inches of hair growth shone a brighter red than her previous hair color. She’d never been partial to bangs, but now they lent her an otherworldly androgynous air, as if at any moment she’d wake up as an enlightened being.

Danny dragged a chair to the bed and rearranged the stuffed flamingo and stuffed Persian cat the kids had brought their mother for her “long sleep.” He had no idea how Mandy and Petey had arrived at this phrase, but it seemed to comfort them. He often eavesdropped on their conversations as they drifted to sleep. The nightlight threw a faint blue shimmer into the hallway, and most nights Danny sat on the floor outside the room they shared with his back against the wall, elbows on raised knees, hoping to glean insight into their emotional health.

“Easter is coming up,” he said to Ellen’s still form. “I’m not sure how to celebrate it this year. Mandy and Petey have whipped themselves into a frenzy of belief that on Easter Sunday you will rise like Jesus. Except in your case, you’ll come back to life here on Earth rather than in Heaven.” He scooted his chair closer to the bed. “Ay, I know, they’ve muddled the point of the Bible story. I’m not sure what to say to them.”

He picked up Ellen’s hand, light as butterfly wings, and massaged it. Her skin felt warm. He leaned closer to peer at her flushed cheeks. “Ellen?” he whispered. “Are you surfacing?”

Every day, all day, a moral tug ate away at him. The chances of her waking were slim, yet he couldn’t, absolutely would not, let her body die while her brain still had a chance to reignite itself. Disengaging Ellen from the life-support equipment would be the same as killing her. Or would it? If she woke up, she’d exist in a living purgatory, a nothingness. A vegetable. He couldn’t decide which was worse: death or a living death.

If he were a better Catholic, he’d have faith that her soul still resided inside her, that even a breath of life meant the soul was intact. That her life, however curtailed, was more sacrosanct than his concerns about the quality of the life.

“Detective Ahern.” One of Ellen’s regular nurses bustled into the room. “There are you. No kids today?”

“Not today. I’m here for work. Thought I’d grab my chance to visit Ellen for a few minutes.”

The nurse patted his arm as she scooted around him to check Ellen’s equipment. “A few minutes with her is better than nothing.”

Faint praise, indeed. While the nurse emptied the drainage bag, Danny flicked open the novel he was reading to Ellen. A classic that she’d sworn he would love: The Count of Monte Cristo.

One of the machines that tracked Ellen’s vitals dinged. With a frown, the nurse squinted at the monitor and exited the room with Danny following close behind. “What was that?” he said.

She ordered him to wait a moment; she needed to check with a doctor. Danny paced the corridor outside Ellen’s room. He no longer noticed the scuff marks on the hospital walls, and the sterile smell of the place had become second nature, like the smell of the Garda station. But this? An ominous ding from a cycloptic machine? Not normal.

The nurse reappeared. “Don’t be alarmed. Your wife has spiked a low fever.”

“Fevers and comas don’t mix,” he said. “Even I know that.”

She moved to the machinery and turned a knob. After a few more moments of what appeared to be random fiddling, she stepped back. “This is why we have antibiotics. A mild fever, no more. Didn’t you say you’re here for work? You’d best be about it before visiting hours end.”

She ushered Danny out of Ward 2B, his wife’s home away from home. The nurse’s parting words—“If we’re not worried, there’s no need for you to be worried”—grated on him as he wound down the stairs to the first floor.

Ward 1A, unlike Ward 2B, was a closed ward. Danny waited at the entrance for a nurse to escort him to Cecil Wallace’s room. In an effort to drag his thoughts back to the investigation, he pulled out a pad and jotted notes. Cecil Wallace. Cecil Wallace. He was in the house when EJ died, with six empty water glasses next to his bed.

The ward door opened to him at last. “A hardy old soul, that one,” this nurse said. “Rallied as soon as we got the fluids and food into him. He’ll need physical therapy, though.”

Danny entered Cecil’s room to find the patient slurping what smelled like homemade chicken soup. A young nurse with freckles and a braid hanging down her back tipped spoonfuls of broth into his mouth.

“Hello, Mr. Wallace, do you remember me from yesterday?” Danny said.

Cecil rolled his eyes toward the nurse. “Get him.” Then back toward Danny. “Of course I bloody well remember you.”

The nurse snorted. “All aggro, this one.”

“I’d like to speak to Cecil in private, if possible,” Danny said.

“Ay, have at him.” She held out the soup bowl. “You can feed him while you’re at it, but don’t tell anyone I brought the soup.”

Cecil winked at the nurse. “Ta, and give us a wiggle.”

“Bad, you are.” But she gifted Cecil an arse shimmy before turning into the corridor.

Cecil transferred his grin to Danny. “Eh, and what’s after you, clamp got your balls? What did you say your name was?”

“Detective Sergeant Ahern. I need to ask you some questions about Joseph Macy.”

“Downed like an old goat to slaughter, was he?”

Danny pulled a recorder out of his pocket. He held it up and Cecil nodded assent. After introducing the two of them, the location, date, and time, Danny began with the basics. Three months ago Cecil Wallace fell and broke his hip, and EJ was supposed to help him with physical therapy.

“He didn’t help you?” Danny said.

“If you call dragging me to the living room to watch the telly with him ‘physical therapy.’ He’d step me through my moves during the commercials. I suppose that’s something. I did the exercises on my own most days.”

“Do you have family?”

“Not so you’d notice. My wife died a few years ago. And the kids. Three of them.” He grimaced as he swallowed the spoonful of soup that Danny held in front of his mouth. “Two of them live the high life in Dublin now. They’ll waltz in to cry fake tears and ensure I haven’t signed my money away to a stranger. They have no use for the likes of me, and I refuse to see the oldest, the one who might have cared.”

He huffed, but Danny caught fear beneath his bravado. “When do you last recall seeing Joe?” he said.

Cecil bunched up his bushy eyebrows in thought. “The day before your lot appeared, in the morning. I’d had a bad few days. Couldn’t get out of bed on my own. He helped me that morning, but after that, he didn’t come when I rang the bell.”

“Did you hear anything?” Danny said.

“Well—” He hesitated. “The telly was always on in the background. Sometimes all night when he couldn’t sleep. But I thought I heard footsteps, sneaky like.”

“Sneaky like?”

“Not Joe, in other words. Someone prowling around, checking on things.”

Danny tapped the spoon against the bowl. Cecil was mentally spry, true, but he’d been bedridden in the back of the house. Danny doubted his hearing was perfect, and besides, homicides were often quiet affairs. Surprisingly quiet. According to Merrit, the television was on when she arrived. With the sound blaring, Cecil wouldn’t have heard odd noises from the living room.

“You heard the prowler outside your room?” Danny said.

Cecil nodded.

“Okay. How often did Elder Joe leave you alone?”

Cecil swallowed more soup. “All the time.”

But of course he must have, because EJ frequented the Plough almost every night.

“Did EJ have visitors? Anyone you heard arguing with him in the weeks leading up to his death?”

Cecil waved away the bowl. “Ay, but I can’t recall when this was, mind you.” He burped with fingers over his mouth. “There used to be more of us there. The last one to go had the room next to mine.”

“Do you recall his name?”

“Her name. She was a she, but I never knew her name. I didn’t know she’d died until the day I heard yelling.”

“Did you recognize the voice?”

“Voices. EJ’s and the other’s. Whoever he was, he cared mightily.” Cecil’s wrinkles deepened as he shook his head. “Poor woman. No one to take care of her to the end.”

On that dismal note, Danny’s thoughts veered back toward Ellen alone in her room. He’d take care of her to the end. The question was what kind of end that should be.