Chapter 11
The nurse came in at midnight to check the saline drip. She was a tired-looking woman with graying hair pulled back into a tight bun and dark circles under her eyes that matched Julian's own. She didn't look twice at the old man in the expensive tuxedo standing in the corner of a charity ward; people in Saint Jude’s had stopped being surprised by ghosts a long time ago.
"Visiting hours ended two hours ago," she said, her voice flat, devoid of malice, just a tired machine stating its programming.
Julian reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a leather billfold. He didn't count the bills; he simply laid a thick wedge of high-denomination notes on the metal tray beside the chart. The nurse looked down at the money, then up at Julian’s face, her eyes lingering on the heavy silk bow tie that looked like a black flower pinned to his throat.
"The room is private now," Julian said. It wasn't a question, and it wasn't a bribe; it was a statement of fact between two people who understood how much things cost when you ran out of time.
The nurse let out a long breath, picked up the money with two fingers, and tucked it into her apron pocket without another word. She walked out, the door swinging shut behind her with a soft, pneumatic hiss that cut off the noise of the hallway.
Julian pulled the plastic chair closer to the bed, ignoring the way the cheap tubular steel scraped against the linoleum. He sat down stiffly, his knees nearly touching the mattress, his overcoat pooling around his ankles like a pool of ink.
Clara was asleep now, her breathing steadier, the machine doing the heavy lifting while she drifted somewhere far away from the gray walls and the iron bed. Beside her, Leo had drifted off too, his head pillowed on his folded arms against the edge of the blanket, his fingers still curled around the elderberry flute as if someone might try to steal it while he dreamed.
May you like
Julian reached out, his old, spotted hand hovering for a second over the boy’s messy brown hair before resting gently against the crown of his head. The hair was coarse and damp with the night mist, just like his own had been sixty years ago when he walked away from the mill with fifty francs and a pocketful of silence.
***
