Light as a Feather, Cold as Marble

Chapter 11

It probably should not have surprised any of us when we pulled into the parking lot at the UW University of Wisconsin Hospital in Ortonville that a white Audi was parked in one of the closest spots to the visitors' entrance. Violet's mother drove a brand new white Audi, and when Violet drove herself to school functions, it was always that car—instead of her father's extremely expensive jade green Jaguar—that she borrowed.

"You have got to be kidding me," Mischa, who was the first to see the Audi, muttered.

"What?" Henry asked, oblivious to what the rest of us already knew: that our enemy was most likely already in the hospital. 

"Violet's mother drives a white Audi," Trey said.

It was easy to forget that Henry barely knew Violet. To the best of my knowledge, they'd only met formally once before Olivia's death on the night of Olivia's Sweet Sixteen slumber party. Henry had been back in town that weekend to have his broken toe X-rayed after having been away at Northwestern for his first few weeks of college.  

"Oh. That's not good," Henry said, turning around a row of cars to park. "Are you sure it's her car? Do you know the license plate number?"

"We're not in the CIA," Trey snapped.

"Trey," I said gently. "I guess if she's up there, Trey and I will have to wait in the car. We can't risk getting in trouble again."

"That's ridiculous," Mischa snapped. "We're not even in Willow! We're technically within Ortonville town limits. What if you were visiting a relative? The Simmons family does not own the entire state of Wisconsin!"

Henry led the way into the hospital's visitor center, carrying the enormous arrangement of roses and carnations he had been wise enough to pick up at the florist conveniently located in the shopping center down the block.

"Good morning, Doris," Henry greeted the heavy-set head nurse at the front desk, apparently on a first-name basis with her. She turned almost as pink as her deep rose tunic when she looked up and noticed Henry smiling there. He was probably the most charismatic and handsome man to enter the hospital visitor center on a regular basis, so of course the nurses recognized him.

"Here to see Miss Hartford?" the nurse asked him.

"Of course," Henry replied with his million mega-watt grin.

"Sure thing. I'll just need identification from everyone who'd like to go up to see her," the nurse said. The visitor's center was nothing at all like an emergency room. The front lobby was sunny and clean. Cut-out Santa Claus images and tin foil from the recently passed holiday still decorated the area. A fake pine tree had been erected in one corner of the lobby, under which similarly fake wrapped gifts had been placed. There was a sign near the tree announcing that the ornaments on its branches contained the Christmas wishes of terminally ill children at the hospital. It made me a little sad that it was two days after Christmas Day, and there were still ornaments on the tree.

As we all withdrew our driver's licenses from our wallets and handed them over to Doris the nurse, Mischa asked, "Is Tracy still contagious?"

"Oh, no, dear," the nurse assured us. "She's still very sick, but she's been on antibiotics now for almost two weeks. It's safe for you to visit."

I looked around, fighting the urge to sniffle. I didn't want to give the nurse any indication that I was ill and be banished from the visitors' center. There were two nervous-looking young guys walking around the visitors' center talking on their mobile phones, quite possibly brand new dads calling relatives to share good news. There was a middle-aged woman sitting on a sofa leafing through a paperback novel with a sleeping daughter in her lap, and two middle-aged men drinking coffees on the chairs near the window. It was what appeared to be a quiet morning. I realized that I was in the very same hospital I'd been taken to after our house burned down. This was the building where I'd been given soup and pudding while my parents' burns were treated. Nothing about the sunny visitors' center looked the least bit familiar, but then again, I'd been a patient when I was eight years old, not a visitor. I couldn't recall ever having been in the hospital since then. Even when Mischa and I had driven out to visit Candace when she'd been undergoing in-patient psychiatric evaluation, we had been deterred from entering the building by Candace's mom in the parking lot.