Mermaids of Glendale - a novel

Chapter 23

While Lorna had slipped away to use the washroom, Kitt had gone into Patrick’s hospital room to visit. Kitt had, in fact, never left the hospital and had waited during the night alternately drinking coffee, reading a paperback novel or dozing in one of the chairs of the waiting area. He wanted Lorna and Marina to have the time they needed to visit their father without his interrupting.

When she was standing at the wash basin, after splashing water on her face and gently patting it off with paper towels, Lorna looked at her face in the mirror and at the dark hollows at the edges of her eyes. She needed to sleep. Lorna realized that she hadn’t slept since Guadalupe Island, since the night spent in the dormitory where, somehow, her mother had also slept; Cassandra’s name scrawled on the dormitory wall in black ink like adolescent graffiti.

Who were you? thought Lorna as she wadded up the paper towel and threw it in the trash.

Exiting the washroom, Lorna walked through the corridors of Glendale Memorial, heading back to her father’s bedside; the scent of industrial disinfectant everywhere, accompanied by the reflection of fluorescent lights off the linoleum floor that was polished and shining like the gleam of wet Piscean scales by moonlight.

Marina had left the hospital to go home, to shower and change and then go to work. She said she’d call Lorna later and that they would meet up for a drink and dinner soon and so, instead of seeing her sister when she returned to the hospital room, Lorna returned to see the two men she loved, talking and laughing together like old friends.

“ -- And Eisenhower flew away with his toupee!” said Patrick O'Shene.

Lorna leaned on the doorframe to watch them for a moment. Kitt’s eyes looked tired, looked so similar to her own. She longed to sleep with him, to close her eyes and shut out the world in his embrace. She knew she’d been acting irrationally during their trip to Guadalupe Island, during the last hours there – her long swim from ship to shore, her long climb up the volcanic hills and her seeming sense of pulling away from Kitt. Lorna felt relieved that sensation was gone.

“Lorna,” said Patrick O’Shene, Lorna’s father, bringing her out of her reverie. “I was just telling Kitt about the time – ”

“The time your parrot took that customer’s toupee, yes,” said Lorna, crossing the room, nearing the hospital bed, standing beside Kitt.

“Eisenhower gave your dad quite the chase around the pet store, as I understand it,” said Kitt. He was sitting in a rigid grey plastic chair beside the bed – the same chair Lorna herself had occupied during the night as she and Marina had stayed with their father and chatted well into the night during his periods of wakefulness, and whispered to each other during those hours while he slept.

Lorna and Marina had not talked like that in years.

Patrick was sitting up in the bed, the head of it slightly elevated, the color having returned to his cheeks. The doctor had said that he was on the mend, out of the woods, out of the deep water, but that he would remain in the hospital for a couple more days for observation.

“Yes,” said Patrick, remembering chasing the parrot Eisenhower around O’Shene Aquatic & Avian. “He gave both myself and Jimmy quite the time, not to mention that poor customer.”

Jimmy, thought Lorna.

Jimmy had gone to high school with Lorna, and then had been working at the pet store for years, all the time always seeming to be studying for some post-secondary degree or another, always changing his major.

“Dad,” said Lorna. She put a hand on Kitt’s shoulder. Kitt covered her hand with his own. “Where was Jimmy the other day, when you had your –“