Evelyn fights down a chuckle as she pictures Chester’s round, bearded face. “Ah, well, it’s one of those vices we weigh as doctors. Besides, I don’t think I could have made him give it up if I’d tried. He made it clear to me from day one that I should not attempt to dissuade him.”
Ilene actually laughs. “From his cold, dead hands, he used to say.” A small gasp stutters through the phone line. “I’m sorry, that was a poor choice of words. His words, though, I suppose.”
Evelyn smiles sadly.
“Oh hell, there was no stopping him.” Ilene chuckles again, sniffles. “I’ll be sorry to say goodbye.”
Evelyn flips a pen cap through her fingertips and swallows the lump in her throat. “Me, too, Ilene.”
Ilene heaves a sigh.
“So what nursing home is he at?” Evelyn asks. “I don’t think I have that in my records.”
“He’s at St. Sebastian’s, over on Riverdale Avenue.”
A chill trickles down through Evelyn’s body and she clenches the pen cap in her fist. The plastic tip cuts painfully into her palm.
“Do you know the one?” Ilene’s words filter through the density of Evelyn’s thoughts like static.
“Yes,” she answers finally. “Yes, I know it.”
“Do you think—would you be able to go visit him?”
Evelyn reaches up and massages her forehead. She can’t refuse this. Not for Chester. “Yes. I think I can.”
* * *
The following day, Evelyn approaches the building warily. ST. SEBASTIAN’S HOME FOR THE AGED, the sign claims. There was no sign at all during its previous life as St. Agnes’s Home for Unwed Mothers, just a rusted house number half-covered in ivy. She’s avoided this entire block ever since she left. She never dreamed there would ever be a homecoming.
Her usually lithe legs stiffen as she nears the steps up to the front porch; the beautiful wooden wraparound, painted cream in the days she lived here, is now refinished in a more modern dark brown. The door is different, too, completely replaced and painted a truly glorious hunter green in a fancy high-gloss finish. It’s remarkable what can be hidden underneath a pretty coat of paint.
Evelyn remembers the day she arrived here, her legs trembling with frayed nerves as she ascended the steps and hammered the brass knocker. It was autumn then, and the air had smelled like wood smoke and leaves. To anyone else, it might have smelled just like autumn ought to, like things transitioning from one state of being to another, both warm and cold at the same time. But to Evelyn, it was the scent of death. She couldn’t smell the wood or the leaves, just the ash and rot they were becoming.
But it’s summer now, a hot and sunny day nearly twenty-three years later, and the air is heavy with the lemony floral scent of roses and fresh-cut grass from the neighbouring yards. Evelyn tries to focus on their perfume, but she knows that roses come with a price. She can’t enjoy them without feeling the thorns pricking her skin.
Evelyn breathes deeply to calm her quickening heart rate, then hitches her purse onto her shoulder and marches up the porch stairs to face her past head-on. She tries to remember that she isn’t the twitchy, grief-stricken mess she was when she arrived on this doorstep as a teenager. She’s her own woman now, braver and stronger than before. She’s here of her own volition this time, to say goodbye to Chester. She didn’t have to come. She made the choice, and that’s what matters. With a turn of the brass handle, Evelyn opens the door into her past.
The main floor of the home has changed since she was here. Walls have been taken down to make space for a large reception area and halls wide enough to maneuver wheelchairs. The creaky wooden floorboards have been replaced with quiet linoleum tile; the wallpaper stripped in favour of a pale peach paint. It would almost be nice, Evelyn thinks, if you didn’t know the building’s history. If you couldn’t hear the long-forgotten cries of stolen babies and broken girls.
“Hi, there!” A young nun at the front desk smiles at Evelyn from beneath her habit. “Welcome to St. Sebastian’s. Have you been here before?”
Evelyn’s breath catches. What a question.
She recovers herself. “Yes. Yes, I have.”
“All right, then, welcome back.”
Evelyn finds she can’t say thank you. “I, uh, I’m a doctor. Evelyn Taylor,” she says softly, as though the walls might overhear and recognize her. “I’m here to see a patient of mine, Chester Braithwaite.”
“Oh, certainly. I’ll just need you to sign in here, please.”
The nun slides a clipboard and pen over the desk and Evelyn signs with an awkward and shaky hand that doesn’t even look like her writing.
The nun consults a chart taped to her desk. “He’s up on the second floor, Dr. Taylor. Room 207.”
The Watchdog’s old room.
Her feet are rooted to the floor. She forces a wooden smile for the young nun. “Thank you.”
“It’s up the stairs here, and to the right.”
Evelyn turns toward the staircase, trying in vain to settle the flutter in her stomach. Her feet drag as though she’s just stepped in wet cement. The steps creak the same way they did all those years ago, and it sets her heart pounding in her ears. She turns right at the landing to head down the hall, passes two rooms, then a third. She freezes in her tracks at the doorway to her old dormitory. There’s a young woman leaning over a bed, her curtain of long brown hair blocking her face as she speaks softly to a patient.
The woman in the bed turns her head. She looks vaguely familiar, but Evelyn can’t place her. When she sees Evelyn through the doorway, she cries out as though burned. Evelyn jumps back, hastily walks away as a nurse darts past her into the room. The patient is whimpering faintly now, and Evelyn can hear the young woman and the nurse trying to soothe her.
Evelyn’s nerves are on edge again, and she takes a moment outside the door of Room 207 to steady herself. She stretches her features into a forced smile, then passes through the open door.
Dim light emanates from a small bedside table lamp. Chester is tucked underneath the bedcovers, sleeping in plaid pyjamas. He’s nearly bald now, with just a few wisps of white hair in a halo around his head. His grizzled beard cascades over a double chin.
A soft, rhythmic beeping issues from a monitor attached to an intravenous pole beside the bed. Dark brown curtains are pulled shut against the window, blocking the afternoon heat. The air is heavy with the fecal-chemical stench all hospitals share. It’s a smell she’s used to, of course. She can cope with it better than most. But the immediacy of Chester’s impending death isn’t something Evelyn has fully prepared herself for, and it catches her off guard. She sets her purse down on the floor, then reaches out and places her hand gently on the peak of Chester’s foot. She’s reluctant to wake him, but she knows how difficult it will be to convince herself to come back here a second time.
“Mr. Braithwaite?” she says loudly. “Mr. Braithwaite, it’s Dr. Taylor.”
She gives his foot a small squeeze, and his eyes flutter open. He blinks a few times, clearing the fog of sleep before a grin stretches across his face from ear to ear, like a cheerful hammock.