Aisling Murphy's Arc

Chapter 8 of 12

Aisling turned from the painted stone and looked back the way she had come. The trees stood dark. Somewhere past them, the infirmary waited with her empty bed. Soon the doctors would wake and find it. They would send people to drag her back. She wiped grass from her boys' trousers and made her choice. She would walk back herself, before anyone had to search. The path was long. Her head ached by the time the little wooden building came into view. A red cross marked its front. A lamp already burned behind one window. She was too late to slip in unseen. The door opened before she touched it. Dr. Hartwell stood there in her dark coat, glasses catching the lamplight. She had Aisling's blanket in her arms. Her face was pale, not angry. "You," she said, and her voice shook. "I checked your bed an hour ago. It was cold." Behind her came Dr. Blackwell, bag in hand, coat thrown on crooked. "We were about to wake the whole village," he said. "Do you know what the woods hold at night?" Aisling stood her ground. "I'm sorry I scared you. But I'm not sorry I went." A woman pushed between the doctors. Aisling did not know her face, yet the woman's eyes filled at once. This was the caretaker from the orphanage, the one who had carried her from the cliff. Aisling remembered none of it. The woman reached out, then stopped her hand in the air, afraid to touch. "Ember," Dr. Hartwell said softly. "She came back on her own." Ember knelt in the doorway. A small chihuahua squirmed in her arms and barked. "I brought Peaches," Ember said. "I thought—if you were lost, she might find you." Her voice broke. "I have been so frightened." Aisling looked at the stranger who cried over her. She felt no memory, only the plain fact that this woman loved her. "I'm all right," Aisling said. "I needed to see something. A stone in the woods. It's about where I come from." Dr. Hartwell knelt too. "You cannot run off like this. Your head is still healing. One fall out there and we could lose you." She drew a slow breath. "If you want to go outside, you ask me. I will take you myself. In daylight." Aisling studied her. The doctor was not promising to keep her locked in. She was promising a door. "You mean it?" Aisling asked. "I mean it," Dr. Hartwell said. "But you sleep here tonight. You rest." Aisling nodded. The ache behind her eyes had turned sharp. Peaches licked her hand, and she let herself be led back inside. In the narrow bed, she pulled the blanket up. No search party had dragged her anywhere. She had walked in on her own feet. Tomorrow the doctor would open the door for her. Tomorrow, in the sun, she could stand in the open and look up.