Free Winter at Death's Hotel by Kenneth Cameron Page A

They seemed to be glued together. Sleep , she thought. That’s what her mother had always called it, that stickiness that glued the eyelids together and that became granules along the eyelids when she woke— You have sleep in your eyes. She tried to move her hand to wipe her eyes but she couldn’t, and then they seemed to open all on their own, and she was frightened by what she saw—nothing.
    â€œMrs. Doyle? Are you awake?”
    She was looking at a ceiling, of course, which was gray and dark because there was no light. No, there was light, dim light, only a kind of glow that became no more than a stain on the darkness. Leaning over her, one side made visible by the stain, was some sort of woman. Louisa tried to ask her who she was, but although her lips and her tongue moved, no sound came.
    â€œYou’ve had morphine, Mrs. Doyle. You’re in your own bed and you’ve sprained your ankle, but you’re going to be fine. Mrs. Doyle?”
    In her own bed? Was she back in London? But she’d been in New York. On her way to a train. To go to Buffalo. With Arthur! Where was Arthur? She felt panic rise in her as if it were a fluid that spread from her heart, along her arteries until a great gout of it blocked her throat. She did manage to make a sound, nonetheless: “Arthur!”
    â€œMr. Doyle had to take a train, remember? He got on his train and you’re back in your room. Mrs. Doyle?”
    If it was London, why did the woman have that incredibly nasal accent? And it wasn’t her own room; it wasn’t at all. Her own room had a ceiling papered with flowers that she’d insisted upon, even though Arthur had been shocked by them and said that other people wouldn’t understand, but she’d said that she wanted to wake to flowers, and what would other people be doing in their bedroom? She said, “Flowers.”
    â€œYes, sweetie, lovely flowers from Mr. Carver and Mr. Irving and, oh, lots of people! Beautiful flowers everywhere.”
    Louisa tried to move her head so that she could look around and see what flowers the woman was talking about. Or was the woman mad? Had she somehow got into a room with a madwoman? She thought through what she would say and enunciated carefully, “Where am I?”
    â€œIn your room , honey. In the New Britannic Hotel.”
    The hotel. But they’d left the hotel. Arthur had staged a little scene and then that pleasant man, what was his name, had got him in to see the manager, Carver— oh, Carver had sent flowers, oh, that one, the slimy one —and they’d put all the luggage into carriages, Arthur and Ethel, and— Then she remembered.
    â€œI tripped. On the carpet.”
    â€œWell, you sprained your ankle, honey. Mr. Carver says it wasn’t the carpet, but that don’t matter, does it.”
    â€œI fell.”
    â€œYes, and pretty bad, too, sweetie, although I wasn’t there to see it. Right down on your poor face, I heard. Have you got pain, sweetie?”
    Pain? Had she pain? She didn’t think so. She wasn’t sure that she had anything, not pain and not pleasure. She felt as if she had been wrapped in something quite neutral, cloud or soft batting that nonetheless didn’t make her too warm, and the sense she usually had of her feet and her legs and her forehead had been drained away. Still, if she was back in the hotel—well, not back, because she’d never left the hotel; she remembered tripping now, a sense of terrible calamity happening, about to happen, and then nothing. She had hit the floor, presumably. Or perhaps Arthur had caught her?
    â€œArthur’s on the train?”
    â€œYes, sweetie, I was told to tell you he’d made his train in plenty of time, and he knew you’d be worried. He’s sent you two telegrams, which Doctor says you’re not to try to read yet, but I can tell you they’re both very loving and nice and he misses you. So