The Crescent

Chapter 15

Will leaned against a lone maple and recalled the bleak morning the authorities came for Baker. Baker had plenty of time to get his affairs in order, allowing his reign over the hospital to end with an undeserving amount of dignity. Will remembered Theodora's hysterical cries when the police led Baker away, her hands finding comfort on the small and swollen bulge of baby at her abdomen. Baker's chin jutted skyward but the muscles in his face were relaxed, tranquil even. An onlooker might have mistaken the scene as a celebrity being led by security to his limousine rather than an arrest. Arrested for, of all things, mail fraud.

Will knew that if there'd been no justice for any patients, there certainly wouldn't be any for him. He hoped that maybe Charlie and Winston would return to scour for evidence, but the lower windows were boarded and the doors were chained. Once he saw an indigo Model-T pull up just outside the hospital parking lot, but Will found after numerous attempts that he could only roam the hospital grounds. He'd waved as the automobile drove away.

In the decades after Baker's departure, Will watched the paint peel from the walls, the furniture sag and sink, and the rafters brittle with unregulated air. The staircase cobwebbed and the carpets putrefied, and vacant hospital beds became home to rodents who paid Will no mind. It was lonely. He drifted through the hospital, occasionally hurtling himself off the top balcony, but to no avail. The more he wished to disappear the more he seemed to become a part of the hospital.

If I must exist I should look for my body. So, he did. He combed the grounds and the rooms, now all accessible to him. But he hadn't found an inkling of where his body was. Again and again he found himself wandering back to the fireplace in Baker's office, to the stained plank of wood concealing his camera. The camera his mother had given him. Or was it his father? Details of his life before the hospital were eroding from his memory like a sandcastle in rain. What was his mother's favorite color? Salmon? Or was it peach? Had his father always worn glasses, or was it something he'd gained in age? What did he and Winston name their newspaper? What shade of blue were Charlie's eyes? Will clutched onto their names like they were four, pink-bellied seashells. Mom. Dad. Winston. Charlie. He guarded them with the little defenses left in his chest.

It became clear to Will in his thousandth time wandering back to Baker's secret compartment that evidence to lead others to his body was in the dark folds of his undeveloped film. Baker had his camera after his death, kept it. A momentum. A trophy, capsuled away like the jars of tumors.

Evidence.

One thing Will knew: the camera was the key to leaving the hotel. He thought after the horror he'd endured in the last hours of his life he deserved a clean, quick exit to whatever came next. But it appeared even that was asking too much.

But then came a 1997. With great anticipation he'd witnessed construction workers and designers renovating and restoring the hospital with roaring machinery, and soon it was transformed into a hotel teeming with people. People meant chances, and Will needed a chance.

But people, Will realized, had changed drastically. He thought his pink bowtie was cutting edge. Women were clad in shapely, bright clothes, their hair unbound, car keys rattling around in their big, bottomless purses. They weren't accompanied by their partners unless they found it suitable. Groups of them checked in for their own festivities for a proper "girl's night." Men came too, exploring the area, the tentative motive of a "business meeting weekend," a farce to bar-hop in the downtown and come back to luxury of the hotel.

Everyone had pocket-sized gadgets: a well of information a tap away, a combination of a television and a telephone and a camera. Winston had always speculated what the future might hold, and Will expected he would rather enjoy the efficiency of things.