Fenton’s heart stopped beating twenty seconds later. Agents would find him on the floor behind his desk several minutes afterward, in a puddle of his own bodily fluids. Paramedics arrived eleven minutes later. They would reach Jefferson Hospital in Stratford twenty-seven minutes after that. The once senior and most respected doctor on the grounds of Harmony House was pronounced dead at 10:07 a.m.
CHAPTER 112
Harmony House, Woodbury, New Jersey, May 29, 12:22 p.m.
Skylar wouldn’t learn of Fenton’s death until later that night, by which time she wouldn’t be able to give the news the attention it deserved. She was too focused on Eddie’s return to Harmony House to give much focus to anything else. She was joined by Nurse Gloria in front of the facility’s main entrance as they waited for his arrival. Gloria was still suffering the effects of too much alcohol over the weekend. “Doctor, is it true?”
Skylar played dumb. “Is what true?”
The nurse appreciated the young doctor’s humility. “That you got Fenton’s job?”
She nodded modestly. “It’s only temporary until they can find a more suitable replacement.”
“Well, congratulations, anyway. It’s still a hell of a thing.” Gloria was already trying to figure out how to condense all this information into a brief text to her other employer later that day.
The ambulance arrived with little fanfare. Lying on the gurney, Eddie remained comatose as the paramedics wheeled him back to his room. He stared blankly upward at nothing in particular. Concern was evident in Nurse Gloria’s face. She had never seen him like this. “How long has he been this way?”
“Roughly thirty-six hours.”
“Do you know what happened?”
“I do,” was all Skylar replied.
What bothered Gloria most was that the doctor now in charge of Harmony House showed such little concern for Eddie. Apparently now that she had the big job, the young doctor didn’t care about her patients like she used to. At least Fenton had pretended to care.
When they got to Eddie’s room, Gloria was surprised to see that the echo box was already there. Which meant that it had arrived separately from Eddie. In the entire time she had known this very special patient, he had been separated from it on only a handful of occasions. “That’s strange.”
Skylar asked innocently, “What?”
“He took his box with him. I wonder how it got back here before him?”
Skylar shrugged. “Homeland Security must have delivered it.”
“Homeland Security? What were they doing with it?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask them.” She eyeballed the nurse for a moment, and then asked, “Would you mind excusing us? I’d like some privacy with him.”
The nurse nodded and left the room, realizing that she might have to break her other employer’s rules and send two messages that day. Gloria just didn’t see any way she was going to fit all this new information into one brief message.
Inside Eddie’s room, Skylar sat on the edge of Eddie’s bed as he continued staring vacantly at the ceiling. “You can stop acting now.”
He continued staring at the ceiling. His eyes didn’t move.
“Eddie?” A hint of concern crept into her voice just as his gaze turned slowly toward the echo box, which was positioned exactly where it had been the last time it was in his room.
“I am becoming a good actor, don’t you think?”
She smiled. “Yes, Eddie, I do. A very good one.”
He closed his eyes. “Doesn’t it sound wonderful?” He was referring to the silence.
“What’s wonderful is seeing you smile again.”
He opened his eyes and looked around his room, feeling more comfortable than he had in days. He SIGHED with relief. “I’m glad to be back in my room.”
“I’m glad you are, too.”
“I don’t like the outside world.”
“I can understand why.”
Eddie sat up, staring at the echo box. He was wondering the same thing Nurse Gloria had. He got up and moved toward it, gently running his hands around the device and then the laptop supercomputer. He noticed the scratches where he had dropped them. “Somebody scratched them.”
Skylar said, “You did.”
“When did I scratch them?”
“You dropped them outside your childhood home in Philadelphia when the agents pointed their guns at us.”
Eddie kept looking around his room, anywhere but at Skylar. “I don’t remember dropping them.”
“You were going into shock.”
He thought for a moment, trying to remember. “I did not like going into shock.”
She motioned to the two machines. “Were they damaged when they were dropped?”
“I will check.” He popped open the laptop’s chassis and carefully inspected each component, as well as those in the echo box. Both devices appeared fine, and both started right up. He ran a brief series of diagnostics, which revealed all machine functions were operating normally. “They were not damaged, which is good because it means I won’t have to perform any repairs.”
She paused a moment and carefully asked, “Eddie, do you know if the echo box is still working properly?” She knew it wasn’t, but was curious how he’d answer.
“Yes, I do know.” He looked out the windows, wondering which of his bird friends would visit him first.
She rephrased her question. “Is the echo box working properly?”
He shook his head. “No.”
She pretended to be confused. “But you just said neither device was damaged.”
“That is correct. Neither device was damaged.”
“Then why aren’t they working properly?”
Eddie looked down at the floor as if he had done something wrong. “Because I made them not work properly.”
She had already come to this conclusion on her own, but was still amazed to hear him confirm it. “Is that what you were doing on the train to Philadelphia?”
He nodded.
“Why did you do that?”
“I did not want anyone taking the echo box away from me.”
“But what about hearing your mother’s voice? What if we had gotten to your old address and your house was still there?”
“The echo box is in here.” He pointed to his own forehead. “If my old house was still there, and the people who lived there had let us inside, I would have made the echo box work again.”
“Just like that?”
Eddie nodded. “Just like what?”
“How long would it have taken you to make the echo box work again?”
“Approximately as long as it took me on the train to Philadelphia when you fell asleep. Seventy-three minutes.” He looked at her briefly before turning back toward the windows, hoping to hear a chickadee or a bluebird or a grebe or even a starling. He was desperate to sing with the birds. And rate his next meal. And fill another notebook with questions and observations. “If I cannot hear my mother’s voice, I have no reason to make the echo box work again.”
She inched closer to him because she wanted to whisper what she had to say next. It was a secret. A great big secret. And she wanted it to have all the impact this secret deserved. “There is still a way you can hear your mother’s voice.”
Eddie perked up immediately. All of his sadness and melancholy suddenly seemed to disappear. He could barely contain himself. “How?” Skylar smiled in a very particular way. By now, he knew exactly what this expression meant. It was an easy one to memorize. “You’re going to ask me to trust you on this one, aren’t you?”
Eddie sat in the wheelchair with utterly no expression on his face, just as Skylar had instructed, while she wheeled him briskly toward the Harmony House main entrance. The echo box and laptop supercomputer were both in his lap. They were ten feet from the door when a uniformed man in his late forties intercepted them. He spoke with a slow Tennessee drawl. “Excuse me, Dr. Drummond, may I be of some assistance?”
“It would be great if you could hold the door open for us, thanks.”