They say he didn’t charge her a penny.
Ironically, it was Mr. Singer who led the others, at the end. You could say he had a change of heart, I guess. That’s why you’re asking me about it, right?
Because I saw what happened with the little girl.
And, you know, what happened after.
…
Yeah, okay. As I’m sure you already know, Mr. Singer and my father were two of the men who did all that to the Petersons. I tried to stop him—tried to stop all of them—but there was nothing I could do. I stayed with him the whole time though, right until the end. I suppose you could say my father was one of the first ones to go mad.
Yeah, I guess you could say that.
DR. RANDY FORD, BARBARA GRIMMEL’S PHYSICIAN
I’m not sure what I can tell you that you can’t find out from the neighbors over there. I…
…
No, I haven’t been back since Ms. Grimmel passed away last year. I’ve no interest in seeing any of those people again. Not ever.
…
The night Ms. Grimmel was cured? Ha! You’ve fallen right in line, I see. This for a tabloid? Gossip pages?
…
A book, huh? I can’t see what kind of… Well, look, I’ll tell you what I know. I’ll tell you the facts of what happened. I won’t get into the… drama that followed. I want no part of it, thanks very much. And I suppose, since Barbara has passed, there’s no reason not to tell you. I doubt she’d care anyway; she told the damn story enough times to whoever would listen.
That ended up being a mistake, didn’t it? If only she’d ….
…
I’m not speculating, damn it. Do you want to hear it or not?
…
Alright, then here’s what I know.
I received a call from Ms. Grimmel early in the morning. I’d given her my personal cell phone number mainly because, in addition to having been my patient for many years—decades, actually—she was also elderly and lived alone. I’d known her husband, Meyer, and the last time I saw him he told me to watch out for her. A few months after that conversation he was dead from heart failure, something we all knew was coming. So, sure, you could say I had a personal investment in Barbara. And when she called me that day, so early in the morning—something she’d never done before—I knew it meant trouble.
I arrived at her home within the hour to find her in bed, unable to get up. Her breathing was wet and shallow. I listened to her lungs, which were full of fluid. She was pale and I don’t think she’d been eating.
“Barbara,” I told her, “I’m going to call an ambulance. We need to get you to a hospital right away.”
But she refused. She had a thing about hospitals, you see, a deep-rooted fear of them. Not that it was going to stop me, of course. The woman was dying. She needed to be on a respirator, she needed intravenous fluids. She needed, in short, a lot more than I could give her with my bag of meager tools and pills and bandages.
I went to the front porch and made my call and was assured an ambulance would be arriving within minutes. Meanwhile, I noticed a few of the neighbors were on their own porches or standing in their front yards, watching me. As if they knew something was happening. I don’t doubt Barbara had been sick for some time and neglected to tell me, and maybe some of them knew how bad it was. Perhaps one of them even convinced her to get me on the phone, finally. I don’t know.
Regardless, I waved absently to a stoic-looking woman watching from across the street, then went back inside.
Which was the first time, that I remember anyway, seeing the cat.
I only noticed her because I nearly tripped over the damn thing going back into Barbara’s bedroom. It meowed and scurried away, hid beneath the bed, and I forgot about it. I went over to the bed and spoke to my patient.
“Barbara, I know you don’t like hospitals,” I said, “but if you don’t go—and go today—you will get much, much worse.”
Die, of course, was what I was thinking. But I saw no point in frightening her.
“An ambulance will be here soon, and they’ll take good care of you,” I said, not realizing the stoic woman from across the street had come over and followed me into the house. She stood at the bedroom door wearing a heavy blue robe and slippers, which wasn’t as strange as it sounds as it was just past seven A.M.
“What’s wrong with her?”
I swallowed my annoyance at someone barging into the house like that, but what did I know? Maybe she was a friend and that was their way. She did live across the street. So, I didn’t make a big deal about it. “I’m sorry, should you be here?”
The woman looked at me. Her hair was windblown, her face oily and devoid of makeup. Her brown eyes were wide, but her lips were set in a hard line, as if I’d surprised her with an inquiry at the supermarket. “I’m Sandy Kolchek. I live across the street. Is she gonna be okay? She’s been sick as death.”
I started to reply that Barbara would likely be fine, prepared to omit any details of her condition, or the approaching ambulance. The truth was, I didn’t know if Barbara Grimmel was going to be fine or, for that matter, even alive come the weekend. I figured the hospital would put her on a respirator, pump air in and out of her frail body for a few days until the congestion got worse and the lungs filled too fast and she either drowned in bed or her heart gave out. None of this was anything Sandy from across the street needed to know, of course. Still, it’s important, I think, for you to understand just how bad things were for Barbara. How dire her situation. So that what happened next will … well, it’ll make more sense just how miraculous—not a word doctors use frequently, I assure you—it really was.
“Should the cat be on her like that?” Sandy said and nodded behind me toward the bed.
I turned and saw what she meant. The tabby I’d nearly stepped on moments before was now lying atop my patient. No, not lying, it was sprawled atop the poor woman. Its hairy body stretched from her thighs to her neck, where it sort of padded at her chin with one of its paws. Like it was trying to get her attention.
Something about the sight was terribly unnerving. I stepped toward the bed and tried to shoo it away. “Get off, now!” I snapped. “Get away!”
And that’s when I noticed something odd.
