Off I went, my white coat streaming behind me. I didn’t bother waiting for the elevator; the stairwell would get me to the Quiet Ward just as well—but faster. I rushed down the stairwell’s octagonal spiral. The ornate, shiny black antique wrought-iron staircase rattled beneath my clip-clopping loafer soles in a race against my fluttering heart-beat. I crossed down a long hallway after hitting the landing, and then passed through a pair of double doors, out from the old new and into the new old.
My words echoed in my mind: a fairy tale just got its Happily Ever After…
If only it had been a happy one.
It happened before my time. Long before; back when Tomfin Kathaldri was the General Director of West Elpeck Medical. He was almost comically short, but he made up for it with moxie, thick, bushy eyebrows, and a fortune earned from establishing the nation’s premiere aerostat manufacturing plants. Prelate Munster wanted to bring Trentonian transportation into the twenty-second century. It was much easier for the Moral Police to arrest people for wearing their hair too long or their skirt or pants too short if they could hover up high like all-seeing eyes and pounce with hawkish intent. Still, for what it was worth, the health insurance company Kathaldri set up for his factory employees would go on to become one of the nation’s foremost healthcare providers, at least until they were bought out by DAISHU like everyone else. The man was a complex historical figure, for sure, but there was no doubting his genuine interest in public health. And that was before the accident.
Letty was Mr. Kathaldri’s only child. After his wife had died of cancer. Letty was all he had left. Pursuant with the religious courts’ rulings on marriage, Tomfin would have had to let his daughter become a ward of the state if he wanted to take another wife. To his everlasting credit, Mr. Kathaldri refused temptation, choosing instead to raise his daughter single-handedly—and, boy, did he succeed. Words didn’t do Letty justice. She was a beauty, inside and out.
Acting was the great passion of her life. In an age where art and entertainment were tarred by censors and neutered into catechizing pablum, Letty Kathaldri rose above the waves. Her second film—a cinematic adaptation of Biluše (the opera, not the play)—caused such a sensation that the College of Angelic Doctors, likely under pressure from Munster himself, revised the moral code to allow for greater artistic freedom solely so that the young Ms. Kathaldri would not be enticed to depart for Mu and its kaleidoscopic, censor-free film industry.
She made six films: Winds Through the Mountain, Biluše, The Maid of the Mesas, Elwood, Phobia, and Others Prefer It Cold. The first three were historical epics. Elwood was a screwball comedy about an eccentric man who was best friends with Elwood, a seven-foot-tall invisible raccoon that only he could see. Phobia was a sumptuous masterpiece of paranoia, murder, and mistaken identity, while Others Prefer It Cold was a comedy about two actors who disguise themselves as women to hide from the goons of a bloodthirsty drug cartel whom they happened to witness in the middle of a crime. It was a testament to Letty’s skill and the esteem with which she was held by society at the time that such an outrageous, code-thwarting film could ever have gotten made.
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Then, when she was twenty-three, it happened: a car accident. Letty’s beau was driving her along Highway 1 when wham!—they swerved off-road and crashed into a tree. The boyfriend died instantaneously, and though Letty herself survived, it was only in the most technical sense. She fell into a persistent vegetative state, the young actress now reduced to a doll. Once, she had been full of life and will; now, she had none except what other hands gave her, one movement at a time. Even with his life’s joy broken before his eyes, Mr. Kathaldri refused to let her go. He was certain that she’d wake up, someday.
That was sixty years ago.
Kathaldri used everything he had to try to rescue her. Even after the Prelatory fell, in his twilight years, he still fought to rouse his princess from her slumber. No expense was too high, nor was any progress too incremental. Any insight—even a wisp of a way to wake her up—was all he asked for. He devoted his massive fortune as much to keeping Letty safe and sound as he did to finding a cure. He gave so much to WeElMed that an entire treatment ward rose up around her: the Letty Kathaldri Neurological Center—though, outside of official communications, everyone called it the Quiet Ward.
For as long as he lived, Tomfin visited his daughter every day, making sure there was a vase of fresh daisies at her bedside at all times; his “favorite girl’s favorite flowers”—orange, violet and gold, boldly bled together, like the sunset. On days he was sick or otherwise incapacitated, he would talk to her over the phone, apologizing for not being there in person. Even after the old man passed away, the Quiet Ward’s staff kept putting the flowers there. Letty was eighty-five now. She was WeElMed’s unofficial princess. Everyone cared for her, preparing her for a knight in shining armor we knew would never come. But still, we hoped.
Like I said: it was a fairy tale.
I was nearly at the Quiet Ward when I realized I’d forgotten to update Kurt’s patient profile. Stopping in my tracks, I pulled my console out of my coat pocket and accessed my patient roster. Tapping Kurt’s image brought up his profile, and I updated his diagnosis accordingly, typing with my thumbs.
Diagnosis: Nalfar’s Syndrome.
“Genneth! There you are!”
I looked up from the console in my hands to see Nurse Yuth Costran staring straight at me. Her nursing cap was in her hands, leaving her striking brunette hair in full view. There were tears in her eyes.