Chapter 22

When Tommy started wailing for his mother, Doctor Raeburn stopped in his tracks. He flipped the patient’s chart to the next of kin section and read the information provided by the police department. He scanned the page and turned his attention to the man cowering on the other side of the bed.

Mister Bledsoe,” he said soothingly, “I don’t see your mother listed on your chart. It says here your next of kin is a sister in Florida.”

Tommy nodded, somewhat calmed by the man’s soothing voice.

“Momma Rita is in Brantley, am I still in Houston?”

Raeburn nodded, so Tommy continued.

“Something happened to my brains and I saw some really, really bad things. Then some men beat me up. Then I woke up here in this bad place, so you need to call Momma Rita so she can come get me and take me home.”

Raeburn nodded his understanding.

“Do you know her phone number?” he asked.

Tommy was about to spout out the number when a burly orderly peeked through the door.

“Ah, Doc, there are three women at the nurses’ station demanding to see this guy. One of them says she’s his fiancée.”

Raeburn looked over at his patient inquisitively and Tommy looked at the orderly.

“Which one?” he asked.

The orderly shrugged his massive shoulders.

“I didn’t catch a name, but she is very pretty, with long wavy black hair.”

For the first time in two days, Tommy felt the least bit more at ease.

“That’s Connie; Momma must have sent her to get me.”

Raeburn glanced at the orderly and shrugged.

“Might as well bring them down, maybe it will help us understand this mess.”

Even though Tommy thought the doctor might end up being his friend, he still kept the bed between them. After what had happened to him lately, he wasn’t about to trust a stranger.

A couple of minutes later, Connie, Paloma and Caroline came steaming into the room. Paloma and Caroline stopped at the doorway, but Connie charged across the room and took Tommy into her arms.

“My poor baby,” she cooed as she gently traced the vivid purple bruise under his swollen right eye.

Tommy sighed and sagged against her. He felt safe for the first time in a couple of days.

Raeburn’s brow furrowed in concentration as the beautiful young woman held his patient. The woman looked familiar, but he couldn’t put a name to the face. His concentration turned into something else when the statuesque woman turned toward him looking seriously irate.

“Why is Tommy locked up in here and what happened to frighten him so badly?” she asked heatedly.

Raeburn held up his hand in a stop gesture.

“Whoa, there, Miss, we are on the same side. Now just who are you three?”

Connie blushed at her rudeness and rushed to correct it.

“Delgado,” she said, “Connie Delgado, and these are two of Tommy’s friends, Paloma and Caroline. Sorry for the outburst, but we’ve been worried sick.”

The name Delgado caught Raeburn’s attention, and he quickly put the name and face together. Conchita Delgado films had been a staple for him when he was a struggling young intern living in near poverty. That a woman of Conchita Delgado’s beauty and stature was engaged to his patient, made him reevaluate what he thought of the man.

“I’m pleased to meet you ladies, I’m Jeffery Raeburn, head of psychiatry for the hospital,” Raeburn said with a slight bow. “And to answer your question, Miss Delgado, Thomas Bledsoe was admitted to this ward when he became uncontrollable in the emergency room. The fright he exhibits now is only a small fraction of what he felt when he was admitted. The fright was cause by flashbacks he was having of some unpleasant experiences he must have had in Vietnam.”

Connie looked at the doctor in surprise.

“Tommy doesn’t have any memories of Vietnam. In fact, he doesn’t remember anything after the age of twelve, until he awoke from a coma two years ago.”

It was Raeburn’s turn to be surprised, and the case just became much more interesting. He thought for a minute before replying.

“Research conducted over the last few years indicates that the mind spreads little snippets of memory in various locations besides the prefrontal lobes. Maybe the large quantity of LSD your fiancé ingested triggered painful snippets he’d been suppressing,” Raeburn suggested.

“LSD!” Connie exclaimed. “I’ve never seen him have anything stronger than a glass of wine.”

She grabbed Tommy’s hand and looked up into his confused expression.

“Did you take LSD Saturday night, Tommy?” she asked softly.

Tommy shook his head emphatically.

“I don’t even know what that is! All I had Saturday night was the Doctor Pepper my new friend Roger fixed me. You can ask him if you don’t believe me.”

Connie soothed Tommy and looked pointedly at Paloma.

“Roger Taylor is an old boyfriend. In fact, he’s the one who drove me around Saturday night looking for Tommy. He has also been bragging lately about this new acid he found. But why would he send Tommy on a trip without telling him?” Paloma said.

Connie’s eyes narrowed at that bit of news. Connie Delgado did not share Paloma’s view that peace was the answer. Roger Taylor would soon find out that fucking with her man was a very bad idea. Although seething inside, Connie pasted on a smile and exercised her considerable skill as an actress. In no time, she had charmed Doctor Raeburn into releasing Tommy to her, with the caveat that she either bring him back in a few days for a follow-up visit, or get him in to see a VA specialist.

By the time Tommy was discharged from the hospital, it was too late to drive back to Brantley, so Connie and Tommy spent the night at Paloma’s house.

After supper, Janet and Caroline locked themselves into their rooms to study while Tommy, Connie and Paloma watched television and chatted. Connie liked tall slender Paloma, and the two women openly flirted all evening long. Under normal circumstances, Connie would have dragged both Tommy and Paloma off to play, but in Tommy’s current condition, that wasn’t an option. It hurt Connie’s heart that her guy was suffering so much.

After a tough night of Tommy fitfully dozing in between heart-wrenching nightmares, Connie felt even worse for him. As they sat at the kitchen table having breakfast with Paloma and Caroline, Connie had a sudden inspiration. She hopped up and asked to borrow the telephone.

An hour later, she and Tommy were on the road. But they weren’t headed west towards Brantley and the heart of Texas. Instead, they were pointed east towards Lafayette, Louisiana and the Hotel Arcenaux. Connie had a strong feeling that somehow, the seemingly supernatural bond Tommy shared with Marie Arcenaux was the solution to his problems.

It was only a three hour drive from Houston to Lafayette the way Connie drove, so the couple pulled up to the gingerbread Victorian Inn right at lunch time. Salmarie was working the desk when they arrived.

“Ahhh, you brought him back so that I could have my turn, eh Cherie?” Salmarie said teasingly.

Connie guessed that Marie hadn’t shared with her daughter that there was a problem with Tommy.

“Sure, Salmarie, provided your mother can make him better,” Connie replied.

Salmarie gave her an inquisitive look as she spun the register around for Connie to sign. Connie shrugged and mouthed, “I’ll tell you later,” as she signed her name.

Marie made her entrance just as Tommy was picking up Connie’s pink Samsonite weekender suitcase. Marie gave Connie a firm hug then stepped into Tommy’s arms. Maria understood the nature of Tommy’s problem as soon as they touched and his aura enveloped her. Before, his aura had been strong and golden-hued. Now it was weaker and shot through with inky patches of hurt and small tendrils of malice. The only good thing about his damaged aura was that it was not as overwhelming as it had been during his last visit.

It hurt Marie deeply that Tommy was suffering so much, but she also knew that she could change that if they had some time alone. Marie knew exactly how Tommy’s aura should look, because she had its clone growing in her womb. Decision made, she turned to face Connie.

“Tommy and I are going to spend a couple of days at the bayou house. Can you help the girls and Pierre while I’m gone?”

Connie grinned and said, “Sure, Marie, no problem.”

Marie drove Tommy out to her family’s little Cajun cottage that was situated two miles off US 90 on Bayou Laveau (pronounced La-voe). Laveau was Marie’s maiden name. The Laveaus were a small family by Acadian Louisiana standards, yet they were legendary for their pretty but strange and mysterious women. Bayou Laveau was a pristine, undisturbed waterway that drained into the Vermillion River, south of Lafayette. Legend had it that the bayou was untouched because a Laveau woman bewitched an Army Corp of Engineer surveyor into moving further to the south a drainage canal needed for the construction of US Highway 90. The four-room house had been in Marie’s family since the 1840s. It was so old it didn’t have nails in the original rough hewed cypress timbers that made up the framework.

Marie and Tommy settled in and put away the groceries they’d bought for their stay. Tommy was infatuated by the quaint old house, and spent an hour exploring in and around it. The house was on creosoted cypress pilings that put the floor four feet above the ground. It was oriented north-south for better cross-ventilation, and had a wide porch that extended end to end across the front. A set of stairs on the porch, or galerie as Marie called it, led up to an attic under the steeply pitched roof. Marie said the attic was commonly referred to as the grenier and was often used as a bedroom for male children.

While Tommy was poking around, Marie bustled about opening the cabin and letting the delightful mid-April air freshen the place. When she finished, she joined Tommy on the short dock that jutted into the bayou. When she walked up, Tommy was examining a small flat bottomed boat turned upside down at the end of the dock. He looked up and gave Marie a small smile.

“Can we take your canoe out on the water? I’ll paddle so all you have to do is ride.”

Marie was encouraged by his smile, even weak as it was.

“Sure we can, Tommy, but it’s a pirogue, not a canoe. Canoes don’t have flat bottoms,” she said.

Tommy was an enthusiastic oarsman, but he couldn’t keep the boat headed in a straight line until Marie gave him some instructions. Soon enough, they came to a wider portion of the bayou where the water was shallow enough to make paddling ineffective. Tommy was amazed when Marie stood up and used a long pole lying in the bottom of the boat to effortlessly push them across the water. Tommy insisted on taking over the poling, and twice, he almost tipped them over before he got the hang of it.

Marie smiled indulgently at Tommy as he paddled them back towards the house. So far, the serenity of the peaceful bayou was having the desired effect on him. See, her plan wasn’t that complicated, she just needed him alone in a peaceful setting so the special connection they shared could work, undistracted.

When Tommy had the boat back on the dock, Marie took his hand and led him back through the house to the front galerie. She sat him down on a sturdy cypress bench then straddled his legs with hers, so she was sitting in his lap facing him. Next she put her hands on his cheeks and turned his face until they were eye to eye.

“That’s it, Baby,” she crooned. “Look into my eyes and listen to me. Those memories you’ve been having aren’t yours, Honey, any more than Old Tommy’s money wasn’t yours. And just like that money, you need to get rid of those bad thoughts. Understand?”

Lost in her amber orbs, Tommy nodded.

“Good. So here’s how we are getting rid of old Tommy’s nasty memories: every time you have one, you are going to throw it into the bayou so that it can drift out to the ocean and be gone forever. If you do that, they will all be gone by tomorrow night.”

Even though he hadn’t tried it yet, Tommy knew that what Marie said would work. He knew that because her words poured through her eyes and into his soul. It was unscientific, so Doctor Raeburn and his professional ilk would say that what Tommy felt was actually the power of suggestion and Marie was manipulating Tommy using his love and trust for her. Tommy didn’t think that way because he knew Marie was magical. In actuality, both Raeburn and Tommy were correct.

Marie smiled when she felt Tommy’s aura brighten slightly. She kissed him sweetly and jumped off his lap to fix them supper.

Back at the Hotel Arcenaux, Connie was working the registration desk while Salmarie took her mother’s place as hostess for the restaurant. Since she wasn’t busy, Connie called Rita Maude Fricke to update her on the status of her quasi-adopted son. Rita also had news for her.

“I was leery of that woman when Tommy described her, but if she helps him get better, she has a friend for life,” Rita began. Then she changed gears. “Oh yeah, the police over in Houston called here this afternoon. They found Tommy’s truck. It was stripped clean of anything of value, but at least the police say the thieves didn’t torch it. Ben and Ramon are taking Ben’s flatbed wrecker to pick it up tomorrow. Maddie and Leo Dixon have already filed a claim with his insurance, and Ben says there is enough in the settlement to fix Tommy’s truck good as new.”

Connie thought that was great news, because the loss of his beloved truck was just another thing weighing heavily on Tommy’s mind. So Connie was in a good mood when Michelle Arcenaux strolled out of the restaurant dressed in her usual French maid’s outfit.

“All of the guests are taken care of, Miss Conchita. May I make a plate for you?”