THE PATIENT IN ROOM 13
THE RED-EYED WOMAN
Monday, November 13th – 11:30 AM
The graveyard was silent.
Sloane stood beneath the old oak tree, her hand pressed against its rough bark, her breath fogging in the cold air. The child was gone, but her presence lingered — a warmth in the shadows, a whisper in the wind.
“She is still watching,” Marian said. “She is always watching.”
“What does she want?”
“To be remembered. To be seen. To be acknowledged.”
“I remember her. I see her. I acknowledge her.”
“She wants more. She wants you to free the others. The ones who are still trapped.”
“Where are they trapped?”
“In the places where the forgetting is deepest. In the minds of the living.”
Sloane pushed off from the tree.
She walked to her car.
She drove back to her office.
Tess was waiting in the reception area.
Her face was pale.
“Dr. Vance. What happened?”
“I went to the graveyard. I saw the child.”
“The one with the red eyes?”
“Yes.”
“Was she… angry?”
“No. She was sad. She wants to be remembered.”
Tess looked down at her hands.
“I remember her. I’ve always remembered her. She was in my dreams before I can remember.”
“You have the gift, Tess. The gift of remembering. The same gift I have.”
“What do I do with it?”
“You help me find the others. The forgotten ones. The ones who are still out there.”
“How?”
Sloane sat down across from her.
“You remember. You remember them. You name them. You give them a voice.”
Tess closed her eyes.
She began to speak.
“There was a girl,” Tess said. “Her name was Sarah. She was seven years old. She was buried in the graveyard behind the old sanitarium. Her parents thought she was possessed. They paid the church to make her disappear.”
Sloane wrote down the name.
“There was a boy. His name was Thomas. He was nine years old. He was sent to the poorhouse because he was born with a crooked spine. He died of neglect. No one claimed his body.”
Another name.
“There was a girl. Her name was Mary. She was five years old. She was abandoned at the asylum by her mother, who could not afford to feed her. She died of fever. The nurses buried her in the graveyard without a marker.”
Another name.
Tess opened her eyes.
“There are so many.”
“I know.”
“How will we remember them all?”
“One at a time. That’s all we can do.”
Tess looked at the names Sloane had written.
“Will they be at peace?”
“When they are remembered, they will be at peace.”
“Then let’s remember.”
They spent the afternoon naming the forgotten.
Tess’s gift was extraordinary. She could see the children as if they were standing in the room with her. Their faces. Their clothes. The sounds of their voices. She described each one in vivid detail, and Sloane wrote down every word.
By the end of the day, they had named thirty-seven children.
Thirty-seven forgotten souls.
Thirty-seven stories that had never been told.
Sloane looked at the list.
It was not enough.
There were hundreds more.
But it was a start.