Idiopath

A story about trying to leave a missing girl's room.

I am in my daughter’s room. I am standing on the carpet in the middle of the room in my socks. It feels soft. How long have I been standing here? I can’t remember. I stare at the wall in front of me without blinking and try to remember. The wallpaper has pink butterflies and pink flowers on it. I don’t know what kind of flowers they’re supposed to be. They could be roses. The butterflies are all depicted frozen in mid-flight. Some of them are about to land on one flower or another. Some look very far away. No, I can’t remember how long I’ve been standing here. How did I get here? I can’t seem to remember that, either.

My daughter is not here. She’s missing. Before she went missing, she was very sick. She lost all her independence. She was all full of tubes. The doctors couldn’t figure out what the problem was. They ran all sorts of tests, but they all came back normal. They put cameras inside her, but they couldn’t see anything. They wanted to do surgery, cut her open just to look at what was there, but my husband refused. They tried different treatments. They gave her injections all over her body, even in her intimate areas. They wrapped her in blankets, then took them away. At one point, they put her on steroids. Later, opioids, and then anti-convulsants. They kept asking us if her shots were up to date. They asked us that every day for a week. Eventually, they didn’t know what to say. They told us they would discharge her, because they thought she might do better at home. They told us they couldn’t find anything medically wrong with her, but they would arrange for a hospital bed to be sent with all the equipment, if we could afford the expense. I was offended. Did we look poor to them? Maybe we did. We were under a lot of stress. We weren’t sure when we were sleeping, and when we were awake. By then, she was so thin. She looked taut, like stretched canvas. I was worried her bones would break through her skin.

At home, my daughter seemed to get better. She developed an appetite. Her hair stopped falling out. Sometimes, I even heard her speak. She wanted us to remove her catheter. She wasn’t ready for that yet, but I let myself start to believe things would be okay. Then, she went missing. Someone took her away. It happened like this: I was in the dark, sewing things together. It was 3:38AM. I remember precisely because there was a clock next to me, one with a digital display. The numbers were large and bright red. I was looking at them when I heard her scream. When she screamed, I got up so fast I got dizzy. I had to sit down again. I was afraid if I didn’t, I would fall and crack open my head. I heard the sound of her door opening. I thought it must be my husband, but then I heard her scream again, and the sound of clanking chains. I didn’t feel dizzy anymore. I got up and ran towards her room. It took me a long time to get there. It felt like I was running in quicksand. When I did get there, the door was open, but the lights were all turned off inside. Even her nightlight. From the doorway, I though I saw a naked man bending over her bed. By the time I had found the light switch, though, there was nobody there. Not even my daughter. The diodes on the machines were all blinking. I heard the sound of the chains again. Then it was silent. I ran to wake up my husband, but then I remembered he wasn’t there. He was in Baku, securing a contract. He had been there for days. In a way, I’m glad that he was. I’ve read that in cases like this, the husband is always the first the police will suspect. They would have wasted so much time investigating him. It would have made everything so much more difficult than it already was. Not that they’ve been much help, anyway. When I call, they always say they have leads, but I don’t think I believe them. I don’t think they have any idea what happened.

The hospital bed is still here in her room. I’m standing right next to it. The front half is still angled upwards, just a little bit. That was how she liked to sleep. The machines are still here, and the wires and tubes connected to them. Everything is just like she left it, waiting for when she gets back. We haven’t touched a thing. My husband hasn’t even gone inside, since she went missing. He took the first flight home that he could, but he’s been avoiding this whole part of the house. He says it makes him feel ill. Our bedroom is down the same hallway, so he sleeps in the living room now, on the couch. I guess he’s out there right now. He’s barely left the house since it happened. He tries to sleep as much as he can, and when he can’t sleep, he lies there and watches TV. I can hear the TV right now. It sounds all muffled. I can hear voices, but the words are indistinct. I don’t think he cares what he watches. I think he just likes the colors and sound. Is the door closed? I’m not facing it. I should turn around and look. I could call to him, but would he hear me? And what would I say?

I turn around. The door is open. I shouldn’t be in here. I don’t know why I came in in the first place. I should just walk out. Just walk right out. I should leave. Why did I come in here at all? But I can’t. I turn back around. I can’t go out that way. The door is open, but there’s something preventing me. It won’t work. I have to find another way. My husband can’t help me. I know that. Something would prevent him, too. I have to get out of this myself. I don’t even know if he’s here. Why don’t I know that? The TV is on. He must be. There wouldn’t be anyone else her. He wouldn’t go away. He wouldn’t just leave me here alone.

I look around. There’s the hospital bed, the machines and equipment, her nightstand with a lamp and a glass of water on it. The glass is more than half-empty. She must have drank some of it that night. She must have been thirsty. I hope whoever took her isn’t letting her go thirsty. I hope she’s being given enough water. There’s her bookcase, her stuffed animals, some dolls, a box of Lego. Posters of her favorite characters on the walls. On the other side of the room from her bed is her closet. The closet door is shut. There’s a window in front of me, with some butterfly stickers on it. A model of the solar system hanging from the ceiling by a string. The window. Of course. I can go out the window. Our house is only one story. Yes, I can leave through her bedroom window. It’s not like the door. It can’t be. I go over to it. I put my hands on the glass. It feels warm. Almost hot. That’s strange. Isn’t it cold outside? Shouldn’t it feel cool to the touch? I try to remember. My daughter went missing at 3:38AM. But what day was it? When did it happen? I thought it was September. There’s patches of snow on the ground outside. Would there be snow in September, in this part of the world? Or is it later in the year? It hasn’t been that long since my daughter went missing. Has it? I try to lift the window open. It doesn’t move. It’s stuck.

I look out of the window again. It looks out onto our backyard. Our backyard is much longer than it is wide. It seems to stretch away into the distance like a deep river. It’s boxed in on three sides by a tall, wooden fence. You can’t see anything through it. We used to have a simple chainlink fence, but we had it replaced after our daughter started getting sick. We didn’t want to take any risks. There’s a metal slide and a swing set with two swings. She used to love swinging. The swing set and the slide both look black. The fence looks black, as well. The sky is white. The snow is all dirty. It’s covered in thousands of footprints. There are footprints in the mud, too, where the snow has melted away. They’re all over our backyard. I’m not sure whose they are. They could be anyone’s. They could have come from anywhere in the world. Were they always here? Maybe they were. It seems possible.

The window isn’t going to open. I understand that, now. If I want to leave my daughter’s room I’ll have to find another way. I cross from the window to the closet door. My feet sink into the carpet with each step. It feels nice. I’m standing in front of the closet door. My daughter’s closet is the kind that’s wide and shallow, with two doors you pull to the sides to open. It’s painted a lavender color. There are no stickers on it. We told her that wasn’t allowed. Once, my husband caught her putting stickers on it anyway. They were Tinkerbell stickers, I think. I don’t know why I remember that. Maybe that’s what being a mother is, remembering things like that. When he caught her, my husband took her to the bathroom and made her stay there for six hours. Then she came out and scraped all the stickers off.

I open the closet door. Inside are racks of clothes on hangers, and some bins full of old books and toys. Behind them, there’s a hole in the wall. It’s roughly circular, and large enough that I could crawl into it. My daughter could have easily, if she hadn’t been sick and confined to her bed. I can’t see how far back it goes, only that it slopes downwards. It’s very dark. Standing there, I can feel a flow of slightly humid air coming from it. Was this always here? I try to remember, but I can’t be sure. Maybe it’s something my husband put in without telling me. I don’t think I want to explore it. It looks like the kind of tunnel I might never find the other end of. I might crawl and crawl and never reach my destination. Have I ever been in a tunnel like that before? I hope not. There must be some other way. I shut the closet door. I walk back to the middle of the room. The door to the hallway is still open, but something is still in the way. I can still hear the TV. My daughter is still missing. I am in my daughter’s room.