AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The guys at the youth hostel are friendly and helpful and speak perfect English, just like Willem did. One of them even looks like him—that same angular face, those puffy red lips. I actually ask him if he knows Willem; he doesn’t and when I explain that he looks like someone I’m looking for, he laughs and says he and half of Holland. He gives me a map of Utrecht and shows me how to get to the address the hospital gave me, a few kilometers from here, and suggests I rent a bike.
I opt for the bus. The house is out of the center, in an area full of record stores, ethnic restaurants with meat turning on spits, and graffiti. After a couple of wrong turns, I find the street, opposite some railroad tracks, on which sits an abandoned freight car, almost completely graffitied over. Right across the street is a skinny town house, which according to my printout, is the last known address of Willem de Ruiter.
I have to push my way past six bikes locked to the front rail to get to the door, which is painted electric blue. I hesitate before pressing the doorbell, which looks like an eyeball. I feel strangely calm as I press. I hear the ring. Then the heavy clump of feet. I’ve only known Willem for a day, but I recognize that those are not his footsteps. His would be lighter, somehow. A pretty, tall girl with a long brown braid opens the door.
>I hold up my hands in surrender. “You’re not. I’m done. This is a lost cause.”
Maps are taken out. Metro routes are debated. Picnic items are discussed.
“People mix up their patron saints, you know?” I look up. Wren, our pixie tagalong, who has been all but silent all day, has finally spoken.
“They do?”
She nods. “Saint Anthony is the patron saint of lost things. But Saint Jude is the patron saint of lost causes. You have to make sure you ask the right saint for help.”
There’s a moment as everyone looks at Wren. Is she some kind of religious nut?
“Who would be in charge of a lost person?” I ask.
Wren stops to consider. “That would depend. What kind of lost?”
I don’t know. I don’t know if he’s lost at all. Maybe he’s exactly where he wants to be. Maybe I’m the lost one, chasing someone who has no desire to be found. “I’m not sure.”
Wren twirls her bracelet, fingering the charms. “Perhaps you should just pray to both.” She shows me the little charms with each patron saint. There are many more charms, one with a date, another with a clover, one with a bird.
“But I’m Jewish.”
“Oh, they don’t care.” Wren looks up at me. Her eyes don’t seem blue so much as the absence of blue. Like the sky just before dawn. “You should ask the saints for help. And you should go to that third hospital.”
Hôpital Saint-Louis turns out to be a four-hundred-year-old hospital. Wren and I make our way into the modern wing that sits adjacent. I’ve sent the others on to Luxembourg Gardens without much of an argument. Sunlight filters in through the glass atrium, throwing prisms of light onto the floor.
It’s quiet in the ER, only a few people sitting among rows of empty chairs. Wren goes right up to the two male nurses behind the desk and that weirdly mellifluous voice of hers breaks out in perfect French. I stand behind her, catching enough of what she says to get that she is telling my story, mesmerizing them with it. Even the people in the chairs are leaning in to hear her quiet voice. I have no idea how Wren even knows the story; I didn’t tell her. Maybe she picked it up at breakfast or among the others. She finishes, and there is silence. The nurses stare at her, then look down and start typing.
“How do you speak French so well?” I whisper.
“I’m from Quebec.”
“Why didn’t you translate at the other hospital?”
“Because it wasn’t the right one.”
The nurses ask me his name. I say it. I spell it. I hear the tap of the computer keys as they input it.
“Non,” one nurse says. “Pas ici.” He shakes his head.
“Attendez,” the other says. Wait.
He types some more. He says a bunch of things to Wren, and I lose track, but then one phrase floats to the top: a date. The day after the day Willem and I spent together. The day we got separated.
My breath stops. He looks up, repeats the date to me.
“Yes,” I say. That would’ve been when he was here. “Oui.”
The nurse says something and something else I don’t understand. I turn to Wren. “Can they tell us how to find him?”
Wren asks a questions, then translates back. “The records are sealed.”
“But they don’t have to give us anything written. They must have something on him.”
