One Door From Heaven

suddenly found themselves even closer than ten minutes to paradise.
        Rickster's uncle, executor of the estate, was also guardian of the boy. An embarrassment to his relatives, Rickster was dispatched to Cielo Vista. He arrived shy, scared, without protest. A week later, he became the benefactor to bugs, emancipator of mice.
        "I put loose a lady like this once before, twice maybe, but those were daylight."
        Suspecting that Rickster might be a little afraid of the night, Noah said, "Do you want me to take her outside and turn her free?"
        "No thanks. I want to see her go. I'll put her on the roses. She'll like them."
        With hands cupped protectively and held near his heart, he shuffled toward the lobby and the front entrance.
        Noah's feet felt as heavily iron-shod as Rickster's appeared to be, but he tried not to shuffle the rest of the way to Laura's room.
        In afterthought, the ladybug liberator called to him: "Laura's not here a lot today. Gone off in one of those places she goes."
        Noah stopped, dismayed. "Which one?"
        Without looking back, the boy said, "The one that's sad."
        At the end of the hall, her room was small but not cramped, and nothing about it cried hospital or whispered sanitarium. The faux-Persian rug, though inexpensive, lent grace and warmth to the space: jewel-sharp, jewel-dark colors, like a pirate's treasure of sapphires spilled among emeralds, scattered with rubies. The furnishings were not typical institutional Formica-and-case-steel items, but maple stained and finished to the color and glimmer of Cabernet.
        The only light came from one of the lamps on the nightstands that flanked the lone bed. Laura didn't share quarters, because she didn't possess the capacity to socialize to the extent that the care home required of a roommate.
        Barefoot, wearing white cotton pants and a pink blouse, she lay on the bed, atop the rumpled chenille spread, head upon a pillow, her back to the door and to the lamp, her face in shadow. She didn't stir when he entered or acknowledge his presence when he rounded the bed and stood gazing down at her.
        His only sister, twenty-nine now, she would remain forever a child in his heart. When she was twelve, he'd lost her. Until then, she'd been a radiance, the one brightness in a family that otherwise lived in shadow and fed on darkness.
        Beautiful at twelve, still half beautiful, she lay on her left side, presenting only her right profile, which was unmarked by the violence that had changed her life. The unrevealed half of her face, pressed into the pillow, was the phantom-of-the-opera hemisphere, its battered bone structure held together by cords of scar tissue.
        Although the finest restorative surgeon couldn't have rebuilt her beauty, the worst of the horror might have been smoothed out oilier crushed features and a plain profile constructed from the ruins. Insurance companies, however, decline to pay for expensive plastic-surgery when the patient also suffers serious brain damage that allows little self-awareness and no hope of a normal life.
        As Rickster had warned, Laura was in one of her private places. Oblivious of everything around her, she stared raptly into some other world of memory or fantasy, as though watching a drama unfold for an audience of one.
        Other days, she might lie here smiling, eyes shining with amusement, occasionally issuing a soft murmur of delight. But now she had gone to the sad place, the second-worst of the unknown lands in which her roaming spirit seemed to travel. Dampness darkened the pillowcase under her head, her cheek was wet, pendent salty jewels quivered on her lashes, and fresh tears shimmered in her brown eyes.
        Noah spoke her name, but as he expected, Laura didn't respond.
        He touched her brow. She didn't twitch or even so much as blink in response.
        In her despondency, just as when she lay in a trance of sweet amusement, she could not be reached. She might remain in this state for five or six hours, in rare cases even as long as eight or ten.
        When not cataleptic, she could dress and feed herself, though she appeared mildly bemused, as if not entirely sure what she was doing or why she was doing it. In that more common condition, Laura now and then answered to her name, although usually she appeared not to know who she was - or to care.
        She seldom spoke,