Andrea had a small stage set up in the center of the living room when I came home from work one evening in November.
The platform was the size of four shoe boxes. She manipulated a female alabaster-white puppet by its strings along its surface.
The puppet was in a black nurse uniform. It had a wide mouth and fire-truck red lipstick, the hue of the curtains on either side. She made it dance along the miniature scaffolding and had it mouth words to a song only Andrea seemed to hear.
A snow-colored screen was behind the figure. Other puppets were near it, their wires entangled around their bodies.
They were in Army uniforms.
Their helmets had small dots of mud she must have gotten from our yard outside. Their olive drab wool constructions even had ketchup splattered on their torsos. Upon closer inspection, I saw a few missing limbs.
“June,” she said, “so glad you’re home. Look at what I found.”
I dropped my car keys and purse on the mahogany roll-up desk next to the front door. I took a few steps closer to the scaled-down theater.
“Her name is Violetta,” she said. “I’ve been helping her along her travels. She’s been treating men wounded in the Battle of Krasnobród all day and night. I tried to change her into a white ward dress and cap. She insisted on her current outfit. She has so many adventures in front of her.”
Andrea had a song playing from her portable Sony speaker in the background. I looked at the screen of her opened laptop on our coffee table. I caught the title of the tune - If I Didn’t Care by the Ink Spots. It was slow and each bar of music echoed.
“You said you found her?” I asked.
“Yes, she was on my bed this morning. The evacuation hospital she works in has had so much mortar fire near its walls. She feels their detonations when she removes shattered bones from their wounds. Weee!”
Andrea made the nurse glide and sway.
“Where did you get…the infantrymen?”
“My Grandmother gave them to me before she passed away. I never found any use for them until now.”
I was speechless. I did not want to rouse an argument by telling her what opinions I held on her new activity. I also did not want to give fake encouragement.
To the left of her was a yellow legal pad with words written in blue ink on its pages. The jottings, based on the capitalized slug lines, were an attempt at a play.
I maintained silence as I grabbed my belongings and walked upstairs to my room. Andrea was so focused on her story that she did not even care about my departure.
I crawled into bed and looked out at my street as the mist rolled against the glass.
*
I went to the kitchen the next morning. When I passed Andrea’s room her light was on. This struck me as unusual since she liked to sleep in later due to her shift starting two hours after mine. Her door was also propped open with a hardcover novel.
I peered in and saw her playing with Violetta again. Her hands manipulated the strings at a much more frantic pace than they had the first time I watched. Her fingers flew faster than a sign language expert interpreting an auctioneer.
A small cage sat below the puppet’s dangling wooden feet, one whose actual size would not have fit a rodent. Violetta’s hands grasped its metal with her head lowered in a gesture of despair.
I walked in and waved my hand in her periphery to get her attention. Books on Hinduism and Buddhism lined her shelves. Beside her was a tome about past-life karma. I had read it before. I had read it with an open mind when we first moved into the house. The concept of prior existences altering this one resonated with me.
“I wanted to ask you something,” I said.
Andrea looked up at me with widened eyes, both of which had black bags underneath.
“We’re right in the middle of her treating POWs,” she said. “She’s the second nurse captured in the war’s history. She’s helping the other soldiers locked up with her. Her first patient of the day succumbed to infection. They are going to repatriate him to U.S. soil as soon as they’re liberated.”
“Listen,” I said as I sat on the floor to be at eye-level with her, “that’s all well and good. There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you, though. You said yesterday you found this puppet-“
“Her name is Violetta-“
“-I know, on your bed. Have you had any visitors?”
“What do you care if I do? You usually don’t bother me about my private life. Are you getting jealous or something?”
“Oh, that’s fine. It would be a relief if you did have someone visit. We share this space. If you’d found it without anyone having been over to our knowledge, we would have had…a trespasser. I’m glad it was a gift and not some bizarre thing that came out of nowhere.”
“She is a gift. Do you like her stories, June? Her travels can go on forever. They help me in getting over the death of my Grandma.”
“I’m glad it’s therapeutic,” I said as I stood and exited.
I went to the pantry and started boiling water. I heard her door slam upstairs, followed by a barrage of medical instructions. Her voice became a bark, a stream of angry orders for scissors and morphine.
*
I watched Andrea deteriorate before me every single morning I left for work. I was unsure if she was getting any shuteye, and after a while I doubted it. It was obvious to me that she was suffering from chronic insomnia. She was too obsessed with her imaginary escapades lived through Violetta.
I walked in a half a week after her infatuation began. I had to signal her eyes toward me as she moved the puppet around in a frantic manner.
“I’m going out for your favorite food,” I said as I stared at her rail-thin physique. “The Thai place at the end of town. What do you say?”
“Oh, you go ahead and have fun. Violetta’s too busy treating those keeping France safe.”
*
I came home after dinner and saw Andrea on her laptop. It was a relief to see her doing something else for once.
“I brought you some red curry,” I said as I lifted a styrofoam container.
She did not answer me, her eyes glued to the screen.
“What are you watching?”
Andrea reached down and picked up Violeta’s strings. She faced the puppet towards me. She spoke to me via an unpracticed but diligent version of ventriloquism:
“I’m taking an online class for my Nurse education certificate,” she said. She looked up at me before focusing on the course again.
She would only speak to me by using her motionless little friend as a second mouth.
*
I went to bed and worried about Andrea as I pulled the blankets over me. I had seen the tone of her skin change.
The lack of nutrients made her nails and hair brittle. Her flesh was an almost grayish color. I tried to remind myself that I was her roommate and long-time friend, but not a health professional. I could not force her to get treatment if she did not want it.
I fell asleep. I had a dream about a folk healer in a house made of straw. She arranged ornaments about the place to ward off something invisible but malevolent.
I awoke.
Something pressed against my face.
I saw the unmistakable outline of Violetta’s eyes and lips.
I sat straight up and turned my lamplight on.
Andrea stood over me, controlling the puppet and making the figure’s mouth open. A black widow spider crawled out from the maw and landed on my arm. I squashed it and screamed.
“Why are you so upset?” Andrea asked as I crawled out of bed and landed on the other side.
I almost picked up my Ipad to throw it at her once I was standing again.
“Why are you in my room scaring me like this?” I said.
She did not issue a response but instead moved toward me. An ominous chill snaked through me as I backed away against the window.
She cornered me.
“You can’t keep talking to me through that thing,” I said as I pointed at Violetta.
“She’s a national heroine. She helped so many men after the Battle of the Bulge.”
“Get away!” My voice was so loud I surprised myself.
“You shouldn’t be so angry at someone so valuable to society. Isn’t that right, Violetta?”
“‘That’s right,” Violetta said. “‘I know how to stitch you and everyone else back up after you get hurt.’’”
“That’s it,” I said as I shot forward. “I’m done with this.”
I dove over the mattress and reached for the puppet. I had planned on throwing it out the window and watching it break apart after a long drop.
Andrea hooked a leg over my shoulders and wrapped the strings around my neck. I thought it must have been an accident as a result of the struggle. It had to be a mishap of her being unwilling to let go of her fictitious entity.
Then Andrea started pulling on the strings and laughing. Her strength surprised me due to her skeleton-like frame.
I tried to claw and hit, but it was no use as oxygen escapes me. Breathing became impossible.
I blacked out from her choking me.
*
A cold breeze graced my forehead when I came to. I tilted my head to the left and saw the window was open.
I stood and had to unwrap the strings which stuck to every angle of my upper body. I had to untwine them from my hair. I let the puppet drop to the floor with a thud that reverberated throughout the space.
I gazed out my window. I peered downwards and saw Andrea like face up, her legs completely snapped behind her. She soaked in a puddle of her blood. When I got a closer look at her face, I saw she was smiling but lifeless.
There was no way I managed to push her out. She had the better of me in the exchange. I was losing that fight from the second it started…unless I managed to overwhelm her in a state of delirium.
I knew emergency services were going to ask me to perform compressions when I notified them. I went downstairs, still a bit dizzy, and held onto the railings for balance. I brought my cell phone with me.
Once I got to the backyard, Andrea was gone.
The blood was still there on the grassy surface. Crimson footprints led to the gate.
I went back inside and made my way back to my room. I locked the door and took in a massive gulp of air.
I dialed.
“911, what is your emergency?”
I tried to think of the right words, to consider how to summarize the ordeal I had survived. The sequence of the conflict became obtuse in my mind. I felt like an amnesiac trying to recall something from the void.
As the operator repeated her question, looked at the floor and saw Violetta staring at me.
I hung up.
I cradled the puppet in my arms, an uncanny feeling giving me a sense of newfound loyalty. Memories from a life not made from the same fabric as this one flooded me. The commands of an anesthetist serving the mutilated on a mobile surgical unit hit me. Explosions assailed the earth around us.
I began to play with her. I brought to life the skills she had to treat the harmed. I began to imagine a sweeping epic with her as the central character. The hours passed by faster than they ever had.