1

For the past two months, I’ve been at an integrated rehabilitation facility that opened in Cincinnati last year. It’s huge, five stories tall, taking up almost an entire city block. Each floor focuses on a rehabilitation specialty: general physical therapy, stroke rehab, psychiatric, geriatric, and one other one I can’t recall. The fact that my niece, Rachel, lives and works as a registered nurse in Cincinnati was certainly one fortuitous aspect of this whole debacle.

I appreciate these folks - both sets to be honest. The physical therapists that worked with me were professional, encouraging, the right kind of tough when I got wimpy. This leg is probably in better shape now than before I broke it. And, the counseling team, especially Dr. Gonzalez. Top notch, really.

Dr. Gonzalez had helped so much. I just got so twisted up, so confused in Chicago. He brought me around to seeing that it was all a delusion brought on by the stress of my unexpected retirement. It took me a while, but that was clearly what was going on. In time, I began to see my broken leg as another fortuitous event, one that brought things to a head. I might have died otherwise.

I want the same thing as all these therapists and counselors - I want to be their success story, to give everyone the satisfaction of a job well done, a patient healed. I’m wrapping up my stay here with a little reception, which was very sweet of the case management team to throw. “Eleonore, we are so proud of you! You look so much better. Are you excited to be heading back to Chicago?”

I’ll have a little cake, some punch, and then off to the airport I’ll go. “You’ll remember us, won’t you, Eleonore? Please let us know how you fare when you get back. We want to stay in touch!” Beneath the smiles and sips of punch, if I were being honest, I was a little nervous. There was not a single soul that I would tell, but truthfully, I was never fully convinced that what I saw, what I was a part of was all in my mind.

Finally the clock showed half past three, and I could make my way to the foyer to wait for Rachel, who was giving me a ride to the airport. I’d make my own way from Midway back to my Lakeview brownstone. We chatted pleasantly on the way, and she dropped me off at departures. Getting through security, boarding, and finally on the way home in my Uber, I found myself unable to fend off memories of when this all started. Playing it all back in my mind, it really did all seem like a dream.

2

My last day at work was a Friday. It was with mixed emotions that I accepted the school’s buyout offer. A decent severance package was icing on the cake really; in the last year I had more often than not felt like the odd one out on a team whose average age was easily fifteen years younger than me. I wasn’t the butt of any jokes; it was a professional office, But, I wasn’t let in on inside jokes or invited to lunches off campus.

I thought it would feel like being on vacation for at least the first few weeks, but by Tuesday I was quite out of sorts. I don’t know if people plan their post-retirement lives, but the timing of the buyout offer was unexpected. I figured I’d just wing it, go with the flow, but the free time of retired life, which looked like a luxury when working full-time, had started almost immediately feeling overwhelming.

When my in-unit dryer stopped working, I thought taking a vacation might be a more enjoyable demarcator between my old and new life than dealing with appliance repair. I contacted my brownstone’s building manager, Rick, who was the only person who’d been in the building longer than me, so just over twenty years. He put a key in my mailbox, said he’d left a washer/dryer hooked up in an unused basement storage room, and I could use that until mine was repaired. He told me to be careful; the storage room was full of lobby furniture, broken equipment, and building junk from years gone by. He hadn’t been down there in a while.

I remember so clearly working the key into the lock, expecting dust and the scent of mildew when I finally pushed the door in, but a much different smell met me at the door. Like almond extract - no, it smelled like maple, which struck me as quite odd.

I stood at the washer loading damp sheets and towels to rewash them before using the dryer. I’m sure it was a sound that first got my attention. When I peered into the corner on the floor near the back of the washer, I’d have sworn that I saw movement, the flash of something drawing back from my line of sight. At the time, I did not think it strange that my immediate thought was, ‘Poor baby, it’s all alone down here.’ Nor did I think it strange that I never identified “it” in my mind - I never suspected a basement rodent, a trapped cat, nothing like that. It was just never named in my mind. To explain that to Dr Gonzalez took two therapy sessions and many more than that for me to realize this all started mostly in my mind.

When I brought water in a small baking dish and pushed it toward the spot where I thought I’d first seen it, I had the intention of helping it, gaining its trust. I’d fostered dogs and cats for my local Humane Society several years prior. That’s how I thought of it - a foster project. I felt like I should return later that night to see if it needed anything. Relating this to Dr Gonzalez, even I could appreciate how silly it sounded, but that’s what I did. I went down that night in the near pitch dark and crouched for nearly three hours. Nothing happened, but I found myself thinking about it the next morning.

Sometimes I kept the light on down there, sometimes not. I usually sat on the floor, leaned against the wall across from the washer/dryer. Sometimes I would catch a glimpse out of the corner of my eye, but glancing toward that corner I’d see only the hole that had been chipped into the dry wall. I stopped leaving water; it was always left untouched. Sometimes I’d have the thought that I saw a vapor, discernible but just two clicks from invisible. Sometimes I was certain it was with me, sitting just inside that hole, appreciating that I was there for it, even though I didn’t know what more I could do.

3

I began sleeping fitfully, needing to nap by late morning because I was now spending several hours between midnight and dawn in the basement by the washer. I couldn’t imagine how to explain this to someone, my friends would think me mad, but I knew with a deep certainty that the ‘creature’ was, first, not of this earth - a visitor, as I began to think of it. And, two, it was buoyed by the company I provided by being there with it as healed. I could point to nothing as evidence of my certainty, yet, if I was forced, I’d have said that I knew these things because the visitor relayed them to me. The only word that came to mind - because we didn’t converse outright - was that we were ‘communing’.

Due to my erratic sleeping habits, I occasionally missed park clean-up days with my volunteer team; they understood at first. When one or two of the ladies reached out to ask why I’d eventually stopped going altogether, I let the calls go to voicemail. I didn’t want to lie and the truth was just too incredible. I felt like I was a part of something much larger than my own life, larger than all of our lives. This visitor was here for a reason and had clearly gotten waylaid on its mission. Righting what went wrong became something of my own mission.

I developed a kink in my neck from too much time spent crouching in uncomfortable positions. The pain and stiffness grew so acute I eventually could no longer raise my arm above my head. I figured a doctor would just prescribe me pain pills, which would distract me from my mission. I wouldn’t get that pinched nerve addressed until in rehab for my leg.

Though much of the time it was like moving through a dream, I was aware of the lack of sleep; it made me terribly grumpy. I wouldn’t notice other changes until they were pointed out to me in therapy, like quitting my volunteer team and withdrawing from a weekly card game at the rec center. When I dug out my size-small yoga pants from the back of my closet, I don’t remember thinking about my weight, instead I remember telling myself that I really should give pastels a try again. In reality, about a month after I first went to the basement, all my mediums were sliding past my hips when I stood. By the time I went to the hospital with my broken leg, I was down to 94 pounds.

I grew weaker but somehow felt buoyed, strengthened by the improvement the visitor was making. I could sense, as though it told me - but of course it never spoke to me nor I to it - I could so strongly sense that it was feeling better, growing. I was encouraged to continue, sure that we were closer than ever to its full recovery.

As the days passed, so did high summer; green leaves darkened and dried; they’d change color soon. Autumn was coming. I didn’t notice those changes, but in the basement I remember noticing that it was cleaner, less dusty. No one knew about this room except Rick, the building manager who didn’t come down. He’d never inquired about the key he’d given me. Increasingly, I would notice the scent of maple extract, seemingly growing stronger, more regular. I suppose now that I think back on it that intensifying smell was the reason, odd as it sounds, that I thought the visitor was growing. I also began to adopt the understanding that the visitor was not staying and would be moving on soon, though what soon meant and its destination were not conveyed to me.

My niece knew something was amiss when I didn’t call on her birthday as I always did. It hadn’t slipped my mind; I just could hardly think of anything but the visitor by then and I certainly wasn’t going to start explaining it to other people now. Especially as it would be gone soon.

“Aunt Eleonore, are you sure you’re feeling alright? Your voice sounds a little different. When is your next appointment with your GP?” My niece was an RN and I did live alone, so I typically didn’t mind the invasiveness of her questions. In actuality, I’d canceled and rescheduled my appointment twice now. It just happened that the appointments fell on days when it strongly felt like something might happen in the basement that I didn’t want to miss. It felt nearly like a responsibility to be there, ready to be a witness. This inquiry felt, frankly, meddlesome, and I remember feeling irritated at Rachel which I couldn’t recall ever feeling prior.

I fell the following night on my way to the basement. It was a fairly severe tumble; an oblique fracture of my right femur and broken hip. Thankfully, I was found by another resident in the stairwell between the first and second floors the next morning. I hadn’t been using the elevator for a few weeks, since running into Neil, a neighbor one floor down. He hadn’t been able to contain his shock at my appearance, and it made me uncomfortable. An ambulance was called, and I left my brownstone for the first time in three months.

4

I never found out what exactly I revealed in the ambulance, but they’d given me some decent pain meds and babbled the entire way. They laughed it off at first, but after being admitted I kept talking freely about the basement, which continued raising concerns along with my vitals. They said the bone fractures were so severe due to being dangerously malnourished and dehydrated.

Within a few days, they recommended psychiatric care in addition to the physical therapy I would need. Once my niece got involved, I didn’t put up much of a fight. She was adamant that I do rehab in Cincinnati, which is what I did, and the rest of my stay in rehab is history. Here I am, on my way home - strong, of sound mind, and feeling well.

“Eleonore, just go along to get along, would you?” A classic axiom used by my father when I was being obstinate. I recalled it when meeting with the shrinks in rehab. I’d been unable to adequately describe how I knew something was in that basement storage room and not sound crazy. It was easier to agree that I must have gotten confused, that, yes, retirement had been a challenging transition. I was stressed and not sleeping well, yes, you’re right about that.

Now that I was back in Chicago, making my way to ground transportation at the airport, I allowed myself to entertain the idea that there could - it was at least very remotely possible - there could have been a visitor. That it was true, but that it was over either way. I could both have been right and now be back on track.

When I got to my apartment, I called my niece and checked in. It’d been a long day, and I was ready to get some rest. Yes, a full night’s rest these days - no more sets of a few hours here, a few there. It was good to feel better, and even better to be home.

5

The following day I ran into my neighbor, Neil. For some reason, he felt comfortable again to comment on my appearance, though this time to tell me I looked well. He was happy to see it, he said. He also told me about the unexpected death of our building manager, Rick. It was Rick who’d loaned me the key to get in the basement storage room at the start of all this mess. Apparently, he must have started to fall ill; people slowly began seeing less and less of him around the building. Tenants swapped stories in the lobby and at mailboxes; issues were going unfixed for days, calls unreturned, when normally Rick was such a communicative, timely repairman. Apparently, one day last week Harriet, also a retired teacher living in the building, found Rick collapsed in the hall just outside her apartment - massive coronary.

“Get this, Eleonore. Doctors said it was brought on by severe dehydration, that it looked like he’d just slowly stopped eating and drinking beginning a few weeks prior to death. Weird, huh? He was a healthy guy otherwise, young still. Anyway, it’s great to see you looking so well. Take the elevator - be safe.”

“Take care, Neil.” I hardly heard the last of our conversation. Rick’s death weighed on my mind as I returned to my apartment. The next day, too, I spent much of my time wondering if Rick somehow had been to the storage room in the basement. This kicked off a whole line of questions for me. Was the visitor here? Had it communed with Rick? Was it ok? Was it gone? It took less than a day for me to realize these questions would plague me until I could confirm.

That night, I made my way slowly, quite carefully to the basement. I’d the key still tucked in the back corner of my kitchen junk drawer and brought it with me. I made my way from the first floor to the basement. It hit me in the stairwell in between floors. The smell of maple extract was immediate, pungent, nauseating. “Oh my.” I whispered aloud to no one and continued on.

I simply had to see.