“Ophelia, they are going to move your father’s body. We have some things to discuss.”
At the word body I felt ill again. He wasn’t a body. He was my dad. My dad who liked blueberry pancakes but only if the blueberries were cooked inside. My dad who knew every employee in the castle by name, even the waiters who worked the occasional banquets. But had he ever been more than just a “body” to Gertrude, a person necessary to fill a job? Or was he as disposable to her as a tissue or a paper cup?
I pushed myself to a sitting position, allowed the dizziness to pass, checked to be sure I was not going to puke, and then stood gradually. What I knew after all my years living in the castle was that, no matter how nicely she asked, Gertrude was, in reality, giving an order. I had to hold on to the cream-colored vanity with one hand while I reached for the poodle-shaped doorknob with the other.
Everything got very, very silent in my head. It was the absence of thought and sound that allowed me to step out of the bathroom. Arms rigid at my sides, I did not feel my own steps as I walked into the middle of Gertrude’s bedroom. Marcellus drifted next to me, but I did not acknowledge him. I vaguely noted the overturned full-length mirror and stopped next to the burgundy comforter, which lay strewn at the foot of Gertrude’s four-poster bed. There had been a struggle and my father had died. Again I wondered how.
No one spoke, so I had time to take in more of the room. The window was not exactly shattered, as I had originally thought. There was a single hole in it from which cracks spiderwebbed outward. Blood had sprayed on the window, on the ceiling, on the still-hanging curtains, and more blood had seeped and pooled around where my father lay. The most distant part of my brain realized that the blood belonged to my father, but it was too awful to register, too awful to feel. On the floor next to the disheveled comforter, I spotted a gun, a handgun that looked just like the one Hamlet had been spinning on the conference table not two hours before.
My eyes flicked to Hamlet, who was still flanked by guards. He was watching me with dread. “You?” I asked in a strangled whisper, hoping I was wrong.
“I didn’t mean to,” he wailed, trying to rush past the guards, who caught him instantly and held him in place.
I stood with my mouth agape. I blinked several times as everyone watched me. The silence gripped me again. Without my even realizing it, my legs gave out and, if not for Marcellus, I would have fallen.
I wriggled out of his hold and stumbled toward my dad. The sheet covered only his torso and head. His hands rested still and soft, and just next to his violet-shaped cuff link, a single drop of blood stained the pure white shirt. My eyes could not leave that spot of red. That spot, which he would have insisted on treating right away, pushed the truth into my silence. My face crumpled and I fell to my knees.
A gurney rolled up beside me, and the side rails clanged into place. Workers in blue booties surrounded my father and hoisted his body onto the sheeted stretcher. I looked up as they rolled him away but said nothing, as nothing was said to me. The pool of blood left behind was dark and thick, and I would have been unable to look away if someone had not thrown a new blue sheet over it. I turned my head as the stretcher was wheeled out of the room. Part of me knew I should be following the stretcher, but I couldn’t force my legs to cooperate.
My head snapped toward a new sound, and my breath grew more irregular. Officers were bagging the gun, and the plastic crinkled noisily. They whispered to one another, then hurried out of the room. I watched Hamlet watch them leave. He yanked at his hair, his face turning red.
He looked at the ceiling and then shut his eyes tightly as he muttered, “Oh God. Oh God.” Standing suddenly, he begged, “Please let me talk to her.”
The still-alert part of me thought he would be denied. Claudius nodded, and the guards let Hamlet go. I froze as Hamlet knelt beside me.