I ducked through the pines, putting as little weight on my left side as possible but every step felt like shoving my foot into a raging bonfire. Tears were streaming down my face by the time I retrieved my bag out of my locker, limped back to the parking lot, and got to my car. I fumbled the keys out, thanking God and Buddha and Henry Ford for designing cars with all the pedals on the right. As Nurse Valerie ran after me with an ACE bandage, I waved her off and gunned the car out of the lot and into the residential streets, zigzagging my way down the hill to St Mary’s hospital while my hands shook on the steering wheel. My only thought, as my phone buzzed incessantly from somewhere at the end of a long tunnel, was getting to Lucas.
A brace, four hours, and five refusals of ibuprofen later, I sat in Lucas’s hospital room waiting for him to wake up. Dr Mehta didn’t look much better than me when she arrived. She’d been presenting at a conference in Rochester when she got the call and drove straight to Duluth, only stopping to pick up her luggage at the hotel. As I filled her in with what I knew, the attending doctor stopped by to check on Lucas.
‘He’s incredibly lucky to be alive. The fall could have been fatal, but he’s going to walk away with only minor fractures to the skull and shoulder, and likely a concussion, although we had some difficulty assessing that.’
Lucas stirred behind us, clanking his handcuffs against the bars of the hospital bed and groaning softly. I watched him until he quieted back down, half listening to the two of them discuss his test results, expected recovery time, and eventual transfer back to Congdon. My phone hadn’t stopped buzzing since I’d left Congdon and I reluctantly checked the sites, already knowing what I would find.
The video was posted to the Facebook fan page, a forty-five second clip of the medics hovering over Lucas, trying to zoom in on his face, and then panning over to me laying behind the fence and Bryce hulking in the background. Three hundred people had already commented and, scrolling through the noise, I caught Bryce’s name being mentioned and at least one of the guards. Swallowing, I felt a hand touch my shoulder.
‘You’ve been here the whole time?’
The attending doctor had returned to his rounds, leaving the two of us alone next to Lucas’s bed.
‘Look at this.’ I tilted the phone. ‘It’ll be on the evening news.’
‘Yes, I was talking to the board on the way here, discussing the best way to handle the publicity.’
The sound of metal on metal came again. Even in sleep Lucas was restless. They said he was awake for the CAT scan but refused to answer any of their assessment questions about concussion symptoms, and the IV of pain medication had sent him back to la-la land before I gained access to see him.
‘I’m curious about your decision to take Lucas outside, given his case history,’ Dr Mehta asked.
I turned to the window. Only a sliver of Superior was visible above the old brick Victorians of downtown and the water looked gray, like a storm was coming in. ‘I thought he would feel more comfortable surrounded by trees instead of walls.’
‘And did he?’
‘Yes, at first. We talked about Scrabble and then he told me a bit about his childhood.’ Dr Mehta’s gaze followed me as I sat down. Her reading glasses were still balanced on the end of her nose from when she’d been looking over the chart and I felt like a specimen in a petri dish, another lab result she could trust for answers. My skin felt too tight and a sickness began contracting my stomach.
‘Did he give you any more details about his father?’
‘No,’ I lied.
‘I know you’ve had a traumatic day yourself, but can you pinpoint any correlation between your discussion and what made him attempt to escape again?’
The body. A body with long, brown hair. The sack of toys that wasn’t worth turning his father over.
I glanced at the bed and pretended to think as I searched Lucas’s face where dark bruises began to ring his eye sockets. My stomached pitched. Then I shook my head, meeting the hope and expectation in Dr Mehta’s face.
‘Nothing obvious. His childhood memories were pleasant – I guess they had a dog at one point – so unless he’s triggered by Scrabble, he must have been waiting for an opportunity. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have attempted it.’
Dr Mehta shook her head and motioned for me to come with her. ‘It was a good instinct. I see why you tried it.’
She opened the door and held my arm to help me down the hall. Her touch, the warm, dry comfort of it, was hard to accept.
‘If you remember anything else about the session, something that may have upset him . . .’
I nodded, seeing only the bright red exit sign at the end of the hall. ‘I know what to do.’
The next morning I got a frantic text from Dad with a link to the video of Lucas, which had aired on all four local news stations and who knew how many more across the state and country. I spent fifteen minutes calming him down and telling him not to cut the Bannockburn expedition short, and I arrived late for my shift at Congdon to find Officer Miller waiting for me. She sized up the brace on my ankle, but didn’t comment on it, handing me a thick manila envelope instead.
‘That was fast.’ I unfastened it and peeked inside at the fat stack of paper.
‘I looked the stuff over to see if it might help with the search but didn’t see anything useful.’ She crossed her arms. ‘Arresting officer’s information is on the top, in case you need anything else, and don’t feed me any crap like you don’t know how to make a phone call. I checked on you, too.’
I didn’t know what to say. It was impossible to lie or play it off, but I couldn’t talk about my time in Ely, no more than I could’ve called their police station to request this case file myself. Silently, I re-clasped the envelope and hugged it to my chest.
When it became clear I wasn’t going to offer any explanations, Officer Miller sighed and straightened her hat, nodding once before leaving. ‘Happy reading.’
There was no time to go through it before my shift started. I stored the envelope in my locker and thought about nothing else during my morning sessions. Every hour dragged. I barely heard the jokes about how ‘shocking’ my ankle looked or whether I was going to be the Bride of Frankenstein for Halloween. Even one of my aphasia patients, Greta, had to throw flashcards at me to get my attention. When it was finally noon, followed by what was supposed to be an hour-long session with Lucas, I grabbed the envelope and hobbled to my car, driving to the hospital without a word to anyone.
The nurses’ station let me into Lucas’s room and gave me an update. He’d been awake all night as the nurses – accompanied by security guards – administered drips, drew blood, and checked his vitals while he watched with a ‘creepy intensity’ that made most of them hand the next round off to someone else. When I arrived he’d finally fallen asleep; he seemed to be dreaming, mumbling and shifting restlessly in bed. I helped myself to the pudding, roll, and juice on his untouched lunch tray, ignoring the meat-product that smelled identical to what we fed our patients, while pulling out the contents of the manila envelope on the other, unoccupied bed. As I chewed and read, the pieces slowly came together.
Heather Price, a twice divorced dental receptionist in Ely, was reported missing after she didn’t show up for work for two days. Her duplex was empty, but the police found clothes belonging to a man and boy in the side she rented out – my heart rate picked up – when they conducted their search. According to neighbors, she lived alone. While they were searching the home, the police encountered Josiah Blackthorn, who’d just returned from a camping trip in the Boundary Waters. When asked about Ms Price, Josiah lied. He claimed he hadn’t seen her since he’d last paid rent, a story that was disproved by two neighbors who’d witnessed them fighting. Believing he was somehow connected to the woman’s disappearance, the police arrested Josiah for obstruction of justice.
And Lucas? I flipped through pages, skimming for any mention of the boy’s location while his father was locked up, but there was nothing. A scared nine-year-old had no place in a criminal report.