There was no movement from the patient, so I walked around and stood next to Dr Mehta. From this angle I could see his face and was surprised by a fresh cut along the outside of his temple. Had he hit his head, too? Without thinking, I took a step closer. His eyes flickered up to mine and held.
No one in the room spoke. We stared at each other, unblinking, without expression. This look was nothing like the connection Eliza made with me earlier and a moment passed in which I had the unreasonable feeling that Lucas Blackthorn knew me, that he could’ve found my neck among hundreds of exposed throats. I lifted my chin, refusing to look away. Finally, he dropped his eyes and a flush of something crossed his features.
He opened his mouth experimentally and then spoke in a low, hoarse voice clearly unused to dialogue.
‘Does your neck hurt?’
‘Yes.’ I set my jaw.
He considered me, as if memorizing the exact shade of red on my skin before making his next effort at speech. ‘Sorry.’
I nodded toward the cut on his face. ‘What happened to your head?’
He didn’t answer and eventually Dr Mehta spoke up.
‘Lucas resisted his transfer to the medical ward and unfortunately hit his head on a door.’ Then she drew closer to the foot of the bed, glancing at the web of scars on his calf. There were long, paper-thin marks and fat, blunt scrapes in all stages of healing, the darker browns layered over faded patches like new saplings taking over an old growth forest. ‘The injuries to your legs, Lucas, remain a mystery.’
‘That’s an easy one.’ I lifted the blanket up, revealing identical markings along the inside of his other leg, and met Lucas’s stare. ‘You’ve been climbing trees. Right?’
He nodded almost imperceptibly, his eyes locked on mine, but when Dr Mehta donned her glasses and moved in for a closer look, he kicked his good leg and lashed a foot at her face. The handcuffs cracked against the bed rail as she jerked back and I threw an arm in front of her, moving us both out of his range. Murmuring an apology, Dr Mehta led me back into the corridor and shut the door.
‘Are you all right?’
She clasped her hands under her chin and beamed. ‘Did you hear that? Two separate exchanges and he even initiated the first on his own. He’s verbal and quite responsive when he chooses to be.’
‘Yeah, hurray. Did you just get kicked in the face?’
‘I’m fine.’ She waved, already marching toward the ward entrance. ‘If he remains this lucid, we might even be able to facilitate some interviews with the Ely police.’
My stomach clenched. ‘That’s great. I’m glad I could help.’
‘You understand this is your primary case now.’
‘What? No.’ It came out louder than I intended and I lowered my voice, checking to see if anyone was in earshot. ‘You were there. You heard him. Perfect enunciation. Appropriate grammar, inflection, and word choice. He doesn’t need speech therapy. He needs behavioral therapy.’
It was absurd to diagnose that after maybe six words, tops, but she didn’t even argue the point. ‘And you don’t think you have a unique vantage point to help him?’
‘I’m not a psychologist.’
‘Indeed, because you majored in speech pathology, focusing your attention on the outward projection of constructed, premeditated messages. One might wonder if you intentionally avoided the messy inner realities of psychology.’
‘Don’t shrink me right now, doc.’
‘Impossible at any time.’ Her eyes still gleamed with the victory of Lucas’s breakthrough.
‘I’m not qualified for this. I wouldn’t know what to do.’
‘I’ll assist you at every stage.’
‘And my rotation is full. I’m busy helping Greta work on her r’s so someday she can pronounce her own name. And Big George, with his—’
‘You were also a patient here once, Maya.’
Her simple statement, voiced intentionally low so only I could hear it, killed the rest of the excuses in my throat.
In the four years I’d worked at Congdon, she’d never once brought up that fact. She’d treated me like any other employee, worse even – assigning me to the most aggressive patients, the foulest messes, the hardest shifts – and I’d always been grateful for that veneer of indifference. Now the reminder lay like an exposed nerve between us. We faced each other silently, boss and employee, doctor and patient. For a second, I forgot which one I was supposed to be.
She looked the same now as she had the first day we met – composed, sober, and impossibly invested in all the crap swirling around her. She’d walked into my room wearing a bright yellow tunic and extended a hand to me, palm up, with skin like warmed earth. I hadn’t known what to do with that hand. From anyone else it would have meant, Gimme your wallet. On Dr Mehta, though, the tiniest shift of a thumb or curl of her wrist changed everything about the gesture, like the slightest change in inflection gave ordinary words entirely new meaning when she spoke them. You don’t think you have a unique vantage point? Like I was one of those gulls living in the cracks of the seawall, finding refuge in the fissures, peering into the depths.
After a moment, Dr Mehta offered that same hand in the space between us, waiting for me to respond. I swallowed.
‘But . . . Ely. If you want him to talk to the Ely police, I don’t think – I can’t . . .’
‘You won’t have to. We can use our liaison, Officer Miller, as an intermediary.’
Reluctantly, I placed my hand in hers and she clasped it, acknowledging my agreement.
‘I’ll send you his file right away. Read it thoroughly.’ She turned her attention back to the far end of the ward and nodded. ‘You might be Lucas Blackthorn’s best chance to reclaim his life.’
With that, she badged the door open and left the medical ward.
I stood there alone until a nurse pushing a patient in a wheelchair needed to get by, then numbly held the door open, glancing down the corridor to where the orderly stood guard.
When Dr Mehta first mentioned this job at our last out-patient therapy session before I turned eighteen, I thought she was kidding. Then it felt like she was trying to recommit me and I ran fast and hard in the other direction. I refused to even look up the hill at Congdon as I drove to and from the university each day. A semester passed where I pretended I was a normal girl, someone whose mother hadn’t abandoned her, who’d never covered herself in blood, or been handcuffed to a bed like Lucas was handcuffed right now. My pretending didn’t work very well. I realized I had nothing to say to the normal girls; I didn’t even speak their language.
Then Dr Mehta sent me a Christmas card and made the offer again. Would I like to work part-time at the hospital to help other patients find their voice? I could start as an orderly and work my way up after I graduated. Before I even finished reading I knew my answer. Maybe I wasn’t the most qualified person for the job – I needed two degrees in order to become a certified speech -therapist – but desperate, hopeless, crazy? Those were languages I spoke fluently.
Swallowing, I paced back down the hallway into Lucas’s room and around the bed. His eyes opened and fixed on me. I took a deep breath and spoke softly.
‘Do you want to get out of here?’
Emotion flooded his face and he started nodding almost before I’d finished. ‘Yes. I have to.’
The urgency in his voice stirred something deep inside me. A recognition. Damn Dr Mehta for always being right.
I sighed. ‘Okay. But you’ll have to talk to me, though. They want to know things and they won’t let you leave until we’ve told them what they want to hear. Do you understand?’
His eyes widened and he shook his head slightly.
‘I didn’t, either, at first. Don’t worry. I’ll help you.’
I started to leave but turned when he said my name.
‘Maya.’ He pronounced it again, slowly, as if suspicious of the vowels. ‘Thank you.’
I didn’t trust my voice, so I just nodded and left, wondering what the hell I’d gotten myself into.
4