Along one of the walls were two dozen storage boxes containing materials related to Eddie. No other patient in the facility had more than three boxes of materials, but no other resident produced anywhere close to the volume of papers Eddie did. She had decided to start at the beginning, in the oldest box, with the first communication Dr. Fenton had received about Edward Parks. The single-page letter was from Eddie’s child psychiatrist in Philadelphia, Dr. Gordon Tuffli. The doctor was part of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which, while respected within the medical community, had the misfortune of possessing the initials CHOP. How they ever got a single parent to take a child for treatment at CHOP left something to the imagination.
Tuffli stated that he had never once, in his twenty-seven years of practice, encountered a child like Eddie, who was eight at the time. Autism was diagnosed much less frequently in those days, and Asperger’s had only recently been reintroduced into the lexicon. What little literature there was included nothing about how to properly deal with a special-education child whose IQ was within spitting distance of two hundred. The boy was doing calculus, but couldn’t tie his shoes. He had completed a Rubik’s Cube in less than two minutes the first time he saw one, but couldn’t look another human being in the eye. Any type of physical contact instantly triggered a screaming rage, and the boy’s only method for expressing frustration was to slap himself in the face, or worse. His father, Victor Parks, had claimed to Dr. Tuffli that Eddie once slapped himself so many times that he had to take the boy to the emergency room. The medical staff doubted the father’s story until something in the ER triggered the reaction in the boy, and Victor was cleared of suspicion.
Little Eddie Parks was a genius savant; there was no doubt about it. The only question was what to do with him. Every teacher or aide who attempted to help him quickly realized how ill-equipped they were for the task. No one on the staff at CHOP had any idea, either. Dr. Tuffli wrote to Fenton hoping that he might know what to do with the boy.
Skylar could only imagine Fenton licking his chops as he read this letter.
Fenton had then commenced his typically thorough due diligence on the boy, retrieving every available medical record going back to Eddie’s birth, which was an emergency C-section. It wasn’t clear from the records exactly what went wrong during the delivery, but Michelle Parks lost a tremendous amount of blood and never recovered. Dr. Wolfgang Oelkers declared her dead when her son was forty-three minutes old. She never got to see her beautiful and unique baby boy. It took his father almost three days before he would hold his son.
What surprised Skylar most was the extent of Dr. Fenton’s research into Eddie’s past. Fenton left no stone unturned when it came to his examination of this wonder child. He corresponded with or interviewed every doctor, teacher, and therapist who had ever come in contact with the boy. But the research didn’t stop there. Fenton examined every record he could find about the father: his employment, his health, his academic and credit files. Skylar didn’t understand what these things had to do with a potential patient. It was clearly an invasion of privacy, but Fenton obviously had no trouble gathering the information, so somebody must have approved the release of the data.
It never occurred to Skylar that he might be as thorough with his hires as he was with his patients.
Breakfast in Harmony House was served at seven thirty, so Skylar went to look for Eddie there. Besides, she was in dire need of coffee. While a double-shot nonfat Starbucks latte might have been enough to get her through the drive to Woodbury, it certainly wasn’t enough to keep her going through the morning. But when she arrived in the cafeteria, there was no sign of Eddie. That was strange, she thought. People with Asperger’s never deviated from their routines.
Coffee in hand, she walked toward Eddie’s room. Passing Fenton’s office, she noticed a silhouette sitting in a chair next to Eddie’s door. It was Nurse Gloria, who was reading the latest issue of People magazine. Skylar quickened her step. Hoping not to disturb Eddie, she whispered, “Is everything okay?”
Gloria whispered reassuringly, “Everything’s fine.”
“Why are you here?”
“To make sure it stays that way.” She turned back to her magazine article about some reality-show contestant’s recent weight loss after pregnancy. “Dr. Fenton hasn’t told you about Eddie’s sessions, has he?”
He hadn’t. “I’m still getting up to speed.” Skylar began to doubt whether starting at the beginning was the right way to study Eddie’s history. She wondered if she should have started with the most recent reports and worked her way backward, so that she would be better prepared for something like this.
“He gets a certain kind of idea in his head, and wild elephants can’t stop him from seeing it through. Sometimes it only lasts a few minutes, but sometimes hours, or even days. We used to try to force him to rest, or eat, or use the bathroom when it happened, but that only worked against us. He once snapped at a nurse trying to make him eat and smashed a plate over her head, knocking the poor thing unconscious. Another time he went catatonic on us for a week. So now, we just let him go until his engine runs out.”
“How does it end?”
“Sometimes good. Sometimes not so good.”
“Like yesterday?”
“Exactly like yesterday. Only worse.”
Skylar glanced at the door, desperately curious to know what was going on behind it.
“You can go in if you want.”
Skylar looked surprised. “You sure?”
“Knock first. If he doesn’t want you to come in, he’ll tell you. But more than likely, he won’t respond at all, because the boy is just gone. Trust me.”
Skylar approached the door to room 237 with caution. She looked down at her feet, surprised that Eddie wasn’t already talking to her as he had done the other times she approached his door. She knocked ever so quietly, certain there would be a response.
But there was none.
“Told you.” Nurse Gloria returned to her magazine.
Skylar spoke softly to the door. “Eddie, I would like to come in. Would that be all right?” Again, there was no answer, so she let herself in. She entered the room cautiously.
Sitting at his desk, Eddie had his back to her. He was typing on his laptop and didn’t look up or acknowledge her in any way. His hands were moving so quickly around the computer’s keyboard that they were a blur. She sat down on the bed next to him, watching him with wonder. “You sure can type fast.”
He gave no response.
“Eddie, can you hear me?”
He nodded almost imperceptibly, but it was hard to tell if he was responding to her or to something else. His lips moved ever so slightly.
She leaned in closer, trying to hear what he was saying.
“Dr. Fenton!” He screamed the doctor’s name so loudly it hurt Skylar’s ears. She winced as he snapped the laptop closed. He picked it up, along with the echo box, and raced out the door.
Skylar went after him. Nurse Gloria followed close behind. “What the hell did you do to him?”
“Nothing. All I did was sit down next to him. You said I could go in.”
“I didn’t say to upset him, now did I?” They both followed him down the hallway, where he made a beeline toward Dr. Fenton’s office.
“Dr. Fenton, I did it! Dr. Fenton!”
The first time Dr. Fenton’s secretary, Stephen Millard, had experienced Eddie bursting into the foyer of Dr. Fenton’s office was seven years ago. Stephen was, naturally, alarmed, and proceeded to physically block Eddie’s path while tersely explaining that patients were not allowed to enter the office without an appointment. Eddie had started screaming the moment Stephen touched him. When Eddie started slapping himself, he dropped the echo box, which crashed to the floor. The resulting damage cost upward of $67,000 to repair.
From that point on, Stephen was instructed not to intervene when Eddie rushed into the foyer, like he did now. Stephen managed to remain pleasant and nonconfrontational. “Hello, Eddie.”
“Dr. Fenton, I did it! Dr. Fenton!” Eddie didn’t even acknowledge Stephen as he continued into Fenton’s office, where the doctor was on the phone.
“I’ll have to call you back.” Fenton hung up the phone and acted pleased to see Eddie. “Well, this is certainly wonderful news.”
“I know it’s going to work! I know it!” He closed the door behind him because it would facilitate acoustic mapping. At least, it was supposed to. He placed the echo box on Fenton’s coffee table and connected the laptop to it.