“She’s fine. You can go in and say hello before you leave. What’s going on?”
He spoke to Josie but was looking at the nurse behind the counter, a woman not much older than Josie, dressed in maroon-colored scrubs, her dark hair swept up off her neck in a loose bun and bright red lipstick smothering her lips. “As you know, Miss Spencer’s next of kin is her mother, who we cannot locate. That leaves her uncle Dirk Spencer, who is in intensive care at Geisinger for multiple gunshot wounds in a medically induced coma. She was just rescued from a year in captivity, and she is in a catatonic state. We can’t just leave her alone at Mr. Spencer’s house. She needs to be looked after.”
“Then the hospital should keep her,” the nurse said.
“There’s a norovirus outbreak at the college. Half the damn student body is at the hospital right now. Believe me, they don’t have the beds.” Ray gave the nurse a pleading look. “Come on. She has nowhere to go. It would only be for a day or two until we can make other arrangements. She needs to be monitored, and we need to know where to find her if she comes around and can start telling us what happened to her.”
“This is a nursing home.”
“It’s also a rehab facility,” Josie interjected.
“Do you mind?” the nurse said, shooting her a dirty look.
Josie was sure she was the only one who saw the smile fighting to stay hidden on Ray’s lips. “Actually, Detective Quinn is my superior,” he told the nurse. “And she’s right. This is also a rehab facility.”
The nurse’s shoulders slumped. She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, for people who have knee replacements and hip fractures. Not… this.”
Josie advanced on the woman and, in spite of the high counter between them, the nurse backed up a few steps. Josie leveled her index finger at the woman like the barrel of a gun. “This girl was abducted by a known sexual predator and held prisoner in a single room for a year. A year. What she needs right now—what she deserves right now—is our empathy and compassion. Anything short of that is inhumane and, quite frankly, a disgrace. You’ve got a private room three doors down from Mrs. Matson. It hasn’t been filled since Mr. Wallis died. This isn’t forever. This is for a few days until more suitable arrangements can be made. It’s quiet here, and you’ve got trained medical personnel on staff. This place is much more comfortable than the hospital. So, you’ve got two choices. You can admit this young lady and do everything you can to care for her while she is here, or you can call your administrator—use her cell because she bowls on Saturdays—and make her come in and talk to me about this situation. What’s it gonna be?”
While Josie spoke, the woman’s haughty posture slowly deflated. She looked over the counter at June and sighed, “Fine, she can stay.”
Chapter Eighteen
June Spencer’s eyes were open. She lay on her back in the center of the bed, her long hair fanned out on the pillow, arms at her sides, and eyes fixed upward and unmoving. Like a corpse on display at a funeral. Almost the moment Ray left, and expressly against his instructions, Josie snuck into June’s room to speak to her. She still wore a hospital gown, and Josie resolved to bring some clothes for the girl from home the next day. She was annoyed that no one had thought of this; hospital gowns were flimsy and undignified, and the last thing a sexual assault victim would want is the risk of further exposure. But of course, no one on Denton PD had thought of this. They were all men. All men, except Josie. The chief had hired two female patrol officers the year before, but one was out on maternity leave and the other had quit to go to law school.
Josie stood at June’s bedside, her hand floating over the girl’s forearm. She wouldn’t touch her, not until she had the girl’s consent, but it was difficult to know how to get her attention. Was it even possible? Instead, she talked in a low tone, so as not to be overhead from the hallway, where nurses, nursing aides, and other residents flitted past, craning their necks to see the catatonic girl inside the room.
“June, my name is Detective Josie Quinn,” she said. “I am so glad you’re with us. I know you’ve been through a lot. I’m not sure how much they told you, but the man who hurt you is dead. You’re safe now. Soon we’ll find your mom, and she’ll come and be with you. As soon as your uncle Dirk is able, he’ll come too. I don’t know if you can hear me or not, but I’ll be close by if you need anything. My grandmother lives here. Tomorrow I’ll bring you some regular clothes to wear. That might make you more comfortable.”
June blinked.
Josie stood frozen for a long moment, waiting to see if she would blink again. She said, “Can you hear me, June?”
Blink.
Josie was leaning in closer, looking for answers, when a scratchy voice from the doorway said, “Don’t get too excited, hon. Even zombies blink sometimes. It’s a purely physical thing.”
Josie looked up to see Sherri Gosnell, a chunky nurse in her sixties—the alleged larynx thief—pushing a medicine cart through the door. The computer screen atop it glowed, and Josie could see that June’s electronic chart was open. There was no information in it other than her name and date of birth. Lisette had once told Josie that Sherri had worked at Rockview since she was a teenager—as a nurse assistant while she finished nursing school and eventually securing a spot on the staff as an RN. Josie was hard-pressed to remember a time she’d visited her grandmother and not seen Sherri there. She wondered if Sherri ever took any days off.
“Gotta do her admission,” she said as she drew closer to the bed. Looking June over, the woman shook her head. “Don’t know what we’ll do with this one.”
An alarm blared from down the hall. By this time, Josie recognized the various alarms that the staff affixed to the chairs, beds, and sometimes even the clothing of residents considered fall risks to alert the staff to when they were getting up without assistance. “That sounds like Mrs. Sole,” she said to Sherri.
The nurse rolled her eyes. “All day long she’s trying to get out of that chair.” With a glance back at June she added, “I’ll have the girls sit this one up in the chair and get her a dinner tray. I can do the admission after I deal with Mrs. Sole.”
With that, she was gone. Josie glanced down at June. The girl’s eyes blinked rapidly for several seconds. Then they stopped, and she floated back off to wherever it was she had found to hide inside her head.
Chapter Nineteen
Josie found excuses to walk past June Spencer’s room two more times after that—retrieving a blanket for Lisette’s lap from her room and then going back again for the butterscotch candies she kept in her nightstand. Each time she passed, she slowed and peered inside. The nursing aides had, as instructed, moved June from her bed to the guest chair next to it. She sat unmoving with her hands on the armrests. Her pale legs—hairy from a year of not having shaved them—peeked out from beneath the hospital gown. Someone had put those awful brown non-skid socks on her feet. Pushed up in front of her was the rolling tray table and dinner: turkey breast with gravy, apple sauce, jello, a tiny can of ginger ale and a hot tea. All of it was untouched, the silverware perfectly lined up beside her plate, which meant no one had tried to feed her. Josie wondered if she would eat. Perhaps, if she was hungry enough? She remembered Ray saying she was healthy. Perhaps the act of eating was an automatic thing for her.