The boy’s vitals were all in good shape, but some faint bruising on the back of his head concerned the trauma doctor enough to order an MRI. Not surprisingly, Carole refused to leave Charlie’s side even for a second. Given the circumstances of his disappearance and miracle recovery, the hospital staff allowed her to remain with her son.
“I wouldn’t let go of my child, either,” one nurse said to a colleague who insisted that the mother was in the way. “Look, you don’t have kids, so you don’t get a say.”
A nurse inserted an IV with a sedative before the procedure.
Charlie didn’t even wince.
“Where’s Daddy?” he asked, his eyelids fluttering as the sedative kicked in.
“He’ll be here soon,” Carole said, although she wasn’t sure if he’d even been notified. She hadn’t tried to reach him. She didn’t care if she never saw him again. In fact, she hoped she wouldn’t.
“He’ll be scared in there,” Carole said quietly to the doctor, gripping her son’s hand.
“No, he’ll be fine,” Dr. Cortez said. “He won’t even know the MRI is being done.”
Charlie’s mother didn’t let go until the very last moment as the radiologist wheeled him through the double doors to the exam.
“He’ll be out in twenty minutes,” Dr. Cortez said.
Carole wrapped her arms tightly around herself and stood there, facing the doctor, her mind playing back every beat of the ordeal that had started with the phone conversation with the insurance adjuster. Deep down she knew that all of what had happened had been her fault. No matter what anyone said. She had left him alone. She had turned her back long enough for someone to take him.
And it hadn’t been a stranger at all.
It was the man across the river.
“Who takes someone’s child?” she asked the trauma doctor, a sanitized version of her thoughts.
“I couldn’t begin to tell you, Mrs. Franklin,” she said. “But Charlie’s safe now. He looks good. He’s young. He’s healthy. He’s back where he belongs.” The doctor motioned to a nearby chair. “Please sit,” she said. “This will be all right.”
Carole brushed her fingers to her lips. “No, I’ll stand. I’ll wait right here.” She planted herself outside the double doors, her eyes trained on the empty hallway beyond the glass. The weeks of the ordeal had beaten her down, her skin, her hair. She no longer looked put together. Yet no one who observed her at that moment saw anything more than the happiest mother on the floor.
The results of Charlie Franklin’s MRI came shortly before Esther and Jake arrived at the hospital in search of Della Cortez. They found her just outside the room where the little boy was resting, his mother by his side.
“Is he going to be all right?” Esther asked after peering in the open doorway.
“Outside of a head injury, he’s fine,” Dr. Cortez said. “Well nourished. Clean. Obviously not victimized, at least in any physical way.”
“No signs of abuse?” Esther asked.
“None.”
“So why did that freak take him?” Jake said.
The doctor looked at Jake. “That’ll be your job to figure out.”
“The MRI,” Esther said. “What does it tell us?”
The doctor picked at the film. “He was hit. It’s been a while, but there’s definitely the shadow of some bruising on the front and back of his brain. All of our brains float. Kids, even more so. It’s a coup-countercoup injury.”
“What did he say?” Esther asked. “How’s his memory of what happened to him?”
“Gone for the time being,” the doctor said. “Maybe forever. It’s missing from the time he was hit and abducted to the time he came to, and about the same amount of time prior to his injury. Retrograde amnesia is hard to understand. We just don’t know enough about it.”
“You mean he won’t be able to tell us what happened to him?” Jake asked.
Dr. Cortez shook her head. “Not impossible, but I doubt it. I’ve seen cases like this before. Car accidents, a few serious assault cases. People forget everything in a window that’s defined by the length of time they were unconscious and backward for the same amount of time prior to the incident.”
“So he won’t be able to tell us anything,” Esther reiterated.
“My guess—and, again, it’s only a guess—is no. While healed for the most part, his concussion was a severe one. Closed-head injuries like his are hard to understand because you just can’t see how bad they are. A lot goes on hidden in the skull.”
Esther looked at the scan, her eyes traveling over the areas of gray and black, stopping where the doctor indicated trauma had been picked up on the film.
“Not knowing what happened can be a great gift for some people,” Dr. Cortez said. “That way they don’t have to relive it over and over. Charlie is going to be fine. His family’s a shambles, but that’s another story. The boy will survive this. Kids are resilient. Adults can be another matter.”
Esther thought of Dan Miller. He hadn’t suffered a brain injury at Diamond Lake. Yet from what Liz Jarrett had reported to the officers who arrived first on the scene after finding Charlie, he’d never been able to get over what happened the day he left Bend with his son and a couple of neighbor kids for a day on his boat. It had been an enduring hurt festering below the surface.
“He told me that the biggest mistake he ever made was saving me instead of Seth,” Liz had said. “By taking Charlie, maybe he thought he had the chance to finally undo what happened.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
MISSING: NO MORE
Liz sat on the edge of the bed. Her shoulder injury from the battle with Dr. Miller had required just five stitches. The scar would be a lifelong reminder of what had happened. As if she’d ever need one. Owen had picked her up at the hospital and brought her home to change. She’d said almost nothing on the way there.
He sat beside her. “You’re in shock,” he said, patting her knee. “We both are.”
She didn’t respond. She just sat there, replaying everything in her mind and still unable to make sense of any of it.
“Dr. Miller saw us,” she said at last. “He saw what we did, Owen.”
Owen slid next to Liz and put his arm around her. She could feel the weight and warmth of his body, but it transmitted nothing to her. No comfort, no assurance. Nothing at all.
“And he’s dead, Liz.”
“Charlie’s alive.”
Owen persisted. “And he’s a very little boy. What does he know? Really, what could he know? He was out cold when we put him in the field.”
Alive, she thought. He was alive.
“He doesn’t remember anything,” he said.
Liz studied her husband’s eyes. Who is this man? “That’s now,” she finally said. “He might remember later.”
“He’s only three.” He was in salesman mode. “He won’t be able to make sense of any of it. He’s been traumatized. He’s too little to put it together . . . and even if he could, no one could make sense of it. We’re free.”
Liz lowered her eyes and gazed at her lap. She pressed her hand against her stomach. She felt sick inside.
“Dr. Miller is dead,” she said.
Owen relaxed his arm. “And thank God he is,” he said. “He was a whacked-out weirdo. He was the only one who could put the pieces together. I’m not sorry he’s dead.”