“Ah ha! Nothing’s unintentional.” Nikki pointed an accusing finger at her and grinned. “You told me that once, remember?”
“Ah ha.” Kate tried to appear wise but couldn’t help wondering if Ira had left those peanuts in her office on purpose, as a sort of test. And Kate had failed to even notice them. How long had they been sitting there, gathering dust? He was probably wondering what the hell was wrong with his favorite former resident that she didn’t even notice the “nuts” on her bookshelf.
“What’s that?” Nikki asked, pointing at Kate’s desk. “Is that new?”
“Oh. It’s a paperweight. A trilobite.”
“Wow. And a big one.” Nikki McCormack had an interest in paleontology. She knew perfectly well what a trilobite was. “Coltraenia oufatensis. Of the order Phacopida.” She shifted around in her seat and yanked her creeping miniskirt back down. “Hey, I just thought of something. What if I end up like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like a trilobite? Maybe a thousand years from now? Or maybe just my skull, holding down paperwork so it doesn’t blow away? I could end up like that, right?”
“I doubt that very much.”
“Why do you doubt it? Why couldn’t I end up a fossil on somebody’s desk?”
“Is that what you’re worried about? Being studied like a fossil?”
Nikki’s lips drew together in a long flat line.
Kate picked up the trilobite. “Is that what you think, Nikki? That I’m studying you? That you mean nothing more to me than this trilobite?”
Nikki’s troubled eyes glazed over, and she looked away.
“Because nothing could be further from the truth. You’re very real to me, and very much alive, and it’s my biggest hope that someday soon, you’ll learn to love yourself as much as others love you.”
Tears squeezed out of Nikki’s beautiful eyes and spilled down her cheeks. Eight months ago, Kate had diagnosed her during her crucial four-week stay at Tillmann-Stafford Hospital’s Child Psychiatric Unit, and she’d come to the conclusion that the girl suffered from bipolar disease and depression, which made it impossible to predict if she would be alive a few decades from now. Would she live to see thirty-two? Kate certainly hoped so, but the statistics were sobering. Her role was to improve those odds.
“Nikki,” she said softly. “We’ve discussed this before, but I’d like to brush on it again. Since I’ll be on vacation next week, Dr. Lippencott would be happy to see you for therapy while I’m gone. Can we set up an appointment?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Trust,” the girl said in a shaky voice.
“Trust?”
“I don’t trust people. I’m supposed to trust them, right? Well, I don’t.” She grabbed a tissue from the floral-patterned box placed strategically on the blond-wood table next to her chair and blew her nose.
“That’s okay. It takes time to trust people. But you can trust Dr. Lippencott. Should I set up an appointment for next Tuesday? Same time?”
Doubt misted her face. “Just because you say I should trust him doesn’t mean I can or I will.”
“No. But what I mean is… I trust him. And you trust me.”
“One plus one doesn’t always equal two.”
“That’s true, but—”
“Wait. I almost forgot.” The girl lifted her scruffy backpack off the floor, settled it on her lap and rummaged through it. “I got you a few things,” she said excitedly.
A red flag went up. “I can’t accept gifts from my patients, Nikki. We already discussed this…”
“They aren’t gifts per se.” She took out a handful of weathered items and lined them up on the edge of Kate’s desk: a barnacled pair of 1950s eyeglasses; a translucent tortoiseshell comb; and a corroded compass. “You can find the most amazing things at the beach. People throw all this stuff away, and it ends up on some garbage barge in the middle of the ocean, and they dump it overboard, and then it washes ashore. Some of it’s very old,” she said breathlessly. “And look, I saved the best for last.” She reached into a hidden compartment of her backpack and took out a circular piece of metal, which she placed in Kate’s hand. “It’s made out of lead. Guess what it is, Dr. Wolfe. Go on. Guess.”
Kate studied the object in her palm. “A button without the button holes?”
“It’s a skirt weight from the twenties. Insane, right? Women used to sew them into the hems of their dresses to keep the wind from blowing them up. Pretty cool, huh?”
Kate smiled. “Very interesting.”
“They were so modest back then,” Nikki said wistfully.
Kate’s fingers curled around the skirt weight. “It was a different time.”
“They were all veddy prop-ah ladies and gentlemen,” Nikki said in a mock-British accent, tugging on the hem of her miniskirt.
Kate tried to hand the gifts back to her, but Nikki shook her head. “You keep them. I’ll take them back at our next session. That way you’ll have to come back.” Her smile was forced. “Where are you guys going for your vacation?”
Kate decided not to press the issue. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be back in two weeks.”
“Two weeks,” Nikki whispered, touching her flushed cheeks. “What if I… need something? I mean, what if something comes up?”
“You can always call Dr. Lippencott, or else you can call me,” Kate said. “You have all my numbers, right? Call me any time, Nikki. I mean it. Day or night.” She plucked a business card out of the wooden cardholder on her desk and wrote down her personal contact information again. “Everything’s going to be okay. That’s what I want you to understand.”
“Thanks.” Nikki took the business card and held it in her lap.
“Promise me you’ll call if you need anything. I’m serious. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said softly.
Kate gave her an encouraging smile. “You know, my sister and I used to play this game when we were little, where I’d measure her height on the kitchen wall. Always in the same spot, once a week, to see if she’d grown any taller. Savannah was on the short side, and she was an impatient little girl… she couldn’t wait to get bigger. And so, just to please her, I’d cheat a little by adding a sliver of height to the chart. She’d get so excited, thinking she’d grown taller during the week. That was our little game.” Kate leaned forward. “But I can’t do that here, Nikki. I can’t add a sliver of height to your chart. I can’t fudge the truth. I’m going to be absolutely honest. No cheating. Okay? We’ve got a long way to go, but I promise, we’ll get there together. You aren’t alone.”
Nikki nodded rigidly. “And you’ll be back in two weeks?”
Kate smiled. “Two short weeks.”
2
KATE’S BOYFRIEND COULDN’T WAIT for his steaming hot pizza to cool down before he took a bite. “Ow. Ow.” Dr. James Hill waved his hand in front of his mouth and gulped down some beer.
James was a psychiatrist in the Adult Locked Unit at the same hospital where Kate worked. His patients were often the toughest to deal with: psychotics and schizophrenics who’d fallen through the cracks; often homeless, often hopeless. James dealt with the pressure by cracking a cynical smile at the broken mental health system that didn’t help these people. He shared his stories with Kate and laughed at some of his patients’ misadventures. Dark humor was a coping mechanism, and even psychiatrists needed to cope.
“Okay, you can mock me now,” he said, wiping his mouth on a paper napkin.
“Me? I never mock you.”
“Ha. You mock me every day. As a matter of fact, I’d really miss it if you didn’t mock me.”
“Okay. Give me a second.”
He laughed. “You’ll think of something.”
“Anyway.” She smiled happily. “Thanks for bringing me to my favorite place in the whole world and not insisting we go somewhere fancy.” She said the word fancy as if it had air quotes around it.
“Fancy schmancy. Who needs fancy? Happy birthday, babe. How’s your pizza?”
“I love this fucking pizza.”