“Oh.” She smiles. “I was gonna say.”
I straighten up. “I’ll get you the note by the end of the month. Thanks for all your great help!”
Chapter Eight
Ann
Patient 34 givesno sign of awareness when I walk into his room the next day.
“Hey,” I say softly.
Nothing.
I look down at his hand. I get it in my head to grab it. I force my gaze back to his gorgeous eyes, rimmed in darkness, fixed on a spot on the ceiling. Water stains. Shitty old tiles. Pure 1950s institutional architecture. I pull out my phone and take a picture of the ceiling. It’s a way of connecting with him, grabbing that ceiling shot. I quickly put my phone aside.
Stop it.
I look back at his hand. I really want to touch him.
I compromise. I press two latex-gloved fingers to his throat, to feel the slow, steady thrust of blood through his veins. It’s a clinical touch. His neck is warm. Solid.
I force myself to remove my hand—I’m practically ravishing a tied-up patient. “I didn’t say anything. Just in case you’re wondering.”
His empty eyes are fixed on the ceiling. It’s weird how he can stay utterly still. He’s like a fucking yogi, being able to control himself like that. Or a sniper. Snipers can get really still. Some of them can slow their heartbeats.
I wait, really wanting to touch him again, but I feel suddenly too shy to. Touching the other patients is routine and robotic. “Give me your name. I know you can talk.”
Zilch.
I was reporting in Colombia once, staying in a beautiful mountainside village that was fogged in every morning, but then the sun would burn off some of the fog, and just the tips of the mountains would appear, as if out of the clouds—massive, menacing, and dark.
That mountain appearing out of the fog would fill me with a sense of awe.
It’s the way I feel at 34’s bedside. Shrouded majesty. The tip of something important. “Come on, tell me your name,” I whisper. “Tell me your story. Let me help you.”
Nothing.
“Fine, I’ll talk. Something’s going on with you. You don’t get hearings. You know you’re entitled to a hearing every six months, right? But you don’t get them. Or do you? But then why aren’t they listed? Why is Dr. Fancher handling your case personally? What’s up with that?”
I glance over my shoulder at the guys out there. Still the backs of their heads. I rest a hand on his chest, soaking in the massive thump of it.
“Come on. Can you bring down your pulse? Do you put yourself in this state, or are you muscling it?”
I wait.
“Fuck you! Come on, answer me, dammit! Just a name. If you’re being unlawfully held, maybe I can help you. The jig is up, I already know you can hear me.”
His stonewall act is more than frustrating. When he took my hand yesterday, it was the first time since the hospital bombing that I didn’t feel so fucking alone. And now it’s as if he, too, has abandoned me.
I get the cuff out. “Don’t worry, 34. I won’t give up on you. There are other ways to get your story.”
If he hears me, he doesn’t show it. Not that he would. I take his blood pressure. It’s up there—it’s not in the danger zone for a normal person, but this cocktail should have it seriously depressed. I’m getting the feeling I affect him. He definitely affects me.
“I’m going to take a past reading. Because here’s what I’m thinking—I’m thinking you don’t want to draw any extra attention to yourself. Amirite?” I’ve stopped expecting him to answer.
The freelance journalistlife is incredibly transitory. You create fierce friendships for short bursts of time in faraway places, and then you all get sent somewhere else, and the friendships are over. I kept in vague email touch with a few fellow journalists, but that ended after my kitten breakdown.
If I did have any friends left, they’d definitely be telling me to turn back. They’d be telling me I’m officially crossing deep into the land of bad ideas.