The very last time I fought the neighborhood boys, the police came. Afterwards I got tied to a tree and beaten with a piano wire.
My family got the money to fix Glenda’s lip that winter. She was pretty after the operation, and she didn’t want me around anymore. My family adopted kids who had things wrong with them and tried to fix them up, but there’s no operation to fix you when you’re savage inside.
That spring, my father took me and the other kids camping far, far up north. It was just after my eighth birthday. He took me aside and told me the police were going to lock me up forever when we got back. I hadn’t hurt anybody for weeks, but I knew it was true. People always said I’d be locked up in the end. He said they were afraid I’d get away, deep into the wilderness where they’d never find me.
My adoptive father never did anything nice for me, so it meant a lot that he told me this secret. I took the canoe when he and Glenda and the other kids went on a hike. I took it deep, deep, deep into the wilderness where they’d never find me.
The police sent helicopters and crews to look for me, but my father had given me a long head start.
It was the nicest thing anybody ever did for me.
The wilderness was good at first. I felt lonely, but I was free, and there were no rules to break, nobody to beat you or confine you. Campers trekked through sometimes, but they rarely saw me. I would steal food from them before I figured out how to get it for myself.
Years later there were the campers who wanted to party and fuck. They, too, saw me as a savage. They wanted to fuck the savage. Or rather, for the savage to fuck them. That’s how they would say it.
My fingertips feel funny. I remember I’m in the hospital. Tied to my bed. She’s here. She’s scrubbing my fingertips. Are my fingertips dirty?
She tucks something cool around my fist. Other voices.Shit. Shit shit shit.A chemical sweet flower smell. Nurse Zara.
Nurse Zara’s tone is angry.Not your patient anymore…not supposed to be on this wing. Nurse Ann stands—I can tell by the location of her voice.Unconscious…state protocols…needed to see…Hippocratic oath…
Nurse Ann leaves with Nurse Zara, leaves my fingers wet, my hands covered with something. And this feeling of bliss where she touched me.
I don’t strain to hear the bird songs now, trying to let them take me back. Instead, I go back to the moment of her touch, skin on skin. I’m drifting, lost.
Nurse Ann took her glove off and touched me. She wanted her skin to touch mine.
Everybody who has ever been nice to me has actually wanted to hurt me, and she’s part of this place. I shouldn’t trust her.
Still, her touch felt like heaven.
When Donny went after her, I had to stop him. I couldn’t let him hurt her.
I replay her visit in my mind—the sound of her pulling off the glove. Her hand on my chest. On my heart, rising and falling with my breath. Distant doors. Bells. Buzzers.Fuck fuck fuck, 34,she said.
Sparkling green eyes. Fingertips the weight of a cloud. Curly hair the color of peanuts. Eyelashes to match.
Something wet on my fingertips. I wake with a jerk. It’s Nurse Ann. She has my hand. She scrubbing my fingers again…have to get this off…sorry…not supposed to be here…fuck fuck fuck…
When she’s done with my fingers, she scrubs the sheet around my hand.
“I’m going to get this story if it’s the last thing I do. You watch, 34. I am going to investigate the shit out of this. I’m going to get answers for you even if I have to rip them right out of somebody.” She scrubs some more, and then she’s gone.
There’s just the endless ticking of the clock.
Her touch is what I think about when Donny comes back. He stands where Nurse Ann did, to block the camera, but instead of scrubbing my fingertips he hits me in the ribs. The pain spikes through me, but it’s not enough to erase her touch.Feel good? You like this, motherfucker?He fits his hands around my throat. I can’t move my arms. I gasp for air.You like this? Who’s the big man now?
I’m spinning. Darkness creeps into my vision, my brain.…need…air.
You wanna see what I do to her next? You wanna know what I’m gonna give her?
I jerk at my bonds just as the darkness starts to consume me.
I wake up gasping and coughing, alone again with the ticking clock.
Chapter Twelve
Ann