The Scattering

by Kimberly McCreight

  My chest is tightening. A legitimate panic attack coming on. Apparently an emergency where I am trapped alone in a room isn’t enough to neutralize my anxiety the way chasing after Cassie did. I try to use the deep breathing Dr. Shepard taught me, try to talk myself through. It helps a little. But not as much as it has been. And if I legitimately start panicking, it will only help prove their point. Then again, maybe I need to kick up a fuss. Demand to talk to my dad, immediately. Be the squeakiest wheel. I’m still staring out the window when the door opens behind me.

  “Not a great view, but not terrible either. At least it’s not a brick wall.”

  When I turn, there’s a man standing in the doorway. A little older than Alvarez, a little younger than my dad. He has kind blue eyes and sandy-colored hair, good-looking without being off-puttingly handsome. He has a folder in one hand.

  “I’m Dr. Haddox,” he says, smiling as he steps forward with his free hand outstretched. Close up, I can feel that he is nervous or uncomfortable or something, but he’s trying to cover that up by acting exceptionally calm and confident. It’s not working. At least not on me.

  Because I may be beginning to panic, but that is a distinct feeling—deeper in my gut and colder like before—than what I am feeling from him. His unease is of a higher frequency, hotter somehow, and coursing instead through my chest. The contrast is becoming more and more clear. This Dr. Haddox may be the one in charge, but he’s not at all sure he wants to be.

  I hesitate before reaching out my own hand. His face softens, relieved when I finally do.

  “How long have I been here?”

  “Oh, a few hours, I think.”

  “Where’s my phone?” I ask—and from the way Dr. Haddox twitches, probably too aggressively.

  “Um.” He looks around like he genuinely thinks we’re going to see it sitting somewhere. “I’m not exactly sure. But I do know that we are holding phones—different parents, different rules. Just trying to avoid any problems. Did you have it when you came in?”

  And I sense not a trace of deception as he steps over to the bureau and pulls open a drawer to look for it himself the same way I did only moments ago.

  “I have no idea if I had it or not,” I say. I remember that it was in my back pocket when I got to the bridge. For all I know it fell into the water. Or it could have easily gotten knocked from my pocket when I hit the ground. “I was unconscious when you dragged me in here. I don’t have any idea what I had.”

  He closes his eyes momentarily. “Right,” he says quietly. “About that—I’m very sorry. I don’t know what the mix-up was, but that never should have happened.”

  Mix-up. Finally, someone gets it.

  “So I can go then?” I ask, looking around again for my personal belongings, which I will gladly leave behind if it means I can get out of here.

  Dr. Haddox’s eyebrows bunch as he tilts his head to the side. “Oh no,” he says, uncomfortable. “By mix-up, I mean there was a whole procedure they were supposed to follow, none of which happened. Starting with the fact that they were supposed to go to your house.”

  “Not my house,” I say. “Jasper’s house.”

  “Jasper is your friend, right?” he asks. “The one you were on the bridge for.”

  “The one they were there for,” I say, wishing this doctor was altogether a little faster on the uptake. “Jasper’s mom called the police because I told her to. I was worried Jasper might, I don’t know, do something stupid. Things somehow got confused because they thought it was me they wanted.” I wait for some reaction, some sense that I am persuading him. But his confusion is still the only thing I can read. “Anyway, I’m here because they thought I was Jasper.”

  “No,” the doctor says, quietly, gently. “You’re here, Wylie, because an ambulance and officers were sent to your house. And”—he consults the folder in his hand—“it looks like it was your brother maybe who—?”

  “My brother?”

  “Yes, your brother Gideon? Oh no, wait, it says he didn’t know where you were. I think it was your friend’s mother who said that you were on the bridge,” he offers then with a quick, satisfied nod.

  Something new—apart from all the obvious of this being a messed-up situation—is not adding up. “Gideon didn’t know I was at Jasper’s house,” I say.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know. The details aren’t here.” And I suppose it is possible that Gideon could have guessed and sent them to the house of the only friend I still have. “Regardless, none of it should have happened the way it did. There is no—” He shakes his head and takes a breath. “It shouldn’t have happened. And I’m sorry. But it’s not a mistake that you are here. You’re supposed to be.”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask. “Why?”

  The worst part is that I can feel that he’s telling the truth—at least the truth as he believes it to be. My hands have started to shake.

  “I know this is hard to understand. And I promise I will explain. But if you could first just—”

  “No!”

  I shout so loud it echoes. And I am glad. Even if shouting has made the air feel thin.

  I fell for this kind of crap once before. With Quentin at the camp—wait one second and we’ll explain everything. I am not going to do it again. I am not going to go around trusting a bunch a people who have me locked up somewhere. You grab me off the street, I am going to assume that every single word out of your mouth is a lie. Even if you don’t realize it.

  “I understand that you’re upset, Wylie, and confused, and under the circumstances you have every right to be,” Dr. Haddox goes on, and his eyes flick toward the door. He’s wondering if he should call someone. Maybe even someone with a syringe who can help control me. And I do have to be careful. Strategic at the very least. They are the ones with the tranquilizers. But I also feel guilt from Dr. Haddox. He doesn’t like keeping me in the dark. If I keep pushing, I think his conscience will get the better of him. “I promise I will explain everything in a—”

  “Now,” I say, quiet and calm. I can do this. I can demand the answers I deserve without them being able to say I am “irrational” or “overemotional.” I can use what I know about Dr. Haddox—that he has his own doubts about this situation—to get him to tell me the truth. I may not want this whole Outlier thing, but I am sure as hell going to use it to my advantage. “Listen, you people cornered me and drugged me. I think the fact that I want an explanation makes me the most sane person ever.” I cross my arms. “Otherwise, I guess you’ll have to drug me again.”

  Dr. Haddox winces, then brings a hand to his forehead and rubs his temples. The drugging thing bothers him the most. It’s a card I might have to keep on playing.

  “Okay,” he says, motioning to the guest chair as he leans back against the bed. But I make no move to sit. “We think there is a chance that you—that all of you here—have something called PANDAS.”

  “PANDAS? What’s that?”

  “It’s a disorder that results from untreated strep. It can cause a whole range of psychological symptoms, primarily OCD and anxiety, though we suspect there may be a variation in this instance or that the symptoms of PANDAS may be broader than we realized previously, encompassing additional mood disturbances. Have you experienced heightened anxiety recently?”

  That’s not a question it’s in my best interest to answer.

  “I don’t have strep. I don’t even have a sore throat,” I say instead.

  “Strep is often asymptomatic. And in this instance it might have even been food borne. It wouldn’t have the usual symptoms you associate with strep, like a sore throat.”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask. “What the hell do you mean, food-borne?”

  “I know this is a lot to take in,” he says with a lopsided smile that is closer to a grimace. “It would be easier if they had explained things to your parents the way they were supposed to.”

  “Yeah, because you can’t keep me here without my dad’s consent.
” Of this much I am 100 percent sure. Assuming that they aren’t going with the whole “danger to yourself” approach, which they don’t seem to be. “That’s illegal.”

  Rachel was just talking about this the last time she was over, how it amounts to false imprisonment if the government holds you.

  “Not in a situation like this, I don’t think,” Dr. Haddox says, and almost like he feels bad about that. “Listen, I’m a doctor here to evaluate the likelihood of PANDAS. I don’t have all the information. I don’t even know exactly how they isolated all of you. But I am pretty sure they are acting within their discretion legally. The NIH has done this kind of thing before with measles and Ebola.”

  “Ebola?” I ask.

  “Don’t worry, PANDAS is nothing like Ebola. It was just another example of something that the NIH has dealt with.”

  The NIH. Someone called my dad to meet with the NIH in DC on the same day the NIH puts me in some hospital? That is definitely not a coincidence.

  “I need to talk to my dad.”

  “Absolutely. We already have called him more than once and haven’t been able to reach him,” Dr. Haddox says. “Do you know where he might be?”

  Washington, DC. The airplane. That’s probably where he is.

  “What time is it?”

  “Almost one, I think.”

  “He’s on an airplane,” I say. “But he should be in DC soon. With his phone on again.”

  “We’ll keep trying him definitely,” Dr. Haddox says. And then his face gets tight. “But there is broad authority in potentially infectious situations like this for the government—the NIH in this case, though I suspect the CDC, too, eventually—to act in the interests of public safety.” That line isn’t his own. This doctor was given it to use. “Again, that doesn’t excuse the specifics of your situation. I suspect, honestly, the officers and EMTs panicked. They haven’t been told much. This is an unusual situation, and we’ve all been told to keep information flow to a minimum. They were trying to do their jobs. I’m not excusing what they did—”

  “Except you are,” I say, but matter-of-fact. “That’s exactly what you’re doing.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says, turning to look at the ground. “My understanding is that we’re only keeping you here so we can run some tests. We’ll need to do a simple blood draw, conduct an interview, make sure that nothing gets worse. We’ll give you all a course of antibiotics to treat the strep and that should be that. If this is PANDAS, the psychological symptoms generally resolve on their own fairly quickly.” Dr. Haddox looks up finally, meeting my eyes. Determination, that’s the emotion. He is determined to do his job right, to be trustworthy. And I do believe that he believes what he’s saying. I also know that is not the same thing as him being right. “It is strange to see so many people fall ill in a small geographical area, and PANDAS is a relatively rare, noncontagious condition. At least up until now. It’s raised questions about how you all might have contracted it. That’s why the NIH got involved, and they got us involved.”

  “So you don’t work for the NIH?”

  “Oh no, I’m just a fellow. I work for a research professor. My boss is an expert so the NIH reached out to him. And now we’re here,” he says like he’s still not sure how it happened. And is not happy about it.

  “And you don’t know why they think I have this?”

  “No,” he says. “They haven’t told us that. Just that they have reason to suspect you all do.”

  You all. I am afraid to ask how many of us there are. And I’m not sure if it should be making me feel better or worse than when I thought I was being committed.

  “Someone from the NIH is supposed to be here soon to go over all the details. I’m sure it sounds ridiculous that I don’t know, but I honestly don’t.”

  “And what if I want to leave?” I ask. “What if I don’t want the treatment or the tests? Can I walk out that door?”

  Dr. Haddox takes a breath. I feel him consider dodging the question, then decide instead to play it straight.

  “No, you can’t leave,” he says. “Not yet. But if you come with me, I can introduce you to the others and schedule your blood draw. That will at least—well, move things along.”

  “I need to know if Jasper’s okay first,” I say. “My friend from the bridge? Dr. Alvarez said she was going to check on him.”

  He nods. “Of course, she was headed to make the call when I came in here. We can find her on the way.”

  9

  THE HALLWAY IS EMPTY. NOT A HUMAN BEING IN SIGHT. THOUGH IN ALL OTHER respects, it looks like a normal hospital: a nurses’ station with expandable racks full of manila folders, assorted medical equipment scattered nearby, and open rooms lining the hall, even an unoccupied stretcher at the far end. But there is something deeply unnerving about the hollow silence. Like we’ve stumbled upon a place that has already been evacuated.

  “Where is everybody?” I ask.

  “They’re all down in the common room,” he says, motioning ahead.

  “What is this place? And why are there no people in it?”

  “Oh,” Dr. Haddox says, looking surprised again by how little I know. “Boston General Hospital, but this is a new wing. It’s at minimal capacity. Come on, I think you and I will both feel better when you’re in the common area.”

  As we’re stepping past the nurses’ station, I spot a phone on the desk. “Can I try to call my dad here?” I ask. I do want to call him, but it is also a test.

  “Of course, absolutely,” Dr. Haddox says without hesitating, and he seems genuinely relieved. Like he’d love nothing more than for me to have that conversation. He steps forward and hands me the receiver. “Dial nine to get an outside line.”

  I still expect for something to stop me, for Dr. Haddox to have some sudden excuse. But then the phone is ringing, the call going right to voice mail. I leave a message. “Dad, it’s Wylie. I’m at Boston General Hospital in the—”

  “Dwyer Wing.”

  “Dwyer Wing,” I say. “These people brought me here. They’re from the NIH. They’re saying I and some other people have some PANDAS thing. Can you come here? Or call? As soon as you can?”

  I hang up, look at Dr. Haddox. “He can call me, right?”

  “Of course,” he says. “We’re hoping he does. As I said, we’ve already left several messages. Dr. Cornelia specifically said that—”

  “Wait, who?” My heart has picked up even more speed.

  “Dr. Cornelia. He’s an immunologist who is affiliated with Metropolitan New York Hospital. He’s my supervisor at Cornell.”

  Dr. Cornelia from Cornell, of course. I should have made the connection as soon as Dr. Haddox mentioned some “disorder” and the NIH. Obviously, it’s all connected. I consider calling my dad right back, adding that Dr. Cornelia is involved. But I am now afraid of giving up to Dr. Haddox the connection between Cornelia and my dad. Right now, at least, it still seems like Dr. Haddox has no idea who I am.

  “Do you want to try to call someone else?” Dr. Haddox motions to the phone for emphasis. He wants to be sure I know he’s not standing in my way.

  I nod as I dial Jasper’s number. When the call goes again straight to voice mail, it makes my stomach lurch. I wish I hadn’t called.

  I think about trying Gideon, too, but he was so very angry this morning. And then there is the fact that he pointed them in the right direction without even warning me. What if he is glad this happened? What if he doesn’t try to hide it? And beyond Gideon there isn’t anyone else to call except Rachel. But I want to talk to my dad first before I invite her to wade in and maybe make things worse. I don’t trust Rachel’s judgment, at all.

  “Anyone else?” Dr. Haddox asks.

  I shake my head. “No, that’s okay. Maybe later.”

  WE CONTINUE THROUGH two swinging doors into a small lobby area. Creepily empty, too, like everywhere else, but for the furniture—two smooth, light-gray leather sofas across from each other and a steel-colored rug with
a grid marked out in even, cream-colored lines. There’s also a coffee table and a group of sleek armchairs lined up along one wall. But there aren’t any magazines stacked up on the tables or discarded coffee cups on the sideboard. Like no one has ever really been here. Like no one is supposed to be. The signage on the other side points this way and that—Francis J. Dwyer Memorial Wing to the right, Staff Meeting Room and Augustus Burn Center left.

  I’m about to ask where Dr. Alvarez is. To demand that we find her so she can tell me what she knows about Jasper when we turn a corner and almost collide with her.

  “There you are,” Dr. Haddox says.

  “I’m sorry, Wylie, that I took so long.” She smiles. But she’s uncomfortable.

  “Did they find Jasper?” I ask.

  “Not in the—no,” she says. “Which is a good sign. The police said they are confident that if he did fall they would have spotted some sign by now.” She hesitates, trying to choose her words carefully. “I guess they know where people usually turn up from the currents . . .” She glances in Dr. Haddox’s direction. “I did ask them to confirm with Jasper’s parents that he made it home safely. If I were you, that’s the only thing that would put my mind fully at ease. The police promised to call me back personally on my cell when they’d confirmed. And I promise, I will call Dr. Haddox as soon as I hear from them.”

  She says this with a kind of grim determination—like staying on the case won’t be easy, but she’s up to the task. I want to find it comforting, but it is just the opposite. Still, overall I do feel less panicked about Jasper, but that’s an instinct that would be easier to follow if Dr. Alvarez didn’t still seem so upset.

  “What’s wrong then?” I ask her. “You seem more worried than before.”

  Dr. Alvarez smiles in a way that is not at all convincing, then puts a kind hand on my arm and squeezes. “Nothing—nothing about Jasper. I just—don’t feel well. Maybe something I ate.” That’s a lie for sure. No matter how good Dr. Alvarez’s intentions, that does not make it any more comforting.