by Lisa Gardner
Two o’clock. Everything will be better at two o’clock. I turn on the shower, step in the spray, and begin to shave my legs.
I return downstairs nearly an hour later, an eternity in my world. I’ve taken the time to smooth my favorite rose-scented lotion into my skin. I’ve buffed my nails, loofahed my feet, used a special conditioner on my hair. If not prettier, at least I’m shinier than I used to be. It’s the best I can do.
Evan’s slouched into the sofa. The History Channel is blaring, the station having segued from the English tunnel to Boston’s Big Dig. The sandwich’s gone. Evan appears glassy-eyed. First the morning’s dose of Ativan, now this.
I sit next to Evan, feather back his blonde hair. He stirs enough to look at me.
“Pretty,” he says thickly, and it amazes me how I can smile and feel my heart break at the same time.
“I love you.”
“Tired,” he says.
“Would you like to rest?”
“TV!” he yells, not totally under the influence yet.
“After TV, then.”
He shifts away, his gaze riveted once more to the magic box. We sit side by side, my son sinking deeper into drugged oblivion, me fidgeting with my push-up bra.
The show breaks for a commercial. I glance at my watch. Ten minutes to go. Now or never. I pick up the remote, turn off the TV. I wait for Evan’s squawk, but it never comes. He’s slack-jawed, already two beats from unconsciousness.
He doesn’t protest as I slip an arm around his shoulders, guide him off the sofa and up the stairs. For an eight-year-old boy, he feels nearly weightless against me. The ADHD, we’re told, his constant agitation. He could follow Michael Phelps’s diet, and still lose weight.
In his room, I tuck him in bed fully clothed. It’s his second nap of the day and I will pay for it later. A long, sleepless night where my son will work off the edgy aftereffects by trashing the house.
But it will be worth it, I think. As long as I can have two o’clock.
I glance at my watch. Three minutes and counting.
“Mommy,” my son mumbles.
“Yes, Evan?”
“Love you.”
“I love you, too, honey.”
“Sorry.”
“What’s that, honey?”
“This morning. Didn’t hurt him. Wouldn’t hurt him. Just wanted … a friend. Nobody likes me. Not even Daddy.”
I don’t say anything, just brush his cheek and watch his thick lashes flutter close. I want to tell him it’ll be okay. I want to tell him we’ll go to the park another day. I want to tell him he’ll make new friends and that his father still loves him.
Instead, I slip into the hallway, and lock my son in his room.
Doorbell rings.
A last nervous sweep of my hand through my hair, then I head downstairs.
My lover waits on the doorstep. He’s dressed casually, white T-shirt stretched over his toned chest. His hair curls damply against the back of his neck. He smells of soap and sunshine, and I want to take a moment to breathe him in. Youth, freedom, carefree days.
He smells of what I’ve lost, and some days I want him for that as much as anything.
“I have only an hour,” he announces. I’m not surprised. In the beginning, he lingered. We shared foreplay, pillow talk, post-coital glow. Then something shifted. He became less charming, more demanding, while our interludes became less romantic, more transactional.
I can feel the edginess in him now. He’ll be rough again, even abusive. The woman I used to be would’ve sent him home.
Now I open my door wider and let him into my home.
“Evan?” he checks. Have to give him credit for that. We met because of Evan. One good thing to come from this mess, I used to think. I’m not as sure anymore.
“Asleep,” I say.
“Locked in?”
“We won’t be interrupted.”
He gets a smile that I already feel between my legs. He leads me to the family room, his callused fingers wrapped tightly around my wrist.
At the last second, I balk. Looking for, wanting …
“What about my surprise?” I hear myself ask.
“It’s not Monday,” he says, leading me toward the sofa.
“Two days. Close enough.”
“Impatient?” He slants me a look. It is both flirtatious and dangerous. There are shadows in his eyes. Why have I never noticed that before? His blue eyes, once so clear, are now as dark as midnight. The phantom, I think. The phantom just won’t leave me the fuck alone.
Then I don’t want to think anymore. I don’t want to know.
He pulls me to the sofa, where minutes before my son slumped in a semi-catatonic state. Except now I’m the one bending over the arm of the sofa, while male hands raise my skirt, palm my ass, and lower a zipper behind me.
I smell the August sun radiating from his skin. It takes me to another place, where I’m still young and my husband still loves me and we’re walking hand in hand in Mexico, watching the sun set and thinking this is only the beginning of the best days of our lives.
Another man’s fingers working against me, stretching me, preparing me. My own back arching instinctively against him.
Then he’s inside me. The first hard thrust. His grunt of satisfaction.
“You will do exactly as I say,” he orders.
I close my eyes and give myself away.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
DANIELLE
“What are you doing here?”
“Working. What does it look like?” I shoved my bag in the locker.
“You’re not on the schedule,” Karen, my boss, persisted.
“Last-second change,” I said neutrally. “Genn wanted to attend some cookout with her kids, so I agreed to take her shift.”
Karen adjusted her wire-rimmed glasses. She crossed her arms over her chest, letting me know I was in for a fight.
“Have you looked in a mirror lately?” she demanded. “Because if you have, I think we can both agree why you won’t be working tonight.”
I returned her stare, chin up, shoulders square. I could be stubborn, too. Especially tonight.
I fell asleep on the sofa after my visit with Dr. Frank. I dreamed of my father again, except this time he wasn’t standing in the doorway. This time, he was in my room. Dr. Frank was right: There were things I’d never dealt with, events I’d never disclosed. I held them at bay, stuffed into a small closet in the back of my mind, where I kept the door locked tight. Except once a year, they managed to escape. They crept under the door, wiggled through the lock, then stalked through the dark corridors of my memory.
“Danny girl. It’s happy time….”
As a professional, I understood that the unconscious mind had a will of its own. As a person, however, I wondered if this is how it felt to go insane. My heart raced even when I was sitting still. My hands fought a tremor even in the August heat.
I couldn’t go home tonight. I just couldn’t, and this place was as close to family as I had left.
“I’ll be okay,” I tried now, but Karen wasn’t buying it.
“First off,” she stated crisply, “you were involved in not one but two major incidents with the same patient.”
I looked at her blankly. Maybe I had gone crazy, because I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“Lucy,” she supplied, reading my face. “She escaped yesterday. In fifteen years I’ve never had a child disappear. The hospital is demanding a formal investigation, as well they should. It’s unconscionable that a child can slip through two sets of locked doors and have not a single nurse or milieu counselor notice. For heaven’s sake, we’re lucky nothing worse happened.”
“But I found her!” I protested. “I’m the one who figured out where she went and got her back.”
“You were the one who should’ve been watching her in the first place.”
I hung my head, suitably shamed.
“Then, last night, I un
derstand you and Lucy went a few rounds in the ring. To look at your face, you didn’t win.”
“I dealt with the situation—”
“You weren’t even on the clock, Danielle. You were supposed to be on your way home, not rushing down the hall to tend a child!”
“Lucy started screaming hysterically. What was I supposed to do, sit around and watch? We needed to calm her and I had the best chance of getting it done.”
“Danielle, a child physically attacked you! Your face is covered with scratches; you have bruises on your neck. I’m not worried about Lucy—you did calm her. But it was at a huge price to yourself. We need to debrief as a unit. You need physical and emotional support as an individual. Instead, you’re pretending it’s business as usual. That’s not healthy.”
“I’m fine—”
“You look like hell.”
“It’s been twenty-five fucking years. Of course I look like hell!” Too late I caught the slip, tried to rein myself in. But I was breathing hard and my heart was racing. I wanted to run.
“Have you been drinking?” Karen asked me.
“No.” Not yet.
“Good. For your sake, I’m happy to hear it. But you still can’t work tonight.”
“I have to work tonight. I can contain it. I can be professional. We both know I’m good at my job.”
“Danielle,” she said kindly, “you’re great at your job—when you’re a hundred percent. You aren’t a hundred percent right now, and these kids deserve nothing less.”
She was going to send me home. I couldn’t believe it. Karen was going to let the unit operate short-staffed rather than accept me.
“I want you to go downstairs,” she said now, voice brisk. “You need a medical evaluation, if not for your own sake, then for our insurance company. I’m giving you a five-day leave of absence. Rest. Talk to one of our counselors. Deal with yourself. Then you can return to dealing with these kids.”
I can’t go home, I can’t go home, I can’t go home.
“I’ll go downstairs,” I heard myself say. “I’ll get a physical exam. Then can I come back? If the doctor says so …”
“Danielle …”
“I’ll help her.”
I looked up. Karen turned around. Greg was standing behind her. We hadn’t heard him enter, but it was obvious from his expression that he’d been listening for a bit.
He looked good. Dark hair still slightly damp from a recent shower. Broad shoulders filling the narrow space, a black gym bag slung over his shoulder.
“She can work with me,” he said, looking at Karen. “It’ll be the buddy system. That way, we’ll have someone on the floor to supervise meds, but you won’t have to worry about Danielle going solo.”
I felt pathetically grateful. How many times had I rejected this man? And he was still the best friend I had.
Karen looked like she wanted to protest, but at the last second, she hesitated. A soft heart beat beneath her stern exterior. God knows, once a year she cut me more slack than I deserved.
“Downstairs first,” Karen stated abruptly, staring at me. “If an intern will clear you physically, and Greg still feels like babysitting…”
I winced at the dig. She was testing me, seeing how in control of my emotions I was. “Exam first,” I agreed meekly. “Then I’d love to work with Greg. We’re a good team.”
I had shamelessly tossed him the bone. He smiled, briefly, but it didn’t reflect in his eyes. Maybe he knew me better than I thought.
The matter resolved, Karen squeezed past Greg back to the main office. It was nearly midnight, and she still had her own paperwork to close out before heading home; a head nurse didn’t get much sleep.
Alone with Greg, I felt awkward again. He opened a locker, stuffed in his bag. I stood there, watching him. He looked tired, I thought. A little worn around the edges. Or maybe that was me.
“Thank you,” I said at last.
He didn’t look at me. “Night’s young,” he said finally. “Don’t thank me yet.”
The police arrived at the PECB shortly after 1:30 a.m. They buzzed at the front doors—one, two, three times. They could see us. We could see them. And they got to wait.
The unit was in bedlam. Jorge, who normally shared a room with Benny, had woken up agitated shortly after twelve-thirty. Ed pulled Jorge aside to read a book. Jorge made it halfway through the story, then yanked the book out of Ed’s hand and hurtled it across the hall, where it hit Aimee in the head. She woke up screaming, and the rest of the kids were off and running from there.
Now Aimee was curled up under a table in the fetal position, Jimmy and Benny were running laps around the chairs, and nine-year-old Sampson was standing in front of the closed kitchenette, yelling shrilly for a snack.
I’d been cleared by an intern just in time to chase five-year-old Becca down the hall. Somehow, she’d gotten her hands on a folded game board and she was beating it against any person unfortunate enough to cross her path. Greg was trying to untangle Jorge from Ed, while Cecille was working containment in front of Lucy’s room, because we absolutely, positively couldn’t have Lucy adding to the mix.
Third time by the receptionist’s desk, I managed to hit the buzzer for the cops. I got Candy Land away from Becca about the same time the police entered the unit. The curly blonde took the lead, three dark-suited officers fanning out behind her in the main hall.
“I have a warrant,” the lead detective started.
A book flew down the hall. To give the Boston police some credit, the detectives jumped pretty fast.
“What the hell …” the sergeant muttered, the scene finally registering.
“Whatever you want, it gets to wait,” I informed them crisply. “Keep your back to the wall. Don’t touch anything. Oh, and look out. I think Jorge just got away.”
Sure enough, the wiry six-year-old was bolting down the hall straight toward us, thin arms pumping, blue eyes bulging. He looked like he was racing away from every bad thing that had ever happened to him. I knew the feeling.
I got one arm around Jorge’s waist as he went flying by, and converted his momentum into a graceful little twirl I practiced at least once a week. “Hey, buddy, where’s the fire?” I asked, as if we did this kind of thing every night at one a.m.
“Bad man, bad man, bad man, bad man, bad man!” Jorge yelled.
“Did you have a nightmare, chiquito? Sounds like a doozy. Why don’t you come with me, and I’ll see what I can do to make all those bad men disappear.”
“¡Maldito, maldito, maldito!” Jorge added, as I led him down the hall. Ed and Greg shot me grateful looks. Then they were in the common area, where Aimee needed rescuing, and Jimmy and Benny had to be unwound like clocks, and then there was the care and feeding of Sampson….
In Jorge’s room, I turned on every light, then went through the motions of checking each nook and cranny. I even shook out his covers to prove no monsters were hiding in his bed. When he remained unconvinced, I went with plan B, moving a mat into the hall and preparing an emergency nest. We lay down, side by side, and I pointed at the silver half globes dotting the ceiling, explaining how their reflective surfaces would allow him to see any bad men coming. “They’re like a personal protection system,” I told him. “They’ll keep you safe.”
Jorge’s shoulders finally relaxed. He snuggled closer to me and I picked up a Dora book. By the halfway mark, his eyes were drooping. The hallway had quieted, the milieu restored.
Just the detectives remained, conspicuous in their dark suits. Greg paused in front of them. They were speaking too low for me to hear. Greg frowned, shook his head, then frowned again. Finally, he pointed toward me and the blonde turned expectantly.
In full view of her gaze, I finished the first book. Then I set it down, picked up a second, and opened the cover.
Whatever she had to say could wait, mostly because I didn’t want to hear it.
“Danny girl,” my father sang inside my head.
I know,
I know, I know.
“We have a warrant for all records pertaining to Oswald James Harrington,” Sergeant D.D. Warren explained ten minutes later, stony-faced. “We also have a warrant for all information pertaining to Tika Rain Solis. Detective Phil LeBlanc will oversee the transfer of all information. The rest of us have questions for the staff.”
I stared at Sergeant Warren blankly. She was still holding out several official-looking documents. For lack of anything better to do, I took them from her. They definitely read like warrants.
“I’ll … I’ll have to call Karen Rober, the nurse manager,” I said at last.
“You do that.”
“Are you sure this isn’t something that can wait till morning? We run a lean crew at night, and can’t spare any staff.”
“I’m sure.” She didn’t blink and it occurred to me that the sergeant had planned this one-thirty ambush. Nine-to-five hours would’ve meant dealing with management, not to mention the hospital’s cadre of lawyers. Middle-of-the-night raids, on the other hand …
“You’re going to have to be patient,” I said, feeling frazzled. I’d never been served with a warrant before. How much did one give a detective? The warrant said everything, but what did that mean? The staff wasn’t equipped for this. I wasn’t equipped for this.
I needed to visit Lucy. She’d made it through Jorge’s meltdown. I wondered if that meant she was now curled up and sleeping in a moonbeam.
“We’ll move into the conference room,” Sergeant Warren declared briskly.
“Conference room?”
“You know, the room we used last time.”
“You mean the classroom?”
“Whatever. Don’t worry. We know our way there.” She started striding down the hall, two of the detectives peeling off to follow her. The fourth cop remained standing in front of me. Mid-forties, a little doughy around the middle, he wore a sheepish smile. Good cop, I decided. Anyone who worked with Sergeant Warren would have to be.
“Detective Phil LeBlanc,” he introduced himself. “If you show me where you keep your records, I can take it from there.”
