by Mindy Mejia
20
* * *
THE NEXT DAY at work, while I led a new group session with four nonverbal women, Lucas tried to escape again.
We were doing deep-breathing exercises and humming out our breath, or at least I was and maybe one patient. The other three sat in their wheelchairs staring at the walls. Hard to blame them. Staring vacantly at the walls was pretty much what I’d done all night after getting home to a dark house and Dad’s closed bedroom door. He’d already left by the time I got up this morning, but there was a note on the counter next to a paper bag. The note said, “Going out for one last run at the Bannockburn. Maybe we’ll get lucky this time.” I opened the bag and found copper-plated drawer handles, polished on the edges and shimmering with deep mahogany and streaks of gold. She would love them, if she ever came back.
I stopped humming and looked around at the group.
“It doesn’t get better, does it?” I glanced from face to wrinkled face, searching for any hint of reaction. Their expressions sagged, unresponsive. Only one woman, the one who had been breathing with me, met my eyes. Tears leaked out of hers, but she didn’t look away. She kept breathing, the exaggerated deep inhale that lifted her shoulders, and then hummed the air out in a noise that turned to a lament, her tiny, soprano ode to sorrow. I crouched in front of her wheelchair and held her hands.
“Maybe coming here was your only way out.”
The tears fell silently off her chin. Her fingers rustled underneath mine like little birds in a cage.
“Let’s just breathe.”
And that’s how the attending day nurse found me, kneeling in front of a crying woman as we whistled our breath in and out together.
“Maya! Your boyfriend’s trying to escape again.”
“Jesus Christ.”
I shot up and out of the ward, shouting at the nurse to help the women back to their rooms. I ran down a flight of stairs and sprinted through a vacant corridor of offices. As I neared ward two a thought almost sent me stumbling.
Whose side was I on?
The badge slapping against my thigh was a Congdon badge. I was a Congdon employee, here to rehabilitate and protect patients, especially from themselves.
But everything in me wanted to find Lucas and keep running.
Just as the realization hit, two orderlies rushed out of another stairwell and the three of us barreled through the door into the high security men’s ward. A crowd of people had gathered at the far end of the ward near an emergency exit, crushing any impulse I had to do something crazy. As I slowed to a walk, I noticed nurses kneeling in the center of the huddle and a surge of fear shot through my chest.
“What happened?” I elbowed my way to the front. “Who’s hurt?”
“I believe that would be me.” Blood covered the side of Dr. Mehta’s head, dripping from a place in her hair where one of the nurses applied a compress.
I scanned the bodies, searching for any sign of Lucas.
“Get out of here, Maya.”
“But . . .” My attention snapped back to Dr. Mehta.
“You don’t have clearance for this ward. Go.”
The rest of them shifted uncomfortably, glancing at me then away. The two orderlies who’d arrived with me worked their way through the crowd to the emergency exit. Had Lucas gotten that far? Was he gone? I took a step toward the exit, but Dr. Mehta’s look stopped me. Even with blood streaks smeared over her face, sprawled in the middle of the linoleum floor, she still managed to impart that shrinking, piercing stare. Like she knew exactly what I’d been thinking.
I swallowed and nodded, withdrawing from the group, and walked slowly back down the hall.
* * *
After my shift ended, I pretended my sprained ankle was hurting again and went to the medical ward where the gossipy nurses reigned. One of them set me up on a bed and examined the bone while the others filled us in, peppering the story with knowing glances in my direction. By now, everyone had heard about the incident on the boat and my demotion.
“According to Stan, all he would say during his session was, I have to go find my father.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nope. Totally silent after that, wouldn’t answer any questions about where his father is so other people could, like, actually go look for him. Only glared at Dr. Mehta and stared out the window. He won’t even talk to Carol when she brings him meals now, and you know he used to ask her about . . . other people . . . a lot.”
Nurse Valerie, the information queen, pointedly ignored me as she parted with this tidbit. I kept my expression neutral, focusing on the narrow bone boxed in one of the other nurse’s hands.
“So when Dr. Mehta tries to give him a book, the kid bashes Stan over the head with it and takes Dr. Mehta hostage.”
The other nurse wasn’t even pretending to examine me anymore. She gasped, putting a hand over her mouth.
“He got a lot farther without this little firecracker”—Nurse Valerie nodded toward me—“around to stop him. He handcuffed Stan to a table, took his badge, and forced Dr. Mehta through the ward to that emergency exit that leads out to the parking lot, but the nurse’s station saw him right away and the guards met him at the door. He threw—literally threw—Dr. Mehta at them and took off. Fell down a flight of stairs and kept going, until three of them tackled him at the main door.”
I closed my eyes. The guilt doubled and redoubled as I sat on the hospital bed, oblivious to the continued chatter of the nurses around me.
“Where is he now?” I asked, opening my eyes to look around. “Doesn’t he need medical treatment?”
“Dr. Mehta wouldn’t let him be treated here.” The nurse who was wrapping my perfectly healthy ankle replied, glancing up with a smug look, like she thought it was obvious I’d come to the ward to see him.
Nurse Valerie piped back up. “I’ve been given clearance to visit him three times a day in his isolation room—where he is in full restraints, mind you—to administer pain medication and check for infection and swelling. That is, until I leave for my Cancun trip.”
Her voice turned gloating and one of the other nurses groaned. “Do you have to rub it in?”
Nurse Valerie glanced at me and seemed to soften a fraction, answering the unspoken question.
“No serious injuries this time. His right side is going to look like a burger patty, but luckily the shoulder didn’t get any more damage. I put it in another sling just as a precaution. Don’t worry,” she patted my bandaged ankle. “Sounds like that kid’s got stamina. But you’d know better than us, right?”
The other nurses snorted, ducking their heads. I felt my face flush as I swung my legs around and put my weight gingerly on the “bad” ankle, shrugging into my coat.
“He’s only on pain meds?”
She nodded as she turned away. “Tylenol 3, three times a day.”
I thanked them for the wrap and pretended to favor the leg as I left the ward.
Everyone knew the definition of insanity. Lucas had tried to escape from Congdon three times now. Three episodes of the same behavior, expecting different results. How many more attempts would it take, how many crawling days and nights in isolation, how many times could he beat his head against the wall before his mind started to crack? Before he became what everyone thought he already was?
* * *
A string of storms raced across Superior and slammed into Duluth over the next few days, bringing blinding lake-effect snow squalls that buried the city, while only a few miles west the ground remained brown and bare. Dr. Mehta hadn’t gotten any updates from the Forest Service rangers and I could tell she was getting tired of me asking. I hibernated in the house after work, spending half my nights on the Internet. The backlash against the protesters who’d chased us down at Twin Ponds had helped some new voices rise on social media, people calling for Lucas’s privacy, to let the system help him and focus public efforts on finding Josiah instead. I looked up Boundary Waters maps, sometimes scrolling the satellit
e images to the tiny break in the green that showed the roof of my mother’s cabin. Other nights I googled everything I could find on Heather Price: her life, the scant details of her death. A drug addict’s death, apparently, was even less noteworthy than a mental health patient’s. Society turned away, pretended the body had never been a person. No one demanded to know how she’d gotten the blow to her head. I found a small, archived post on the website of the dentist office where she’d worked, offering the usual thoughts and prayers to a family who didn’t seem to exist, and the only person who might know more had disappeared from the known world.
After half a week, the snow stopped and the gales began tossing it around the city, whipping drifts of white over the streets, tearing at anyone who braved the cold. I left work one day and the wind picked up the tails of my jacket, invaded my hood, and froze my earrings the second I muscled open the security door. I jogged toward the parking lot, intent only on getting to my car and starting the heater, before stopping dead in the middle of the sidewalk.
Lucas, two orderlies, and Nurse Valerie were walking in the side yard near the therapy garden. Lucas was restrained in a full straitjacket with an orderly holding each arm. His head listed to one side and he stared dully at the flakes whipping along the ground. Even from twenty yards away it was obvious he was drugged. His movements were sluggish and awkward, reeking of a massive dose of some life-sucking, behavior-correcting prescription cocktail. It looked like Nurse Valerie was trying to hurry them back inside, but Lucas could barely put one foot in front of the other.
Until he saw me.
His eyes wandered over the sidewalk and roamed up my body like I was just another static feature in the landscape. A moment passed when it didn’t even seem like he recognized me until he blinked and jerked upright.
Maya. I saw his mouth form my name even though no sound came out. He lurched forward, throwing his handlers off balance, and tried to close the distance between us. Confused by his sudden mood change, Valerie put a hand out to steady him before she turned and saw who he was trying to reach. She snapped back around and said something to the orderlies, who abruptly stopped walking and grabbed Lucas, preventing him from moving. Lucas struggled, but he was no match for the combination of the straitjacket, two burly orderlies, and whatever chemicals they’d pumped into him. Thrashing in place, he mouthed my name until he finally managed to work the ragged sound out of his throat, and he reached me the only way he could.
“Maya. Help, Maya. Maya, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Tears started to run down his face. “Don’t leave me here. Please, Maya. Please.”
Nurse Valerie stepped in front of Lucas, blocking him from my sight, and gestured to the parking lot.
“Go on. Dr. Mehta’s orders state that he can’t have any contact with you.”
I couldn’t move, even as the wind slapped my cheeks and stung needles into my fingers. I forgot where I’d been going. Lucas dragged one of the orderlies a step forward, bumping into Valerie.
“Go!” She pointed to the cars, trying to keep her hood from flying off with her other hand. “We’re going to freeze out here if we don’t blow away first.”
It took strength I didn’t even know I possessed to walk toward the parking lot. Lucas’s voice grew weaker and weaker before dying away in the wind, and I didn’t know if he stopped calling my name because the group had gone inside or because he’d lost all hope. I didn’t turn around to check.
By the time I climbed inside my car, I was shaking. Snowflakes clung to the ends of my hair and my hands were red and raw. I stared at Congdon’s brick walls and barred windows rising like a fortress out of the angry, white blur of the gales, and everything became suddenly clear. As clear as a sun-soaked sky over the lake. As clear as a bag of carefully chosen hardware. As clear as the layers of an agate, sliced and gleaming in my mother’s hand.
I knew what I had to do. I had to rescue Lucas Blackthorn.
21
* * *
STEALING A PATIENT from a psychiatric facility is a little harder than your basic B&E. Congdon had multiple layers of security, beginning with the outside gates where a guard was posted twenty-four hours a day and the ten-foot tall iron fence enclosing the rest of the property. Then there was the building itself. Every exterior door locked from both sides and could only be opened with a security badge, except the main entrance, where visitors passed through metal detectors and checked in with another Taser-armed guard before being escorted to the appropriate room. Each floor and ward had their own entrances with their own electronic security. Not every badge opened every door. And if you happened to be trying to kidnap someone from an isolation room, no badge would work. The entrances to each seclusion unit opened with individual keys which were only held by the attendants on duty or the night security staff. Cameras in every hallway fed video back to the guard desk at the main entrance. If an emergency was spotted—like, say, someone trying to make off with a high-security patient—they could hit a button that would deadlock all doors, trapping everyone inside until the lockdown was lifted.
That was getting in. Smuggling the patient out and figuring out how to get as far away as possible without drawing attention was the other obstacle. People tended to notice stumbling mental health patients in straitjackets, even when they weren’t celebrities.
For three days I planned the rescue, making lists and detailed plans before burning the pages immediately afterward. It had to be a night job, when staff levels were the lowest. I began staying late after my shifts to catch up on paperwork and then stopped to chat with the front desk guard on my way out, pretending to be outraged at the rumors flying around about me while watching the security monitors and the pattern of the night rounds. Jason, the guard, had apparently been accused of sexual harassment once and was sympathetic in a way that made me immediately want to shower. On the third day, he told me he got off at eleven and had a growler with my name on it. We could watch Netflix and chill. I told him no thank you, marking the end of my first attempt at friendship. All in all, I called it a success.
The supplies I’d bought for the original search party were still piled in a vacant office in the administrative area, including extreme weather tents, subzero sleeping bags, and—most important of all—the locked, waterproof box filled with a random buffet of medicine: antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, cortisol steroids, every broad-spectrum pill or shot that might have provided Josiah the emergency care he needed. When we’d been preparing for the search, I’d brought the box so the associate psychiatrist could fill it and dutifully secure it with a Master No. 3 padlock, universally acknowledged as the easiest lock on the planet to pick. And, as an added bonus, the building’s security cameras were only used in patient wards. Over my three days of planning Lucas’s rescue, I exchanged ward bedding for sleeping bags, Advil for steroids, swapping items so the gear appeared intact and smuggling the supplies out one by one in the backpack I always brought to work.
On my next day off, Jasper and I took a longer than usual walk. We headed north out of Lincoln Park and started climbing the hill into nicer neighborhoods until we reached a two-story Victorian with window boxes full of spruce branches and an honest-to-God porch swing with snowflake-printed decorative pillows arranged on it. Rounding the block, we doubled back through the alley. I stopped near the house’s garage, pretending to pick up some dog poop while checking for motion in the house and then we slipped inside the gate and around to the side door. Houses in Duluth were built so close together that only the next-door neighbors could have seen me working on the lock, and luckily their blinds were closed.
I hadn’t used my lock picking skills in eight years and it wasn’t exactly like riding a bike, but luckily I’d saved my bump keys and the door was old. Closing my eyes, I put myself inside the lock, feeling the weights and springs, and tapping the bump with a screwdriver until the key turned. Jasper pushed ahead into a sun-soaked laundry room. I reined him in before he could get too far.
“Anyone here?
” I whispered.
Jasper nosed the air and we both listened, waiting for any signs of life while my heart raced. When I broke into places as a kid, I’d never cared about getting caught; I had nothing to lose then. Now Lucas’s mind and freedom hung in the balance, and I couldn’t stop hearing his drugged, desperate voice. Don’t leave me here. Please, Maya. Please.
After a few minutes of total silence, I forced myself to relax and crept further into the house. It was like another world—a Martha Stewart world. Curtains with gauzy stuff at the top set off the rich colors of the walls and sleek couches. Vases, books, and art filled the built-in shelves lining every room. I thought I’d done a good job with our bathroom, but every inch of this house felt manicured. The containers in the pantry had tiny chalkboards attached to their fronts that were scrawled in handwritten cursive. Red lentils. Protein powder. Each drawer had an organizer and each bin had a label. A church bulletin lay on top of an ornate-looking Bible near the fireplace. The air even smelled different here, like vinegar-dipped roses. Framed pictures of the ocean were scattered everywhere and I paused at one sitting on top of a piano.
In the picture Nurse Valerie sat at a table with a balding man as they held up some fruity drinks. They were both sunburned and smiling in that overly wide, forced way when you hold one pose for too long.
“Hey, Val.” I grinned at the picture and kept moving. “Hope you and the hubs are having fun in Cancun. Nice digs, by the way. My dad might need your advice on our kitchen.”
I checked all the coats in the front closet, the purses in her bedroom, the kitchen drawers, even the pockets in her dirty laundry. Nothing. This was a house where everything had a place, so why couldn’t I find what I was looking for?
