Page 29 of Good Half Gone

We cross the rectangular room, empty except for a couple of barrels. The air is damp and salty. I’m shivering as my eyes try to adjust to the low light. We’ve gone from dim to dimmer. A couple of flickering yellow bulbs hang from the ceiling.How did the soldiers live in all this wet darkness for months at a time? And then suddenly we are back in the meager Washington sunlight, standing at one end of a steel-and-glass structure—an aboveground tunnel. The floor and the ceiling are made of the same dark steel, but the rest is glass. I peer out into the dripping woods, green-and-brown leaves sticking to the outside of the glass, sprayed there by a strong wind. Below us is a thick stream, the water moving surprisingly quickly.

“That stream sustains fresh water on the island; gets pretty high, as you can see.”

Our shoes echo on the grate beneath our feet. I think about how lovely it must be here in summer.

“Do the patients get to go outside often?”

“They have outside areas, but I’m sure Y2K told you about the cliff erosion. We have to be careful where we let them wander.”

We reach the end of the walkway. Crede holds the door open for me. I take one last look at the canopy of green and step into a small, windowless room. There is another security door in front of us; he swipes his card and stands back, allowing me to step through first. We are officially on the other side.

“Welcome to the dark side,” he says grimly. I look around in surprise. It’s not what I was expecting.

It’s as if we’ve walked onto a stage from a side door. To my left is a living room area with a couple of sofas and a large TV mounted to the wall. Ahead and to my right, a care station faces four hallways. For a moment I believe we will go undetected—two more bodies in a room of bodies, but the sight of me following Crede causes a ripple of quiet that begins at the front of the room and moves its way back. Everyone stops what they’re doing to watch us.Two, four, six, eight…I count the group huddled around the television—they’re a motley crew of mostly men; two older women stand to the rear of the group, arm in arm.

A man sitting at a card table gets up and begins to follow us; someone else makes seal noises. A woman stares from a doorway wearing a daisy headband across her forehead, one ear tucked under the elastic. Crede ignores all of it. He is the most bored human I have ever met.

My eyes scan the letters above each hallway: A, B, C…D. My fingertips tingle in anticipation. D is the only hallway with a security door.

“You won’t ever be down D unless the doctor is accompanying you. I don’t need to tell you why, do I?”

I shake my head.

“Good, because stupid mistakes can get you seriously hurt or easily killed.”

It’s cold. I know it’s not my imagination when Crede pouts and makes abrrrsound.

Crede’s hands are always moving; I watch the muscles in his forearm flex with effort as he gestures with very tan arms.

Crede gives me the C tour first. There is a large window at the end of a wide hallway. It looks out on the sound.

“This is the patient cafeteria.”

The room is windowless. The skylights are the only source of natural light. A Plexiglas wall looks into the kitchen. With such great views, you’d think they’d give the patients a better view than a prep table.

The medical wing is down the hall, as well as four treatment rooms with different beach scenes painted on the walls. He’s showing me around the clinic when a door markedHospiceopens, and Bouncer steps out. There is a basin of water propped on her hip, and it splashes over when she closes the door behind her. Her red hair is startling… Disney startling. It crosses my mind that she dyed it that way to be so… Ariel in the ocean.

I want to ask Crede if he gets it.

Bouncer greets Crede and smirks at me before disappearing through another door.

Jordyn said I was working hospice today—that means I’ll be working with Bouncer. The tour continues. Behind the last door—a calm-down room, he calls it—we find two people having sex. He shuts it abruptly.

“That happens.”

Right. “Are they suppo—”

“No, but we can’t watch them every second, can we?” he snaps. “We turn the eye.”

He takes me back to the annex.

“What about D hall?”

“What about it?”

I shrug casually.

He narrows his eyes. “You’re not one of those freaks who feed on crime stories, are you?”

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