Page 27 of Leave No Trace
Before I could reply, Dad turned onto Congdon’s street and I gasped. A reporter stood in front of the gate, filming a segment, next to at least a dozen people crowded onto the cracked sidewalk. They held signs and leaned into the shot, their faces washed bloodless by the camera light. There’d only been a handful of them here when I punched out a few hours ago, but news of the escape must have made them multiply. A girl about Lucas’s age with bright red hair stared at the truck as we approached, holding a piece of tagboard that readIf he’s crazy, I’m crazy. She pointed and yelled something, causing the rest of them to turn as one while the cameraman scrambled to get footage of our procession.
‘Get down.’
I pushed Lucas by the good shoulder, doubling him over in the rear seat as the guards began herding people back, trying to make way for the police motorcade. The crowd didn’t want to disperse.
‘Who – ?’ Lucas began, but anything else he might have said was lost in the yells and clamor of a mass of bodies breaking free from the guards and racing toward us. Signs waved frantically, hands reached out with grasping fingers as I held Lucas’s head beneath the window. One of the police cruisers spun a U-turn inside the gate and flipped their siren on, driving between us and the crowd. As soon as the path forward was clear, Dad gunned the engine and sped through the parking lot to the main entrance where a team of orderlies, nurses, and more security guards waited for us.
I gave Dad’s shoulder a squeeze before grabbing Lucas’s hand and sliding across the seat to the door. ‘Thanks, Dad. Don’t wait for me.’
We hurried toward the main doors, flanked by the remaining police officers. Once inside we were rushed to the medical ward where they performed a series of checks on an uncharacteristically docile Lucas. He submitted to every probe, answered every question, and it wasn’t until I saw Dr Mehta standing at the doorway to the triage area, eyes narrowed in speculation, that I realized I’d barely let go of Lucas’s hand since the moment we got out of the truck.
12
The nextmorningthe world was coated in white. A thick frost had frozen every rooftop, lawn, and tree branch in Duluth and as I peered out the staff break room window, rubbing the couch debris out of my sleep-bruised eyes, a powdery snow whipped into the panes and skittered along the ground, as if the wind refused to let it land. Sometime in the night I’d left Lucas in the care of the nurses and headed down the hall for a few restless hours of sleep. The break room furniture was scratchy and reeked of antiseptic, but it beat going home and trying to explain what happened last night while Dad looked at me in that way of his – like I was a vase glued carefully back together and he had to constantly check me for missing pieces, fissures, any sign that I might crumble again. Today was my day off, though, and I couldn’t leave Jasper alone much longer. I stared into the blowing white world and listened to the tick, tick, ticks of the snow against the window, each flake hurling winter that much closer.
After checking on Lucas – who may or may not have been sleeping – I took the bus home and made sure the garage was empty before going in to shower and walk the dog. We drove up to Bayfront and paced the lake walk, where Jasper chased snow devils and I limped along the empty boards and scanned Superior’s horizon. The powder wouldn’t last. The sun would chase it away as soon as the clouds broke, but we were getting closer to November and not even Superior’s gales could fight off the inevitable. Normally I liked winter – the four-foot drifts, the nostril-freezing arctic blasts that drove all the tourists away, leaving the town to the hardy, the survivors who bundled up and shoveled oceans of snow before retreating to our mugs and fleece blankets to wait out the endless December nights. Winter in Duluth was antisocial paradise and for someone whose mother suffered from chronic depression, there was a disconcerting comfort in the isolation. A home I recognized, even if I hadn’t asked for it. Today, though, I wasn’t comforted by the cold blast of wind numbing my ankle. I didn’t find relief in the absence of people on the lake walk. Today I was scared for a man I’d never met.
After dropping Jasper off at home, I drove to the library and spent the rest of the morning poring over books and topographical maps. I studied pictures, read travelogues, and stared at the mottled landscape of greens and blues that would be covered in white, frozen over and closed off to even the most adventurous hikers in a few short weeks. Maybe to a young boy it would look like a mountain of salt, vast and impenetrable, but Josiah Blackthorn was out there somewhere, sick, alone. I circled the location of the outfitter’s store and drew ranges out from that center point. Five miles. Ten. How far would you go up the mountain to save the person you loved most in the world?
How far would I go to help them?
Two days after Lucas’s hospital escape I drove through the swelling crowd at Congdon’s gate – at least fifteen people were bundled up and waving signs at passing cars – and punched in to find most of the staff either staring or whispering to each other on the opposite side of whatever room I was in. My dramatic recovery of the boy who came back from the dead, which had aired on every major news channel in Duluth, apparently sealed my reputation as something entirely apart from them. I spent the morning catching up on email, planning session activities for my other patients, and trying to ignore everyone whose Minnesotan niceness made them smile before walking hastily away. The one person I could count on for direct address, unfortunately, was the one person I was trying to avoid. Dr Mehta held me back after our afternoon staff meeting.
‘I approved Lucas’s transfer back to ward two today.’
‘That’s great, thanks. The group environment is his biggest challenge. The sooner we get him comfortable there, the quicker his recovery.’ I inched my way toward the door, thankful that my ankle felt almost back to normal.
‘Yes, he still needs to acclimate and of course integrate his childhood experiences with the larger world, but Mr Blackthorn strikes me as someone who needs a path forward. He should be thinking about short- and medium-term goals.’
‘We’ll start working on that right away.’ Obediently, I made a note of it, turning to leave.
‘I haven’t decided who his speech therapist will be yet.’
‘What?’ Halting in mid-escape, I swung on Dr Mehta. ‘I’m his therapist.’
‘Shut the door and sit down, please, Maya.’
I complied, watching her warily as she sat opposite me and carefully picked cat fur off her pants.
‘You haven’t told me what happened the night of Lucas’s escape.’
In a clear, even voice, I told her the same story Dad had given to the police. Unlike the officers, though, Dr Mehta didn’t appear the tiniest bit convinced.
‘You weren’t answering my calls earlier that evening.’
‘I’m sorry. I was tired and off duty.’
Dr Mehta nodded and let her gaze slide somewhere closer to my heart. ‘A perfectly reasonable explanation and if it was any of my other staff, quite in character.’
My tongue pressed against my palate and held. After a moment, she sighed and clasped her hands. ‘And then we have Mr Blackthorn. He left the hospital almost two hours before your father discovered him, claiming he was standing in plain sight in the middle of one of the busiest docks in Duluth.’
‘That’s where Dad found him.’ I met her gaze head-on, mixing mine with the right amounts of irritation and confusion.
‘It still seems like a long gap of time to me.’
‘Did you ask him where he went?’ I countered.
‘We did. He said he was wandering.’
