Page 28 of Leave No Trace
Dr Mehta stared at me with her all-knowing look. Every muscle in my body tensed, and I barely made myself nod and murmur an acknowledgment.
‘Lucas Blackthorn doesn’t strike me as the wandering type.’
I took a deep breath. ‘So I’ll try to figure out what his goal was during our next sessions. I haven’t worked this hard to earn his trust for nothing.’
‘Yes, I have no doubt that you’ve gained it. He’s been asking for you – extremely politely, I’m told – with every new nurse at every shift change. He even struck up a conversation with one of the janitors about you. Your interests. Your background. Hector wasn’t extremely helpful in the situation, apparently only knowing you as “that little punk girl with the shit in her ear.” ’
‘See?’ I ignored the sudden upbeat in my pulse. ‘So why would you make him start all over again with someone new?’
‘Because I’m worried about your attachment to each other.’
Jesus. She didn’t pull any punches. I felt myself flushing, which might as well have been a big fat confirmation of our ‘attachment.’ Dropping my gaze, I tried to find words that were both true and harmless.
‘I like him.’
‘Obviously. You spent hours at his bedside in the hospital, off the clock, and when you brought him back here you barely moved from his side all night. The medical team noticed what they called an “unspoken communication” between you.’
‘Well, for one, that sounds like gossipy bullshit.’
Dr Mehta chuckled.
‘And two,’ I sighed and tossed my hands in the air. ‘You’re right. I have become attached to him. He reminds me of me, Iguess. But is that so bad? I mean, don’t you ever become fond of any of your patients? What about Big George? That man is a human-sized teddy bear. How can you not love him?’
‘Don’t shift the topic. There’s a difference between professional compassion and personal attachment.’
I made myself laugh. ‘I’m not going to ask him to go steady, okay?’
‘It’s against policy, it’s dangerous, and to be completely honest I’m more worried about the consequences for you than for Mr Blackthorn.’
‘This is insane.’ I launched myself out of the chair and paced behind it. ‘In the eight years I’ve known you, all you’ve ever told me is that I need to let myself connect with people, to open up to love and loss again and all that crap. Then you force me to work with Lucas against my will and outside my professional scope. And now you’re upset because I’m too close to him?’
She steepled her fingers under her chin, undisturbed by my outburst. On the scale of emotional incidents around here, we might as well be having a sedate tea. After a moment’s consideration, she nodded.
‘I’ll authorize you to continue your sessions for the time being, but I’ll be monitoring your work closely. And please know, Maya’ – she stopped me as I headed for the door – ‘I believe inyou.’
Belief is a powerful thing. It grabs you, unmakes you, changes the tilt and angle of everything around you into an entirely different geometry. You see the world in a new shape and no matter how horrible the belief, no matter what awful things it makes you do, a part of you is still grateful for the structure.
I’d believed a lot of things in my life, most of them about my mother.
I’d believed in Santa Claus until I found the frosted animal crackers I only got once a year in my stocking, tucked away in Mom’s sock drawer. They were brittle cookies, animal shapes coated with a careless icing like snow drifted into patches along back alleys, and the ones I found were leftovers, crumbled into tiny rocks at the bottom of the bag. She cried when I brought them out, perplexed by my discovery, and after she broke down I immediately wanted to hide the bag, to bury it at the bottom of a snowbank that would never melt. I’d believed our rock garden would make her happy, and that if I could memorize just one more mineral her eyes would blink into focus again and she would hug me with pride. Later, when she left us, I believed every word of her goodbye letter. Everything shifted into place: the jobs she could never keep, the long silences when Dad was gone, how her sadness swamped her at the strangest times – in the grocery store or walking me to school. I’d look up and her face would be wet, eyes averted and unwiped. If I tried to hug her, it seemed to make her worse. If I ignored it, the gap between us only widened. She hadn’t wanted me, hadn’t wanted this life, and disappeared like theBannockburnbefore I could demand a reason why. To ask what I’d done that was so intolerable.
Sometimes I even wondered if I’d studied speech so I could dissect my memories of her. I played old videos of us over and over but could never find any hint of her intentions. I hated the counselors who pulled me into their offices, the words that came so easily to them and had been impossible for her. The thing no one understands, when your parent abandons you, is that it doesn’t happen just once. They leave every day, every moment that you remember them is a door slamming shut in your face. And with every slam, you believe – a little more each time – that you probably deservedit.
My belief about Lucas Blackthorn was nothing like that creeping kind of blame. It didn’t gradually take root in my consciousness over years; I woke up this morning with a certainty flowing through me that not even Dr Mehta could derail. I hated myself for lying to her – sane Dr Mehta, sober Dr Mehta, a woman who had faith in the faithless and confidence in the worst people you could imagine. After all, she’d hired me. She’d challenged me, elevated me, believed in me, but now I wondered how much she really understood me. If she did, she never would have given me this assignment. Before I met Lucas, I don’t think I’d even understood myself.
This is what I knew now:
A father had disappeared. A son was desperate to find him.
And I would tell a thousand lies if it brought him one step closer.
The path before me seemed so clear and it gave meaning to everything I’d survived to get to this point. I had to help Lucas find his father. No matter what Josiah had done, no matter what had driven them into the Boundary Waters, they needed to find each other and I was possibly the only person in the world who understood how much. But the clock was ticking. Every day the winds blew harder and colder, the gales raged in a losing battle against the coming winter. Soon the ice would win, soon Josiah might be dead, and we’d be out of time.
I gathered up my session supplies and jogged up the stairs to ward two. I could feel the organs in my body pumping, expanding, the excitement set loose in every nerve ending, flashing with a life I hadn’t known was even inside me. Without any premonition of what lay ahead, I badged in to ward two and caught a flash of Lucas’s face before the world jerked sideways.
13
Acrushing weightknocked me to the ground, sending the air whooshing out of my lungs. Several people yelled my name, the loudest one right in my ear.
