Page 49 of Ward D
“No…” He yawns and rubs his eyes. “Okay, a little bit. I didn’t mean to drift off. But it’s fine. I’m up now, anyway.” He runs his fingers through his disheveled hair. “Anyway, what’s up? Is everything okay?”
“Kind of…” I glance behind me. “I was just talking to Will Schoenfeld, and I discovered that…”
Dr. Beck is looking at me intently. Now I’m starting to second-guess myself. If I tell him the truth, it won’t be good for Will. They may have to force him to take his medications, and whatever that involves, it won’t be pretty. But actually, that’s to his benefit. He wants to get better, doesn’t he? You can’t go through life hearing voices in your head.
“He’s been pocketing his medication,” I blurt out. “I found a whole bunch of them inside a book in his room.”
“Shit,” Dr. Beck breathes. Then he quickly adds, “Sorry. I’m tired. But… ugh. I can’t believe he’s been doing that.”
I tighten my grip on the copy of the book Will gave me. “So what now?”
“We may have to switch to intramuscular dosing,” Dr. Beck says. “I’m not the attending physician on service this week, so I’ll pass it on to the primary team in the morning. If there are any problems overnight, we’ll have to go to the injection route. I’m glad you told me.”
“No problem,” I say, even though I feel a twinge of guilt. I shouldn’t though. I’m doing this to help Will.
“Anything else?” Dr. Beck asks me.
There is one other thing. I feel guilty ratting out Cameron, but I have to say something—I’m starting to freak out that I can’t find him. “I don’t know where Cameron went. I think he might have left the unit.”
“Oh.” He looks back into his office. “Actually, Cameron left a message on my machine. Apparently, he had some family emergency and had to leave immediately.”
I guess that solves the mystery of what happened to Cam and why I can’t find him anywhere. But it’s strange that he would leave a phone message with that information. Especially when Dr. Beck is right here on the floor, and pretty easy to locate. Why wouldn’t he talk to Dr. Beck directly? Also, why wouldn’t Cam tell me if something happened? It’s not like we’re total strangers. “I see…”
“I did think it was strange,” Dr. Beck admits. “I wish he had spoken to me directly about it. But he sounded pretty upset on the phone. Choked up. So he probably wasn’t thinking too clearly.”
Cameron was choked up? That’s hard to imagine. Whenever we used to watch sad movies together and I would get tearful, he would look at me like I was out of my mind. Even when he was breaking up with me, he barely seemed upset.
“I hope he’s okay,” I finally say.
“Areyouhanging in there okay?” He reaches out and rests a hand on my shoulder. “You look like you’re having a tough night. I know that was kind of jarring with Miguel. I’m sorry you had to see that.”
He doesn’t know the half of it, but I’m not going to open up to him, even though he is a psychiatrist—or maybebecausehe’s a psychiatrist. I don’t want the guy judging me. And it would be very unprofessional to have that kind of talk with my supervisor for the night. I wouldn’t want it to get around at school that I’m…
“I’m fine,” I say. “Just tired.”
He nods sympathetically. “Try to get some sleep, okay?”
I agree with him, but it’s a lost cause at this point.
I say good night to Dr. Beck and trudge back to the staff lounge, to try to read until I drift off to sleep. But when I get there, I realize I’m not alone. Somebody is waiting for me in the lounge.
It’s Jade.
And she looks really pissed off.
28
EIGHT YEARS EARLIER
Idon’t like Mr. Riordan.
He’s my least favorite teacher. Actually, he’s everyone’s least favorite teacher. If everyone in the school picked the teacher they disliked the most, he would be on every single list. (Well, not everyone. Not everyone has had him as a teacher. But you know what I mean.)
First of all, he smells bad. He doesn’t smell like he hasn’t showered or something like that, but he has this weird moldy cheese smell. Jade told me it’s whatever he has for lunch, since we get to have him in the afternoon. From the second row, where I am unfortunately seated, I can always smell it emanating from him.
He also has the absolute worst comboverever. He has like ten strands of hair combed over his bald spot. It’s seriously hard to look at.
But the worst part is he’s bad at explaining math. I could deal with the smell and his bald head if he could only explain stuff better. His voice has like two levels: monotone and yelling. Monotone is what he uses when he’s explaining math problems to us. Yelling is what he does when the class gets restless because nobody understands what he’s talking about because he’s bored us nearly to sleep. And yet, his tests are notoriously extremely difficult.
