Live to Tell - Lisa Gardner [31]
That’s the life of the sole survivor: You never escaped the anniversary date.
“Is Lucy too much for you?” Karen asked abruptly.
“No.”
“We’ve always been willing to work with you, Danielle,” she stated crisply. “But you have to be willing to work with us. Understand?”
“Lucy’s not too much,” I said, voice stronger.
But Karen remained uncertain. She finally sighed, moved along. “Is Lucy still naked?”
“Last I saw.”
“Then she couldn’t have gotten far.”
Karen made the decision to contact the medical center’s security. The full hospital went to lockdown, and I felt about three inches tall. I’d lost my charge. I’d breached protocol in a place where protocol breaches were unacceptable. And while my personal life wasn’t anything to write home about, I took my job seriously. I was a dedicated nurse. Some days, I was even a great nurse.
Apparently, today wasn’t one of those days. We had an emergency staff meeting, with Karen briskly assigning hospital floors to each of us to search. Security was also making a sweep.
I had the first and second floors. I headed out, feeling sick in my stomach.
Where would Lucy go? What would she do?
Then I had an idea.
I bolted for the hospital solarium.
Ten minutes later, I’d found Lucy. She was behind a potted palm, in a full-blaze sun, curled up like a cat and sound asleep with her head on her joined hands. Somewhere during her adventures, she’d found a green surgical scrub top and was now wearing it like a gown. She nearly blended into the floor, her dark hair obscuring her freshly scrubbed face.
I radioed upstairs that I’d found her.
Then, because this was the best rest I’d seen her get, I took a seat on the floor and waited.
Greg eventually came down, sat beside me. “Tough day,” he said, after a moment.
“She’s okay. That’s what matters.”
“Bad luck, getting out. Must have snuck through the doors when an outsider was coming or going.”
He said it casually, but we both knew there would be an investigation. It was extremely bad luck Lucy made it through two sets of locked doors. Such bad luck, it’d never happened in all the years I’d worked here, and I still couldn’t imagine how a naked nine-year-old girl had done it now.
Heads would roll over this. Maybe mine.
I felt anxious. I couldn’t lose this job. I loved this job, especially this time of year, when—Karen was right—I wasn’t altogether sane and they kept me anyway.
Greg touched my cheek. For a change, I didn’t flinch. Greg and I had been coworkers for years. He was a good-looking guy. Tall, fit, a natural jungle gym for small boys bursting out of their own skin. He dressed like a football coach, and spoke with the best baritone on the unit. Even the worst kids shut up just to catch the timbre of his speech.
He’d asked me out for the first time two years ago. I’d never said yes. He’d never stopped asking. I didn’t know how one guy could take so much rejection and still come back for more, but maybe that went with the job.
Now I found myself thinking of Sheriff Wayne again. But I refused to cry, because that would be stupid.
Lucy finally stirred. She raised her head, blinked her eyes, regarded us owlishly.
Quickly, before she was awake enough to fight, Greg and I tucked her between us and hustled her to the elevators.
I was still thinking of too many things. That it was three days away. That it shouldn’t matter anymore. A date on a calendar, a day that rolled by once a year. And I knew Karen had finally figured out my schedule, why I’d been logging so many hours. Because the date did matter, somehow it always mattered, and in another twenty-four hours or so, I’d have to disappear. I wouldn’t be fit for the kids. I wouldn’t be fit for adults.
And I certainly wouldn’t be fit for a decent guy like Greg, who’d want to hold me and make it all better.
Once a year, I didn’t want it to be all better.
Once a year, I liked honing my