The Hidden - Jessica Verday [46]
Me? Is it me?
The girl in the nightgown turned and walked toward the bed. With the teddy bear still in one hand, she climbed up and then sat down. She put the bear on her lap and reached over for a strap. “I lost my mom,” she said sadly. “She died.”
I watched in mute horror as she slowly started to strap one wrist in.
“I lost my dad,” she repeated. “He died.”
“Poor girl,” the nurse murmured, glancing back at me. “She had a mental breakdown. Has to be strapped in just to take her meds. Are you with the other visitor? The gentleman?”
All I could do was nod.
“Well, honey, let me go take you right to him. You must have gotten lost in this maze of a place. Just give me one second.”
She went over to the bed, putting a hand on the girl’s arm. “You don’t need to do that. It’s not time for your medication yet. Why don’t you come with me? I’ll take you to watch TV.”
“Pretty color,” the girl said, looking up at the nurse.
My heart whooshed with relief. It’s not me! I’m not crazy! She is.
Gently the nurse undid the strap and helped the girl down from the bed. Scooping up her teddy bear, the nurse handed it to the girl and then led her to the door.
“You can follow us,” the nurse said to me. “We’re all going to the same place.”
I wanted to laugh hysterically. I knew she meant that we were all going to the same front waiting area, but all I could think was, You’re right. Everyone goes to the same place. I looked back at the bed as I left the room. Some of us just get there faster than others.
We shuffled slowly down the hall but eventually made it to the front desk. The nurse gave me a kind smile and pointed over to a corner, where I saw Uri talking to an older man with white hair. The man was wearing an old-fashioned white suit, and he looked like a college professor. A sad college professor. As I got closer, I could hear what they were saying.
“Don’t you feel any sense of responsibility?” Uri asked.
“He’s made his choice,” the man replied. “It was not mine to make.”
“But aren’t you going to help us at all? You should be there.”
“I can’t. I’m sorry, but he won’t listen to me.”
Uri caught sight of me, and the conversation stopped abruptly. “Ready to go?” he asked me.
“Ready, like, an hour ago. You never came and got me.”
“I was going to as soon as I was done here.”
“How much longer were you going to be? You took a really long time. I had a slight run-in with one of the patients. But it’s cool, I’m fine.”
Something caught my attention, and from the corner of my eye I saw a male aide come to fetch the girl from the nurse. He was wearing leather pants underneath a scrub top uniform, and he looked like he could have been Johnny Depp’s brother.
The male nurses wear leather pants here? This place is really weird.
“I guess we can leave, then,” Uri said, drawing my attention back to him. “We’ve said all there is to say.”
The man in the white suit didn’t say good-bye to either of us but instead turned and walked down another hallway. I watched him go, wondering what exactly was going on.
“Did you find anything out?” I asked Uri.
He led me outside to the golf cart. The expression on his face was angry. “Yeah. I found out that we’re on our own. The person I need isn’t here.”
Chapter Twelve
ADVICE
From his half-itinerant life, also, he was a kind of traveling gazette, carrying the whole budget of local gossip from house to house …
—“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
Cacey was waiting for us when we got back to the guesthouse. She looked like she still felt pretty awful, but after a short exchange with Uri in which he told her only that he was unsuccessful, we got in the car and drove away from the asylum without looking back.
All I could think about on the ride home was that girl. What had her life been like before she’d gone in there? Does she have any friends that miss her? A best friend? That could have been me. …
Uri’s phone rang when we were almost to the house, and he answered it. He spoke briefly, then hung up. “Slight detour,” he told Cacey. “We need to stop at the