“I know,” she said on a sigh. It’s what she’d been debating for hours and had finally decided to do. Wait until her dad fell asleep and then go down there and search.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I can get them on my own. You won’t have to be involved.”
Was that what she wanted? She’d promised to help Aden. And as her history teacher was fond of saying, “A successful future is impossible if you don’t know your past.” Maybe her dad had seen something in Aden, something that could point them in the right direction.
Their birth certificates hadn’t arrived yet, so they didn’t know who his parents were and couldn’t even visit the hospital where he’d been born to retrieve his medical records. Their only hope at the moment lay in her dad’s files.
She stood, squared her shoulders. “We’ll do it. Together.” And then she did something that shocked them both. She rose on her tiptoes and pressed a swift kiss on his lips. “Thank you for returning to help me.”
When she tried to move away, he latched onto her forearms and held her in place. His eyes were gleaming. “Next time you decide to do that…”
“What?” she said, stiffening. “Give you a little warning?”
“No.” He grinned. “Linger.”
CHAPTER 17
SUBJECT A. What can I say about him? First time I saw him, I was reminded of my daughter. Not in appearance, of course, they look nothing alike. Not in demeanor, either. Where my daughter is wild and carefree, laughter so easy for her, A is quiet and shy, afraid to look people in the eyes. I have never seen him smile. My daughter is happiest when surrounded by people. A is happiest in the shadows, alone, unnoticed. But I can see the longing in his gaze. He wants to be part of the crowd. He wants to be accepted. That he isn’t breaks my heart. And that is where the two are most similar. The love I feel for them, in one case understandable, in the other…not.
Love is exactly what A needs, though. No one has loved him since his parents gave him up, while my daughter has been coddled her entire life. That is why she smiles and he does not. And yet, despite their different pasts and opposing natures, they both possess a bone-deep vulnerability that radiates from them. Something that strikes the heart, like claws digging in and refusing to let go. Something that imprints them in your mind so that you can never forget them.
I’ve noticed the way some of the other patients look at A. They, too, feel those claws. They, too, are drawn to the young boy without knowing why.
Funny, though, that the only patients concerned with him are those who are here because they see things that aren’t there, talk to people who aren’t there and think they are spawned from hell itself.
During therapy sessions, I’ve asked a few of them why they watch A so intently. The answers were the same: he draws me.
That shocked me each time I heard it because I had felt drawn to this institution with the same intensity they were drawn to the boy. I’d driven past it and had been filled with a need to work here, even though I’d already had a job. A well-paying job at a private practice I’d had no intention of leaving. I could have risen up the ladder and eventually become a partner. But none of that had mattered after I drove past Kingsgate Psychiatric Hospital.
I’d wanted to—
I never took her back, but I myself went. The feeling of belonging, of needing to be there had increased. And when I saw A for the first time, I’d been filled with the urge to hug him. To welcome a beloved family member home. Was
Subject A was beaten up today. The patient responsible claimed he’d only wanted the urge to be near A to disappear, that he couldn’t live with the invisible tether that bound him to the boy anymore.
I was finally able to give A a hug. He won’t remember it, of course, because he was unconscious and drugged with sedatives, and that’s best for both of us. I can’t really give him what he wants, a place to belong. Still, I hadn’t wanted to let go. Tears had even filled my eyes.
Again, I have to wonder what’s wrong with me.
Subject A is recovering nicely. I spoke with him briefly, but the pain medications made him groggy and hard to understand. At one point I think he called me Julian, but I can’t be sure.
There has to be a way to help him. There has to be something I can do. He’s a good kid with a kind heart. Another patient had visited with him and had eyeballed his Jell-O. Without any hesitation, A offered up the Jell-O, though it was the only thing he could eat and he wouldn’t be given another. Well, shouldn’t have been given another. I brought him two an hour later.
My first true session with Subject A. He’s been diagnosed with schizophrenia by several doctors and frankly, though it’s highly uncommon in children under sixteen, I understand why. He has a tendency to retreat inside his head during conversation, mumbling to people who aren’t there.
Do I believe that myself? I’m not sure. And it’s not just because the illness is rare in children. To be honest, my doubt upsets me. Only one other time have I felt it, and that ended in a disaster I have yet to overcome. Grief still eats at me, in fact. But that’s a story for another journal.
Before the meeting with A, I perused his file and found something interesting. Since his admittance three months ago, he has escaped a locked room twice—just disappeared from it, leaving no trace of how he managed the feat. In both instances, he reappeared in rooms he shouldn’t have been able to access. Everyone thinks he has simply learned how to pick locks and he himself probably thinks it’s a fun, harmless game. But I’m upset by it. I’ve dealt with that before. Not with him, but with someone I love.
I guess I’m not going to wait for another journal entry to veer in this direction after all. My daughter’s mother used to do the same thing. Before her pregnancy, that is. She would walk into a room one moment, headed in my direction, and then simply vanish before my eyes. I would search the house but find no sign of her. This happened six times. Six hellish times. Usually she would reappear a few minutes later. Once, though, two days passed before she returned.
Each time I asked her where she had gone,
She is the reason I entered into this field. I’d wanted to understand her, to help her. Oh, did I love her. Still do. I can’t hide that, though I should. Too bad I failed her. The only time she claimed to feel normal was the nine months she carried my precious baby girl. And after that, well, I wasn’t given a chance to help.
Mary Ann’s hand was trembling as she flipped to the next page of her father’s journal. She and Riley had pilfered it from the study while her dad slept, head resting on the keyboard nearby. He’d fallen asleep going over his notes about Aden, or rather “Subject A,” so they’d had to pry them out from under his head. That he’d kept them here, and so easily transportable, was shocking, but it proved how much they meant to him—and perhaps how often he read them.
She’d been poring over them ever since, nausea churning faster and faster in her stomach. At first, the term Subject A had bothered her, but then she’d realized that had been her father’s way of retaining Aden’s privacy, even in his personal journals. But she knew it was Aden, and the things he’d endured…the grief her dad felt for some mysterious doubt about the young boy’s “illness…the way her dad had written of her mother as if she were already
