‘So you don’t know how Tim would react if Darryl actually grabbed the book?’
He kept his eyes on the screen. ‘No.’
The air in the room had grown unbearably close. As always, when trapped in a tight space, Erin experienced a flutter of panic.
‘Are you ready to meet Tim? Instead of telling him the reason you’re here, I thought I’d introduce you as a colleague from downstate who’s visiting our facility. That way he won’t feel put on the spot.’
*
A sharp rap on the door and an attendant prodded Tim into Harrison’s office. Erin hovered by the bookcase, nervous he would recognise her, though the chance was remote. She looked nothing like the girl she once was. The only possible giveaway was the unusual colour of her eyes. Celadon, a man had told her once. Mermaid eyes. But the thought that Tim might notice something familiar about her, however slight, was enough to quicken her pulse.
Harrison motioned to the chair opposite the desk. ‘Have a seat, Tim. I’d like to introduce you to a colleague from downstate. Dr Cartwright is here to tour our facility. I’ve given her permission to talk to some of our patients. After we finish our session, you’ll have a chance to meet with her. Is that all right with you?’ He spoke in a normal tone of voice, though with longer pauses between sentences. Looking Tim in the eye and affecting a hearty manner, as if the two of them were mates meeting over a pint, rather than doctor and patient. Tim avoided the attempt at eye contact. Not unusual in a paranoid schizophrenic.
‘Okay.’ A mumble, scarcely audible, his eyes focused somewhere to the left of Harrison’s desk. He hadn’t looked at Erin when he came in the room, but he glanced at her now from his spot near the corner. A flick of the eye, as if measuring the distance between them, or assessing a threat. Like a fox in the wild, easily spooked.
She tried not to look directly at him. So far, nothing about his face or form was familiar. She exhaled, relieved. He was a stranger to her, and she to him.
Tim edged towards the leather chair and slid into it sideways, shoulders sloped, legs sprawled. His lank hair showed a hint of grey at the temples, but otherwise he looked younger than his forty-three years. His face and hands were pale and unlined. Years spent indoors and idle would do that to a person.
‘Hello, Tim,’ Erin said. ‘I look forward to speaking with you later.’
At a nod from Harrison, she backed out of the office, nearly bumping into the attendant waiting outside, a solidly built woman with her black hair scraped into a topknot and a no-nonsense demeanour.
‘I’m to take you to the staff lounge,’ she said tonelessly, as if Erin was one more thing to check off a list. ‘You can wait there till someone comes for you.’
The staff lounge, an unadorned box of a room at the far end of the ward, was equipped with two threadbare sofas, a tottering pile of outdated medical journals, and a coffee maker. Helping herself to a chipped ceramic mug from the cupboard, Erin poured coffee from the pot, thick as treacle. Cradling the mug in her hands, she looked out the barred window at the car park. A gust of wind blew bits of plastic and tattered newsprint across the frozen ground. The sky was a sickly shade of grey. All she needed now was for some freak storm to trap her here. The warm lights and familiar routines of the Meadows seemed impossibly far away.
The coffee was too bitter to drink, and she poured it down the drain. Behind her, someone coughed. She turned to find the attendant standing in the doorway, a dour look on her face.
*
At the far end of a narrow corridor, a dim bulb protected by a metal grille provided the only light. The attendant pointed to a half-closed door. ‘He’s in there.’
Before Erin could step inside, the woman gripped her arm.
‘There’s a panic button on the wall behind the desk.’ She looked Erin in the eye. ‘Don’t be afraid to use it.’
Erin nodded and shut the door behind her, testing the handle to be sure it opened from the inside. A battered desk and tattered chair. A single barred window, smeared with handprints. Tim stood in the far corner, his back pressed to the wall. Panic buttons and body alarms were standard equipment on high-security wards. But the attendant’s warning… Was that normal procedure, or was she trying to tell her something? So far, nothing Erin had seen suggested that Tim was ready for life outside the hospital.
Through his bedraggled fringe of hair, he squinted at the fluorescent tubes fixed to the ceiling.
‘Do the lights bother you? I can turn them off if you’d like.’ She hit the switch by the door, plunging the room in shadow. With only a square of wintry light from the window, the room took on a subterranean hue, more suitable to interrogation by hooded operatives, than a friendly chat with a doctor. To improve the atmosphere, she switched on the small lamp bolted to the table. ‘That’s better. I don’t like fluorescent lights either. Too bright.’ She smiled in a way she hoped was reassuring.
But Tim had turned his face to the window. On the other side of the razor wire, an abandoned factory with shattered windows and blackened bricks squatted on a barren patch of land. Three large crows, the colour of soot, pecked at the frozen ground.
In the slanting light, the sickle-shaped scar stood out on Tim’s cheek. His arms hung at
