‘Sorry,’ Erin said, as she pulled on her coat. ‘I was held up. I wanted to speak to Dr Harrison before we left.’
A shadow clouded his eyes. ‘Why?’
‘No special reason.’ She smiled again, though her jaw was starting to hurt from all the smiling. Perhaps she should try a different tack. Less cheerful air hostess, more white-coated professional with a medical degree. Detached, clinical, poised. She buttoned her coat. ‘Shall we go?’
Tim had changed out of his stained sweatshirt and into a dark maroon jumper, only marginally frayed at the collar and cuffs. He’d also swapped his trainers for a pair of heavily scuffed leather Oxfords, as if some distant memory had triggered the appropriate dress code for lunch in a restaurant.
An attendant in a white smock led them through the series of locked steel doors to the front entrance. Buzz. Screech. Crash. As each door swung open and clanged shut behind them, Tim flinched.
The attendant, a squat man with a barrel chest, reached out and patted Tim on the arm. ‘Going out on the town, huh, Timmy? Lookin’ pretty spiffy. Give my regards to Broadway and all that.’
Tim refused to engage, not even to remind the man to call him Timothy. His face gleamed with sweat, and his panicky look shifted from the walls to the floor. With his feet rooted in place, he turned his head to look back down the corridor from which they’d come.
Another ear-splitting buzzer, a flashing red light, and the final barricade between the ward and freedom swung open. Erin stepped into the fresh air and motioned for Tim to follow. But he hung back, squinting against the light. Outside, his skin was an even whiter shade of pale, nearly bloodless. Strands of hair hung over his eyes. Sluggish as a lizard in the cold, he tilted his face towards the sun, mouth slack, eyes closed.
‘We’re outside.’ He opened his eyes and turned in a slow circle.
Such a simple boundary to cross, Erin thought. Inside, outside. And yet a minefield for the incarcerated.
She tightened her scarf around her neck. ‘Take a deep breath. Doesn’t the air feel good?’
‘I guess.’
‘Don’t you ever go outside?’
He shook his head.
‘What about the courtyard, or out on the grounds? Aren’t you allowed to walk there?’
He shivered in the corduroy jacket, too thin for the cold. ‘I like to be inside.’ Tim remained rooted to the front step. Out in the daylight, the sorry state of his fingernails, bitten and raw, was clearly visible. Under his breath, he began to count. ‘Thirty-seven,’ he said, breathing out. ‘That’s a good number.’
Erin was mystified by the number’s significance until it came to her. He had counted the cars in the car park.
She started down the front steps. Tim followed behind, obedient as a child. He was showing more evidence of obsessive-compulsive disorder than reported in his file. Though the symptoms might be aggravated when he was nervous.
A stiff breeze chased dead leaves across the ground. Mounds of dirty snow from a recent storm were piled up along the crumbling asphalt. As they passed through the gate, a wild thought spun through her head. What if she revved the engine and raced to the border? Set Tim up in a flat in a village in Ontario with a job flipping burgers. The idea was so absurd, she nearly laughed. One glance at Tim’s clenched jaw and wide-eyed terror was enough to set her straight. Leaving the confines of the ward for the great outdoors was not a cause for celebration.
*
It took her three attempts to find Summer Street and the Adirondack Café, the lunchroom Harrison recommended. Conveniently located two blocks from the local police, should anything go wrong.
The minute she parked and cut the engine, Tim consulted his watch. ‘12.23,’ he announced, ‘and 17 seconds.’
Was that a good number, a favourable moment in the space-time continuum? Or would they have to wait in the car for the clock to reach a more auspicious time? But he unbuckled his seat belt and folded his hands in his lap.
Erin gathered up her things. ‘You can open your door now.’
A group of young people, students from the local college by the looks of it, in jeans and bright parkas, crossed the street in a burst of chatter.
Tim lumbered out and stood fixed to the square of pavement next to the car. He looked so ill at ease, she was tempted to suggest they skip lunch and go for a drive instead, pick up a bag of burgers and fries at a drive-through and hit the open road.
But he moved in the direction of the restaurant, careful to avoid stepping on any cracks in the pavement. At the door to the café, he turned his head, his jaw working, eyes unfocused. Was he thinking of making a break for it? Twice her weight, if not more, he could knock her flat and be halfway across town before she picked herself off the ground.
‘Number 11. That’s a pretty good number.’ He traced it with his fingers.
Thirty-seven cars. Number 11 Summer Street? Was there a pattern or connection? None she could discern. But it seemed to fit with his counting behaviours.
A girl with purple-tipped blonde hair pointed to their table. The place was only half full. Students. A couple of stressed-out mothers and their fretful children. Tim glanced nervously at the other diners, a rabbit in a field of hounds, before dropping into the chair that faced the exit.
‘This is a good table,’ he said. ‘Close to the door. Five steps.’
The waitress slapped two laminated menus in front of them and rattled off the specials in a bored voice, before walking away to clear another table.
Tim held the menu close to his face. ‘What’s a… Cobb salad?’
‘Chopped apples, raisins and walnuts mixed together with mayonnaise.’
He placed the menu in the corner
