Heat flooded Erin’s face. It was childish to care, but how typical – and shameful – of Greta to take the credit for Sara’s recovery. If Erin hadn’t taken over, Sara would have died.
*
Erin looked through the peephole of the observation room. Cassie was awake. Her dark eyes flicked from the window to the door. Was she hoping to make a run for it? But there was no way out, not from this room. No dangling cords or sharp objects, and the window fitted with safety glass. It would be difficult for Cassie to harm herself in here. By law, they could hold her for seventy-two hours. But thirteen were already gone, and the clock was ticking.
A wintry sun cast a weak light into the room. Out in the hall, a resounding tone from the brass Tibetan bowl signalled the start of the midday meal.
Erin pulled a chair close to the bed.
‘You gave us quite a scare last night.’
Cassie coughed and struggled to sit. ‘Where am I?’
She handed her a cup of water. ‘You’re in a clinic called the Meadows.’
Shock marred her features. ‘You mean I’m locked up. Like, with crazy people?’
It was a good thing Erin had the foresight to remove her doctor’s coat. White coats tended to upset new patients. Hadn’t they all seen their share of horror films? Defenceless souls spirited away in the dead of night by white-coated men.
‘You’re not locked up. And no one here is crazy.’
‘I heard someone shouting.’
Erin cast about for an excuse. ‘One of our staff slipped on the ice and sprained her ankle.’ It sounded lame, even to her own ears. She’d always been a terrible liar.
‘Right, whatever.’ Cassie fell back on the pillow. ‘Did Lonnie put me in here?’ Her hand jerked to the cropped hair. ‘She’s going to kill me.’
‘Lonnie? You mean your mother?’
‘Foster mother. She gets a kick out of claiming she’s my real mother. Like she’s Mother effing Teresa or something.’ Cassie picked at the raw skin on her thumb. ‘Always threatening to have me locked up.’
Erin tensed. If Cassie was telling the truth, this Lonnie woman was worse than she’d thought. She reached for her hand, but Cassie flinched and pulled away.
‘Can you tell me about last night?’
Silence. She might have been talking to a stone.
Cassie squinted at the chipped blue polish on her nails. ‘So, if I’m not locked up, I can go home, right?’
‘Not quite yet. We need to understand what happened first.’
‘I was totally wasted. Obviously.’ She exhaled noisily. ‘But I’m fine now.’
To give her some space, Erin moved to the window and considered her next move. Getting anyone to admit they needed help was the difficult, but essential, first step on the road to recovery. Unless Cassie chose to let Erin in, she’d continue to resist any attempt to reach her.
‘You’re not fine.’
Cassie refused to meet her eye.
‘You were found passed out in the snow by the front gate.
It was only dumb luck that one of our staff spotted you.’ Erin allowed this to sink in. ‘If he hadn’t…’
Silence, thick as fog.
‘Did you want to die?’
‘No.’ Her eyelids snapped open. ‘Can I go home now?’
From her spot by the window, Erin watched the clouds move in, bearing a fresh cargo of snow. ‘You mixed alcohol and pills.’ She paused. ‘A dangerous combination.’
Cassie closed her eyes and turned away.
This was the hardest part. Waiting for the brittle shell of denial to crack and fall away. Without a connection to the patient, however fragile, she’d get nowhere. Much of her work involved watching and waiting. For a bridge to appear in the mist, a light to blink on.
But Cassie was done talking. As she slid under the blanket and turned her face to the wall, Erin felt a pang of disappointment.
At the door, she hesitated, waiting to be called back. If the clock ran out before they got through to her, Cassie would walk out the front door and slip from their grasp. Any chance to save her would be gone.
3
Erin jotted a few notes in Cassie’s file. Awake, angry, won’t talk. What’s she hiding? In the music room, someone was plonking out discordant notes on the piano. It was impossible to think straight. Not with the Greenlake file trapped under the desk blotter. She slid it free and snapped it open. A grainy photo, like a bad mugshot, was stapled to the inside cover. Muddy-brown hair. Deep-set eyes of an indeterminate colour. A sickle-shaped scar high on the left cheek. A summary of the patient’s arrest and trial followed, accompanied by a medical history.
Over the years, the patient’s diagnoses had managed to hit all points of the compass – reactive psychosis, schizoaffective disorder, schizophrenia, paranoid personality disorder, paranoid schizophrenia. As if his doctors were a band of wanderers struggling to find a path through the darkness. The patient, Timothy Warren Stern, Jnr, was scheduled to appear before a judge on the thirtieth of June, as the final step in his petition for release.
With a flicker of unease, Erin tossed the file on her desk. Why this, why now? Nearly four months back in the country, and her anxiety about returning to America was finally on the wane. It helped that everyone thought she was born and bred in England. A risky strategy, but a means of avoiding bothersome questions about her family and a past she wished to forget.
Her new role at the Meadows was any therapist’s idea of a dream job, and she’d been conscious in the first weeks of the need to make a good impression. With the clinic’s vast endowment, they could treat any girl in need, regardless of the ability to pay. Unlike the Thornbury in London, with its fiscal hardship and penny-pinching ways. And what a relief to be freed from working under the thumb of the Thornbury’s director. Not that Julian was
