‘Have you spoken to Mr Stern?’
‘Not yet, but I did talk to the psychiatrist on call,’ Lydia said. ‘He thought Tim might have had a panic attack, brought on by the stresses of the move.’
The meeting had broken up and Niels, coming through the door with the rest of the staff, motioned for her to stop by his office.
‘Sorry, what was that?’ Erin said. She’d missed half of Lydia’s side of the conversation.
‘I was saying that Dr Harrison isn’t able to get away on such short notice. He wondered if you could drive up there to see what’s going on.’
She’d have to check her calendar, though it wouldn’t be a simple matter to drop everything and drive up to Burlington. A good three hours away, if not more, and there was no telling how long she’d have to stick around once she got there. She had her own patients to think of, and a full diary of responsibilities.
After hanging up, Erin felt an overwhelming urge to skip town. Would this case never go away? But that something had gone wrong wasn’t a complete surprise. Nothing ever played out as expected, and Tim’s move to Vermont, no matter how seamless on paper, was never going to be all sunshine and roses.
What else could she do but drive up there and help sort things out? If Tim had gone off his meds, paranoid delusions were just one of the many possible effects. It was only later that another, more frightening, thought occurred to her. That Tim wasn’t delusional at all. And there was a grain of truth to his claim of attempted bodily harm. Especially if Stern had behaved in ways, both large and small, that Tim viewed as a threat. For all she knew, a hair-trigger temper lurked behind Stern’s easy-going smile.
*
With a little juggling of her schedule, Erin managed to be on the road to Burlington by four. Three hours alone in the car would give her plenty of time to think. As she wound through the Green Mountains, miles upon miles of dark forest that shifted in and out of the golden afternoon light, the potential scenarios of what had gone wrong piled up in her head. When she pulled into the car park of the Burlington hospital, it was a few minutes after seven.
As the big glass doors slid open to let her in, she wondered if she’d find Stern there, hovering in the lobby like a concerned parent. Or perhaps he was at home in Matlock, rethinking his decision to house Tim under his roof.
She rode the lift to the psych ward on the top floor. The duty nurse, a woman with a no-nonsense expression, glanced at her ID.
‘He’s out of restraints now,’ she said, consulting a chart on her desk.
‘Could I speak with the attending physician on call when Tim Stern came in?’
Distracted by a beeping monitor, the nurse tilted her head. ‘Who? Oh, sure. Dr Larsen. There he is now, coming out of Room 603.’
Erin hurried to intercept him, aware she looked a mess, with her shirt untucked and her hair limp from the long drive in the heat. ‘Dr Larsen?’
The man’s eyes swam behind a pair of thick glasses. He blinked as he hitched his belt over a considerable paunch. Erin cleared her throat and asked about Tim.
‘Are you a family member?’
‘I’m a psychiatrist,’ she said. ‘His treating physician couldn’t get away, so he asked me to represent him.’
Larsen slid a notepad from the pocket of his white coat and flipped through the pages. ‘The patient was brought in by ambulance on Sunday, just after two in the morning. He was highly agitated and disoriented. Possibly psychotic. He knew his name, but not what day it was. After taking a blood sample, we administered a sedative as a precaution. His labs showed no evidence of antipsychotics. As of seven this morning, he’s back on his prescribed meds. My guess is he stopped taking them soon after he was released from, where was it… Greenlake?’
Stopped taking them. How was that possible? Stern would have been schooled on the importance of Tim’s meds, and the consequences of his failure to take them.
‘I was about to go off my shift,’ Larsen said. ‘But I can stay on a while, if you think it’ll help.’
Through the observation window in the door, Erin could see Tim lying flat on his back, eyes fixed on the ceiling. ‘Thank you, but there’s no need for you to stay.’ She remained at the window for a few minutes, hoping to see some movement, but not even a twitch emitted from the figure on the bed. Except for the eyes, fixed but clearly alive, he might have been a corpse.
She knocked softly and opened the door. ‘Timothy? It’s Dr Cartwright. May I come in?’
When he didn’t respond, she entered and tiptoed towards the bed.
‘How are you feeling?’ She pulled up a chair.
The faint rise and fall of his chest provided a hint of life, but nothing suggested he was aware of her presence.
‘You’re safe, Timothy. You’re in a hospital in Burlington. Your father isn’t here, and he won’t be allowed to see you without your permission. No one will hurt you.’
Her shoulders tensed as she waited for a response.
Breathe in, breathe out. She counted ten breaths as she held herself perfectly still, until they resembled two statues in the waning daylight.
A tiny movement, a shift of air.
He shut his eyes. ‘Go away.’
She waited for him to say more, but when nothing came, she continued. ‘I’m on
