"I tried to get more information to help her, but she clammed up and just went to work with me in the field. As I said, I was working and thinking and not paying attention to anything and then suddenly realized she was no longer there.
“So, I went looking for her and found her in the barn, sitting on the floor. She had taken the sharpest scythe and she had cut both her wrists very deeply. There was so much blood already, but she was smiling at me. I shouted for help, of course. No one was around, so I ran to find Natani, but he wasn't there either.”
“That's because he was out there helping us,” I said, looking at Robin. She nodded. “What happened then?”
"I tried to stop the bleeding, but that was impossible. She said, 'Leave me be. I was wrong. I'm going home.'
"So I ran out again and went to the house where I found Dr. Foreman lecturing our buddies in her office. She demanded to know why I had entered the house without permission. She stood there screaming at me. Finally, I managed to tell them about Mindy and they ran out to the barn.
“I saw them carry her off, but I knew it was too late. Later, the van took her away. I saw them carrying her out of the house. This afternoon,” she continued after along beat of silence, “I think Dr. Foreman was to meet with the police. Did you see how nice she looked?” she asked as if that really mattered to any of us. “She'll make it look like an accident.”
“How horrible,” Robin said.
“You know what was done to us, how we were left out there in the desert?” I asked.
“I know.” She looked up at us. “I didn't expect you would make it back.”
“Natani helped us. That's why he wasn't here when you needed him,” I said.
“She's going to get away with it,” Gia said. “She got away with Posy. She'll get away with all this, too.”
“Maybe the police are still here or someone from the social service agency. Maybe we can talk to them,” Robin suggested excitedly.
“No,” Gia said. "They're gone. She did her good job on them, I'm sure. We're high-risk girls, you see. Anything can happen and it's not going to be her fault. Look at all the girls she's helped, the ones she's released back into society to be productive citizens. Once in a while, she loses one. It can't be helped. The girl was beyond redemption. I know her whole speech. I've heard it before. I've heard it all my life, that speech. How terrible I am. How beyond help. How selfish. How downright no good.
“Sound familiar?” she asked us.
“Not as much maybe, but I've heard it, yes,” Robin admitted.
I thought about my uncle and aunt and how they saw me. “Me, too.”
“Won't Mindy's family be upset, angry, demand answers?” Robin wondered.
“The family that failed, that gave up? Please,” Giasaid. “They'll feel sorrier for Dr. Foreman. They'll even apologize for giving her a girl she couldn't cure.”
“She's more dangerous than we'll ever be,” I said, “because she gets them to believe she does it all out of some desire to be good.”
“Exactly.” Gia looked past me at the cot. “I see you were given the notebook to fill. I have one, too.” She reached under her pillow to show it to us. “I'm to write about what I learned from Mindy's failure.”
Gia put it aside and looked at us again, finally realizing Teal wasn't there.
“Where is Teal?”
I told her what had happened and where she was.
“She'll take good care of her,” Gia said. “She might even have her transported to a real hospital or something. She can't afford to lose another girl so quickly.”
“She almost lost all three of us out there.”
“That's different. You ran off. You were beyond her help, her ability to do anything. If you didn't show up, she would have called the police and covered her rear end. Don't worry about Dr. Foreman. She's invincible,” Gia said.
She lay back and looked up at the ceiling, her hands folded on her stomach.
“What do we do?” I asked. Robin shook her head.
“Nothing,” Gia said. “Go write in your notebooks. I have mine half-filled.”
“I'll write something. What I write will make her ears burn,” Robin threatened.
Gia smiled. “Good idea. That's what I'm doing.”
We had no idea what she meant.
But we would.
Soon.
We would.
Broken Wings 2 - Midnight Flight
Posy Returns
J. eal wasn't sent to any real hospital. Natani's Indian medicine worked well. After another two days, she appeared at the barracks, weakened, but essentially well enough to be on her own again with just a little limp in her walk. The snake bite and the events afterward appeared to have erased most of her memories of our desert ordeal. Robin and I had to describe it all to her, and as we did, she kept shaking her head and saying, “I did that? We did that?”
Apparently she had been in more of a daze and in more confusion than we'd realized after she had been bitten by the sidewinder.
Apparently because of her condition, Dr. Foreman did not give her a notebook to fill with thoughts and lessons learned. Neither Robin nor I had really done much in ours, but we were told we would not be givenback our mattresses, blankets, and pillows until we had completed the notebooks.
I was afraid of writing anything truthful, afraid that somehow Dr. Foreman would find a way to use it against me, use it as a weapon to tear me down, just as she had done with my revelation about my fear of rats. Gia was writing in hers, but we had no idea what she wrote. She wouldn't reveal it. She just kept mumbling, “I'll remind her. I'll remind her.”
One of the first things I did when I had free time was to thank Natani. He said nothing, admitting to nothing until I
