I lean against the counter and watch her work the post through. "He broke a guard's arm and he's a serial killer."
"Geez, Hope."
"The guard had a history. He wasn't following protocol."
"And that makes the broken arm okay?"
"It doesn't." I run my thumbnail along the edge of the counter. "But the facility's response doesn't match the incident either."
Mishel is quiet for a beat. She puts the earring in. Then the other one. Her eyes find the camera and her voice drops.
"You know your meter's broken, Hope. You've known since the accident."
I don't say anything. My thumbnail finds a chip in the countertop and stays there.
She's the only person who says it to me. My parents don't. My brother Steve doesn't. They all know about the accident—front-impact collision, my second year of undergrad, twenty-one years old. The car hit me head-on. My brain hit the inside of my skull, bounced, hit the other side.Coup-contrecoup, the doctors called it. They said it so many times it lost its meaning.
Partial damage to my amygdala. They drew a diagram. Showed me where the fear response lives and where mine took a hit. They told me I'd have trouble reading danger in people. That the information would get in—I'd read the facts, I'd know it in my head—but the feeling wouldn't follow. The alarm that tells abody to run, the one that tightens your chest and speeds your pulse and screamsget out of here, mine has a short in it.
I understood every word they said. I nodded. Seven years ago. I stopped thinking about it because there's nothing to think about. You can't miss what you can't feel.
And here's the part Mishel doesn't want to hear. The part none of them want to hear.
I'm good at this jobbecauseof the accident, not in spite of it. I can sit in a room with a man who killed eighteen people and my pulse stays flat. I can read his file and walk into his cell and ask him how he slept. Other monitors burn out. They transfer. They have breakdowns in parking lots and never come back. I walk Ward C the way they walk Ward A. My charts don't get edited by my heartbeat. My notes don't shake.
That's why the court sends me to the facilities other monitors won't touch.
"My meter isn't broken," I say. "My meter is why they send me to the facilities nobody else wants."
"That's what scares me."
"Mish. I've done this so many times. This one is no different."
She looks at me through the screen and she doesn't believe me. But she knows me well enough to let it go. She's been doing that since we were eleven.
Mishel was in care from the time she was eight. Moved three times before she was ten. The third house had a lock on the fridge. An actual padlock, heavy chain, wrapped through the handles. She was twelve. I was eleven. She told me about it at school, her voice flat. I went home and cried in my room for an hour because I couldn't do a single thing about it.
That's where it started. I couldn't open the fridge for her. But I could grow up and make sure someone was paying attention to the next Mishel.
"Be careful," she says.
"Always am."
"You're literally never careful. That's the problem." She blows a kiss at the screen. "I have to go. Aaron's here."
"Have fun. Use protection."
"I have an IUD and a taser. I'm covered."
She hangs up. I set my phone down.
Steve calls twenty minutes later while I'm microwaving leftover pasta. His face is sunburned. He's been surfing again.
"You're peeling," I say.
"Worth it. Four-foot swell." He tips his beer at the screen. "You look tired."
"Thanks, Steve."
