"Five weeks," I say.
Kent stands. Buttons his jacket.
"I'll see you Thursday."
The door closes behind him. I stare at the ceiling. The fluorescent blinks in the corner.
Five weeks to the review. Five weeks of swallowing pills and answering Kennedy and keeping my hands open during transfers.
Rick Dutton doesn't have long. He just doesn't know it yet.
Chapter 9
Hope
Jude moves his bishop three squares and George takes it with a pawn. He doesn't smile and Jude doesn't react, but his shoulders settle and his hand steadies when he reaches for the captured piece.
The supervised activity area sits between Ward B and Ward C—four tables, eight chairs, two guards at the door, and a strip of windows that let in enough gray light to remind everyone what outside looks like. Dr. Kennedy runs it as a therapeutic socialization program, which in practice means six men sit in heavy silence while guards line the walls. Jude and George play chess.
George brought the board a few weeks ago, a battered thing with felt peeling off the bottom and a missing black rook replaced by a medicine-cup lid. They've played five games and George has won four. I've seen Jude correct a dosing number the nursing staff got wrong, so he didn't miss that bishop. He let George take it. George doesn't know, and I'm not going to be the one who tells him.
Gage stands at the far door with his arms folded and his weight even. He looks at me a moment too long before he turns back to the corridor. He does this every session now.
I don't mind it.
"You're losing on purpose," I say to Jude when George gets up for the bathroom.
Jude looks at me. "Am I?"
"The rook sacrifice in game two. The bishop just now. You're feeding him the win."
"Maybe I'm not as smart as you think I am."
"You are, though." I lean back in my chair. "That's the problem."
His mouth pulls and he holds my gaze a beat longer than he needs to. He heard me. He always hears me—even the parts I don't say out loud—and that should concern me more than it does.
"What are you reading?" I nod at the paperback tucked under his chair. Kent has fought for him to have books, and I've been keeping track of the titles. It tells you more about a person than their file does.
"The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch." He picks it up and turns it over in his hands. "George recommended it."
"He recommended you a children's book?"
"He said it was about a man who eats the same lunch every day and seagulls keep stealing it." He sets the book down. "He said it reminded him of me."
I laugh before I can stop myself. The sound carries across the room and the guard by the window shifts. Gage's head turns.
"George has a sense of humor," I say.
"He has a death wish." But Jude's smiling when he says it. It makes him look like someone you'd sit across from at dinner, not a serial killer.
The game winds down and George wins again. They pack the pieces into the cigar box George uses as a case. I watch their hands work—George slow and careful, Jude efficient, dropping each piece into its slot without looking. The orderly against the far wall stands there with his mouth half-open because he's never seen Jude do anything with his hands that didn't end with someone on the floor.
The corridor back to admin is long and quiet. My shoes squeak on the linoleum the way they always do, and I take the long way past the staff offices and the medication dispensary.
Casey's by the water fountain near the Ward A junction.He stops when he sees me and his whole face changes—opens up, softens—the way people look when someone they've been waiting for finally walks in.
"Hope." Not Ms. Turner. Hope. He says it like we talk every day, like this is something we do. "I was thinking about what you said last week. About routine being underrated."
