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“Trying to trace his steps? How?”
“They have a photo. This is protocol,” Shaw said. “We’ve registered him with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.”
“What? When?”
“Excuse me?”
“When did you do that?”
“This morning,” said Shaw.
Dr. Parks paused. Seriously? Josh’s face on a milk carton? On TV? “Can you even do that without our permission?”
“Yes, we have to. There’s no waiting. There’s no hold time for children. Ever. Under eighteen.”
Missing? Exploited?
Children? The word hung in her brain.
Josh was a child. He was still a child, at least legally. It didn’t matter that he towered over her, that he’d had sex or taken drugs, that he cursed like his dad.
Legally, her son was still a child, and she had failed him as his mother and as a physician. She couldn’t help him, she couldn’t cure him, she couldn’t save him.
“The Billings police have issued a BOLO,” Shaw said. “Helena, Missoula, Butte, Spokane.”
“Okay.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Parks. We all thought he was making progress. We all thought…” Dr. Shaw’s voice trailed off.
“You all thought what?”
“We all thought he was doing well.”
Clearly, they were dead wrong.
CHAPTER 28
AFTER THE DOCTOR hung up on Shaw, she called Steven. They agreed he should book a flight to Billings and leave right away, that afternoon. He’d deal with the police and with Wellborn. The doctor would stay put and hold down the fort in case Josh came home.
Who knew, they thought.
Maybe Josh was headed home.
As they spoke, the doctor was overcome by a nausea, a wave of dread. The year had been an amusement park ride, like the kind she rode at Playland Park when she was little. On the Dragon Coaster, she’d adjust her seatbelt and instantly regret she ever got on. The ride would take off, and all she could do was grip the seat bar and suffer the terrifying dips and turns, completely and utterly out of control.
The rest of the morning and all afternoon, she waited and waited, and heard not a word from Wellborn Ranch or the police. She called a few times and no one picked up. She could not get through. She’d leave it to Steven to deal with Wellborn Ranch in person.
What else could she do?
In the evening, she retreated upstairs, went to the bathroom, and scrambled through the cabinets and drawers. What did she need and what did she have? Ativan and Ambien. The magicA’s. One for nerves and one for sleep. Maybe a double dose of each. For a moment, she paused over the sink, water glass in hand, and wondered if she should go to sleep forever. It would be easy, a great relief, but it would be wrong. A huge betrayal to her life’s work, the Hippocratic Oath she’d once sworn. First, do no harm. Even to herself. Maybe, she thought, maybe Josh was on his way home. Maybe he was sober. Maybe he was finally sane. Maybe. Either way, there was no way to sleep without the drugs, so she took them both.
But neither worked.
The coyotes were back on the hillside again, wailing their sad and mournful cries. And sometime later, in the middle of the night, the doctor woke with a frightened start, anxious as hell, and saw only white.
She knew it was blood. She knew that she had blood in her eyes, she knew it was hers, and knew she was no longer in her own bed where she’d fallen asleep.
She woke up face down on her bathroom floor.
