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“The malnutrition, scars on your back, neck, and your wrists tell me that you had a hard life.”
I tuck my left wrist under the sheet. The scar is mostly covered by a bandage that goes up almost to my forearm, but the need to hide it is automatic. I don’t think. I just do.
“The scar on your right wrist… that’s a little harder to identify. But I’d guess it was from a handcuff or some kind of restraint rubbing against bone over an extended period. Am I close?”
I don’t say a word.
After a moment, he continues in that same calm, unflappable tone. “So you might have a good reason to want to drive into the river, maybe a better one than I’ve seen from anyone who’s come in before. Especially if you were with someone who wasn’t a friend. But that doesn’t mean I agree with it. There are always other options. We have a great social worker here—a psychiatrist too. Maria. She’s also a friend who, I know from personal experience, is a great listener. I can send her up anytime you want.”
I’d love to know what he thought about those options if I told him there were wolf shifters in the world and once they’ve made up their mind to keep you, there’s only one way to escape them. And the therapist? She’d take one look at the wolf in Rylan’s eyes and run.
“You asked me why I didn’t tell the officers you were awake,” he says.
My head rises because Idowant to know why. He should be on their side, not mine.
His expression is impossible to read, but I’m almost positive there’s a hint of old pain creeping into his eyes. “Not all people in this world are good people. Regardless of what their jobs are or their title. You can find bad ones everywhere.”
Is he saying what I think he’s saying?
“Even cops?” I hold my breath as I wait for his response.
He straightens from his lean.
I flinch back into my bed, just holding onto my fork before it can go the way my remote went the night before.
He stops moving. “Even cops. Doctors aren’t immune, either,” he says, his voice soft. “Salisbury steak.”
I blink. “What?”
He nods at my plate. “No one ever knows what it is because the chef always cooks it too long. But it’s Salisbury steak, and you’ll find mashed potatoes buried beneath it if you feel like going hunting for it. Looks terrible, but it’s not bad.”
And with that, he turns and heads for the door. At the entryway, he pauses, his back to me. “But there are some good ones, too.”
He isn’t talking about the meal.
As he steps out, pulling the door closed behind him I stare after him, and try to work out which one this doctor is. The good kind or the bad.
I worry at the question until my stomach grumbles, reminding me I’ve gone far too long without a decent meal in my belly, and then I lower my head.
As he said, there’s a small pile of mashed potatoes buried under the gravy. I spoon up some of the meat and gravy and slip it into my mouth.
The steak is so soft I don’t even have to chew, and the gravy is a little salty, but it’s not bad, so I scoop another mouthful and then another, not stopping until my plate is empty.
5
SAIGE
Something about the drugs kept the nightmares at bay the night before, but as I lay trapped in the sheets from Nurse Amy’s cocoon-like way of tucking me in, the memories swarm me.
Sunlight from a new day bleeds through the thin tissue-like blinds covering my window as I stare up at the slowly brightening ceiling.
I haven’t dreamt about Dad for a long time now. Months, probably. But maybe the fact I’m dreaming about him means that’s where I should go. Or maybe I’m being as naïve as I was to take a strange man’s hand and hope he’d lead me to a better life.
A flicker of the last seconds of the dream hovers at the edge of my mind. In it, a fierce sun beats down on us, making our sunkissed skin glow. Dad lifts me on his shoulders as I squeal at him to put me down. Mom laughs at us both when he threatens to toss me in the lake beside our cabin. The last summer vacation before Mom’s cough turned out not to be a winter cough at all.
My lips curve in a smile at the memory that feels like it was a lifetime ago. No, of a past life that feels so hazy and faded it’s like it happened to someone else.
I’ll be volunteering for more of the same bottle dodging, belt whipping future I was so desperate to escape from before, but once I tell him what my life has been like, maybe he’ll remember when he was a Dad worth having.
