I was too hot. The smell of woodsmoke mixed with something else: the stink of singed fabric. I smacked the vents up, aiming them at my face, and even though it was November, I ran the A/C at full. I pictured the Bighorn River. I pictured the shallows, where the river ran wide, the water flat except where it riffled over stone. The stink of smoldering fabric grew worse, and I cranked a window down. He could be dying right then, right at that minute. His lungs could be stopping. That’s what happened. It happened all the time. People relapsed, they thought they knew how much they needed to get high, but their tolerance had lapsed. Their bodies couldn’t handle it. The heroin or the oxy or whatever it was, it would shut down the part of his brain that regulated his breathing. He’d be dead. One day, one sunny summer day, we had been out in the garden, and he had been stretched on his belly on the grass, shirt off, and I had traced the line of his spine with my eyes. I had watched as his chest expanded and contracted with each soft breath. I had seen the innocence he thought that he’d lost, the scarified half of his face turned up because he’d fallen asleep, because he wasn’t awake and therefore couldn’t hide the best part of himself.

  The Impala was too small; even with the window down, the stench of the burning fabric was too thick, and I couldn’t breathe. I jerked the wheel. A horn blared, and a car swerved around me. The horn kept going as the car passed me. The driver flipped me the bird. I just kept dragging the wheel to the right, ignoring the honks, the screech of brakes, until the Impala hit the rumble strip and I was coasting onto the shoulder. Hands over my mouth, I dropped my head against the steering wheel. The teacher part of my brain had handled this plenty of times; kids who had panic attacks were more common every year. We’re going to breathe together, that part of my brain said. We’re going to take slow breaths through the nose. Deep breaths. Fill the lower lungs first. You’ll feel it down here. Then the upper lungs. That’s right. Hold your breath to the count of three. Great, that’s really great. Now we’re going to do it again.

  After a while, my hands stopped shaking. The roar of traffic filtered through the haze, cars whipping past me, the Impala rocking slightly from the force of their passage. I buzzed the window up, too exhausted to do anything else except flop back against the seat. A few minutes later, I angled the vents away. The panicked whirl of thoughts had stopped, but one thing had moved to the front of my brain: if he hurt himself, if he died, the last thing between us would have been that fight in the bathroom.

  I couldn’t let that happen; I wouldn’t let that be the last thing we had together. An opening appeared in the traffic, and I shifted into gear and merged onto the highway, headed for San Elredo. But now I knew where I was going. And I knew why.

  When I got to the hospital, it was early afternoon. The November day had cleared; the sun was bright in a watercolor sky. Where the light touched the hospital, the weathered stucco glowed so brightly that I shaded my eyes. An old man was shuffling across the lawn; on the metal frame of his walker, he had a bumper sticker that said YOU BETTER HOPE YOU GET HERE TOO. THE ALTERNATIVE IS EVEN WORSE. And I thought of the way Emmett had said about me, He’s, like, thirty. I laughed, and the sound surprised me, and then I was crying and laughing, wiping my face as I got out of the car. The laugh surprised the old man too. His head whipped toward me, and I waved. I managed to tamp down the laughter, but I couldn’t get rid of the grin.

  In a couple of days, Emmett would be back here. He’d grouse and grumble. He’d do that thing where he slouched and obviously had a very high opinion of himself. He wouldn’t realize that the things that made a guy’s heart stop—the things that made my heart stop—had nothing to do with slouching or strutting or what he referred to as sex eyes. It was the way he hummed when he didn’t realize it. It was the way he rolled onto his back, grabbing his legs just behind his knees and pulling them to his chest, laughing about a meme that I didn’t understand. It was the way he chewed on the collar of his shirt when he was thinking, really thinking, because he was smarter than he ever gave himself credit for. In a day, two tops, he’d be here. And I realized I was going to tell him. All of it. Counting his ribs, the curve of his spine, the humming, the laughing, even chewing on his damn collar. I was going to tell him. And if he hated me, if he thought I was a creep, well, at least he’d know.

  No more lies, I thought as I walked into the hospital. My whole life had been lies. No more.

  After making my way through the hospital to the psych ward, after explaining what had happened, after telling them all of it—except the supernatural bits—about how Emmett needed help, how he had run off, the withdrawal, after all of that, they made me sit in an office.

  A minute ticked by. Then five. Thoughts of Emmett kept swarming in. I kicked back in the chair, tried to relax, and forced myself to focus on something else. On the desk, the nameplate said K. Rice, M.D. A few framed photographs stood on the desk, along with a pile of paperwork and a spray of pens. Behind the desk, diplomas and certificates hung on the wall. Another wall was taken up with cabinets, medical supplies like cotton balls and disinfecting wipes, and another wall had posters for campaigns to raise awareness about mental health. The posters were a little faded, with a few tears along their edges. The clothes the models were wearing were outdated. A lot of fluorescent colors. One of the posters looked even older; the woman had a perm roughly the size of a yacht, and she was wearing high waisted jeans and shoulder pads sharp enough to take out somebody’s eye if she turned around too fast. I’VE GOT A JOB. I’VE GOT A FAMILY. AND I’VE GOT MANIC DEPRESSION. Big neon letters.

  I squirmed in the chair, trying to find a better spot. I looked at the diplomas. I looked at the back of the framed photographs on Dr. Rice’s desk. Then, turning around, I studied the posters behind me again. The iceberg-sized perm, the mom jeans, the shoulders pads. Sure, they were ugly. I mean, they’d been awesome in the 80s but they were ugly as sin. But maybe ugly wasn’t a reason to take down a poster. Maybe Dr. Rice had really liked the 80s. Maybe he’d really hit his stride. Maybe he still wore his acid-wash dad jeans, still had his mullet, still had Depeche Mode on cassette.

  Maybe.

  I got up. I was antsy now. I walked the room, all four walls, and I felt the invisible box I was tracing. I went back to the poster. The 80s were pretty bad, right? I’d been born at the end them, so my experience was mostly second hand. But I knew about mullets. I knew about Members Only jackets. I’d listened to the Eurythmics on Bonnie Kissner’s Walkman. But maybe bad was good. Maybe we’d come full circle. Maybe the poster was ironic.

  Except.

  Except I was pretty sure we weren’t supposed to call it manic depression anymore. I was pretty sure that term was outdated. And in the psych ward of an expensive private hospital, why would you leave up a poster with outdated, possibly insensitive terminology?

  Maybe Dr. Rice used it as a teachable moment. Maybe he walked patients over here, pointed out the hilariously ugly clothes and hair, talked about cultural history and how mental health is an evolving field.

  In my head, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Emmett said, Don’t be a fucking moron, Jimbo.

  I moved back to the chair; I gripped it tight enough that my knuckles were white. I thought about how Emmett hated this place but wouldn’t say why. I thought about how eager he was to leave. I thought about all the times he’d seemed upset and wouldn’t explain. I thought about how he’d refused to go back. It’d been easy to rationalize those moments away: he missed his family, he missed his friends, he missed his freedom, he missed Vie. But now, I wondered.

  And now that I was wondering, my brain couldn’t seem to stop. I moved around the desk, stood behind it, and glanced at the photographs. I realized that I’d been sexist in my expectations; Dr. Rice wasn’t a man. Dr. Rice, whom I hadn’t met before, was in all of the pictures: the earliest one showed a young black woman at her white coat ceremony, her face turned slightly up as she looked past the camera, her countenance bright with excitement and happiness. In another, she stood with her husband on their wedding day. In others, she was with her family. One picture showed what I assumed was her twentieth anniversary with her husband: they were cutting a cake together, and a balloon 2 and a balloon 0 floated in the background. They looked older, and in this photograph, Rice stared directly at the camera, her cheeks sagging, her eyes dull. It was the face of a woman who wanted her damn cake and then wanted out of there. In one of the pictures, Rice was christening a boat, a big one. I didn’t know the first thing about boats, but I knew that one cost a lot of money. In another, she was wearing a fur coat.

  Lots of doctors made a lot of money, I told myself. Lots of doctors, especially if they worked in elite private hospitals.

  I turned around. One by one, I checked the certificates, the diplomas, the abundance of documentation that proved Rice’s expertise. Up close, the effect was overwhelming; some of the certifications were so specialized that I had no idea what they meant, while others seemed to have been added to fill space. CPR training by the Red Cross. Maybe that was normal. Maybe all doctors did that. What did I know? When was the last time I’d been to a doctor?

  In the center of the maze of frames and glass hung a Harvard Medical School diploma, crimson matting, creamy paper, crimson and black letters, crimson seal. Dr. Kayla Rice. I made myself take a breath. I was being silly. She was a Harvard-trained physician. She worked at one of the best private psychiatric hospitals on the West Coast. If she wanted to leave up an outdated poster, that was her business, right? Maybe she thought it was kitsch.

  I had my phone in my hands, and I tapped through an internet search while the rest of my brain rattled on about shoulder pads and mullets and Depeche Mode. Easy to check. Easy to verify. Trust but verify; that was Reagan, right? Another 80s icon.

  There were websites that verified physician credentials. I went to one and typed in Kayla Rice and set the search parameters to California.

  Nothing.

  No results. Not even a similar name.

  That had to be a mistake.

  I expanded my search: Kayla Rice, no geographic limiters.

  Thirty results. Oklahoma, Georgia, New Hampshire. Thirty results, and not one of them had gone to Harvard.

  The door opened; I shoved my phone in my pocket.

  “Hello, Mr. Spencer? Oh. There you are.”

  “Sorry.” I gestured to the wall. “Got bored.”

  “Not at all.” She had a rich, pleasant voice. She changed her hair since the most recent photographs; it was short, and it complemented the shape of her head, but the dead lines in her face were the same. I caught a whiff of perfume, and again, I thought: perfume, perfume, in a psych hospital, in a closed space, where patients might be sensitive. She came around the desk, and I retreated until I was standing by my chair again.

  Her eyes went to me, and she smiled. She was still smiling as her eyes flicked down to the desk, the pile of papers, the drawers. I could almost see the invisible checkmarks as she made sure nothing had been disturbed.

  “You’re here about Emmett, I understand.” She sat. “What is your relationship to him?”

  Her eyes moved to the stack of papers.

  “Mr. Spencer?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you want to sit down?”

  “Oh. Yes. Yeah.”

  “Can I get you something? Tea? Coffee? Water?”

  “No.” I wanted to lick my lips. “Sorry, this is such a silly question, but did you go to Harvard?”

  Her smile got even bigger, and she looked over her shoulder and shrugged. “For the first ten years after I got out of there, I was embarrassed. I felt like I was showing off. I bought a sweatshirt,” she mimed lettering across her chest, “and sweatpants and a pullover and, oh my God, I don’t know what else. I kept it all in a drawer. Couldn’t bear to wear it in public.”

  She laughed. I laughed. Just two gals having so much fun.

  “What year did you graduate?” I asked.

  “93.”

  “Crazy,” I said. “I have a friend who graduated around then.”

  “Really? I have to say, Mr. Spencer, you are very well preserved if you have a friend who’s my age.”

  “He’s an older friend.”

  “Really, what’s his name?”

  “Bob.”

  A delicate eyebrow went up.

  “Bob Smith,” I said, dragging my knuckles across my cheek, trying to grin. “Sorry. I’m kind of spacey today.”

  “I don’t recognize that name.”

  “I’m sure it’s a big place.”

  “Not really.” She frowned. “I’m sure he’s in the alumni directory, though.”

  My grin got bigger. I wondered if this was how Vie felt sometimes, when he really wanted to get trouble started, and I squirmed to the edge of my seat. “That’s a good idea. Could you check?”

  In the hallway, something with a squeaky wheel rolled past us. The squeaking went on and on. It felt like fifteen solid minutes of squeaking.

  “Now probably isn’t the best time,” Rice said.

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Mr. Spencer, I’m sorry, I still don’t understand why you’re here. What is your relationship to Emmett?”

  “He’s a friend.”

  The squeaking was still going, distant now, a thin sound, and then it cut off when a door slammed shut. The noise was so sudden that I jumped in my seat. I dragged my knuckles across my cheek again, tried to grin again, but Rice’s face had gotten stony. Us gals, I thought, fighting a wild giggle. Just us gals, but not having quite as much fun anymore.

  “I see,” Rice said. “And do his parents know that you’re visiting him?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see,” Rice said again. “I understand you’re worried about Emmett.”

  “No,” I said. “No, I just wanted to . . .” My mind was blank. I couldn’t think of a lie fast enough.

  “Mr. Fischer said you were insistent that Emmett was off hospital grounds.”

  Not escaped, I thought. You didn’t escape from a place this swanky. You were off hospital grounds. Like you’d just taken a wrong turn.

  “I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” I said.

  “I see,” Rice said.

  Maybe it was doctor speak. Maybe you paid a few hundred thousand dollars to Harvard Med to learn how to say it just right.

  Rice’s hands had come to rest on the edge of the desk. She was holding my gaze, but in my peripheral vision, I could see her right hand sliding along the desk. Very slow. Very controlled. She was smiling again.

  “Well, I’ve got great news for you. Emmett is right here. Why don’t we go pay him a visit?”

  “What?” I said. “No, he’s not even—”

  I shut my mouth so hard that I bit my tongue; I tasted blood.

  Rice’s smile didn’t change. The dead lines of her face didn’t change. Her eyes, though—her eyes were hard now. Her right hand had come to a stop. I watched without watching, just using my peripheral vision, as her thumb flicked something under the desk.

  “Let’s go talk to Emmett,” Rice said. “I think you’ll be really thrilled with how much progress he’s made. We’ve got a specialist down from San Francisco who would like to talk to you about Emmett, I think.”

  “No,” I said, taking a step backward toward the door. “No, I should get going.”

  “Mr. Spencer—”

  I threw open the door and started walking. Not a run. Not yet. But a brisk walk. The inferno at my core, the one that never went out, was waking up. Fire, all fire, was a living thing: it shuddered and stirred and took deep breaths. The blaze inside me was panting for air, curling up into my chest, a dancing, flickering heat. Paint blistered on the wall beside me; on the bulletin board to my left, a flyer for cage-free organic eggs blackened and charred.

  Behind me: “Mr. Spencer!”

  I walked faster. Ahead, the hallway opened onto a large reception area—not the main reception area at the front of the building, but one of the nested stations that subdivided the hospital. I shot across the open room, dodged a row of tubular chairs, and ignored the questioning look of the girl behind the desk. On the opposite side of the reception area, a door opened, and two men came out. They were wearing dark suits, and they probably each weighed a hundred pounds more than I did—a hundred pounds of gorilla muscle, by the look of it. They came toward me without breaking their stride; one of them spoke quietly into a walkie.

  Now I ran. The gorillas ran too, and then it was a race, all three of us sprinting down the next hallway. For the first minute, the gorillas kept up. Then they faltered. Me, on the other hand? I hit my stride, breaking away. I ran like I’d never stop. I didn’t have to throw a look over my shoulder to know they couldn’t keep up; I could hear them falling behind.

  Ahead, a nurse’s station broke the flow of the hallway, a slightly wider area of space fitted with a desk and computers and various pieces of equipment that I didn’t recognize. The woman behind the desk had to be sixty, and she stared at me as I ran toward her. One wrinkled hand came up to absently pat her bun, as though she were checking she were still all in one piece. As I got closer, I saw that a new hallway branched left at the nurse’s station. Had I come that way? Or did I need to continue straight? I didn’t even remember passing a nurse’s station on the way in. I decided to keep running straight rather than risk losing momentum.

  As I drew even with the nurse’s station, two more of the gorillas appeared at the end of the hall. I put on the brakes, skidding to slow myself, and turned left.

  Two more of the gorillas there too.

  My hands were on fire, gauntlets of flames that climbed my forearms; my sleeves had already burned away, and flecks of ash and ember floated around me on eddies of heat.

 

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