The next morning the world was coated in white. A thick frost had frozen every rooftop, lawn, and tree branch in Duluth and as I peered out the staff break room window, rubbing the couch debris out of my sleep-bruised eyes, a powdery snow whipped into the panes and skittered along the ground, as if the wind refused to let it land. Sometime in the night I’d left Lucas in the care of the nurses and headed down the hall for a few restless hours of sleep. The break room furniture was scratchy and reeked of antiseptic, but it beat going home and trying to explain what happened last night while Dad looked at me in that way of his – like I was a vase glued carefully back together and he had to constantly check me for missing pieces, fissures, any sign that I might crumble again. Today was my day off, though, and I couldn’t leave Jasper alone much longer. I stared into the blowing white world and listened to the tick, tick, ticks of the snow against the window, each flake hurling winter that much closer.
After checking on Lucas – who may or may not have been sleeping – I took the bus home and made sure the garage was empty before going in to shower and walk the dog. We drove up to Bayfront and paced the lake walk, where Jasper chased snow devils and I limped along the empty boards and scanned Superior’s horizon. The powder wouldn’t last. The sun would chase it away as soon as the clouds broke, but we were getting closer to November and not even Superior’s gales could fight off the inevitable. Normally I liked winter – the four-foot drifts, the nostril-freezing arctic blasts that drove all the tourists away, leaving the town to the hardy, the survivors who bundled up and shoveled oceans of snow before retreating to our mugs and fleece blankets to wait out the endless December nights. Winter in Duluth was antisocial paradise and for someone whose mother suffered from chronic depression, there was a disconcerting comfort in the isolation. A home I recognized, even if I hadn’t asked for it. Today, though, I wasn’t comforted by the cold blast of wind numbing my ankle. I didn’t find relief in the absence of people on the lake walk. Today I was scared for a man I’d never met.
After dropping Jasper off at home, I drove to the library and spent the rest of the morning poring over books and topographical maps. I studied pictures, read travelogues, and stared at the mottled landscape of greens and blues that would be covered in white, frozen over and closed off to even the most adventurous hikers in a few short weeks. Maybe to a young boy it would look like a mountain of salt, vast and impenetrable, but Josiah Blackthorn was out there somewhere, sick, alone. I circled the location of the outfitter’s store and drew ranges out from that center point. Five miles. Ten. How far would you go up the mountain to save the person you loved most in the world?
How far would I go to help them?
Two days after Lucas’s hospital escape I drove through the swelling crowd at Congdon’s gate – at least fifteen people were bundled up and waving signs at passing cars – and punched in to find most of the staff either staring or whispering to each other on the opposite side of whatever room I was in. My dramatic recovery of the boy who came back from the dead, which had aired on every major news channel in Duluth, apparently sealed my reputation as something entirely apart from them. I spent the morning catching up on email, planning session activities for my other patients, and trying to ignore everyone whose Minnesotan niceness made them smile before walking hastily away. The one person I could count on for direct address, unfortunately, was the one person I was trying to avoid. Dr Mehta held me back after our afternoon staff meeting.
‘I approved Lucas’s transfer back to ward two today.’
‘That’s great, thanks. The group environment is his biggest challenge. The sooner we get him comfortable there, the quicker his recovery.’ I inched my way toward the door, thankful that my ankle felt almost back to normal.
‘Yes, he still needs to acclimate and of course integrate his childhood experiences with the larger world, but Mr Blackthorn strikes me as someone who needs a path forward. He should be thinking about short- and medium-term goals.’
‘We’ll start working on that right away.’ Obediently, I made a note of it, turning to leave.
‘I haven’t decided who his speech therapist will be yet.’
‘What?’ Halting in mid-escape, I swung on Dr Mehta. ‘I’m his therapist.’
‘Shut the door and sit down, please, Maya.’
I complied, watching her warily as she sat opposite me and carefully picked cat fur off her pants.
‘You haven’t told me what happened the night of Lucas’s escape.’
In a clear, even voice, I told her the same story Dad had given to the police. Unlike the officers, though, Dr Mehta didn’t appear the tiniest bit convinced.
‘You weren’t answering my calls earlier that evening.’
‘I’m sorry. I was tired and off duty.’
Dr Mehta nodded and let her gaze slide somewhere closer to my heart. ‘A perfectly reasonable explanation and if it was any of my other staff, quite in character.’
My tongue pressed against my palate and held. After a moment, she sighed and clasped her hands. ‘And then we have Mr Blackthorn. He left the hospital almost two hours before your father discovered him, claiming he was standing in plain sight in the middle of one of the busiest docks in Duluth.’
‘That’s where Dad found him.’ I met her gaze head-on, mixing mine with the right amounts of irritation and confusion.
‘It still seems like a long gap of time to me.’
‘Did you ask him where he went?’ I countered.
‘We did. He said he was wandering.’
Dr Mehta stared at me with her all-knowing look. Every muscle in my body tensed, and I barely made myself nod and murmur an acknowledgment.
‘Lucas Blackthorn doesn’t strike me as the wandering type.’
I took a deep breath. ‘So I’ll try to figure out what his goal was during our next sessions. I haven’t worked this hard to earn his trust for nothing.’
‘Yes, I have no doubt that you’ve gained it. He’s been asking for you – extremely politely, I’m told – with every new nurse at every shift change. He even struck up a conversation with one of the janitors about you. Your interests. Your background. Hector wasn’t extremely helpful in the situation, apparently only knowing you as “that little punk girl with the shit in her ear.” ’
‘See?’ I ignored the sudden upbeat in my pulse. ‘So why would you make him start all over again with someone new?’
‘Because I’m worried about your attachment to each other.’
Jesus. She didn’t pull any punches. I felt myself flushing, which might as well have been a big fat confirmation of our ‘attachment.’ Dropping my gaze, I tried to find words that were both true and harmless.
‘I like him.’
‘Obviously. You spent hours at his bedside in the hospital, off the clock, and when you brought him back here you barely moved from his side all night. The medical team noticed what they called an “unspoken communication” between you.’
‘Well, for one, that sounds like gossipy bullshit.’
Dr Mehta chuckled.
‘And two,’ I sighed and tossed my hands in the air. ‘You’re right. I have become attached to him. He reminds me of me, I guess. But is that so bad? I mean, don’t you ever become fond of any of your patients? What about Big George? That man is a human-sized teddy bear. How can you not love him?’
‘Don’t shift the topic. There’s a difference between professional compassion and personal attachment.’
I made myself laugh. ‘I’m not going to ask him to go steady, okay?’
‘It’s against policy, it’s dangerous, and to be completely honest I’m more worried about the consequences for you than for Mr Blackthorn.’
‘This is insane.’ I launched myself out of the chair and paced behind it. ‘In the eight years I’ve known you, all you’ve ever told me is that I need to let myself connect with people, to open up to love and loss again and all that crap. Then you force me to work with Lucas against my will and outside my professional scope. And now you’re upset because I’m too close to him?’
She steepled her fingers under her chin, undisturbed by my outburst. On the scale of emotional incidents around here, we might as well be having a sedate tea. After a moment’s consideration, she nodded.
‘I’ll authorize you to continue your sessions for the time being, but I’ll be monitoring your work closely. And please know, Maya’ – she stopped me as I headed for the door – ‘I believe in you.’
Belief is a powerful thing. It grabs you, unmakes you, changes the tilt and angle of everything around you into an entirely different geometry. You see the world in a new shape and no matter how horrible the belief, no matter what awful things it makes you do, a part of you is still grateful for the structure.
I’d believed a lot of things in my life, most of them about my mother.
I’d believed in Santa Claus until I found the frosted animal crackers I only got once a year in my stocking, tucked away in Mom’s sock drawer. They were brittle cookies, animal shapes coated with a careless icing like snow drifted into patches along back alleys, and the ones I found were leftovers, crumbled into tiny rocks at the bottom of the bag. She cried when I brought them out, perplexed by my discovery, and after she broke down I immediately wanted to hide the bag, to bury it at the bottom of a snowbank that would never melt. I’d believed our rock garden would make her happy, and that if I could memorize just one more mineral her eyes would blink into focus again and she would hug me with pride. Later, when she left us, I believed every word of her goodbye letter. Everything shifted into place: the jobs she could never keep, the long silences when Dad was gone, how her sadness swamped her at the strangest times – in the grocery store or walking me to school. I’d look up and her face would be wet, eyes averted and unwiped. If I tried to hug her, it seemed to make her worse. If I ignored it, the gap between us only widened. She hadn’t wanted me, hadn’t wanted this life, and disappeared like the Bannockburn before I could demand a reason why. To ask what I’d done that was so intolerable.
Sometimes I even wondered if I’d studied speech so I could dissect my memories of her. I played old videos of us over and over but could never find any hint of her intentions. I hated the counselors who pulled me into their offices, the words that came so easily to them and had been impossible for her. The thing no one understands, when your parent abandons you, is that it doesn’t happen just once. They leave every day, every moment that you remember them is a door slamming shut in your face. And with every slam, you believe – a little more each time – that you probably deserved it.
My belief about Lucas Blackthorn was nothing like that creeping kind of blame. It didn’t gradually take root in my consciousness over years; I woke up this morning with a certainty flowing through me that not even Dr Mehta could derail. I hated myself for lying to her – sane Dr Mehta, sober Dr Mehta, a woman who had faith in the faithless and confidence in the worst people you could imagine. After all, she’d hired me. She’d challenged me, elevated me, believed in me, but now I wondered how much she really understood me. If she did, she never would have given me this assignment. Before I met Lucas, I don’t think I’d even understood myself.
This is what I knew now:
A father had disappeared. A son was desperate to find him.
And I would tell a thousand lies if it brought him one step closer.
The path before me seemed so clear and it gave meaning to everything I’d survived to get to this point. I had to help Lucas find his father. No matter what Josiah had done, no matter what had driven them into the Boundary Waters, they needed to find each other and I was possibly the only person in the world who understood how much. But the clock was ticking. Every day the winds blew harder and colder, the gales raged in a losing battle against the coming winter. Soon the ice would win, soon Josiah might be dead, and we’d be out of time.
I gathered up my session supplies and jogged up the stairs to ward two. I could feel the organs in my body pumping, expanding, the excitement set loose in every nerve ending, flashing with a life I hadn’t known was even inside me. Without any premonition of what lay ahead, I badged in to ward two and caught a flash of Lucas’s face before the world jerked sideways.