A crushing weight knocked me to the ground, sending the air whooshing out of my lungs. Several people yelled my name, the loudest one right in my ear.
‘Tag, Maya! Tag, Maya!’ the voice shouted gleefully.
I twisted around and pulled his skull into a headlock as Lucas appeared above us, grabbing a massive arm and ripping it backward. Big George shrieked in pain.
‘Back off, Lucas! Now,’ I managed to order as two nurses came to pry our tag player off me. After we got untangled and de-
escalated the situation, the other staff and I led Big George to his favorite squishy chair and sat him down. He held his arm and rocked, refusing to make eye contact with anyone. I nodded to the nurses and they gave us a little distance, returning to the bustle of the adult men’s common room. Most of the other patients watched us to see how the show would turn out, but when nothing more exciting happened than Big George sniffling into the crook of his arm they gradually resumed their card games, books, and TV programs. Faces turned away from the window of the classroom, where one of the life skills coaches held up a rainbow-colored chart. Lucas paced behind the row of sofas in front of the TV, and even though he didn’t look over once I knew I had his undivided attention.
Big George was holding his throat now and he’d gotten himself into a loop, repeating ‘Ow’ over and over.
‘What hurts, George? Tell me.’
Instead of verbalizing, he pointed to his arm and neck and then, as he always did when something ached, he doubled over and pressed his palms against his head.
Big George had lived at Congdon for twenty years, ever since he and two friends robbed a grocery store at gunpoint in Cloquet, loaded up trash bags with cash and food, and met a squad car on their way out. The other two began shooting at the police and were killed on sight but George was ‘lucky’; he’d been hunched over a box of Triscuits when they opened fire and the angle of the bullet through his brain missed every major artery. He had the aptitude of a four-year-old now, ate every meal as if his life depended on it, and was aggressively cheery unless he felt the slightest twinge of pain – reminding him a phantom bullet lived in his head – or if he saw anything resembling a tan, plaid square, which would send him spiraling into a meltdown. Triscuits were strictly banned in the men’s ward.
I gave him a second to work through his feelings and then doubled over my own legs, mirroring his pose. When I got his attention, I pointed to the ankle Bryce’s Taser had sprained.
‘I’ve got a place that hurts, too.’ As George reached out to tap my shin, I asked him. ‘Where am I hurt?’
‘Leg.’
‘This is my leg.’ I sounded as excited as anyone could about discovering a piece of their body and he caught on to my enthusiasm, pointing to his head.
‘This is my ow.’
Keeping my grin in place with a Herculean effort, I corrected him. ‘No, silly. That’s your head.’
He cackled and we kept going, the body part naming game an old favorite and a comfortable way for him to articulate complete sentences. I’d tucked a bunch of fabric samples in the surprise bag with another exercise in mind, but swatches could wait. We played while tears dried on the dark mounds of his cheeks, until I’d pushed him beyond all the body parts he knew and into the more phonetically uncomfortable territory of forearm and spine, where cognitive fatigue soon settled in. Sessions with George were always brief.
To end, I pulled him to his feet and we sang a version of ‘Dem Bones,’ hopping around the common room. ‘Toe bone connected to the foot bone, foot bone connected to the heel bone . . .’
George loved singing and was oblivious to the snickers and stares. We spun and danced while recapping all the body parts he might need to verbalize to his doctors in the event of illness or injury. After we finished, the easy grin melted into a more complicated emotion and his next words came out in a quiet, but perfectly clear cadence. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry.’
‘What are you sorry for, George?’
‘Tag, Maya. I’m sorry.’
‘Thank you for finding those words.’ I touched his arm and grinned into his contrite face. ‘Next time you play tag, you’ve got to remember you’re a big, old bear. You can’t go around tagging little gnats like me.’
‘Bird.’ He petted my hair and cracked a smile. ‘Maya’s a bird.’
‘Bears have to be careful of birds, okay?’
‘Okay, Maya.’
I left Big George in the care of one of the nurses and wandered through the ward with his words repeating in my head. This is my ow.
When I was first promoted to speech therapist I’d focused on one thing – helping my patients speak. I spent all my sessions working on palate exercises, pronunciation, articulation, and sound. The goal was form. Whatever coherent subject matter they produced had ended up on their doctor’s plate, not mine, but now Lucas was changing everything. I couldn’t ignore the meaning behind their words, couldn’t keep describing the water in the boat without wanting to plug the holes. This is my ow. My heart ached for Big George, for the broke, hungry kid who would probably grow old inside these walls. He had no support network outside of Congdon, nowhere to go if he was ever released, and no hope of becoming self-sufficient. All I could do was point to my forearm, teach him words he would forget by our next session, and try to make him smile.
I poked my head into every room along the corridor, trying to locate the one person in this building who’d actually asked for my help, and who had suddenly – if characteristically – vanished. Finally, I found him at the far end of the dining room and what he was doing stopped me in my tracks.
He ran full speed at the wall and then, without slowing down, ran up the side of it, turned sideways and landed lightly back on his feet, jogging to where he began. The sling he still wore on one arm didn’t slow him down at all, or maybe it did. Maybe if he hadn’t been wearing it he could’ve scaled further, gone higher. I had a vision of the fence outside, of Lucas clearing the entire thing in one giant leap. I might have been George’s bird, but Lucas was the one who was trying to fly.
I watched him repeat the trick two more times with my mouth hanging open before realizing I wasn’t his only audience. The Grinch sat at a nearby table, puffing on an e-cig with a slight head twitch as Lucas went almost horizontal against the cement blocks.
‘I think I’m having an episode.’ He puffed, eyes straight ahead and unblinking.
‘Me too.’
He grunted in acknowledgment. The Grinch was another lifer, but for far different reasons than Big George. His schizophrenia was well managed with medication and he’d conquered most of his paranoia, even completing some vocational training he would never have the opportunity to use. He’d been found not guilty by reason of insanity for hacking up the young couple and their two-year-old twins who lived next door to him, but guilt didn’t matter with some crimes. There would never be any protesters at the gates for the Grinch, demanding his release. People might understand, rationally, that his illness had caused the crime, but they would keep the man locked up long after the illness had been treated. After a decade of perfect behavior, the only concession the system had granted him was a transfer from the state security hospital, where most of Minnesota’s criminally insane residents lived, to the relatively progressive environment of Congdon. He would die in the high security ward here, a Scrabble champion who would never feel the breeze of an oe on his upturned face.
My story was the exception, and I always assumed the basis of Dr Mehta’s affection for me. Most of her beds were taken by forensic patients and the longer ones like Big George and the Grinch stayed, the fewer voluntary patients she could accommodate. Rather than treat patients when they actually sought help, she had to wait until their mental illness caused them to commit a crime and then hope the courts would send them to Congdon instead of prison. I was lucky – I’d been in and out in under six months, barely a blink of Big George’s eye – and now I had to help Lucas get even luckier.
Finishing his show and not even out of breath, Lucas walked over to the tables. He leaned down to murmur something in the Grinch’s ear, then clapped him on the shoulder and walked past me without a word or glance. I was still so stunned that it wasn’t until he left the dining room I realized he was blowing me off.
Pivoting out into the hallway, I raised my voice.
‘We have a session, Mr Blackthorn.’
He turned around at the other end of the corridor. ‘You told me to back off.’
‘That was then. This is now. Keep up with the schedule, will you?’
‘So you’re done being tackled by huge men?’ Even across this distance, his irritation was palpable. I tried not to laugh.
‘In the grand scheme of things, let’s hope not. But today . . .’ I shrugged and went back to the dining room, pulling out papers from the surprise bag and laying them in rough geographic order on the nearest table. The Grinch paced the wall where Lucas had been running, muttering to himself in a monotone and taking drags of his e-cigarette. I kept working even after I sensed Lucas standing behind me.
Once everything was arranged I started marking places with a pen, narrating in a voice that could have easily been just to keep myself company.
‘Here’s where you were found.’ I pointed to the blue X and talked through the paths that grew like tree branches through the paddle and portage routes beginning in Ely, stopping when I hit the fifteen-mile range and the jagged edge of the international border. I lingered on the line, drawn like a stuttering heart monitor, and finally turned my head to acknowledge Lucas’s presence.
‘I need to know where you left him, everything you can remember, if we’re going to be able to locate him in time.’
Lucas took a step forward, swallowing as his eyes filled with tightly-banked emotion. ‘You’re going to help me?’
Swiveling back to the table, I shifted one of the copies a millimeter to the right. ‘Nothing gets by you, huh?’
When I started to tape the fragments of the maps together, he moved up beside me and held the edges together with his one good arm, helping me create a patchwork whole.
‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t thank me until you’ve heard the plan.’ I lifted my face to his and smiled. ‘Let’s get to work.’
Thirty minutes later, after discussing, debating, and flat-out arguing in whispers too low for anyone else to overhear, I gathered up all the papers and stuffed them away. Lucas wanted to leave for the Boundary Waters yesterday and refused to even try to understand how the system worked. He thought my way was irritating and pointless, which made me think it was the most adult plan I’d ever had.
I slung the surprise bag over my shoulder, ready to beat hell across the building for my next session, an OCD patient who would take it badly if I wasn’t punctual.
Lucas stood up with me. ‘Can I ask you another question?’
I glanced at the clock again. I had three minutes. ‘Only if it can be answered in five words or less.’
His mouth quirked up, the first sign of humor I’d seen from him all day. ‘That’s up to you.’
He walked me to the cafeteria door and pushed it open with his good arm, easily keeping up with my determined pace.
‘What did you mean earlier? By the grand scheme of things?’
It took me a second to remember what he was talking about and then it flashed back – the quip about being tackled by large men. I felt my cheeks getting warm as we headed toward the rear exit of the ward.
‘Hmmm. Sometimes . . .’ I paused before counting the words on my fingers. ‘Tackling can be fun.’
We reached the end of the hall and I reached for my ID.
‘You’re talking about sex?’
Badge in hand, I ran out of reasons to avoid his gaze. We stared at each other for a second. Then I smiled and activated the door.
‘That’s two questions.’