Lisa Gardner: Live to Tell

“Based upon blood evidence.”

“Based upon preliminary exam of the blood evidence, yes.”

“It’s an impressive analysis,” she told him. “Very well done. I can tell that you’re hell on wheels in the classroom.”

Alex didn’t say a word, which confirmed that he was as smart as he looked.

“But there’s another major piece of evidence.”

“Which is?”

“The dining room.”

Alex and Phil turned toward the dining room.

Phil asked the question first: “What about the dining room?”

Alex, on the other hand, got it. “Crap,” he said.

“Yeah, it’s always slightly more complicated than we’d like it to be,” D.D. agreed. She looked at Phil. “We got five bodies, right? Four dead, one in critical condition. Five bodies for five family members.”

Phil nodded.

D.D. shrugged. “Then why is the table set for six?”

You want to know what it means to be a pediatric psych nurse? Welcome to the Pediatric Evaluation Clinic of Boston, otherwise known as PECB. Our unit occupies the top floor of the larger Kirkland Medical Center. We like to believe we have some of the best views in Boston, which is only fair as we serve the toughest citizens.

Thursday night, I sat in the hallway of the pediatric ward observing our newest charge. Her name was Lucy and she’d been admitted this afternoon. We’d had only twenty-four hours to prepare for her arrival, which hadn’t been enough, but we did our best. Most of our kids shared a double room; Lucy had her own. Most of the rooms included two twin beds, bedside tables, and matching wardrobes. Lucy’s room had a mattress and a single blanket, that was it.

We’d learned the hard way that the shatterproof glass on our eighth-story windows didn’t always hold up to an enraged child armed with a twenty-pound nightstand.

Lucy was a primal child. That meant she’d been so severely and continuously abused that her humanity had been stripped from her. She didn’t wear clothes, use silverware, or tend to basic hygiene. She didn’t speak and had never been potty-trained. According to her file, she had spent most of her life in a disconnected freezer unit with bullet holes for ventilation. Her time out of the freezer had been worse than her time in. The result was a nine-year-old girl who existed like a wild animal. And if we weren’t careful, she’d train us to treat her like one.

First hour she was admitted, Lucy greeted our nurse manager by defecating into her own hand, then eating the feces. Twenty minutes later, a milieu counselor-MC-observed her ripping out the insides of her pillow and stuffing it into various orifices. The pillow was removed; Lucy wouldn’t allow us to tend to the stuffing. An hour after that, she scratched open her arm with a fingernail, then drew patterns on the wall with her blood.

First observation of our new charge: Any form of attention seemed to trigger a need to debase herself. If Lucy had an audience, she had to hurt.

By four in the afternoon, we agreed to confine Lucy to her room and assign one staff member to monitor her. Rather than the five-minute check system, where an MC accounts for every child’s whereabouts every five minutes, one staff member would observe Lucy as discreetly as possible, noting every twenty minutes.

Tonight, that was lucky me.

It took until eleven for the kids to settle down. Some were sleeping on mattresses in the well-lit hall; these were the kids who were terrified of the dark. Others could only sleep alone in a pitch-black room. Others still required music or white noise or, for one child, a ticking clock simulating his lost mother’s heartbeat. We set up everyone accordingly.

For Lucy’s first night, I did nothing special. Just sat with my back to her doorway and read stories to the other children. From time to time, I’d catch Lucy’s reflection in the silver half dome mounted in the ceiling above me. The mirrored half domes dotted the broad hallway at strategic intervals-our version of a security system, as they reflected back activities from inside each patient room.

Lucy seemed to be listening to the story. She’d curled up on the floor, waving one hand through the air, the way a cat might study its own paw. If I read faster, her hand moved faster. If I read slower, her rhythm adjusted accordingly.

Then, twenty minutes later, she’d disappeared. In the dome’s distorted reflection, I’d finally spotted her foot sticking out from beneath the mattress. When she didn’t move, I turned around to study her room directly. It appeared that she’d pulled the mattress over her body and had finally gone to sleep. From time to time, her foot would twitch, as if from a dream.

I settled in myself, sitting on the floor with my back against the wall. There were over half a dozen other staff members scattered down the hall. Nighttime in the unit was paperwork time. Gotta catch up while you had the chance.

None of the kids would sleep for long. Some of the more manic ones required food every three hours, though you’d never know it to judge by their skeletal frames. Others just couldn’t sleep.

Nighttime meant old terrors and fresh fears. A subconscious buffet of every evil thing ever done to them. Kids woke up crying. Kids woke up screaming. And some woke up primed for battle. Fight or flight. Not everyone was born to run.

I flipped open the first patient chart, and felt my eyelids already getting heavy. I’d been working a lot lately. More and more shifts. Less and less sleep. I needed to keep busy, especially this time of year.

Four days and counting. Then it would be twenty-five years down, and one more to go. Keep on trucking, the duty of the lone survivor.

I wondered what Lucy would think, if she knew that for years I’d slept tucked beneath a mattress myself.

On my eighteenth birthday, I seduced Sheriff Wayne. I hadn’t started out with a plan. I’d run into him in Boston, three days prior. He’d brought his wife, grown daughter, and two grandkids to the Public Garden to see the Swan Boats. The sun was out, a beautiful spring day where tulips waved and children shrieked as they chased ducks and squirrels across the sprawling green grounds.

Sheriff Wayne didn’t recognize me. I suppose I’d changed in the past nine years. My dark hair was long, cut in a sleek line with overgrown bangs. I wore low-slung jeans and a yellow-striped top from Urban Outfitters. My Aunt Helen had turned her white-trash niece into Boston hip. At least we both liked to think so.

I recognized Sheriff Wayne from the back. It wasn’t how he looked; it was how he moved. The solid roll of his legs across the pathway as he corralled bouncing grandkids, herding them steadily back to the family fold.

Sheriff Wayne noticed me standing a ways off, staring at him. He turned back to the women on either side of him, then it must’ve hit him. The nagging sense of familiarity clicked and he whirled around, taking me in squarely.

“Danielle,” he said, and the sound of his voice again, after all these years of living in my dreams, the lone whisper of safety amidst so many images of blood and violence, finally released me. I took a step forward. Then another.

His wife and daughter had noticed by then. His daughter was confused by my approach. His wife-Sheila was her name-must have remembered me. She held very still, and I could see the quiet sympathy in her eyes.

Sheriff Wayne took over. Shook my hand, made the introductions between myself, his wife, daughter, and grandkids. He smoothed it over, in the way a man who broke up bar fights would know how to do. I might have been the daughter of an old friend, reacquainted after all these years. We made small talk of the sunny day and the beautiful park. He told me of his other child, a grown son who lived in New York. We marveled over his granddaughter, who hid behind her mother’s legs, and his grandson, who loved chasing squirrels.