Mindy Mejia - Leave No Trace

The sound of metal on metal came again. Even in sleep Lucas was restless. They said he was awake for the CAT scan but refused to answer any of their assessment questions about concussion symptoms, and the IV of pain medication had sent him back to la-la land before I gained access to see him.

‘I’m curious about your decision to take Lucas outside, given his case history,’ Dr Mehta asked.

I turned to the window. Only a sliver of Superior was visible above the old brick Victorians of downtown and the water looked gray, like a storm was coming in. ‘I thought he would feel more comfortable surrounded by trees instead of walls.’

‘And did he?’

‘Yes, at first. We talked about Scrabble and then he told me a bit about his childhood.’ Dr Mehta’s gaze followed me as I sat down. Her reading glasses were still balanced on the end of her nose from when she’d been looking over the chart and I felt like a specimen in a petri dish, another lab result she could trust for answers. My skin felt too tight and a sickness began contracting my stomach.

‘Did he give you any more details about his father?’

‘No,’ I lied.

‘I know you’ve had a traumatic day yourself, but can you pinpoint any correlation between your discussion and what made him attempt to escape again?’

The body. A body with long, brown hair. The sack of toys that wasn’t worth turning his father over.

I glanced at the bed and pretended to think as I searched Lucas’s face where dark bruises began to ring his eye sockets. My stomached pitched. Then I shook my head, meeting the hope and expectation in Dr Mehta’s face.

‘Nothing obvious. His childhood memories were pleasant – I guess they had a dog at one point – so unless he’s triggered by Scrabble, he must have been waiting for an opportunity. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have attempted it.’

Dr Mehta shook her head and motioned for me to come with her. ‘It was a good instinct. I see why you tried it.’

She opened the door and held my arm to help me down the hall. Her touch, the warm, dry comfort of it, was hard to accept.

‘If you remember anything else about the session, something that may have upset him…’

I nodded, seeing only the bright red exit sign at the end of the hall. ‘I know what to do.’

The next morning I got a frantic text from Dad with a link to the video of Lucas, which had aired on all four local news stations and who knew how many more across the state and country. I spent fifteen minutes calming him down and telling him not to cut the Bannockburn expedition short, and I arrived late for my shift at Congdon to find Officer Miller waiting for me. She sized up the brace on my ankle, but didn’t comment on it, handing me a thick manila envelope instead.

‘That was fast.’ I unfastened it and peeked inside at the fat stack of paper.

‘I looked the stuff over to see if it might help with the search but didn’t see anything useful.’ She crossed her arms. ‘Arresting officer’s information is on the top, in case you need anything else, and don’t feed me any crap like you don’t know how to make a phone call. I checked on you, too.’

I didn’t know what to say. It was impossible to lie or play it off, but I couldn’t talk about my time in Ely, no more than I could’ve called their police station to request this case file myself. Silently, I re-clasped the envelope and hugged it to my chest.

When it became clear I wasn’t going to offer any explanations, Officer Miller sighed and straightened her hat, nodding once before leaving. ‘Happy reading.’

There was no time to go through it before my shift started. I stored the envelope in my locker and thought about nothing else during my morning sessions. Every hour dragged. I barely heard the jokes about how ‘shocking’ my ankle looked or whether I was going to be the Bride of Frankenstein for Halloween. Even one of my aphasia patients, Greta, had to throw flashcards at me to get my attention. When it was finally noon, followed by what was supposed to be an hour-long session with Lucas, I grabbed the envelope and hobbled to my car, driving to the hospital without a word to anyone.

The nurses’ station let me into Lucas’s room and gave me an update. He’d been awake all night as the nurses – accompanied by security guards – administered drips, drew blood, and checked his vitals while he watched with a ‘creepy intensity’ that made most of them hand the next round off to someone else. When I arrived he’d finally fallen asleep; he seemed to be dreaming, mumbling and shifting restlessly in bed. I helped myself to the pudding, roll, and juice on his untouched lunch tray, ignoring the meat-product that smelled identical to what we fed our patients, while pulling out the contents of the manila envelope on the other, unoccupied bed. As I chewed and read, the pieces slowly came together.

Heather Price, a twice divorced dental receptionist in Ely, was reported missing after she didn’t show up for work for two days. Her duplex was empty, but the police found clothes belonging to a man and boy in the side she rented out – my heart rate picked up – when they conducted their search. According to neighbors, she lived alone. While they were searching the home, the police encountered Josiah Blackthorn, who’d just returned from a camping trip in the Boundary Waters. When asked about Ms Price, Josiah lied. He claimed he hadn’t seen her since he’d last paid rent, a story that was disproved by two neighbors who’d witnessed them fighting. Believing he was somehow connected to the woman’s disappearance, the police arrested Josiah for obstruction of justice.

And Lucas? I flipped through pages, skimming for any mention of the boy’s location while his father was locked up, but there was nothing. A scared nine-year-old had no place in a criminal report.

Two days after the arrest Heather’s body was found. She’d died behind a house in the nearby town of Virginia and the medical examiner put her date of death within the time frame Josiah’s camping permit said he was in the Boundary Waters. Heroin was found in her body, the death was ruled an accidental overdose, and within a week the Blackthorns disappeared.

At the bottom of the pile of papers were a series of photographs, mostly shots of the corpse and the townhouse, but the last one looked like a print of an ID badge from her job. The woman smiled at the camera with gaunt cheekbones and too-white teeth, her face framed by perfectly styled, flowing brown hair.

I stared at the picture and then jumped when a nurse and the security guard strode into the room. She glanced at the empty food containers on top of my stacks of papers and raised an eyebrow as she adjusted monitors and changed the IV drip.

‘Has he woken up since you’ve been here?’ she asked.

‘No, just a lot of that.’ I motioned to his twitching hands as he unconsciously pulled against the restraints.

‘You could try talking to him, but I’d stay on that side of the room if I were you. Chocolate pudding isn’t worth an assault.’

‘Depends on the pudding.’

‘Not that pudding.’ After tucking the sheet in and recording his vitals, the two of them left me staring at Lucas’s form, wishing I could take her advice.

I needed to talk to someone and I wished – for maybe the first time since I’d been committed – that I had a friend, someone I could trust. The street kids I ran with before Congdon had all heard what happened and avoided me like the plague after I got out. I started taking college classes in high school, with no time for pep rallies or clubs, and by the time I officially started at the university I was already a sophomore. Then it was all about getting accepted into the speech pathology Master’s program, and the few friends I made there were largely study partners. We bonded over anatomy and assistive technology, and we hugged each other goodbye after graduation. Dr Mehta called my lack of social support an attachment disorder. I never really cared about it until now.