Mindy Mejia - Leave No Trace

Her voice turned gloating and one of the other nurses groaned. ‘Do you have to rub it in?’

Nurse Valerie glanced at me and seemed to soften a fraction, answering the unspoken question.

‘No serious injuries this time. His right side is going to look like a burger patty, but luckily the shoulder didn’t get any more damage. I put it in another sling just as a precaution. Don’t worry,’ she patted my bandaged ankle. ‘Sounds like that kid’s got stamina. But you’d know better than us, right?’

The other nurses snorted, ducking their heads. I felt my face flush as I swung my legs around and put my weight gingerly on the ‘bad’ ankle, shrugging into my coat.

‘He’s only on pain meds?’

She nodded as she turned away. ‘Tylenol 3, three times a day.’

I thanked them for the wrap and pretended to favor the leg as I left the ward.

Everyone knew the definition of insanity. Lucas had tried to escape from Congdon three times now. Three episodes of the same behavior, expecting different results. How many more attempts would it take, how many crawling days and nights in isolation, how many times could he beat his head against the wall before his mind started to crack? Before he became what everyone thought he already was?

A string of storms raced across Superior and slammed into Duluth over the next few days, bringing blinding lake-effect snow squalls that buried the city, while only a few miles west the ground remained brown and bare. Dr Mehta hadn’t gotten any updates from the Forest Service rangers and I could tell she was getting tired of me asking. I hibernated in the house after work, spending half my nights on the Internet. The backlash against the protesters who’d chased us down at Twin Ponds had helped some new voices rise on social media, people calling for Lucas’s privacy, to let the system help him and focus public efforts on finding Josiah instead. I looked up Boundary Waters maps, sometimes scrolling the satellite images to the tiny break in the green that showed the roof of my mother’s cabin. Other nights I googled everything I could find on Heather Price: her life, the scant details of her death. A drug addict’s death, apparently, was even less noteworthy than a mental health patient’s. Society turned away, pretended the body had never been a person. No one demanded to know how she’d gotten the blow to her head. I found a small, archived post on the website of the dentist office where she’d worked, offering the usual thoughts and prayers to a family who didn’t seem to exist, and the only person who might know more had disappeared from the known world.

After half a week, the snow stopped and the gales began tossing it around the city, whipping drifts of white over the streets, tearing at anyone who braved the cold. I left work one day and the wind picked up the tails of my jacket, invaded my hood, and froze my earrings the second I muscled open the security door. I jogged toward the parking lot, intent only on getting to my car and starting the heater, before stopping dead in the middle of the sidewalk.

Lucas, two orderlies, and Nurse Valerie were walking in the side yard near the therapy garden. Lucas was restrained in a full straitjacket with an orderly holding each arm. His head listed to one side and he stared dully at the flakes whipping along the ground. Even from twenty yards away it was obvious he was drugged. His movements were sluggish and awkward, reeking of a massive dose of some life-sucking, behavior-correcting prescription cocktail. It looked like Nurse Valerie was trying to hurry them back inside, but Lucas could barely put one foot in front of the other.

Until he saw me.

His eyes wandered over the sidewalk and roamed up my body like I was just another static feature in the landscape. A moment passed when it didn’t even seem like he recognized me until he blinked and jerked upright.

Maya. I saw his mouth form my name even though no sound came out. He lurched forward, throwing his handlers off balance, and tried to close the distance between us. Confused by his sudden mood change, Valerie put a hand out to steady him before she turned and saw who he was trying to reach. She snapped back around and said something to the orderlies, who abruptly stopped walking and grabbed Lucas, preventing him from moving. Lucas struggled, but he was no match for the combination of the straitjacket, two burly orderlies, and whatever chemicals they’d pumped into him. Thrashing in place, he mouthed my name until he finally managed to work the ragged sound out of his throat, and he reached me the only way he could.

‘Maya. Help, Maya. Maya, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’ Tears started to run down his face. ‘Don’t leave me here. Please, Maya. Please.’

Nurse Valerie stepped in front of Lucas, blocking him from my sight, and gestured to the parking lot.

‘Go on. Dr Mehta’s orders state that he can’t have any contact with you.’

I couldn’t move, even as the wind slapped my cheeks and stung needles into my fingers. I forgot where I’d been going. Lucas dragged one of the orderlies a step forward, bumping into Valerie.

‘Go!’ She pointed to the cars, trying to keep her hood from flying off with her other hand. ‘We’re going to freeze out here if we don’t blow away first.’

It took strength I didn’t even know I possessed to walk toward the parking lot. Lucas’s voice grew weaker and weaker before dying away in the wind, and I didn’t know if he stopped calling my name because the group had gone inside or because he’d lost all hope. I didn’t turn around to check.

By the time I climbed inside my car, I was shaking. Snowflakes clung to the ends of my hair and my hands were red and raw. I stared at Congdon’s brick walls and barred windows rising like a fortress out of the angry, white blur of the gales, and everything became suddenly clear. As clear as a sun-soaked sky over the lake. As clear as a bag of carefully chosen hardware. As clear as the layers of an agate, sliced and gleaming in my mother’s hand.

I knew what I had to do. I had to rescue Lucas Blackthorn.

STEALING A PATIENT from a psychiatric facility is a little harder than your basic B&E. Congdon had multiple layers of security, beginning with the outside gates where a guard was posted twenty-four hours a day and the ten-foot tall iron fence enclosing the rest of the property. Then there was the building itself. Every exterior door locked from both sides and could only be opened with a security badge, except the main entrance, where visitors passed through metal detectors and checked in with another Taser-armed guard before being escorted to the appropriate room. Each floor and ward had their own entrances with their own electronic security. Not every badge opened every door. And if you happened to be trying to kidnap someone from an isolation room, no badge would work. The entrances to each seclusion unit opened with individual keys which were only held by the attendants on duty or the night security staff. Cameras in every hallway fed video back to the guard desk at the main entrance. If an emergency was spotted – like, say, someone trying to make off with a high-security patient – they could hit a button that would deadlock all doors, trapping everyone inside until the lockdown was lifted.

That was getting in. Smuggling the patient out and figuring out how to get as far away as possible without drawing attention was the other obstacle. People tended to notice stumbling mental health patients in straitjackets, even when they weren’t celebrities.

For three days I planned the rescue, making lists and detailed plans before burning the pages immediately afterward. It had to be a night job, when staff levels were the lowest. I began staying late after my shifts to catch up on paperwork and then stopped to chat with the front desk guard on my way out, pretending to be outraged at the rumors flying around about me while watching the security monitors and the pattern of the night rounds. Jason, the guard, had apparently been accused of sexual harassment once and was sympathetic in a way that made me immediately want to shower. On the third day, he told me he got off at eleven and had a growler with my name on it. We could watch Netflix and chill. I told him no thank you, marking the end of my first attempt at friendship. All in all, I called it a success.