Mindy Mejia - Leave No Trace

In 1902, a young crew set out on Lake Superior in the S.S. Bannockburn with 85,000 bushels of wheat in her hold. They didn’t know the gales were coming, or maybe they did, but they didn’t know enough to be afraid. Every November the lake turned gray, the water churned and raged against the coming winter, and hurricane-force winds whipped the waves into forty-foot crests. The lake became hungry.

The Bannockburn was downbound that day and spotted by two other ships also fighting their way through the storm. Then she vanished. A single life jacket printed with the boat’s name washed up onshore three weeks later. A few other clues surfaced, fragments here and there, but the lake didn’t give up any secrets. Countless ships had disappeared on Superior, but the Bannockburn was the only one sighted after she was lost. Tales of glimpsing the Bannockburn ’s profile on the horizon of the water spread through the Great Lakes. It sailed as a ghost ship on the waves, warning other boats of impending danger before disappearing into the wind.

Something about that had appealed to my mother, something my dad couldn’t have predicted at the time, but it got him a date and – a few years later – a marriage and baby, too. My earliest memories were on Dad’s tugboat, squealing at the empty horizon and claiming I’d seen a phantom ship as we sped into the endless blue. The Bannockburn was one of the great mysteries of Superior, and now Dad and Butch were going to chase it down.

‘Don’t worry about me.’ Ignoring the discomfort in my throat, I smiled at Butch. ‘I’ll have Jasper for company.’

Butch gave the dog a dirty look and grunted.

‘And I still have the bathroom to finish. I was thinking about new hardware, because I don’t like how—’

‘Maya,’ Dad scanned me up and down, still searching for hidden wounds. ‘Someone just tried to kill you.’

‘He wasn’t trying to kill me.’ And then, before I could stop it. ‘Trust me, I know the difference.’

Pain glanced over Dad’s face and suddenly neither of us knew what to say. There were too many ghosts in the room, and none of them had sunk with the Bannockburn . After a minute I mumbled goodnight, slung the backpack over my shoulder, and left the kitchen, forgetting my noodles in the microwave until I found them the next morning, a cold, tightly coiled lump that had lost any chance for salvage.

Jasper followed me into the bathroom, where I splashed water on my face and avoided looking at the angry, red line bisecting my neck, instead staring glassy-eyed at the handles of the knotty pine cabinet I’d installed last year. Nickel. Maybe brushed nickel. My throat ached and my head began to pound, but it wasn’t until Jasper nudged me that I flipped the light off and crawled under my duvet.

He curled up at my feet, facing the door and the voices that drifted down the hallway, while I booted up the computer and began outlining my incident report. Hours later, long after Butch’s truck had fired up in the driveway and Dad shuffled off to bed, after even Jasper’s vigilance had faded to huffs and doggie snores, I was still awake with the ghosts.

THE NEXT DAY, after helping Dad load the pickup and promising to text every day and use the radio to hail him for emergencies, I clocked in at Congdon and went to make my rounds. I always walked the wards before my sessions; it let every­one know I was there and that today was a speech therapy day. Nobody liked surprises in a psychiatric facility.

During my rounds, I stopped and chatted with any patients open to it. Some saw my bright maroon hair coming and hit the decks. Others seemed starved for attention and followed me from one end of their ward to the other. Today’s hot topic was the angry red bruise circling my neck. Eliza, a teenage cutter with some cleft palate issues, kept trying to touch the mark like it was a holy relic.

‘Did it hurt?’ she whispered.

‘It sucked, Eliza. I don’t recommend it.’

She just stared at my throat.

‘Are you working on your presentation for later?’ Eliza was part of my advanced group being prepped for discharge. I’d assigned them all the task of speaking about their stay at Congdon, what had brought them here, and what they’d learned about themselves. There was no time requirement, no formal structure or underlying assessment, but it was probably the most important speech they’d ever have to make. If they could articulate their thoughts, find words big enough, true enough, they might find a way to own their stories.

‘I’ve thought about it. I didn’t write anything down yet like you asked us to.’ She dropped her head on the s ’s, forcing the words out past the slight nasal emission.

‘No problem, you’ve still got a few hours. Grab your journal and see what happens.’

She glanced back up and met my eyes this time, hesitantly making that connection. It had taken months for her to become confident enough to do that. I acknowledged her progress with a smile and pointed to her room. ‘Go.’

‘I was about to say the same thing to you,’ said a voice behind me.

Swiveling, I found Dr Mehta arching a perfectly plucked eyebrow.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

‘Working. Am I supposed to be at a meeting?’ I panicked, pulling my phone out to double-check the schedule.

‘I assumed you’d be taking some sick time, not submitting incident reports at three in the morning and preparing for your sessions the next day like nothing happened. Come on.’

She nodded toward the exit and we headed to the opposite side of the building, where the medical ward and the administrative offices were located.

‘How are you feeling?’

Wary of the direction we were taking, I shrugged. ‘Fine.’

‘I’ll be sure to note your expressiveness in my comments. Speech therapist ironically unable to communicate in more than mono­syllables .’

We both laughed and then she got serious again.

‘I’m terribly sorry about what happened.’

‘Really, I’m fine. I don’t need rest or medical attention. And hey, you said you were looking for any response, right? So that assignment should be listed with full credit in my next review.’

‘The assignment isn’t over yet.’

‘What?’ I stopped walking and Dr Mehta paused a few paces ahead of me, waiting for me to catch up, until it became obvious I wasn’t going to move. Finally, she gave in and turned around.

‘He’s still unresponsive. Every staff psychologist has attempted communication this morning and they get nothing. You’re the only person in this building he’s had any reaction to.’

‘So, I get to be his personal punching bag?’

‘In the version I heard, he was your punching bag the last time you two met.’

‘That’s not the point. I didn’t think you promoted me to the position of brawler.’

Dr Mehta paced back in her tirelessly calm way. ‘You said you didn’t need any rest. Now was that true or are you trying to overcompensate for a self-perceived but nonexistent weakness?’

Sometimes it was irritating having a psychiatrist for a boss. I shook my head, trapped. ‘I’m good.’

Dr Mehta smiled and swept an arm toward the medical ward doors in front of us. ‘Let’s do a little experiment, shall we? He’s fully restrained.’

I took a deep breath to center myself and followed Dr Mehta into the ward and all the way down the corridor to a private, high security room with an orderly posted outside.

Straps held Lucas to a hospital bed in the center of the room and handcuffs encased his wrists and ankles. He faced away from the door. There were no pictures in the room, no color, and no windows, just the smell of antiseptic and the sound of another patient moaning down the hallway. I drew closer to the bed where his leg was elevated in a sling. An ice pack covered most of his thigh, but the rest of his leg was exposed, revealing a network of scars.