“Good. Because if I hear that you so much as looked her way, I’ll call in another demand.” She gave me a humorless smile. “You’d be amazed at how amenable a facility can be to client’s wishes when it’s within that client’s ability to sue said facility into the ground.”
She started past me, then stopped. For a second, her dark eyes softened beneath the hard mask of her face.
“I am grateful you stopped that man. I know it sounds like I’m not—”
“I don’t need your gratitude, Ms. Hughes.”
She stiffened. “I disagree. My gratitude is the only reason you still have a job, Mr. Whelan.”
I didn’t take Thea on her FAE that day, and I never would again. I had to be content the new doctor was interested in Thea’s case. Still, the idea of working under the same roof with Thea every day and not talking to her was a kind of torture.
Jesus, I really am a creepy stalker.
Maybe it would be better if Delia had me fired after all.
I should do what she wants and quit. Start over somewhere else. Keep my head down. Do my job.
Rita and Alonzo fumed about Delia’s edict in the dining room after lunch.
“That’s some bullshit,” Alonzo said. “I can talk to her.”
“Have you met Delia Hughes?” I asked with a wry smile. “Forget it. My job’s hanging as it is.”
“But after how you saved Thea?” Rita said, shaking her head in disbelief. “When I think of Brett in her room…” She shivered.
“Delia’s protective,” I said. “Can’t blame her for that.”
She and Alonzo exchanged glances, and I felt the pity roll off of them in waves.
“No big deal,” I said shortly. “There are plenty of residents who need help. You can assign me to one of them.”
Alonzo watched me through narrowed eyes. “Mr. Perello,” he said after a long moment. “He needs someone with him for his daily smoke.”
“Great,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
Alonzo went back to work, and Rita reached her hand across the table and gave mine a squeeze. “I’m sorry, Jim. I wish things were different with Thea. For her sake, but for yours too.”
“For m-m-my sake?”
Her smile tilted toward pitying. “You seem so taken with her. And in her own way, she cares about you.”
I stared, my skin heating.
The stuttering orderly and the broken-down girl. I could practically see Doris shake her head. What a pitiful pair you make.
Now my skin burned with humiliation and I pulled my hand away. “I gotta get back to work.”
I rose from the chair and headed out without looking back. I cleaned up a few resident rooms and took Mr. Perello for a walk outside. He sat on a bench and savored his one cigarette.
“This is a life, isn’t it?” he asked, watching the smoke curl up and hang thickly in the humid, summer air. “Not the life. A life. I guess that counts for something.”
A life.
That’s what I had before Thea. It wasn’t much, but at least there hadn’t been so much damn confusion. Or this ache in my chest that didn’t quit. A longing. Strange emotions I’d never experienced before, like bright swaths of color over a drab gray sky. They swept through me when I thought of Thea. I remembered the softness of her hair and how good it felt to hold her, even if it was to keep her from falling apart.
It wasn’t right to feel like this. It wasn’t right to feel anything for a girl who had no control over who was in her life. Who couldn’t make a single informed decision. Who smiled her brilliant smile at those around her because what choice did she have but to trust us?
I wanted to be a choice she made, not a stranger she was forced to contend with. And it wasn’t fair to put that pressure on her, even if she never knew it. I knew it, and it wasn’t right.
I needed to quit.
After I walked Mr. Perello back to his room, I headed for the break room, hoping to catch Alonzo. I’d hand in my resignation. It’d be hard on the staff to fill my hours until they found a replacement, but they’d manage. Especially with a new director and increased funds. Blue Ridge would survive without me. Like Thea after a reset hit, they’d never know I was gone.
Pity party, you big dummy?
I shrugged Doris off. No pity. Just facts.
But Alonzo wasn’t around, and I figured I should finish the full day’s work. I went to the rec room to clean up.
I stopped short to see Dr. Chen at the shelf along one wall. Even from the door, I knew she was looking at Thea’s drawings. Dr. Chen held the paper and turned it slowly, reading the word chains.
The broom handle banged against the door as I entered the room and Dr. Chen looked up.
“Hello,” she said. She couldn’t be more than thirty-five, with a sharp intelligence in her eyes and a kind smile. “Don’t think we’ve met. I’m Dr. Christina Chen.”
“Jim Whelan,” I said. “I can come back.”
“You’re the one who stopped the orderly from assaulting Miss Hughes,” Dr. Chen said. “We’re all so grateful to you. Truly.” The doctor looked back at Thea’s drawings. “Have you seen these? Quite extraordinary.”
“Yeah, I have,” I said, glancing behind me, expecting Delia Hughes to materialize in a cloud of green smoke. “Thea uses them to communicate. I think they’re her memory.”
“Do you?” Her tone was inviting, not derogatory. “How so?”
I crossed over to her. Hell, if I were going to quit anyway, I had nothing to lose. I pulled out the folded drawing I kept in my back pocket. “You see this one?” I pointed to the word chain:
Rue true blue bluest sky eye my smile rile rain pain pain pain
“Those are song lyrics,” I said. “‘Sweet Child O’ Mine.’ I played it for her when I took her for a walk, and she drew this the next day.”
Dr. Chen’s eyes widened. “Has this happened more than once?”
I found and showed her more examples, along with the drawing that clued me in to Brett’s assaults.
Dr. Chen nodded. “I see.”
Hope took flight in my heart. “D-D-Do you?”
She nodded. “Dr. Stevens’ notes regard the word chains as Thea’s brain exercising itself the only way it knows how. But perhaps that’s because he had no context for them.”
My heart skipped a beat. “Do they m-m-mean anything to you?” I asked, my jaw stiffening at that damn stutter.
She cocked her head. “You have a slight disfluency, Jim?” Before I could answer, she said, “I only bring it up so that we can acknowledge it, and you don’t have to feel self-conscious.” Her focus went back to the word chains. “I heard about Thea’s painting. She ruined it as a result of the abuse happening to her at night?”
“Yes,” I said. “Exactly. She r-r-remembers.”
Dr. Chen studied the drawing a final time. “We’ll see. Some tests need to be run, of course.”
“You can help her?”
The doctor gathered the drawings into a stack and tucked them under her arm. “Before coming here, I completed a fellowship with Dr. Bernard Milton, one of the premiere neuropsychologists in Australia. He’s doing amazing, groundbreaking things to restore memory loss in special candidates, using stem cells and nanotechnology.”