I knew. A few days had passed since David attacked the doctor, and he seemed to have settled into the new routine. Still, I knew.
I stood at my door. Mute, but screaming inside until someone came.
They all wondered how I knew, of course, but it’s not that difficult to put it all together if you had watched him closely. And no one had watched him more closely than I had. I just needed to stand back and see the big picture, and finally, I did.
When Dr Jacobi opened my door, she sighed – a martyred saint, bleeding to death for my raging stupidity.
‘You need to verbalize what you’ve got locked up inside you,’ she told me, shaking her head sadly. ‘The only way you’re going to get what you need in this world is if you ask for it.’
I dodged and weaved on my bare feet. I pushed past her and pointed. She followed me a few steps, but then nodded at an orderly to grab me. I struggled, but let’s face it, I’m not a wrestler, and the orderlies at the hospital were very good at restraining people.
I made my first sound in months. Or I tried to. It creaked out of my throat, barely intelligible.
‘David . . .’
It surprised everyone just enough that I could slip away and run the few steps down the hallway to his door.
The furniture was bolted in place, and the ceilings were so high. No one thought it was possible, but David was exceptionally tall, and he’d played volleyball his whole life. He was an outside hitter – one of those guys who jump up so they can spike the ball down on to the opponent’s court at an impossibly steep angle.
The details. That’s where the devil lives.
I can never know for sure if it was what I wrote in my journal that made the doctors aware of David’s feelings for Dr Holt. And maybe if I’d said something about David’s height and his ability to jump, they still wouldn’t have listened to me. It was their job to keep him safe, not mine.
All those little details that I saw that they didn’t. How silent he’d become since Dr Holt was moved to another floor. How hopeless yet determined he’d seemed. And then, that night after dinner as both he and I shuffled to our rooms, how relieved he looked. Like it was all going to be over soon. All of these details were there, waiting in my inbox for me to read into them if I had just taken the time. If I’d clicked on David’s three little dots.
It was not my fault. But I knew it was going to happen, and I didn’t stop it. I should have said something but, as usual, I was too wrapped up in myself to give it a thought until it was too late.
I could have just looked in the window, but I didn’t. I threw the bolt on David’s door and swung it wide open.
In that slim slice of time after morning check-in when they turn off the night surveillance cameras, but before they came to take him to breakfast, David had hanged himself from the ceiling fan.
Woop-woop.
I bring Bo back to Mila’s house.
It’s odd to see him like this, so close to pavement and pollution and GPS-led cars. We’re standing on the edge of the forest, and her house is across the street. Bo is already looking around for her possible entrance site.
‘Don’t move,’ he orders softly.
I stand stock-still while he works his way around the area in loops. After about fifteen minutes, he calls out, ‘How much does Mila weigh?’ He looks up at me.
‘Hundred pounds, soaking wet,’ I reply.
He smiles. ‘This is her.’ He points down at the ground.
‘Can I move?’ I ask.
His smile turns into a grin. ‘Yes. Come here. I’ll show you.’
I go to him and look down. I see something pressed into the ground. Maybe it’s the waffle print of a hiking boot.
‘How did you see that?’ I ask, shaking my head.
‘Practice,’ he replies. ‘We’re lucky it had just rained. She kicked up some mud with the edge of her boot. See right here?’
I look closer and see it. And it’s like something unwinds in me. ‘We’re going to find her,’ I say, just testing it out, really – the possibility that we could do this.
‘We will,’ Bo says absently, looking up the trail. ‘Is this the girl that kissed you?’