Their birth certificates hadn’t arrived yet, so they didn’t know who his parents were and couldn’t even visit the hospital where he’d been born to retrieve his medical records. Their only hope at the moment lay in her dad’s files.
I am not a coward. I do not welsh on my promises. Besides, it would be better if she took the files rather than someone else. She would be keeping them in the family, so to speak.
She stood, squared her shoulders. “We’ll do it. Together.” And then she did something that shocked them both. She rose on her tiptoes and pressed a swift kiss on his lips. “Thank you for returning to help me.”
When she tried to move away, he latched onto her forearms and held her in place. His eyes were gleaming. “Next time you decide to do that…”
“What?” she said, stiffening. “Give you a little warning?”
“No.” He grinned. “Linger.”
SEVENTEEN
From the case journal of Dr. Morris Gray
January 23
SUBJECT A. What can I say about him? First time I saw him, I was reminded of my daughter. Not in appearance, of course, they look nothing alike. Not in demeanor, either. Where my daughter is wild and carefree, laughter so easy for her, A is quiet and shy, afraid to look people in the eyes. I have never seen him smile. My daughter is happiest when surrounded by people. A is happiest in the shadows, alone, unnoticed. But I can see the longing in his gaze. He wants to be part of the crowd. He wants to be accepted. That he isn’t breaks my heart. And that is where the two are most similar. The love I feel for them, in one case understandable, in the other…not.
Love is exactly what A needs, though. No one has loved him since his parents gave him up, while my daughter has been coddled her entire life. That is why she smiles and he does not. And yet, despite their different pasts and opposing natures, they both possess a bone-deep vulnerability that radiates from them. Something that strikes the heart, like claws digging in and refusing to let go. Something that imprints them in your mind so that you can never forget them.
I’ve noticed the way some of the other patients look at A. They, too, feel those claws. They, too, are drawn to the young boy without knowing why.
Funny, though, that the only patients concerned with him are those who are here because they see things that aren’t there, talk to people who aren’t there and think they are spawned from hell itself.
During therapy sessions, I’ve asked a few of them why they watch A so intently. The answers were the same: he draws me.
That shocked me each time I heard it because I had felt drawn to this institution with the same intensity they were drawn to the boy. I’d driven past it and had been filled with a need to work here, even though I’d already had a job. A well-paying job at a private practice I’d had no intention of leaving. I could have risen up the ladder and eventually become a partner. But none of that had mattered after I drove past Kingsgate Psychiatric Hospital.
I’d wanted to—had to—go inside. I’d wanted to be there, to stay there forever. What surprised me most about my determination was that my daughter, also in the car, had cried when we passed it. She’d been perfectly happy there in the backseat of my sedan, applying her favorite flavored ChapStick, when she’d suddenly burst into tears. I asked her what was wrong, but she’d just rubbed her chest as if it hurt, unable to explain.
I never took her back, but I myself went. The feeling of belonging, of needing to be there had increased. And when I saw A for the first time, I’d been filled with the urge to hug him. To welcome a beloved family member home. Was I going crazy?
February 17
Subject A was beaten up today. The patient responsible claimed he’d only wanted the urge to be near A to disappear, that he couldn’t live with the invisible tether that bound him to the boy anymore.
I was finally able to give A a hug. He won’t remember it, of course, because he was unconscious and drugged with sedatives, and that’s best for both of us. I can’t really give him what he wants, a place to belong. Still, I hadn’t wanted to let go. Tears had even filled my eyes.
Again, I have to wonder what’s wrong with me.
February 18
Subject A is recovering nicely. I spoke with him briefly, but the pain medications made him groggy and hard to understand. At one point I think he called me Julian, but I can’t be sure.
There has to be a way to help him. There has to be something I can do. He’s a good kid with a kind heart. Another patient had visited with him and had eyeballed his Jell-O. Without any hesitation, A offered up the Jell-O, though it was the only thing he could eat and he wouldn’t be given another. Well, shouldn’t have been given another. I brought him two an hour later.
February 21
My first true session with Subject A. He’s been diagnosed with schizophrenia by several doctors and frankly, though it’s highly uncommon in children under sixteen, I understand why. He has a tendency to retreat inside his head during conversation, mumbling to people who aren’t there.
Do I believe that myself? I’m not sure. And it’s not just because the illness is rare in children. To be honest, my doubt upsets me. Only one other time have I felt it, and that ended in a disaster I have yet to overcome. Grief still eats at me, in fact. But that’s a story for another journal.
Before the meeting with A, I perused his file and found something interesting. Since his admittance three months ago, he has escaped a locked room twice—just disappeared from it, leaving no trace of how he managed the feat. In both instances, he reappeared in rooms he shouldn’t have been able to access. Everyone thinks he has simply learned how to pick locks and he himself probably thinks it’s a fun, harmless game. But I’m upset by it. I’ve dealt with that before. Not with him, but with someone I love.
I guess I’m not going to wait for another journal entry to veer in this direction after all. My daughter’s mother used to do the same thing. Before her pregnancy, that is. She would walk into a room one moment, headed in my direction, and then simply vanish before my eyes. I would search the house but find no sign of her. This happened six times. Six hellish times. Usually she would reappear a few minutes later. Once, though, two days passed before she returned.
Each time I asked her where she had gone, how she had gone. Each time, she gave me the same sobbing answer: into a past version of herself. Time travel. I knew it wasn’t possible, but she insisted that it was. When I asked for proof, she could give me none.
She is the reason I entered into this field. I’d wanted to understand her, to help her. Oh, did I love her. Still do. I can’t hide that, though I should. Too bad I failed her. The only time she claimed to feel normal was the nine months she carried my precious baby girl. And after that, well, I wasn’t given a chance to help.
Mary Ann’s hand was trembling as she flipped to the next page of her father’s journal. She and Riley had pilfered it from the study while her dad slept, head resting on the keyboard nearby. He’d fallen asleep going over his notes about Aden, or rather “Subject A,” so they’d had to pry them out from under his head. That he’d kept them here, and so easily transportable, was shocking, but it proved how much they meant to him—and perhaps how often he read them.
She’d been poring over them ever since, nausea churning faster and faster in her stomach. At first, the term Subject A had bothered her, but then she’d realized that had been her father’s way of retaining Aden’s privacy, even in his personal journals. But she knew it was Aden, and the things he’d endured…the grief her dad felt for some mysterious doubt about the young boy’s “illness…the way her dad had written of her mother as if she were already dead at that time, only speaking of her in past tense all left Mary Ann reeling.
At the time he’d written these journals, her mother had been alive and well and caring for Mary Ann at home. And why couldn’t he let others know that he loved her, his own wife? Wasn’t that something husbands and wives were supposed to be proud of?
Trembling, Mary Ann read on….
March 1
My second session with Subject A.
A fight had erupted the day before, all of the patients in a frenzy. Seems A told one of the patients he was going to die that day with a fork to the throat. That patient became angered and attacked A. The patients around them jumped into the fray. The hospital staff rushed to the group and began pulling them apart, injecting them with sedatives. But at the bottom of the pile, they found the patient A had predicted would die. He’d had a fork buried deep into his throat, blood pooling around him.
A hadn’t done it, that much we know. He’d managed to work himself out of the flailing throng and press himself against the wall, forked himself, in the side. Plus, another patient still had his hand wrapped around the utensil, shoving the metal prongs deeper. Had the patient committed murder because of what Aden had said? How had A known the guy had hidden a fork in his sleeve, though? Had he seen it and hoped the guy would use it the way he described? A self-fulfilling prophecy?
When I asked A these questions, he gave me no answers. Poor kid. He probably thought he’d get in trouble. Or maybe it was guilt. Or pain. I have to reach him, have to gain his trust.
March 4
After my prior encounter with Subject A, I was still a little shaken. Maybe I should have waited to see him again. Maybe then this third session wouldn’t have proven to be our last.
A was different today. There was something about him…his eyes had been too old for his age, filled with knowledge no eleven-year-old should have. I had trouble looking at him.
At first, everything progressed as I’d hoped. He’d begun to answer my questions, not evading as usual, but finally allowing me a peek inside his mind and why he does the things that he does. Why he says the things that he says. What he really thinks is going on in his head. His answer—four human souls are trapped inside him.
I dismissed the claim as his way of coping with what was happening to him. Until he mentioned Eve. That intrigued me. Eve was a person who can supposedly time travel. Just as my wife claimed to be able to do.
