The Burning Man (21 page)

“Knock it off,” he said, taking one of her fragile, scarred arms. “You want to go back to wearing the antistrip jumpsuit again?”

“No, sir,” Annie said. “Teal is
so
not my color.”

Larry led Annie out of Olivia’s room, while the nurse closed the window. Olivia’s shivering slowly subsided, but her healing ribs still throbbed from the shiver’s achy echo.

“What was that all about?” Olivia asked the nurse.

“Just a fellow patient,” she replied. “She’s a little eccentric, but harmless.”

“What did she mean by saying that this isn’t a normal hospital?”

“Annie likes to make up stories,” the nurse said. “She’s just looking for attention. Don’t pay her any mind.” She checked Olivia’s bandages and then pulled the blanket up to her chin. “Try to get some rest.”

Olivia nodded and closed her eyes.

As soon as the nurse was out of the room, however, she opened her eyes again and looked around. The door was shut, and there were no footsteps or voices in the hallway beyond. She waited a minute, then another, and then slowly, cautiously eased herself into a sitting position.

It hurt like hell, and nearly took her breath away, but she was able to tough it out. When she felt as ready as she was ever going to be, she swung her shaky legs over the edge of the bed until her bare feet touched the cold linoleum.

It took several attempts to get her battered and disused body upright and find her balance. Her legs felt like spaghetti and her chest felt like it’d been stepped on by an elephant. But her curiosity drove her on, and she made herself take one wobbly step toward the window, and then another.

When she finally reached it, she had to rest for several minutes with the palm of her good hand against the cold glass and sparkles dancing around the edges of her vision.

When her head cleared, she looked out the window. Nothing visible but dark pine branches. No lights or other buildings or highways. No parking lot so she could check license plates and see what state she was in. It was obviously way too cold to be Florida, but other than that, there was no hint of where she might be at all. Just those taciturn pine trees.

She couldn’t see the ground, but she wasn’t above the treetops, so she estimated herself to be on the third floor of the building. She slid the window slowly open. Sure enough, it only slid about three inches before hitting some kind of block that kept it from opening any wider. Upon further examination, she discovered that the glass was reinforced with a thin wire mesh.

What kind of hospital has locking, unbreakable security windows?

She didn’t like the answer to that question. She didn’t like it one bit.

* * *

When the day nurse with the bun appeared the next morning to check Olivia’s vitals and dole out medication, she refused to allow herself to be examined.

“I want to call my sister,” she said. “I’m not taking any more pills until you let me talk to Rachel.”

“I’m sorry,” the nurse said. “That’s just not possible right now.”

“Make it possible,” Olivia snapped. “Because if you don’t, I’m out of here. I don’t care if I have to walk back to Deerborn with no shoes and my naked ass hanging in the breeze. You can’t keep me a prisoner!”

“You’re not a prisoner, honey,” the nurse said, reaching out to push a button on the side of the bed. “You’re just very badly hurt, that’s all. You need to take it easy. Relax.”

“Fine,” Olivia said, struggling to her feet. “I’m leaving.”

“Please, Ms. Dunham,” the nurse said, putting a strong hand on her shoulder. “You’ll tear your stitches.”

Larry appeared in the doorway, blocking it with his big freckled arms crossed.

“Just relax,” the nurse said, taking a capped syringe out of her uniform pocket.

Olivia knocked the syringe out of the nurse’s hand with the hard cast on her left forearm and then shoved the older woman away. The pain shooting through her ribcage was blinding, almost unbearable, and she could feel cold sweat pouring down the channel of her spine.

Then Larry had ahold of her, hauling her up and trapping her arms at her sides. She could smell his failing deodorant and his black-coffee breath, weirdly intimate and creepy in that panicky and irrational moment before she felt the sting of a needle in her right thigh.

As the woozy red nothingness swallowed her up, she thought she saw a fleeting glimpse of Annie in the hallway outside her door, mouthing the words,
I told you so.

Olivia sat in Doctor Lansen’s office, one leg bent. She was picking at the fraying toe of her non-skid slipper sock.

She’d been in this place for more than two weeks now, and was slowly starting to get the lay of the land. It had been obvious from early on that aggressive resistance wasn’t the way to get out of there. She learned very quickly that behavior like that earned her nothing but restraints, both physical and chemical.

She needed to focus and direct her energies. Be smarter, patient, and meticulous. She started toughing out the pain and palming her meds, flushing them down the toilet. Because the longer she stayed there, the clearer it became that she needed to get out, and soon. She needed a clear head to make that happen.

Although she couldn’t get any real details out of anyone—about exactly what had happened to her that night—Doctor Lansen claimed she had suffered some kind of mental breakdown during a fight with that crazy cop who had abducted Rachel. She had no memory of anything from that day at all, so it was hard to argue about what may or may not have occurred. But she was pretty damn sure that there was nothing mentally wrong with her now.

There was, on the other hand, something very wrong with this place. And a big part of that wrongness was Doctor Lansen himself.

It wasn’t something she could easily put her finger on. He was in his early forties and not bad looking. Kind of like a blue-eyed, American version of Jeremy Irons. Neat and impeccably groomed. Always wore a tie. But there was something in the way he looked at her that made her deeply uncomfortable. It wasn’t a sex thing, or at least it wasn’t
just
that.

Olivia never considered herself a hottie or anything, but she was far from unaware of the effect her developing body had on the male gender. Yet this wasn’t about her boobs or her legs or anything like that. It was like he was perving on something about her that she couldn’t see.

“Tell me about your boyfriend,” he said.

Olivia shrugged, refusing to give this creep even the tiniest sliver of her feelings about Kieran.

“Are you sexually active?”

Olivia glared at him through her tangled hair.

“Are you?” she replied.

“It’s nothing personal, Olivia,” he said. “I’m only asking because there appears to be a connection between the onset of sexual activity and your... disorder.”

She wanted to smash in his perverted face, but she bit back on the urge and took a long, slow breath instead.

“Well,” she said, “I hate to spoil your pet theory, but no, I’m not. Besides, correlation does not imply causation. Didn’t they teach you that in medical school?”

“That’s absolutely right,” he said with a condescending smirk. “Which is why we’re so grateful to have you here, to help us learn more about this unique condition.”

Condition.

Disorder.

Olivia hated those words. All this tip-toeing around what was supposedly wrong with her, but offering no real information. Like she was a cat at the vet who couldn’t possibly understand what needed to be done to her. Like she needed guys like Lansen to do things to her, for her own good. She might be sixteen, but she wasn’t a child.

She’d been taking care of herself and Rachel for years, and was perfectly capable of watching out for her own good. As far as she could tell, there was nothing wrong with her besides a broken arm.

“All right then,” he said, closing his notebook. “That’s all for today. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Whatever,” Olivia replied.

Larry was there, right outside Doctor Lansen’s office, waiting to escort her through what she liked to refer to as “the airlock.”

It was the elevator area in the crook of the L between the ward and the row of labs and offices. Both wings were behind key-card locked security doors, and to travel from one to the other you had to pass through both doors. They were programmed so that one couldn’t be opened until the other was closed and locked.

Neither could be opened while the doors to one or both of the two elevators were open. Olivia had been over and over every possible scenario in which she might be able to steal a key card, or find a way to get unsupervised access to the elevator area.

So far, no dice.

Larry gripped her upper arm in his big fist and marched her through the airlock and into the ward. Once the ward door clicked closed behind them, he left her to her own devices while he ferried one of the other patients—a quiet little Hispanic girl named Lindsey— through the airlock in the direction of Lansen’s office.

Walking down the corridor to her room, Olivia wondered for the hundredth time what was behind the other locked doors on the ward. There was Annie, Lindsey, Corrine, and Olivia, but there were twice that many rooms. The nurse claimed the extra rooms were empty, but if there was no one inside, why were they locked?

The door to the janitor’s closet popped open and a skinny white hand reached out to grab the sleeve of Olivia’s hospital gown, pulling her in.

Annie.

She pulled Olivia close, hissing inches from her ear.

“Let’s get one thing straight, babydoll. I’m the teacher’s pet around here. Not you. I’m the one he really wants.”

Olivia shoved her away.

“What’s the matter with you?” she whispered, frowning. “I’m not anybody’s pet, and neither are you.”

“You think you’re special just because you’re all shiny and new,” Annie said, grabbing her arm way too hard. “But see how fast he gets sick of you, once he realizes that you can’t control it like I can.”

“What are you talking about?” Olivia said, wrenching her arm loose. “Get off me.”

Free of the other girl’s grip, she took a deep breath. Poor Annie was clearly nuts—most likely paranoid and delusional—and Olivia couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for her. If Lansen was doing things to Annie that made her imagine there was some kind of romantic relationship between them, that was his fault, not hers. After all, he was the adult.

“Look,” Olivia said, softening her voice. “You shouldn’t let him touch you.”

“You have no idea,” Annie said, opening the closet door and slipping out. “You don’t know anything at all.”

Olivia followed her out into the hallway. Corrine was there, sliding along the wall toward her room with her head hung low. She was very dark skinned, chubby and slump shouldered, with a sad, defeated demeanor. She had a pretty face, with widely spaced almond eyes and high cheekbones, but you almost never saw it, because she always kept her chin tucked in and her face turned down and away.

She hadn’t spoken a single word to anyone in the whole time Olivia had been there.

As Annie passed Corrine, the chubby girl suddenly slammed backward against the wall as if shoved by a giant invisible hand. She let out a whimper and crumpled to the floor, her hands covering her face.

The new girl had to go.

It was becoming clear to Annie that something had to be done about Olivia. Blond, tall, and haughty, walking around the ward like she was some kind of supermodel. Wiggling her cute little ass in Doctor Lansen’s face and acting like she didn’t notice the effect she was having.

Annie had been here for a little more than a year. Before that she’d been in and out of various foster homes, juvenile detention centers, and psych wards, but had been transferred here shortly after the not-really-accidental death of her abusive junkie mother on her thirteenth birthday.

Her mother, Angela Pagliuca, was originally from New Jersey. Third daughter out of seven. She’d gone to Daytona Beach for Spring Break one year and never went home. A year later, she was strung out and knocked up, turning tricks out of her boyfriend’s van.

Police found baby Annie forgotten in a Butchie Burger bathroom stall, wearing an unchanged diaper and nothing else. Her grandparents Sal and Rita in Jacksonville were awarded custody, and for the first five years of her life, Annie had enjoyed a happy, unremarkable childhood. She had a pool and a Chihuahua named Bitsy and her own room full of toys and books. She got to do fun things like go to Disney World and play miniature golf and be part of a cool science program where she played educational games with this friendly doctor.

She was loved.

Then Grandma Rita died. Less than a month later, Grandpa Sal suffered a stroke and had to go live in a home. Bitsy had to go to the dog pound, and Annie went to a foster home.

That first foster home was okay, even though the parents were very religious and strict and made all the kids do chores all day long, like they were slaves. But then one day, Angela showed up, claiming to be sober and wanting to start a new life with her precious little girl.

That lasted just long enough to get custody. By the end of the first week, the cute purple canopy bed Angela bought to impress the social worker had been sold for dope, and Annie had to sleep on some old couch cushions pushed together to form a makeshift bed. Two months after that, they were evicted and had to sleep in the car, or in the apartments of Angela’s various male “friends”— many of whom seemed to think Annie was part of a package deal.

Angela would berate Annie every day, calling her a worthless trick-baby whose birth had ruined her mother’s life. She pulled Annie out of schools constantly, moving her around from state to state. She would abandon her daughter in fleabag motels for days on end and Annie would get so hungry that she would be forced to go into fast-food restaurants and eat the discarded scraps and extra ketchup packets that other people left behind on their trays.

If there were no scraps, she would sometimes ask the employees if they had anything they were just going to throw away. Sometimes she got lucky and someone might buy her a fresh burger because she was so thin and they felt sorry for her. But when Angela overheard Annie telling a stranger that she was hungry, she dragged her back to the motel by her hair and beat the crap out of her, threatening to kill her for “making me look like a bad mother.”