‘What?’ Now he’s back to looking down at his knees the way he always does and he’s not saying anything and I can’t get him to repeat it. So I leave again and when I reach the door he makes this sound I’ve heard him make a few times before- like a bark-nth nth ruh. I never knew what it meant but now I get the feeling it’s his way of laughing-he’s laughing at me. Then he stops, he’s back in space, and I’m out of there.”
Milo said, ” ‘Dr. A bad eyes in a box.’ Have you told anyone about this?”
“No, just you. I planned to talk to Claire about it, but I never got to see her because the next day…” She bit her lip. “The reason I didn’t mention it to anyone at the hospital was because I figured it was just crazy talk. If we paid attention every time someone talked crazy, we’d never get any work done. But the next day, when Claire didn’t come to work, and later in the afternoon I heard the news, it freaked me out. I still didn’t say anything, because I didn’t know where to go with it-and what connection could there be? Then when I read the paper and it said she’d been found in her car trunk, I’m like, ‘ “Boxed up” could be a car trunk, right?
This is freaky.’ But the paper didn’t mention anything about her eyes, so I thought maybe by ‘bad eyes’ he meant her wearing glasses, it probably was just crazy talk.
Although why would he say something about it all of a sudden when usually he doesn’t speak at all? So I kept thinking about it, didn’t know what to do, but when I saw you yesterday, I figured I should call. And now you’re telling me something was done to her eyes.”
She exhaled. Licked her lips.
Milo said, “I didn’t exactly say that, ma’am. I asked why Dr. Argent’s eyes concerned you.”
“Oh.” She slumped. “Okay, so I’m making a big deal. Sorry for wasting your time.”
She started to walk away. Milo placed a big hand on her wrist.
“No apologies necessary, Ms. Ott. You did the right thing.” Out came his pad.
“What’s this patient’s name?”
“You’re going to pursue it? Listen, I don’t want to make waves-”
“At this point,” said Milo, “I can’t afford to eliminate anything.”
“Oh.” She picked some bark from the tree trunk and examined a fingernail. “The administration doesn’t like publicity. This is not going to earn me gold stars.”
“What’s the problem with publicity?”
“Mr. Swig believes in no-news-is-good-news. We depend on politicians for funding and our patients aren’t exactly looked upon kindly, so the lower the profile, the fewer the budget cuts.” She flicked bits of bark from under her nail. Slender fingers twirled the ponytail again. Shrug. “I opened the can, what did I expect. No big deal, I’ve been thinking about leaving anyway. Starkweather’s not what I expected.”
“In what way?”
“Too repetitious. Basically, I baby-sit grown men. I was looking for something a little more clinical. I want to go back to school to become a psychologist, thought this would be a good learning experience.”
“Dr. Delaware’s a psychologist.”
“I figured that,” she said, smiling at me. “When Hatterson said he was a doctor. You wouldn’t exactly be taking a surgeon around on the ward, would you?”
“This patient,” I said. “Is there any particular reason he’d pay attention to Dr.
Argent?”
“Not really, except she worked with him. I was helping her. We were trying to raise his verbal output, getting him to interact more with his surroundings.”
“Behavior modification?” I said.
“That was the ultimate goal-some kind of reward system. But it didn’t get that far.
Basically, she just talked to him, trying to build up rapport. She had me spending time with him, too. To bring him out of his isolation. No one else bothered with him.”
“Why’s that?”
“Probably no one wanted to. He’s got difficult… personal habits. He makes noises in his sleep, doesn’t like to bathe. He eats bugs when he finds them, garbage off the floor. Worse stuff. He doesn’t have roommates because of that. Even at