“Show me the paperwork. I’ll do it right here.”
Kate took a frustrated step backward, sorely tempted to walk away, but this could be her only chance to get a signature on paper. She took out her phone, called the nurses’ station, and asked Yvette to grab the paperwork and bring it out. Then she leaned into the car and said, “What’s going on, Mrs. Ward?”
“Nelly.”
“Are you all right, Nelly? Is everything okay at home?”
“I’m here about my daughter.”
“What’s the problem with Maddie? We found her cutting herself in Admissions. Jabbing a pencil into her thigh. We found dozens of old scars on her body.”
“She does that to herself,” Nelly sputtered. “Like I said, she’s sick in the head. Possessed or something.”
“She may be suffering from a mental disorder and the self-harm could be a sign of an early break,” Kate said.
Nelly stepped on the gas, and the car jerked forward, giving Kate a start and forcing her to jump backwards. She almost tripped over the cement divider. Nelly hit the brakes and shrieked, “Do you think this is easy for me? Do you?”
Deeply shaken, Kate struggled to regain her composure. The woman had almost run her over. She took a deep breath and reminded herself this wasn’t about her or Mrs. Ward. It was about Maddie. “No, I don’t think it’s easy for you,” she asserted. “Please don’t go. Someone is bringing out the paperwork now.”
Nelly sat trembling behind the wheel. “Are you going to be her doctor?”
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
“Just the opposite.” She stared straight ahead. “Maybe you can help her.”
“Can you elaborate? We need more information about Maddie’s illness, her symptoms. When did they start? Why do you think your daughter’s possessed?”
“She won’t listen to reason. She locks herself in her room and refuses to come out. She hates her dad and me. She hoards stuff like a little pack rat. She bites and cuts herself. She refuses to go to school. She hears things that I don’t hear, and it scares the living daylights out of me. I’m at my wit’s end. So I brought her here, because I know you’ll take good care of her.”
Yvette came jogging into the garage, her nametag on its lanyard bouncing all over the place, puffing and gasping for breath. She thundered to a halt and thrust the paperwork into Kate’s hands. “Is that everything you need?” she wheezed.
“Perfect. Thanks, Yvette.”
“Good, because I’m not doing that again.” Yvette nodded at Nelly and headed back to the hospital with the commanding, take-no-prisoners stride of the psychiatric nurse.
“Okay,” Kate said, thumbing through the standard admission forms. “We’ll need to admit Maddie for observation. She’s clearly a danger to herself. Please write down your home address and an alternate number where you can be reached in case of an emergency. And reconsider coming inside so that we can discuss Maddie’s treatment. It would be extremely helpful if—”
“Pen,” Nelly barked. She stuck a scrawny, bruised arm out the window and waved her hand with exaggerated impatience. “We just have the one phone. We can’t afford cell phones or what have you.”
“Here.” Kate handed her the pen and the paperwork, and watched as she signed on the dotted line.
“Is that all?”
“Plus today’s date,” Kate said. “And I’m going to need your insurance card number. And you need to sign there. And there.” She pointed through the rolled-down window. “And if you could fill in her medical history, any health problems…”
“She was a healthy child. Where else? Is that all?”
“There.” Kate pointed. “And the HIPAA. Last page. Two places. That’s right.”
Nelly finished signing the forms and handed everything back. “We all done here? We good?”
“Yes.”
Kate tried one more time—not because she thought it would work, but so she’d be able to say that she had given Maddie the proper standard of care. “Won’t you please come inside? Just for a short while? The more information the better.”
The woman sighed and adjusted her hands on the wheel. “She was a good girl. Cute as a button. Now it’s hard work. I miss my daughter. I want my little girl back.”
“All right. We can keep her for up to a week for observation…”
“She’s healthy. She’s had all her vaccines. I was good about that.”
“This paperwork will allow us to admit her for observation for seven days, ten days tops, but I’ll need you and your husband to come in tomorrow for a meeting…”
“Can I go now?”
Kate took a breath. “How’s tomorrow afternoon?”
Nelly removed her sunglasses and rubbed her eyes, revealing her whole face for the first time. Kate suddenly felt numb with shock. Nelly didn’t seem to notice, and said, “Please. Just take care of my little girl. Make her better. Because I sure can’t.” She released the hand brake and took off in a scarf of dust.
“Wait!”
The car disappeared around the corner, and Kate could hear the Camry’s tires squealing through the twists and turns of the vast parking garage. She looked down at the woman’s scratchy signature and felt a swirling nausea. Nelly Ward. Except that wasn’t the name she’d gone by when Kate had last seen her. In high school she’d been Penelope Blackwood, niece of Henry Blackwood, Savannah’s killer.
Feeling lightheaded, Kate took off after the Toyota. She hurried down the cement steps until she got to the ground level and took off running across the brick courtyard. But by the time she reached the entrance gates, Nelly Ward was gone.
10
KATE FOUND JAMES IN the Adult Psych Unit, where the more violent patients were cared for. He stood in front of the door to the time-out room, looking through a nine-by-twelve-inch window. The time-out room was where patients could scream and throw tantrums without injuring themselves—basically a padded cell.
“Hey,” she said.
He turned with a distracted look. “Kate? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. Can we talk?”
“Hold on a second.” He spoke to a clipboard-carrying resident about the patient in the time-out room—a middle-aged man who never smiled and rarely moved, but who was now railing against the entire world. James escorted her into the day room, where sunlight spilled through the wire-mesh windows.
Most of the patients milling around in the shabby communal area were heavily medicated. The furniture was bolted to the floor and the paintings were glued to the walls.
“What’s up?” he asked with a concerned look.
“My new patient—the one I told you about? Her mother just signed the admission forms. There’s her signature, Nelly Ward. At first I didn’t recognize her. But then she took off her sunglasses, and I realized I’d gone to school with her. She’s aged badly and dyed her hair dark brown, but it’s definitely her. Her name used to be Penelope Blackwood. Penny for short. She’s Henry Blackwood’s niece.”
“Are you sure?” James said.
“They live in Wilamette, which is right across the river from where I grew up. And there were only a few Blackwoods in Blunt River County that I know of. Henry Blackwood and his brother’s family.”
James rubbed his chin. “Did you ask her about it?”
“No. She was gone by the time I realized who she was. But here’s the thing. On the night Savannah went missing, Blackwood was supposed to be with his niece Penny the whole time. She was his alibi. But during the trial, Penny testified under oath that her uncle had disappeared for six hours that night. She must’ve changed her name from Penny to Nelly.” Kate shook her head. “I don’t understand. Why would she drive all the way down here just to drop off her daughter at my hospital? She knows who I am, right? I didn’t change my name. I’m not trying to hide my identity. Besides, there’s an excellent psych unit right across the river, with plenty of good female psychiatrists… so why pick me? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Deep breaths.”
Kate drew back. “Deep breaths?”
“You sound upset.”
“I am upset.”