“She’s good. I thought she called you.”
“She sure did, honey. Told me to take care of you. Dr. Walter is on her way. There’s no camera in here. But we got them in the hallway. Act right while you’re out there. None in your room, though. You’ll be safe with us.” She squeezes my cheeks like she used to when I was a kid and she was my mom’s nurse. “But look at you! My little Scoutie. All grown up. Girl, you look good!” Grabbing my hand, she brushes over my simple gold band. “Andmarried. Wow. Where does time go?”
I get a tear in my eye, remembering all the times she brought me pineapple upside-down cake she’d make just for me. So I could sit in the back after school and play. She’d even entertain me on her breaks. Mom said it was because she lost her granddaughter. And that would make me play extra hard with her. To make her feel better.
“It’s so good to see you, Miss Quince.”
She gives me another tight squeeze. “Same. And you ask any of us if you need anything. No one’s going to mess with you. You hear me?”
I nod, a lump tightening my throat. “Who else is aware?”
“Your mama made sure the nurses up here on nights knew. A couple on the day shift. I’ll be here until seven. And, of course, Dr. Walter.”
As if called, in walks the woman herself. Her red hairtied into a bun. Neat, but unraveling around the edges. Thick glasses sliding down her nose. And a tired, annoyed look on her face that all my mom’s friends from work have stitched into their wrinkles.
With a deep inhale, she taps on the screen of a tablet. “You’re in big trouble. Apparently, you’re delusional. Suicidal. Even becoming psychotic. Hallucinations, they said.”
Her face is serious, but I wait for the punchline. The moment crawls on for so long, my heart picks up speed again.
“Well, I’m not?—”
“Welcome to the Wellness Center, Scoutie! We’ll make you all better in just a brief twenty-four hours. You’ll be my miracle patient. The one I sprinkled psychiatric fairy dust on and fixed all your problems!That’show good I am.”
I chuckle at her warped sense of humor. She and Mom trained together during their intern year in neurology rotations. And they’ve “bonded for life,” telling me “it’s something you can only understand once you’ve been through the war of internship.”
Quincy shakes her finger at me. “I gotta do my rounds, but you act as if you had a finger up your ass butaren’thappy about it when you leave this room.”
“I will. Thank you, Miss Quince.”
Dr. Walter gives her some other instructions and returns to me with a serious look covering her face as she drops onto a rolling stool. “Whatarewe going to do with you? Disobeying the president?” She tuts at me dramatically.
“Aren’tyoudisobeying orders?”
She smirks. “If an administrator thinks a psychiatrist is going to follow arbitraryrules, they’re naive. Likely to the point of having serious mother issues. But most likely, highlynarcissistic.” Waving a hand in front of her face, she tosses away her thoughts. “But that’s not the point. The point is, Scout, that your mother is coming to sneak you out of here in a moment. She wanted to talk to you.”
With a glance at her watch, she continues. “I’m leaving for the evening in about half an hour, then I’ll see you in the morning for rounds. At which point, you’ll becured, I tell you. Right?”
“Right?”
“Right. That means…”
“Um…” I’m not sure what she’s getting at.
“That means that you’ll follow these arbitrary rules and regulations. Pretend you’re that thing they callnormal. Bless the Seven. Take a pill. Say you love it. All of that. You’re going into surgery, right? That’s all surgeons do—obey rules. But we need concrete thinkers, mechanics of the medical world.” Standing back, she crosses her arms. “Just like we need rebels.”
Mechanics. That’s true.
Just like Apollo.
There’s a little tap on the door. Dr. Walter throws it open and pulls my mom inside.
Mom grabs me in a hug, and then squeezes Dr. Walter’s arm. “Thanks, Iris. Truly.”
“Meh, don’t mention it. She needs to be back up here by about nine for rounds on camera. But the night nurses know. We’ll take care of her. Get her out tomorrow morning.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. Especially when we make it to Mom’s office, and she pulls up the autopsy records for us to go through.
Now that I think of it?
