“I do. We’ve talked about the losses you’ve experienced in your life, big and small. Your mom, for starters. Abandoning you in foster care. Choosing heroin over her only child. You didn’t cope well with that, did you?”
Drake’s head tipped back, exposing his long, pale neck. His laugh reminded Olivia of his nickname. Because it sounded like the cry of a vulture. Shrill and wild and unnerving.
“I guess you’re right about that. I ended up in this hellhole talking to you. No offense.”
“And when they took your yard privileges a few years back? That was a loss, albeit a temporary one.”
“C’mon, Doc. That’s not fair. You know I had to make a statement. Drake Devere needs his fresh air. I’m like Walt Whitman, drawing my inspiration from nature.”
“You broke that CO’s hand.”
“Technically, the door fractured her index metacarpal.” On any other day, Olivia would’ve stopped Drake right there and put an official label on his bullshit. Minimization. Justification. Externalization of blame. “But, you’ve made your point. I don’t react well to stress. And you’re right. This thing with Ms. McMillan has got me strung out. I couldn’t even focus on my audiobook. Do you know what bothers me the most? What’s been keeping me up every night since she went missing?”
Today, he steamrolled her, dragging Olivia along for the ride. “Who else is gonna help me finish the series? My readers are expecting the sequel in February. And she was supposed to talk to the Classification Committee about my working as a teacher’s assistant. Now, I’ll be stuck working for Ms. Ricci, slinging that chow hall slop for fifteen cents an hour. She hates me. She’s always writing me up for being late when she knows good and well it takes at least ten minutes to walk to the kitchen from here.”
“Stop.” Olivia suddenly wished she’d stayed home today. Pulled the covers over her head and postponed returning to the real world with its cruel lessons, its sharp edges. None sharper than Drake.
“I’d like you to take a step back. Work on your perspective-taking. Your empathy, remember? Next session, I want an answer to my question. To this question.”
Drake raised his hands in surrender to an invisible gun. “Fire away. You’re the best psych doctor in this joint.”
“You cared for Ms. McMillan. You valued her. She helped you achieve a long-held dream of publishing your manuscript and gave you confidence when others doubted you. Then, someone took her away. Ended her life. Violently.”
Olivia thought of her father. Of his eyes. Which weren’t green like hers and Em’s, but blue and seemed to fade out the longer he’d been locked up, like a photograph left too long in the sun. By the time they’d transferred him to the minimum security facility at Valley View ten years ago, they’d dimmed to a soft gray mist.
But Drake’s eyes glinted with life as they followed her. As golden brown as a hawk’s feather and bright as the day they’d taken his first prison photo. The one tacked onto the front of his file on Olivia’s desk and immortalized on the last page of his self-published novel, Bird of Prey.
Though it left her inexplicably angry, she stared into them, unafraid. “What is it like knowing you did that very same thing to the families of your victims five times over?”
Olivia watched Drake through her office window as he strolled past the officers’ desk and toward the locked outer door of the MHU. Hank didn’t look up. Not even when Drake called out to him.
“C’mon, Sarge. Help me out. Ms. Ricci’s gonna ride my ass if I’m late for lunch prep again.”
Leah’s patient, Greg, emerged from her door across the hall, his mouth moving strangely as he talked to the voices in his head. The same ones that had told him to drive a stake—which turned out to be a steak knife—through his mother’s vampire heart.
Leah came out behind him and stood in the doorway. She made a face at Olivia, equal parts eye roll and exasperation.
“You know I was just pulling your chain, Sarge. You’re alright.”
Hank remained stone-faced at his computer while, one by one, all the 9 a.m. patients gathered at the locked door, waiting for him and his precious key. Olivia could’ve put an end to the standoff and simply opened it herself, but after the incident in the chapel she’d been trying to stick to the unwritten rules: Keep your head down. Don’t get involved.
Hank pushed back in his chair and kicked his boots up on the desk, humming, as Drake made one more effort.
“I didn’t mean it, Sarge. Ask Doctor Rockwell. She’ll tell you. I’ve been real upset about Ms. McMillan. I probably took it out on you.”
Hank began singing Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues”, and Drake kicked the door, the hollow sound ringing like a gunshot.
At the sound, the other doctors emerged from their offices and looked on from their own doorways, the whole MHU poised on a knife’s edge. When Olivia spotted Drake whispering to Greg, a cold dread crept up her spine and stood her hair on end.
Her finger hovered over the red push button at her waist.
“Let me out!” Greg screamed, flailing at the door with his fists. “He’s going to damn me to a life of eternal ruin! He’s a vampire!”
Another inmate tried to hold him back and took an elbow shot to the nose, blood dripping down his chin and spreading onto his prison blues. The blood only ratcheted up Greg’s terror. He stretched his hand out in front of him and made the sign of the cross before he returned to thrashing the door, desperate to get out.
Olivia launched herself straight into the fray, pressing the button as she ran. The alarms blasted, flashing red, until all the inmates hit the ground per prison protocol. Only Greg remained upright, cowering in the corner, his knuckles bruised and already swollen from the pounding.
“It’s okay,” Olivia told him, steadying the quiver in her own voice. “There are no vampires in the MHU. Sergeant Wickersham is here to help you, and so am I. So is Doctor Chapman.”
Hank’s hands shook as he unlocked the door and the rest of the officers stormed in to restore order.
Secured in handcuffs and pinned to the wall, Greg began to cry as Leah tried to soothe him. “Keep him away from me,” he sobbed. “Please. He’s going to bite me. He told me so.”
“Sergeant Wickersham isn’t a vampire,” Olivia said again.
“Not Sarge.” Greg pointed at the ground, where Drake lay on his belly. Olivia swore she heard him laughing. “Him.”
Except for the soft swish of the porter’s mop across the tiles near the door, the MHU had quieted again. Leah collapsed into the chair opposite Olivia. With a frustrated sigh, she blew her blonde bangs from her face. “Girl, tell me again why we can’t bring booze to work?”
Olivia laughed but it didn’t quiet her nerves which had frayed down to the last wire. “For one, I don’t think Baby Chapman would appreciate you drinking.”
“It’s really not fair. I’m big as a house. My hormones are raging. I’ve got two more months until I get this kid out of me. Then, I come to work and have to put up with these lunatics. And it’s not just the inmates. I’m telling you, I could use a strong shot of pruno right now.” Leah stuck her thumb in Hank’s direction. He hadn’t spoken a word since Warden Blevins stormed out ten minutes ago. “That guy is a riot just waiting to happen.”