Live to Tell (Detective D.D. Warren, #4)(37)

She attacked the window, beating it with her fists. When the shatterproof glass held, she whirled around and slammed herself into the neighboring wall. Her head whipped back. She cried out again, before careening across the room and pounding into the next wall. She still wore the oversized top, and it flapped around her bony knees like a giant green cape.

I put up a hand, gesturing for everyone to hold still. Technically, I wasn’t even on the clock. I’d logged out hours ago, but had never made it home. I’d debriefed with Karen, visited with Greg, caught up on some paperwork. I’d worked for thirty-six of the past forty-eight hours. Now I was tired, frazzled from Lucy’s escape, and wrung out from the detectives’ visit. After they’d left, I’d made the mistake of looking up the Dorchester murders on the Internet. I could picture Ozzie inside that white-trimmed triple-decker. Patrick, Denise, Ozzie’s older brother and sister.

And that put my father’s voice back in my head. “Oh Danny girl. My pretty, pretty Danny girl.”

Two and half days now. Sixty hours and counting.

“She’s disassociating,” Cecille, an MC, murmured beside me.

She was right. Lucy’s dark eyes held a glassy sheen and she was striking out at things only she could see. Her nightmare had carried her to the wasteland between sleeping and waking. She was reacting to our presence, but not really processing. Kids like this were nearly impossible to wake, and it almost always ended badly.

Now Lucy flung herself against another wall and started pounding her head.

“Ativan,” Ed stated across the room. He was an older MC, heavyset, balding. He liked to cook and the kids loved him for it.

“No shit,” I muttered back.

“I can get her.” Ed was already on the balls of his feet, preparing his heft for action. He was going to rush her, try to grab her in a bear hug. The feeling of being enveloped soothed some kids, helped bring them down. I knew immediately Lucy wasn’t that kind of kid.

“No!” I grabbed his arm, stalling him. “Touch her and she’ll go nuts.”

“She’s already nuts. We gotta get her sedated before she takes everyone with her. It’s nighttime, Danielle. You know what it’s like at night.”

I knew, but forcefully grabbing a child as damaged as Lucy … I couldn’t stomach it.

“Everyone out,” I ordered. “Just out. We’re not doing any good.”

Lucy was back at the window, banging futilely against the glass. There was a hopelessness to her actions that hurt to watch. As if she knew the glass wouldn’t break, as if she knew she couldn’t escape, but she had to try.

How long had she banged on the freezer door? How many hours and days had she spent, forced into a fetal position, feeling her arms and legs burn from the cramping muscles?

These kids were tougher than us. These kids were braver than us. That’s why we loved them so.

We backed out slowly, easing into the lit hallway, where the domino effects of Lucy’s outburst were already in motion. Kids were off their mattresses, looking wild-eyed as Lucy launched into a fresh series of shrieks. Jimmy raced by, arms outstretched as he reacted to the stress by making like an airplane and taking flight. Jorge and Benny were hot on his heels.

Verbal kids were chattering away. Nonverbal kids were curling into balls. Suicidal Aimee stood in the doorway, looking as if the world were ending, but then, she’d known it would. She disappeared, shuffling back into the darkness of her room, and Cecille swiftly followed her.

Lucy began to wail. A thin, anguished sound that built, then fell off, then rose to a crescendo all over again.

“Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop!” Jimmy yelled, roaring down the hallway, arms straight out, bathrobe flapping.

Lucy wailed louder.

“Stop, stop, stop!” Benny and Jorge took up the chant.

“Midnight matinee,” Ed boomed over the growing uproar. “To the movie room. Popcorn for all.”

He started to herd dazed and distraught children away from Lucy’s room, toward the common area. I joined suit, gathering as many kids as possible as I worked my way to the medicine dispensary. I tried to appear as if I were merely walking fast when, really, I wanted to bolt.

The wails continued, a long heartbreaking ladder that made the adults pale, even as we pasted reassuring smiles upon our faces.

I found myself picturing my father. He was standing in my doorway, framed by a halo of hallway light. “Oh Danny girl. My pretty, pretty Danny girl.”

The pitch of his last words matched Lucy’s wail perfectly. Songs for the dying.

I wanted Lucy to shut up. I needed her voice out of my head.

I finally reached the dispensary and grabbed the Ativan. Two more kids went racing by. I snagged the first, then the second, got them to the movie room, where the MCs were getting it together now. A movie was on, audio blasting almost loud enough to drown out the ruckus down the hall.

Lucy screamed more frantically, and I bolted for the rest of my supplies. Having the proper sedative was only half the battle. The real problem would be administering it. Most kids, we talked through the process or even bribed. Lucy, however, didn’t have language skills.

She was a mystery to us, and she was a mystery now screaming so shrilly my head hurt. The windows should shatter. The building should implode from so much anguish.

“Oh Danny girl. My pretty, pretty Danny girl.”