Saving Meghan(102)

The phone rang. The number on the in-car display came up as WHITE MEMORIAL. Carl answered the call using Bluetooth.

“Carl Gerard here, you’re on speaker.”

“It’s Dr. Nash.”

Becky’s stomach clenched at the name of the woman she blamed most for her ordeal.

“I’m with Becky now,” Carl said. “Is everything all right?”

“Hello, Becky,” Nash said with a touch of disdain.

“Is Meghan all right?” Becky asked, feeling the sting of the court order barring her from White.

“Well, that’s why I’m calling,” Nash said.

Becky gripped the car armrest with grave anticipation.

“Meghan saw the news, meaning she saw you, Becky.”

“I thought the children weren’t allowed to watch the news,” Carl said.

“One of the patients smuggled in a cell phone, which we’ve confiscated.”

“And?”

“And she’s been struggling since coming back here. She hasn’t been eating. She’s been extremely depressed. Agitated. And seeing you on the news has only made things worse for her.”

Becky felt a surge of anger toward Zach.

“What can we do?” Carl asked.

“I think Meghan needs to see her mother, see that she’s okay, that she hasn’t been hurt. I’ve spoken with Meghan’s new psychiatrist, who agrees the visit would be beneficial.”

“Well, that’s impossible,” Becky said, “because the judge has ordered me to stay away.”

“DCF is working on that as we speak,” Nash said. “They should be able to get that condition lifted.”

“Could you please contact the kitchen staff right away,” Becky said to Nash.

“Why?” she asked.

“Well, I’m not showing up without some chicken soup.”





CHAPTER 49





MEGHAN


At first, I couldn’t believe my eyes when Mom walked through the door to Charlotte’s Web. I did a double take before leaping out of my chair. I ran to her, not my dad, at a full sprint, forgetting all her warnings about exertion. Maybe everything was going to be all right.

Our emotional reunion had an audience. We weren’t going to be left alone, for obvious reasons. All the key players were there: that annoying lady from DCF, Annabel Hope, who I suspected cut her bangs with a ruler; Jill Mendoza, my oh-so-charming guardian ad litem; Knox Singer; Dr. Nash; and my new shrink, who shall remain nameless because I don’t care about her one bit. There were also a bunch of orderlies and nurses in the room in case things got out of hand.

My fellow inmates (okay, okay, patients) weren’t around to witness the joyous reunion, but they were nearly as excited as I was for Mom’s visit. Mom was a legend on this floor, and I guess by proxy (get it?), so was I. I got a huge round of applause when they brought me back. Even Bathtub Girl started acting nice to me. In fact, she was the one who showed me the news footage on her contraband cell phone of Mom leaving the courthouse.

But Mustache Man didn’t seem all too pleased with my return. The same went for Loretta, who everyone said hadn’t ventured so much as five feet from her food cart since my escape.

Mustache Man was guarding the door with four other orderlies—four instead of the usual two, just in case there was trouble. But there wouldn’t be any trouble. My spirit was broken. I was broken. Maybe I was broken and crazy. Maybe my mom had planted the idea that I was sick in my head and it had sprouted into a forest where I couldn’t find my way out. Crazy or not, I could almost hear the switches inside me, each click a symptom of something wrong.

Fatigue. Muscle aches. Weakness. Headaches. But there was never anything major—no seizures, no cancer, no blood disorder, nothing medically amiss, at least nothing Nash could find.

But I forgot all about those symptoms, real or imagined, when Mom showed up. I swear there was like an angel’s halo surrounding her. She came running over to me, thermos in hand. We hugged and cried. I could tell she was trying to hold it together for me, but it was no use. We were both a hot mess, the full waterworks. I swear even Jill Mendoza got a little teary.

My new shrink, aka she-who-shall-remain-nameless, looked on with curiosity, studying us like a field scientist watching animals in the wild. To be fair, she was a nice lady—harmless, I supposed. She and Dr. Nash were the ones who had pushed hard for my mom to come here, so I guess I couldn’t think too badly of her.

Still, I wished Dr. Levine were around—or, let’s be honest, still alive. I could have sworn he was starting to have doubts about his original diagnosis before he died, the medical child abuse and all that. Maybe those switches I kept talking about weren’t in my head. But my new shrink wasn’t going to entertain that notion, not for a second. In her mind, my mom had filled me with so much nonsense that I couldn’t tell delusion from reality.

“We know what’s wrong with me,” I told my shrink during our last session. “It’s mito. Dr. Fisher told me I was going to resume my mito treatment.”

“Dr. Fisher is not treating you anymore, Meghan. We are.” To my ears, she sounded a lot like a grief counselor. That flicked a new switch in me—the one that stopped caring about anything she had to say.