The Lucky Ones(85)

That was Deacon?

“I can’t believe it,” Allison said.

“Believe it,” Antonio said. “I don’t know how to lie. Maybe he cut that out of me, too.”

She shook herself out of her shock.

“Who took you to Dr. Capello?”

“He found me,” he said. “He was looking for kids like me. Fucked up. Violent. Incurable. A kid nobody wanted. A kid nobody would miss. That was me. Nobody wanted me. When we met...you know what he said?”

“No, tell me.”

“He said I was very lucky he’d found me, because he knew how to cure my disease.”

“What disease did he say you had?” Allison asked. “Tony, what disease did Dr. Capello tell you that you had?”

Antonio opened his eyes again.

“Evil.”

Allison looked away from Antonio’s wide, waiting eyes. She’d known that was what he was going to say. She might have known before she’d come here. Maybe she even knew from the day on the beach when Dr. Capello had said he hoped for the day it would be possible to cure evil. He’d spoken with such conviction, conviction that bordered on certainty. He was sure they could do it. He was sure because he had done it already.

He’d done it already.

To Antonio.

To Kendra.

To Deacon.

To Thora.

To Oliver.

And to Roland.

“Why are you crying?” Antonio asked. “You aren’t as pretty when you cry. No offense.”

Allison looked back at him and saw tears on his own face.

“Why are you crying?” she asked him.

“Because my head hurts.”

“You have headaches?”

“All the time.” Antonio’s face screwed up in obvious agony. “Will you rub my head? Just a little?”

His voice was so pleading and his pain so apparent that she reached out to him in compassion. Antonio jerked forward toward her with a sudden lunge. The bed lurched as he lurched. Allison screamed and jumped back in her chair. The restraints had caught him but she’d seen the expression of animal rage in his eyes as her hand neared his head. It was there in a flash and gone in an instant.

Antonio beat his head against the pillow, tears streaming from his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry...” He said it a dozen, two dozen, a hundred times, as Allison caught her breath. Antonio couldn’t seem to stop apologizing and she couldn’t stop weeping. She went to his hospital bed and walked around the side to stand behind him. This time, when she reached out to touch him he lay still. She ran her fingers through his shaggy dark hair and he quieted. The litany of apologies ceased.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“You’ll never come see me again now,” he said.

“No, I’ll come, I promise. You just gave me a little scare. I’m not mad. It’s not your fault.”

“I wish I was dead sometimes,” he said.

“No, don’t say that,” Allison said. “Please don’t say that. I’m so glad we met, Antonio. I like talking with you. And I do want to come see you again.”

“You do?”

“I do, I promise.”

His hair was so soft and Antonio so apologetic and helpless that she had to love him. She couldn’t help but love him. To her he was the boy in the photograph, the child of eight in the stupid bucket hat, not the man of twenty-eight who had to live day and night chained up in this hotel he could never check out of, never leave.

“He was supposed to make me good,” Antonio said. “He just made me sorry.”

“Oh, Tony,” she said, weeping with him. His back heaved with his sobs and she rubbed it as best she could, trying to soothe him. No one deserved this. No one. Not even a boy who’d hurt children the way he had. To be given a life sentence for crimes committed at age seven and eight...to be trapped in this place for decades with no hope of ever getting out, of ever getting well...no visitors and no one to touch him but doctors and nurses and orderlies. No one deserved this.

“Allison,” he said, the first time he’d spoken her name.

“Yes?”

“Hit the buzzer.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Hit it. I’m going to have a seizure. Hit it.”

She ran to the door and hit the buzzer. It wasn’t more than ten seconds, though it felt like an eternity. Allison stood in the corner of the room watching Antonio’s back rise off the bed like a scene from an exorcism movie. His face was contorted in agony and the sound that escaped his lips was that of a wounded animal or a terrified child. She wanted to help him but didn’t know how. Two nurses, one male and one female, burst into the room and rushed to the bed. One of them forced a mouth guard between Antonio’s teeth.

Allison slid down the wall to sit on the floor.

And she remembered what happened that day.

It played before her eyes like a scene from a movie. A horror movie. And she was the star.

Antonio seized, and Allison remembered. Everything passed by in slow motion, like the floor was covered in glue and the air in the room was as thick as molasses. Eventually time found its footing again and she came back to herself and to the present. The two nurses had finished with Antonio and now they stood calmly at his bedside, one wiping sweat from his face and neck and the other making notes in a chart.