کتاب 05-02

2

Harper read the notebook in the bathroom, with the door locked, to prevent someone from walking in on her and finding her with it. She felt vaguely like an adolescent, privately examining a work of pornography with a dry mouth and a tripping heart.

When she finally stepped back into the wardroom and the milky glow of dawn, she discovered a white rock on the foot of her cot, a sheet of paper under it. WHEN WILL YOU TAKE YOUR MEDICINE? someone had written.

Father Storey drowsed in one bed, Nick in the other. With both of them asleep in the same pose, and with the same frowning look of concentration on their faces, it was impossible not to see the close familial resemblance. The child was still inside Father Storey somewhere, as a fly remains perfectly preserved in a bead of amber. The old man waited for Nick, a baggy overcoat that he would be ready to slip on in six decades.

Harper glanced at the curtain into the waiting room, to be sure she was unobserved, and put the notebook back in the ceiling. Then she picked up the stone and ducked into the next room.

Mindy Skilling, a pretty, waifish girl of about twenty, was on watch. Harper had treated her last month for a urinary tract infection. Mindy gave Harper a dewy, pitying look. She had a lovely, expressive face—bright eyes and long curling lashes—and Harper remembered that in a former life Mindy had studied acting.

“Did you put this on my bed?” Harper held out the stone.

Mindy shook her head.

“Who did?”

“Wouldn’t you feel better,” Mindy asked, “if you just got your punishment over with? I know Allie would feel better.” Her eyes widened in sudden inspiration. She scooted to the edge of the couch. “What if you just put the rock in your mouth for five minutes? I’d tell everyone it was a whole half hour.”

“Not five seconds,” Harper said. “Oh, and Mindy? Next time you’ve got an infected bladder?”

Mindy stared at her with apprehensive, ready-to-be hurt eyes.

You can piss off, Harper said in her mind, but in real life she only sighed and said, “Forget it,” and slipped back into the ward.

She really didn’t have the right temperament for vicious comments. The few times in her life she had said truly nasty things to people, it had left her with a bad flavor in her mouth. A stone couldn’t taste any worse.