Toby awakened with a craving for an icy soda. His throat felt like it needed to be scoured. The lights in the room were off, but the door was open and even the scant light from the hall was harsh in Toby’s eyes. It was exactly as dim outside the window as it was in Toby’s room. It was dawn or dusk. In the coming hours, Toby would be expected to fall back asleep or he would be expected to face a day.
Toby had never been in one before, but the sour, sprucy smell and the gamut of beeps he heard — monitoring machines, the bing of the elevator, the buzzing of the nurses’ call buttons — all came together in a way that could only be a hospital. Toby remembered being brought here. He’d been loaded into the back of a van. Stale rock music had been playing on the radio. He remembered a wheelchair, an elevator, but before that a police station, another place he’d never been. The station had seemed tiny from the outside, but inside it went back and back. Phones had been ringing and no one would answer them. A lady had administered a bunch of tests on Toby, then he’d been given a hot dog with no bun and a very small apple. This memory was sharp, the smallness of the apple. Toby had eaten it in three or four bites and hadn’t touched the hot dog. What Toby did not recall was the police arriving at his uncle’s house. He remembered walking back from the bunker after making one final check on Kaley. He’d had her dressed the way he wanted her and had let her hair grow out in the past weeks until it looked like that FBI agent’s hair. He’d gone back to the house to wait for night to fall, not meaning to go to sleep. He’d stretched himself out on the floor of his bedroom, wanting to get down onto something firm and permanent rather than his mushy mattress, and the next thing he knew he’d been awakened by a shot. He’d wanted to be shocked by the sound, that flat, resolute clap that could’ve come from Toby’s closet or from miles away, from some distant, cool place. He’d gone to the living room, and from there he could hear the radio from his uncle’s room, excited cops barking away. They’d found the Register girl. There were a bunch of them talking, all failing at keeping a calm, determined tone. Code numbers and directions. They’d kept saying Toby’s uncle’s name, Neal Showers. The singed smell of the shot was lingering in the house. Toby had known, had come to understand, that his uncle was in the next room, dead. His uncle wouldn’t make any more decisions, wouldn’t clean another thing or smoke another thing. Toby couldn’t bring himself to go in there. He remembered how it sounded, strangers on a radio talking about Uncle Neal, calling him all kinds of names that regular, tame people called people they didn’t understand.
It was morning. Outside the window of Toby’s hospital room, the sun was rising. He propped himself on his pillows. He saw the TV up in the corner of the room, saw the remote control on the dresser beneath it. He wasn’t squinting anymore. Another type of beeping was coming from outside, a big truck backing up.
Toby remembered riding in the back of the police car. There was a metal screen separating the front seat from the back. Two cops sat up front and one sat next to Toby, a guy with a thin, sly mustache. The guy kept asking Toby questions, mostly easy ones like his age and what sports he liked, but then he’d slip in questions about Uncle Neal. Toby had known enough to say nothing.
Uncle Neal was gone. Toby’s uncle was dead. Toby would never know if he’d killed himself because he thought he’d be blamed for the kidnapping, or because he’d been looking for an excuse for a long time and this seemed like a good one, or if his uncle had meant to take the rap for Toby. Maybe, for the first time, Toby’s uncle had looked out for him. Toby had hastened his uncle’s suicide and his uncle had kept Toby out of trouble. They’d helped each other. Toby was very glad he hadn’t gone in and seen his uncle dead. He didn’t want that in his mind. That wasn’t the kind of thing, he imagined, you could clear out with a long walk.
Toby heard steps approaching his room and then a nurse with black shoes was in the doorway.
“Want the light on?” she asked.
“No,” Toby said. “If that’s okay.”
The nurse came over and pulled Toby straighter and plumped his pillows. She didn’t seem fond of Toby, but was nonetheless going to be a proficient nurse.
“Did they get me from my uncle’s house last night?” Toby asked. “Or was it the night before?”
“It was last night,” the nurse said. “They gave you something for sleeping. That’s why it feels like you got hit in the head.”
The nurse had a mint in her mouth. The mint was gleaming white, and made it easy to see that her teeth were not. She opened a couple drawers and was not displeased at what she saw in them. She glanced at Toby’s chart, then went and pulled the blinds all the way up. She told Toby she’d be back in a few minutes to help him to the shower. The doctor would be coming by in an hour or two, and she wanted Toby alert.
She picked up the remote control and walked it over to him.
“Could I get a soda?” Toby asked. “A soda on ice?”
“I suppose you can have a soda.”
“Are there cops here?”
The nurse nodded. “They’re down by the nurses’ station. They’re wearing regular clothes. I think it’s supposed to be a secret you’re here, but we’ll see how long that lasts. Those guys won’t bother you. They’re down there flirting with Stacy.”
“I don’t want to see any cops right now.”
“I wouldn’t worry. Stacy’s got her low-cut scrubs on.”
The nurse tapped the door frame, meaning she was leaving.
“Maybe two sodas,” said Toby.
“A double.” The nurse might’ve smiled.
“Is the little girl here?” Toby asked. “Is Kaley and her family here?”
The nurse made a noise. If she’d smiled, that was over now. “No, sir. They took that child down to a fancier place than we got.”
The nurse left and Toby turned his attention to the remote control in his hands. Menu. Mode. Function. He hit the power button and the screen snapped to life. He heard the announcers before he could make out what was on the screen. It was a soccer game, from Mexico or somewhere. People holding banners hopped in the stands. Toby pressed the arrow. A show from the eighties about teenagers. A show about barbecue. Toby needed a news network. He found one, and turned the volume up a notch.
There was a shot of Uncle Neal’s property from above, from a helicopter. Toby could hear the blades whirring. The sight of Uncle Neal’s place gave him a pang — for what, he couldn’t say. A woman with a flinty voice began speaking, referring to Uncle Neal’s property as a compound. All of it could have looked placid and everyday — the house, the shed, the winding dirt driveway that stopped a ways short of the house — but with the wobbly camera and the eerie music swelling up, everything was sinister. The woman mentioned Kaley and a picture of her appeared in the upper corner of the screen. The woman was in disbelief that Kaley had survived her ordeal. They had a different picture of Kaley now. In this one, she was held aloft by someone and was clutching a popsicle. Next to the bright orange of the popsicle you could see just how gaunt and colorless she’d grown, like the mint and the nurse’s teeth. Kaley looked terrible, really. She would’ve died. Toby could say that now. Anyone that laid eyes on her could tell she wouldn’t have lasted much longer. The station left the picture of Kaley in the corner of the screen while the anchorwoman returned her attention to the Showers compound. The shed, she said, was packed with hemlock plants. There were drugs all over the house, few of them strictly illegal. No food in the fridge. Old carpets that had never been cleaned. The anchorwoman said a lot of folks believed Neal Showers had gotten off easy, killing himself, that he should have had to face Kaley’s father and have his day in court and try his luck in prison. Toby looked down at his hands. They were pale, weakly veined. They didn’t seem capable of the things they’d done. Toby wanted to know how they’d even found Kaley. How had it all broken loose in the first place? No one was saying.