LITMIR.BIZ

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“Right now! Look... at... me.”

      He doesn’t. His eyes are glued to the cemetery. Allie has slowed the car down to nearly a crawl and I fear she’s about to pull over. Part of me thinks that’s a smart move in case Danny does try to jump out, but another part of me realizes that we need to get as far away from the cemetery as we can, as soon as we can.

      Behind us, Devo turns on his lights.

      “Danny, look at me!” I say again, more sternly this time. I squeeze his hand hard to try to break his concentration on the cemetery. This works. He turns and looks at me, his eyes wide with fear. Beads of sweat have broken out on his forehead, and his color is so pale he looks like a ghost himself.

      “Allie, drive.” I say. “Get us past this cemetery.”

      She does what I tell her, hitting the gas and making the car lurch forward. To an outsider watching all of this, it would look like Devo is trying to do a traffic stop, and we, the culprits, have just decided to run. Fortunately, Devo doesn’t make any other maneuvers to stop us, though he does keep his lights on. At least he isn’t using the siren. Not only might it attract unwanted attention, I have a feeling the sound of it would escalate Danny’s panic.

      “It’s okay, Danny,” I say in my best soothing voice. “You’re completely safe here. Roscoe is with you and he’ll protect you.”

      Danny stares at me but I don’t think he sees me. All he sees are the frightening images playing out in his head. But at least the hand that was on the door moves away from the handle.

      “You’re safe and you’re okay,” I repeat. “We’ll be at the hospital in another minute or two and then we can get you checked out, look at your meds and make sure everything is the way it needs to be, okay?”

      Danny doesn’t answer, but his breathing slows and a hand settles on Roscoe’s head and begins stroking the soft fur there.

      I glance off to the side and see that Allie is turning into the parking lot of the hospital. She pulls up to the entrance to the ER and shifts the car into park.

      “We’re here,” I tell Danny. He seems calm, so I undo the latch on my seatbelt and turn around to face front. I’m out of the car in seconds and opening the back door beside Danny. Devo has pulled up behind us and he’s already out of his car standing next to me. I take Danny’s hand and give Roscoe a sideways head nod. Roscoe backs off Danny’s lap, rising to a sitting position beside him. I tug gently at Danny’s hand and he climbs out of the car.

      “What happened back there?” Devo asks.

      “Just a moment of panic. We got through it fine. Can you put Roscoe back in your car?”

      Devo hesitates, frowning. I’m not sure if he’s put out by the fact that I’m giving him directions and not filling him in on exactly what happened, or if he’s worried about not accompanying me when I take Danny inside.

      “Everything is under control,” I tell Devo. I look up at Danny, who is standing beside the car’s back door, staring off into space, chewing on the side of his thumbnail. “Ready to get things straightened out, Danny?” I say.

      He nods, still chewing, his eyes scanning the surrounding area.

      Devo hesitates a few seconds longer, his scowl deepening, but then he sighs and turns to the inside of Allie’s car. “Come on, Roscoe,” he says, and my dog obediently hops out of the back seat and follows Devo to his car.

      I breathe a sigh of relief, whisper “good dog,” under my breath, and then Allie and I steer Danny inside to the registration area of the ER.

      * * *

      An hour later, Danny is lying on a stretcher in a glass-walled room, sound asleep. The curtains to the room are open so the ER staff and anyone else in the area can see him clearly. He’s been given a shot of medication to relax him and it’s working like a charm. Allie and I are seated in the hallway outside his room and the doctor on duty, Susan Finnegan, is listening to a brief history of Danny’s mental health issues provided by both me and Allie. She is new to the doctor’s group on staff here and doesn’t know Danny the way some of the other doctors and the nurses do. The way I do.

      “Typically, when he starts hallucinating and behaving like he did tonight it’s because he’s off his meds,” I explain. “Though his reaction tonight is a little different from his usual. Danny typically has auditory hallucinations, the classic schizophrenic voices in his head. To my knowledge he’s never had a visual hallucination before, so that’s new. Right Allie?”

      She nods, looking worried, and chewing on the side of her thumb the same way her brother had earlier.

      “Allie has assured me that she’s been checking his pill dispenser every day to make sure the meds are being taken,” I go on. “And ever since they changed Danny’s meds a few months ago, he’s been good about taking them. He tended to stop them before because they made him feel so dead and leaden, but he says the new ones don’t do that.”

      “Just because the pills are no longer in the slots in the pill dispenser doesn’t mean he’s actually taking them,” Dr. Finnegan says. “He might be removing them from the dispenser and flushing them down the toilet. Do you watch him swallow the pills?” she asks Allie.

      Allie is staring off into space, her mind clearly elsewhere, and she doesn’t answer. Dr. Finnegan looks at me over Allie’s head and arches her brows.

      “Allie,” I say, nudging her with my arm. “Dr. Finnegan asked you if you watch Danny actually swallow the pills each day.”

      Allie blinks several times rapidly and stares at first me, then the doctor. “Sorry,” she says. “And no, I don’t watch him swallow them. I leave for work earlier than him so I’m not there to supervise him. Besides, he doesn’t like it when I treat him like a child. I do ask him every day and he’s said he has. He’s not a very good liar and I can usually tell when he’s trying to put one over on me.”

      “Maybe he isn’t lying,” Dr. Finnegan suggests. “Maybe he thinks he has taken the pills. If he’s imagining ghosts and people getting murdered, it’s not much of a leap to think that he might be imagining that he takes his pills.”

      Allie frowns and looks like she’s about to say something, but then she bites it back. Her eyes go to the floor.

      Dr. Finnegan watches her with a concerned expression. “Do we need to look at placement somewhere for Danny?” she asks softly. “Even if it’s only temporary. Perhaps it’s not wise for him to be at your house right now.”

      Allie bristles. “No, I want him home with me. Joel is there to help now and I’ll be extra vigilant about his medications and make sure—” Music fills the air, and Allie pulls her cell phone out of her purse. I realize it’s a ring tone and recognize the tune as Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust.” Allie says, “Sorry, I have to take this call. It’s the funeral home and I’m on call tonight.”

      She hops up and hurries off down an adjacent hallway, her phone to her ear. Dr. Finnegan and I look at one another for a second, and then we both burst out laughing. Once we have ourselves under control again, she says, “Let me know what she finally decides to do. We can let him sleep here for now and reassess in a little while if she needs to leave for a call.”

      I thank her and wait for Allie’s return. Standing at one end of the desk, I shove my hands into the pockets of my bomber-style jacket—a special police-issue item that Chief Hanson gifted me with on my first day—and feel something round and fuzzy. Puzzled, I pull it out and see that it’s a kiwi. I must have grabbed one from the bowl on the table at Allie’s house, though I have no memory of doing so.

      This isn’t the first time this has happened to me. Throughout my adult years I’ve discovered odd pocketed food items from time to time with no memory of how they got in there. My shrinks have said it’s a manifestation of my obsessive-compulsive disorder brought about by the lack of control I felt over my own life while growing up. That’s because

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