The officers thanked everyone in the room, then walked to the outer door, where Rietta let them out with a key.
Susan waited for Rietta to return and let her onto the unit. She did not want to meet with Sharicka. Not ever. The idea of looking into those demonic eyes, of facing that childish smirk, made her crazy. She realized how lucky Sharicka was that the Ansons had adopted her. Her biological parents had a history of impulsive, negative behaviors. By now, they would have chopped her into pieces small enough to fit through a sieve.
Susan tried not to dwell on that thought too long. Sharicka just might be the youngest conduct-disordered child in history, but she was certainly not the only one. The Ansons were highly intelligent and educated people with a well-above-average understanding of normal and abnormal child behavior. What happened to the children with conduct disorder raised by parents who had little or no education, who probably had psychopathology of their own? Might that explain the inexplicable: parents who murdered or abandoned their children? It all seemed just too terrible to contemplate.
Yet Susan had no choice but to contemplate one thing. The Ansons had suffered a trauma so horrible, most people could not imagine such a thing. It must have happened in the wee hours of the morning. The father had promised to glue himself to her, but even he had to sleep. Likely, Sharicka had chosen the only weapon she could find. Anything obviously lethal would have been well hidden. The Ansons had worked so hard for their family, had suffered the long anguish of infertility, had been put through the wringer to adopt, had raised their three beloved children through crisis after crisis. Now, one was dead, another would need permanent psychiatric care, and the last was hospitalized with potentially life-threatening injuries. And the cause of all the recent trauma awaited Susan in the so-called Self-awareness Room.
For one horribly selfish moment, Susan wished the whole thing had happened just two hours later. Rounds would have finished, and she would have gone home for the entire day. She could have dined and skated with Remington, none the wiser, and taken up the cause on Tuesday. Despising herself for the bare thought, she abandoned it instantly. She knew the Ansons did not have that luxury. The incident had happened on Susan’s watch, had occurred because the family had faith, not in Sharicka, but in Susan’s ability to evaluate Sharicka. Now, Susan realized, she was not the hero the nurses had once heralded with balloons. She had made the worst mistake of all, and it had cost at least one child her life.
Susan wondered if she could ever sleep again, could ever trust her own judgment. Her own words cycled through her mind until she could no longer stand to hear them: “If we believe she’s trying, and I know I do, then home visits are the necessary first step toward working her back into the family.” What have I done? A picture of Lucianne Anson filled her mind’s eye, her face open in uncertainty and hope. “Dr. Calvin, I trust you.” Why? Why did she have to put her faith in me?
As she stepped onto the unit, Susan’s feet felt like lead. She heard the door clang shut behind her, so loud, so final, and the noise echoed through the subdued confines of the PIPU. Most of the nurses were in the charting area, nearly all of the patients asleep. That accounted for the quiet hush that seemed so out of place on a unit where children regularly shrieked and threw tantrums. She dragged herself to the Self-awareness Room. A nurse named Hanniah stood outside of it, looking through the window.
“What’s she doing?” Susan asked.
“Nothing.” Hanniah did not look away. “Just sitting there, picking her nose.”
Susan peeked through the window. As if sensing the new presence, Sharicka slowly raised her head. A slight smile played across her lips, and she met her resident doctor gaze for gaze. Susan felt like a hunted animal beneath that killer stare. The idea of going into the room with Sharicka seemed madness. She’s a four-year-old child, Susan reminded herself. She’s barely half my size and currently without a weapon. Susan knew, logically, Sharicka could not harm her. She took a deep breath, then loosed it slowly before announcing, “I’m going in.”
Unlike when she had decided to confront Diesel Moore, the nurse made no protest. She stepped aside and allowed Susan to open the door.
Susan tried to look nonchalant as she did so, strode into the padded room, and allowed the door to close and latch behind her. Seated on the floor, Sharicka glanced up at the doctor, looking for all the world like an innocent four-year-old child. “Hi, Dr. Susan.”
It seemed ludicrous to simply return the greeting, but Susan could think of nothing better to do. “Hi.”
Sharicka wiped her fingers on the clean clothes she had changed into on the ward. She wore a pair of black sweatpants and a Craft-a-Critter T-shirt. “How’s Rylan doing?” She posed the question with the casualness of a sister asking after the health of a brother with the flu. The query seemed strangely genuine.
Susan found it difficult to look at the girl. “I don’t know.”
“How’s Misty?”
“She’s dead, Sharicka. You know that.”
“Can I see her?”
Susan looked away. Was it actually possible Sharicka did not understand the finality of death? “Never again. She’s dead.”
“Can I see her in her coffin?”
The question seemed so odd, so unutterably antisocial and wrong. Susan looked sharply at Sharicka.
The girl’s expression did not compute. Susan read curiosity and a faint hint of pleasure.
“You can’t see her, Sharicka. Not ever. You killed her.”
“I’m a murderer.” Sharicka rolled the word in her mouth, as if testing it.
Susan did not indulge the recognition. She did not want Sharicka to identify herself with evil, to view the act as an accomplishment. “Why, Sharicka? Why did you do it?”
Sharicka could no longer hold back the smile. It slipped past her guard to light her entire face. The dark eyes went cold, and even the sockets seemed to shift right before Susan’s eyes. “We all have to die sometime.”
Susan could not stand to look at Sharicka for another second. Rising silently, she left the room and told the waiting nurse, “She can go to her room now.” She wanted to put the child into a straitjacket right out of an early-twentieth-century movie. The death penalty had existed for people like Sharicka, the homicidally incurable, those most despicable and desperate. Desperate. The word clung to Susan’s memory. Activating her Vox, she zipped off a bitter text to Doctors Goldman and Peters: “Found stdy pt.”
Susan managed a quick shower and change before rounds, discovering two messages on her Vox when she finished. The first came from Ari Goldman, requesting the details of the study patient. She typed in some basic information about Sharicka in reply, then moved on to the second. This one came from Remington: “B L8. E! Boy stb/ chke by 4yo? Dad?”
Susan groaned. The E! meant an emergency. If Rylan Anson needed the on-call neurosurgeon, he had sustained serious spinal or head wounds. Susan would need to explain Sharicka and clear poor Dr. Anson. The last thing he needed was to fall under a cloud of suspicion while he rushed to save the last of his children.
Susan went to the staffing room, hoping to find at least one of the other psychiatry residents. To her relief, Kendall sat in a chair, leaning so far back, its headrest was braced against the table. She walked over to him, and he sat up quickly. “Good morning, Calvin. How was your night?”
Susan shook her head. “Quiet until about two hours ago when I had to deal with the police.”
“I heard.” Kendall leaned forward. When the nursing shift started, it was the sole topic of conversation. “So, Sharicka murdered her siblings on a home visit.”