Chapter 2
The hallway didn't get quiet after he said it.
The man in the light gray coveralls said it again, louder this time, and his voice cracked on the middle word. "There's a muffler. Call 911. Lock the doors. Don't let him leave." He wasn't looking at me anymore. He was looking past me, down the hall toward the front.
The woman in the white coat didn't move her hand at first. Her fingers were still close to my zipper, close enough I could see the black band of her watch against her wrist and the pale blue of her shirt cuff underneath her sleeve. Then she pulled her hand back a few inches, just enough that I could breathe.
"Okay," she said. She said it to him, not to me. "Okay, we heard you."
Her voice was even, but I could hear her breathing. She turned her head just enough to call over her shoulder without taking her eyes off me. "Marisol, please lock the front. Now. And call 911."
From the front desk, a woman's voice came back, tight and quick. "Locking."
I heard it. The click of the lock at the front doors. Then the second click, the deadbolt they only used when the weather was bad. The sound carried all the way down the pale hallway with its white floor and dark base trim. The fluorescent lights buzzed the same as before, but the air felt different. Closed in.
The man in coveralls had his hands out in front of him, palms down, like he was trying to keep something from moving. His brown boots were planted wide on the white floor. He wasn't coming any closer to me.
"She needs on the phone," he said to the woman in the white coat. "Tell them what I saw. In the shop. He brought the truck in and—"
"We will," she said. She cut him off, gentle but firm. "Sir, I need you to stay right there for me, okay? At the desk. So we keep this clear."
Marisol was already on the phone. I could hear the dial tone then the ringing, then a voice on speaker. "911, what is your emergency?"
Marisol answered, fast. "This is Pine Street Clinic. We have a man here reporting— sir, what did you say it was?"
"A muffler," the man in coveralls said. He was talking to the phone now, leaning a little toward the front. "Off a truck. In my bay. There's— there's stuff inside it. He told the kid not to open his jacket."
The woman in the white coat crouched then. Not all the way down, just enough so her eyes were level with mine. She didn't reach again.
"Hey," she said to me. Her voice got quieter. "I'm not going to open it here. Not in the hallway. That's not okay to do here, you know that, right?"
I didn't answer. My hands were fisted around the zipper of my dark gray hooded jacket. The hood was still up around my head and I could feel sweat at the back of my neck even though the hallway was cool. I held tighter.
She saw it. She nodded once, small.
"So how about we go in the room, just you and me? Exam room one. Door closed. No one watching. You can keep it zipped until you decide. I won't touch it unless you say it's okay. Can we do that?"
Behind her, Marisol was still talking to the dispatcher. "Yes, we're locked. No, he's still here. No, the child is with our provider."
The dispatcher was a woman, calm and flat over the speaker. "Is the child injured? Can the child speak to me?"
The woman in the white coat looked at me and waited. She didn't grab. She just held her hand out, palm up, a few inches away and low, not near the zipper. An offer, not a pull.
I took a step back. My shoulders hit the pale bluish-gray wall. The wall was hard and cool through my jacket. I slid a little along it until I was against the corner where the wall met the doorframe of exam room one. I brought both fists up to the middle of the zipper and locked them there, one over the other. Double-fisted, so no one could get a finger underneath without going through my hands first.
"No," I said. My voice was small and it shook. "Not here."
"Not here," she repeated back, right away. "I hear you. Not here in the hall. In the room."
She stood slowly and opened the door to exam room one with her other hand. The room was small, same pale walls, same white floor, a paper-covered table and a chair. She stepped back and left the doorway open for me.
"Just us," she said. "You walk in first."
I didn't take her hand. I kept my fists on my jacket and shuffled along the wall and into the room, my boots squeaking a little on the floor. She followed me in but left the door open a crack at first and spoke toward the hall.
"Sir, please wait with Marisol," she said to the man in coveralls. "Officers will want to talk to you up front."
He nodded, his hands still out. "Don't let him leave," he said again, but quieter now.
She closed the exam room door most of the way, not locked, just closed, and pressed the speaker button on the wall phone so the dispatcher stayed with us inside. The hallway got muffled. The lock at the front stayed clicked shut.
Inside, it was just her white coat and my gray hood up and the sound of both of us breathing.
"You did good holding that closed," she said quietly, crouching again near the chair, giving me the table side to stand against. "You keep holding it. Nobody opens it here without you saying so. Okay?"
May you like
I nodded. My fists didn't move.
Outside the door, the 911 voice kept asking questions, and Marisol's voice answered from the front, and the man in coveralls' brown boots didn't move away from the desk.
