Chapter 6
The monitor hung in the corner of exam room 1, high up near the ceiling tiles, and I hadn't noticed it until she did.
She'd pulled the rolling stool away from me after I flinched the second time, gave me space, and her eyes went to the little black rectangle on the wall. The screen was split into four grainy squares. Three of them showed empty hallway, empty waiting room, empty parking lot from different angles. One of them wasn't empty.
"Look," she said. She didn't touch me. She stood and reached for the remote on the counter and thumbed the button so the parking lot feed filled the screen. "That's our lot camera. We can see who's out there while the doors are locked."
I stayed on the exam table, my hands still fisted around my jacket. The zipper was cold against my neck where she'd almost touched it. My cheeks felt tight from crying.
The picture was blurry and washed out, the kind of pale winter light that makes everything look flat. Snow was piled along the edges of the lot. And near the front, close to the clinic entrance, there was a truck.
It was an old dark truck, the tailgate rusted, parked crooked like he'd pulled in fast. I knew the dent on the passenger side. I knew the sticker on the back window. I stared at it and my stomach dropped.
"It's his," I whispered before I meant to say anything.
She glanced at me, then back at the screen. Her voice stayed low and even, the way she'd been talking since she locked the door.
"That's the lot entrance," she said, narrating for me like I was supposed to be the one seeing it. "There's a dark truck parked at an angle near the front doors. Not in a space. Engine looks off, no one's getting out right now. Doors here are still locked, so no one can come in or out without us unlocking them."
She wasn't asking me. She was telling me what she saw, so I wouldn't have to guess.
On the screen, nothing moved. The truck just sat there in the grainy light. And suddenly the words from the hallway made sense in a different way.
There's a muffler. Call 911. Lock the doors. Don't let him leave.
It wasn't just a sound. It wasn't just a word someone yelled. The man in the coveralls — he'd seen the truck. He knew that truck. And what I had under my jacket, pressed against my ribs and making my jacket bulge in front, wasn't just something I was hiding. It was part of that truck.
I curled my hands tighter. The fleece bunched under my fists.
He'd told me not to touch anything on his truck. He'd told me I'd break it. But that morning the muffler had been hanging low, dragging almost on the ground behind his truck in our driveway, rattling and smoking. He'd kicked it and yelled and left it there when he went inside. I'd picked it up because it was hot and loose and I thought I was helping. I thought if I brought it to someone, they'd fix it. I hadn't meant to steal it. I just carried it, and when I realized how heavy it was and how mad he'd be if he saw me with it, I zipped it inside my jacket and ran.
Now the White Coat was looking between me and the monitor, and the police were coming, and if they saw what was under my jacket before I could explain, he'd say I stole it. He'd say that. Adults always believed him first.
"Do you know that truck?" she asked softly. She didn't look at my jacket. She looked at my face.
I nodded. My throat was dry. I wanted to tell her but the words stuck. If I showed her the muffler now, she'd have to give it to the police when they got here, and then he'd have proof I took something. He'd say don't let him leave was about me, not him.
"I'm not going to open your jacket without you saying it's okay," she said. Her hands were in her lap, where I could see them. The black watch on her wrist caught the fluorescent light. "But I need you to know — whatever you're holding, it can't hurt you more if we keep it hidden. The man in the coveralls locked the doors to keep you safe, not to trap you."
I looked at the truck on the monitor again. It hadn't moved. The doors were still locked. He couldn't leave yet, but he also couldn't get to me.
"I took it," I said, so quiet she had to lean in a little. "From his truck."
She didn't ask what it was. She just nodded once, slow.
"Thank you for telling me that part," she said. "You don't have to show me until you're ready. We'll wait together until the officers get here, and then you get to decide how you show them, okay? No one will say you stole something without listening to you first."
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I didn't answer. I kept my hands locked on the zipper and watched the grainy truck on the screen, and I decided to keep the jacket closed a little longer — not because I was ashamed of the bruise underneath it, but because the cold metal shape against my stomach was the only proof I had that I was telling the truth, and I needed the police to hear me before he got to talk.
The monitor flickered. The truck stayed where it was.
