What She Found in the Woods

The deeper we go, the more fear I sense in Bo, and the faster we move.

Something about this isn’t right.

I reach out and grab his arm to stop him. I look up into his face, but his gaze scatters off, his eyes darting anxiously around us.

‘What?’ I ask, instinctively keeping my voice lowered. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Everything. This is all wrong,’ he whispers, shaking his head.

‘Why?’ I ask. ‘What is it?’

‘There’s more than one set of tracks, but the first set is faint,’ he whispers. ‘That can mean two things. Either your friend was following someone who knows how to cover their tracks, or she’s coincidentally going in the same direction as a really skilled hunter. But there are no game trails out here.’ He points up the incline, and even I can see that deer don’t come this way. ‘There’s no reason for a hunter – or anyone – to cover their tracks. Unless they thought they were being followed.’

I stare at him, not sure what to make of that. And from the look on Bo’s face, he doesn’t know what to make of it, either.

He scans the ground, frowning. ‘Was Mila a good tracker?’

‘She said that she grew up hunting out here, so probably?’ I reply, shrugging.

‘She could have been out here tracking someone who’s really good?’

I shrug again, and his frustration turns back into anxiety as he looks around at the tangled brush.

‘Something else is bothering you,’ I say, knowing this goes deeper than finding two sets of prints.

‘It’s this area,’ he snaps, and then immediately lowers his voice again. ‘My dad made it off limits years ago. There are dangerous people out here, Lena.’

I look into Bo’s dilated eyes.

‘Like who?’ I whisper. He doesn’t answer me. ‘Like Dr Goodnight?’ I press.

Bo’s face twists up comically as he pauses to think. ‘Dr Goodnight? Isn’t that a Stephen King novel?’

I stifle a bark of laughter, and not just because I thought the same thing once, but because I’m secretly relieved. There’s no way anyone could fake Bo’s response. He literally has no idea what I’m talking about. I’ve never been so happy to be so misunderstood.

‘No, that’s –’ I start to say, and we both finish, ‘Doctor Sleep,’ at the same time.

He smiles, bemused. ‘Who’s Dr Goodnight?’ he asks.

‘Wow,’ I say, wondering how the hell I’m going to tell him. ‘Where do I start?’ I say, cringing at my colossal foolishness.

I’m saved from having to explain for now as a few fat drops patter down through the canopy ominously. A cold wind gusts through the stifling heat.

‘Oh shit,’ Bo mumbles. He looks skyward.

Thunder rolls. And just like that, a downpour begins.

Bo looks at me, his face falling. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he says.

In moments, the ground is sopping wet, and all trace of Mila’s trail is gone.

There was no malice in what I did. There was anger and a sense that justice hadn’t been done yet, but I’m not Machiavelli, ruthlessly plotting to eviscerate my enemies. It wasn’t like that. I had just been watching for a long time. Months. I had been paying attention to the inner workings of the hospital. Boring things. Strange things. Everything.

I saw stuff that was already there. Risky behaviours that, but for dumb luck, should have cost any one of them their jobs.

Take, for instance, Dr Jacobi’s near constant miscommunication with the nurses who administered our meds. At least twice a week, Dr Jacobi would pull one of the nurses aside and grill her about why so-and-so was still on this dosage when the order had been put in hours ago for a change. Dr Jacobi couldn’t seem to understand that hospitals, like big ships, could not turn on a dime.

Nor did they want to. Not for her. It wasn’t that the nurses couldn’t understand Dr Jacobi. It was that they couldn’t stand her. Like many brilliant people, Dr Jacobi’s disdain for lesser mortals always seemed to bite her in the ass. Her impatience translated as condescension, and you should never, ever talk down to someone who can, in essence, spit in your soup.