The Secret Room

by Sandra Block

  “None whatsoever.” I scratch my head, my greasy hair. I need a shower, though the idea of the pain involved terrifies me. “In fact, I thought she liked me.”

  “Maybe too much,” the warden says. “She’s had a few female affairs in the prison. We’re looking into that, too.” His typical strident demeanor is more cowed today. As if ignoring Detective Adams has finally caught up with him. As if someone else is worried about losing his job now.

  “It doesn’t make sense, though,” I say. “Out of nowhere, Aubrey attacks me?” I take a sip of my coldish water from a straw. “She knows about my pregnancy, obviously. So she must be involved in the texting. Which means she must be involved in the prison deaths. But why?” I stop talking because my stomach is pounding in time with my hip, and I’m running out of breath.

  “Or the attack may have been motivated by something else entirely. Money. Street cred. Another inmate,” the warden lists off.

  “Sofia,” Adams says.

  The name makes me sit up, wincing. “She saved me. She had nothing to do with this.”

  “Hard to know, Zoe.” Adams puts his big paw of a hand on my shoulder. “Setting you up to save you? If she wanted to earn your trust, that would be a damn good way to do it.”

  “The oldest one in the book,” the warden says.

  I shake my head. “Not possible.”

  They exchange a look, and I yawn, in an unsubtle attempt to remind them that I’m the patient, and it’s time to leave. “Well…” The detective looks at his watch. “I guess we better be—”

  “Anyone here to help you?” Warden Gardner looks around because it sure as hell isn’t going to be him.

  “My boyfriend, Mike. He had to cover for a few hours, but he’ll be back.”

  “Good,” he says, and the detective pats my shoulder again.

  Now I yawn for real. The pain medication is hitting. The doctors gave me the lightest pain pill possible with the baby in mind, but my body’s been without medication for four months now, and it wallops me.

  “Before we go,” the warden leans down toward me and whispers, “I just wanted to apologize. I didn’t realize your…condition, and we’re going to get to the bottom of those texts, you can be sure.”

  I manage a nod.

  “If you think of anything, you call, okay?” Adams adds.

  I nod again.

  And I do think of something before I drift off. Barely. The smudged, blue, flowery word. On her arm. “The professor,” I mumble, before my eyes close.

  “The professor?” I hear Adams repeat, and then I fall asleep.

  * * *

  I awake to a most unwelcome face. “Newsboy,” I say, my tongue dry and furry.

  Logan laughs. “Never been called that one before.”

  “Why did they let you in?” I ask, abandoning all politeness.

  He shrugs, pulling out his press badge. “Membership has its perks.” Then he holds out a box, abashed. “I come bearing chocolate, at least.” He places the box on the table and pulls up a chair to sit down beside the bed. “How are you doing?”

  “On the record?” I query.

  “Off the record. I just want to know. As a human, Zoe.” He tugs at his tie, and it strikes me that I’ve never seen him in a tie before.

  “As a human, I’ve been better.” I think back to my last hospital stay, when I almost died after Sofia slashed my neck. “On the other hand, I’ve been worse.”

  Nodding, he gazes around the bare room. A few bouquets, an IV pole, a TV, a clock. Your basic non-ICU setup. He sighs. “I hate to bother you right now, but you gotta admit, it’s a great story.”

  “I could see that, Logan. But you also gotta admit, this isn’t the best time to talk.”

  He nods, readily. “Of course. Maybe just a little off-the-record chat, then?”

  I rub my eyes, my hip pulsing again. “I suppose. Five minutes, max.”

  “It’s a deal. Five minutes.” He takes out his notebook. “Let’s start with this. Any idea why she did it?”

  “Who?” I ask, unwilling to give him any more than he knows.

  “Aubrey Kane.”

  So he does know. “No idea.”

  “No motive yet.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Does the detective think they’re close to an answer?” Logan asks.

  “You’d have to ask the detective.”

  He bites his lip with a determined nod, which tells me he hasn’t gotten very far in talking to the detective. “Could she have been working for someone? Like some agent that wanted to do you harm?”

  I notice a sky-blue thread poking out from under his sweater again. When I look closer, though, it looks as if the thread is braided. “Anything’s possible,” I say, sorry I made this deal already. I’m grumpy and hungry, and my stomach wound is flaring with pain.

  “Like a professor, maybe?”

  My breath catches, and I stare at him a moment. “What did you say?”

  “A professor.” He looks at me with a wicked glint in his forest-green eyes. “Did you like her new tattoo? I certainly did.”

  I am speechless.

  Logan stands up now, towering over me in the bed. “I told you I volunteer there, right? That’s what I do. I teach them creative writing. To expand themselves.” He draws out the word with sarcasm. “I teach, out of the goodness of my heart, but I also have other motives. Less altruistic motives, shall we say.” His smile is vicious. “The prison girls like me, you know. Especially Aubrey. She’s one of my very best students.”

  My mind is spinning. Logan is the professor. And I realize suddenly what that thread is on his wrist.

  A friendship bracelet.

  I reach over for the nurse’s button.

  “Looking for something?” he asks, then reveals the call button in his palm. “How about I’ll get the nurse for you, if you need anything?” Then he puts his hand on my stomach, putting pressure on the wound. My breath sucks in.

  “You make one sound, and I will kill you and that fucking baby. Got it?”

  I nod, not saying a word.

  He stands over me then, gloating, obviously relishing this moment. “Did you get all of your texts, then?” I don’t answer, and he laughs, darkly. His boyish grin has vanished. “You’re not very good at riddles. Too bad Detective Adams couldn’t track down the phone for you. Save the day.”

  I swallow. “I’m sorry. For whatever I did, Logan.”

  “Shhh…” He pushes down harder on my wound, and I can feel my eyes fill up. “Remember our deal?”

  I nod again.

  He releases his hand just a bit, and I gasp at the swell of pain. “I’m so sorry. Does that hurt, Zoe? I’m sure it does. But that’s nothing compared to what you did to me.”

  I try to question him with my eyes, afraid to speak.

  “You remember I told you that I had a brother in prison once?”

  I am thinking back. Vaguely, I remember that conversation.

  “Dennis was his name. Dennis Johnson. Remember him?”

  The name pummels me. Dennis Johnson. My first, unalterable mistake. The eighteen-year-old I declared competent to stand trial, who scored the lowest rating on the suicide risk assessment scale. And since it was the first week of the fellowship, I tried to reach Dr. Novaire. I called him three times, had him paged overhead. He finally got back to me, distracted, and said that sounded fine, and I could sign the paperwork.

  But five hours later, Dennis was found hanging in his cell.

  Dennis Johnson. Logan Johnson’s brother. So the chickens have come home to roost.

  “I can see by that loathsome look on your face that you do.”

  “Logan,” I say, reaching out for his arm, “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t you fucking touch me,” he hisses, flinging me away. “You disgust me. Get that? Disgust me. Everything about you. Especially that monster inside you.” As he leans over me, I see spittle on his bottom lip. “You think you’ll have a nice little baby with
a sister like Sofia? I meant what I said, you sick fucking bitch. That baby is tainted.” His face looms over mine, his face red with hatred, his eyes vitriolic. Like one of Andre’s devils. “I tried to get done with this at your house, but your big hero of a boyfriend was there.”

  “Logan—”

  “And if Aubrey hadn’t been such a pussy, I wouldn’t have to waste one more second with you.” He lifts his hand from the wound then and whips his tie off his neck in one slick motion. “But you did give me five minutes. And I’m afraid I’ll have to spare another thirty seconds or so.”

  Now the tie is looped around my neck and pulled tight. My throat goes into immediate spasm as I pull at the tie, trying to fit a finger under it. The room tilts. Seconds pass, minutes maybe. I don’t know how long. Time has slowed, and I’m trying to suck in air, and the room is dimming, a gray shade lowering. Darker, darker. I reach out but can’t get to Logan. No air. Lungs burning. I feel myself falling into a cold place. An ocean. Frigid water surrounds me as the sunlight above me turns watery, then disappears. My mother’s face coalesces in front of me then, smiling. My young mom, before her dementia, is there. Stroking my hair.

  “Zoe,” she says, whispering in my ear. I can barely hear her. She says something, and I am straining to hear, my vision turning a dark, bloody red. The ocean is red, too, now, and I am sinking. The water has turned warm. Finally I can see her lips, my mother’s beautiful lips, forming the words.

  Kick him.

  Her words give me the strength I need for one last chance. I know that’s all I have. One chance. And with the last muscle fibers burning out, the final second of my life fading, my mom gives me just an aliquot of energy. Just enough to kick my leg out. One time. One shot.

  And I connect.

  * * *

  “Jesus!” Logan bellows, bending over with hands on his groin.

  I rip the tie off my neck, taking in a lung-bursting breath as the black-red ocean opens above me. Colors surge back into the room, and my mother’s kindly face fades into pinpricks. Yanking the IV out of my hand, I jump off the bed, fighting through the searing pain. Logan lunges at me again, and I stumble backward to avoid him. Jumping at me again, he grabs my shirt by the neck and slams me against the wall.

  I hear my skull crack, and pain washes through my head. My vision divides into two. He is grabbing me by my shoulders, and his knee comes up to my abdomen. Bile rises in my throat as I fall to my knees, a grinding pain in my gut. I am backing away from him, crawling awkwardly like a crab, when the door whips open, and we both look over to see a person standing there with a cup of coffee in each hand.

  The coffee hits the tile, splashing in a thousand directions as Mike leaps onto Logan. Mike doesn’t size him up or take a stance, he just pounces. Punches are landing, thudding, over and over, his arm arching again and again. Ugly thumps, the sound of bone cracking, his arms a blur, pounding. Logan slumps over. His face is grotesque, eyes swollen up, his nose pushed over an inch to the side.

  “Mike!” I am yelling. “Stop!” But he doesn’t hear me, can’t hear me. Muffled punches to his abdomen. Grunts. Logan has stopped moving. Mike’s arm lifts up again. “Mike!” I scream out as loudly as I can with my sore, hoarse voice. “Please! You’re going to kill him.”

  And he turns to me in a daze, his arm still lifted, then drops it suddenly, breathing heavily in the silence. Mike looks at his hands, his knuckles already pink and swollen, with bits of skin torn off. “Are you okay?” His voice is ragged.

  I nod, though my knees are wobbly, and I can barely hold myself up against the wall. I touch my neck, which is tender and bruised. As he comes over and grabs me in a hug, I can smell the sweat on him. I realize he is crying, and I hug him back, my arms so tired I can barely lift them. My abdomen aches where Logan kneed me, and I’m just praying that the lemon is okay. Mike wipes his eyes with a shaky hand, streaking blood onto his cheek.

  Detective Adams bursts into the room then with a bulky policeman by his side. “I was coming to warn you.” He stops short, though, taking in the scene—the angry purple ring around my neck, Mike’s scraped-up fists, the spilled coffee, and Logan’s beaten, motionless body. “About the reporter…” His voice trails off.

  Dizzy and sick, I slump back onto the bed. “I think you might be a little late.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Three weeks later I’m sitting on the couch again.

  “I wish you had told me,” Sam says.

  “I’m sorry.” I look down at the oatmeal-colored carpet in shame. “I just couldn’t.” I move against the couch, frowning at the pain. “I wasn’t even sure I was going to keep it.”

  Sam smiles as he gazes out the window at the gray February day. “It does explain a lot, though.”

  “You mean why my medicine wasn’t working very well?”

  “Exactly,” he says, laughing now.

  I laugh, too, tugging my Steri-Strips. Mike took my stitches out last week. They had shoved me out of the hospital after only one day of observation. (It turns out that patients are expensive.) I feel like a doll that’s been ripped apart, then sewn back together wrong.

  “So have they figured it all out, then,” he asks, “the texts and everything?”

  “Logan Johnson. He had poor Aubrey wrapped around his finger. She was feeding him information on all my patients.”

  He squints in thought. “How did she know who your patients were in the first place?”

  “She got into my computer.”

  “She knew your password?”

  “Rule of thumb,” I say, tipping the liquid toy. “Don’t use your pet’s name as a password. Especially if said pet adorns your mug.”

  “Ah.” Sam scratches his incipient beard. “Lesson learned.”

  “Logan got other prisoners to manipulate my patients. And they were all vulnerable to begin with. Doesn’t take much to push them over the edge.”

  “To convince a depressed patient to take a bottle full of pills,” he says.

  “Exactly.” I find my foot tapping and stop it, as it’s stretching my hip wound. “They’re reinvestigating the prisoner who jumped, too. Janaya Jones. Looks like she might have had some help on the way down.”

  He grimaces. “That’s too bad.”

  “Yeah.” I glance at my watch, making sure I won’t be late for my meeting with the detective, and find I have plenty of time. “And the most amazing part of it all is that Sofia had absolutely nothing to do with it.”

  He uncaps his fake Montblanc. “What are you going to do about her?”

  “I don’t know.” A hawk swoops onto a branch outside, then flies away just as quickly. “I don’t see us becoming best friends. But I think she’s earned some type of relationship, at least.”

  Sam doesn’t agree or disagree. “Be careful.”

  “My middle name, right?”

  Sam doesn’t bother to answer that one. “Okay.” He places the pen down on his glossy desk with some finality. “No meds?”

  “No meds.”

  “Fine for the moment. We may want to reexamine that later in the pregnancy.”

  “Uh-huh,” I say, which is code for no way.

  “You’re off for one month, then I’m putting you on part-time.”

  “Wait. I don’t think I need a whole month to—”

  “Not up for debate.” He uncaps and recaps his pen again with an annoying clicking sound. “Meanwhile, get some rest. I know doing nothing isn’t exactly your style.”

  This makes me laugh out loud.

  “But you need it.” His voice is serious now. “Take some time to heal, Zoe. For you, and the baby.”

  * * *

  Andre is sitting up, tearing through his third chocolate pudding.

  “Easy there, champ,” Detective Adams says. “You don’t want to make yourself sick.”

  Andre shrugs. “I’m hungry, man. And the nurse said I could have whatever I want.”

  The nurses have all taken a shine to the smiling, soft-
spoken young man who, like Lazarus, rose up from the dead and nicely asked for pudding.

  “You’re looking so great,” I say. I still can’t believe my eyes. Not only is he not hooked up to any machines, it’s as if he’s a completely different person. No longer paranoid and deranged, swatting at hallucinations. Now he’s lucid, but even more, smart and funny. A solid addition to my win column.

  Andre taps his spoon on his plate in a rhythm. “I know I was saying some crazy stuff.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say. “You were in a crazy situation.”

  “That’s true.” He has a faraway look.

  “Anyway.” I whip the big reveal out of my bag.

  His eyes light up. “Really?”

  “Really,” I say, handing him the latest Avengers comics.

  He shoves his empty plate to the side and digs right in, his eyes as voracious as his stomach. “Thanks,” he says, looking up just for a second so as not to lose his place.

  “Enjoy,” I say. We sit for a moment as Andre enters another world. The detective watches him with an almost paternal pride. “So,” I say, “how is Newsboy doing?”

  Detective Adams shrugs. “He’s fine. Broken nose, couple of ribs, nothing that won’t heal in time for his trial.”

  “And he’s on the Medical floor?”

  “For now,” he says. “Handcuffed to the bed with a guard babysitting him. He’s not going anywhere.”

  I nod, relieved at the news. “They managed to save Timothy Gordon,” I say. The man looked happier than ever when I visited him. It’s such a relief, he said, to finally get that thing off. That thing being his arm.

  “But not Aubrey,” the detective says.

  “No,” I say with a sigh. “Not Aubrey.” Who died, literally, of a broken heart. Or a shank to the heart anyway. “I was wondering about something,” I add.

  “Yeah?” He takes out a piece of mint gum and offers me one.

  And I take a piece and unwrap it. “How did he know I was pregnant?”