The Inner Circle

85

It takes me nineteen minutes to drop Dallas at the Archives, eleven minutes to drive his silver Toyota back to St. Elizabeths, and a full forty seconds for me to stand outside, working on my story, before I push open the front door of Nico’s building.

“I… hi… sorry… I think I left my notebook upstairs,” I say to the guard, feigning idiocy and holding up the temporary ID sticker that she gave me a little over an hour ago.

The guard with the bad Dutch-boy hair rolls her eyes.

“Just make it quick,” she says as a loud tunk opens the steel door, and I take my second trip of the day through the metal detector.

“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “I’ll be lightning.”

Trying hard to stand still, I fight my body as it follows the rhythmic sway of the rising elevator.

An hour ago, when I was standing here, I was holding Clementine’s hand. Right now, I lean hard on that thought, though it does nothing to calm me.

As the doors rumble open and I step out, the same black woman with the same big key ring is waiting for me.

“Forgot your notebook, huh?” she asks with a laugh. “Hope there’s no phone numbers in there. You don’t want Nico calling your relatives.”

I pretend to laugh along as she again opens the metal door and leads me down the hallway, back to the day room.

“Christopher, can you help him out?” the woman asks, passing me to a heavy male nurse in a freshly starched white shirt. “We got some more visitors coming up right now.”

As she leaves me behind, I take a quick scan of the fluorescent-lit day room: patients watching various TVs, nurses flipping through various clipboards, there’s even someone feeding coins into the soda machine. But as I check the Plexiglas round table in the corner…

No Nico.

“Who you here for again?” the heavy male nurse asks as he fluffs pillows and straightens one of the many saggy sofas.

“Nico,” I say, holding up my ID sticker like it’s a badge. “I was here seeing Nico, but I think I left my notebook.”

He does his own scan of the area, starting with the round table. He knows Nico’s routine.

“I bet he’s in his room-711,” he says, pointing me to the swinging doors on the far left. “Don’t worry, you can go yourself. Nico’s got room visitor privileges.”

“Yeah… no… I’ll be quick,” I say, taking off for the swinging doors and reminding myself what they first told me: This is a hospital, not a prison. But as I push the doors open and the bright day room narrows into the far smaller, far darker, far quieter hospital hallway, the sudden silence makes me all too aware of how alone I am back here.

At the end of the hall is an internal metal staircase that’s blocked off by a thick glass door so no one on this floor can access it. I still hear the soft thud of footsteps as someone descends a few floors above.

Counting room numbers, I walk past at least three patient rooms that have padlocks on the outside. One of them is locked, bolted tight. I don’t even want to know who’s in there.

By the time I reach Room 711, I’m twisting out of my winter coat to stop the sweat. Nico’s door also has a padlock and is slightly ajar. The lights are on. But from what I can tell, no one’s inside.

I look back over my shoulder. Through the cutaway in the swinging doors, the male nurse is still watching me.

“Nico…?” I call out, tapping a knuckle softly on the door.

No one answers.

“Nico, you there?” I ask, knocking again.

Still nothing.

I know this moment. It’s just like the moment in the original SCIF: a scary door, an off-limits room, and a spectacularly clear opportunity. Back then, I told Orlando we shouldn’t be that guy in the horror movie who checks out the noise coming from the woods. The thing is, right now, I need what’s in those woods.

Clenching my jaw, I give the door a slight push, and the whiff of rosewater perfume takes me back a dozen years. It’s the same smell as Clementine’s old house. As I lean forward, the nylon on my winter coat rubs the door like sandpaper. I crane my neck just enough to see-

“What the hell you doing?” an angry voice snaps behind me.

I spin around to find a tall brown-haired man-nurse… another nurse-standing there wearing plastic gloves and carrying a stack of Dixie cups in a long plastic sheath.

“You got no business being back here!” the nurse scolds, plenty pissed.

“The other nurse… the guy up front… in the white,” I stutter, pointing back the way I came. “He said Nico had visitor privileges.”

“Christopher? Christopher ain’t no nurse! He runs the juice cart! And don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing…”

“Doing? I–I’m not doing anything.”

“You say that. But then every year or so, we still get one of you showing up, hoping to get an autograph or grab some personal item-last year, some guy put a Bible that he said belonged to Nico up on eBay. I know you think it’s cool, but you’ve got no idea how hard Nico’s working. It’s not easy for him, okay? Let the man live his damn life.”

“I am. I want to. I’m… I’m just trying to get my notebook,” I tell him.

“The what?”

“My notebook. I was visiting with him earlier. Doing research. I think I left my notebook.”

The nurse cocks his head, studying me for a full two seconds. He believes me. Pointing me back to the swinging doors of the day room, he explains, “Nico’s doing his janitor work in the RMB Building. You wanna ask him something, go find him there. You’re not going in his room without his okay. Now you know where RMB is?”

“The redbrick building, right?” I say, rushing for the door, remembering where Nico feeds the cats. “I know exactly where it is.”