When Max takes my plate, I realize that they both need to know what happened to me, too. I go upstairs and find jeans. My trusty briefcase is sitting on my bed, where I left it all those weeks ago. I put on a plaid shirt over my t-shirt and leave the buttons undone. I find a pair of shoes and socks, and they feel weird on my feet. After a quick look in the mirror to make sure I don't look too crazy, I take my briefcase and meet Kate downstairs. Max is in the kitchen, up to his elbows in soap, but he looks pretty content to be doing the dishes. He waves with a sudsy hand, and I follow Kate out to the car.
I'm starting to notice now that she's constantly looking at me. I think it might be because I've been gone for so long, but it's starting to make my skin crawl, being watched like this. That, and she's going to have to keep her eyes on the road. She starts the car and glances at me. Her hand rests on the gearshift, and I open my mouth to speak. It takes too long for me to find the right words, and she shifts the car into drive. Her hand is still on the gearshift, and mine gravitates toward hers. The car still hasn't moved, so I slip my hand, palm-up, beneath hers, and lace our fingers. She looks at our hands, then at me. I nod to the windshield. "Eyes on the road," I tell her, and she nods. She pulls out into the road and drives all the way to the precinct with one hand. She only looks at me once, the entire time, and that's while we're stopped at a red light.
We get to the building, and I have to go through the pat-down, but it's a guard who knows me, and I'm done in record time. We go up—Kate holds my hand in the elevator—and I'm startled by the raucous cheers when the doors open. I nod and wave nervously—have there always been this many people up here?—and I'm about to run screaming the other way when Kate takes my arm and pulls me through the crowd to an observation room, where the table holds some stuff arranged in numbered groups.
"Is this it?" I ask her once I've caught my breath. There's an extra, smaller table near the door, and there I drop my briefcase.
"This is it." She hands me a pair of gloves and the blue nitrile offers a satisfying snap on each hand. I start near the door, where an army of medicine bottles is congregated next to a plastic number 1. The labels on the bottles are hand-written, but I recognize almost all of them, and I'm horrified to think I ingested any of these. Most are recreational drugs, made into the form of pills. There's cannabis, mescaline, three different amphetamines, four different doses of caffeine—there's a reason I stay away from coffee—and a dozen more. A few are legitimate medications, like dopamine stimulators—helpful for a patient with depression, hell on me.
I set the bottles down and move on before I make myself sick wondering which ones they used. There's a pile of clothes next to the number 2 card. Some are filthy shirts and pants I wore, some are scrubs in the same teal as the orderly whose name I still can't remember. There's a fake name badge attached to one of the scrub shirts, and I know it's fake because even though it's got the orderly's face on it, the name is a random string of letters, capitalized to resemble a name. My mind tries to work out what it means, if the letters anagram to anything, but I move on before I get too absorbed.
There is an array of cassette tapes in group number 3, the kind you'd buy blank and record onto. I look up at Kate. She's standing to the side, letting me work. "Do you have a cassette player?" I ask. Kate picks up a clunky thing from the nineties and hands it to me. I put in the tape, and press play. I think maybe the tape is blank when I hear faint noises. It takes a minute before I understand it's a recording of a hospital. I can hear a cough from the next room, footsteps, the indistinct chatter of doctors and nurses. In my mind, I can see my motel-hospital room—the imagined one—and it's subtle, but this tape reminds me strongly of it. I stop the tape and look back at the scrubs, the fake name badge, the meds. The pieces fall together in my mind.
"They didn't just stop the drugs," I say aloud. Kate's immediately interested, and I don't wait for her to prompt me.
I pick up one of the bottles. "These are all recreational drugs and stimulants. In a normal person, the effects are relatively harmless: a few hallucinations, less drowsiness, lower depression. In a schizophrenic—" and I laugh, just once, because it's actually kind of ingenious "—they induce psychosis. Even a little bit of LSD or extacy or cannabis would induce one hell of an episode." I shudder to think which ones they did actually give me. "So. They drug me up. I'm totally out of it. Conscious, but completely deluded. Then—" and here I put down the bottle and pick up the scrubs "—they put on a sort of skeleton performance of hospital life. I've been in the hospital before, so I know what to expect, and as long as they don't disrupt my expectations too badly, my mind will supply the rest: the sunshine, the windows, the Cubs games." I don't mention the visitor. "They didn't just cut off the psychotics. They weaned me off." It makes sense now, those increasingly lucid periods. I'm satisfied that I've solved this puzzle, although I'm worried the drugs are still in my system.
Kate doesn't look as satisfied, judging by the creases between her eyebrows. "If they did all that," she says, "they'd have to be pretty familiar with your history." I nod, but if Reardon could run a background check and find out I was at Rexford, it wouldn't be hard for someone else to do the same. She looks like she's about to make a mental breakthrough when she shakes her head. "I'll work on it tomorrow," she says. "It's been a long day." She strips off her gloves and tosses them in the can by the door. I peel mine off—they're much tighter on my hands, and I lose a few hairs in the process—and grab my briefcase on the way out.
"But you haven't even solved the case," I protest, though I'm feeling worn out as well, and I'm starting to really worry about the anti-meds. I'm considering checking into the real hospital for a few days, just to be safe.
She stops at her desk for her briefcase and her jacket. "We know who kidnapped you, Daniel, and we're working on finding them, but there's nothing else I can do right now." She sounds tired, and I remember she's probably been working God knows how long, searching through abandoned buildings to find me—and that's not even counting the last three and a half weeks.
I grip my briefcase tightly. "Okay," I say, and I follow her to the elevator. I hold my briefcase and silently recite the rows of Pascal's triangle until we get out on the parking level. We don't talk on the way home, but she looks at me every chance she gets, and after a couple of stoplights, I take her hand again so she'll focus on the road. She parks in front of my house, but she doesn't make any move to get out of the car. "A-are you going home?" I ask. It's selfish, I know, but I don't want her to go.
"I need to sleep," she says.
"You could sleep with me." The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. My face turns red and I'm quick to correct myself. "No! I mean—stay! You could stay with me."
She hesitates and I know she's thinking about making some excuse about pajamas or sleeping arrangements.
"You can borrow pajamas, and I'll sleep on the couch."
"You don't have to—"
"I want to," I say, cutting her off. "I don't—I don't want to be alone," I add quietly. It's the weakest excuse I've made all day. Max is there; I won't be alone.
She stares at me for a moment, and I think she's going to argue some more. She doesn't. Instead, she sighs and takes the keys out of the ignition.