It was four in the morning when the cruisers pulled up to the security portico of the Riverview Behavioral Annex in Huntington.
The building was a three-story brick barracks built during the New Deal, its window sashes painted a dull institucional beige behind heavy steel wire mesh. The administrative night supervisor, a weary woman with gray hair pinned into a tight bun, stood behind the bullet-resistant admissions glass holding a green cardboard file folder. Beside her stood the hospital’s resident physician and the state magistrate Briggs had summoned from the district court.
"The patient was admitted forty-eight hours ago under transport by Mercer County Sheriff’s transport," the doctor said, looking over his half-moon reading glasses at the paperwork Briggs laid flat against the counter. "The committal slip was countersigned by Chief Garrett acting under emergency municipal welfare authority. The intake notes stated the subject was found wandering the rail line near the river crossing, non-verbal, suffering from acute environmental delirium and combativeness."
"He wasn't wandering a rail line," I said, leaning both hands against the counter ledge. "He was pulled out of the intake ditch after trying to stop a midnight purge from an unpermitted holding tank. He had inhaled enough solvent vapor to strip his bronchial lining. Did you run a toxicological blood screen?"
The doctor looked down at the floor, his jaw shifting. "The county order requested immediate sedation and a fourteen-day isolation evaluation. We followed standard municipal intake procedure."
"Show me where he is," I said.
The locked ward on the third floor smelled of industrial floor stripper, boiled laundry, and stale oatmeal. There were twelve doors along the western corridor, each fitted with a five-inch square observation port covered in heavy acrylic.
The orderly unlocked Room 314 with a long brass key that grated in the old cylinder.
The room had no furniture except a low steel bed bolted to the concrete floor, a single wool blanket, and a plastic mattress. David was lying on his side, his face turned toward the bare plaster wall. He was wearing gray canvas scrubs that were two sizes too large for him, the sleeves rolled back to keep his wrists clear. His hair, dark and coarse like mine, was matted against his skull with dried sweat. Across his left forearm, from the crook of his elbow down to the knuckles of his hand, ran a wide, dark chemical burn—the mottled yellow-brown skin left behind when industrial degreaser splashes onto cotton and soaks through to the flesh.
I knelt beside the bed. The linoleum was cold beneath my knees.
"David," I said.
He didn't jump. He didn't turn with the sudden panic of someone waking from a nightmare. He moved slowly, his neck stiff, his eyelids fluttering against the dim, yellow glare of the hallway bulb until his brown eyes found my face.
He stared at me for five seconds without blinking. His lips were chapped, cracked at the corners, and when he tried to draw breath, his chest rattled with the wet, shallow friction of lungs that had fought against chlorinated gas in an enclosed pit.
"Claire," he whispered. His voice was barely a scratch, a sound like dry leaves sliding across a driveway. "They took the meter."
"I have the meter," I said, reaching out and laying my palm against the cool skin of his forehead. "I have the casing, I have the logs, and I have the bypass codes. It’s over, David. The truck is sitting in Bay Four under state seal."
A single tear cut through the dried grit on his temple, leaving a clean, pale line down into the gray fabric of his collar. He didn't ask about Garrett. He didn't ask how I had found him, or what had happened to his shift truck, or how many hours had passed since he had walked down the steel stairs to the river valves. He simply reached out with his right hand—the hand that hadn't been burned—and closed his fingers around my wrist, holding on with the desperate, white-knuckled grip of an exhausted diver who had finally touched the bottom rung of the ladder.
"The south intake was open," he croaked, his breathing hitching against the pain in his ribs. "The South intake... thirty thousand people, Claire. They were running the pumps while the tanks were blowing."
"I know," I told him, leaning forward until my forehead rested against his shoulder. "The line is closed. The reservoir is on the mountain main. Nobody is drinking from the weir tonight."
We stayed like that for ten minutes while the orderly stood silently in the hallway with the clipboard clutched to his chest. When the state emergency medical crew arrived with the gurney to transport David to the regional medical center in Charleston for pulmonary treatment, I walked beside the wheels, my hand never leaving the rough wool of his blanket until the rear doors of the ambulance swung shut.