On Fire by Dianne Linden Page B

with us. Now, if possible.”
    Dr. Charon’s eyes popped out a little when he heard that. “He’s very ill,” he said. “He’s been committed.”
    â€œWhat does that mean?” I turned and looked at Marsh.
    â€œIt means,” Marsh said and he narrowed his eyes, “that he can’t leave here. And it would be breaking the law and also very unpopular if you tried to take him.”
    â€œSo he’s a prisoner?” I turned back toward the doctor with his unusual head. “This is a democracy. You can’t just lock someone up for no good reason.”
    He blinked in the slow way a cat does when you’ve asked it a dumb question. Then he pushed back in his chair and laced his fingers across his round stomach. “How are you related to this person again?” he asked.
    â€œHe’s my cousin.”
    â€œWell,” the doctor said. “Your cousin attacked the men who brought him in. That makes him a danger to others.”
    â€œIf it’s the helicopter pilots you’re talking about, I think they may have attacked him.”
    He went right on. “Then this same cousin assaulted a nurse while trying to fly out a third-story window shortly after he got here, making him a danger to himself, and others again. There are also signs of self-mutilation on his body. I believe that’s enough reasons to keep him here for the full thirty days the law allows.”
    When the doctor put it like that, there wasn’t a lot I could say. I was glad Marsh finally spoke up.
    â€œMatti’s just concerned about . . . ” he flicked his eyes over at me and then back to the doctor. “ . . . her cousin. I think she’d feel better if she could see him.”
    â€œYou’re her father?” the doctor asked.
    â€œA friend of the family,” Marsh said.
    The doctor scooted back up to his desk and looked through the folder of papers he had there. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said. “He was close to death when they brought him in. His blood tests showed something like wood alcohol in his system. Would he have drunk that, do you know?”
    â€œUnlikely,” Marsh said.
    â€œI don’t even know what that is,” I said. “Dan was just visiting us from . . . just visiting us. He went off to hike in the mountains and got lost.”
    â€œIn the middle of a forest fire?”
    â€œBefore that,” I said. “Anyway, there was no place to get any alcohol where he went.”
    â€œToxins can build up,” the doctor said. “The test results could have been due to lack of food and water, I suppose.” He nodded like he’d experienced that first hand.
    â€œCan we see him?” I asked again.
    â€œI’d advise against it.” The doctor closed the folder and laid his hands on top of it again. “He’s heavily medicated. If you’ve never seen him like that before, it would be upsetting. I suggest you come back in . . . ” He ran the adding machine he had inside his head “ . . . a few days. They can tell you at registration which building he’s in.”
    I couldn’t believe we’d come this far and still didn’t know if Dan was the guy they had here or not.
    John Does, the doctor said, like the fire had flushed a lot of them out of the mountains and into the world.
    I sat there, staring.
    â€œCome on, Matti,” Marsh said. “We can’t do any more here today.”

9

S HOCK T HERAPY
    F RANK CAME TO THE SCHOOL AGAIN that night, just before lights out. He squatted down on the floor in the empty space where a family had been sleeping before. There were lots of spaces like that by then. And more every day.
    He wasn’t what you’d call limber and he had a steel plate in his back from his war injury so I knew he wasn’t going to stay long in that position. He liked to be on the move, anyway. “I have to take you out of