Free The Girl Without a Name by Sandra Block Page A

idea how you got it?”
    Jane touches the scar but doesn’t look at it. I wait a long while for her answer.
    “I don’t know.” She screws her face up in thought, then finally she says, “I’m hungry.”
    “Hungry, right. We’ll take care of that in a jiffy.” I scoot into the hallway and get right on the phone to Detective Adams. “Guess who’s talking, talking, talking?”
    “One second.” The detective yells something muffled away from the phone. “I’m guessing it’s Jane.” The detective’s voice sounds far away among the buzz of activity in the background.
    “Yes indeed. You win a prize.”
    “Must be my lucky day.” His voice gets louder as the phone shifts toward his mouth. “Do we have a name yet?”
    “Not yet, unfortunately,” I answer. “She doesn’t know anything really. She doesn’t even know how she got here. The last thing she remembers is chasing a limousine.”
    “Chasing a limousine?”
    “That’s what she said.”
    “Hmm. That’s odd.”
    “Oh, and she thought she was in New York City.”
    The phone moves onto his shoulder again. “Okay, I’ll get out there soon.” Someone calls out his name. “Listen, Zoe, I have to get going. Thanks for keeping me in the loop.”
    “Sure, no problem.”
    There’s a pause on his end. “Here’s the thing. I know you care about this girl. We all do, really. But I’m working on a lot of cases right now…” He trails off.
    “Okay?”
    “Yeah, so feel free to call me with any big changes or updates. Like today, for instance. But”—he pauses—“you don’t need to call me every day or text me reminders or anything.”
    I feel my face flush. I guess I did text him last week, three or four times. Or six times maybe. I lost count. It was after my Adderall bump.
    “I promise,” he says, “we’re on it. And I’ll call you if we find anything.”
    “Oh, sure. Sorry about that.” In other words: Don’t call me, I’ll call you.
    “I mean, you don’t want me to try to be a doctor, right?” He laughs, to lighten the mood.
    I force out a laugh, too.
    “I’ll call you soon. Okay?”
    We hang up, and on the way back to the nurses’ station, I corner Nancy to arrange for an extra lunch, then swing into the nurses’ station. “Guess who’s talking, talking, talking?” I ask the room, though only Jason is there. He looks up from his computer. “Did you hear me? Talking!” I reach over for a high five, and he offers only a fist bump in return. “Come on, where’s the excitement?”
    Jason turns back to his e-mail. “You’re kind of amped up these days.”
    “Not really,” I answer, trying not to sound defensive. But I have to admit that this seems to be the general consensus. So far, Mike has told me I’m a “little up,” Eddie told me I seemed “zippy,” and Scotty—less diplomatically—told me to “calm the fuck down.” The slap of Dr. Berringer’s walk announces him in the doorway, and Jason signs out of his e-mail.
    “You guys all set?” His eyes are bloodshot, and his hair is mussed up. “Jason, who’s up?”
    “A new one. Ms. Clark,” Jason answers as we start walking down the hallway to see the patients.
    “All right. What’s the quick and dirty on this one?”
    “Sixteen-year-old female with new onset of probable psychosis.”
    “Because?” Dr. Berringer’s voice is scratchy.
    “Because she thinks her cat is talking to her.”
    He pauses. “Did you say ‘her cat’?”
    “Her cat,” Jason confirms.
    “Okay, I thought I’d heard them all. What’s the cat saying exactly?”
    “The cat is giving her secret messages that people want to harm her.”
    “By actually talking?”
    Jason pauses. “To be honest, I’m not sure if the words are in English or if she’s going by the meow.”
    “It’s a feline conversation one way or the other,” I break in.
    They both stare at me. I find myself less patient on my new dose of Adderall.
    “Yes. That’s correct, Zoe,” Jason says, in not