Dr. Knox Read Free Page A

men squinted, bent to the door glass, put meaty hands to meaty brows, and peered in. They tried the door, but found it locked. They didn’t ring the bell, and after a while they walked away.
    Arthur tapped keys and the two windows blinked, and displayed a live feed of the empty street and the empty doorway. Lydia looked at me. “Who were they?”
    I shook my head. “Not the usual neighborhood types. And they seemed to be looking for someone.”
    “Those suits and the hair…They could be cops.”
    It was my turn to look skeptical. “You think so?”
    “Some kind of cops,” Lydia said. “La Migra, maybe—who knows? Anyway, how do you know they were looking for the woman?”
    “I don’t—not for sure. It’s a guess based on observation, like a preliminary diagnosis.”
    “Don’t patronize me, doctor.”
    “I’m not pat—”
    “Sure you are. We should call the cops or DCFS, and you know it.” Her mouth was firm, frowning. I sighed and closed my eyes.
    A few years back—it seemed like a hundred sometimes, sometimes last week—in another life, quite far from here, I’d watched too many kids wake up on gurneys or stretchers, sick, maimed, always in pain, to find that everything they’d known—parents, siblings, homes, schools, villages, the ground beneath their feet—was gone. More than gone: hacked apart, scattered, annihilated. I’d never forget the vacant, blasted look in their eyes as the new facts of life beat against them like a horrible tide, and incomprehension, denial, and raw terror swept them away. I’d had little to offer any of them besides a hand to hold for a few minutes, some empty words, and sometimes space on a truck that would carry them into a mostly well-meaning, sporadically competent, and always overburdened refugee bureaucracy. I never knew where they wound up—a proper hospital, maybe—one with actual walls, or a camp or orphanage. The next wave was always coming in, and I never had time to find out. I didn’t know what this kid’s story was, but I didn’t want to put him on a truck—and especially not to DCFS. Not unless I had to.
    “The boy’s going to wake up confused and scared,” I said. “He’s going to want his mom and she won’t be around and he’ll be terrified. You want to turn him over to a bunch of people he’s never seen before?”
    “
We
are a bunch of people he’s never seen before.”
    “You really want to hand him to Family Services, Lyd? On a weekend? We won’t even get the A-list idiots on a weekend.”
    Lydia sighed massively. “You know the shit we could land in?”
    “All we’re doing is waiting for his mother to come back for him. She said she was coming back—”
    “From the bathroom.”
    “She said she was coming back, and there’s no crime in waiting. If she doesn’t turn up by Monday—if I can’t find her by then—we’ll call whoever you want to call.”
    “
Find her?
You said she’d come back for him—now you have to find her? You moonlight as a detective now?”
    “I’ll ask around the neighborhood, see if anyone’s seen her.”
    “While I babysit.”
    “You had big plans this weekend?”
    “Never mind my plans. You think ’cause I’m a woman I don’t mind taking care of kids?”
    “It’s not the gender thing so much as the fact that you raised Lucho and his sister up from babies, and you did it by yourself.”
    “Now you’re blowing smoke at me, doctor. I’m supposed to take him home?”
    “My place isn’t child-friendly.”
    Lydia rolled her eyes. “God only knows what goes on up there. Does the kid even speak English? You weren’t sure the mother did.”
    “She understood it.”
    Lydia shook her head and sighed. “Just till Monday.”
    “Tuesday the latest.”
    “You should pay me overtime for this,” Lydia said. “Time-and-a-half at least.” She looked at Arthur. “And don’t think you two aren’t gonna help. I’ll make a list; you’ll go to the market.”
    “Nothing with nuts,” I