Elena Vanishing by Elena Dunkle Page B

Karen, the woman who threw her pancake. She’s crouching beside me in the corner. “You’re having a bad time, aren’t you?” she says. “Yeah, you are. You’re having a bad time.”
    My face feels cold. I touch it and realize I’ve been crying. Karen sneaks a look at the nurses’ station. “Come with me,” she says.
    She leads me into the rec room, keeping a cautious eye on two patients who are sitting on the couch and watching TV. She stops behind them, by the far wall. A big metal shelving unit there holdseverything from books and games to yoga mats. With the tips of her fingers, Karen waves me closer.
    â€œThis is one of my best spots,” she whispers. “Not the bottom shelf, because they look there, but the second shelf, behind the stack of yoga mats. You can crawl in there and pull the mats back in front of you. No one’s ever found me there.”
    It doesn’t look like there would be room for a person behind the mats, but Karen is like a toothpick. I’m not surprised no one has thought to hunt for her there.
    She waves again, and I follow her down the hall. Two small palms and a luxurious fiddle-leaf fig share the corner by the window.
    â€œI curl up behind the pots,” she murmurs. “It’s crazy that it works. You’re not hidden that much. You’d think they’d spot you, but their eyes slide right past.”
    Next, she leads me through a door at the end of the hall. I didn’t know this room was unlocked, but Karen tells me this is the cooldown room. Prepared for what’s coming, I scan for hiding places, but I don’t see any. It’s sparsely furnished, and you can take in the whole room from the doorway.
    â€œBack here,” breathes Karen, with a quick look toward the door. “There, behind the couch cushion. It’s a futon, see? All one piece. You just push it forward and slide in between it and the frame, and no one will ever, ever find you.”
    I stare at Karen in awe. This woman is a genius!
    â€œBecause sometimes, you have to be where they can’t see you,” Karen says. Her face is urgent, like she’s telling me how to defuse a bomb. “Sometimes, you have to get away.”
    I nod. “You do. You absolutely do.”
    â€œYou can use my places,” Karen whispers, with another cautious look toward the door. “I know I can trust you. You won’t tell.”
    â€œI won’t. I absolutely won’t.”
    And Karen slips away.
    Right after supper, a nurse calls me to the phone. It’s Mom, and I can tell from her hello that she’s feeling a hundred percent better.
    â€œYou can start packing,” she says. “I talked to Dr. Harris, and he’s offered to see you in his office day after tomorrow. He says he’ll have an EEG and an MRI done to make sure there’s nothing medical causing the blackouts, and he’ll do a full psychiatric evaluation to see if you have an eating disorder. It’s going to take two days to get there. We’ll rent a car and drive. I’m getting ready to call rental places right now, so I won’t make it to visiting hour.”
    I don’t tell her that the staff have already put me on the blacklist for visiting hour. It would just make her mad.
    I hang up the phone. So I’ll be leaving. That’s good, right? No need to worry anymore about what the patients think of me. No need to wonder whether we’re alike or different.
    â€œI need my suitcase,” I tell the nicest nurse. She turns and stares at me in surprise. “I’m leaving. My mom’s going to pick me up after visiting hour.”
    â€œHas she cleared that with Dr. Moore?”
    â€œI guess so.”
    â€œI’ll check with him. In the meantime, you just have a seat and watch the world go by. Nothing’s going to happen until Dr. Moore says it can, and it won’t take you more than a couple of minutes to