Chapter 30

Trinity

After the man left, I didn’t know what to say, but I was also very curious. What did he mean by all that? More than that, why did I get the sense that there was more to his story than just him mourning the loss of his wife?

I felt compelled to see him again, to figure him out, but I wasn’t sure if that was a good idea. Whatever his real problems were, they were way beyond my training at this point. I looked down at the notes and frowned, realizing that his name wasn’t on the page.

Something tingled at the back of my mind as if I knew what should be there but couldn’t quite say what it was.

Days passed, and it seemed that the police came by to speak to me nearly every day. There were different officers every day, but they all asked most of the same questions.

“No, I hadn’t seen him since the trip where he tried to assault me in the bar.” I swallowed, looking at the officers. “No, I don’t know if the bar had surveillance you can check, but there were other people there from the university who saw him chasing me.”

The officer looked a bit disgruntled. “You seem hostile.”

I glared at him. “More than ten officers have come in here and harassed me about his death in the past week. At this point, I feel like you’re just too lazy to do any real investigating and trying to blame me.”

His eyes narrowed. “That kind of talk could get you arrested.”

I set my jaw. “Read me my rights then and get on with it.”

The man looked like he couldn’t believe what I’d said, but neither of them knew. It was a threat that they couldn’t even follow through on. I didn’t have any immunity, but I knew my rights. They couldn’t just arrest me for nothing.

“We’ll be back tomorrow,” his lips quirked. “Since we know you have trouble with your memory.”

They left, and I was half tempted to not show up for practical sessions the next day. I didn’t know what they were hoping to get out of me about the dean’s death, but I had nothing to give them.

The next day, there was a female officer with a man. She didn’t look apologetic about any of this, but she led the conversation.

“I’ve looked at your pending case,” she said lightly. “I’m glad that you made it out alive.”

I tilted my head. There was something in her words that made it seem like she knew more than what was in the records.

“Could you tell me how you left the dean?” She asked, opening her notes. The man remained silent beside her.

I realized that he was quite a bit bigger than the other officers had been. More than that, he had an air about him that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. My hand dropped to his hand, drawn there for some reason. There was a plain silver ring there, much like the ring Mark would wear.

“I got away from him. A man stepped in and scared him off. He was waiting for me in the lobby. The man agreed to walk me back to my room.” I shuddered.

“The dean followed us around the building, but we shook him off using the elevators, and I went to my room.”

“Who was this man?”

I frowned, shaking my head. “I never got his name…”

I could tell them that he was currently here as a patient, but that would be a violation of patient-doctor confidentiality, I think. It didn’t matter, but I got the sense that I shouldn’t tell them that he was nearby.

Besides, there was nothing special about it.

“How did you get back from the resort?”

“On the charter bus.”

“Do you remember seeing him on the bus?”

I frowned and thought back, but I shook my head. “I don’t remember seeing him on the bus there or back.”

She looked thoughtful, but she nodded and stood. “I think this will be the last time we come to see you. The dean wasn’t on the roster of people who rode the charter bus there or back.”

I frowned. “Why didn’t anyone else ask me that? It’s been such a waste of time.”

She smiled. “When dealing with witnesses and potential culprits with memory issues, it’s best to ask multiple times. Have a good day.”

That answer felt mostly like a lie, but I said nothing and walked out behind them.

“There they are again,” someone whispered. “It’s like they think she killed him.”

“She could have. Don’t put it past anyone.”

I twitched but carried on. While the officers had been annoying from the start, the rumors that their frequent appearances started were really the worst of it. People seemed to think that I was a murderer and kept avoiding me. Sindia was the only one who didn’t seem to believe any of the nonsense that was going around, but that was probably because she knew that I had been with her from the time it was time to leave the resort until we reached campus again.

I didn’t bother to heed any of it. Trying to explain what the police asked about would be useless to people who just wanted to gossip. Besides, I have transferred in under mysterious circumstances that most people had some idea about, thanks to the school newspaper digging into my past.

The assistant dean was promoted to the current dean a few days after those officers had stopped coming to see me. Things should have been just fine, but it seemed like the people that I had been working with, in my clinical observations and as a part-timer, were all pulling away from me. It wasn’t my fault, honestly, but it was harder to ignore when they all seemed to be on edge about being alone with me.

Like they thought I was a killer.

I was taken off all my observations. Sindia couldn’t do anything about it, but she kept mentoring me in private.

She shrugged. “These are orders handed down from up top but don’t worry about it. The rumors will die down eventually. And even if they don’t, you’ll be done soon enough.”

I nodded. It was the only thing that kept me going. The man’s sessions were making sure that I was working towards my degree steadily. The hours of him being there were logged by the nurse’s station, but his name never appeared on the records, and he never offered it.

The sense that I should know it, or rather that I did know his name, kept growing stronger.

I found him funny, slowly. He talked about his wife often, then people he knew and cared about.

Every once in a while, he would go eerily still and say nothing as if he was slipping into an episode. His eyes would flicker. His face went pale, and the sense of danger that lingered around seemed to grow and fill the room.

Before I could think to run and escape the room, he’d break out of it and smile at me before calling the session over.

It could have been a fluke, but Sindia said that it was a sign that everything he reported was just symptoms of him either recovering from some sort of psychotic episode or slipping into another one. She always made sure there was a security officer nearby when I had a session with him, but nothing happened.

“How are you doing today?” I asked, looking at him.

“As well as can be expected.”

“That’s—” My phone rang. My heart lurched. I had it set to do not disturb unless it was from my father or Mark. “Could you… it’s my father.”

He went still and nodded before I answered it, but the voice wasn’t my father’s.

“Hi, I’m not sure who this is. You’re in his phone as an emergency contact.”

“Where is my father?” I asked, going still.

“He’s been in an accident. The medics took him to the hospital. A-Are you Trinity?”

“Yes. Is he…”

“The doctors say that they’re not going to commence with the surgery until they have some guarantee that the bill can be paid. They said he’s sort of stable, but… they don’t know how much time he has.”

My heart lurched. “H-How much?”

“I don’t know… I just know it’s a lot since he doesn’t have insurance.”

I felt ill. We were barely making ends meet while living with Mark. Sure, he didn’t charge us rent, but I still had loans from school to pay off, and those loans would just increase once I was done at this school.

There was no way I could come up with the money quickly for this. There was no way that I could pay for it, whatever it was.

I swallowed and looked at the man.

He frowned. “What is it?”

“… When you said before… about money,” I said.

“Is it still an option?”