The Price of Misjudgment

Chapter 2 The Dark Cell

Rain hammered the windshield faster than the wipers could clear it. I gripped the wheel and kept seeing Leo’s face when they took him.

I had no memory of the turns I took. I only remember my knuckles against the wheel and the image of Leo’s terrified face.

Northwood Juvenile Guidance Center appeared beyond the next bend, all concrete walls and razor wire under the lightning.

Each flash picked out another length of wire along the top. The building had no welcoming entrance, only a gate and a narrow booth set into the wall.

I left the car crooked in a parking space and ran. By the time I reached the gate, rain had soaked through my clothes. One guard sat in the bright booth behind thick glass.

He looked up from the counter with the bored expression of a man who had already decided I was a nuisance.

I held down the intercom. “Please. My son was just brought here. Leo Sterling. He has severe asthma, and he needs his inhaler.”

The speaker crackled. “Personal items are processed in the morning, ma’am.”

“He can’t wait until morning!” I yelled, holding the small blue inhaler up to the glass. “He could have an attack. He could die. Please, just take this to him.”

The guard sighed. A metal drawer buzzed open beneath the window. “Put it in there.”

I put the inhaler in the drawer before he could change his mind. He picked it up, turned it over once, then opened the booth door and tossed it into a muddy puddle beside the road.

“Contraband.” He shut the door. “We have a full medical staff. If he needs something, they’ll provide it.”

The blue plastic lay half submerged in brown water. Leo could stop breathing without it.

Back in the car, I tried Richard. Northwood would listen to Leo’s father, even if he had stopped listening to me. My wet fingers shook as the call went through.

Calling him was humiliating. I did it anyway. Richard was the only person left who could make the center pick up a phone and obey.

It rang twice. Chloe answered.

“Richard’s a little busy right now.” A champagne flute clinked near the phone.

“Chloe, listen to me. Leo’s at Northwood. He doesn’t have his inhaler. He’s in a dark room, and he’ll have an attack.”

She laughed. “Oh, Eleanor. Always so dramatic. A little discipline is exactly what he needs. You’ve coddled him for too long.”

“I made sure they gave him a special room. No noise, no light. He can reflect on his behavior.”

“He’s not reflecting, you b***h, he’s suffocating!” I screamed into the phone.

“He’ll be fine. Richard and I are toasting to our future. Finally child-free.”

The line went dead.

There was no one else to call. Rain and tears blurred the gate into streaks of light.

I stayed there all night. The gate remained closed until the rain thinned and the sky turned gray.

It was the siren that broke the silence.

Northwood’s gates opened. An ambulance shot through, red and white lights jumping across the wet road.

I followed. My tires slid on the turn, and I kept driving. Just down the road, the ambulance pulled over to wait for a coroner’s van.

I begged every god I had stopped believing in to let me be wrong about who was inside.

A paramedic tried to block me. I was already close enough to see the gurney and the small body under a white sheet.

His face gave him away before he spoke. I stepped around him.

A hand hung from beneath the edge.

The fingernails were gone. The skin beneath them was torn and bloody. Leo had clawed at the door until there was nothing left to claw with.

He had been alone in that room, fighting for air and trying to dig through steel.

My son was gone.

The doors of the coroner’s van closed over the white sheet.