Me Before You

PART 34: Piece a Fragment

🅈🄸🄽 🄿🄾🅅

After I laid out the intricate details of my situation to Lee, a hushed stillness settled around us, creating an almost palpable cocoon of silence. His gaze fixed on me, absorbing my words without offering an immediate response. A heavy exhalation escaped him, his hand coming up to roughly rub across his face as if attempting to grapple with the words of what I had just shared. Then, his eyes met me again.

Lee's lips moved slightly, forming the beginning of a sentence but they snapped shut just as quickly, his thoughts apparently too tangled to find a coherent expression.

Desperation clawed at me, propelling me forward. "Lee, I know this all sounds crazy and yeah, you can call me crazy. I don't blame you if you're having a hard time believing it. But I'm begging you, I need your help. You are the only person I can turn to, the only one who might be able to help me find War," I pleaded, not caring if I sounded pathetic.

"No, Yin. You're not crazy," Lee responded. "Folk has filled me in on the details about the painting. And I can tell that there's something odd about it."

He then took a file from his briefcase. He turned the pages until he found what he was searching for, then angled the file toward me, indicating a photograph. "This...this is Mike Panitan, the person Dr. Thu introduced the artist behind the painting, right?" Lee inquired, his eyes fixed on me, searching for affirmation.

I nodded. "Yes, that's him," I confirmed, my heart racing in anticipation.

His sigh was laden with a complex blend of emotions, his face reflecting a medley of concern, frustration and fascination. "Yin, six months ago, Mike was my patient. He had been under my care for the past two years before he was transferred to Dr. Thu's supervision."

"But the puzzling issue here is that Mike experiences a substantial impairment in his fine motor skills. This means that he faces significant difficulties in performing tasks that require precise and controlled hand movements such as holding a pencil or manipulating small objects, let alone create intricate paintings like the one you and Folk showed me," Lee disclosed, his words like a lightning bolt to my heart, electrifying my hope and confusion simultaneously.

"So...that-that's mean..."

"Yes, they were lying to you," Lee responded with a heavy sigh.

My vision blurred as tears welled in my eyes, my emotions caught in a tempest of disbelief and confusion. I had always clung to the belief that War was the true artist behind that captivating painting. The doctor's dishonesty about the painting's creator gnawed at my instincts, raising suspicions that they were concealing something significant from everyone.

Lee retrieved another document from his stack of files. He displayed the paper in front of me, his eyes locking onto mine. "Take a look at this, it's a record of the patients at BNH Hospital who contributed their work to the Gallery Center this year," he explained calmly.

I directed my attention to the document. "I painstakingly analyzed every detail. Our team submitted around 10 paintings for display this year. But as you can see..." He flipped to another page, his finger guiding my gaze to the relevant section. "The painting you show to me, under Mike's name, has an empty data." His finger is traced over the information meticulously. "When you examine the profiles of other artists, there's something strikingly different about Mike's page."

He shifted his focus to a side by side comparison, juxtaposing the details of Mike's entry with those of other artists. "For each painting submitted, there's usually an appendix, a supplementary document, accompanying the artist's name. But, when it comes to Mike's entry, there's an absence of any such appendix," Lee pointed out, his tone marked by a mix of intrigue and concern. "This deviation is intriguing in itself. It's as if they wanted to keep his association with the painting discreet."