Cry Until You Bleed

19- Radars

“You’re always on the phone, you know,” Mia tells me after lunch on Tuesday when I tell her that I’m going to go make a phone call.

I just shrug sheepishly. “I just like to keep in touch with my family.”

“Oh, that reminds me. Did your brother tell you anything about Renée?” She asks me, her eyes looking up at me with complete hopefulness.

I hate to tell her no but I don’t want to lie to her either. Although, I’m sure that would be the nice thing to do here, to tell her that Penn had checked the hospital and he told me that Renée is fully recovering and everything is rainbows and sunshine but that’s not fair to Mia, so I just shake my head. “He wouldn’t tell me anything. Sorry. I’m not giving up though, I’m still looking for answers.”

“Thanks,” She smiles at me gratefully but I can still tell that she’s a bit disappointed that I couldn’t get anything out of Penn. I smile back at her before walking away to go make a phone call to Niles. I’m not sure if I should or not because I don’t want to be too pesky and call him too much but when I was on the phone with him on Sunday night, I didn’t ask him about Renée and I’m really worried about her and so is Mia so I’m going to call him again.

I go to the last phone in the corner, which is my favorite one because I feel like I have a sliver of privacy when I’m so far into the corner and privacy is a very rare thing around here. I dial Niles’ number and listen to the ringing until he answers the phone.

“Hello?” He answers.

“Hi,” I supply softly. “It’s Ana.”

“Oh, hey,” He greets me, sounding slightly chirpy. “What’s up?”

“Nothing really,” I sigh. “I just have a quick question.”

“Sure, go for it.”

“Okay, well I think I told you about my friend who’s in the hospital,” I say. “I was wondering if you could find out how she’s doing?”

“Isn’t that Renée?” He wonders.

“Yeah,” I confirm. “Do you think you can do that?”

“I already know how she’s doing,” Niles tells me. “I overheard my sister talking about it the other day. She’s scheduled to come back to Bernard’s next week, I think. I’m pretty sure she’s going to be stuck in solitary for a while though.”

“Really? Wow, that’s great. Mia will be really happy to hear that,” I say with a relieved breath and a little smile because I was so worried that she wouldn’t be coming back here. Even though she’ll be in solitary for a while, at least she’s going to be here and we’ll probably see her again after a while. “Thank you. Don’t tell anybody that you told me that though.”

“Nobody even knows that we’re talking at all,” He reminds me. “I wasn’t going to tell anybody. Why? Are you not allowed to know?”

“Dr. Lombardi thinks that worrying about Renée will interfere with my recovery or something. It doesn’t make any sense but she convinced my family not to tell me anything and we’ve just been so worried about her,” I explain to him. I wonder if I should ask him about the case too, to see if Gavinberg got out on probation or not, but I’m suddenly realizing that I’m not so sure if I want to know the answer to that anymore. Maybe it’s best if I just don’t know because I know that I’ll worry way more about it if I know for sure. I also don’t want Niles to know about my past and if I asked him to look up Gavinberg, I’m sure he’d be able to piece it together. “And I don’t want you to get in trouble for telling me.”

“I don’t mind getting in trouble for you, Ana,” Niles assures me. “But we’re not in trouble yet. If Sophie found out that we’re talking on the phone, she’d be pretty pissed though so we really have to keep that quiet.”