The Blessed - By Tonya Hurley Page 0,9

little world and not interested at all in small talk with some stranger.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to—”

“Jude!” he shouted, as if the word had been building pressure inside of him and had now been launched like a rocket. “My. Name. Is. Jude.”

With that labored introduction out of the way, Jude darted toward an old and weathered statue of Jesus, with its left hand pointed gently at its exposed heart. Time and indifference had taken its toll on it. Flecks of white where paint and plaster had chipped or broken off dotted the figure. Agnes guessed that it must have been moved up to the psych ward and out of the way, just like everything and everyone else up there. It reminded her of the statues that adorned her school lobby, Immaculate Heart Academy, but in worse condition, lending it, ironically, a kind of unforced sympathy, which was more than likely originally intended.

Out of nowhere. Without warning. The boy jumped up on the statue’s pedestal and grabbed it with both arms, grunting and struggling with it as if it were fighting him back.

Maybe this kid isn’t too young to be a mental patient after all, she thought.

“Say ‘Uncle,’ Jesus!” he said, trying to catch his breath.

Agnes tried not to look.

The boy was getting increasingly agitated and maniacal . . . hanging from the neck of an almost life-size statue, driving his knuckles repeatedly into the Savior’s plaster of Paris head.

“Say it!” the boy demanded as if the statue were resisting him.

Agnes was astonished at what kind of kid would bully a statue, let alone one of . . . Jesus. She stared intently at the painted face as several drops of blood suddenly appeared, trickling down the forehead and off the brow.

Her eyes incredulously followed the streams down as they fell to the floor, bright red spots peppering the white, waxed marble. Proving that one—a certain one perhaps—can indeed get blood from a stone.

Startled for a second, she thought she might be seeing things, something miraculous even, until she noticed Jude’s knuckles, which were rubbed raw and bleeding. Undaunted, the boy examined his hand, shook it off, and returned quickly to his noogies, stopping only to feel around behind the statue’s head. As he pulled his hand away, and hopped off the pedestal and back toward her, Agnes noticed he was clutching something.

“He left this for you,” Jude said, handing Agnes the most spectacular white bracelet that she’d ever laid eyes on. “He wanted me to make sure you got it.”

Agnes was stunned. Without words. Her heart felt as if it were going to beat right out of her chest and she was sure, if someone looked close enough, they could see it through her smock. The chunky beads—maybe pearls, she gathered—were strung beside an unpolished gold charm embossed with a heart set aflame. She felt her incisions tingle and twitch as she gently fingered it.

“Tell him that I gave it to you,” the boy said proudly, without the slightest hesitation or stammer. “Okay?”

“Agnes Fremont,” the nurse called out.

Jude heard the nurse and dutifully returned to his seat and his silence.

“Who? Tell who?” Agnes queried the boy with sudden urgency, eyeing the statue suspiciously.

The boy did not answer her.

Agnes, meanwhile, was in a kind of shock. Whatever his problems, the trinket was extraordinary. Agnes hid the beads under her hospital gown and tucked the gold charm under her bandage to keep it safe and out of view. The flaming heart emblem that hung from it pressed uncomfortably into her wound. It hurt, but the pain it caused felt somewhat reassuring to her. She really was still alive.

“Agnes Fremont,” the nurse called out again, this time with more impatience. “Are you coming?”

Agnes jumped off of her gurney and waited anxiously by the door like a pet that hadn’t been out all day. She looked back at the boy who was now sitting like an angel in his seat, and followed the nurse down the hall.

As she was taken through the patient corridor, she snuck peeks in the rooms. Having never been in a psych ward before, curiosity got the best of her, and she couldn’t help but rubberneck. Besides, all the girls in the tiny dormitory-style rooms were doing the same to her.

Face after face, all hopeless-looking and lost. Some just staring into nothingness and others just . . . waiting. She felt she had nothing in common with them, except she did.

The nurse gestured for her to enter an