I hesitate before reaching out my own hand. His face softens, relieved when I finally do.

“How long have I been here?”

“Oh, a few hours, I think.”

“Where’s my phone?” I ask—and from the way Dr. Haddox twitches, probably too aggressively.

“Um.” He looks around like he genuinely thinks we’re going to see it sitting somewhere. “I’m not exactly sure. But I do know that we are holding phones—different parents, different rules. Just trying to avoid any problems. Did you have it when you came in?”

And I sense not a trace of deception as he steps over to the bureau and pulls open a drawer to look for it himself the same way I did only moments ago.

“I have no idea if I had it or not,” I say. I remember that it was in my back pocket when I got to the bridge. For all I know it fell into the water. Or it could have easily gotten knocked from my pocket when I hit the ground. “I was unconscious when you dragged me in here. I don’t have any idea what I had.”

He closes his eyes momentarily. “Right,” he says quietly. “About that—I’m very sorry. I don’t know what the mix-up was, but that never should have happened.”

Mix-up. Finally, someone gets it.

“So I can go then?” I ask, looking around again for my personal belongings, which I will gladly leave behind if it means I can get out of here.

Dr. Haddox’s eyebrows bunch as he tilts his head to the side. “Oh no,” he says, uncomfortable. “By mix-up, I mean there was a whole procedure they were supposed to follow, none of which happened. Starting with the fact that they were supposed to go to your house.”

“Not my house,” I say. “Jasper’s house.”

“Jasper is your friend, right?” he asks. “The one you were on the bridge for.”

“The one they were there for,” I say, wishing this doctor was altogether a little faster on the uptake. “Jasper’s mom called the police because I told her to. I was worried Jasper might, I don’t know, do something stupid. Things somehow got confused because they thought it was me they wanted.” I wait for some reaction, some sense that I am persuading him. But his confusion is still the only thing I can read. “Anyway, I’m here because they thought I was Jasper.”

“No,” the doctor says, quietly, gently. “You’re here, Wylie, because an ambulance and officers were sent to your house. And”—he consults the folder in his hand—“it looks like it was your brother maybe who—?”

“My brother?”

“Yes, your brother Gideon? Oh no, wait, it says he didn’t know where you were. I think it was your friend’s mother who said that you were on the bridge,” he offers then with a quick, satisfied nod.