I pulled myself out of bed, grabbed the crutches the night nurse had left propped against the wall next to my bed, and used them to hop to the bathroom—something I’d been able to do by myself for a full day now. The pain medication still made me woozy, but I was off the IV now, and the wrap around my leg was still bulky, but not bad. My leg only throbbed a little, sort of like a splinter lodged in the wedge between your fingers would do.
It took me a while to maneuver myself around and get down to business in the bathroom, and when I emerged again, Mom was sitting on the edge of my bed. There was a small suitcase on the floor at her feet.
“What’s that?” I asked, crutching back to the bed. I picked up my shirt and began peeling myself out of my pajamas.
“Some things I thought you might need.”
I sighed, pulling the shirt over my head, and began working on my pants.
“You mean I’m stuck here for another day? But I feel fine. I can get around fine. I can go home. I want to go home, Mom.”
“Here, let me get that,” Mom said, leaning forward to help me shimmy into my jeans. She snapped them and zipped them for me, which felt weird and comforting all at the same time.
I hobbled to the wheelchair and plopped into it. I pulled my hair out of the back of my shirt and got settled. I wheeled to the nightstand, where a nurse had left a tray of food for me. I smelled bacon and my stomach growled.
“So have they said yet when they’ll let me go home? Tomorrow? I really think I can go home tomorrow, Mom. Maybe you can talk to them about it.” I opened the lid on the breakfast tray. My stomach growled again. I couldn’t get the bacon into my mouth fast enough.
Just as Mom was opening her mouth to speak, the door swung open and a guy in a pair of khakis and a plaid shirt with a lab coat tossed over it came through.
“Mrs. Leftman,” he said jovially. “I’m Dr. Dentley. We spoke on the phone.”
I looked up, my mouth full of bacon.
“And you must be Valerie,” he said, his voice measured and careful. He held his hand out like he wanted me to shake it. I swallowed the bacon and shook his hand tentatively. “Dr. Dentley,” he said. “I’m the staff psychiatrist here at Garvin General. How’s your leg feeling?”
I looked at Mom, but she was looking at her feet, like she was pretending we weren’t in the room with her at all.
“Okay,” I answered, reaching for another piece of bacon.
“Good, good,” he said, the smile never leaving his face. It was a nervous smile, almost like he was half afraid, but not of me personally. It was almost like he was half afraid of life. Like it was going to jump up and bite him any moment. “Tell me about your pain level right now.”
He reached behind him and whipped out my chart, which, of course, had their pain management assessment page taped to the back of the clipboard. I’d been answering this question about a hundred times a day since I got here. Is your pain a ten? A seven? Maybe it’s a 4.375 today?
“Two,” I answered. “Why? Am I getting out?”
He chuckled and used his forefinger to push his glasses back up on the bridge of his nose.
“Valerie, we want you to heal,” he said, in this patient kindergarten-teacher voice. “And we want you to heal inside as well. That’s why I’m here. I’m going to do some evaluations on you today so we can determine the best way we can help you get to a place of mental health. Do you feel like hurting yourself today?”
“What?” I looked over his shoulder again. “Mom?” But she just kept staring at her shoes.
“I asked if you’re feeling like you might pose a danger to yourself or others today.”
“You mean am I going to commit suicide?”
He nodded, that stupid grin hanging on like a barnacle. “Or cut yourself. Or if you’re having dangerous thoughts.”
“What? No. Why would I want to commit suicide?”
He shifted slightly to one side and crossed one leg over the other. “Valerie, I’ve spoken quite extensively with your parents, the police, and your doctors. We talked at great length about the thoughts of suicide that have apparently plagued you for a good long time. And we all fear that, given recent events, those thoughts might be increasing.”
Nick had always been obsessed with death. It wasn’t any big deal, you know? Some people were obsessed with video games. Some people thought about nothing but sports. Some guys were totally into military stuff. Nick liked death. From day one when he was sprawled across his bed talking about how Hamlet should have killed Claudius when he had the chance, Nick had talked about death.
But they were stories, that’s all. He told stories about death. He recounted movies, books, all with tragic and meaningful death scenes. He talked about news reports and crime reports. It was just his thing. And I adopted his language; I told stories, too. It was no big deal. Really I didn’t even notice I’d started doing it. It felt like fiction, all of it. Shakespeare told stories of death. Poe told stories of death. Stephen flipping King told stories of death, and none of it meant a thing.
So I hadn’t even noticed when the talk increased. Hadn’t noticed when it got personal. Hadn’t realized that Nick’s stories had become tales of suicide. Of homicide. And mine had, too. Only, as far as I knew, we were still telling fiction.
When I thumbed through the e-mails Detective Panzella had given me on his first visit to my room, I was dumbfounded. How could I have not seen it? How could I have not noticed that the e-mails told an alarming story that would have made anyone sit up and notice? How could I have not seen that Nick’s talk had gone from fiction to fact? How could I not see that my responses—still just fiction in my head—would make me look for all the world like I was obsessed with death, too?
I don’t know, but I hadn’t seen it. As much as I wished I had, I hadn’t.
“You mean those e-mails? I didn’t mean it. It was all Romeo and Juliet. It was all Nick. Not me.”
He kept talking, as if I’d never said a word. “And we all believe that the best course of action for you at this juncture is to keep you safe and enter you into an inpatient residential program where you can get some help to battle those suicidal urges. Group therapy, individual therapy, some medication.”
I grabbed my crutches and pulled myself to standing. “No. Mom, you know I don’t need this. Tell him I don’t need this.”
“It’s for your own good, Val,” Mom said, finally looking up from her shoes. I noticed she had her fingers wrapped around the handle of the suitcase. “It’ll only be for a little while. A couple weeks.”
“Valerie,” Dr. Dentley said. “Valerie, we can help you get what you need.”
“Stop saying my name,” I said, my voice rising. “What I need is to go home. I can battle whatever urges at home.”
Dr. Dentley stood and leaned over to press the call button on the remote. A nurse scurried in and picked up the suitcase, then just stood at the door, waiting. Mom stood up, too, edging toward the bathroom, out of the way.
“We’re just going to move up to the fourth floor, where the psychiatric wing is, Valerie,” Dr. Dentley said in that measured voice. “Please sit down. We’ll take you in your wheelchair. You’ll be comfortable that way.”
“No!” I said, and I guess from the way Mom blinked when I said it I must have been screaming, although I didn’t feel it. All I could think about was tenth grade Comm Arts class when we watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. All I could think about was Jack Nicholson screaming at the nurse about wanting the TV on and the creepy blank-faced Indian and the nervous little guy in glasses. And—here is the dumbest thing of all—I even had the thought that when word got around that I’d been locked up in a psych ward, everyone would totally make fun of me. Christy Bruter would have a field day with this one. And all I could think was They’re going to have to take me up there dead, because there’s no way I’m going up there of my own power.
Dr. Dentley must have had the same thought because once I started screaming, “No! I won
’t go! No! Get away from me!” the pleasant look on his face turned just slightly and he gave a nod to the nurse who scurried out of the room.
A few moments later two big orderlies came in and Dr. Dentley said, “Be careful of the left thigh,” in this very clinical voice and then the orderlies were on me, holding me down while the nurse came at me with a needle. Instinctively I dropped back in my wheelchair. My crutches clattered against the floor. Mom bent over and picked them up.
I thrashed as best as I could with what felt like a thousand pounds on top of me and I screamed as loud as my voice would allow. So loudly, pieces of my words were silent, flinging themselves into the air so forcefully I imagined foreign-looking people in distant countries picking them up like artifacts in the dust. One of the orderlies moved to get a better hold of my arm, which gave me just enough room to kick. I kicked out with all I had, landing a good one on his shin. He let out a shoosh through gritted teeth, bringing his face kissing-close to mine, but it did nothing to help me. I was pinned. The nurse stole behind me and I moved the only thing I still had power over—my lungs—when she stuck the needle in my exposed hip through the open space of the wheelchair.
Within seconds, the only part of me that cooperated with fighting my fate was tears, which smeared my face and collected in my neck. Mom cried, too, and I took some satisfaction in that, though not nearly enough.
“Mom,” I whimpered, as they rolled me past her. “Please don’t do this. You can stop this…” She didn’t answer. At least not in words.
They wheeled me down the hallway toward the elevator. All the way I cried, I begged, I repeated, “I didn’t do it… I didn’t do it…” but Dr. Dentley had disappeared and all that was left were the two orderlies and the suitcase-toting nurse, none of whom acknowledged they even heard me.
We came to an intersecting hallway with a sign that said ELEVATORS and an arrow pointing the way. Just before we turned, we passed a room, and a face that I recognized.
They say that near-death experiences change people. That they suddenly discover what tolerance and love are really about. That they have no more use for pettiness and hate.
But when the orderlies wheeled me toward that bank of elevators and we passed Christy Bruter’s room, I saw her propped up slightly in her bed, staring out at me. I saw her parents standing by her bedside, and another, younger woman who was holding a little boy in her arms.
“I didn’t do it… I didn’t…” I was saying, crying.
Her parents stared out at me with weary eyes. And Christy looked on with just the slightest wry smile. It was the same smile I’d seen so many times on the bus. Completely unchanged.
The orderlies turned the corner and I couldn’t see in Christy’s room anymore. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. But I don’t think she heard me.
Still, I wondered if somehow Stacey did.
11
There would be many times in my life that I would wonder how I survived those ten days in the hospital psychiatric wing. How I got from my bed to the toilet. How I got from the toilet to group sessions. How I lived through listening to high squealy voices shouting ridiculous things through the night. How I felt like my life had been taken down to a disgusting level when a tech came into my room one morning and whispered that if I needed “a hit” we could “probably work something out,” tugging at the front of his scrubs while he said it.
I couldn’t even succumb to my silent place again—my comfortable space. Dr. Dentley would surely consider silence a regression and suggest to my parents that I needed to stay longer.
Dr. Dentley made me sick to my stomach. His tartar-caked teeth and his dandruff-flaked glasses and his psychology-textbook way of talking. All the while, his eyes wandering to something more important while I answered his Super-Shrink questions.
I didn’t feel like I belonged there. Most of the time I felt like everyone else was crazy—even Dr. Dentley—and I was the only sane one.
There was Emmitt, a mountain of a boy, who continually trolled the hallways asking everyone for pennies. Morris, who talked to the walls as if there were someone there talking back to him. Adelle, whose mouth was so foul they wouldn’t even let her be in group with us half the time. Francie, the girl who liked to burn herself and constantly bragged about having an affair with her forty-five-year old stepfather.
And there was Brandee, the one who knew what I was there for and who regarded me with her sad, dark eyes and questions at every turn.
“What did it feel like?” she’d ask in the TV room. “You know, to kill people.”
“I didn’t kill people.”
“My mom says you did.”
“What does she know about it? She’s wrong.”
In the hallways, in group, there would be Brandee with her questions. “What did it feel like to get shot? Did he shoot you on purpose? Did he think you’d turn him in? Did any of your friends get shot or was it all people you hated? Do you wish you hadn’t done it? What do your parents think? My parents would totally freak out. Did your parents freak out? Do they hate you now?”
It was enough to make me crazy, but I worked really hard to not let it get to me. Most of the time I would just ignore her. Shrug my shoulders noncommittally or pretend I didn’t hear her. But occasionally I’d answer, thinking it would shut her up. I was wrong. Answering her would just bring on a new wave of questions and I’d regret that I’d ever said anything.
The only good thing that happened during those days in the psych wing was that Detective Panzella stopped coming in to grill me. Whether that meant Dr. Dentley was keeping him away or he’d decided I was telling the truth or he was working up a case against me, I didn’t know. All I knew was it was good that he wasn’t around.
I moved from place to place like I was supposed to. Changed out of my pajamas and hospital-issued robe like a good girl. Sat on the couch in the common room, watching approved TV, looking out the window at the highway below, pretending I didn’t see the dried boogers smeared on the walls next to me. Pretending my heart wasn’t breaking. Pretending I wasn’t angry, confused, scared.
I wanted to sleep my time away there. Wanted to take painkillers, curl up in bed, and not wake up again until I was home. But I knew that would be seen as a sign of depression and would only serve to keep me there longer. I had to pretend. Pretend I was getting better. Pretend my “thoughts of suicide” had changed.
“I totally see that Nick was wrong for me now,” I intoned. “I want to start over now. I think college will be good. Yeah, college.”
I hid the anger that was welling up inside me. Anger at my parents for not being there for me. Anger at Nick for being dead. Anger at the people in the school who tormented Nick. Anger at myself for not seeing this coming. I learned to tamp down the anger, to force it to the back of my mind, hoping that it would just fizzle out, go away. I learned to pretend it was already gone.
I said the things that would get me out. I mouthed the words they needed to hear and somehow got myself to those group sessions and said nothing when one of the other patients would lash out at me with insults. I took my meals and tests and cooperated in every way possible. I just wanted out.
Finally, on a Friday, Dr. Dentley came into my room and sat on the edge of the bed. I didn’t cringe, but curled my toes inside my socks, trying to distance myself from him.
“We’re going to release you,” he said, so matter-of-factly I almost missed it.
“Really?”
“Yes. We’re very pleased with your progress. But you’re a long way from healed, Valerie. We’re releasing you to intensive outpatient care.”
“Here?” I asked, trying not to sound panicky. For some reason, even though it would be outpatient, the thought of coming back to the hospital every day scared me—like if I said or did something wrong, Chester and Jock would pin me down and shove a needle in my butt again.
“No. You’ll be seeing…” he trailed off, flipping through pages on the clipboard he was holding. He nodded in appro
val. “Yes. You’ll be seeing Rex Hieler.” He looked up at me. “You’ll like Dr. Hieler. He’s perfect for this case.”
I left the hospital, a “case,” but a free one.
A nurse wheeled me down to the front door of the hospital in a wheelchair. I was aware of every eye in the building staring at me as I went past. Probably they weren’t really staring at me, but it felt like it. Like everyone in the world knew who I was and why I was there. Like everyone in the world stared at me, wondering if what they’d heard was true. Wondering if God was a cruel God for letting me live.
Mom had the car pulled up outside and was coming toward me, a pair of crutches in her hand. I took them and hobbled to the car, piling myself inside it, not saying anything to Mom or to the nurse, who was giving Mom instructions just inside the hospital door.
We drove home in silence. Mom turned the radio to an easy listening station. I opened the window a crack, then closed my eyes and smelled the air. It smelled different somehow, like something was missing from it. I wondered what I would do when I got home.
When I opened the front door of the house, the first thing I saw was Frankie sprawled on the floor watching TV.
“Hey, Val,” he said, sitting up. “You’re home.”
“Hey. Like your hair. Maximum height on those spikes today.”
He grinned, ran his hand over his head. “That’s what Tina said,” he said. Like nothing had ever happened. Like I didn’t still smell like the hospital. Like I wasn’t a suicidal freak come home to make his life miserable.
At that moment, Frankie was the best brother anyone could have asked for.
12
Dr. Hieler’s office was cozy and academic—an oasis of books and soft rock music in a sea of institutionalism. His secretary, a relaxed girl with brown skin and long fingernails, was curt and professional, ushering me and Mom in from the waiting room to the inner sanctum as if we were there to buy rare diamonds. She bustled around a mini-fridge, bringing me a Coke and Mom a bottled water, and then waved with her arm toward an open office door. We stepped through.
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