She made it as far as the doors that led to the next wing before Dr. O’ Conner caught up to her.
“I’m sorry, Harriet.” There was no doubting the contrition in his voice and on his face. But she’d learned a long time ago that his apologies didn’t actually weigh all that much in the grand scheme of things. The next opportunity he got, the next time they disagreed he would do it all over again, consequences be damned.
“No, you’re not.” She buried her face in her hands. “You were right. I have walked away from all of this.” Taking her hands from her face, she gestured to the space around them. “But I did it so I wouldn’t end up in here like my mother.”
Dr Connor managed to look suitably shocked and if it had been any other time—perhaps during any other conversation that wasn’t quite so serious—Harriet might have found the look on his face funny.
“That would never happen.”
“You and I both know you can’t say that. We don’t know what the human mind is truly capable of handling—or in my mother’s case—not handling. For all we know I have inherited her illness and it’s right now festering inside me, just waiting for the right moment to drag me under. Just like it did with her.”
Simply talking about her mother was enough to bring Harriet out in a cold sweat. It was a time she’d tried to forget but no matter how hard she attempted to wipe that memory from her mind it crept through, like a stain that refused to budge.
Dr Connor placed his hand on her arm. “You are not like her.”
“But how can I really know?” They both knew the answer to that question.
He sighed and let his hand fall away from her arm. “I’m sorry for bringing up uncomfortable memories for you. I didn’t think and that was selfish of me.”
Harriet smiled and shook her head. “You’re just trying to help your patient. I can understand that.”
“Do you think you could come back and speak to Emily again?”
“Considering her violent reaction to me I’m not sure it would be such a good idea.”
“I think because of her violent reaction to you, seeing you again is just what she needs.” Seeing the look of discomfort on Harriet’s face he added. “Not yet of course. She needs time and I will continue to work with her but perhaps if I can get her to a more settled place you would consider it?”
Harriet nodded. “I’ll consider it but if and only if you can get her to a place where she is more able to face her demons. I won’t be your hammer, Jonathon. You used me like that once before, I won’t do it a second time.”
Before he could say another word, Harriet used the keycard he had given to her and left him behind as she pushed out through the heavy double doors.
Chapter Nine
It took only a few minutes to get back to the main reception area. Clara stared at her as she entered but if she noticed her dishevelled appearance, she was too polite to say anything. That was a miracle in itself.
“Your mother is waiting for you in the day room,” she said instead as Harriet handed her Dr Connor’s key card.
“I think the good doctor will be looking for this.”
Clara nodded and buzzed a door to the left that led to the day rooms and counselling centres.
Harriet slipped through to the other side of the hospital and nipped into the first bathroom she spotted on the corridor. She clicked the lock home and turned to face the small basin and the mirror positioned over it.
Her face was drawn and pale, her hair an unruly mess. Leaning on the edge of the porcelain sink, Harriet closed her eyes and was instantly treated to an image of Emily Hawthorne’s face. Distress etched into every line and the downward curve of her lips.
Her case had been one of those that captured the public’s attention. Headlines splashed across every newspaper and online news outlet had painted her as the Medea for the modern day.
But the woman Harriet had spoken to bore no resemblance to the vengeful granddaughter of a bloodthirsty Greek god hellbent on making the man who had wronged her pay for his crimes. However, despite being the complete antithesis of this her story was no less tragic.
On the heels of her husband leaving her, Emily’s newborn son had been diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis. Many had wanted to believe that she had acted selfishly, that her inability to cope with the diagnosis had led to her actions.
But Harriet had witnessed the devastation in her face. Would she ever recover? There was a time when she’d worked clinically that she had believed everyone was capable of recovery. In fact, that mindset was tantamount to successfully treating patients. However, a run in with one particular patient had caused Harriet to doubt her own ability to be the catalyst for recovery.
After splashing water up onto her face, Harriet grabbed a fistful of paper towels from the dispenser and pressed them to her mouth. Dwelling on the encounter wasn’t going to make her visit with her mother run any more smoothly.
She balled the papers up and tossed them into the trash before heading out of the bathroom.
“How are you feeling today?” Harriet sat opposite the woman she called mother and resisted the urge to fold her arms defensively over her chest.
“This place isn’t doing me any favours, Harri. The air in here is making me sick. Couldn’t I come and spend some time with you. Just for a little while at least?”
“You and I both know that’s not possible,” she said as kindly as possible.
“Any why not? You don’t want me, is that it? Too good for your own mother now?”
“That’s not what I’m saying. You know why you have to stay here, why you can’t come home with me.”
“Home.” Her mother’s voice was wistful as she glanced out through the large picturesque window that looked out over the moors. “You know I barely remember what it was like to have a home.”
Harriet sighed. “Why did you attack the care assistant?”
“Twenty years doesn’t sound like a long time but when you’re in here.” Her mother turned to stare at her. “When you’re trapped in here for something you know you didn’t do it’s an awfully long time. Don’t you think?”
“We’ve been over it before, Mom,” Harriet said, keeping her voice as level as she could. “You told the Doctors that you did drive us off the pier that day. You told them it wasn’t an accident.”
“Lies!” The word was hissed. Her mother leaned over the table toward Harriet, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “I only said that because that was what they wanted to hear. You and I know it never happened.”
“I was there, Mom, I remember.”
“You were too young to remember anything.”
“I was ten. I remember you telling me to take my seatbelt off. I remember refusing and you unclipping it anyway. And I remember you ordering Kyle to do the same thing.”
As she spoke, Harriet watched the glint that formed in her mother’s eye, the steely determination in the set of her jaw as she folded her arms over her chest and leaned back in her chair.
“That wasn’t me.”
Harriet sighed and sat back. Her mother wasn’t entirely wrong. It had been a part of her that had tried to kill her children. The untreated psychosis that had poisoned her mind and forced her to press her foot down on the accelerator.
“Kyle is such a good boy.”
A headache was beginning to form in the centre of Harriet’s forehead. It was only just after lunch and the day was already too long.
“Why did you attack the care assistant, Mom?”
“He was stealing things from my room. He thought I didn’t know but I know everything I have in there. They let you keep so little, everything I own is precious. But that bastard was taking it so he could sell it.”
“What did he take?”
“My jewellery. Do you remember the butterfly necklace your father gave to me?”
Harriet nodded. She remembered the butterfly necklace but she also knew her mother didn’t have it anymore.
“He gave t
hat to me on our fifth wedding anniversary and that bastard Grant tried to take it from me.”
“I have the necklace,” Harriet said.
“Why would you have it?”
“I’ve had it this whole time you’ve been in here. I told you I would keep your jewellery safe when they took it from you.”
Harriet watched as her mother shook her head. “No. You’re wrong. Dr Connor said I could keep that necklace. I have it here and Grant stole it.”
“Mom…” Harriet leaned over the table and stretched her hands out toward her mother. “I’m telling you. I’ve got the necklace. I promised I would keep them safe, remember?”
Tears crowded her mother’s eyes and Harriet’s stomach lurched.
“I don’t want to be in here anymore, Harri. I don’t like it. It scares me.”
“Why does it scare you?”
“Everyone is so ill and I’m afraid I’m going to die in here. I don’t want to die in hospital, please…”
When she got like this, Harriet found it difficult to refuse her. As much as she knew she had to, it still tore at her heart to see her mother—a woman who had one time been as loving as any mother could be—reduced to such a pitiful state.
Harriet took her mother’s hands in hers and chaffed the cold flesh between her fingers—something her mother had done for her when she was small.
“You know this is the safest place for you to be. In here you don’t have to—”
Her mother jerked her hands back from Harriet’s grip and stared at her with distrust and disgust.
“You don’t care, do you?”
“That’s not true, I—”
“You’ve got your own life now and you don’t care what happens to me in here. You always were the selfish one. Well, just you wait and see when they kill me in here, you’ll be sorry then, Harriet. You’ll be sorry then.”
With a sigh, Harriet straightened up and met her mother’s stormy eyed gaze head on.
“I should go,” she said. “I’m just upsetting you.”
“I think it would be best.”
Harriet nodded and pushed up onto her feet.
“Tell your brother to come and see me when he can.” Her mother’s expression softened as she spoke of Kyle.
“You know he can’t do that.”
“He comes to see me more than you do,” her mother spat the words at her. “At least he doesn’t blame me for everything that happened.”
Rather than argue with her further, Harriet nodded. “I’ll tell him.”
Satisfied, her mother sat back in her chair and folded her arms over her chest.
Harriet turned to leave.
“I didn’t think he would bleed so much…”
“Who?”
“Grant.” Harriet watched her mother stare out through the large picture window again. It was typical of her avoidance of a situation. “I was covered in it and he was screaming. It sounded strange though, wetter.”
Harriet said nothing, her fingers digging into the back of the chair she had vacated.
Despite seeing her mother over the years, it never ceased to amaze her the sudden mood changes she displayed. Not to mention, the cold and calculating way she could recount some of her more vicious attacks.
“Grant said you told him to be quiet, that he was making a fuss over nothing.”
“Well he was. He’s a grown man and he’d done wrong. He needed to be punished.”
“When did you stop taking your medication?”
Her mother turned then, and the glint was back in her eye. The same calculating look she had given earlier, and it was the same expression that Harriet recognised from the day when she had driven them off the pier and into the freezing waters of the North Sea.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Harriet. I’m under constant supervision here. They make sure I take my medication.”
It should have been true. She was under constant supervision, although not as much supervision as she had once been under. As she’d progressed through her treatment, she’d been entitled to receive certain benefits that other patients like Emily would not yet enjoy. But even then, ensuring the patients took their medication should have been a top priority. However, Harriet couldn’t shake the feeling that her mother had somehow managed to slip the net.
It was something she would have to discuss with Dr Connor the moment she got the chance. Perhaps, if she was lucky, she would get to see him before she left.
“I hope that’s true,” she said, feeling utterly impotent as her mother smiled beatifically up at her.
“Don’t forget to tell, Kyle,” she reminded as Harriet pushed away from the table and started across the parquet floor of the day room. “Tell him, mommy loves him.”
A shiver raced down Harriet’s spine as she was buzzed out through the doors into the main corridor.
Dr Connor stood in the hall and Harriet knew he’d been waiting for her.
“How do you think she is?” Although he tried to hide it, Harriet noted the curiosity in his voice as he asked the question. Despite being the primary physician in charge of her mother’s care, he couldn’t help but look to others for their thoughts. It was definitely a professional hazard Harriet had noticed occurring in other doctors besides Dr Connor. As though there was a part of them that sought out reassurance that they were doing a good job, that their efforts were noted and appreciated. She knew it ran deeper than that but as she stood in the hall after meeting with her mother that was how it felt to her.
“Has she been taking her meds?”
Dr Connor’s eyes widened and he dropped his gaze to the charts gripped in his hands. “As far as I’m aware there hasn’t been any issues with her refusing to take her medication.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.”
He glanced up at her. “Then what are you asking?” There was no denying the thread of steel in his voice.
“I’m asking if you know for certain she has been taking her pills.”
A look of horror mixed with consternation crossed his handsome features. “I don’t think I appreciate the direction you’re taking this, Harriet. You know—”
“I’m not saying you’re not doing your best. I just want to know if you’re certain she is getting her meds.”
“You clearly think she isn’t,” he said, side-stepping the question neatly.
“There’s something off about her. The attack on the care-assistant for starters.”
“It wouldn’t be your mother’s first attack on a member of staff,” he said not unkindly. “I’ve still got the scars from our first meeting.”
Harriet gave him a tight smile. “But she wasn’t on medication then, or at least she was refusing most of it. She’s been more stable since you got her into a routine with her tablets. Until now at least…”
“What did she say to you that has you so worked up?”
“It’s not just what she said to me.” Harriet sighed and covered her face with her hands. Visiting her mother tended to take the wind out of her sails but today had been particularly brutal. “It’s the look on her face. I recognise it.”
Dr Connor smiled and placed a gentle hand on Harriet’s shoulder. “I’m telling you, Harriet, she is taking her medication. If it makes you happy, I’ll stop by this afternoon when they’re handing out the meds and watch her take them myself.”
“Really?” She hated the note of needy relief that made up that one word.
“Of course. I can give you a buzz after, let you know how it went if that’ll help take a load off your mind?”
“I’d really appreciate that,” she said, feeling the knot of tension that had formed below her sternum since she’d spoken to her mother loosen.
“And about earlier,” she said.
Dr Connor shook his head. “Forget about it,” he said. “That was my fault. You were right. I shouldn’t have dumped you in the deep end like that.”
“Well, I was thinking I would like to visit with Emily again. I
f you’d still like me too?”
Despite her misgivings about the entire situation, Harriet couldn’t deny the thrill of excitement that raced through her at Dr Connor’s expression of joy.
“I would very much appreciate it,” he said, a broad smile lighting up his features.
Glancing down at her watch, Harriet felt her stomach plummet. What was supposed to have been a short visit to see her mother had eaten into the afternoon. As it was, she was going to be late to her last meeting of the day if she didn’t leave immediately.
“I must go,” she said, smiling up at the man opposite her.
“So soon?”
“I’ve got a meeting this evening.”
Dr Connor nodded his understanding. “You know, perhaps we could get together some time for a drink?”
Harriet’s heart flip-flopped in her chest. A few years ago, she would have jumped at the chance. But now…
“I—”
“We could discuss your mother’s case and treatment. I’d be interested to get your perspective on her progress.”
Heat slid up her neck and into her face as she realised her mistake. He wasn’t asking her out like she’d initially thought. He was asking in a professional capacity and her mind had instantly taken a turn towards something less innocent.
“Well, I suppose… yeah,” she said, her words tumbling over one another as he led her back to the reception desk where Clara sat with her bag and jacket awaiting her.
“Great,” he said. “Shall I call you to arrange a date and time?”
Harriet nodded, feeling Clara’s attention settle on her as she gathered up her belongings.
“Sounds good. I’ll speak to you then, Doctor.”
He opened his mouth to say something else but seemed to catch himself at the last second and simply nodded instead. Harriet, started for the door, rather than wait for him to say anymore. After everything, all she wanted to do was escape out into the rain. Perhaps if she was lucky, the cool raindrops would take some of the shame heating her cheeks away.
Pushing out into the rain, she glanced back up at the imposing building and caught sight of her mother in the picturesque window that took up one wall of the day room.
The Hanging Time Page 6