by Sandra Block
I fold the paper in quarters. “It’s worth a phone call anyway.”
“Whatever.”
“What do you mean, whatever?”
“Do you possibly recognize a pattern here?” Scotty scratches under his Sabres cap. “This bizarre need to become obsessed with your patients?”
“It’s called doing my job.”
“Yeah, sure,” he snorts. “Remember that fucking psychopathic lady? That ended well.”
“She was obsessed with me,” I argue, while he glances ahead at the melting numbers on the Dali clock to check the time left in his break. “Speaking of obsession, how is the great hunt for the Treasury bonds going?”
When Mom was spiraling into her dementia, she mentioned that Dad might have stashed away some Treasury bonds and she might have forgotten where they were. Might being the operative word here, because there might not have actually been any such bonds to begin with. But she became obsessed with finding them, and now Scotty’s convinced there’s gobs and gobs of money out there, just laid to waste.
“Crappy,” he says. “I haven’t found shit.”
I shake my ice cubes. “Maybe that’s because they don’t actually exist.”
“Yeah, so you’ve told me a million times.”
“I’m consistent.”
He takes a sip of his own iced cappuccino. “You know, Zoe, I know you think I’m a fucking idiot, et cetera, et cetera, and maybe the whole thing’s one big circle jerk, and maybe she was just demented and delusional and whatever psychobabble shit you want to call her, but I promised her on her fucking deathbed I would look for the bonds, and I’m looking for the bonds. All right?”
“All right, jeez.” I break out my RITE review book.
Scotty pulls his straw in and out of the drink with an annoying squeak, not responding. I agree that it would be nice if there were money lying around. I’d be able to do a fellowship instead of hitting the streets to pay off my loans. It would be nice if we had world peace and an end to world hunger. It would also be nice if Mom were still alive. There are a lot of things that would be nice.
Scotty tosses his drink in the garbage with a well-practiced wrist flip, garners his two points, then gets up. “Back to work.”
“Hey, before you go. Just take a quick look at this.” I hold the phone up for him to see, and he bends down.
“Zoe, man, that’s fucking disgusting.”
“What? It’s just a scar.”
He shakes his head without answering and heads to the counter, grabbing an apron. I glance down at my RITE review book, but before making the commitment to open the thing, decide to check in on the Black and Missing website first. No comments under Jane’s picture, just “Thank you. We received your picture and will do our best to help find your loved one.” Deciding I’m all out of excuses, I open my review book. Question number one:
A 21-year-old female college student is brought in by her boyfriend after increasingly confused and agitated behavior. Soon after, she is described as appearing fully awake but unresponsive. She is diagnosed correctly by the first-year resident as catatonic. Catatonia is characterized by which of the following?
Of course, the question is on catatonia. Apparently, God is making jokes now.
a) a “waxy” state, where the body can be manipulated into various postures which the patient maintains
b) excessive grimacing or blinking
c) hyperkinetic state, with large-amplitude, purposeless movements
d) all of the above
Unfortunately for Jane, the answer is d: all of the above. But that still doesn’t answer the real question, the question that won’t be in my review book: Who is she, and what is she doing here?
“Hi, Zoe.”
I look up to see Dr. Berringer standing there.
“Oh, hi.” I stand up, too.
“This is my wife, Trudy,” he says. She takes my hand like a queen. Trudy Berringer is pretty, if in a manufactured way. Boob-job, fake-blond, tanning-booth pretty. She has “former debutante” written all over her.
“You come here a lot?” he asks. His eyes look gray against his sweater.
“Oh, yeah, well, my brother works here.” I point over to him, and Scotty gives a polite wave from afar.
“We were just walking by,” he says, and Trudy nods her agreement. “Nice place,” he comments, taking it in. We all stand there staring at each other. It strikes me that we really have nothing to talk about. I can’t exactly ask about Jane in the middle of the coffeehouse. Nor can I reveal that, oh, by the way, I posted her picture on a missing persons website and unfortunately got no hits yet. “Well, we’re going to grab something.” He points up to the register.
“Right, right. I’ll see you later.”
“Nice to meet you,” Trudy says.
I sit back down on my settee and open my book while Eddie takes their order. Number two:
Which of the following is true regarding post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)?
a) nightmares are often a troubling phenomenon
b) intrusive thoughts are a key feature
c) just witnessing a traumatic event may be a sufficient cause
d) hyperarousal state may be seen in these cases
e) all of the above
I circle e, then steal a glance over at the Berringer couple. They’re sitting in the corner in the glare of a sunny window, sipping coffees. Both are watching the traffic from opposite sides of the table, not speaking. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons starts playing. (Scotty threw out the Wagner after I complained about it enough, and now they play this ad nauseam. Management decision, he told me.) I look over at Tad and Trudy again.
Maybe it’s just that you run out of things to say after years together. Maybe it’s just companionable silence. Maybe, as a psychiatrist-in-training, I’m making too much of nonverbal clues. But as they sit there, staring past each other, I could swear they look unhappy.
Chapter Seven
The week flies by, and it’s Yom Kippur already. Scotty and I walk out of the temple into a misty rain. This morning it was gray and muggy out, impossible weather to dress for. Clothes start out sweaty, then get soaked from a downpour an hour later. I can’t wait to get into my jeans and out of my “temple clothes”—my pin-striped gray suit, which is a hair tight in the waist (likely due to a dry-cleaning issue), and scratched-up flats. I feel like a women’s basketball coach in that suit, clapping up and down the sidelines and wishing she had her sweats on. As we walk down the street toward his car, rain starts falling in a lazy, light spray, deciding whether or not to come down in earnest. The type of rain that makes you consider but decide against an umbrella, a decision you’ll regret in a half hour.
“So what did you think of the service?” Scotty asks.
“Fine. A little heavy on the music.” Our rabbi is a big believer in music. My mom once cracked that his guitar was surgically attached to his hip. (She was the queen of one-liners before her brain started shrinking.) Not that I’m antimusic, but I can do without five musical versions of every prayer. If I wanted to sit in temple for three hours, I would have been conservative.
Scotty folds a rectangle of gum up like an accordion and pops it in his mouth, the same way he’s eaten gum since he was six.
“You going in to work today?”
“No, I’m being a good Jew. You?”
“Yeah, unfortunately. Eddie’s got the flu so I have to cover.”
The rain has made its decision to go full bore now, pelting us and sending rivulets down the side of the street. Water rolls off my raincoat and onto my skirt, and Scotty’s strategically gelled hair now lies flat on his head like a bowl cut. Our leisurely stroll becomes an all-out run until finally, we reach Scotty’s car, a tiny silver hybrid. Being tall like me, he has to fold his body in half to get in. I lumber in on the other side.
“So I’m dropping you home?” he asks. The rain thuds against the windshield.
“Yup.”
“Hey,” he says, look
ing into the rearview mirror and wiping moisture off his forehead, “did you get a chance to get any of those pictures together?”
“Oh, right,” I say, stalling. “Not yet.”
Scotty’s been asking me to gather pictures of Mom for a Web memorial he’s doing. I’m not exactly sure what a Web memorial is—something like a website of Mom’s life. It’s under construction but he showed me the home page, a photo of Mom from a party, her head back and laughing, unaware of the camera. She is beautiful in that picture, the essence of herself, a joyful, loving, self-assured woman. The complete opposite of who she was before she died. There were tabs running down the left side in categories: Vacations; Parties; Zoe; Scotty; Mom and Dad. An entire life shrunk down into a website, as if that were even possible.
We drive home, a sports station squawking about the Bills, with each caller enumerating the ways each player sucks, and Scotty pulls into my driveway. “Is Mike there?”
“No, he’s working. You want to come in?” I ask.
“Nah. I got to get changed and back to work. Thanks anyway.”
“Okay, see you later.” I race in and let Arthur out of his crate. He immediately assumes the position, lying down rather promiscuously on his back, his tongue out and tail wagging. I can’t claim to be as happy. Though getting out of my soaked temple-wear and into my lovely, dry jeans is a good start.
Now that I’m home, though, I have no idea what to do with myself. Yom Kippur means no schedule and no work, filling a Type A-er like me with dispiriting ennui. And anything I might want to do surely constitutes sinning. I can’t study for the RITE or read up on further treatments for catatonia because that would definitely qualify as work. Crashing on my couch, I flip through a gossip magazine but realize this is most likely a sin, too. I vaguely recall a pronouncement against slander. The gas fireplace flickers orange over the fake gray-black stones. The fireplace would have been inconceivable before today, but the rain has finally stopped, and the day has turned precipitously cold. Fall has officially fallen. The sky outside is still gray, but a cool, misty gray now. Everything looks gray in fact, like the sky sucked out all the color. Gray glossy grass, gray sodden sidewalk, silver-gray underbellies of the leaves flittering like fish scales.
The gossip mag (more a picture book than a magazine really) is finished in two minutes, and I thump my fuzzy-socked feet against the coffee table. I am officially bored, a dangerous state of affairs for an ADHDer who needs her dopamine fix. I could call Mike, but he might not want to pause from stitching up a gunshot wound to chat with me. Then it occurs to me: I could call the Nigerian girl again. The family’s name was on the school website, but their machine has been “full and cannot accept new messages at this time” all week. I unfold the creased paper where the number is scribbled, make the call, and am shocked when someone picks up the phone.
“Hello?”
Even the hello has a Southern accent. “Um, hi. I was looking to speak with Sarima?”
“Can I ask who’s calling?”
“Well, yes, but she doesn’t know me. I’m a doctor from Buffalo. Dr. Zoe Goldman. And—”
“Oh, all right. I’ll get her.”
I hear a name being called. Arthur wanders by and tries to make off with the paper with her picture, and I shove him.
“Hello?” Now it’s a Nigerian hello.
“Yes, hi, this is Zoe Goldman.” I realize at once this will be an impossible situation to explain, especially with a language barrier, so I improvise. “I’m calling from a health agency. We just need to verify that you are in fact Sarima Balewa.”
“Yes. That is me.”
“And you are matriculating as a foreign exchange student in Oak Hills High School?”
“Yes, I am.”
“And your vaccinations are current?” I throw this one in to sound official.
“Absolutely,” she answers.
I pause then, out of things to say. “That’s fine then. Thank you for your time.” I hang up with a sigh. So I have proved the obvious. Sarima Balewa is in fact Sarima Balewa and not Jane. I put the paper down and lay back on the couch. My stomach growls, but it’ll have to wait until sundown. Maybe it’s the gray day, the fuzzy socks, or the empty stomach, but all at once I feel drugged. Pulling my blanket (Mom’s old lilac blanket that she knitted herself, pre-dementia) over me, I fall into a deep slumber.
When the phone wakes me up, three hours have slipped by. My right leg has gone numb from a dog lying on top of it, and I’m starved.
“Hello?” I sit straight up, and Arthur woofs awake.
“Hi, is this Dr. Goldman?” says a woman’s voice.
“Yes?”
“Yes, it’s eleven north. We’re having a bit of an issue here.”
“Okay?” My voice is still husky with sleep.
“Our patient in 1128 is threatening to leave AMA.”
“What’s the patient’s name?”
“Tiffany. Tiffany Munroe.”
Tiffany Munroe leaving AMA. Why is this night different from any other night? “Okay, here’s the thing. I’m actually not on call. Maybe the service didn’t get the message, but I switched with Dr. Chang.”
Papers rustle over the phone. “No, we definitely have you down.”
“Yes, I can see how that might be, but it’s actually a holiday. A very important Jewish holiday, and I’m not on.” I’m trying to keep my voice even. “Jason is on call. Dr. Jason Chang.” With fucking whom I switched one month ago, of fucking which I reminded him yesterday.
“I don’t know anything about that,” the nurse says, annoyed. “And your name is down here as the on-call doc. So, unless you’d rather I call Dr. Berringer—”
“No, no, that won’t be necessary,” I grumble. Probation Girl surely does not need that. I flick off the charming fireplace and the room blacks out like a light switch was turned off. “I’m on my way.”
“Thank you very much,” the nurse says with a tone that sounds more like “Fuck you very much.” I slip on my new brown (seal brown, per the box) boots, and Arthur gives me a mournful “say it ain’t so” look. Time to go to the hospital, to work.
I’m trying hard not to sin, but it isn’t easy.
* * *
Room 1128 is empty, of course.
The bed has been stripped, leaving a stained, blue-striped mattress. The bathroom is empty, too, a mint-green toothpaste line running down the middle of the sink. Ms. Tiffany Munroe has left the building.
I march over to the nurses’ counter ready to blaspheme like a drunken sailor, Yom Kippur or not, when the nurse preempts me. “I’m sorry,” she says, sounding in fact sorry. “I tried to call you. Like five minutes after we spoke, Tiffany vanished.”
I pull out my phone, which was conveniently on vibrate, and notice a voice mail from the hospital. “Oh,” I answer, deflated. It’s hard to be mad at someone who’s actually contrite. And it is Yom Kippur, after all. “That’s fine.” From the chart rack, Jane Doe catches my eye. “How’s Jane doing, by the way?”
The nurse squints her eyes. “The catatonic?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing’s up with her as far as I know. Stable.”
“Oh well. While I’m here, might as well go and check.”
As I walk in, her shadow looms on the wall, a camel with two humps. A soft light buzzes over her head, giving her a pale cast. Jane is the nighttime version of herself. Staring, grimacing, doing the bunny-nose thing. No change whatsoever, despite our sizable bump in the Ativan yesterday. The vision is beyond depressing. I turn around to leave and nearly slam into Dr. Berringer in the doorway.
“Hey, you,” he says, like we happen to be running into each other at a shop. “What are you doing here?” He’s wearing old corduroys and a pilled tan sweater. Like me, he’s in “hang-out clothes.” He usually wears khakis with a blazer on rounds.
“They called me for Tiffany. She left AMA. But I figured I’d check on Jane while I’m here,” I say.
He nods, turning to
her. “No change, huh?”
“No, unfortunately not.” There is a pause. The bed moans, the IV bag whirs, her stockings fill with air and deflate again. All the sounds in the room are inanimate.
“Tough case. I was talking about her with a colleague.”
“Yeah?”
“She said the next step may be ECT.”
I pause. Electroconvulsive therapy. The big guns, or more like the assault weapons. His colleague is right, though. It’s the last-resort treatment in the literature review on catatonia.
“But we have some time before we get that drastic,” he says. “Got some more meds we can try.”
“I hope so.” We stand another moment. “Well, I was just leaving, actually,” I say.
“Yeah, me too. Just checking up on things on the floor.” We walk into the hallway together, our feet clacking two different rhythms against the tile. I don’t know whether to be impressed or alarmed at his obvious workaholic tendencies. Maybe this is how he got to be “wunderkind from the Big Easy.”
“Wait, isn’t it your holiday or something? New Year’s?” he asks.
“Yom Kippur. But they couldn’t reach Jason, so I came in.”
“Ah, that’s too bad. I wish they had called me. Did you park far away?”
“Not too far.” Though this is a lie. The resident lot is a good ten-minute walk, through not the nicest neighborhood. A neighborhood where people shoot one another.
“Let me walk you,” he says.
“No, that’s all right.”
“No arguing. It’s a Southern gentlemanly thing. I insist.”
“Well.” I laugh. “I suppose I can’t argue against the Southern gentlemanly thing.” We head into the elevator. But instead of pushing the down button, he pushes the twelve. The top floor.
“I want to show you something first, if you don’t mind,” he says as the elevator lumbers up.
“Sure,” I answer, though I’m feeling a bit light-headed and really just want to go home and get something to eat. But I’ll admit that I’m intrigued. The elevator dings open, and I follow him out. The twelfth floor, oddly, does not have the same mud-brown color scheme as the rest of the hospital. The carpet is a light pink, with tuna-colored Formica furniture, a basic block coffee table, and pink plastic chairs with scratched-up seats. A pale-pink curtain covers the large window.