by Cara McKenna
“With the mentally ill, the symptoms are flavors, all mixed and mingled, shared between patients who are on a similar spectrum, but in all different measurements. Two patients might share a certain quality, say, paranoia. But one could be schizophrenic and the other merely anxious and under-rested. A third might be intoxicated. By itself, paranoia is a single flavor, found in a dozen distinct dishes. Like pepper if you will.”
“Sure.”
“Lee Paleckas is paranoid. And while a meatloaf might taste of pepper, there’s more going on—salt and basil and garlic powder, any number of things. Follow?”
“I think so.” Though I had no clue what it meant about my lame-ass non-treatment plan.
“Whatever flavors Mr. Paleckas has going on in him aside from paranoia, I can’t tell yet. He’s too smothered in gravy, from the meds the hospital’s got him on, and whatever extracurriculars may have tainted his earlier diagnoses.”
I couldn’t help but crack a grin at this ridiculous metaphor.
“So until we can scrape some of that gravy off and figure out what recipe we’re looking at, I’m in perfect agreement with you, Miss Coffey.”
My brows popped up, and Dr. Morris smiled.
“You looked surprised.”
“I am surprised. I thought it must’ve sounded like a cop-out.”
“In my not-always-popular opinion, there is far too much gravy-ladling going on with patients like Lee Paleckas.” He stood, tidying the files on his desk. “And somewhere, a mob of psychopharmacologists is sharpening its pitchforks.”
I got to my feet.
“But as his new doctor, I plan to lessen Lee’s dosage and get a good look at what’s underneath the side effects, just as you suggested.” He opened the door for me and we exited his office. “Pardon me, but I have a session to head to.”
“Sure. Thanks so much for letting me sit in, Dr. Morris.”
We shook hands.
“You LPNs are refreshing. You haven’t had your intuition crowded out by a skull full of med school texts. So, well done. If a time comes when you find yourself in need of a letter of recommendation, don’t hesitate to knock.”
I blinked, floored, and Dr. Morris started down the hall, the opposite way I’d be heading. He turned after a pace. “And Miss Coffey?”
“Yes?”
“With all due respect to our stellar nursing staff—give some thought to joining the dark side.” Demonstrably, he straightened the collar of his white coat.
Me? A psychiatrist? That was just whacked.
Dr. Morris pumped his fist in the air, cultishly chanting, “One of us. One of us,” as he turned and headed down the hall. And I thought, maybe whacked is exactly what it takes.
Chapter Twelve
I ran into Kelly in the mid-afternoon in the S3 break room. He was eating an apple and watching a golf tournament on the tiny TV in the corner—surely someone else’s selection he was too lazy to change. He turned as I entered and offered the barest flicker of a smile.
“Hey, Kelly.”
“Hey, yourself.”
I bought an orange pop from the machine and sat on the other side of the table. I needed the sugar, badly. The afternoon had been a mess—nothing that required any restraining or sedation, but it seemed like everybody’s psychoses were keyed up and eager to clash. Maybe from the gloomy weather.
“It’s not a full moon, is it?” I asked, pressing the cold can to my temple.
“Feels like it. Everybody’s voices are screaming extra loud today.”
After a few minutes of impersonal pleasantries, Kelly got up. I figured he was leaving, but he headed for the vending machine. When he sat back down, he faced me, instead of the TV.
“Wasn’t expecting to find you sitting in on that admission,” he said, cracking open his cola.
“Me neither. I didn’t know I was ’til I saw it on the duties board.”
“How was it for you?”
“It was . . . interesting. I’ve never gotten to see that before. Plus the part afterward, listening in on a psychiatrist explaining how they come up with the treatment plan they do. It sounds naive, but I didn’t think there’d be so much guesswork. I mean, I’m sure they know their stuff, but at the end of the day, it’s just taking a best stab, or holding off until there’s a better set of clues to go by.”
“Mental illness is messy. Can’t check an X-ray and pin it down like a broken bone.”
“I know. It was just interesting. Demystifying. And I like Dr. Morris now. He always seemed kind of brusque and snarky in hand-off, but he’s actually pretty cool.”
Something changed in Kelly’s expression. Was I dreaming, or was that jealousy passing over his unreadable face? I had to make a decision. Stroke his ego and downplay how impressed I was by Dr. Morris, or let him suffer the knowledge that I could be wowed by more than a potent attraction and a big dick. Not much of a contest.
“He’s good,” I finished casually. “I can see why he’s the head of the department.”
“He’s not perfect. No doctor is.”
“I know that.”
With a nasal huff, Kelly’s expression went back to its usual neutral state. “But he’s good. You’re right. He’s been real good with Don.”
I softened at his concession. “So have you.”
Kelly shrugged, taking a deep drink.
“Dr. Morris told me I should think about psychiatry.”
“Probably wise,” Kelly agreed, deadpan. “You can use all the help you can get.”
I shot him a snotty look. “Ah ha ha ha. He said he’d write me a letter of recommendation. Like, if I ever applied to premed, I think he meant.”
Kelly’s gaze wandered to the window as he sipped his pop. “Did he, then.”
There was something mean-spirited in his tone. At worst he was implying it was a ridiculous notion, my being a doctor. At best . . . He couldn’t actually be jealous, could he? Kelly Robak, so above everyone’s bullshit, jealous of a middle-aged doctor who’d deigned to compliment a new staffer? Would wonders never cease? Plus if that were the case, what on earth did it mean for any future sex Kelly and I had? He was a force already. Jealousy might turn him full-on, foaming rabid.
“So, yeah. Though it’s not like I’ve got a spare hundred grand lying around to go, even if I wanted to.”
His gray eyes stayed pinned to the outside, lit up like icicles by the belated afternoon sun. “Do you want to?”
“I dunno. It’s a pretty expensive gamble to take.” But damn if I wasn’t proud to have been told I should consider stepping up to the high-stakes table. Before now, everyone in my life had been dazzled that I’d earned any kind of useful qualification, that I’d landed a salaried job with benefits. Not because I was dumb or anything, just because that sort of achievement didn’t happen for people in my family. Amber’s graduation from beauty school had been a major event. As far as that crowd was concerned, my scrubs practically deemed me a brain surgeon.
The senior weekend nurse entered the break room then, and though we didn’t look suspicious in the least, I sat up rod-straight.
“Afternoon Erin, Kelly. How’s Saturday treating the two of you?” she asked, perusing the vending machine.
“Fine,” Kelly said, “except somebody must’ve spiked the water cooler with extra crazy juice.”
She rolled her eyes with commiseration, not bothering to correct his casual use of crazy, as she might have if she’d had the energy. “Tell me about it. You both off tomorrow?”
We nodded.
“Any good plans?”
I glanced at Kelly, and he glanced at me.
“Nothing I know of,” Kelly said, staring me in the eyes.
A dark little part of me was pleased to say, “I’m spending the day with my sister and nephew. We’re going to
a farm with a legendary hay-bale maze.” And no Marco. Though I wouldn’t mind a bit if he came along and wound up lost in the maze, never to be found again.
“Oh, how old is your nephew?”
“Almost three.”
We went off on a tangent about what the most adorable ages were for boys versus girls, and Kelly finished his pop and excused himself to get back to the ward. I watched him go, proud in a petty way that I was busy all day Sunday, and now he knew it. That what we’d done was fun, but I wouldn’t be spending my free time mooning in my room, wishing he’d call to validate my existence with another invitation to screw all over his house.
The only trouble with this strategy, I realized, was that it sounded depressingly like some tactic you’d read in The Rules.
* * *
My day off passed too quickly. The farm was fun—with the exception of Jack having a meltdown when a llama spat on his new jacket—and we had an impromptu picnic dinner in Amber’s front yard.
I thought about Kelly as little as I could manage, knowing if my mind started wandering, the infatuation would return in a blink, and my resolve for us to go back to simply being coworkers would be gone just as fast.
Come Monday morning hand-off, it felt almost as if we’d never slept together. The sensation should have pleased me. After all, that was exactly what I wanted, in my rational brain. Why on earth should it be disappointment filling me, right where I’d expected the relief to be?
I stole glances at him, trying to remember how that cool, calm face had looked looming above mine. How that level voice had sounded. How those battered arms had held me through the night. I could recall those things, but with only dreamlike fidelity. That made me sadder than I’d ever have guessed.
I saw Lee Paleckas on the ward for the first time that morning, bright and early, for breakfast meds. He wasn’t on the roster—Dr. Morris would be supervising his pharma regimen personally for the first week or two—but I offered a smile as he eyed me through the booth’s window. I thought maybe he returned it, sort of a grudging twitch of his lip, but for all I knew, it was a side-effect tic.
It wasn’t until late in the afternoon that I got a chance to talk to him. I was done with post-lunch meds, free to mingle with the patients during their short free period between sessions. I found Lee staring out the rec room window and walked over.
“Hi, Lee.”
He turned and offered a guarded assessment. “Hey.”
“How are you finding everything so far?”
“It fucking sucks,” he said, with a sneer like he might hawk a loogie, but thankfully didn’t. There was more lucidity in his eyes today, and his color was better.
“I hope it won’t suck for too long. You play cards at all?”
“You let us play cards? Didn’t know we were allowed to do jack-shit on our own time except veg out to the fucking soaps.” He jerked his thumb at the TV.
“Until somebody comes up with a way to assault themselves or someone else with a worn-out pack of Hoyles, yes, cards are allowed. You want a game? I’ve got nothing to do for the next half hour.”
“Yeah, fine. Whatever.”
As we walked to the games shelf I said, “That wasn’t a challenge, incidentally. I’m not looking to be proven wrong about cards making lousy weapons.” I kept all the suspicion out of my tone, and it earned me the faintest shadow of a smile.
“Poker?” he asked. “That’s the only kind of cards worth playing.”
If I’d had the time, I would’ve consulted with Dr. Morris and found out if Lee had any known issues with gambling. We weren’t playing for money, but still. At the moment, though, my primary concern was getting him to engage, so I took a gamble myself. “Sure. Five-card draw? That’s all I know.”
“We got anything to bet with?”
I scanned the shelf and grabbed the checkers box.
“Red can be one dollar, and black can be five.” We sat at a free table and Lee shuffled while I divided the checkers between us. Kelly passed by, smooth and silent as a trolling shark.
Lee dealt. “You’re a lot nicer than the other nurses.”
“I’m new. Give it a week,” I said with a smile, stealing Dennis’s line.
“Well, you’re still miles nicer than that Jenny bitch.”
My professional coat slid over my shoulders with ease, no reactionary bits of me tempted to take his bait and get defensive. Clearly I saved those lapses in self-control for real grade-A douchebags like Marco. “It’s not any of our jobs to be nice, sadly, not unless being nice explicitly helps your treatment.”
“Can’t hurt,” Lee said, dealing the cards.
“No, happily you’re right. What’s wild?”
Lee snorted, shooting me this funny little coy glance with his face cast down, a taste of how charming this guy might’ve been, if his life weren’t so terribly complicated. “Wild cards are for babies and pussies.”
“Fine,” I said, arranging my hand then setting a red checker between us. “Ante.”
Lee did the same. “And maybe she’s not such a bitch, that Jenny chick. I was giving her a hard time.”
“She’s used to it.”
“I’m not giving you a hard time, though. ’Cause you’re pretty.”
I gave him a cool look. Nothing about the comment came off as skeezy, but I wouldn’t be setting any permissive precedents with patients where attractiveness was concerned. “It’s not my job to be pretty, either. If you give me any reason to suspect my appearance is becoming a distraction to your treatment, I will arrange for our paths not to cross.”
Lee laughed silently, shaking his head at his cards. “So you’re a bitch, too.”
“When it suits me,” I said, and plunked two red checkers beside the antes. “When it benefits your—”
“Yeah, my fucking treatment,” he finished for me, still grinning. “I got it.”
After a few hands, I was up eight facsimile bucks and Lee asked, “Where’d you learn to play poker?”
“One of my mom’s old boyfriends,” I said, stacking my ante on his.
“One of ’em? She go through a bunch?”
My stomach soured with misgiving, but I’d see where this topic took us, since it had him communicating. “Yeah, you could say that.”
After a heavy pause, Lee said, “Mine, too. New dude every fucking month, it seemed like.”
“It’s not easy, is it?”
“Did . . . Any of your mom’s boyfriends. Did they ever . . . you know. Try to fuck with you?” Lee murmured. I looked him dead in the eyes, to see if he was fishing for titillation. But his stare didn’t chill my blood—it broke my heart. That stare said, If they did, I understand.
“No,” I told him. “They didn’t.”
“That’s good,” he said, avoiding my gaze.
“Happens to lots of kids, though.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I hear it does.” His hands were shaking, ever so slightly, lips pursed to a thin, bloodless line.
After a few quiet hands, I took a chance. Knowing Lee might very well blow up at me for what I was about to say, I caught Kelly’s eye across the room, and raised my brows to beam him a warning, just in case. He gave a single nod.
“You know,” I said quietly to Lee, “if there’s ever anything you need to get out of you, any shit that’s weighing you down, you can always talk to Dr. Morris. About any baggage you might have, from your childhood.” I held my breath, every muscle on a hair trigger.
He stared at me a few seconds. “I could talk to you instead, maybe. You’re easy to talk to.”
“I’m not your doctor, though. That’s not really my place. But Dr. Morris, he’s here. And he’s heard everything under the sun, I promise.”
Lee cracked a shy smile. “He’s not pretty like you.”
“I’ll tell him to work on that.”
With no crisis imminent, I beamed Kelly another message when Lee was busy shuffling. It’s cool. As you were.
“How have your voices been?” I asked. “Since you came through the ER?”
“Jesus. I thought we were just playing cards here.”
“We are. But it’s my job to be nosy. How are your voices?”
“They’re fine, since the meds kicked in. And since some of my DIY prescriptions wore off.”
“Good.”
He was about to replace my discards, but froze with the deck between us. “How long d’you think I’m stuck here? Like, for real?”
“It’s too soon to say.”
He released my cards and exchanged a pair of his own. “Figures.”
“But I think you’re one of the most self-aware patients I’ve encountered, so far.” It was the truth, though I didn’t bother telling him exactly how new I was. “If we find you the right meds and you can stick to them, I think you could be headed to an outpatient program sooner than most. But those are big ifs.”
“What’s self-aware mean?”
“It means that at the best of times, you can see your symptoms for what they are. You seem like you’re able to step back from yourself, and examine what you’re feeling, and what your voices might be telling you.”
“And that’s good, for somebody like me?”
I smiled. “That’s good for anybody. That’s the difference between someone who can turn the other cheek and walk away from a pointless fight, and one who’ll lose their shit and wind up hurting someone, or go to jail. Someone who’s circumspect, and can look at their emotions and urges with detachment, not somebody who’s a slave to their impulses.”
“I think you’re giving me too much credit. I been in lots of fights. Over real stupid shit.”
I exchanged three cards. “I know you were self-aware enough to seek substance abuse treatment. That means, at least sometimes, your brain knows what’s best for you, and has the strength to shout louder than your addictions or your disorder.”
“I never finished none of those programs, though.”