by Tenaya Jayne
"Vincent! Wait! He drugged me! I didn’t do it! I didn’t reject you!"
I entered the thick of the trees, the darkness enveloping me. Vaguely, in my frenzied state, I could hear Uncle Jack trying to catch up, yelling to me. My head was reeling and my vision had burred further, it was like trying to see underwater.
"Vincent, please don’t leave me!" I wailed, turning in circles, looking for him.
My tears were turning to ice on my cheeks. Unable to stand any longer, I fell to my knees. Uncle Jack was behind me, he grabbed me by the shoulders trying to pick me up off the ground. I jerked away from him, still unwilling to give up. Everything was slipping away. I couldn’t fend off the drugs in my blood any longer.
"You said you would never leave me! You said we had a never-ending future!" I screamed to the trees with the last of what I had, and then all went dark and totally quiet.
I was drifting in a fog, only vaguely aware I was alive at all. I could hear talking from a great distance. My eyes fluttered, my arms were too heavy to lift. My Uncle was near me. His voice pressed and ebbed like the tide. Sleep was tugging me back, but I was trying hard to hear what he was saying.
"No, it’s urgent. I need someone to come and analyze her. Money is not an issue. She’s a danger to herself. Yes, you had better bring one, just in case. Thank you."
In my delirium, I couldn’t feel the emotions rampant within me, anger, hatred, love, agony. I went back to the fog. The darkness was my closest friend. Many hours passed, unbeknown to me, as my blood cleansed itself. Again, I became aware of someone talking but this time it was not my Uncle.
"Dulcee, wake up. Can you hear me?"
Something was tapping my cheek. My eyes fluttered, everything was blurry. A strange man was close to my face, breathing on me. I felt a jolt as I became lucid. Everything I hadn’t been able to feel, slammed into me. Every pore was throbbing with wrath and frustration. Then I realized I couldn’t move. I was in a strait jacket! I slowly lifted my head as the stranger and my uncle came into focus. I was so demented with anger I could hardly breathe. The stranger grabbed me by the shoulders and hoisted me into a sitting position.
"Dulcee, I’m Doctor Phelps. I work at Aspen Grove Psychiatric Hospital. Your uncle asked me to come and talk to you. He is very concerned about you and I assure you he only asked me to come because he loves you. No one wants to hurt you. I’m very sorry to have to keep you in the jacket, but your uncle and I are afraid you might be a danger to yourself and until I know otherwise it has to stay on," he said all of this in a pacifying tone.
Dr. Phelps was a skinny nerd who resembled an overgrown turtle. He wore large glasses that made his eyes appear twice their size, and his nose whistled as he breathed. I wanted to squash him. I wasn't going to talk to him. I looked over at my uncle who quailed under my gaze. With every ounce of intensity I could conjure, I told him how much I hated him with my eyes.
"Dulcee, who is Vincent?" Dr. Phelps asked.
I didn’t respond. Dr. Phelps looked over at Uncle Jack, then back at me.
"Your Uncle said that last night, after you ran from the house, you were calling for someone named Vincent. Who is he?"
I didn’t know if staying silent would be to my advantage or not. Regardless, there was no way to have my life back. Even if this doctor determined I wasn't crazy, there was no way Uncle Jack would let me stay here alone again. I was sure I couldn’t maintain a relationship with my uncle any longer. I hated him too much. But I didn’t want to be hauled away to the loony bin either. If only I could stay with Uncle Jack. After his lawsuit was over, I would eventually end up back here in this house. Would it be too late by then? Every second that ticked away put more and more distance between Vincent and me. My uncle had seen and heard too much. I had to try to convince them that Vincent was real and not just a figment of my imagination. That was step number one.
I took a deep breath and looked into the face of Dr. Phelps. He was staring at me, still awaiting my answer.
"Vincent is my fiancé," I said, horrified, hearing the words hit the air. It was done. I had said it. "He has been living here with me since my uncle left for LA. We had a fight last night, and he left. I ran after him, trying to stop him, to make him come back."
"Your fiancé?" Dr. Phelps repeated, raising his eyebrows. "I see, and, um…Why didn’t you tell your uncle that you were engaged when you moved in?"
"Because I wasn’t engaged when I moved in."
"How long have you been engaged?" Dr. Phelps asked, pulling out a little note pad and pen.
I sighed wearily, and counted backward. "Eight days."
"And, how long have you known this Vincent?"
I shuddered having to say it. "Three weeks."
"What is his last name?"
"Sands. Vincent Sands."
Dr. Phelps scribbled it down. "And he has been living here with you the last few weeks?"
"I just said that, didn’t I?" I snapped. Dr. Phelps grunted but didn’t look up from his pad.
"Do you have an engagement ring?"
"Yes, well no, that is I did," I stammered.
He looked up at me his eyebrows raised again.
"What happened to it? Did you lose it?"
"Vincent took it back." My voice broke and I began to shake. The tears came so fast.
Dr. Phelps ignored my tears and pushed on, pragmatically. "There's a cut on your ring finger, how did that happen?"
I felt totally naked. The pain of how I had lost my beautiful ring was searing inside me. How had everything fallen apart so quickly? I shut my eyes as tight as I could and shook my head. I tried to disembody myself from my recent memories. I wailed in anguish and forced myself to answer his question.
"The ring did it," I said, trying to fight down the shaking of my voice. "It was…too tight."
Dr. Phelps looked up from his writing, disbelief plain on his face, and then quickly looked down again to his pad. "And what about your chest? Did you do that to yourself? Or is Vincent abusive?"
I wanted to spit in his face for talking about Vincent that way. I ground my teeth together. Dr. Phelps was a rapist. He was violating my life, a stranger, poking around in my personal affairs.
"I can’t…I won’t tell you why I did that. But it was me, not Vincent."
He accepted my answer without argument and scribbled for a few more seconds.
"Okay," he said, getting to his feet. "Dulcee, you just relax. I'll be back in few minutes. I want to ask you some more questions. Okay?"
I nodded looking at my feet. Dr. Phelps walked away, pulling Uncle Jack with him to the kitchen, where I couldn’t hear them. They stood talking quietly for a few minutes before Uncle Jack led Dr. Phelps to his office. Dr. Phelps went in and shut the door behind him. I was sure that he was going to make some phone calls or something like that. Uncle Jack didn’t seem to want to talk to me or even look at me. He had betrayed me. He didn’t come back to the living room where I was trapped but retreated again into the kitchen.
Twenty minutes is a long time when you are in a strait jacket, wondering if your sanity has gone on vacation. I was shriveling up inside. This was worse than when the fire had gone out before. Now I fully understood what Vincent's note had said about a gently gaping hole. Only it didn’t feel gentle. Inside me was a jagged, cavernous pit that wailed and screamed in agony, the edges clawed in vain at the empty center, trying to grasp what had been forcefully removed. It was no longer just my eyes, I was a living, breathing, exit wound.
Before Dr. Phelps returned, I explored the nothingness that was me. If I couldn't find Vincent, and win him back, I would die. If I could not have his love, I would end my own life. How could I go on? There was no color to the world without him, no beauty, no joy, just a gray desert filled with thorns.
Dr. Phelps came back and sat in front of me again. I wished that I could have wiped my face. He had his pad and pen at the ready. Uncle Jack came back to stand in the archway of the kitchen. I looked over at him. He loo
ked at his shoes.
"Now, Dulcee," Dr. Phelps said in a business-like way. "What evidence can you give me that Vincent is a real person? Do you have anything of his? Some clothing, perhaps? If he was living here there should be some trace of him."
I thought. I knew there was no clothing. In all the time he had been here, I had never seen a suitcase, a toothbrush, or anything at all lying around. He never left anything behind.
"I’m not sure that they are still there, but there were some letters Vincent wrote to me," I said. "Up in my room, there's a carved, wooden box on the mantle. I kept the letters in there."
Dr. Phelps nodded to Uncle Jack, who made his way upstairs to retrieve the box.
"Now if you would, I want you to write something down for me," he said, moving forward to unfasten my arms. "It can be anything, your full name perhaps."
He set the pad and pen in front of me. Once my arms were free, they felt very sore. I picked up the pen and wrote down my name. Dr. Phelps took the pad back from me and moved to fasten my arms again. I moaned in pain and frustration.
"Sorry," he said, sitting back down.
Uncle Jack came back down holding the wooden box. He handed it to Dr. Phelps and retreated back to the kitchen like Judas. Dr. Phelps opened the box and pulled the little notes from it. I was surprised that they were still there. He sat back and began to open them one by one. My nakedness was complete now. I looked longingly out the window. Where was Vincent now? Was he still close by or oceans away? Vincent didn’t deal in time and space the way others did. It took me a moment to realize Dr. Phelps was looking intently at me.
"What are you thinking about?" he asked.
"Vincent," I confessed. "I want to find him. I want to make up with him."
Dr. Phelps had a sympathetic expression on his face. I grasped at the thread.
"Have you ever been in love, doctor?" I asked.
He shifted in his chair, the look of compassion morphed into one of discomfort. He didn’t answer the question. Instead, he looked down again at his note pad and the letters from Vincent.
"What does Vincent look like?" he asked, scribbling again.
"He's about as tall as my uncle. He has shoulder length black hair, fair skin, light blue eyes." My voice shook violently. ",…strong hands, a soft deep voice…" I trailed off, weeping openly. Dr. Phelps glanced up once, and then looked back down at his pad.
"Is there anything else you want to tell me?" Dr. Phelps asked quietly, finally looking at me with his full attention.
"I’m not crazy," I stated flatly. "I know all of this looks abnormal, but that’s because it is. Nothing about our relationship is what you would call normal. Vincent is not normal, but he is real. I didn’t make him up. It wasn’t a hallucination or a dream."
I paused then, thinking about the dreams Vincent had given me, how real they were and for the first time I second-guessed myself. Faltering at the thought that somehow everything that happened was not what it seemed. Vincent is real. I know it.
Dr. Phelps was still looking at me. I could think of nothing else to say.
"What can you tell me about your mother?" he asked, pen at the ready.
Anger shot through me like a flaming arrow.
"Why?" I spat. "What does my mother have to do with anything? As far as I’m concerned, I don’t even have one!"
"Why do you feel that way?" He asked, quite unconcerned about my obvious outrage.
"My mother has nothing to do with Vincent. And I’m sure you know quite a bit about my mother already. So, if you want to know some more, go whisper in the kitchen with my uncle again."
Dr. Phelps whistled some air through his nose and clicked his tongue. "Are you unwilling to tell me anything about your mother?" he asked blandly.
"Yes!" I said, trying to mock him as best I could, "I am unwilling to tell you anything about my mother."
He looked down and wrote a little. Then he stood up suddenly and strode into the kitchen without saying anything else to me. I strained my ears trying to hear anything they were saying.
"What do you think?" Uncle Jack asked in a whisper.
"It’s a tough call. She needs to be properly evaluated. I can’t just take her. It’s not lawful. I highly doubt that she will consent to being committed, the court will have to order it, you know that," Dr. Phelps said.
"I have to be back in LA tomorrow. I can’t take her with me like this, and I certainly can’t leave her here. You have to take her with you. Can’t you just smooth it over until I return? We can do all the legal footwork then. Please?"
There was a momentary silence. "I’ll tell you what, I’ll try to get her to consent to come with me, but if she doesn’t, you will ride to Aspen Grove with me. Another doctor will evaluate her and if they determine she is a danger to herself, she will be committed along with your signature. I will delay her seeing an attorney until you return from LA. If you're not back in three weeks, I will call the attorney myself and she will be turned over to the system," Dr. Phelps said.
"But what if the other doctor decides that she is not a danger to herself?" Uncle Jack asked, forgetting to lower his voice.
"The hospital can’t babysit for you just because you are in a tight spot!" Dr. Phelps replied, anger flaring in his tone. "And I’m not losing my job for you just because I owe you a favor."
My ears pricked in alarm. Did I hear him right? Did they know each other? Were they friends?
Uncle Jack spoke again, in a calmer tone. "Look, Tom, what do you really think?"
There was a pause, and then Dr. Phelps said, "If what you told me is true about her childhood, this psychotic break may have been brought on by Post-traumatic stress. Possibly, it’s the first sign of schizophrenia, but don’t quote me on that. Her isolation has given her mind free reign. She's delusional, and obviously been hallucinating frequently. Her actions last night and the self-inflicted wounds bring me to the conclusion that she is a danger to herself…but it’s not so easy to commit someone nowadays."
I sat utterly still. Delusional? Hallucinations? Schizophrenic?! How could he think that? He had the letters. They must have realized how loud they were talking because they lowered their voices so all I could hear was muttering. I wondered if it even mattered if I went with him, willingly or not. It seemed there was no way out of it. I wasn’t sure if I even cared.
Dr. Phelps returned, tailed by Uncle Jack. Dr. Phelps resumed his seat and Uncle Jack sat next to me on the couch. I scooted a few inches away from him.
"Dulcee, I have to tell you something that is very difficult," Dr. Phelps said. "It looks as if the letters you gave me were written by you. That’s why I had you write your name down for me, so I could compare your handwriting with the handwriting on the letters. Now I don’t know that for sure, but I’m convinced it’s true. "
Everything started spinning. I felt nauseated. I closed my eyes, trying to breathe, but that was proving difficult. Had I really lost my mind? Vincent’s face and voice flashed through my head and once again I heard him say, "You can’t expect anyone to understand. No one can understand."
It had been real. I knew it! I decided that there was no way I could convince them, so I wouldn’t try. From a great distance, I heard Dr. Phelps calling to me.
"Dulcee? Dulcee, open your eyes."
I felt him put his hands on my shoulders and give me a little shake. My eyes popped open and all the spinning stopped, and then the miracle I had been suffering for happened.
I heard Vincent whisper in my ear. "I have been listening. Submit to their wishes, wait for me, I will come for you, be patient. We shall be whole again, in time, our fire rekindled. I still love you."
His beautiful voice trailed away. I inhaled so fast and deep, both Dr. Phelps and Uncle Jack looked at me in surprise. They were thrown by the sudden smile spreading across my face. My heart was pounding in my ears and hope filled every empty inch of me. All the pain had given way to relief, and I sighed so deeply it was a groan from my soul.
My sudden change in behavior seemed to solidify their theory of my insanity, but that was no longer my concern. I didn’t care what they thought. I would do as Vincent instructed.
"I heard what you said in the kitchen," I said to them. "I will go with you, Doctor, of my own free will." They both looked alarmed and then relived.
"I think that’s a wise decision," Dr. Phelps said. "I will help you get your things."
He helped me to my feet and the two of us walked up the stairs to my bedroom. Dr. Phelps took off the strait jacket, gave me barely enough privacy to get dressed, and then he put it back on. Under my instruction, Dr. Phelps got out my old duffle bag and filled it with a small amount of clothing.
"Okay, that should be enough," he said, zipping up the bag. "Is there anything else you want to bring with you?"