Your Voice Is All I Hear

by Leah Scheier

  But I was being judged, I wanted to tell her. Her patient was judging me. “I don’t have anything to say,” I repeated stubbornly.

  She sighed and turned back to Jonah. “How were your first two days here, Jonah?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Oh, peachy, Doctor,” he smiled. “Just what I needed.”

  “How are the medicines making you feel?”

  He blinked at her. “Which medicine, Doctor? I’m getting three.”

  “Let’s start with the Risperdal.”

  “Oh, the antipsychotic? Well, it’s making me less psychotic. That’s a good thing, right?”

  She leaned back against her chair. “Jonah, you promised to cooperate if April joined us.”

  “I am cooperating. The medicines are fantastic. You’re also fantastic, Doctor. This whole place is fan—”

  “Okay, Jonah. I get that you don’t trust me yet. But we’ll get there. Why don’t you tell me about the art therapy class? How do you feel about that? Your mom told me that painting is a hobby of yours.”

  I saw his eyes flame for a second, and then the anger died as quickly as it came. “You need some new stuff, Doc,” he told her in a low voice.

  “Sorry, what?”

  “They gave me Magic Markers at first. Seriously. And the set of oils was dry and crusty. If I was a five-year-old finger-painter, it would have been a joke.”

  “The idea isn’t to create great works of art, Jonah. The idea is to harness your creative side and use it in the healing process.”

  “Oh, I see,” he replied in a dry tone. “Sorry. I thought the idea was to pass the time until you let me out of here. Fine then. I’ll make you a nice picture of an elephant, okay? An elephant with emotional problems.”

  Dr. Hermann smiled and shook her head. “These meetings are part of the process. The sooner you cooperate, the sooner you’ll be ready for outpatient therapy.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means when we reach our inpatient goals, you’ll be considered ready for discharge.”

  “And what are these goals exactly?”

  “The first is to make sure that you’re not in danger of harming yourself or anyone else. The second is to work through some of your fixed ideas—your belief that the government is shadowing you and planting thoughts into your brain, for example. That the doctors are trying to steal your creativity. And finally, we want to help you get rid of the voices that are bothering you.”

  Jonah’s face froze, and his eyes flickered to the right; he seemed to be listening to something. “You are stealing my creativity, Doctor.” His voice was quiet, deliberate, and emotionless. “I’m not the only one who says so. This isn’t a delusion or a ‘fixed idea’ as you call it. Half of the patients here complain that they can’t think when they’re taking their meds. That’s what they say in those group sessions that you make me go to. The medicine makes us dead inside. It turns us into zombies. Easy-to-manage zombies.”

  She seemed pleased that he’d confided in her. “It is a common complaint,” she replied, smiling. “Each patient is different. We have to find the right balance of medicines to treat you. We increase or decrease the dosages to achieve the effect that we’re looking for. The level we want is the one that lets you feel like your old self, but without the delusions and the voices that are hurting you.”

  Again the voices, the topic that put him on his guard each time it was mentioned. He glared at her, and his brows came down. “Is there anything else you’d like to know, Doctor?” he muttered. “Or are we done here?”

  “I need to know what you’re experiencing, Jonah,” she insisted. “Are the voices quieter now than when you were first admitted?”

  I could see him struggling, his mind screaming a silent protest. I don’t hear voices! Leave me alone. But then he looked over at me, and he bowed his shoulders in defeat. Don’t make me admit it in front of April, he seemed to beg her. Don’t make me say it in front of her.

  Why couldn’t she hear him? It was obvious that he couldn’t handle the shame of it, that he needed me to go before he confessed the truth. But I couldn’t get up and leave him now. I had to sit and watch as the doctor leaned forward and pushed him again. “How are the voices today, Jonah?”

  His answer came eventually in a shaky, embarrassed whisper. “There are no voices.”

  “Good,” she said with a satisfied smile, as if he had just reported that an annoying rash had finally disappeared. “That’s great to hear. It usually takes a long time to quiet the voices, so I’m glad that we’re moving in the right direction. I hope that we can continue to work together over the next few weeks.”

  His eyes flashed. “Few weeks? I’m not staying here that long! You can’t keep me more than twenty days without an admission hearing. They read me my rights when I got in here, so I know that you can’t hold me against my will. Or make me take your pills either, if I don’t want to. So I’ll tell the judge I don’t belong here. He’ll see that and let me go.”

  She sighed and leaned forward over her desk. “Jonah,” she said in a quiet voice. “We have several witnesses who will testify that you’re a danger to yourself and possibly to others if you’re discharged from the hospital too soon.”

  “Like who?”

  “Well, there’s the ER physician who first admitted you, the independent psychiatrist who examined you—”

  “But they’re all in on it!”

  “Your parents.”

  He flinched and sank back into his chair. “Sorry. Time’s up, Doctor. We’re done here.”

  Dr. Hermann tried to coax him back into a conversation, but he closed his eyes and refused to answer her. Eventually, she gave up and reached out for his chart. “We’ll meet again tomorrow then. Good progress today. Maybe next time we can do this without April?”

  His eyes flew open. “No. With April—or not at all.”

  Chapter 28

  “With April—or not at all,” was how we ended every session over the next few weeks. They were all variations of that first one. Dr. Hermann made progress—or she seemed to think she did. Jonah began talking to her a little, mostly about stuff that didn’t matter to him (or anyone), but she didn’t appear to mind the pointless chatter. “It’s all part of the process,” she told me.

  Once, when Jonah wasn’t around, I took Dr. Hermann aside and asked her about his voices. “When this first started, Jonah seemed to be terrified of the voices and the things that they were saying to him,” I told her. “He’d break into a sweat, put his hands over his ears, even yell back at them when he thought nobody was watching.”

  She nodded and gave me a knowing smile. “That’s very common. The voices can be very hostile and angry sometimes. They’re also very real to him, so real that he can find it hard to understand that no one else is hearing them.”

  “Yes, I realize that,” I replied. “But shouldn’t you talk to him about it? Find out what they’re saying to him? I think the voices are what’s bothering him the most, and what he’s most embarrassed about.”

  “The voices are just another part of his illness,” she said to me. “Our goal is not to understand them but to quiet them, maybe even to get rid of them. I think that we’re doing pretty well too. He seems to be responding less to them now.”

  She was right about that, at least. Jonah did seem to be responding less to them, even though I couldn’t help wondering if that was just an act. He’d stopped shouting at no one and covering his ears. But sometimes, when nobody was looking, I would still see his eyes flicker in response to something, even when the room was quiet. He was just hiding it better now. He understood that the voices were a brand of shame, that they stood between him and his freedom, and so he pretended not to hear them. It took all of his energy to pretend though—and it left him with very little strength to do anything else.

  But he was gaining weight, a
nd his face was filling out a little. I was encouraged by this at first, until one of the nurses told me not to get too excited—weight gain was a side effect of his antipsychotic.

  Art therapy was also a big help—but not for the reasons that Dr. Hermann mentioned. Jonah produced a disturbed elephant as promised. Also a grieving hippo and a happy armadillo. His projects were funny to anyone who knew what he was really capable of creating. But the other patients loved it. There was a pale girl with purple scabs on her wrists who’d sit next to him when he worked and stare at him with an intensity that annoyed me. Her devotion didn’t seem to bother him though; Jonah was used to being loved. He made her a rainbow butterfly as a reward for her support. For days afterward, I would see her walking around with it, cradling it in her arms as if she were holding a paper baby.

  Shawn was Jonah’s closest friend at Shady Grove. The kid had attached himself to Jonah a few days after his arrival, and he soon became his shadow. Shawn’s outburst was considered a setback, and as Nurse Becky had predicted, his hospital stay had been extended because of it. It seemed wrong to me; I might also have had a breakdown if my mother had forgotten me in the hospital. But that logic didn’t seem to apply on the psychiatric ward. Shawn had broken one of the goals of therapy when he assaulted the nurse, so they were no longer sure that he was ready for the outside world.

  I never learned Shawn’s actual diagnosis (that information was confidential), but from the bits of history that he revealed to Jonah, I understood that Shawn’s “forgetful” mother had been just one of his many problems at home. There had been a steady stream of Mommy’s boyfriends, and some of them were probably the reason that Shawn ended up in Shady Grove.

  But the boy was a welcome distraction for both of us. I think those weeks of silence and fake therapy with Dr. Hermann would have driven me a little crazy if it hadn’t been for Shawn. I was surprised to learn that he was nearly our age; he looked and acted like a sixth grader. Shawn was a little lightning bug, buzzing around, always talking a mile a minute, commenting on everything, excited by everyone around him. The few hours after his failed discharge were his dark time; I learned later that he spent most of the evening in the quiet room, throwing himself against the padded walls, swearing at the staff, and trying to tear the cushions apart. But there was no hint of that side of Shawn when he was around Jonah. He acted like my boyfriend’s loyal disciple, and Jonah welcomed his enthusiastic follower. Shawn swallowed everything that Jonah said, never questioning anything, no matter how bizarre it sounded. “They’re bringing in a new victim today,” Jonah would tell him. “I can feel him speaking to me through his mind. He’ll need us to help him.”

  Shawn would nod enthusiastically and then run off to hover near the entrance to the ward. And when they brought a new patient in a couple hours later, Shawn would gaze at Jonah as if he’d just witnessed a miracle of prophecy. Neither of them seemed to notice that the patient was female, not male as Jonah had predicted. Or that we’d all overheard the nurses talking about a new admission. For Shawn, Jonah’s prediction had magically come true.

  At first, I wondered if Jonah was using Shawn as a buffer between us, because he always seemed to be around whenever I was there. And I couldn’t really talk to my boyfriend with Shawn in the room. I tried not to get frustrated. I was visiting Jonah to show my support, I told myself. It wasn’t about me. But eventually my patience began to wear thin. Nothing was changing.

  Each time my bus pulled up to the stop outside the hospital, I’d feel my heart begin to drum. “Maybe today will be the day,” I’d think in spite of the previous evening’s disappointment. Maybe today would be the day that Jonah would smile at me, would take me in his arms and kiss me. Maybe today we would finally get a few minutes alone. No doctors, nurses, parents, or Shawn. No voices. Just Jonah and April, like we used to be.

  I’d walk into the ward, holding my breath. Praying.

  And Shawn would be hovering by his side. Jonah’s eyes would flicker over me. And then he’d smile, finally—at someone invisible at his side.

  One day, as I was about to leave for home, Jonah asked me to wait. “Shawn, I think it’s time to tell her,” he declared.

  “It isn’t safe yet!” Shawn warned him. “It’s too soon.”

  “We need help from the outside,” Jonah said in a low voice. “We don’t have a choice. They’ll search my room the minute they discover that we’re gone. Besides, April has been protected all this time. I’ve told her how to block them. She’s on our side.”

  I suppressed a sigh and waited for him to continue. It was painful to admit it, but I was technically on their side. I still wore the ridiculous hat that Jonah had fashioned for me to keep out the mind-controlling radio waves. I’d even lined a few baseball caps with tinfoil and shown them to him to make sure that they were up to his safety standards. And I wore those too, after I tired of the beret. And no matter how many therapy sessions I attended with him, I still never said a word to his psychiatrist, just as he’d instructed me.

  It pissed off Dr. Hermann in the beginning, but she eventually got used to Jonah’s quiet girlfriend. “Psychiatrists have to be flexible,” she told me. “We have to relinquish control in order to gain their trust. We have to listen to what they’re saying.”

  And yet, we were weeks into Jonah’s hospital stay—he’d passed all of Christmas break in Shady Grove’s sterile hallways—and I didn’t believe that anyone was actually listening to him. The medicines worked just enough to make him a passive mental patient, less likely to smack a nurse or scream at the hallucinations in his mind. But the doctors and the pills hadn’t brought Jonah back to me.

  It was a suspicious mental patient who was looking at me now, not the Jonah I knew and loved. He pulled the navy spiral notebook from beneath his pillow and turned it over and over in his hands. It was covered in strips of sticky gum that he’d stretched around the binding to seal it closed.

  “It’s all in here,” he told me in a conspiratorial whisper. “And I need you to keep this safe until Shawn and I are ready to use it.”

  “What do you want me to do with it?”

  “Take it quickly and hide it in your schoolbag.” He glanced sharply over his shoulder as he spoke. “Now go home and rest. Tomorrow’s going to be a big day for us.”

  Chapter 29

  When I got home, my mom met me at the door. “Kris is here,” she said in a hushed voice. “She’s been waiting in your room all afternoon.”

  I’d been ignoring Kris’s texts and calls for weeks. My phone had finally gone silent, so I hadn’t expected her to just show up at my house. She was the last person I wanted to see.

  I trudged into my bedroom without a word, slumped down on my bed, and leaned back against my pillow. Kris walked over and tried to put her arm around me, but I shrugged her hand off and glared at her.

  “Why are you here?” I demanded. “Do you need more information about Jonah? Is Cora begging you for more gossip?”

  She flinched and shrank away. “I know you’re mad at me. But I swear I didn’t mean to tell her anything. When Cora called, I’d just spoken to your mom and I didn’t really understand what was going on. So I blurted out the part about Shady Grove. I’m really sorry. I regretted it the minute I said it.”

  “Oh, well. I’m glad you’re sorry, Kris. Because that helps me a lot in school. I’ll remember that you’re sorry the next time Robby calls me Mrs. Crazy. Or Cora asks me what I did to drive my boyfriend insane.”

  “I am sorry,” she insisted quietly. “That’s what I came by to tell you. You’ve been shutting me out and not giving me a chance.”

  “Okay, let me guess. You want to join the April sympathy parade now? And drop little hints about how I should be ‘getting on with my life.’ Which is just code for ‘dump that boyfriend already.’ Thanks, but I already have my mom to tell me that.”

  “No, that’s not what I think at all!
Why can’t you just listen? You’ve decided that the entire world is against the two of you, and so you’re pushing everyone away. But I’ve been thinking about Jonah for weeks now. And I’ve wanted to tell you that I get it. I know that I was kind of suspicious in the beginning. I didn’t realize what he meant to you before. I thought it was just a first crush, your first boyfriend. And frankly, he scared me a little, even at the beginning. No, don’t roll your eyes. Just listen. There was something so intense about him, something that made me nervous for you. And then I saw him that day, all covered in red paint and holding a knife. Everyone was afraid of him; he looked completely out of it. And I thought—I was right. I saw it before anyone. I was actually a little proud of myself. I’m supposed to be the blind one, and you’re the one with all the good advice. But this time—this time, you were the one in trouble.”

  Her eyes filled with tears, and she put her sleeve up to her cheek to catch them. “But then I saw the two of you out there on the lawn,” she continued after a pause. “And I realized that even at the worst time, you two were closer than I’d ever been to anyone. You were able to go to him, to enter into his world. And he listened to you. He wouldn’t pay attention to the policeman or even his own mother. But he heard you, April.”

  I’d never thought of it that way before. He had heard me, even as he blocked everyone else out. I was a little ashamed of myself, looking at Kristin’s earnest expression. I really hadn’t given her any credit. I’d just assumed that she would judge me. “Thank you, Kris.”

  “I’ve really missed you.”

  I reached out to hug her. “I’m sorry I shut you out.”

  “It’s okay. I might have done the same thing if I was you.”

  “And you’ve been waiting for me here all afternoon?”

  She shrugged. “A couple of hours. I didn’t realize that you always go to Shady Grove after school or I would have called first. I have to be heading back now. But before I go, I want to ask you something. I’ve been waiting weeks to ask you.”