“I don’t remember.”
“Are you sure that you didn’t have a fight with someone? That’s a pretty deep cut for a simple accident.”
“No, it wasn’t a fight,” Justine disagreed.
“Did you fight with your mom?” he sat down on the nearby bed to get down to Justine’s level. She was still sitting in the wheelchair that they had dumped her into in the emergency triage area. “Sometimes it can be kind of embarrassing to admit if there is abuse or something like that going on in our own family. Are you sure that you didn’t have a fight with your mom? Maybe things got out of hand. There was a knife on the counter, she just picked it up, in a fit of anger …?”
“No. It wasn’t Em. It was just an accident.”
He raised his brows and looked at her questioningly for a long minute. Justine didn’t change her story.
“Okay, then. We’ll give her a call and get her in here. In the meantime, why don’t we get you onto the bed here? You can rest until she gets here. Get yourself back together.”
Justine started to rise from the wheelchair. He quickly moved in and helped her, which was a good thing, because her legs were like jelly and she almost ended up on the floor.
“Whoa, there. Hang on. Just a bit too quick on the draw. Let me help you out.”
He held her firmly, and walked her over to the bed, helping her to lie down. He arranged her so that her arm was stuck out away from her body, still covered by the blue cloth.
“Okay, there you go. Stay put so you don’t get your lines crossed …” she had some kind of monitor on her fingertip, and the IV in her arm. “Just get some rest.”
Justine nodded.
“Okay. Thanks.”
It seemed like a long time had passed. Justine had dozed and awakened a number of times. There was a nurse looking at the chart at the foot of Justine’s bed.
“You’re Justine Bywater?” she said briskly.
“Uh, no,” Justine said, raising an eyebrow. “My name is Katie.”
The nurse looked down at the chart again, her brows drawing down, and looked up at Justine in consternation.
“You’re not Justine Bywater?”
“No. Someone must have mixed up the charts.”
The nurse looked around for the misplaced chart. She left the room, and Justine imagined that she was walking through all of the examination curtains looking for the fictional Katie’s chart. It was some time before she reappeared at Justine’s bed and looked at the chart again. She studied Justine, eyes narrowed.
“Are you telling me that there is another patient with a left arm laceration walking around here somewhere?” she challenged.
Justine shrugged.
“How would I know? I wouldn’t think it was that uncommon a thing. It would explain why they got the charts mixed up.”
The nurse nodded at this and left again. The next time she returned, her face was beet red.
“There are no other patients with arm lacerations being treated right now. And there are no patients named Katie checked in. So just what are you trying to pull here? Why are you making my life so difficult?”
“I don’t know what you mean. You said you were looking for Justine, and there is no Justine here.”
“You are Justine.”
“No, I’m Katie.”
“How did you hurt your arm?”
“I slipped and fell.”
“And you came in through emergency.”
“Yes.”
“You are Justine Bywater,” the nurse insisted.
Justine closed her eyes, nestling back in her pillow comfortably.
“No,” she said simply. “I’m Katie. Justine isn’t here now.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” the nurse questioned suspiciously. “Justine isn’t here now?”
Justine shrugged.
“Do you mean that Justine was here?”
“I suppose she might have been. I don’t remember.”
Justine opened her eyes a slit and watched the nurse grapple with this idea. The nurse shook her head and walked away, muttering to herself.
The next time, it wasn’t the nurse that came back to talk to her. It was a doctor. An older man, graying hair, whose security card said ‘Alexander Michelin.’ Justine read his tag with a giggle.
“Does that mean you’re the Michelin man?” she questioned.
“I guess it does,” the doctor said, giving her a friendly smile. “And who are you?”
“I’m Katie.”
“Pleased to meet you, Katie.”
He sat on the edge of the bed and took her pulse. But his grip wasn’t like the other doctors and nurses, and he didn’t seem to actually be counting her pulse. He looked into her eyes.
“I understand you’re giving the nurses a bit of trouble.”
“I haven’t done anything. I’m just staying here in bed waiting, like they asked me to. I’m all stitched up,” she showed him the bandage on her arm. “I don’t understand why I can’t go home now.”
“Well, for one thing, your mother isn’t here yet. For another, the doctors are a little confused as to how you got that cut. It was very unusual.”
“Why does it matter how I got it? It’s stitched up fine, so I can go home now.”
“It matters how you got it, because if somebody attacked you with a knife, that’s a police matter. You didn’t just fall down and cut yourself. What did you fall on? How is the cut in the position that it is, if you got it falling? The hospital is tasked with doing more than just stitching you up.”
“I just fell.”
“What did you cut it on?”
“I don’t remember. I guess the shock …” Justine trailed off.
“It looks like a deliberate cut with a knife.”
“No. Sometimes things can look like things that they are not,” Justine said.
“That’s true,” Dr. Michelin nodded sagely. “I understand there is some issue of you looking like another patient. Like Justine.”
“Justine isn’t here,” Justine told him.
“I see. Was Justine here before?”
“I don’t remember.”
“How well do you know Justine?”
She pondered her answer to this.
“She’s been around for a long time,” she said slowly.
“I see. How long has Justine been around?”
“About … thirteen years.”
“But she’s not the oldest,” he suggested.
“No,” Justine glanced at him curiously, wondering if he had already picked up the clues. He was quick. “I am fifteen. That’s older than thirteen.”
“It is. Are there others?”
“Hmm,” Justine wasn’t sure the proper way to answer that one. “I don’t know. Maybe. Why does it matter? I’m the one who is here now. Don’t you care about me?”
“Certainly I care about you, Katie. I care very much about making sure that you are okay, and that you are safe. But I want to make sure that the others are safe as well.”
“Everybody’s fine.”
“Good, good …” he pursed his lips, thinking. “Do you think that I could talk to Justine?”
Justine drummed her fingers on the bed. He sat there watching her, waiting to see what her reaction was going to be.
“I’d like to talk to Justine. Just so I can be sure that she is okay,” he encouraged.
His hand was still on her pulse, and Justine shook it off.
“Umm, okay,” she said uncertainly. She closed her eyes and relaxed her body. Then she opened her eyes and glowered at him suspiciously, hunching her shoulders, looking around covertly. “Who are you?” she questioned in a deeper voice.
The doctor pointed at his name badge.
“Dr. Michelin,” he said. “Am I talking to Justine?”
“Of course you’re talking to Justine. Who else would you be talking to?”
“I was just talking to Katie. But she said it was okay if I talked to you
. I hope that was okay with you.”
She shook her head, frowning. It was a short, tight motion.
“Who is Katie? Why would she care if I talked to you?”
“I think you know who Katie is,” Michelin said. “Since you share a body.”
“What are you talking about?” She frowned at him severely. “People don’t share a body. That’s crazy.”
“It has been known to happen. Have you heard of it before?”
“Like a ghost or something? Possession? I’ve heard of that, but I don’t believe in ghosts. Are you some kind of crazy ghost buster or exorcist? I don’t believe in that stuff.”
“No, I’m not talking about ghosts. I’m talking about psychiatric dis—psychiatric conditions. Sometimes people find it difficult to live with all of their emotions and experiences, and they … fracture pieces off. Refuse to acknowledge what has happened to them. Have you ever heard of that?”
Justine rolled her eyes.
“Multiple personalities? That crap? Psychiatric mumbo-jumbo. No one really believes that stuff.”
“It does exist. Maybe not as dramatically as on made-for-TV movies, but it does happen. People can have difficulty dealing with things that have happened to them. Like maybe … you don’t want to deal with what happened to you, how you got hurt. So you compartmentalize it, and you don’t tell the rest of your personalities what happened. You protect them from the pain of the experience.”
“Hokum,” Justine pronounced. “I know what happened. It’s not a secret. I fell and cut myself.”
“That’s not even a good story, Justine. It’s obvious that this wasn’t an accident. You didn’t fall down and accidentally cut your forearm open. The doctors here are trained to be able to spot the difference between accidents and intentional injuries, or indications that someone is being abused. And your arm … Doesn’t qualify as an accident. You didn’t just fall down and cut it cleanly open like that. Somebody cut you.”
“No one cut me.”
“Your mother is taking a long time getting down here to take care of you. Did your mother hurt you?”
“No. I’m taller than she is now, you know. She couldn’t hurt me. If we got in a fight, I would hurt her. She couldn’t hurt me.”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. We run into cases where a little tiny woman is abusing a big, strong husband. He doesn’t want to hurt her. But he’s too ashamed to tell anyone she is hurting him. Size really has very little to do with abuse. Especially if someone is prone to using weapons. How would you fight someone with a weapon?”
“I would fight. I wouldn’t just stand there, and take it.”
Justine studied her hands, but there were no injuries there. No defensive wounds like she had been in a fight.
“I wouldn’t just stand there and take it,” she asserted again.
Michelin nodded slowly, scratching his chin.
“What is your mother like?” he questioned.
Justine was reticent. Talking about Em never got her very far. There were too many people who had heard the story and proven it wrong. If she started making reports about Em again, they would just threaten to put her in juvie for lying and slandering her.
“My mother is perfect,” she said, snipping her words off. “She probably just had a migraine or something, and that’s why she’s not here yet. She does that, you know. Gets real bad migraines, and can’t do anything. Just lays in bed waiting for them to pass.”
“Does that bother you? You feel like she should take better care of you? Get a little desperate for attention when she is so sick she can’t spend any time with you or take care of you properly? If I was in hospital, hurt, I would sure want my mom to be able to be there, even if she wasn’t feeling very well. Take a pill or something and come look after her daughter.”
“She doesn’t neglect me. She always feeds me, tries to get me to eat healthy stuff instead of junk. I’m not neglected. And her migraines don’t last for a long time, just for a day or something.”
“I’m glad that you have someone that takes care of you so well. Is there anyone else that you want to talk about? Maybe someone at school? A boyfriend? Your mom’s boyfriend?”
“She doesn’t have a boyfriend. I never really liked her dating. So she just stays home with me now. No boyfriend.”
“And what about you, do you have a boyfriend? You’re a nice-looking girl.”
“They don’t care if you look nice, they only care about … hooking up. I don’t want a boyfriend.”
She could see him making mental note of that fact. If it had been Dr. Morton, he would have taken a moment to write something in her file. Justine always liked it when she said something momentous enough to be noted in her permanent file.
“So you don’t want a boyfriend, and you don’t want your mom to have a boyfriend? Did something happen in the past? Did someone hurt you?”
“No,” Justine said flatly.
She didn’t like this line of questioning. She closed her eyes, and waited while he tried to ask her questions a few times before he finally noticed that she wasn’t talking to him any more. Justine opened her eyes again, smiling sideway at him flirtatiously.
“No one hurts me,” she said in a breathy voice. “I’m always … ready for a good time.”
Michelin swallowed and took an extra deep breath.
“And what’s your name?” he questioned.
Justine cast about for a name, and picked the first one that came to mind.
“Monica,” she said, and blinked her lashes at him a couple of times.
“Monica. That’s pretty. And how old are you?”
“How old do you want me to be?”
Michelin smiled.
“Monica. How old are you?”
“Mmm … eighteen. Is eighteen good?”
“Eighteen is fine. Tell me about yourself, Monica.”
“I … I’m friendly. I make friends really fast. I like being around people. Having a good time.”
“Really. Where did Justine go?”
“Who is Justine?”
“How about Katie? Could I talk to Katie again?”
“Oh,” she pouted. “You don’t even want to talk to me?”
“No. It’s just that I need to ask Katie some more questions. Serious stuff. You wouldn’t know about it.”
“I know lots of things. How do you know I wouldn’t know the answer?”
“Well, how about this one. How did you hurt your arm?”
Justine looked down at the bandages.
“I don’t know what happened,” she said in a high voice. She tugged at the dressing, peeling back the tape that held it on and revealing a few stitches. “What happened? What happened to me?” she demanded.
Just looking at the stitches made her queasy again.
“No, no, leave the bandage on,” Michelin told her, pulling her hand back and attempting to stick the tape back to Justine’s skin. “Just leave it on. You didn’t know that you got hurt?”
“No,” Justine said faintly. “It must have been one of the others—”
A nurse poked her head in, and motioned to Dr. Michelin.
“Could I see you for a moment, doctor?”
Dr. Michelin smiled at Justine.
“I’m sorry. I’ll be right back,” he told her.
The nurse nodded to the woman standing by the reception desk. She didn’t bear much resemblance to Justine.
“This is Ms. Bywater. The girl’s mother.”
Alexander reached his hand out toward her.
“Ms. Bywater, good to meet you. I’m Doctor Michelin. I’ve just been in talking to Justine.”
“What happened? Is she all right?”
“She’s fine. She cut her arm quite badly and needed some stitches. I’m sure the emergency room doctors filled you in on those points. There was some vascular involvement, but they had a surgeon take care of it. Really pretty simple.”
“Then why is
n’t she ready to come home?” Em questioned.
“I’m actually with psych.”
“Oh,” Em sighed and rolled her eyes expressively. “Of course. She already has a therapist.”
“Glad to hear it. I’ll talk to him before I sign off.”
“What did she do to get you down here?”
“She is shamming Multiple Personality Disorder.”
“That’s my girl. She likes to pretend to be other people.”
Her words were amused, but her tone held no affection. Michelin nodded.
“Attention-seeking behavior. What’s her diagnosis?”
Em’s lips pressed together in a thin line. She considered for a moment before answering.
“It’s not always easy to classify behavior or psychiatric disorders.”
“You’re telling me? I have a whole practice full of patients who defy classification. I just wondered what spectrum she has ended up on.”
“Attachment Disorder,” Em sighed. “But there are some things that still don’t make sense.”
“I have found that a number of FASD kids get misclassified as RAD,” Michelin said helpfully.
“FASD?” Em repeated.
“Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.”
“Oh,” Em was disappointed. “No, I never had any alcohol when I was pregnant with her.”
“Even before you knew you were pregnant? Or maybe cold medicine or something?”
Em shook her head.
“No. We were trying to get pregnant, I was being very careful.”
Michelin shrugged.
“Just a thought. Like you say, psychiatric disorders can be difficult to classify.”
Em nodded.
“The other reason that I was called down today was to see if I could get Justine to tell me how she injured herself.”
“What did she say?”
“She says she fell down and cut herself.”
Em shrugged.
“Maybe she did. She skateboards and falls down all the time. Gets road rash, sometimes gets a concussion or breaks a bone. She could have fallen on something sharp.”
“She had a gash on her forearm that took almost fifty stitches to close. It was clean, no jagged edges or tears. Very deep. No other fresh abrasions or contusions that would indicate that she had fallen. The doctors say it was either self-inflicted or received from someone she knew.”
Stand Alone Page 22