The Forgetting Place

by John Burley

  Another man entered my line of sight. His back was to me, but I could tell right away that it was Wagner. He was spouting a rebuke, admonishing Jason, and whether this was part of an interrogation I didn’t know and didn’t care. I took a step forward. The floorboard creaked loudly beneath my left foot as Menaker dutifully alerted them.

  Wagner stopped talking, turned around. Over his shoulder, I could see Jason’s face studying me as well. I took another step forward.

  “No,” Wagner said. “This is a private meeting and you are not permitted to be here.”

  “You go straight to hell,” I told him.

  “Lise.” He was at the far end of the hallway now, taking tentative steps in my direction. “It is dangerous for you to be here. It is dangerous for all of us. How did you even—”

  “I’m not leaving here without him.”

  Another step forward. He held up both hands to show me there was nothing in them. “You don’t understand what is happening here.”

  “I understand enough,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. “And one way or the other, I’m taking him with me.”

  “But where would you take him?” he asked. “Have you even thought of—”

  “Doesn’t matter. Away from here. And if you raise an alarm or try to stop me”—I locked eyes with him, so he would know that I meant every word—“I will kill you.”

  His eyes dropped to my hands for the first time, and he saw the shears. “Oh,” he said, appearing not so much frightened as fascinated by the sharp metal blades nestled there. “This plays into it, doesn’t it?”

  I didn’t take the bait, didn’t bother to ask him what he was talking about. Wagner’s gaze slid along the walls of the narrow hallway, touched upon the open door behind me. Again, I could hear the distant sounds of traffic, could feel the chill of the night air coming through the open doorway.

  Wagner’s head cocked to one side, the look of a praying mantis as he studied me. “Do you know where you are right now?” he asked, and I felt a thin sliver of fear at the question.

  “Shut up, and get out of my way,” I responded, raising the shears in front of me.

  “You are at Menaker, you know. I am Dr. Charles Wagner.”

  “I know who you are.”

  “This is not a town house in Silver Spring, Maryland. It is daytime, not night.”

  “Stop it.”

  “You are here because you are concerned about Jason’s safety. You suspect that I am cooperating with a group of Islamic extremists. You have come to confront me in his presence, haven’t you?”

  I stared back at him.

  “But I am not Jason’s domestic partner, Amir Massoud. This is not the evening of May 12, 2010.”

  “I know what year it is.”

  “Do you? Do you really?”

  For the space of a few seconds, neither one of us spoke.

  “Because this is exactly what happened on that night, isn’t it? You showed up at their town house, argued in the hallway. I don’t know if you planned to kill him or if it was more of an accident—the confrontation turning physical and quickly getting out of control. But you did bring a knife, Lise, and that suggests premeditation. And now . . .”

  He looked down at my right hand again, the one holding the shears. We both did. I could feel the hallway tilting a bit, like the long circular tube of a fun house.

  “I am Dr. Lise Shields, a psychiatrist at this hospital.”

  Wagner shook his head no, offered me a sad but compassionate smile.

  “I am Dr. Lise—” I began again, but he cut me off before I could finish.

  “You are not a psychiatrist. You are a patient here.”

  The tube was spinning faster now. I put a hand on the wall to steady myself.

  A trick, I warned myself. This is one of Wagner’s tricks, some form of hypnosis. When he sees the opportunity, he will go for the knife.

  Shears, I corrected myself. He will go for the shears. I looked down at them again to be certain.

  “You gave us quite a scare, taking off like that.” The sound of his voice made me jump.

  “What?”

  “Your escape from Menaker,” he said.

  “They kidnapped Jason and attacked Paul—tried to capture me, too. That’s why I had to run.”

  “No one kidnapped Jason. And as for Paul . . . you attacked Paul. Stole his keys. It’s how you managed to escape.”

  “That’s bullshit,” I replied. “Paul gave them to me.”

  “You broke your arm going through that bathroom window downstairs. You’re lucky it wasn’t worse.”

  A thought occurred to me then—proof that what he was telling me was a pack of lies.

  “Haden. They killed him right in front of me.”

  “Who’s Haden?” Wagner asked.

  “The man who took me in, the one who was helping me.”

  He looked puzzled. “This is the first time I’ve heard that name.”

  “They executed him, Charles. We started to surrender and they shot him in the chest and neck. I watched him bleed out in that field.”

  “Are you referring to the place where the police eventually picked you up, on that wildlife refuge on the Eastern Shore?”

  “It wasn’t the police.”

  He shook his head. “You were found alone in that refuge. You’d stolen a boat and a gun from who knows where.” He scowled at me with a look of severe disapproval. “The rifle was loaded, you know. When I think about what could’ve happened, about how badly you could’ve been injured . . . or even killed . . .”

  “Haden died in that field,” I said, trying to hold on to at least one irrefutable truth. “He was innocent, blameless, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. He was . . . he was my friend, Charles.”

  “I’m sorry, Lise,” he responded. He was not conceding the point, I realized—only expressing empathy for my pain.

  “The FBI,” I countered, although it felt like I was grasping at straws now.

  “Do you mean Special Agents Daryl Linder and Aaron Remy?”

  “How do you—?”

  “You’ve told me about them many times before. Don’t you remember?”

  I put a hand to my head.

  “They’re part of the delusion, Lise. Daryl Linder and Aaron Remy do not exist. In fact”—he smiled disarmingly—“their names are most likely based on medications you’ve come in contact with here at Menaker. Remeron, from which I believe you constructed the name Aaron Remy, is an antidepressant. Inderal, from which you’ve created Daryl Linder, is a drug used to control medication-induced akathisia.” He paused a moment, looking at me. “You do know what akathisia is, don’t you? If you’re indeed a psychiatrist, as you profess to be, I’m sure you’re familiar with the term.”

  I didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer.

  “Akathisia is profound restlessness,” he told me. “Any third-year medical student would know that.”

  “I have an apartment,” I argued. “If I was a patient here and not a doctor, I couldn’t just—”

  “You have a room here at the hospital, and I can assure you that except for your recent escape you haven’t set foot off this property for the past five years. Although you sometimes try to. Our security officers have become quite adept at making sure you find your way to the right place.”

  Out for a walk, Lise?—a recollection of Tony Perkins, calling out to me from the watchman’s booth at the front gate.

  Goin’ home, Tony, I replied, but he held up a hand for me to stop a second.

  Let me get someone to escort you. Make sure you get there safe.

  “Lies,” I muttered, backing up a step, my weight against the wall. It was becoming difficult to breathe.

  “For five years,” Wagner advised me, as if reading my thoughts, “you have been a patient here at Menaker. I’ve tried so many times to confront you with the truth. But the nature of a delusion is that it remains fixed and unchanged despite all evidence to the contrary. I could see that d
irect confrontation wasn’t working. You simply refused to hear it, or shut me out altogether.”

  He ran a hand across his face. Sighed.

  “You have paranoid schizophrenia, Lise. Like your uncle.”

  “No.”

  “There’s a genetic component, you realize—a tendency for the disease to run in families.”

  (You and I got a lot in common, Lise. Uncle Jim with one arm around my shoulders. We see things differently than other people.)

  “I became a psychiatrist because of what happened with Uncle Jim.”

  “I know that you think so. But look at the symptoms: agitation, social withdrawal, declining personal hygiene, disinterest in pleasurable activities. Complex auditory and visual hallucinations.”

  “I am . . . Dr. Lise Shields.”

  “Tasked with a critical mission to save your patient from a radical extremist group receiving information from a mole within the CIA.” He looked at me. “Don’t you see? These are delusions, Lise—delusions of grandeur and persecution. You have disturbances of behavior, thought, and perception—hallmark features of schizophrenia.”

  (Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me . . . I’ll get an idea in my head that I can’t shake, something that isn’t right but seems right at the time.)

  “It’s your disease that brought you here in the first place,” Wagner continued. “Five years ago, something horrible happened because of it. You’d been getting sicker, had stopped taking your medication, developed certain delusions about Jason’s partner, Amir. You became convinced that you were working for the CIA, that Amir was plotting with terrorists, that he planned to blow up a D.C. subway station. Do you see now how detached from reality you’d become?”

  He waited for me to answer. I said nothing.

  What brings you to see us tonight? I imagined the way Amir might have smiled, holding the door open and inviting her in. Inviting me in.

  “I KNOW WHAT you’ve been planning.” The words tasted bitter in my mouth.

  “Planning?” The smile had not left his face, but there was something else there as well. Was it puzzlement? Guilt? The face of a liar finally confronted with the truth?

  “I know about the meetings with Al-Termir, about the plot to bomb the D.C. subway station. I followed you last week into the District.”

  “You followed me—”

  “Shut up and listen. I am here because of Jason. I’ve tried to warn him, but he refuses to believe me—loves you too much to think you could be capable of something like that. At one point, maybe I did too. But I’ve seen the photographs, Amir. I’ve listened to the tapes of your conversations with them.”

  “I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replied, reaching out with one hand to touch me. I swatted it away.

  “Because of who you are to me and my family,” I could hear myself saying, “I’ve decided to warn you—to give you a chance to back away from this thing before it’s too late. If you cooperate with helping us catch them, we can put you into a witness protection program—you and Jason both. You’ll be safe there, protected from retribution. There’s still time. You don’t have to go through with this.”

  “I’m sorry, Lise,” he said. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  “No.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I won’t go. Not without him. He’s not safe here with you any longer.”

  He put a hand on my shoulder, more forcefully now, and attempted to move me toward the door.

  But I’d meant what I said. I wasn’t leaving without Jason. I grabbed Amir at the wrist, twisting it in my hand. He yelled out, surprised, tried to pull away. The heel of my right hand flashed out, striking him in the chest. He was shoved backward against the wall, his body bouncing off it and coming back at me. We collided, the force of his momentum toppling us—him forward, and me backward. The back of my head connected with the hardwood floor with a loud crack that filled the hallway. A split second later, he landed on me, the impact snapping ribs, forcing the air from my lungs.

  It was like the time I pulled him from his bed—Amir delirious from the fever and influenza, his body landing on top of me on the floor. Only this time he was awake, aware, looming over me with murder in his eyes: for me, for Jason, for the people in the subway station he intended to sacrifice as a political statement against the country in which he was born.

  Why did I not anticipate this? After all that I have witnessed, why am I still surprised that he would try to kill me? I reached for my service weapon, slung high in its shoulder holster under my left arm, but for some reason it was not there. Maybe I just couldn’t reach it, couldn’t bring my right arm across my body with the weight of him on top of me. The world began to blanch, Amir’s face floating above me like a balloon tethered to his shoulders.

  But the knife was with me. I had brought it just in case.

  I arched my lower back, worked my right hand into the space created by the curve of my spine. My fingers closed around the small dark handle and I delivered the knife from its leather casing—a last-ditch effort as I slipped away into the whiteness all around me. I will be dead soon, I realized. We all will.

  I was so far gone that I did not feel my right arm completing its half circle, driving the weapon home between the fifth and sixth ribs.

  He grunted. The world began to slide back into focus. He was pushing himself up with his hands, the weight of his body lifting off me. There was a look of surprise in his expression. Bewilderment. He had his knees under him now, moved a hand to the side of his chest, then raised it in front of his face. It hung there—slick with blood—in the air between us, scattered drops cascading onto my forehead.

  You baptize me in the name of the Father, I thought, and of the Son, and of the . . .

  “Why?” he managed, his breathing thick and labored, the hand still dangling in the air between us. Amir looked past it, into my eyes, and for a moment the events that had brought us here were jumbled in my mind. Is he just awakening from the fever? I wondered.

  The strength in his arms and legs failed, and I guided him to the side as his body went limp on top of me. Air surged into my lungs in deep whooping breaths. The color of the room fell back into place, and with it, the image of Jason looking down on us—the ovals of his eyes wide with horror, his clawed hands filling the slim hollows of his cheeks, the silent scream unable to pass beyond the circle of his lips.

  “WHAT HAPPENED THAT night was a tragedy.”

  I blinked twice, found myself in the hallway of the administration building once again.

  “For everyone,” Wagner continued. “But you can’t change that fact by hiding from it. Amir is gone.”

  (No. He’s not gone. Help me move him to the couch. We’ve got to—)

  “But you’ve disappeared, too, Lise. You’ve chosen to become someone else entirely—a benevolent psychiatrist at a state mental hospital, instead of the guilt-ridden patient who resides here.”

  I stood with my head lowered, trying to think. This is how they brainwash you, I told myself.

  “My office was broken into.”

  “My office that you trashed,” Wagner replied. “I had to move into a new one.” He paused, hands clasped in front of him. “Everything has an explanation—an explanation far more plausible than the story you’ve concocted.”

  I looked up at Jason, who was watching me from the far end of the hallway.

  You’ve got a visitor, Marjorie advised me from the nurses’ station.

  Is this going to be one of mine?

  She nodded. I think you should see this one.

  I turned my eyes to Wagner now. “Who is he to me?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Jason,” I said, knowing the answer already, but not believing it—needing to hear it spoken out loud.

  “Oh,” Wagner replied. “I assumed that much was obvious. It’s why he keeps coming here to see you, why—despite everything—he refuses to give up on you. It’s why he returned today, in
fact, even though I told him he should stay away for a while, that his visits only make you worse.” He studied me for a few seconds. The inquisitive look was gone. Now he only seemed sad and a little tired. “Do you really not know who this man is standing behind me? Even when you were growing up, you’ve always been protective of him.”

  For a moment, I could picture Jason when he was much younger, could see him sitting up and looking at me from his hospital bed the night after Billy Myers and his fellow bullies beat him into a state of unconsciousness.

  This will not happen again, I’d assured him that night, and three weeks later I’d backed that promise up with a Louisville Slugger and a fit of detached violence that almost left all four of those boys dead. Was it any surprise that five years ago I’d stepped in again when I thought his life was in danger, this time with lethal results?

  “I don’t believe y—” I started to tell Wagner, but Jason was pushing past him now, coming for me down the hall. I met his eyes, and the last of the denial fell away. I was crying now—crying because of what I had done to him and what I was doing to him still. “I’m sorry,” I told him, but he didn’t stop coming, didn’t even hesitate.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so goddamn sorry,” I was saying over and over again. He wrapped his arms around me as I buried my face in the side of his neck. He rocked me, told me it was okay, and that he forgave me a long time ago—that all he wanted was to have me back again.

  “I will never give up on you—never,” he promised, and I held on to him tighter, unable to let go.

  “Thank you for not leaving me here,” I whispered. “I’m so alone without y—”

  My voice choked up again, the words refusing to come. But it was all right because I wasn’t alone anymore. No matter what happened after this, I knew I would be okay—that we would be okay. Because the only truly hopeless thing in this world is to be abandoned—forsaken for what you have done—and I could see now that this would never happen. Not between us. Not between me and my brother.

  Something was gently lifted from my hand. I opened my eyes and saw Wagner standing there, watching me over Jason’s shoulder. “I need to take these,” he said, giving the thing in my hand a soft tug. I opened my fingers and let go of the shears, or maybe it was the knife that I’d been holding on to these past five years. I wasn’t certain, didn’t really care. I didn’t need either of them any longer.