Pria had taken that from me. I could still hear her breath, labored and rasping. I could smell her vomit and taste her blood. Her tiny voice taunted me, reminding me of mountains we would never climb and places I would never go, "I can't make it," she had said.
Acute Mountain Sickness. AMS. That had been the reason we put in the journal for our failure. It had been the first time I had failed at anything. I had climbed many smaller, more technical peeks in my day, but this was meant to be my big mountain. I had never dreamed of Everest, but I wanted to prove to myself that I was better than many. I wanted to say I was more than a dayhiker or backpacker. I had never been so ashamed of anything in my life. She had been sick. She hadn't eaten since we had climbed over 10,000 feet and she threw up a thick, yellow bile. In my mind, I knew she was sick. But as I ran and as I remembered the untapped ability in my own body, my own body's potential to climb any mountain I wanted, my heart hated her. It was a physical response. Like the motion of running itself. I would never think it in words, but I could feel it when I ran.
The shower washed away the past and brought me back to my work. By the time I put my jacket on and kissed Pria, all I wanted in the world was to crawl back in bed with her and kiss her shoulders. Emotion is a fickle beast.
The carpool was on time. John's car was just as dirty as Andy's.
"Alright," Andy said as I sat down in the back seat. "You dumped us to ride home with Dr. Allen last night. What the hell is up with that?"
"Don't ask me. I just work here,” I said with a sheepish grin.
"You can't answer that way. We need and deserve information. As two people who have waited around Circe for you to finish Dr. Allen's slave labor work night after night, we deserve to get the good gossip first."
"I don't know. It was like watching Sybil. She just changed on me."
"She just changed?" John asked.
"Yeah. Yesterday, she was writing notes on my desk that said my report writing was improving, but better than shit isn't saying much and last night she said she respected my ability to stand up for the truth. She said I was the best intern she had worked with and took me out to dinner."
"Wow," John said sarcastically. "You made it to the other side."
"The other side of what is what I want to know," Andy said. "So what is she like, the mysterious Witch Allen."
I shrugged, finding myself at a loss for adjectives. "She talks a lot."
"What does she talk about?"
"Nothing mostly. She talks about nothing."
"What do you mean nothing?"
"I don't know. She believes marriage is an obsolete joke designed to protect our superego from our id's desire to fornicate. She rambles on about nonsense."
"Bunch of Freudian bullshit," Andy said disdainfully.
I shrugged again. "It was an awakening."
"An awakening?"
"She's interesting. Her ideas are strange, but listening to her talk is like reading a book, you look at it with a critical mind and try to appreciate the age from which it came. She's in her forties. When she was in school, all psychologists were taught psychoanalysis, weren't they?"
"You have a very open mind, but she isn't that old and I think most psychologists were not being taught psychoanalysis then, it’s not like she was educated in the ’50s, and even if they were, most psychologists, as you know, have a responsibility to read and keep up with the times."
I had nothing more to say.
"Is that all?" Andy pushed. "She didn't say anything else? Nothing about any change of heart that will make our spring easier?"
"Unfortunately for you, no."
Work feels better when you know that you’re doing a good job. Despite several arguments in treatment planning, I felt like I was playing for the right team. I felt like a qualified representive of Dr. Allen. I didn’t expect that much to change after our dinner, except for Dr. Allen to treat me with more regard, but the next day was very different. Around one o'clock, Dr. Allen came stumbling into her office and hurled a stack of papers onto her desk.
"I asked Katie to cover group for you today," she said. "Would you like a tour of the third floor?"
"I thought interns weren't allowed up there."
"You’re with me. You can be up there when you're under appropriate supervision."
Most people envision mental institutions to be like they are in movies. They picture white rooms, padded cells, and straitjackets. They see restrained patients and psychiatrists that actually do therapy. In the years I have worked in various state institutions, I have seen none of this. Psychiatrists prescribe medication and advise treatment teams. They do five-minute interviews and avoid any other contact with the patients. Psychologists do any and all therapy, if there is any, which there often isn’t, and social workers try to integrate patients into the world outside the hospital. I have never seen a padded cell or a straitjacket actually being used on a patient. These are lingering images from the history of mental health. Maybe some institutions still follow these formats, but Circe did not.
The third floor was the first place that I saw anything even remotely close to a padded cell. It was an empty room, where patients could be placed if they had to be restrained or sedated. Patients never spent much time in this room. It was just for calming them down. On the third floor, things were much more controlled. There was less furniture and almost everything was bolted to the floor. The patients had less access to amenities and freedoms. There were no pool tables or foozball tables and no one had grounds privileges. It was a restricted environment.
"All of the people here," Cassie explained, "are here because of a court order."
Cassie gestured to a pretty redheaded girl who was sitting on the floor in front of the television. "That is Layla. She stabbed her father seven times in the back. She's been here for a year, and thanks to the Hendricks decision we are currently looking for a group home environment for her. We can never have more than 100 patients on the chronic unit, and guess what? Layla gets to go home because we are out of space." Cassie indicated another woman who was dancing from one foot to another in front of the nurse's station. "That’s Nita. Watch out for her. She has AIDS and she refuses to take her medication. We pin her down every day and shoot her up. She also likes to scratch people and spit in their wounds. She'll spit in your mouth if you open it by her and she'll try to make herself bleed so she can smear the blood on your face. She doesn't believe she has AIDS. She thinks we are all conspiring against her to get her to stop having sex. She was a prostitute and as soon as she leaves, she'll have sex with everyone who will give her a nickel.
"We’re going to court tomorrow. I get to testify, as always," Cassie said. "You should come. I'll tell Ms. Gardner and Dr. Yoshi that you won't be available for treatment team."
"Thank you. Is it that easy?"
"Yes. You've been to treatment team; it’s a 95% redundant technicality so we have the paperwork to show that everyone here is in the least restrictive environment. It’s sad if you think about it. All this staff, skilled and trained in the arts of healing the mind, and we all spend 85% of our days keeping up with the paperwork necessary to show that these people need to be here and releasing all of those that we possibly can because institutionalization is considered inhumane. Imagine what we could all do if we were actually given that time back to treat patients. If we could use that time for therapy. We would be a powerful force. It's a good thing we have the recreational, vocational, and art therapists, otherwise there would be no therapy here at all."
I spent the day talking to Cassie's patients. We sat in on treatment planning and did several individual sessions and interviews. Cassie said she loved the third floor because there was more freedom to actually treat the patients. She spent a lot of time talking to patients and trying to assess their needs and meet them. I was impressed. At the end of the day, she took me on a walk around campus. The hospital reminded me of my dreams in the waning light. The pink and red of the failing sun painted the white wa
lls, like dripping blood.
"It's extraordinary isn't it?" Cassie said.
"What?"
"This place. I had to search many years to find it."
"What exactly were you looking for?”
"Everything. The patients. The building. The history. The hands-off supervision. The freedom. Look around you. We work in a museum, a piece of forgotten lore. You can almost feel the dead staring at you from the windows. And the work is interesting."
I looked around me at the collection of mismatched buildings and patients. I looked at the odd juxtaposition of the architecture and the way it both clashed and was absorbed by the black trees that surrounded it. I watched the patients meander through the scene like ghosts.
Or maybe we were the ghosts.
"I worked at five institutions before I found this place."
"Really."
"Yes." She put her hand on my shoulder. "Do you see this building?"
"The old acute ward?"
"Yes. It was the first building on this campus that was used as a hospital. The fort that was here before had become redundant under American control. It protected nothing and it was horribly out of date. So they turned it into an institution for blacks. Of course there was a much nicer institution a little further North. That's where the whites went. But this place was reserved for the blacks, not just crazy blacks, but any blacks that were found by the courts to be too much of a nuisance to deal with. Keep in mind that back then it was considered crazy for a black man to say he should vote or shouldn't have to be subordinate to a white. There were more than 3,000 patients then and once they arrived, they rarely left."
Her eyes grew hazy, as if she was trying to carry me back in time with her. She stretched her arm out and pointed to an empty field surrounding the chronic unit. "All of this land and the swamps were cotton fields back then and all the patients spent their days toiling in the sun. Don't you see? They were clever. They found a way to reinstitute slavery and it was better, because all these slaves were free. They found a way to pathologize their racism. They weren’t racists. They weren’t plantation owners. They were merely providing the needed care for a bunch of crazy blacks. They commissioned them out to farmers to do their work. Lots of people got rich. Dr. Bosarge got the richest and the people that lived here suffered worse than any slave. You can only imagine. If they didn't work, they could do anything they wanted to them. They treated them worse than animals. Over the years, many people were tortured to death."
"That's one of the worst things I've ever heard. Why in the hell would you search for a place with a history like that?"
She leaned over and put her hand on the brick of the building. "Because this place is truly haunted and unhappy. Can't you feel that?"
"Maybe we should give you the Zyprexa?"
Cassie didn’t turn to face me. She only pushed her other hand against the cool red brick. "Isn't it hard?" she said. "Believing in nothing but yourself?"
"I don't understand the question."
She looked at me with her piercing blue eyes, the color of a dead man's lips. "Of course you don't. If you understood the question, I wouldn't have had to ask it."
She began to walk again. "You should go home. Your wife is going to miss you."
"She hasn't been too happy with me lately."
"Oh?"
"She thinks I work too much."
"You do. I work you too much, far more than anyone else, but you've never objected."
"I don't mind staying late."
"You certainly aren't rushing to get home to the little woman."
I didn't respond. I didn't want to. I had never rushed to go home to Pria and I could never explain why. I loved her. I loved being with her. I did not want to avoid her, but I never viewed her as something to be rushed home to. It was unexplainable.
Cassie smiled as we walked towards the parking lot. "Perhaps she's more like a pet than a wife," she said. "Something you enjoy being with, but you have no obligation to."
I turned on her ferociously. "Look, I put up with a lot of shit from you, but I don't have to take that. I think, from now on, we shouldn’t talk about Pria. I respect your opinion in clinical matters, but I think it’s inappropriate of you to make those kinds of assumptions about her. You don’t know us and you’re my supervisor, not my therapist."
"Hit a little too close to home, did I?"
"I told you to drop it."
"I'm just curious."
"What does that mean?"
"You’re a curious man. An interesting case study."
I had that feeling again. Like the first time I had met her. I was a specimen pinned down to a dissection plate and she was slowly taking me apart. Our relationship was odd. I could have filed a complaint. I could have pulled back and put a professional distance between us. There were many things I could have done, and looking back, I should have done. But I did nothing. I stood there staring at her.
"Would you like to get a bite to eat?"
"I'm driving the carpool tonight. They'll be happy you’re letting me off on time, for once."
"Maybe tomorrow?" she asked.
"I can avoid carpool tomorrow. I don't think it will make any difference to anyone."
She smiled up at me. With her glasses off, in the shadow of twilight, she was quite pretty. All the things that had once made her ordinary came together in a harsh singularity to give her a predatory grace. Her thinness seemed like a modelesque elegance, and her slate blue eyes seemed like the devil's pool. Her smile animated her marble skin, giving her a vampiric quality, and even as I noticed these things I told myself that I did not. I told myself that all I wanted from her was an excellent review and perhaps a recommendation. I told myself that I wanted to be with her because I wanted to be the best intern she had ever had. It was a career move. There was nothing else driving me. I couldn’t let myself believe that there was more to it than that.
"Taking long sunset walks with Dr. Allen now?" Andy teased on the way home.
"I don't have any idea what you’re talking about." I responded curtly.
"We saw you walking with her. You should be careful, people might gossip."
"Nothing to gossip about. I’m just being the ass kisser you always say I am. She has a thing for history. She thinks Circe is haunted or something. I was just walking and listening and waiting for my sterling evaluation. Better than either of yours."
"Maybe we could join you then, if we get off early. You know that I’m interested in Circe's history."
"Dr. Babcock said it on the first day, all you have to do is ask her and she'll tell you more than you ever wanted to know."
"You're going to get yourself in trouble, you know that, don't you?"
"Fuck off," I said coolly.
"Ahh, the intelligent response of someone who has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Are you fucking Dr. Allen? Is that why you stay late?"
"No! I’m a married man. My wife would leave me and my life would fall apart."
"Wow. That was personal. Breaking out of your shell finally? I guess you aren't fucking her. She's pretty, that's all, and y’all are spending a lot of time together lately."
"She's a weird woman. I think she sees me as a case study. I don't know, but there is nothing sexual there."
"We believe you," John said. "It’s just weird, her being nice to someone."
"I know, but I think it’s because I stay late. I think she respects my diligence and my ability to work independently."
"Or maybe she has a crush on you?"
"I don't see that. You would have to know her to understand."
I skipped dinner with Cassie the next night. Andy's accusation still hung in the air around Cassie. I averted my eyes when I looked at her. I avoided time spent alone with her. Cassie didn’t seem to notice. She left her yellow Post-It notes on my desk and smiled slyly when I told her that I would rather do my regular work than go with her to the third floor. She gave me a week of sweet peace. It was almost
like it had been before. Quiet and cold. Her office became like a coffin again and her eyes became distant. I left early and Pria happily cooked me dinner. Time stood still.
I felt like I was holding my breath when I was with Pria. My mind wandered and I found myself drifting away to other places when I was with her. I tried to pretend that I wasn’t thinking about something else, but Pria always saw though me.
“It isn’t like you,” she said. “You’re always so attentive. You’ve been dazed all week. I understand if you’re not ready to talk about it, so I’m just going to give you some room to breathe.”
"I haven't been dazed," I responded. "I've just been tired."
"Honey, you've been tired before. I've seen you at your worst, working incessantly. But this is different." Pria looked away. Sadness swam over her features. "You have always been a distant man, but you always noticed me. You always drown me in stupid compliments and kiss me before you leave. These things have meant the world to me. But not this week. This week you've been somewhere else. I know you’re not going to talk to me, but you need to deal with whatever is bugging you."
"I'm sorry. The job has just got a little more intense than usual."
She laughed. "I don't know if you think you’re fooling me or yourself, but we know it isn't that. Just deal with it. Take some time to yourself. I’m going to stay with my mother. I'll be back Sunday night. I need some time with my mom in any case. She says her back has been hurting and she's having trouble getting out of bed. I'm just gonna help her out around the house."
We made love before she left. There were moments when she seemed too perfect. She was too empathetic, too understanding. She knew what I needed and she gave it to me without waiting for me to ask. This only made it harder for me. I knew my sins lay at my feet like a pile of filthy linens waiting to be washed. I ignored them. I rationalized with myself, but in the darkest shadows of my subconscious I knew what I was, and I knew that Pria didn’t belong with me. She was too good for me.
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