Silent Echoes

by Carla Jablonski

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  “I might have word from your mother,” Lindsay added, hoping that would convince her.

  “Then I will do my best to get back here.”

  An unfamiliar doctor walked into the room, followed by the nurse. “I understand you’re still hearing the voices,” he said. They must have switched shifts, and Dr. Mousif had gone home.

  “Just one,” Lindsay said.

  The doctor smiled. “That’s still one too many. But don’t worry. Sometimes it’s just a matter of adjusting the medication.” He wrote something on a little pad and handed it to the nurse. “We’ll keep her on this a bit longer, but we’ll up the dosage. Don’t worry, Lindsay, you’re in good hands.”

  The nurse returned with the extra medication, and she and the doctor both watched as Lindsay took it.

  “And now let’s go join the others,” the nurse said, waiting at the door.

  Lindsay unfolded herself from the bed. Oh, joy.

  In the common room the television blared, as usual. There were about a dozen kids ranging from twelve to seventeen milling around. “They’ve just come back from school,” the nurse explained. “You’ll probably be joining them tomorrow.”

  “School?” Lindsay asked. She couldn’t imagine studying, feeling the way she did—so spaced out and underwater.

  “What, did you think you got to get out of school by going crazy?” said a tall boy with a buzz cut and a tattoo of a skull on his neck. “No such luck.”

  An argument broke out on the other side of the room. A small boy grabbed a chair and flung it. Kids scattered and nurses rushed in as the boy knocked over chairs, cursing at the top of his lungs. Lindsay stood and stared as if she were watching a movie, a still, fuzzy center in the swirling wild storm.

  Almost as quickly as it had started, the outburst stopped. A security guard gripped the boy tightly, and a nurse spoke to him quietly but firmly. Only when the other nurse came up to her did Lindsay realize she had pressed herself into a corner.

  “Lindsay, it’s all right. We have everything under control,” said the nurse, Maria.

  “He was really mad,” Lindsay said.

  “Ricky has some anger issues, and we’ll be talking about this incident later in group. Right now, though, you have a visitor. Your mother is here.”

  Lindsay stiffened. When they’d finally found her mother that first day, she’d shown up drunk with Carl glued to her side. The doctor had explained to them that Lindsay was hearing voices and had to be admitted for an indeterminate amount of time. Despite the utterly surreal nature of the moment, Lindsay could have sworn that after a flash of surprise, both her mother and Carl looked relieved. Carl had done most of the talking, repeating over and over that they should keep Lindsay for as long as they thought necessary. What they had told the doctor in private, Lindsay could only guess.

  “Is she…is she alone?” Lindsay asked.

  “Yes. I’ll bring you to the visiting room.” Maria led Lindsay down the brightly decorated hallway.

  “I hate you all!” Ricky shouted as they passed his room.

  “Ricky, you know what will happen if you don’t calm down,” an orderly was saying. They arrived at the visiting room.

  “Here she is, Mrs. Clancy,” Maria announced, opening the door.

  Melanie glanced up from the chair by the window.

  “Hi, Melanie,” Lindsay said.

  Melanie’s eyes flicked to Maria, then to Lindsay. “Hello.” Was she embarrassed because Lindsay had called her “Melanie” instead of “Mom” the way she always did?

  “Do you have to be here for this?” Melanie asked Maria.

  “That’s up to Lindsay,” Maria said.

  “It’s okay,” Lindsay said. “You can go.”

  “I’ll be just outside. I’ll have to escort you out when you’re ready to leave, Mrs. Clancy.” Maria left the room, shutting the door with a little click.

  “I think that’s the first time I ever heard anyone call you that,” Lindsay said.

  Melanie nodded, studying Lindsay’s face. “So, you okay here?”

  Lindsay shrugged.

  Now her mother stood and started to pace, her arms crossed over her chest, her fingers tapping. She forced herself to stay sober for this, Lindsay realized. So she’s jumpy.

  “I know how this shrink stuff goes,” her mother said. “It’s all the mother’s fault, right?”

  “I don’t know,” Lindsay said. “What I have…What they think I…What’s going on isn’t anybody’s fault, exactly.”

  Her mother stopped and looked out the barred window. “So what do you tell them about me? About me and Carl?” she asked, her tone challenging.

  Understanding crept into Lindsay’s muffled brain. Her mom wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to tell anyone the truth about what was going on at home. She turned and opened the door.

  “Maria,” she said. “I’m feeling really tired. I think maybe Mrs. Clancy should go now.”

  That night the bright fluorescent glow from the corridor seeped into Lindsay’s room from the observation window in the door. Lindsay heard sobbing somewhere but couldn’t identify the source or even the direction. She felt disoriented, floating, the extra medication making her limbs leaden.

  “Are you there?” a voice called. The voice named Lucy. The voice that had brought her here to this place, this moment.

  “I am,” Lindsay said. “So I guess you are too.”

  “Do you have something to tell me?”

  “About what?”

  “Do you have a message from my mother?” the voice asked.

  Lindsay put a hand to her forehead. Right. Lucy had wanted information about her dead mom. For some reason, she thought Lindsay could do that. Weird.

  “I might be able to find out about her, but I don’t think I’ll be able to do that in the hospital.”

  “Oh.”

  Lindsay could almost feel the invisible girl’s disappointment. Or maybe that was just another side effect of the meds.

  “It’s just my father misses her so much,” Lucy said. “I never really thought about how he felt. I never knew her.”

  “I never knew my father,” Lindsay said. “He dumped my mom before I was born.” She sighed. “From what my mother tells me, I’m better off this way.”

  “Oh. Well…”

  Through the drug haze, Lindsay sensed Lucy withdrawing, pulling away, as if she were about to say goodbye.

  “Could you—would you stay and talk to me?” Lindsay blurted. “I’m so lonely.”

  The wavering attention was replaced by a warming, cocoon-like sympathy. “You must be. I’m terribly sorry about everything that’s happened to you.”

  “Thank you,” Lindsay whispered. It was hard to keep forming coherent sentences, but she had to do something to keep the lifeline active.

  “I’m not sure how long I can stay,” Lucy warned. “I claimed my doctor friend told me to wait in his office for news of one of his patients, but once he comes in, I’ll have to leave.”

  “That’s okay. Just…a while longer. Thanks.”

  “I’m feeling alone too,” Lucy confessed. Lindsay thought she sounded sad. “My father moved back to the boardinghouse, but I’m staying at Mrs. Van Wyck’s. I have to be so careful. There’s no one I can really be myself with now that my father isn’t around.”

  “I know what you mean,” Lindsay mumbled. “Being yourself can be dangerous.”

  “And with Bryce—I have to be really on my toes.”

  “Who’s Bryce?”

  “He’s my suitor. Well, I think he is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He treats me as if he’s courting me, but my father doesn’t think his intentions are serious. And I…Well, I’m afraid he’s only interested in me because his parents don’t approve.”

  “I’ve seen that before,” Lindsay said.

  “You sound funny,” Lucy said. “Are you all right?”

  “It
’s the pills they gave me,” Lindsay explained.

  “I should let you rest—”

  “No! Please. Keep talking to me. Just don’t get mad if I fall asleep on you, okay?”

  “Okay. So…what do you want to talk about?”

  “Tell me about your father. What’s that like, having a dad?”

  Lindsay pulled the covers to her chin and curled up, listening to Lucy describe her charming, troublesome father, as if she were a small child being told a bedtime story.

  “I see that Dr. Greene upped your medication yesterday,” Dr. Mousif said, reading a page in Lindsay’s file.

  “The voice I hear…” Lindsay said. “Could it be anything except schizophrenia?”

  “I know it’s hard to hear such a scary-sounding diagnosis,” Dr. Mousif said. “And I won’t pretend it isn’t serious. But there is hope that it can be managed.”

  “But what if—what if I take the medicine and I still hear the voice? Wouldn’t that mean there’s a different reason I hear it?”

  Dr. Mousif looked at her sharply; then her expression softened. “Is that what’s happening, Lindsay? You still hear the voice even on the new dosage?”

  Lindsay flicked her eyes to the floor, angry at herself for her obvious mistake.

  “Lindsay, don’t feel bad. There is a period of adjustment. Every individual is different. We’ll find the best fit for you.” She scribbled on a prescription pad. “We’ll try this instead.” She looked up and smiled. “Now you can join the others and go to class.”

  “Okay.”

  She left Dr. Mousif’s office, and as she turned the corner, she saw two orderlies wheeling a writhing girl strapped to a stretcher.

  “Better here than emergency, they decided,” one of the orderlies said.

  “Your teeth!” the girl shrieked. “I see them! I know who you are!” She strained against the straps. “They’re here! They’re everywhere!”

  “Guess the shot didn’t take,” the other orderly said.

  “Give it a minute,” the first orderly said. They rolled the stretcher into one of the rooms and shut the door.

  Lindsay hovered at the end of the hallway. She could still hear the girl screaming.

  “What’s all the noise?” Trina asked, coming out of her room with her roommate, Susie.

  “Someone new,” Lindsay said.

  “Come on, girls!” Ruth, the therapist, called from the common area. “We’re working on structure, remember? Time to get to class.”

  “Schizo,” Trina announced as they passed the door.

  “Definitely,” Susie agreed.

  Lindsay glanced sharply at them. “How do you know?”

  Trina shrugged. “Typical behavior. It’s the voices that she’s screaming at. Seen it before.”

  “You said you wouldn’t tell,” Susie whispered.

  “I wasn’t telling, dodo, I just said I’d seen it.”

  Susie gripped Lindsay’s arm. Her fingers were icy cold. “I was never that bad. The voices, they were just mean to me. They never told me to hurt anyone else. But I’m a lot better now.”

  “Yes, you are,” Ruth said to Susie, motioning them toward the door. “Now let’s go.”

  Even chaos theory couldn’t be used to predict the activity, movement, and general disorder in the classrooms. Lindsay figured there were probably about fifty students moving down the halls into the classrooms. Her class had only fifteen kids, but she didn’t understand how anyone could keep track of them all. Interruptions, outbursts, and nervous energy filled the room to bursting.

  In a white-hot surprise, something hurtled so close to Lindsay’s face she felt its breeze. She was under the table, heart pounding, before she even heard the crash. She peered through the legs of the table and saw that Ricky had thrown a chair at a computer terminal. The kids all went wild.

  “Man, what’s with the chair throwing, dude?” a tall boy named Conner shouted above the general melee.

  “Everyone calm down,” Mr. Madison kept saying over and over as orderlies rushed in and dragged Ricky out.

  Lindsay curled up under the table. Mr. Madison continued to fight a losing battle to restore order until finally it was time to go back to the ward. Lindsay thought she’d wait before heading out to the swarming corridor. She already felt jangled. Finally she crawled out from under the table and suddenly realized: she was alone in the room. Could she…make a run for it?

  The door burst open and a panicked nurse stood in the doorway. “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

  “Nothing,” Lindsay said.

  “Come. Right now,” the woman ordered.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong,” Lindsay protested.

  “Yeah, right. Move it.”

  The nurse led Lindsay back to the locked ward. “Here she is,” she announced. “I noticed one was missing when I did the head count.”

  “What were you trying to do?” Ruth asked.

  “Nothing,” Lindsay protested. “I hid under the table. I didn’t want to get hit in the head with something.”

  “No lie,” Conner said. “Ricky went whack again.”

  Ruth nodded. “Yes, he’s in the quiet room.”

  Lindsay knew that meant Ricky was in the small dark room, empty except for a bare mattress. The door went from open to shut to locked and the person inside could end up in restraints.

  Ruth gave Lindsay a sympathetic smile. “Sorry, Lindsay. I know it must have been a frightening first day of class for you.” She put her hand on Lindsay’s shoulder. “Time for your new meds and then we’ll head in for lunch.”

  In the dining area Lindsay was stunned to see the girl from the stretcher sitting at a table, eating calmly. She was carrying on a conversation with her one-on-one nurse.

  Lindsay slid into a seat at a nearby table, fascinated. Trina plopped down beside her. “Told you,” she said, nodding toward the new girl. “Schizo. Drugs kicked in and the voices all evaporated.”

  “Does it always work like that?” Lindsay asked. “You don’t hear the voices when you take the meds?”

  Trina shrugged. “I don’t hear voices. But it was like that with Susie too.”

  Lindsay lifted her juice container, and her hand just stopped in front of her, halfway to her mouth. Sweat beaded up on her forehead, and she felt queasy. She stood, wobbling, and went out to the nurses’ station. “I don’t feel so good,” she said.

  The nurse looked at something in Lindsay’s chart, felt Lindsay’s forehead, and nodded. “It may be a reaction to the new medication. Why don’t you lie down and I’ll make sure Dr. Mousif checks on you?”

  “Thanks.”

  Lindsay went into her room, and as soon as she lay down, she heard the voice call to her. “Lindsay, I came back, like you asked.”

  Interesting. No matter what drug she took, she still heard the voice.

  Lindsay blinked, trying to allow the suspicion, clouded by medication, to come to the surface. Something else was going on, something stranger than schizophrenia.

  “Don’t talk to me,” Lindsay whispered. “Not here.”

  “But you asked me to come back. I thought you wanted company again,” Lucy’s voice replied.

  Lindsay pressed her fingers to her forehead, trying to unscramble her thoughts. “I can’t risk it,” she said. “Not good. Not here. Something is happening.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Me either,” Lindsay admitted. “I just know I can’t take any chances right now. Not with this.”

  “But—”

  “I mean it!”

  A nurse opened the door. “You all right?”

  “I feel pretty sick. Is Dr. Mousif going to see me?”

  “I’ll check.” The nurse shut the door again.

  “I’m sorry you’re not feeling well,” Lucy said. “That’s why you’re in the hospital. I won’t trouble you here.”

  Lindsay felt like a door in her brain just shut.

  And then she started making plans
.

  Thirteen

  Nurse Maria has a thing for Therapist Mark, she wrote in her notebook the next evening. When he’s around, she pays a lot less attention. Eager Edgar the Intern is the worst at remembering about locking doors after him. Useful.

  She’d figured out how to fake taking her meds as well as mimic the dazed “lack of affect” described in her chart. Her mind was clearing as the drugs left her system. She’d managed to avoid two doses so far.

  “You writing your memoirs?” Trina asked, sitting down next to Lindsay in the common room. “Am I in them?”

  “No,” Lindsay said, refusing to look up. Repairmen working on the electronics room. Sometimes leave door open. Ruth yells at them, but they still do it. She tapped her pencil on the page.

  If Eager Edgar, Nurse Maria, and Therapist Mark were all scheduled at the same time that the workmen were in, she might be able to get out.

  She was in luck. Two days later, just after two o’clock, Eager Edgar was talking to Ricky, who was in the quiet room again, this time in restraints. Maria was flirting with Mark, and one of the workmen started cursing.

  “I think Susie is making out with Conner,” Lindsay said to Trina, knowing Trina had a crush on the guy.

  “What?” Trina raced down the hallway. “Where are you, bitch?” she screamed.

  Maria glanced away from Mark and watched Ruth and an orderly tear after Trina. Lindsay edged closer to the room that was having electrical work done. “I’ve got to go all the way down to the fifth floor to get the specs,” one of the workmen snarled.

  “Sorry,” the other workman said meekly. He turned away and busied himself with a tangle of wires.

  The cursing workman stalked out of the room and flung open the door. Before it could catch, Lindsay shoved her foot into it. She counted: One, two, three, and ran out.

  Into a stairwell, out onto another floor, another stairwell. As she ran, she tugged on the plastic wristband that identified her as a ward on the loony floor. Down another corridor, but now she walked slowly, with confidence, as if she were a visitor. She had no idea where the exit was in the maze of rooms, halls, locked and unlocked corridors, but she knew she had to keep going.