One Dead Under the Cuckoo's Nest

by Lori Avocato

  But I couldn’t.

  Still, I’d give Jagger a hard time so he wouldn’t take me for granted. I kissed Spanky on the head. “I’ll be right back, sweetie.” I always told him this, thinking dogs had no concept of time. Even when I went away for a week or more I’d told him I’d be right back. I only wished it was true this time.

  I stood, set him down on the couch and lifted up my little bag. I knew one of the nuns would search it, so I only brought a few magazines and tapes to listen to. Anything to take my mind off of where I’d be. I also brought a small notebook and several pencils to write notes about my case.

  I’d never admit this to anyone, especially Jagger, but I was a bit excited about this case. Even though it wasn’t mine (Jagger always did pay me something though), I felt an overwhelming desire to stop whoever was committing the fraud.

  All I had to do was picture Margaret mouthing to me that she didn’t belong in the Institute.

  I opened the door. My heart momentarily stopped, and this time it wasn’t because I was looking at Jagger.

  Facing incarceration again had caused the anomaly.

  Jagger pulled into one of the reserved spaces marked for physicians.

  I shook my head, grabbed my bag and got out.

  “You can’t just go walking in alone. Wait up,” he said from behind.

  Goldie’s yellow Camaro sat in a restricted parking space for visitors and I noticed Jagger nod to him. Obviously my family had to bring me back, since they took me out. Goldie stepped out and walked as if in slow motion. Guess he really didn’t want me going back in either.

  Not that I was in a hurry to get inside, but I was still pissed at Jagger, mostly on principle, that I was the one being readmitted. I stopped for a second and looked up.

  It was quiet except for a distant foghorn from a boat that chugged up the Connecticut River. The windows to the main building were empty, but on the western side, I could see someone pressed up against the glass, mouth wide open, hands flailing and eyes glaring in horror.

  Yet I couldn’t hear a sound.

  The place was obviously designed so that passersby couldn’t hear the ranting of the mentally ill. The thought gave me no comfort at all. Winter ivy climbed the walls of the giant redbrick buildings. A steeple of white stood on the end building as if it had been a chapel at one time—or maybe it still was. I could use one. My first thought had been that the Institute looked like a typical New England college.

  I stopped and turned toward Jagger.

  “I’ll be one step behind you,” he said.

  I knew that was his way of trying to calm my fears. My feet felt like lead weights as I nodded and moved up the stairs clutching Goldie’s arm between mine.

  “All right, Mary Louise, you can keep your notepad, but not that pencil. It’s too sharp. I can get you a crayon though,” said Sister Liz in the readmitting room.

  Bummer. Good thing I’d thought to hide a tiny pencil in my sock. It was only a few inches in length and no wider than a coffee stirrer. I’d gotten it out of Uncle Walt’s old golf bag. He used it to write on his scorecard, but it had been a few years since he’d played.

  Goldie sniffled and moaned a few times about his “daughter.” Then, I kissed him and whispered that I’d be fine and to keep an eye on my family. Having come from a broken home, I could see the pride in his eyes at being given this chore. He kissed me and nodded to Sister Liz as she unlocked the door to let him out.

  Glad they didn’t do a strip search, I smiled and said, “That’s fine, Sister Liz. A crayon would be fine. Could you please go back to calling me Pauline? So I’ll remember to answer you. I don’t want to seem rude.”

  She hesitated, then probably remembered my “doctor” had said to humor me. “Of course, Pauline. I’ll get you something to draw with. Any particular color?”

  “Black.” Oops. That choice had to be telling in some psychotic way, but truthfully I’d said it since it resembled a pencil.

  “Black. Okay. Black it is.” She turned toward the door when it opened with a swoosh.

  In waltzed Sister Barbie, carrying a tray of colorful pills. “Everything all right here, Sister? If so, you are needed out on the unit.”

  Great. If they started to medicate me, I could lose all logic and not be able to do my job. I always wondered how anyone could function day to day, especially at a job, when they did illegal drugs. Give me a clear head any time.

  Sister Liz gave me a sympathetic look and walked out.

  Damn. Did she know something? I tried to look calm, even pathetic, so Barbie wouldn’t force drugs on me. She held the tray and said, “So, how was your visit?”

  As if I’d tell her that Jagger and I investigated Dr. De Jong. Instead I practiced my lying and said, “Fine. It was fine.”

  She gave me a “yeah, right” kind of look. Amazed me how modern nuns were nowadays. Well, excluding Sister Liz. She was adorable and very much like the “old” nuns although she really wasn’t that old.

  When I went to Saint Stanislaus Grammar School, nonun ever gave me a “yeah, right” look or was as pretty as Barbie. Nope. They all looked like, well, proper nuns. Once they gave up having to wear habits in public, the nunnery went downhill. It was like letting kids wear jeans to school. In my opinion, that was the beginning of the many behavioral problems in schools.

  I had problems of my own, I noted, when Barbie took out a little white cup with a green pill in it. “Your doctor prescribed this for you, Mary Louise.” She held it out toward me.

  It was then that I not only decided I would kill Jagger, but also how.

  “I … Can’t you please call me Pauline?”

  She rolled her eyes. Damn! These nuns were way too modern for me.

  “Fine. Pauline, take your medication.”

  “My doctor said I didn’t need any.”

  “Doctor Plummer may have said that, but Doctor Brandon Pinkerton, the head of the Institute, my dear, has a standing order that new patients be medicated. It is for your own good, child.” She wiggled the cup toward me. “I will inform Doctor Plummer of the policy we have here.”

  Instead of trying to argue, and I do mean trying, since I had very little faith I could win against Barbie, I took the cup, opened my mouth and stuck the pill under my tongue. While she watched me like the proverbial hawk, I took a cup of water from my bedside table and drank.

  The pill floated from beneath my tongue!

  “Swallow, Pauline, before you choke yourself.” She remained glued to the spot. “Don’t make me have to get my flashlight to check your mouth. This has been a long day. Just swallow, dear. Please.”

  My tongue fished around my mouth, but to try and get the damn pill back into its hiding place proved useless. Then Sister Barbie patted me on the back! I swallowed and felt the damn pill sliding down my throat. Shit. I consoled myself with the thought that the pill might be Prozac, which wouldn’t take effect too quickly or knock me out. The drug peaked at six to eight hours.

  No problem.

  In my foggy haze, the furniture in my room started to wiggle. I sat bolt upright in my bed to see it clearly move across the room. When I flopped back down, I decided the pill wasn’t Prozac at all.

  I called it the Green Demon, and didn’t even remember getting into bed.

  My eyes fought to shut, but I tried to force myself awake to think. It was no use. The lids closed like a curtain on the final act of a play. Deciding to give in to the feeling, I lay still. Then my door opened.

  A shadow of a figure stood by the doorway. At first I thought it might be Jagger, but it wasn’t his size. My mouth went dry and my heart started to pound so loudly in my drug-induced state that I worried that whoever it was would hear it. Like some paranormal evil spirit, it moved across—no, glided across—the room. Couldn’t be Sister Liz either. Way too tall for her.

  As a matter of fact, from this angle, it almost touched the ceiling light above my bed. Of course, I couldn’t be too accurate with drugs in my system an
d lying down.

  Not certain if what I saw was fact or drug fiction, I remained still—and the evil spirit rummaged through my drawers!

  Paralyzed with fear, I now couldn’t move if I had wanted to.

  Why would someone sneak into my room? Why wouldn’t they think I’d wake up? And why me?

  Someone here must suspect me. But of what? I’d been so careful.

  I thought of missing Mary Louise, dead Vito Doran, and poor Margaret. Great. Just the kinds of thoughts I needed right about then.

  The figure dug into my bag and even looked inside each of my shoes. Damn, that would have been a good place to hide something. But then again, I hadn’t thought of it and this spirit person had.

  A tickle started in the back of my throat. Had to be from fear, or the dry air of this place, but I tried not to give in to a cough. I certainly didn’t want to startle him, her or it. What I wanted was to open my eyes a bit more than a slit to see if I could tell better who it was. But other than the fact that it wore black—and this place was crummy with black-clad nuns—I had no clue.

  Suddenly, it turned and came closer.

  Gulp.

  The figure remained hovering near for what seemed like hours. I tried to identify a scent, but nothing. The tickle became worse. I swallowed as nonchalantly as I could.

  The figure remained, its face a blur, and then it just turned and walked out.

  I coughed my brains out when the door shut, and then tried to get up. My body remained stuck to the bed as if it were ten times my actual weight. I hoped I hadn’t been given some paralyzing drug. The room remained a foggy blur … until tiny butterflies flew toward the window. Green ones with yellow wings followed by toads hopped across my bed. Then a large cockatoo flew in from the window. I tried to reach out, to shoo them all away, but nothing.

  Instead I shut my eyes and let them make a racket. Someone would hear and come get them out of here.

  “Pauline, Pauline, wake up, my dear. I need to check your vital signs, child.”

  My eyes fluttered. Sister Liz, a hazy Sister Liz, stood in front of me. I opened my eyes wider to see the room. My hands shook but not as much as my voice. “Are … they … gone?” I grabbed the covers tighter even though my hands still trembled.

  “They?”

  “The … birds … the butterflies,” I mumbled. “That damn toad kept me awake.”

  I felt a hand on my arm and turned toward her. “Sometimes it takes a while to get used to the medication.”

  Get used to! Some psychedelic pill had me hallucinating the rain forest in my tiny, stark room, and I had no damn intention of getting used to it or taking a pill again.

  I inhaled and wanted to ask her what the hell I had been forced to swallow, but it probably was some usual “cocktail” they gave all the newly admitted patients. Maybe Jagger had prevented them from giving me one the other day, but he might have a harder time going up against the head of this place.

  I shut my eyes a second to think and ask myself what the hell I was going to do next.

  The only question that came to mind was, Had someone really come into my room or not?

  Eight

  Once Sister Liz had left my room, I made my way to the nurses’ station on wobbly legs. “I want to see my doctor immediately,” I said to Novitiate Lalli, who was behind the glass window typing on a keyboard.

  She kept typing until she appeared to be done.

  I wanted to bang on the window, but thought better than to do that. “Sister?”

  Finally she looked up. “Doctor’s name?”

  “Plummer. Dr. Plummer.” Thank goodness I remembered this time.

  She reached for the list of phone numbers then looked up at me. “You know, your psychiatrist is not at your every beck and call, Pauline. He has other patients too.”

  Yeah, right. Not my psychiatrist.

  She leaned closer and eyed me up and down. “You don’t look so great, so I’ll call him this time. But don’t be surprised if he reprimands you. Go sit in the dayroom.”

  I think she smirked at me.

  I bit back that he had left orders to call him whenever I wanted. No sense in making enemies around here. I didn’t know who I could trust or who I should watch out for.

  On my way to the dayroom, I said a silent prayer that she’d learn more compassion if she was serious about this nun thing. Before I knew it, Spike came bounding down the hallway. Oh, boy. I grabbed a pillow, sat and became a statue.

  He came so close to me I could smell that he’d recently had a cigarette. “Your doc is here. Get up.”

  I sprung up like a Jack in the box so he wouldn’t manhandle me. I had visions of poor Margaret, whom I hadn’t seen today yet, being shoved around by Spike. Of course, the stupid Green Demon had me knocked out for so many hours that Margaret could be asleep along with all the other patients. Without windows in the room, I couldn’t tell if it was day or night.

  “Lead the way,” I said to Spike with a bit of humor that went way over his basketball-sized head.

  Once down the hallway, I paused. Through a window in a door I could see someone, one of the patients who looked a bit like Jackie Dee, wrapped in white sheets, lying still on a twin bed with rails, and some nun I didn’t recognize was sitting at the side.

  While I was zonked out, Jackie must have had some kind of incident that landed her in cold wet packs. My heart broke as I walked past the room, unable to do anything to help. I had to constantly remind myself that this was a hospital, and although some of us really didn’t belong here, most actually did.

  Spike opened the door to the doctor’s office. I held my breath for a second. Jagger sat on the end of the examining table. He looked as if he’d walked in off the street. Although in full character makeup, he hadn’t bothered to put on a white coat.

  Damn. The medication must still be in my system.

  “Here she is, Doc,” Spike said and promptly headed off after Jagger nodded at him.

  He looked at me and said, “Close the door.”

  I did and turned around to him, thinking he’d move and let me take the table. But no, he remained, so I sat in the rolling doctor’s chair. I wheeled closer to him.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I … Barbie gave me a green pill—”

  “Goddammit.”

  “On that we agree.”

  He merely gave me a Jagger look and said, “I’m not even going to ask who Barbie is.”

  Good, I thought to myself. He didn’t need to notice that the head nurse/nun looked like a real doll (especially since I’d heard my niece say Barbie and Ken were splitsville). Damn. I was becoming jealous of a doll or a nun—take your pick. Either way, it was pathetic. “Look, I know you didn’t want me medicated, least I hope you didn’t.”

  He merely looked at me.

  “Okay. Okay. So you didn’t, but when I’m in the position of a patient, I don’t have much room to argue.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you stick it under your tongue until she left, and then spit it out?”

  I slapped my hand to my forehead. “Gee, why didn’t I think of that?” I rolled farther back.

  He leaned forward. “You all right? You don’t look all right.”

  “I’m flattered. But what I wanted to tell you about was my drug-induced trip.” I proceeded to tell him about the rain forest and finished with, “So I really can’t be certain someone was in my room.” Nor am I sure there are toads—or are they frogs?—in the rain forest.

  “Did you … When your mind cleared, did you check your drawers to see if anything was disturbed?” He tapped his foot on the edge of the exam table’s step.

  Why hadn’t I thought to do that? I watched his foot a second longer then looked up. “Of course. You know, Jagger, I’m not allowed many personal belongings around here. So it didn’t take much to scan what I had to see if it was touched.” I ran my hand across my nose to make sure it hadn’t grown. I was getting damn good, and much quicker on the uptake, with
this lying stuff.

  Jagger stood and walked toward me. He hooked his foot on the wheel of my chair and spun me toward him.

  “Hey! Watch out!”

  “You need to work on credible lying, Sherlock. Go back and check. It’s late tonight, so I’ll see you on rounds tomorrow.” Then, while I was paralyzed in stunned silence, he touched my cheek and said, “Watch your back.” His finger ran slowly down my skin.

  At least I convinced myself that it had … in a very sensual sort of way.

  Now I really wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight.

  I mumbled inside my head all the way back to my room. Dr. Dick had called Spike to escort me and gave him a reminder to keep his hands off me unless absolutely necessary. I figured my idea of absolutely necessary and Spike’s version weren’t even on the same wavelength. Nevertheless, I made it back to my room unscathed, and as soon as he left, I hurried to my drawers.

  “Shit,” I muttered when I opened them to find my undies scattered about.

  I always folded my undies.

  Someone actually had been there. Because even on drugs, no way could I be this messy.

  Sleep didn’t come easily, once I’d confirmed the suspicion that someone had invaded my space. Why me though? Who would suspect me of not being a real patient? Was that really what someone supposed? Or was it a coincidence? Or had a real patient done it due to their mental health issues, and was I—or at least my undies—an innocent bystander? Whatever the reason, someone had violated my undergarments, and that didn’t sit right with me.

  But who?

  I’d pondered that thought over and over during the night, which had led to my not being able to sleep. I came up with a suspect list though. I wrote it on the paper I’d brought there, and rewrote it over and over. It was a short list, unfortunately. Novitiate Lalli was on the top of it—mainly out of principle and the fact that I plain didn’t like her. The figure could have been her size, I rationalized. And, maybe she was in on the fraud. That way she might know I really wasn’t Mary Louise Huntington.

  I had cut the nuns some mental slack. After all, they were chosen for a life to serve God, so they wouldn’t come snooping in someone’s drawers. Novitiate Lalli hadn’t taken her final vows, so that made her a suspect along with, unfortunately, Ruby. Maybe Ruby was being buddy-buddy with me to get some info. Maybe she was involved in the fraud. Anything was possible. Hell, maybe she was a plant, like me, but for the opposition.