by Peter Kirby
“Leave it,” he said.
And she did.
The bald man sat down again facing her. He reached into his pocket, and pulled out a plastic sandwich bag and offered it to her. “Take it. You’ll need it soon.”
She didn’t understand, but she took the bag and stuffed it into her pocket.
Then, he turned to the other man. “Joe, I think now would be a good time to restrain Star.
The guy called Joe pulled Star’s hands behind her back and slipped plastic cuffs around her wrists, pulling the lead tight. Then the bald man went over to a tall workbench against the wall and came back with a pair of red pruning shears. He sat back in his chair facing Star and leaned over with the shears. He hooked the blade under the fabric of her bra and cut. Then he used the shears to move the fabric away, exposing each breast.
Star vomited onto her pants and began crying. “No. Please. I’m telling you the truth.”
The bald man ignored her while he took some paper napkins from his pocket and wiped at the vomits splashes that had landed on his pants. Then he reached over again with the shears, this time he used them to force her chin up so she would look him in the eyes.
“Listen, Star. And believe this. You will give me the truth today. It could be right now, or a few hours from now. Either way, you will tell me the truth. I really hope it will be sooner rather than later. But you’re the only one can decide that.”
Star was dry heaving, shivering with fright. But she heard him and couldn’t see a way out.
“The sandwich bag I just gave you? That’s for your nipples. We’ll start there,” he said, flexing the pruning shears.
Star involuntarily looked down at her breasts. Her nipples were flat against the skin.
“Some cold water will bring them out for cutting. We do have some water don’t we, Joe?”
“Yes, sir,” said Joe. “I’ll get some.”
Joe got up and walked across the room.
“Hugo Desportes,” Star mumbled.
“What? I couldn’t …”
“Hugo Desportes,” she repeated. And once the tap was opened, there was no reason to stop.
They were parked outside the Mega Bus Terminal on Saint-Antoine Street. The driver had said nothing on the ride to the terminal and now sat, half swivelled in his seat, watching Star in the back seat. The guy they called Joe emerged from the terminal building and climbed back into the passenger seat. He turned around to face Star.
“Remember. You are not to come back to Montreal. Ever. And you’re to keep your mouth shut about what happened. You understand?”
She nodded, sniffling tears and shaking every now and then. Joe had repeated the same instructions six or seven times already. She hadn’t told them about Kyle and, right now, he was all she could think about.
“Say it,” he said.
“I’m not coming back. Ever. And I won’t tell anybody about what happened.”
“Good.” Joe leaned over and handed her a bus ticket and what looked like a couple of hundred dollars in cash.
“This is a one-way ticket on the Express to Toronto, and some money to get started. That’s your bus in front.”
A Van Hool bus was already receiving passengers up the block.
“Let’s go.”
The driver stayed where he was, and Star and Joe joined the line of passengers, the usual mix of young and old, students going home to visit their parents, and grandparents going to visit their kids. Star was the only passenger without a bag.
Joe waited on the sidewalk and watched as she climbed up into the bus and found a seat towards the back. He was still there when the driver killed the internal lights and eased the bus slowly into traffic. Star looked behind her, but the back window of the bus was blacked out, and she couldn’t see if they were following her. Then she relaxed for the first time in hours and tried to pull herself together. The old Asian woman next to her stared out into the night as the bus weaved through traffic for two blocks and slipped onto the highway for the five-and-a-half hour trip to Toronto.
She was about to ask to try to borrow someone’s cell phone until she noticed the sign with a cell phone barred with a red line. It would have been too late anyway, she thought, it was almost three hours since she gave them Desportes’s address, and if they were going after him, they would already have done it. She thought about Kyle. He was defenceless, and she had abandoned him, no betrayed him. Then she remembered the ankle bracelet. They said they would track her to Toronto, and they would know if she got off before Toronto.
She was the first person into the bathroom. She sat down on the closed toilet and started fiddling with the ankle bracelet. It was fastened up high, and when she moved it down, it was loose on her thin ankle. Someone started knocking on the bathroom door. She took off her boot and sock and wiped soap from the dispenser around her ankle and the inside of the bracelet, all the time cursing the frantic knocking on the door. In a few minutes she had the bracelet slipped off, and she tossed it into the garbage container. She wiped the soap off with paper towels, put her sock and boot back on, and left the toilet. The woman waiting outside flashed her a dirty look and said, “I hope you didn’t stink it up.”
Star sat back in her seat, ignored by her Asian seatmate. She took the roll of twenties and removed two; the rest she slipped into her sock and deep into the boot. Then she walked to the front of the bus and bent down to put her mouth close to the driver’s ear.
“I feel funny, I need to get off the bus.”
“What? This is an express. No stops.” The driver turned to look at her, “What’s the problem? You don’t look sick.”
“I haven’t taken my pills in three days. I thought I was okay.” She gave him a demented smile. “Most times I can feel it coming on. I thought I should warn you.”
“Why don’t you sit down and relax. Maybe sleep. We’ll be in Toronto in five hours.” He wasn’t going to stop just because someone asked him to.
Star went back to her seat, matching the Asian woman’s scowl with the same off-centered smile she gave the driver. After a few minutes, she started singing in a little-girl-lost voice.
My Mommy lies over the ocean,
My Mommy lies over the sea,
My Mommy lies over the ocean,
So bring back my Mommy to me.
Bring back,
Bring back,
Oh bring back my Mommy to me.
Last night as I lay on my pillow,
Last night as I lay on my bed,
Last night as I lay on my pillow,
I dreamed that my Mommy was dead.
When she reached the end, she started over. She had their attention. No question. She wasn’t making eye contact, but she could see heads turning in her direction. Then, in a voice that would have carried across a battlefield, she screamed,
“Mommy. Where are you?”
She repeated it, loudly, with a plaintive turn at the end. Then she stood up and started walking up the aisle to the front of the bus, putting her head down between each seat as though looking for someone.
“You know I don’t like hide and seek, Mommy. You know I don’t like it.”
She ignored the passengers, but they had given up trying to ignore her.
“Mommy. Please don’t do this. Where are you?”
It’s odd how words can stir your emotions. You see it with actors who shed real tears on stage, and Star was getting sucked into the little-girl-lost character. She was feeling the girl’s anguish.
When she reached the front of the bus, she turned and ran towards the back, bumping seats as she passed. She stopped in front of the toilet and banged on the door.
“Mommy, are you in there?”
Then she pulled the door open, looked inside, slammed it closed, and then turned back up the aisle, looking in each seat as she passed. A lad
y stood up as she approached and made soothing noises. Star gave her a two-handed push back into her seat.
“Kyle? Stop this. Where are you?” If pretending to look for her mother felt real, calling out for Kyle hit her like a blow, and she started screaming, “I’ve got to find Kyle. Let me off this fucking bus now.”
The driver was getting frantic. He was trying to keep an eye on the highway, talking on his phone, while watching Star in the mirror. He put his phone back into his jacket pocket and said over his shoulder,
“It’s going to be okay, kid. We’re going to stop.” Then he reached forward, uncradled the speaker handset and brought it to his mouth.
“Ladies and gentlemen. We will be making an unscheduled stop in approximately five minutes. If everyone can just remain calm for a few minutes things are going to be fine.”
A heavy-set Haitian woman stood up and approached Star, her arms out in a welcome, and Star allowed herself be pulled into the hug. “There darling. Things will be all right. Come sit with me.”
Star didn’t struggle as the woman guided her down to a seat, putting a fat arm across her shoulder and pulling Star into her soft body.
“We’re almost there, darling. Relax. Things will be okay.”
Star rested into the unfamiliar comfort of the hug. Minutes later the bus turned off the highway and eventually into the bright courtyard of an Ultramar service station. It pulled to a stop next to a police cruiser and an ambulance.
The door of the bus opened with a hiss, and a uniformed policeman climbed the stairs. He immediately picked out Star. It wasn’t hard. Passengers were staring in her direction and, just to be sure, the Haitian woman raised her arm. The policeman moved down the aisle, followed by an ambulance technician, and leaned over to Star. He ignored the Haitian woman.
“Hi, Miss,” he said. “I’m Charles. We’re going to help you. This is Tony,” he said, gesturing to the technician.
“She’s having bad thoughts,” the Haitian woman said. “Calling for her mother.”
Star began to sing again, this time quietly, almost to herself.
The Haitian woman reached over to brush Star’s loose hair out of her face. “The child needs help.”
“What’s your name?”
Star didn’t answer. The Haitian woman removed her arm from around Star and raised herself out of the seat. The technician moved into her place, balancing himself with a knee on the seat. He arranged a thick blanket around Star’s shoulders.
“Can you walk?”
Star stopped singing and allowed the technician to help her up and lead her off the bus. In the blazing light of the ambulance, he got her short coat off and noticed the bus ticket: Louise Trainor. Then he got her to lie down and began collecting the vital signs: pulse, blood pressure, temperature, breathing rate. She was quiet, and he didn’t seem in any hurry to leave. Finally the policemen stood at the door to the ambulance. “You guys ready to go?”
“Sure”
“How is she?”
“Seems fine.” He turned to Star, “Don’t you, Louise?” Then he turned to the policeman. “According to the ticket, her name is Louise Trainor.”
Star said nothing. She heard the ambulance door close, leaving her and the technician inside.
She hadn’t thought past getting off the bus. But now that she was off the bus, she had other problems; she was a psychiatric patient having a meltdown. She was surprised how short the drive was, she expected to be taken back to Montreal. Instead, they brought her to the Lakeshore General in Pointe-Claire, about forty-five minutes west of Montreal. She looked up at the clock as they led her into Emergency. It was five-thirty in the afternoon, almost three and a half hours since they’d snatched her.
The emergency room was crowded. In a system where healthcare is free, emergency rooms are the bottlenecked entries into the system, and the triage nurse is the gatekeeper. Her job is to predict how long you will survive without seeing a doctor. If you look like you’re good for a few hours, you’ll probably wait ten. If you look like you won’t last more than an hour or two, you’ll still wait, but near the front of the line. You need lots of bleeding to get seen immediately.
The triage nurse at the Lakeshore was working the last few hours of a double shift and was stressed and exhausted. She needed details from Star, but Star wasn’t giving them. Star had seen enough crazy people on the street to know how many different ways there were to look crazy. She chose a non-threatening, living-on-another-planet look, and ignored the nurse’s questions. From time to time she mumbled, “St. Mary’s, that’s the place.”
The nurse took the bait and called the psychiatric ward at St. Mary’s in Montreal. In the emergency room, sending people somewhere else is always a good idea, it improves the statistics, and nobody would criticize her for that.
It took some convincing, but St. Mary’s agreed to accept her. Star was back in the ambulance heading for Montreal within fifteen minutes of arriving at Lakeshore.
There are thirteen psychiatric emergency institutions on the island of Montreal. St. Mary’s Hospital has one of them. Its emergency room is painted a calming blue, but it’s hard to notice décor in bedlam. It’s an emergency room without inhibitions, where anything is normal, even the security guard at the door. People in crisis wait for a doctor’s decision to load them up with chemicals and send them back on the street, or hold them for ten days while their brain chemicals are adjusted with drugs. Those who haven’t yet been drugged into docility wander around in comforting circles, wearing humiliation gowns split down the back, while friends and families, if they’re lucky enough to have any, try to cope. Nurses and doctors rush from one patient to the next, trying to deal with the never-ending flood of the inconsolable.
The ambulance technician led Star into the room that was dominated by a circular staff pen where nurses and white-coated doctors were sheltered like pioneers who had circled the wagons against attack. Doorless rooms lined the edge of the large space, each with a single bed and a plastic curtain for privacy. Clusters of metal chairs were scattered around in no apparent order. The ambulance technician grabbed one of the chairs and motioned for Star to sit in it while he went to find a nurse.
He walked up to the counter, and a nurse who was listening to someone on the phone cupped her hand over the mouthpiece.
“Louise from Lakeshore?” she asked.
The technician nodded, and they exchanged clipboards. He wanted a confirmation of delivery, and she wanted confirmation of where the latest arrival had come from. With her hand still over the mouthpiece of the telephone, she said, “We don’t have a room just yet, but tell Louise I’ll be over to see her in a second.”
He walked back to Star and relayed the message. Then he took his blanket back and replaced it with one marked St. Mary’s Hospital, thin and worn after innumerable cycles from patients to laundry and back again.
“You’re in good hands now. Take care of yourself, Louise.”
Star watched him leave and realized it was her chance. She stood up and took a step towards the exit, but there was a hand on her shoulder. She spun around. It was the nurse.
“Louise? Hi. My name’s Verna. I’m a nurse. I’m here to help you.”
Star sat down again, and the nurse pulled up a chair facing her.
“We’re going to have to fill in a form, and then the doctor will see you. Let’s start with name and date of birth. It’s Louise Trainor, isn’t it? They told me that’s what it said on the bus ticket.”
Star looked up. “Louise Trainor. April 16, 1994.” She waited for the nurse to finish writing.
“And do you have a hospital card, Louise?”
Star shook her head.
The nurse looked disappointed. Without a card, there was no easy access to a file, which meant a lot more questions. Star’s mind was racing, trying to figure out how she would get out, worried that they
would drug her into sleep. She didn’t know how she was going to get Kyle back.
The nurse continued with questions, and Star made up answers. But she couldn’t remember all the important stuff, the name of her psychiatrist, what drugs she had been prescribed, and no, she couldn’t remember when her last appointment had been.
The nurse stood up. “Louise, I’m going to order up your chart. That’s the best place to start. The doctor will be over in a few minutes. In the meantime, go into the dressing room over there and put this on.”
She handed Star a gown and led her to a small cubicle no bigger than the changing room in a low-end clothing store. Star went in and pulled the curtain closed. She didn’t undress. She looked out at the room through a crack at the edge of the curtain. The nurse, Verna, was on the phone again, with her back turned to the dressing cubicle. She knew she couldn’t make a run for it. All the staff were busy, but they seemed attuned to anything unusual; they spent their working lives looking over their shoulders. Making a dash for the exit would be the sort of thing that gets noticed. Then she saw a cleaner pushing a trolley towards her. He parked it in front of the changing room and went into the toilet with two huge rolls of paper for the dispenser.
Star slipped off her jacket and left the cubicle. Dumping the jacket into the garbage bag on the trolley, she started to push the trolley slowly across the room, like she was putting in a long, eight hour shift.
As she approached the double doors, she stared at the guard and dared him to open them for her. He did, leaning into the door and making room for her to pass.
“Louise. Come back.”
It was Verna, but Star wasn’t about to turn around. She grabbed her jacket from the garbage and tipped the trolley sideways onto the floor, spilling water, brushes and bottles onto the hallway tiles. Then she was off, running down the corridor. The upturned trolley slowed down the security guard, but once he cleared it, he started gaining on her. That’s when she started shouting.
“He’s got a gun! Gun! He’s got a gun!”
She rounded a corner and crashed into a big man with a walker, sending the walker clattering to the ground. She screamed and pointed back behind her. “He’s got a gun!”