"I try to give it to myself and fail," I said. smiling.
"What else is there but the moment, the here and now anyway?" she asked, laughing with a wonderfully pure abandon. Then she stopped, held my gaze in hers for a moment before she leaned down and kissed me. I closed my eyes and willed this all to be forever and ever, willed away any obstacles.
We made love in that field that day. Willow, and there is no doubt in my mind, that was the day you were conceived. How many children get to know that, the where and the when and the beauty of the moment? I hope you cherish this revelation and see it for the wonderful time it was. Perhaps now you can understand why I would not trade a moment, not erase a second of my life with your mother.
When we returned and Nadine Gordon practically attacked me with the news I had kept another patient waiting too long for his session. I should have realized that things would become more and more difficult. But my heart was too full. Even her ice-cold eyes and granite-like face of chastisement couldn't shake me. Behind her back, I held Grace's hand in mine and then I let her go and went on to do my work.
Little did I know that day that what would end the grand struggle for Grace's and my destinies had taken place: your conception.
I'm sure you're wondering why I was so careless. Here I was a man of science, a logical, reasonable man who was spending his adult life helping other people avoid mistakes that would impact on their lives, and I, your efficient, meticulous, and dedicated professional father, behaved like nothing more than a foolish teenager. What was I thinking?
If I bother analyzing myself. I might conclude that I wanted this relationship so much, Willow, I was willing at least subconsciously to risk everything to have it. I permitted myself to believe that should Grace become pregnant with my child, we would be together forever. You were to make that happen.
Of course, nothing could be more romantic and foolish on my part. Not only would I destroy my own life and career. I would damage Grace, and who knew what Jackie Lee would do about that? Ironically, by not thinking about birth control, all I had really accomplished was to drive the love of my life from me.
It didn't happen for some time, of course. Over the next few weeks and months. Grace did exactly what she had done before when she was pregnant with Linden. She revealed nothing. But to be fair to her, she was caught in a new turmoil herself and not a new turmoil of her own making. And I am not just speaking of my actions. Willow.
Not long after Jackie Lee's first visit and Grace's and my walk to the river, a dark shadow resembling the dark shadows Sandy hallucinated came into Grace's life, or should I say our lives? It began subtly.
First. I noticed how tired Grace often was. I asked her about this during one of our doctor-patient sessions, and she told me she was having strange dreams lately. They did resemble vivid hallucinations. She woke often during the night, and one night she woke screaming. The nurse on duty that evening. Suzanne Cohen, had a report for me in the morning. Of course, I looked into it immediately.
My first terrible fear. Willow, was that my relationship with Grace and the conflicts it was creating in her were bringing about this new emotional and mental problem. I tied observing her unnoticed, especially when she was in the recreation room or the arts and crafts area. and I saw how frequently she looked distracted, even dazed. When I questioned her more and more about it, she grew more and more fragile, often bursting into tears, crying she didn't know why she wasn't sleeping, she didn't know why she was having terrible nightmares.
I began to wonder if her medications weren't being dispensed correctly and did check into it to find some errors in dosages during Nadine Gordon's shifts. This was very uncharacteristic of her, and she apologized profusely. For a while that seemed to correct things.
And then, a terrible crisis occurred. I arrived at the clinic in the morning and found bedlam and tumult going on in the patients' dormitory. I hurried to it where I discovered Dr. Wheeler frying to calm Grace. Her hysterics had triggered Sandy, who was
screaming in the hallway and pounding her fists at the walls to drive away those dark shadows she still saw everywhere. Other patients were agitated as well, and my staff was fully involved, attendants and our two additional nurses working on calming everyone. Ralston came flying in after me.
"What's happening?" I cried, rushing to Grace's door.
Nadine Gordon stepped out and glared at me for a moment before saying, "Someone took her teddy bear."
"What?"
Obviously, because of the nature of our patients, we couldn't put locks on their bedroom doors. We couldn't permit them to have the ability to shut themselves in and away from us. From time to time, one or another patient did wander into the wrong room or take someone else's things.
I charged in and saw Wheeler was about to give Grace some sedation. She had torn her room apart looking for her teddy bear. The lamp on the
nightstand was shattered on the floor and lay there along with all the spilled drawers. The bed had been ripped at and the small desk in the corner was turned upside down,
"What is it?" Ralston asked me.
"Her teddy bear's gone." I said, now very frightened for the both of us. She was looking directly at me and crying. "It was a very special gift from her father.
"Hold off, Dr. Wheeler," I ordered. "I'll see to her." I said. "Help with the others."
He looked at Ralston. who nodded. and then he handed me the syringe and left the room. Nadine Gordon stood in the doorway watching and waiting for further orders. I sat on the bed and took Grace's hand in mine. Her sobs shook her body, but she had her lips clamped shut. There was a slight scratch at the side of her left temple where she either had clawed herself in desperation or grazed her head against something during her frantic search.
"It's all right. Grace," I said. "We'll find it."
Her lips trembled so hard. I thought her face would shatter right before my eyes.
Sandy's screaming turned Ralston away from the scene and made him snap an order at Nurse Gordon. He and she left the room to see about the commotion,
"Daddy..." Grace managed. ".., gave it to me."
"I know. Someone must have just seen it and taken it by mistake. I'll turn the clinic inside out until I find it for you. I promise. Grace."
She looked only slightly relieved. My overwhelming love for her had blinded me to the fact that she was still quite emotionally frail and delicate. I was so angry at myself. Willow. I had so wanted Grace to be strong and healthy for me that I avoided all the signs telling me otherwise. If anything should have brought home my professional neglect and malpractice. this should have been it.
It did and I vowed to myself that I would pull back and spend more time as her doctor and not as her lover. I could see her realizing and perhaps hoping this was so. too. She looked at me with the sort of plea and desperation in her eyes that I had seen in many of my other patients: this cry for help that even they didn't realize they were making.
Of course, I would be dishonest if I didn't tell you that I was afraid she would either do or say something which would reveal our relationship. Ralston was back in the room. I gave her the sedative and urged her to sleep. promising I would find her teddy bear. She said nothing. She turned her head and soon afterward she fell asleep.
"I have noticed a change in her these past few weeks. Claude," Ralston said when we both stepped back. "Maybe you're reducing her medications too quickly." he suggested.
"I'll look into it," I said, not wanting to get too deeply into her situation at that moment.
The hallway was cleared. Sandy was medicated and the other patients were guided back to their activities. Nadine Gordon joined us in the hallway.
"Do you know anything about this teddy bear of hers?" I asked quickly.
"I haven't seen it. but I haven't gone looking for it, either," she said.
"What about Sandy?" Ralston asked. Have you checked her room?"
"Not yet. but I will," she said. "I have noticed that Gr
ace Montgomery was more agitated these days and that was after her medications had been corrected." she added before I could say anything, "She hasn't done anything in the arts and crafts room. She doesn't have the patience to read or watch television lately, either. I was going to bring it to your attention at our next patients' meeting. I don't believe we are at the proper dosages with her yet." she added,
-Claude?" Ralston asked.
"Yes," I said. "She's right. I'll reconsider her medications and get on it." I said,
"What a shame. The girl was making such progress. I actually thought you would please her mother very soon." Ralston said.
"I did as well." Nadine interjected. She held her eyes on me a moment, and then she added. "I'll search Sandy's room."
We watched her leave,
"Careful. Claude." Ralston advised in a very unspecific way. "Wings of wax." he muttered and left me standing outside Grace's doorway, feeling as if I were truly in the midst of a great descent.
9
The Teddy Bear's Arm
.
The teddy bear was nowhere to be found.
Willow. I literally did turn the clinic inside out, spending every available minute looking for it. I had the kitchen staff search every cabinet and shelf. I ordered the attendants to look under every bed. I had Joan Richards take apart her arts and crafts area, and then I had the custodians search the outside of the clinic, especially under or around every window.
How could such a thing disappear into thin air? It was puzzle enough for me, but to Grace it began to corroborate one of her old fears and revive problems I thought we had resolved, When Jackie Lee heard about Grace's regression, she threatened to take her from the clinic and have her put somewhere else. She phoned me, shouting hysterically at times.
"Why did this happen? She was almost cured, wasn't she? Maybe I was right. It was time to take her out. Maybe the longer she is around those other disturbed people, the worse it will be for her,' she said, practically lunging at me through the phone.
"No, no. Jackie Lee," I said. "If she can have this sort of setback while she is here, it could be worse for her and for you if it happened out there," I reasoned. It gave her some pause.
"Well, what do you expect now? What are you going to do about this?"
"I'm reviewing her treatments. Give me a little time."
"Time! That's all you doctors want, time, and of course, money," she chastised.
I was silent,
"All right," she said. relenting. "But I want a weekly report now, If you can't do it yourself, have your secretary call me or a nurse,"
"Very good," I said.
"This teddy bear thing. It's inexcusable."
"I agree. I'm not giving up on finding it for her." I promised.
"Maybe she hid it herself somewhere," she suggested. "Maybe she wants to be crazy."
"I don't think so. Jackie Lee. No one could enjoy that sort of pain."
"In the state of mind she's in, anything's possible," she muttered.
Then she went into a rant about her own state of mind and how difficult things were for her.
"People know the truth, you know. I've done the best I can to prevent it, but they find these things out eventually. They know where she is and they talk about us. They even know about Linden. People feed on this sort of thing here. Now I don't know what will become of her."
I wanted to say I didn't, either, that perhaps Grace would be here a long time if not forever, but I kept my secret thoughts lacked in my heart and did the best I could to relieve her of her anxieties.
Soon afterward Grace began to accept the disappearance of her teddy bear the same way she had learned to accept the death of her father. She went into a period of deep mourning, retreating to the shadows in her room, spending hours and hours staring into space, occasionally permitting a fugitive tear to trickle down her cheek and off her chin. I was at her side constantly, trying to break through her sadness, trying to give her renewed hope.
Finally one day she turned to me and said. "He's gone."
I wasn't happy with this conclusion. She was hardened with the realization and the finality. She lost the softness and the innocence and optimism I had been able to restore in her, and in fact, in myself. It was as if some light had gone out of her eyes and a deeper, darker glint appeared through which she now saw the world in all its reality. She could no longer see angels. The clouds we once playfully imagined being this or that were now simply clouds. It was as true for the stars as well.
I hated what had happened to her and what was still happening to her. When I was first starting out in the practice of psychiatry. I used to fixate on the mental problems and see them as small, distorted, ugly creatures. I would focus on killing them, hunting them down through the darkest corridors of a patient's mind, pursuing them relentlessly with my psychiatric weaponry until I had either destroyed them or driven them so far underground, they could do no more serious harm. I hated none as much as I hated the one or ones plaguing Grace, my lovely, wonderful. beautiful Grace.
I know I was a different man at home because of all this. Willow. For the first time my temper was short with Alberta. I had little or no patience for any of her nonsense and everything she was doing those days seemed to me to be bigger and bigger nonsense. It got so she was afraid to come to my office to ask me anything. I would argue with her over trivia. What wasn't trivia to me, however, was her new insistence that we spend a small fortune on upgrading our landscaping. She had brought in a landscape architect who had created a project twice as costly as what the house was probably worth. It envisioned a pond that could qualify as a small lake!
"I can't touch the outside of this precious, historical building, but I can at least improve our grounds," she insisted.
She needed me to convert some investments into liquid cash for her to begin such a project and I resisted. Our normally strained relationship was hanging by threads. I took to spending even more time away from home just so Alberta couldn't harangue
As to Grace and her treatments. I did return to the earlier, heavier dosages of her medicine. I hated to do that, but for a while, it seemed to be helping. We spent hours talking about that curse again. The clinic wasn't as sacrosanct as she had come to believe after all. The demon would enter and it would get to me. too. I didn't know at the time, but she already knew she was pregnant and was keeping it a secret just as much because of these troubling ideas as anything else.
How, I wondered. can I turn this around? Why hadn't I realized how delicate her recovery had been? I began to think that perhaps I was not capable of helping her after all. Maybe Jackie Lee wasn't so wrong. Maybe Grace belonged somewhere else and my keeping her here with me was a purely selfish thing. Maybe I should get her away from me as quickly as I could. I thought.
These questions and thoughts troubled me so much. I know I began to show it in my face. Miles was asking after me constantly. He easily saw the differences in me and was full of concern. When I came home from the clinic. I went right to my office and perused case study after case study trying to find some clues, some technique, some method to make proess with Grace. I often fell asleep in my chair and woke realizing it was the middle of the night.
Obviously, this all had an impact on my relationships and my effectiveness with my other patients, Willow. It occurred to me that Grace might very well be right: my relationship with her was destroying me from within, destroying who I was supposed to be and what I was trained to do. Do you know that for a while there I actually considered the infamous curse?
Like a parasite my frustration fed off of me, draining me, sapping me of my otherwise high-octane energy. Ralston expressed concern and even Nurse Gordon commented about my workload and gave me advice. The irony was the more effort I put into helping Grace, the worse things became because she saw my struggle and my fatigue to be a direct result of my relationship with her. She refused to go on our special walks, and she began to talk more and more about leaving the clinic, cla
iming it would be better for both of us.
I appealed to her sense of guilt.
"If you do that now." I told her, "I'll feel like more of a failure and instead of helping me, you will hurt me deeply. Grace."
For a while that staved off her talk of leaving. Jackie Lee, however, continued her pressuring, her frequent phone calls, and her threats of simply sending a car and an attorney to pick Grace up. It actually reached the point where my heart would skip a beat whenever I saw a strange automobile make the turn onto our clinic driveway.
And then one night when I was doing
everything I could to postpone my returning home, delaying, finding- little things to take up my time, just so I wouldn't have to confront an increasingly belligerent Alberta, something terribly explosive occurred. I was making some notes on a report I was completing concerning another patient when Suzanne came running down the corridor to my office. She burst in crying. "Come quickly, Dr. De Beers, something horrible.'
"What?" I stood up. "Who is it?"
"It's Grace Montgomtry."
My heart did flip-flops. I could feel my legs go numb, "What happened. Suzanne?" I asked as I followed her out.
"Someone put this on her pillow." she said and pulled the teddy bear's arm out of her uniform pocket. I stopped dead in the hallway and took it from her, turning it in my fingers. Willow, it was as if this toy arm with its stuffing leaking out was a real arm, bleeding in my hand.
"It can't be," I said, shaking my head like one of my own patients going into self-denial. "We looked everywhere."
Suzanne nodded.
The impact of what such a thing might have done to Grace hit me and I charged ahead. I found her sitting as still and as firmly as a statue on her bed, staring at the wall. She had a strange, mad smile on her face, Willow. For a moment she looked so different, it was as if a stranger had wandered into her room.
"I heard her screaming and came quickly," Suzanne said, standing beside me. "I saw the ripped teddy bear arm on the pillow and scooped it off as quickly as I could. That stopped her screaming, but she was as rigid as she is right now. Doctor. It's almost as if she's gone into rigor mortis," she added. Her arms are locked. I couldn't move her."
Hidden Leaves Page 10