Hearing Voices

by E. C. Bell

  “Natalie,” I finally said, after I’d rammed a couple outsized chunks of lettuce into my mouth, wishing for just a little bit of dressing to make it taste like something past green. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

  She didn’t move a muscle. Just stared at her bowl. I ate a hunk of stringy celery, and washed it down with a piece of cucumber that felt like it was trying to turn to water before I even got it in my mouth.

  “Come on, Natalie,” I said. “You should eat.”

  No response, but one of the other women, in a wheelchair with a bib, looked up from her bowl of gruel.

  “Leave her alone,” she said. “You’ll get her in more trouble. Just leave her alone.”

  That took me aback. “All right,” I finally said. “I will. Sorry.” Then I focussed on my own bowl, working on one chunk of green after another until my salad was finally done. I didn’t feel any fuller, but it looked like dinner was over for me. Then the woman in the wheelchair pointed at the small can of chocolate chalk sitting on my tray.

  “Don’t forget that,” she said. “Or you’ll get in trouble, too.”

  “Oh, yeah, right,” I said, and picked up the can.

  That was when Natalie roused herself from her med-induced funk. She grabbed my arm and held it tight.

  “Gimme that,” she said. Her voice sounded like her mouth was full of gruel, even though she hadn’t eaten one bite from her bowl. “Gimme that now.”

  “Don’t,” the woman in the wheelchair said. I looked over at her, and her eyes pleaded silently. “You can’t.”

  “Sorry, Natalie,” I said. “No can do.” I tried to pull my arm from her grip, but she wouldn’t let go.

  “Give it to me,” she said, her voice getting louder with every syllable. “Right now.”

  “No,” I said, and gave my arm another yank. Finally, I was free, but I could see red marks where her fingers had gripped my skin. “I can’t.”

  Natalie didn’t respond well. She stood, knocking her chair back and causing the people at the table behind us to screech in sudden terror. She grabbed for the can of chocolate in my hand, knocking my bowl to the floor where it rattled and whirled like a top on the greasy ceramic tiles, adding to the din in the room.

  “Give it to me,” Natalie howled, and took a drunken swipe at me. “Now!”

  The orderlies lining the edge of the dining room came alive, and soon Natalie was subdued.

  “Looks like dinner’s over for you, Nat,” one of them said way too cheerfully as he hauled her to her feet by one arm. Nurse Melodie, who’d shown up just as Natalie was being taken down, grabbed her other arm and helped the orderly remove her.

  Natalie didn’t make a sound as all this was going on. She’d just gone back to staring, but at nothing, this time. It was like she’d checked out, permanently.

  ONCE NATALIE WAS removed, the woman in the wheelchair pointed at the can of chocolate chalk that Natalie had so dearly wanted. It was lying in the middle of the table, on its side, leaking liquid onto the plastic. For a second, it looked like it was bleeding out, and I felt queasy.

  “Pick up your bowl,” she whispered, looking suddenly frantic. “And then drink that stuff. Drink it. They can’t blame Natalie for that. Drink it!”

  I retrieved the bowl from the floor, and then grabbed the can on the table and put it to my lips. The smell of the chocolate made me feel like I was going to vomit, and I pulled it away from my face so I could breathe.

  “No,” the woman in the wheelchair said, shaking her head. “No, you have to drink it. For Natalie.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” I said. “It smells horrible.”

  “Plug your nose then,” the woman said. She looked over her shoulder, and gasped. “They’re coming back,” she said, frantically. “Hurry up!”

  I glanced at the big double doors and saw Nurse Melodie walk in. She looked pissed, and I grabbed the can of chocolate and downed it all in three big gulps. Luckily, it stayed down, and I was just putting the can back on the table when she arrived at our table.

  “Have you finished eating, Marie?” she asked.

  “All done,” I said, and manufactured a smile from somewhere.

  “Good,” she said. “It’s almost time for your meeting with Dr. Parkerson.”

  She put her hand on my shoulder to help me rise. I glanced at it and blinked. Were those bite marks?

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Oh,” Nurse Melodie said. “Natalie got a little upset when we were removing her. It’s nothing.”

  She looked down at the table, and I realized she was checking to see if I finished my meal. She pointed at the chocolate pool in the middle of the table. “What happened?” she asked.

  “My drink tipped over,” I said quickly. “But I drank the rest of it.” I pointed at the empty can lying in the middle of my equally empty bowl. “All gone.”

  “Good,” she said, but there was no smile on her face to indicate that everything was, in fact, good. “Shall we go?”

  I ASSUMED THAT I’d be going back to my room, and that Dr. Parkerson would be coming to me like last time, but we turned right instead of left, and soon we were in the bowels of the building somewhere. The hallway was much narrower, and there was a row of identical doors down each side. Offices, lots of them.

  “Where are you taking me?” I asked.

  “Dr. Parkerson’s office,” Nurse Melodie said shortly. She flexed the hand that Natalie had bitten like it was hurting her, which it probably was.

  “Why is she back here?” I asked. “Seems kind of strange.”

  “She likes the quiet,” Nurse Melodie said shortly, and stopped in front of the last door on the right. She rapped on it twice with her knuckle, and then stepped back.

  “Enter,” she said. “Dr. Parkerson is waiting for you.”

  THE OFFICE WAS dimly lit, but it looked just like her office out in the world. Lots of beige, and the paintings above the couch looked identical to the ones I’d examined while I was working with her before.

  Dr. Parkerson sat behind her desk, looking over a fat file—it couldn’t be mine. I’d only been there for a day and a half. She closed it and gestured to the chair across the desk from her.

  “Sit,” she said. “We have lots to talk about.”

  I sat and we stared at each other in silence for a few uncomfortable minutes. I tried to figure out what her game was, then decided I didn’t care.

  “When am I getting out of here?” I asked.

  “That has yet to be decided,” Dr. Parkerson said. She pointed at the file. “We have much to discuss, you and I, before we can even consider release.”

  She glanced down at the file without opening it. Talked quickly about the upcoming tests I’d be subject to, and what medication I was taking. I couldn’t follow the science speak and soon her words were running over me like water.

  “Any questions?” she asked. I shrugged. I probably would have had questions if I’d been able to follow what she’d said, but no such luck. All I knew for sure was, the file was mine. Looked like everyone who’d had contact with me had handed in a report on me.

  “Good,” she said. “We have much more to discuss tonight.”

  “What do we have to discuss?” I asked. The chocolate chalk felt like it was curdling in my stomach, and I could taste bile at the back of my throat. I was scared, and that pissed me off. “Besides the frigging diet you have me on,” I said. “Are you trying to starve me to death?”

  She frowned and opened the file. Read for a moment, then looked at me. “It says here you requested a vegan diet,” she said. “And, there is some suggestion that you may have an eating disorder, which complicates matters immensely. We’re doing our best.”

  “I already told you I wasn’t vegan,” I snapped. “And I do not have an eating disorder, which you should know if you listened to me at all for the past eight months. I have to tell you, there were some big damned assumptions made just because I wasn’t hungry when I first came in he
re.”

  “Oh,” she said, and picked up her pen. “What would you like to eat? I can correct this right now.”

  “I’d like Carl’s,” I said. “Or Timmies. Maybe Harvey’s.”

  She blinked a couple of times, and then sighed and replaced the cap of her pen and set it back down. “Ah,” she said. “Fast food. I’m afraid we can’t allow that.”

  “Then let me out of here,” I snapped, “And I can feed myself.”

  “That is out of the question,” she said. “At this time. As I said.”

  An impasse, and we stared at each other across the expanse of her shiny wood desk.

  I opened my mouth, preparing to question her about the medication she had prescribed for me, but she spoke before I had a chance to say a word.

  “So, tell me about your visit with the police,” she said. She appeared be trying to be nonchalant about the cops, but I wasn’t buying it for one moment.

  I tried to come up with something that would sound like a cop said it, without mentioning what we’d actually talked about. “She had a few questions for me,” I finally muttered. “She wanted to know more about the night I was attacked. Stuff like that.”

  “And what did you tell her?”

  I frowned. It was an odd question. “I told her the truth,” I said. “Of course.”

  She nodded as though she’d suspected that was exactly what I was going to say. “Did she mention the victim’s injuries?” she asked.

  “I was the victim,” I snapped. “Not Andrew Westwood. I wish you could remember that, Doctor.”

  “Yes,” she muttered. “Yes, of course.”

  She wrote something in the file, then took a deep breath and looked up at me. Smiled, but past it I couldn’t read her.

  “You’ve been—very active, while you’re in your room,” she said. “Haven’t you?”

  I blinked, tried to change mental gears, and failed. “What do you mean?” I asked. “All I do is sleep in there. Oh, and brush my hair so I don’t upset the staff.”

  She ignored me, leafing through the file until she found what she was looking for. “You are having nightmares. Correct?” she asked. She put her finger on a page, like she didn’t want to lose her place. “Every time you sleep. Correct?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But you knew about the nightmares before. PTSD, remember?”

  “I remember,” she said. She glanced down at the page on the file. “But I didn’t realize that you talk to yourself almost continually, while you are awake.” She looked up at me, accusing finger still pressing hard into that sheet of paper. “You never told me you do that.”

  I talk to myself? What was she talking about?

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said. “I don’t talk to myself.”

  “Oh, but you do,” she said. “I’ve seen the video.”

  Video? Of me?

  “Are you saying you’ve been videotaping me in my room?” I whispered. “That there’s a camera in there somewhere?”

  Spirits had been wandering in and out of that room since I got there. And every encounter had been videotaped.

  “Yes,” she said. “We have.”

  “That can’t be legal,” I muttered, doing my best to regroup and failing miserably. “Shouldn’t I be assured of privacy or something?”

  “It’s a safety issue, “Dr. Parkerson said. “All new patients are on suicide watch until we are assured that they are stable. We have to keep an eye on them at all times.” She smiled. “It’s policy, nothing more. Now, when I looked over the tapes, it did not appear that you were simply talking to yourself.”

  Dammit. All those ghosts, and I’d talked to every one of them.

  “It appeared as though you believed that you were carrying on a conversation with someone—something—that was not visible on the video.” She smiled. “Who were you talking to, Marie? Who do you believe was in that room with you?”

  I didn’t answer, because I saw no point. She had me on video, talking to nothing as far as she was concerned.

  “Did you think there were ghosts in that room with you?” she asked gently. “Is that who you believed you were talking to?”

  “That’s why you upped my meds,” I muttered. “Because you thought I was seeing things.”

  “You must admit, it’s a disconcerting development,” she said. “Tell me, are you seeing the ghost that you said you spoke to at the ball diamond the night you attacked Andrew Westwood?”

  “I didn’t attack him,” I snapped. “He attacked me. I was defending myself.”

  “So you said,” she said. “But that is not Mr. Westwood’s assertion.”

  My face grew hot, and I couldn’t catch my breath. “Screw him. He’s a frigging murderer, and he was planning on killing me. He tried to kill me,” I whispered. “Why won’t you believe me?”

  “This has nothing to do with who I believe,” she said. “However, there’s a very real chance that you were hallucinating the night you had the altercation with him, and that concerns me deeply. Tell me, how long have you been seeing apparitions?”

  “Seeing what?”

  “Seeing ghosts,” she said. “How long do you think you’ve been seeing ghosts?”

  Forever.

  “I don’t see ghosts,” I said. I had to turn this conversation around pronto. I could tell by the look on Parkerson’s face that she thought I was bugnut crazy, and I had to do what I could to convince her otherwise. Telling her about the ghosts wasn’t going to do that. I knew that for a fact. “I don’t know what Andrew said I said, but I didn’t say anything about ghosts to him or anyone else.”

  “But when we were in session in July,” she said, and pulled another equally thick file from the top right drawer of her desk, “you mentioned a dead girl. I believe you were trying to help her get over some trauma from her past?” She looked down at the file and nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Here it is. You called her your friend, and that she was dealing with issues similar to your own. And then you said she was dead.” She looked up from the file and smiled again, and for just a second I wished that I could slap it off her face. “I think she’d count as a ghost, now wouldn’t she?”

  “I told you,” I said, my throat so tight my voice sounded like a penny whistle, “that was just a slip of the tongue. That’s not what I meant to say—”

  “Odd how that particular slip of the tongue keeps happening around you,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

  Before I could answer, she slapped the files shut and pushed them to the side. “I’m going to adjust your medication,” she said. “It’s important that you get sleep, and the nightmares aren’t allowing you to do that. I will also be doubling the dosage of the Seroquel, and let’s see if we can’t put a stop to the conversations you’ve been carrying on in your room.”

  “I don’t want more drugs,” I said. “Seriously. I can barely function now.”

  “You’ll adjust,” she said. “And the benefits vastly outweigh the side effects.” She opened a day timer sitting on her desk and stared at it. “I want you to come back tomorrow. Same time. I’d like to see how you are reacting to the increased dosage. And perhaps, we can discuss the ghosts a bit more.”

  “When can I see James again?” I asked. “I help him run his business. He needs me—”

  “He’s not a family member,” she said shortly. “He will not be allowed back for the duration. And I think it would be better if we limit all visits until you have adjusted to your medication. For at least a week.” She glanced at me, and her face tightened. “You do understand, don’t you? This is for your own good.”

  “And Sergeant Worth?” I asked. “You can’t stop her from talking to me, can you?”

  “I’ll explain the situation to Sergeant Worth,” Parkerson said. “I’m sure that the investigation can wait until you have stabilized.”

  I didn’t say anything, because there was nothing more to say. She was going to continue to drug the hell out of me, and she wasn’t going to let me see anyone
on the outside. She was even going to try to keep the cops away from me. The only ones she couldn’t physically stop me from seeing were the ghosts, but I figured that soon enough the drugs would take care of that.

  I was going to be completely on my own, and she was going to make sure it stayed that way.

  Jasper:

  Out in the Pasture

  I CAME TO in the field behind Building One. It frightened me, finding myself out among the weeds and tall grass, even though the blue sky looked beautiful with the light fluffy clouds and the beginnings of a sunset.

  I hadn’t had that nightmare in two years no months and twenty-nine days.

  Going to my old house, to find my mother. Wanting to hurt her because she gave away my dog when I was little. So pathetic, so sad. So immature. I was past all that now.

  Mom wasn’t dead, as far as I knew, and she wasn’t a monster. She’d given the dog away because Jimmy needed a good place to live and we couldn’t provide it. She’d explained everything to me as she’d driven me to the institution, that last time.

  “You have to understand,” she’d said, her bandaged arm flashing white as she turned the steering wheel so the ancient Rambler could take the long driveway to Building Thirteen, “I didn’t do that to hurt you. It was to save the dog from a life of misery.” She glanced over at me, and half smiled. “You get that, don’t you?”

  “I understand,” I said. She was bringing me to the institution because it was the best thing for me. Just like giving away Jimmy hadn’t made her life easier. It was best for the dog.

  I knew I should have felt bad for hurting her the way I had, but I didn’t.

  She’d come to see me a few times after that, but the last time she’d told me she’d gotten a job—a good job, excellent pay and benefits—and she was sorry, but she was going to have to move away.

  “I’ll write you every week,” she said, touching her upper lip with an old-fashioned handkerchief to sop up the sweat that had beaded there. “I promise.”