Testing Kate

by Whitney Gaskell

  “Who is this?” I’d asked groggily. I was hungover from the Amaretto sours the night before. My head pounded and my throat felt dry and fuzzy.

  “My name is David Bell. I’m the Dean for Student Affairs…. I need to see you immediately,” he’d said. My mouth went dry with fear when he added, “It’s…it’s very important.”

  I’d never crossed campus so early before. The sun was just starting to rise as I hurried across a freshly salted walkway from my sophomore dorm to the administration office building. The winter light was weak and the freshly fallen snow was as yet unmarred by footprints, giving the campus a beautifully eerie look. The wind had been bitterly cold, and it stung at my eyes—the only part of me not bundled up in a coat or scarf or hat—causing them to water so much I could hardly see where I was going.

  I’d known even before Dean Bell had emerged from his office to greet me in the empty reception area that something was terribly wrong.

  “Kate,” he’d said, taking my hand in his and looking down at me through thick glasses. He was mostly bald, except for some white fringe hanging about his ears, and there was a large liver spot covering his prominent forehead, like Mikhail Gorbachev’s. Despite the early hour, the dean was dressed in a natty three-piece gray flannel suit and a blue-and-red-striped Brooks Brothers tie. A power tie, I’d noticed, like the kind the President wears.

  “Your parents were in a car accident. They…they didn’t make it. I’m so sorry,” the dean had said.

  Those words cracked open my world, and everything familiar slipped away.

  Whatever happens this morning with Dean Sullivan, at least it can’t be as bad as that meeting was, I reminded myself. When I looked back down at the letter her office had sent me, I saw that my hands were shaking, gently rattling the linen paper.

  I climbed the stairs to the second floor of the law school and crossed the hall to the administration offices. The same obnoxious receptionist was manning the front desk. She was examining her teeth in a makeup compact when I entered.

  “I’m Kate Bennett. Teresa Sullivan asked me to come see her this morning,” I said.

  “Dean Sullivan will be with you shortly,” the receptionist corrected me. She snapped the compact shut.

  Before I even had time to sit in one of the cherry wing chairs, the door to Sullivan’s office swung open and Nick walked out, looking incredibly pissed off.

  “What happened?” I asked him softly when he passed by on his way out the door, but Nick just shook his head.

  “It’s total bullshit,” he said. He didn’t look me in the eye.

  “Kate, come right this way,” Teresa Sullivan said. She was standing in the doorway, her arms crossed in front of her. Today she was wearing a red suit with big black buttons and black patent pumps squared off at the toe. She waited at the door, closing it after I’d entered her office.

  “Go ahead and take a seat,” she said.

  Once Sullivan had settled back down behind her desk, I said, “So…am I expelled?”

  “No. But you are on probation, which means that any further incidents could result in expulsion,” Sullivan said. She sighed, and shook her head. “Why did you go out of your way to provoke him, Kate? I’m not supposed to tell you this, but both you and Nick are at the top of your class after last semester. You both have an excellent chance of grading onto Law Review. Why screw it up over an egomaniacal professor?”

  I didn’t know what startled me more—that I was in the running to grade onto Law Review or that Sullivan had actually just called Hoffman an egomaniac.

  “So, you know what he’s like? Then why haven’t you done anything about him?” I asked, the words tumbling out.

  “Because if we fired every professor for egotism, we wouldn’t have much of a faculty left,” Sullivan said, allowing herself a thin-lipped smile.

  I shook my head. “None of my other professors is as bad as Hoffman,” I insisted. “He just goads and picks at you, waiting for you to screw up….”

  “But he didn’t overstep the line. You did,” Sullivan said.

  “How can you say that? He was ridiculing Dana.”

  “I heard what happened. And no, not just from Professor Hoffman,” Sullivan said, interrupting me before I could protest. “But even if he was being a jerk, he was acting within the boundaries. However, when you stood up and interrupted his questioning of Ms. Mallick, you violated the Code of Student Conduct.”

  “What happens now? Do you put me in law-school jail?” I asked, my mouth twisting.

  “Would that I could, if it would keep you out of trouble,” Sullivan said, and this time her lips curved up into a genuine smile. “Professor Hoffman has decided that the two of you won’t be returning to his class. Which means that there are only two options open to you. One, you receive a failing grade for the course and then retake it next year. There’s little chance that you’d still make Law Review.”

  This grim possibility hadn’t occurred to me. I’d have an F on my transcript, which every law firm I ever interviewed with would see.

  “What’s my other option?” I asked.

  “You can take the final at the end of the semester,” Sullivan said. “You’ll have to study on your own, but at least you’ll still have a shot at Law Review that way.”

  It really wasn’t a choice at all. And, actually, being able to study on my own was far more appealing than having to sit through any more of Hoffman’s sadistic lectures. My friends would surely let me copy their notes, and there were plenty of commercial study guides available that would cover the rest of the material.

  Although there was the obvious downside to this option.

  “Will Hoffman be the one to administer the exam?” I asked.

  Teresa Sullivan looked at me and nodded once. “I looked into your charges that Hoffman marked your blue book, and there was no conclusive evidence that it happened,” she said.

  “Did you see the actual blue book?” I asked.

  “Yes, but I didn’t see any sort of a marking on it that would obviously flag it as yours.”

  “But you saw the dot.”

  “It was inconclusive.” Sullivan raised her hands, holding the palms out toward me, fingers spread. “I’m telling you, Kate, there’s nothing I can do. Hoffman has control over his own exam. If you opt to take it, you’ll have to follow the same protocol as every other student in his class.”

  “Then I guess that’s what I have to do,” I said. The meeting seemed to be over, so I stood, swinging my heavy knapsack up onto my shoulder. “Is Nick taking the test?”

  Sullivan nodded. “He wasn’t happy with the options. He thought you should both be able to transfer into another Con Law class.”

  This idea had enormous appeal. No Hoffman…a fair shot at a decent Con Law grade.

  “That sounds good to me,” I said hopefully.

  But Sullivan shook her head. “This wasn’t my call. Dean Spitzer made the final decision, after consulting with Professor Hoffman about how he wanted to handle the situation.”

  And there it was. Hoffman had engineered the punishment. We’d be stuck taking his exam, and he’d screw me—or perhaps both Nick and me—on the grade. “Great,” I said without enthusiasm. “So he’s going to get away with it.”

  “I know you’re not happy about this, Kate. But if you have any further problems with Professor Hoffman, come to me and I’ll be fair about how I handle it,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “It could have been worse,” Sullivan said gently. “You could have been expelled. Next time please think before you lash out. You don’t want to ruin your career before it even begins.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The call came on Saturday at two o’clock. I’d just started the Contracts reading assignment when the shrill ring interrupted me. I was expecting a call from Graham—he’d said he’d phone when he got back from the gym—but when I answered, it was a woman’s voice.

  “Is Kate Bennett there, please,” she said.r />
  “This is Kate.”

  “I’m calling from Tulane University Hospital. Dana Mallick listed you as her emergency contact, so I’m calling to notify you that she was admitted to the hospital this morning.”

  “Dana? What’s happened? Is she okay? What’s going on?”

  “I’m not authorized to give information out over the phone. I can tell you that she’s in stable condition,” the woman said.

  Stable condition? The words should have been reassuring but weren’t.

  “May I see her?”

  “We have visiting hours daily until six p.m.”

  Twenty minutes later I was striding through a hospital corridor lit with rows of fluorescent bulbs and smelling of desperation and industrial-strength cleaner. I passed by an orderly who was wheeling an elderly man in a wheelchair. A family, clutching vases of carnations and Mylar balloons with Get Well Soon! printed across them in bubbly purple script, was in a whispered conference at the side of the hall. One of the women was crying, and another younger one—her daughter, perhaps—was rubbing the older woman’s back soothingly.

  Just past the family was the nurses’ station. A stout bleached blonde wearing mint-green scrubs and a rail-thin black woman with an elaborate updo and pink scrubs stood behind a chest-high counter.

  “Can I help you, hon?” the blonde asked me. She had enormous breasts, and her white-blonde hair was teased up high. The plastic name tag clipped to her scrubs said RENEE.

  “I’m here to see Dana Mallick. The information desk downstairs told me she was on this floor, that she’d just been moved here from ICU.”

  “Dana Mallick…Dana Mallick…oh, yes,” the nurse said as she ran a fuchsia nail down the patient list attached to the clipboard. “That poor baby.”

  “Please, what happened? They wouldn’t say over the phone,” I said. My voice was high and spiked with fear.

  “Are you family?”

  “No, a friend—but Dana has me listed as her emergency contact. My name is Kate Bennett,” I said.

  “Right, here you are. Well…I’m sorry to tell you, hon, but your friend attempted suicide this morning,” Renee said.

  Suicide?

  It took a moment for the word to sink in, and when it did, I wasn’t prepared for how my lungs froze and my legs began to shake. And even as my body started to react, my mind couldn’t seem to process Renee’s words.

  Dana tried to commit suicide.…

  I opened my mouth, wanting to voice the questions that were firing from my thoughts—Why? How? When?—but I couldn’t seem to draw in a deep-enough breath to speak.

  “Are you okay, hon? Here, sit down right here.” Renee bustled around the nurses’ station, grabbed my arm, and guided me to an empty wheelchair parked nearby. “Just take in a deep breath. No, don’t try to speak just yet. Just inhale in…and out….”

  Renee rested a plump hand on my shoulder as she instructed me to breathe. I stared down at the light-gray industrial-tile floor and wondered why everything suddenly seemed too pronounced—the lights were too bright, the tip-tapping of a passing woman’s high heels too loud, the smell of ammonia too strong.

  “Feeling any better?” Renee asked.

  “Yes,” I finally managed. “What happened to Dana?”

  “I don’t know all the details. She cut her wrists and then apparently changed her mind, because she called 911 herself. An ambulance brought her in,” Renee said.

  “And…is she okay? I mean, obviously, she’s not okay, but is she going to be?”

  “She lost a lot of blood before the ambulance got to her,” Renee said. “The cuts were horizontal, but they were deep—she was very lucky not to have hit a vein. But her condition is stable. She’ll be admitted for a psych evaluation; that’s hospital protocol.”

  I nodded. That made sense. They couldn’t exactly bandage her up and send her back home to an apartment full of scissors, razors, and knives.

  “Are you a good friend? The reason I ask is that she hasn’t put down any contact information for her family. Do you know how to get ahold of them?”

  “We go to school together. At Tulane,” I said. “I don’t know her parents, but I can talk to someone in the administration office. They probably have contact information there.”

  “Good. She shouldn’t have to go through this alone,” Renee said.

  A new wave of horror washed over me. Would I have to call her parents? What would I say to them? You don’t know me, but I’m calling to tell you that your daughter tried to kill herself.

  But Nurse Renee saved me from this unpleasant task. “We can’t call her parents directly anyway—it’s against the rules—but we can call Tulane, since she’s a student there. The universities always get students to sign a permission form allowing them to contact the family in emergency situations,” she said.

  “I doubt there’s anyone in the administration offices over the weekend.”

  “They all have emergency numbers for these types of situations. This isn’t the first time this has happened, after all,” Renee said kindly. “Would you like to see your friend now?”

  I nodded, although a cowardly part of me wasn’t at all sure that I really did.

  Renee helped me to my feet, and I followed her down a hospital corridor lined with medical equipment and empty transport beds. Renee stopped at a door to our left. The room inside held two beds, but only the one closest to the windows was occupied. Lying there, propped up at a forty-five-degree angle, was Dana.

  She looked awful. Her skin was waxy and white, as though when she’d cut her wrists, all of the blood had been drained from her face. The purple-rimmed circles under her large brown eyes stood out viciously, like bruises. Her hair was messy and her lips were flaky. Her thin wrists, resting limply to either side of her, were bandaged. She was looking out the window, although as I drew closer, she turned suddenly and smiled wanly at me.

  “Let me just check your IV,” Renee said, inspecting an udderlike bag filled with clear liquid hanging on a metal rack next to Dana’s bed. A tube snaked from the IV into a needle taped to the back of Dana’s hand. Renee pressed the plastic bag with her fuchsia-tipped fingers. “This looks just fine. I’ll check back with you in a bit, hon.”

  Renee bustled from the room, leaving Dana and me alone.

  “You came,” Dana said.

  “Of course I came. Are you okay?” I asked, and then closed my eyes for a minute. What a stupid question. Obviously she wasn’t okay.

  “I’ve had better days,” she said wryly, lifting her bandaged wrists up as explanation. Dana seemed remarkably composed. More so than me.

  “Do you need anything?” I asked, sitting down on the edge of an orange visitor’s chair at the foot of her bed.

  “Actually, yeah, I do. Holmes is home alone. Would you mind taking him until…well, until whenever?” Dana asked.

  My head nodded like a bobble-head doll, I was so eager to be given a task.

  “Yes, of course I’ll take care of him. Of course,” I said. “I’ll take him home with me.”

  Dana smiled, looking almost obscenely serene. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ve been worried about him.”

  But not so worried, I thought, that it kept you from doing this.

  And then the picture clarified in my mind—Dana sitting on the edge of her utilitarian white ceramic bathtub, the rectangular razor held pincerlike in her right hand, Holmes curled up on the plastic-backed hunter-green bath rug, yawning or maybe investigating an itchy spot on his belly, completely unaware that Dana was about to do something so…final. Violent and final.

  “Dana, what were you thinking?” I asked.

  The smile faded from her pale face, and she looked away, staring out the window with glassy eyes. While I waited for her answer, I stayed as still as I could, as though scratching my arm or bouncing my foot would have imposed on her sanctuary. But Dana did not speak, and we sat there like that for a long time, so long I thought she might have fallen asleep. But when I check
ed, looking over the pointed little face framed by a mess of brown curls, her eyes were still open and fixed on something in the distance. I glanced around and bitterly wished I’d thought to stop at the store for a get-well bouquet to brighten up the depressingly sanitized room.

  “I’m cold,” Dana suddenly said, her voice cracking across the silence.

  “I can get you an extra blanket,” I said.

  She shook her head slightly. “No, that won’t help. It’s the IV. Whatever they’re pumping into me is making me cold on the inside,” she said. She began to tremble.

  “I’ll go get the nurse.”

  “No, don’t. I…Look, I’m not some kind of an unstable wack-job,” Dana said.

  I laughed. I didn’t mean to—it was probably about the most inappropriate response I could have had—but the gurgle of laughter popped out before I could stop it.

  “I’m sorry…it’s just…you’re one of the most stable people I’ve ever met. So if you’re a wack-job, we’re all in trouble.”

  “That’s nice of you to say, but obviously false in light of the current circumstances.” Dana sighed. “I wish I could say something that would make you understand why I did it, but the truth is, I don’t know why myself. I really don’t want to die. I knew that as soon as the blood started. I used my teeth to tie tourniquets around my arms and then called 911.”

  I swallowed, these details adding themselves to the slide show already flickering through my mind.

  “Then why?” I asked. “What made you cut yourself? Was it…Addison?”

  Dana frowned. “Addison? What do you mean?”

  “I thought…I mean, I wasn’t sure, but I wondered if…the two of you were…involved,” I finished lamely.

  “Are you kidding? Addison thinks I’m his kid sister,” Dana said wryly. She shrugged, her narrow shoulders rising up pathetically against the bulk of the pillows stacked behind her head. “It wasn’t because of Addison. I just didn’t want to do it anymore, any of it. Study, go to class, worry about finals, worry about grades, worry about my future…I didn’t want to have to worry anymore,” she said.