Spiral

by Mila Ferrera

  The dark-haired paramedic leans back, sticking close to Aron, who is still watching me, though his gaze is unfocused now. “She shouldn’t have tried to stop him,” says the paramedic. “She’s lucky it wasn’t worse.”

  Mark’s arms go tense around me. “He might have been able to get onto the balcony if she hadn’t acted as quickly as she did. So … don’t.”

  The paramedic raises his hands in surrender while his partner rolls a stretcher into the room. They’d stowed it in the hall, maybe hoping they wouldn’t need it. They lay Aron on it and carefully secure him, including ties at his wrists and wraps over his knees, hips, and chest. Mark helps me to my feet and steadies me when the room tilts. With him at my elbow and my head throbbing, I walk unsteadily over to Aron. They’re preparing him for transport, tucking a blanket over his body so no one can see that he’s strapped down. I take his hand, which is limp in my grasp. “I’m so sorry, Aron. But this is what you need. I’ll be there for you every step—”

  “No,” rasps Aron, feebly trying to pull his fingers from mine. It seems to take every ounce of strength he has to focus on me. “Nessa,” he whispers hoarsely.

  I lean close, straining to hear him. “What is it?”

  “I don’t ever want to see you again.”

  Mark’s hands close around my shoulders and keep me from falling. Then the two paramedics push the stretcher into the hallway, carrying my love away from me.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The sand crunches beneath the soles of my sneakers as I near the water. The sun is a faint orange streak in the distance, only a promise of light. A gust of wind whips my hair across my head, and I pull the blanket closer around my neck and shoulders as I sink onto a patch of dry beach just beyond the lapping surf.

  It’s been seven days since Aron was taken from me. But I know, down to my bones, I lost him before that, possibly because of my own obliviousness and inaction. Because I was drowning in a fantasy of him, of us together, of love that shook me to my core, and I didn’t realize he was already slipping beneath the waves. I didn’t reach out soon enough to grab his hand. My secret, dark fear: What if I pushed him under?

  I’m not even sure where he is. After the ambulance pulled away with him strapped in the back, Mark took me to Jefferson. While I sat in the emergency department waiting room, my head aching, black spots patching my vision, he tried to find out whether Aron was there. But of course, because we weren’t his relatives, because I wasn’t his spouse, they could neither confirm nor deny that he’d been admitted for evaluation. Same thing at Fairmount. And at Friends, Girard, and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Finally, Mark refused to take me anywhere else. He was worried I had a concussion and insisted I get medical attention of my own, which confirmed he was right. He promised to make use of all his contacts to find Aron. He promised he would keep me informed.

  I zombie-walked through the next few days, and despite a lingering headache, returned to work on Monday. Word on the oncology unit was that Aron was out with an undisclosed illness. I tried to ask Dr. Feldman if she’d heard anything, but she was, unsurprisingly, brusque and tight-fisted with any information. Part of me wanted to thank her for being so protective of him, and part of me wanted to shake her and scream in her face. I love him, I silently shrieked as she stalked away from me. But then I realized my love hadn’t done a thing for him. Soon after that, my secret fears hissed: it might have made things worse. And then I stopped asking about him, because I understood that I might not have a right to know.

  Dr. Feldman arranged for ongoing coverage for all Aron’s patients, including Finn, who pulled through a difficult few days. I spent time with Greg and him every afternoon. They were the only bright spots of the past week. Times with my clients allowed me to focus on something other than my own grief and guilt.

  But now it’s Thanksgiving break, and I’m in free fall. I spent Thanksgiving Day with my mother and grandparents, aunts and uncles, hiding behind a plastic smile and waving away questions about my health and well-being brought on by the shadows beneath my eyes and the untouched plate that Grammy had heaped with all my favorite foods. I hid in the kitchen, doing dishes and mopping and sweeping and cleaning things that were already clean, anything to avoid having to spew lies about how okay my life is, how I’m about to get everything I’ve worked for years to achieve. Anything to avoid questions about my doctor friend, the one my mother had told them so much about.

  I hug my knees to my chest and stare at the waves. The sun is a glowing fingernail at the horizon now, yellow and pink and orange bleeding across the sky and the sea. It’s gorgeous and perfect. The loneliness sits like a rock on my chest, making it hard to breathe. Aron was supposed to be here. That’s what we had planned. I was going to bring him right to this spot, too. I would have sat between his knees and felt his arms around me, his warmth at my back as we watched the sunrise together. We would have laughed about my grandfather’s odd sock collection and my Uncle Randall’s insistence on showing off his juggling prowess. We might have talked about the future. We might have sneaked back into my grandparents’ cottage and made love beneath the heavy quilt, holding our palms over each other’s mouths to stifle the noise.

  But instead, he’s somewhere I can’t reach him, and his parting words to me ring in my head, hollowing me out.

  “You gave me a scare when I woke up and found you gone,” my mother says from behind me.

  I turn to see her walking gingerly along the sand, carrying two large insulated mugs. She’s wearing a coat and sweat pants, and has a hat crammed over her hair. A few silver strands blow like cobwebs around her ears. She’s such a tiny thing, shorter even than I am. I realized a long time ago that she looks more fragile than she actually is, but I still feel the need to protect her. “Sorry. I was awake anyway, so I thought I’d come watch the sun rise.”

  “I guess I know you well.” She sinks to the ground next to me and offers one of the mugs.

  I wrap my chilled fingers around its surface and cradle it close to my chest, wishing it could warm my heart as well as it does my hands. “Thanks.”

  “I’m worried about you.”

  “You’re always worried about me, Mom.”

  “Maybe. I’ve never seen you like this, though. You put on an awfully brave face yesterday, but I think that made me worry even more. I know you’re down because you lost your advisor, and that the last few weeks have been very hard on you.” Her shoulder nudges mine. “But I’ll admit: I wasn’t expecting you to come alone, and I’m wondering if that has something to do with it.”

  I bow my head, squeezing my eyes shut to hold in a sob. I’ve actually managed not to cry for the past few days, but it’s always right there, and I’m afraid that if I let it out, I won’t be able to bottle it up again. “We … we decided to take a break,” I say in a choked voice. I can’t imagine telling her what’s happened. I don’t want to have to deal with her reaction, not when I’m so close to the edge.

  “Oh, honey,” she says, putting her arm over my shoulders. “I’m sorry. Was it his idea?”

  I clamp my lips shut and nod. “It’s okay. He needed time, and I’m going to give it to him.” I wish it was that simple.

  “You care about him a lot.”

  “It’s more than that.” As the tears force their way to the surface, I grimace and lean my head on her shoulder, grateful to have her near, to have her love. She sets her mug in the sand and wraps her arms around me, holding me while the wrenching sobs shake my body. She is my safe haven, the only one I have left, and I cling to her while the gale swirls around me. She doesn’t ask why I’m so distraught, doesn’t ask about my mood. It occurs to me that she understands this kind of sorrow better than anything else. She knows what it is to lose someone and that grief is not a sickness.

  My mother rocks me, whispers to me, strokes my hair while I come undone, and she doesn’t let go as my tears run dry and I settle, still holding tight, afraid I might spin into the darkness again
. Because right now, I don’t want to go back to Philadelphia. I don’t want to go back to CHOP. I don’t want to face any of it, not without Aron. I want to stay here on the beach until I disappear, until my body is worn away by the shifting sand, carried away by the tide. Then my mom murmurs in my ear, “You’re strong enough to get through this, Nessa. You’re strong enough to get through anything.”

  I don’t know if she’s right. But I do know this: I don’t want to go back, but I will. I want to sit here and rot and forget, but I won’t. I raise my head and kiss her cheek. “I got that from you, Mom.”

  Together, we get up, dust ourselves off, and hike back to my grandparents’ cottage a few blocks away. I take a long, hot shower and imagine the misery flaking off and dissolving in the water, spiraling the drain. It’s a temporary illusion, but it will get me through today.

  When I return to the tiny guest room, I check my phone. And sink to the bed. There’s a text from Mark:

  Aron’s inpatient at Jefferson.

  My fingers shake as I hit the callback number. “Did he call you?” I ask when he picks up, my heart thumping against my ribs.

  “No, his mother did. His parents flew from Stockholm and are staying in Philadelphia. I guess they got here a few days ago.”

  “Did she say how he is?”

  He’s quiet for a moment, but then says, “The last week has been rough, apparently. He’s been really uncooperative, and they’ve had to give him mood stabilizers and antipsychotics to try to bring the mania under control. He accused them of trying to poison him.”

  “Poor Aron,” I whisper. “He must have been terrified.”

  “His mother said he’s turned a corner in the past day or so, though. I asked if it would be okay for some of his friends to visit, and she thought that might be all right.”

  I stand up, a seed of hope sprouting within me. “Can I go with you?”

  “Yeah, I thought you might want to. When can you be here?”

  “Less than two hours. I’m on my way.”

  Two hours later, Mark picks me up outside of my apartment. My mom drove me back with a minimum of fuss and questions, for which I was incredibly grateful. I promised to call before the end of the weekend, and that seemed to satisfy her. As I climb into Mark’s car, I ask, “Were you with family yesterday?”

  He smoothes a hand over his spiky black hair and shakes his head. His smile is sad. “I took on-call for one of the residents. It’s the perfect excuse.”

  After that, I don’t ask more personal questions. “So, Aron’s mother called you?”

  He nods. “I met them just a few months ago, and they found my number in his cell.”

  A twist of discomfort shoots through me. “They went through his phone,” I mutter. That means they would have seen my number, too. Over and over again, if they cared to look at the call record.

  Mark finds a place to park and we head into the hospital, sign in at the front desk, and journey to the psychiatry inpatient unit. My heart is beating like I’m sprinting, and that’s exactly what I feel like doing. Aron is close, within my reach, and I could see him again in a few minutes. Maybe with the space of a week, with the help of the medications, he’ll realize he didn’t mean what he said to me before he was taken away. He’ll remember everything that came before. Maybe he’s waiting, even, hoping I’ll come, wondering why I haven’t yet.

  As we walk into the reception area, I sit down and Mark goes to speak with the nurse at the receiving desk. A few minutes later, a tall, lean woman in her mid-fifties, maybe, her pale blond hair pulled back into a tight bun at the base of her neck, strides out through the locked doors leading to the unit. Her ice blue eyes rake across the waiting room until they find Mark, and she smiles and walks toward him. I stand up on wobbly legs. This has to be Aron’s mother. She shakes hands with Mark, and he gestures toward me. I hear him say my name, and the moment he does, her smile freezes, turning flinty. She snaps something I don’t quite catch, and Mark gives me an alarmed look as she stalks toward me.

  I hold my hand out. “Dr. Lindstrom. I’m Nessa—”

  “I know who you are,” she says, ignoring my outstretched hand. Her English is perfect. Precise. And her tone is just like Aron’s when he’s furious: so cold it burns. “I have read all of your text messages to my son. Why have you come here?”

  My mouth drops open for a second as I think about the hundreds of texts Aron and I exchanged, intimate, playful, and sometimes sexual messages meant only for each other’s eyes. And this woman has seen all of them.

  Mark tries to come to my rescue. “You said it would be good for Aron to see his friends—”

  She nods, a clipped bob of her head. “Yes. His friends. From what I understand,” she says, her gaze meeting mine, “you are not his friend.” Her frigidly disgusted tone tells me what she thinks I really am. A plaything. A slut. A piece of trash.

  “Nessa was the one who realized he needed help,” Mark says, his voice taking on an edge as he steps to my side. “She was instrumental in making sure he got to the hospital, Katerin, and he gave her a concussion in the process. Aron might have jumped off his balcony if she hadn’t moved as fast as she did. I saw it happen.”

  Katerin Lindstrom’s expression softens slightly. “And for that, his father and I are grateful.” She tilts her head. “I mean you no offense, young lady, but you must understand that my son has always been a passionate and intense young man, and now he is suffering from a severe mental illness. From what I can tell, his interactions with you are part of that illness, and I think it would be better if you left him alone. He needs to heal in peace.”

  Her quiet, calm words are like a million needles, poking tiny holes in my heart. One would have been survivable, but together, they are deadly. Because she’s speaking my worst fears aloud.

  “They’d been together for a few months before any of this happened,” says Mark. Katerin’s mouth tightens. “Be that as it may, I don’t think it would be good for Aron to see you,” she says to me. “So many of his delusions were centered on you. So much of what he spent was on you, and you clearly benefited from his deluded generosity. We are currently going through his finances, and there is much work to be done to save him from severe financial difficulty. His credit card bills are astronomical, and the car, the ring …”

  “I didn’t ask him to do any of that for me,” I say hoarsely. “I told him it wasn’t necessary.”

  “And yet you did not stop him from doing any of it.” She gives me a sharp look. “Forgive me for being indelicate, but I must ask, since we are on the topic of cleaning up the mess Aron has made: Are you pregnant? Because we will pay for an abortion and any medical care you require. Aron cannot be burdened with that kind of thing, so I certainly hope—”

  “Hey, that is totally—” Mark begins, his fists clenching.

  “No, I’m not,” I whisper. Getting my period on Wednesday was a huge relief.

  Her shoulders relax a bit. “I’m pleased to hear it. Now, Mark, if you’ll come with me.” She inclines her head toward the unit.

  “Can you at least tell me how he is?” I ask, my voice thick with tears I refuse to shed in front of this cold, heartless woman. She’s obviously very protective of her son, which I admire, but right now I want to shove her out of the way. Instead, I say, “Please, Dr. Lindstrom. Whatever you think about me, I love your son.” I swallow hard, knowing I’m making a fool of myself, but hoping the sincerity in my voice melts some of her ice. “I care about him deeply, and I want him to be all right. He cared about me, too. That wasn’t a delusion.” Another dark, secret fear finds its voice and whispers: Are you sure?

  She gives me a pitying look. “Aron’s mind is fragile right now. He has been calmer and more cooperative in the last day, but he has a long way to go before he is stable. His father and I are determined to ensure he is well again. We have already arranged for his care in Stockholm, and—”

  “Wait,” says Mark. “You’re taking him back to Sweden?”
>
  She nods. “Aron has agreed. He will be discharged to our care in a few days, and we’ve booked our travel. He’ll get the psychiatric services he needs and be with people who know how to take care of him.”

  I want to argue with her. I want to burst through those locked doors and find him. But I can’t find the words or the will, because the only thing in my head is the understanding that there will soon be an ocean between me and Aron. I stand there mutely while Mark argues that Aron needs to stay here, that he’s lived in Philadelphia for the past eight years, that this is his home, that he loves it here and has friends.

  Katerin scowls as she says, “And yet he was able to spin completely out of control without anyone to stop him—in fact, it seems he was spurred on!”

  She waves her arm at me, and then turns on Mark. “But thank you for making your views in this matter so clear, Mark. Aron is not in a frame of mind to deal with conflicting opinions right now, so I know you will understand when I say that you will not be allowed to visit with him, either.”

  “Don’t do this, Katerin. It’s not good for him. It’s not what he wants.”

  Her smile is ghostly. “On the contrary, Mark. He’s already agreed to it. We’re not forcing him.”

  “Can I say goodbye?” I ask.

  She gazes at me with complete contempt. “That is out of the question. He doesn’t want to see you anyway. If I had known Mark would bring you, I would have made sure you didn’t waste your time. Please know that any attempts to contact my son will be blocked. You will get nothing more from him, so I ask you not to try. We control the approved visitor list, as well as his mobile phone and email accounts. And his professional email has been suspended. Let him go, Ms. Cavenaugh. It’s what’s best for him.”

  I bite the inside of my cheek and taste blood. I will not cry. I will not cry. “Then will you tell him something for me? Please.”

  She rolls her eyes. “As I said, Aron does not need to hear how you feel—”