But Inside I'm Screaming

by Elizabeth Flock

  Isabel flips ahead through the pages, all of which are crammed with Ben’s nearly illegible scrawl.

  I have come to believe that Northerners are evil. Especially New Yorkers. But Northerners in general. They don’t care about you. Southerners, now that’s a different story. Southerners are the only truly great people. They really care. The food they cook is the best, by a long shot. They must care about you if they’re cooking like that for you.

  Why does Ben want me to read this, for God’s sake? I don’t give a shit about this twisted journal.

  “Isabel?” Connie the night nurse is smiling apologetically as she approaches Isabel.

  “Larry’s here and wants everyone to get together in the living room for an emergency group session. We need you to come inside now.”

  “I don’t want to go to group. I want to stay out here,” Isabel replies.

  “I know, sweetie, but Larry says it’s important for everyone to be there.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. He wants to talk about ‘how Lark’s death affected us.’” Isabel mimics Larry’s somber tone. “I don’t feel like talking about it. Sorry, Connie, but I’m not going.”

  Connie crouches down in front of Isabel’s lap.

  “Honey, we know you saw Lark. You were the only patient to see her like that. That’s an incredibly traumatic thing. Larry really wants you to come talk to him.”

  “What’s there to talk about? Lark killed herself. You guys all screwed up. All the bed checks, the flashlight checks, the sharps closet. All of that and you can’t keep a patient safe in broad daylight right under your noses. Larry wants to take the heat off the staff—no offense to you, Connie. I don’t want to hear it. I just want to be alone.”

  Isabel gets up and walks down a sloping hill into the middle of the field below. Connie goes inside presumably to get Larry.

  Larry pushes through the unit doors and heads straight to Isabel, who is sitting cross-legged on the grass.

  “Larry, don’t even waste your breath,” Isabel calls out to the therapist, who is trudging down the hill. “I know you want me to come to group and I’m not going to, so you can just turn around.”

  “I just want to talk with you for a second, Isabel. Is that okay?” Larry is trying to sound nonthreatening. “After that, if you want to come to group, fine. If not, no problem.”

  Yeah, right.

  Larry exhales as he plops down beside her on the grass.

  “I’m not going to beat around the bush. You’re a smart woman. You know why I want to talk to you. I’m worried about you witnessing something like Lark’s suicide. That can be a jarring thing to see, even for a professional. I wonder what you thought when you saw her?”

  I didn’t think anything. Not one single thing.

  “Nothing.” Isabel shrugs.

  “You realize, don’t you, that you are probably still in shock. That was a horrible thing to see.”

  “I don’t know. I just really want to be by myself, Larry. I don’t have anything to say.”

  “Okay. I’ll leave you alone for now. One more question and then I’m out of your hair, so to speak.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Were you aware of the extent of Lark’s mental illness?”

  “What? Don’t you have doctor-patient confidentiality to think about? Should you be telling me stuff about Lark? Jesus.”

  “You didn’t hear me. I am not telling you anything about Lark. I am simply asking if you knew the depth of Lark’s illness. Did you?”

  “No,” Isabel replies. “Not like you knew about it, I’m sure. We weren’t close friends, Lark and I, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Okay. Well, I suppose, then, if you didn’t know how deeply troubled Lark was then you couldn’t have been expected to save her, right?”

  “Point taken.”

  For a few moments neither of them say a word. Isabel tries to concentrate on an industrious line of ants carrying specks of dirt away from their M*A*S*H unit.

  “Isabel, I’m going to be direct. You’re going to have to decide whether this forces you to sink or whether it helps you swim. None of us can decide that for you. There are a lot of Larks here at Three Breezes. There always have been and there always will be. You are not one of them. You are in the unique position to be able to help yourself. Many of the patients here will never be able to do that. This is tough to hear, I know, and please don’t mistake my bluntness for a minimization of your pain. But I sense that deep down inside you know you don’t belong here much longer. You can lift yourself up. Lark was never going to be able to do that.”

  Tears are falling down Isabel’s cheeks as she turns to Larry.

  “Maybe you could’ve helped her. Maybe I could have,” she cries. “She could have lifted herself up….”

  “Never,” Larry says gently.

  He stands up, stretches and shades his eyes from the sun. Isabel looks out across the field and wipes her nose.

  “Goodbye, Isabel.”

  She twists around to watch him make his way back up the hill to the unit. Waiting for him on the smoker’s porch are Ben and Kristen, who, Isabel can just make out, is scratching at her wrist. As Larry approaches them Ben jumps to his feet and claps his hands together like a child at Christmas. They follow the therapist inside and the door shuts tightly behind them.

  Forty-Six

  “What’re you doing?” Isabel asks Kristen.

  “Shh! Keep your voice down. Want one?” Kristen whispers over her shoulder while reaching into the vending machine for a Snapple.

  “No.”

  “No one’s going to find out,” Kristen says defensively as she shakes the bottle of iced tea and breaks the safety seal. “I do this every day and no one’s said a word yet. They don’t even know. Plus, the dollar-feeder thingy is broken. Score!”

  “You don’t pay for it?”

  “I watch the nurses doing it. How come they get to do it and I can’t?”

  “Well, let’s see,” Isabel says in a purposely patronizing tone, “for one thing, it’s in the staff cafeteria. Emphasis on staff. You know. People who are actually paid to be here. Get it?”

  “Little Miss Goody Two-Shoes,” Kristen laughs as she takes a swig of her drink. “I always finish it before it’s time to get back to the unit.”

  “What an accomplishment,” Isabel mutters. “Who are they to say that we can’t have something good to drink?”

  “You’re a regular Norma Rae.”

  “Who?”

  Isabel turns and walks away.

  Larry’s right. I don’t belong here. I’ve got to get out of here.

  Thirty minutes later she signs herself out for a walk.

  Without planning on it she finds herself outside Peter’s unit. There she settles on a large rock and watches the door, wondering what Peter is doing on the other side of it.

  Maybe he’s coloring something. Maybe he’s reading. Harry Potter? I hope so…I hope he has some way to escape his madness.

  “I want to get out of here,” Isabel says as she sits down in her therapist’s office. “How do I go about doing that? Seriously. Tell me.”

  Dr. Seidler smiles. “It’s about time.”

  “How do I do it?”

  “First things first,” Dr. Seidler begins. “Let’s talk about how you’ve come to this decision.”

  “I had an epiphany…I woke up on the right side of the bed…I had a good dinner…I don’t know.” Isabel does not want to go into detail. Her mind is made up. “Just tell me what I’ve got to do.”

  “Okay. Let’s do this. Your outside therapist, Mona, and I have talked—remember I’ve been telling you about our phone conversations—and we both think it might be a good idea for you to ease back into life by going to your session in the city this week. Then you can come back here.”

  “Commute into Manhattan?”

  “That’s right. A field trip. That way it might not be such a shock to your system.”

  “Then you’ll sign the papers to l
et me out? For good, I mean. If I pass this test?”

  “This is not a test. I think it would benefit you to go slowly, that’s all.”

  “Okay, I’ll do it. Where can I get the train schedule?”

  “There’s a schedule at the front desk—I’ll get it for you by tonight. It’s really easy. The nurses will call a taxi for you that will take you to the station and the train goes right in to Grand Central. You go to your appointment and then hop back on the train and come back here. You up for it?”

  “Yes.”

  They trust me? How do they know I won’t stop at Duane Reade and pick up razor blades?

  “I think you’ll do just fine, Isabel,” Dr. Seidler smiles. “I think you’re ready. In the meantime, I wonder if we can talk about what that last day at work was like for you. The day before you came here. What happened after—” she cleared her throat “—ahem…”

  “After I wigged out on live television?” Isabel snorted.

  “Speak,” said John without looking up, so accustomed was he to multitasking that his colleagues knew not to wait for his full attention.

  But Isabel was unable to obey his command. She fixed her stare on the crown of his head, which was bent over his laptop, which fought for space with a Chinese carryout container balanced on a heap of folders in the clutter of his desk.

  “You snooze you lose,” he muttered, reaching for the phone while clicking on his keyboard.

  Isabel simply stood there. After a moment, in an attempt at watering her incredibly dry mouth, she cleared her throat, hoping the phlegm would help cancel out the sick taste in her mouth.

  After a curt phone call, John hung up. “What?” he glanced up at her, looked back down and then brought his head back up as though he couldn’t quite believe what he’d seen when he first saw her standing there. After that his head did not move.

  “Talk to me.” For once, she had John’s full attention.

  Still, she could not form the words.

  Focus. Focus.

  “Can we—ahem—sorry,” she coughed. “Can we close the door?” she whispered.

  John went over to his office door and batted down the coats slung over the top of it. Wordlessly he clicked it shut and motioned for her to sit down.

  Isabel perched on the edge of the chair and looked down at her knees.

  “What’s going on, kiddo?”

  Kiddo.

  “Whatever it is, we can fix it,” he said kindly.

  Isabel took a deep breath and then dove in. “It’s like this…” But the words stopped their outbound journey.

  “You can do it,” John coaxed.

  You can do it.

  “I need a medical leave of absence and I need it to start now.”

  “Now, as in…?”

  “Now as in right away. Tomorrow.”

  John did not bat an eye. “Whatever you need. Take whatever you need.”

  Isabel had been unprepared for his unconditional support. “But…but I know this is leaving you in the lurch and I don’t want—”

  “Isabel—” John’s voice a deep mix of gentle and gruff “—your health is more important. Can you still pull bulletin duty tonight? If you can’t just say, but it might be hard to get someone else in here since it’s Labor Day weekend.”

  “Yeah, yes.”

  “You sure?”

  No.

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” he said. “Then your leave will start tomorrow.”

  “You haven’t even asked why,” she said.

  “If you’d thought it was important for me to know, you would have told me. Now, go. Do what you need to do.”

  Her eyes filled up with tears and she looked away from him. Silently but with great effort she stood up and turned to the door. As she reached for the handle she straightened her shoulders, took another deep breath, cleared her cheeks of tears and, for one last time, put the mask back on.

  “He didn’t ask you why you needed the leave?” Dr. Seidler asks.

  “No,” Isabel answers. “He didn’t even look curious about it. It was like he sensed that I couldn’t talk about it—whatever ‘it’ is or was.”

  “Interesting.”

  “What?”

  “I’m wondering how that made you feel. Sitting there in his office—you were obviously at a real low point. What did you think when he told you to take whatever time you needed?”

  Isabel’s mind wandered back to the day that now seemed like it belonged to a parallel universe. “I remember thinking that if I let John down I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. I remember thinking I’d just go home and do it.”

  “Do it?”

  “Kill myself.”

  “Because you disappointed John?”

  “Well, let’s be honest here, I’d been planning it, anyway. But I thought that if John said I was leaving him in the lurch I would do it sooner rather than as I’d planned it.”

  “You didn’t want to disappoint him.”

  Isabel nods her head in agreement.

  “Well. What I find interesting about this is that that is what one might feel about one’s father. A lot of people would try to keep from disappointing their fathers, not their bosses. It seems like you thought of John as a father figure—someone who looked out for you, cared about you. Yes?”

  Isabel nods again.

  “So when you went to him, obviously at the end of your rope, so to speak, and he stepped up to the plate, giving you unconditional support without even asking you what it was all about, that was healing for you. That was indeed something a father would do. And John did it. He came through.”

  “Yeah. But then again, I did look pretty strung out. Maybe that’s why he didn’t ask me any questions.”

  “See? Even now you’re hedging. It’s like you can’t believe someone could offer you their support when you most need it. It’s like you don’t trust it.”

  Isabel thinks about the doctor’s words. She imagines Dr. Seidler as a gardener, an oversize trowel in her hand, digging into the soil of her soul. Peering into—what? Compost? The cynical part of Isabel wonders. And what would she plant in the space she’d created? What would grow—flourish, even?

  “I want to trust it.” Isabel’s voice is one decibel higher than a whisper. “I want to.”

  “Then why don’t you? What would it be like if you just felt the warmth of someone reaching out and throwing you a lifeline at a time when you’re gasping for air? You don’t have to answer. Just think about how wonderful that would feel. To have someone be there for you when you most need it.”

  Isabel feels a tiny seed dropping into the hole deep inside her and knows it will flower. Someday.

  Forty-Seven

  Twenty-four hours later Isabel is sitting on a train.

  Why is my heart beating so goddamned fast? I’ve been taking the train for as long as I can remember. This is a piece of cake: there’s no room for error, really. I’m in, I’m out. So why do I feel faint?

  “This is the 2:10 train to Grand Central. The 2:10 to Grand Central.” The conductor’s loud voice is a vise tightening on her stomach walls.

  Jesus. Maybe I’m not ready after all. This is happening so fast.

  “Going all the way in?” The conductor is standing in the aisle clicking his hole punch impatiently.

  “Excuse me?” Isabel tears her head away from the station that is rapidly shrinking in the distance.

  “Going to Grand Central, miss?”

  “Oh. Yes.”

  “That’s $5.75.”

  Isabel fumbles for her wallet and feels confused searching through the bills.

  Should I give him a twenty or a ten? Maybe I’ll need change once I get into the city. I do have exact change but maybe I should hold on to the smaller bills.

  “Miss? That’s $5.75 please.”

  Isabel nervously hands him the twenty.

  “You got anything smaller?” The conductor is annoyed at having to change the bill.

  “No. Sorr
y,” Isabel lies.

  He sighs and hands her back the change and moves on to the next passenger. Isabel realizes she has been holding her breath. She exhales.

  Calm down. Calm down.

  Forty minutes later the voice booms through the cars: “Grand Central Station. This is Grand Central Station, folks. Last stop.” Isabel tightens her grip on her purse straps, which have remained on her shoulder for the entire ride.

  “Grand Central Station.” The voice is echoing in her brain as she follows the crowd of people up the platform into the main terminal. Once there Isabel stops and looks around as if she is seeing the monumental structure for the first time.

  I look like a tourist from Iowa wandering through Times Square. All that’s missing is that ugly coin purse thing that straps around my waist. Has there always been an echo in here? I never noticed it before.

  Isabel inches through the bustling station toward the door she is most accustomed to using. At the Vanderbilt Avenue exit taxis wait for commuters, and at this hour in the afternoon there is a long line of hungry drivers.

  I have plenty of time. I don’t know why I took such an early train. Maybe I should save money and take the subway. A cab would be ridiculously expensive. I’ve got time.

  She checks her watch for the sixth time.

  Right now they’re in afternoon group, she thinks as she goes back in to the station and follows the signs for the subway. She has not taken into account that she is unfamiliar with this particular subway line. Her confusion is magnified.

  Calm down. Calm down.

  The subway map, with its colorful maze of lines, blurs together.

  Jesus. I don’t know where I am. Where am I on this map? Okay, calm down. I can do this. I take the subway all the time.

  The deafening sound of an approaching train drowns out Isabel’s thinking. Passengers pushing through the turnstiles and running past her to jump on board make her head hurt. A sense of urgency surges through her. She steps onto the train.