The Secret Room

by Sandra Block

  Mike doesn’t answer, the sound of stirring and sizzling filling the room. In the ensuing quiet, I can’t help but think back to that injured look and walk my heavy body over to the stove and lean into him, kissing his cheek right by his ear. The way that drives him crazy, good crazy. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” he says. “Now go make the salad. I’m hungry.”

  Scrunching up some iceberg, I hear a text alert go off again, but when I look over, it’s Mike’s phone.

  FYI, you were so right! Total tibial fracture! Smarty pants. See you tomorrow, Adonis (hahaha) XO Serena

  We both see the message, and I grab the phone. “Who the fuck is Serena?”

  “Just a doctor I work with,” he says, flustered. “It’s nothing.”

  “‘XO’? ‘Adonis’? Doesn’t sound like nothing to me.” He doesn’t answer. “And who the hell follows up on a tibial fracture?” I stare at him, but he still doesn’t respond. The noise of the pot of water bubbling beside us sounds suddenly explosive.

  “Okay,” he says, finally. “There’s nothing going on between us, I promise. But…” He scratches his stubbly chin.

  “But?”

  Mike sighs. “She might have a little crush on me.”

  Chapter Two

  This was my life before I met you.

  Wake up.

  Eat breakfast. Kill time. Eat lunch. Kill time. Eat dinner. Kill time.

  Lights out. And repeat.

  An existence, I can’t even call it a life.

  I don’t know how these girls do it. Day after day after day. I met some lifers in here, and they’re like a different breed. Most of them are older and pretty much stick to themselves, acting like no one else understands them. And you know what? They’re right. No one understands them. Their eyes are blank, dull, the lights gone out. Like they’ve already died. I was like that, too. Just biding my time, getting through the minutes, the hours, the days.

  Until I met you.

  I still remember the very first day. We called you the Professor. It was kind of a joke at first, but the nickname fit, so it stuck. You sat at the scratched-up circular table in the library and announced that you were here to teach us to write. We were all going to start keeping a diary. An outlet, you said, for the real you.

  I don’t even know who the real me is, I said. And I wasn’t lying.

  That’s why you’re writing a journal, you said.

  With a sly smile. A smile that said you knew everything about me. So I took a closer look at you, the Professor. Your plump lips, curly hair, and green-brown eyes. The color of a forest. And tattoos poking out of your buttoned-up sleeves.

  I decided right then that I wanted you.

  This is different than loving you. That came later. This was just a pure, animalistic desire. I wanted to unbutton your shirt and catalog every tattoo, trace my fingers over every edge and kiss every color.

  I wasn’t original, though—all the girls wanted you. It was painfully obvious.

  Fawning over you, giggling when you walked by, tossing their hair back, batting their eyelashes, and sticking out their tits. Like bitches in heat.

  But I’m not like them, and even then, you knew that.

  Scary to think, I almost didn’t even take the class. But one of my friends said it would help me get time off. And I figured it would be a welcome distraction, at least. Turns out I was right, more than right.

  I didn’t realize what would happen.

  I didn’t know this class would become everything to me. This hour would be the only thing keeping me whole, would become my life. The only time I am truly me. The real me, like you said, who’s been gone for so long.

  Wake up. Eat breakfast. Kill time. Eat lunch. Kill time. Eat dinner. Kill time. Lights out. Repeat. That was my life. That would be my life, for years, too many years to come. Until I met you, Professor, and everything changed.

  And I knew that I could never go back to my life before you, that half a life, that living death. Never.

  And I would do anything it took to keep you. Anything.

  Even kill for you.

  Chapter Three

  The first thing I notice is his bright-red gloves.

  Andre Green sits on an unmade bed. The room is tiny and claustrophobic and smells of urine. He is the first patient of the day, the one I didn’t get to see yesterday after the warden’s meeting.

  I just finished reading through his chart, which tells me Andre is a sixteen-year-old African American male in prison for the attempted murder of his father. Andre is saddled with the unfortunate delusion that his father, Abraham Green, a soft-spoken, widowed accountant, is the devil.

  At first blush it looks like your typical schizophrenia. Andre was a straight-A student, first clarinet, and chess team champion when something happened. Something always happens. Usually it’s voices, whispering evil secrets or a malicious running commentary on the day. Or sometimes patients get delusions, like our Andre, and the devil one isn’t uncommon.

  But this case is more complex.

  Andre’s mother died just a year ago. Soon after, Abraham was teaching his son how to change a tire when Andre grabbed the wrench out of his hands and swung it at his face. His father managed to back off quickly enough to end up with just a broken nose. Andre admitted that he thought his father was the devil and was trying to kill him, and was soon after admitted to the children’s psych floor with a working diagnosis of psychotic depression. After release he was doing reasonably well until, one day, Andre took a kitchen knife from the butcher’s block and stabbed his father in the chest. Abraham recovered, but he pressed charges.

  And Andre wasn’t fifteen anymore. He was sixteen now. So he went to prison.

  Which brings me back to the teeny room, the unmade bed, and the red gloves. I sit down in a chair next to him, while a guard watches right outside the bars.

  “I’m not taking them off,” Andre threatens, by way of hello.

  “No problem.” I lean back in the chair, doing my best to look relaxed. “Why are you wearing the gloves anyway?” I try for a curious, rather than confrontational, tone.

  “The devil. He’s trying to plant seeds in my fingers,” he says, quite matter-of-factly. Andre lifts his wrinkled comic book up to his face. “And I’m keeping them on.”

  “Yeah, I got that. I’m not here for that.”

  “Okay.” He shrugs. “Why are you here, then?”

  “Just to talk.”

  “To find out if I’m crazy, you mean.”

  I smile at his deft assessment. “And are you?”

  “No,” he shoots back with disdain. But as he peers over his comic, his expression is less certain.

  “Let’s talk about your father,” I say.

  He pulls the comic book farther up, covering his face. “What about him?”

  “Can you explain why you stabbed him?”

  He rubs his elbow, which is dry and scaly. “I don’t know. Not exactly. I was confused, I guess.”

  “Something about the devil?” I ask. Andre glances up at me, then back at his comic. It’s a look I recognize. The microsecond debate. Do I trust her?

  “I don’t know if you’re crazy, Andre.” I lean my elbows against the cold, white-painted wall. “But I can at least try to help you figure that out. And I can help you get better.”

  He flips a page. “How?”

  “By treating you.”

  “Crazy meds?” Andre shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Okay, then.” I decide to change tack. “Let’s talk about the devil planting those seeds.”

  “Why?” He runs his hands through his hair, a modified cone Afro. Some coils sprinkle onto his white T-shirt. “You won’t believe me. Nobody does.”

  “Try me.”

  He exhales with impatience, putting his comic on his lap. “Sometimes I see them, sometimes I don’t.”

  “Okay. How about this, can you tell me what the devils look like?”

  He glances
down at the splayed-open page. “Like us, sort of. But with fur. And that devil tongue, you know…” He grasps for the word.

  “Forked?”

  “No, not forked. More like a double tongue. And they slither, separately, you know? One half of the tongue goes up, and the other half goes down. But both ends are reaching out, trying to get me.”

  “And you see this devil?” I shiver, as if someone just walked on my grave. “Not just imagine it, but actually see him?”

  He nods, his caramel-brown eyes fearful. “He looks real. Realer than you or me. And I hear him. All spooky-like. Whispering. Like that dude in…” He scratches his head, brushing out some more strands. “Did you read that book with the wizard dude?” I’m shaking my head, and he thinks a minute, then comes up with the name. “Lord of the Rings. Gollum.” His voice is animated, and now I know how to connect with Andre Green. Fantasy. Comics. “Do you remember him?”

  “Sort of,” I say.

  “He’s hissy. Scary sounding.” His voice drops to a whisper. “I hear him a lot.”

  I scoot my chair closer. “What does he say to you?”

  “Stuff. Different stuff.”

  “What kind of stuff?” I push him.

  “Mean, crazy stuff.”

  Again, schizophrenia. Unfortunately, the voices aren’t usually very nice. They’re more likely to tell you to rot in hell than that you should have a nice day. His gaze falls back to his comic book. A big-chested hero with kick-ass purple boots. “What does this have to do with your father, do you think?”

  A knock on the door breaks up our discussion. It’s Simon, the kindly social worker. I’ve met him more than a few times by now. “Ready for school?”

  “Oh yeah. Sure.” He leaves his comic on the bed.

  Andre is enrolled in high school in here, his junior year. Hopefully, he can keep up with that until we can get him stabilized in the hospital, then back home where he belongs.

  Because he sure as hell doesn’t belong here in prison.

  * * *

  Later in the day, I’m at the clinic with another new patient: Aubrey Kane.

  Her arms are a strange tapestry of scars. Linear, jagged, and squiggly, in shades of magenta, pink, and white.

  “Tell me about the cutting,” I say.

  Aubrey stares at the floor without answering. The noises of prison are muffled in our little white box of a clinic room, with the big red button on the wall right next to me for an emergency. I haven’t had to push it yet, and I doubt Aubrey will bring my first opportunity. Shoes clap down the hallway, along with scattered cussing and yelling, and the piercing squeaks of cells opening and closing.

  “I don’t know,” she says, finally, tucking strawberry-blond hair behind her ear. “I just do it.” Aubrey just turned twenty but looks younger. Bony thin, five foot one, she is petite, delicate. As if she might have been a ballerina, or a figure skater, a model even, if she hadn’t ended up here. If she hadn’t robbed a convenience store with her boyfriend’s gun to pay for heroin. She traces one of the newer, fluffier scars with some detachment. “It helps.”

  “Helps with?”

  “Everything, I guess.” She picks at another scar, not fully healed. The scar from when her razor went too deep and nicked a vein that bled under the door and into the hallway, alerting the guards that Aubrey Kane might not be playing this time. That Aubrey Kane might be dying in there. The scar that got her in to see me.

  “When do you get out of here?” I ask.

  The abrupt change in questioning obviously surprises her, and she looks up at me, her eyes a soft green. “Fifteen. But they say it’s usually more like seven. With good behavior.”

  “And do you think this qualifies as good behavior?”

  This gives her pause, but she shrugs it off. “Doesn’t matter. I’d be back in here soon enough anyway.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I’m an idiot.”

  “You have a problem with drug addiction, Aubrey,” I correct her. “That doesn’t mean you’re an idiot.”

  She shrugs again, raising up her collarbones. “Idiot. Addict. Same thing.”

  “Have you been to the drug rehab program yet?” I ask. “That would qualify as good behavior.”

  She drops her eyes to the floor again. “I signed up. Just haven’t gotten to a meeting yet.” She rubs her knees, bony in her orange pants. “You might not believe me, Dr. Goldman, but I’m trying. I really am.”

  “I do believe you.” I lean toward her to make my point. “But the cutting isn’t helping.”

  She doesn’t answer.

  “They’ll put you in solitary again, Aubrey.”

  A visible shiver runs through her. “I don’t want that.”

  “I don’t want that either. But it’s a two-way street. They need to keep you safe.” A long pause follows this statement, broken up by hooting and hollering outside the room.

  “I made a friend,” Aubrey says, like an offering. “In the cell, next door.” She blushes right down to her strawberry-blond roots, which makes me wonder what kind of friend.

  “Friends are good to have.”

  She nods with verve, as if my trite statement were utter truth. “Todd never wanted me to have friends.”

  “Todd?”

  “My boyfriend. He just—” She shakes her head. “He said they weren’t good for me. A bad influence.”

  I have a feeling this Todd has a lot to do with her cutting. “He sounds like an asshole.”

  She smiles at me then, fully, her green eyes glowing. As if we’re sidekicks, plotting some mischievous childhood prank, bonded together in our bad behavior. “How?” she asks, pausing uncomfortably and reaching up to her own neck. “How did you get yours?”

  Involuntarily I reach up, too, touching the faded gash. She hasn’t asked about the scars on my hands yet, even more ancient vestiges of my history. I debate telling her the truth, then decide this may be the only moment I’m given. If I lie to her now, the door she just opened up an inch for me might slam shut forever.

  “Someone stabbed me,” I say.

  * * *

  “Thanks for coming in, Zoe,” Dr. Novaire says.

  “Oh, sure, no problem.” I almost slip up and call him Nowhere.

  “I wanted to talk to you about something, but…” Something catches his eye. “You want to see something?”

  Here we go. “Sure.” I say this with zero enthusiasm, but, despite being a psychiatrist, he has yet to acknowledge any of my nonverbal cues that I have literally no interest in his coins. (Though I would appreciate some guidance in treating my criminally insane patients.) He opens a little wooden case with some majesty, revealing a gold coin atop blue velvet, then breaks into a smile. “I finally got it.” He holds it up high. “The master of all masters.”

  “Oh, wow.”

  “The 1986 Silver Eagle dollar.” The silver catches a glint off the sunlight as he twists it between his fingers like a magician. “A beauty, ain’t she?”

  “She sure is,” I say, wondering if a coin is, in fact, a “she.” There are rules about this. Ships are always female, for instance. But then again, so were hurricanes until someone decided this was downright sexist, and all those godly hissy fits were just as likely to be testosterone- as estrogen-derived.

  He puts the coin back. “Now, where were we?”

  “You had wanted to see me?” I remind him.

  “Oh yes, yes.” He pauses, and I feel jitters in my stomach, hoping nothing else has gone wrong since the OD. I’ve been on high alert ever since the Dennis Johnson fiasco. “Why don’t we just go over the patients?”

  “Sure.” I release my breath in relief, pulling out my iPad. “I’ve just got a couple right now.”

  Pushing the coin box to the side with some rue, he catches himself staring at it again and shuts the box. I understand the temptation, having issues with bright, shiny objects myself. “Go ahead.”

  “Aubrey Kane,” I start. “Twenty-year-old wi
th cutting and questionable suicidality.”

  “Meds?” he asks.

  “Nothing yet. And no other past medical history.”

  “Axis two?” he asks, meaning personality disorders.

  “Dependent, maybe. But I don’t think so.” Unfortunately, there is no axis for fell in love with the wrong guy, got hooked on drugs, robbed a store.

  “Anyone else?”

  “Andre Green. Sixteen-year-old African American with delusions and visual and auditory hallucinations.”

  “Schizophrenia.”

  I nod my assent. “Probably. Refusing meds right now.”

  “Do we need a medication over objection?”

  “Working on it.”

  “Okay, next up—”

  “About Andre…” I interrupt. “He really doesn’t belong in jail. I don’t see how he wasn’t NGRI.”

  Dr. Novaire lifts off his glasses, rubbing the indented skin on the bridge of his nose. “Did they try for it?”

  I shake my head. “His lawyer pled out.”

  “Then there’s not much we can do.”

  “He got five years.”

  “Five? That’s nothing,” he says in a jolly tone. “Two years with good behavior.”

  “But he’s only sixteen. This is—”

  “Oh, I know what I wanted to meet with you about!” Dr. Novaire bursts out, making me jump with surprise. “I have a research project for you.”

  “Okay,” I say. Research is a necessary evil, as I see it, something smart people should do for the common good. But me, I would rather chat with patients. Still, I do need to complete a project for the fellowship.

  “Cognitive behavioral therapy for sociopathy,” he says with great enthusiasm. “CBT.”

  This loosely translates into teaching sociopaths not to be sociopaths by thinking good thoughts. The premise does not sound promising. “Should I start with a literature search, maybe?”

  “Oh no. I want to get down to brass tacks here. We don’t have a lot of time, so I was thinking a small pilot, maybe ten patients.”

  “Uh-huh.” Ten patients I can handle.

  “Initial evaluation, run the Hare scale, CBT, then run it again. Actually, I already have the first one picked out for you. She agreed right away.”