“No,” Hugh said. “The rule of thumb is always to put the patient back on medications that have worked in the past, barring a good clinical reason to do otherwise.”
“Assuming we, I mean Jade, can get her back on the drugs, how long before they work?” Gabriel said.
“That depends on the patient. I’ve seen it take days, and I’ve seen it take months. But it’s my opinion, based on the admittedly limited time I’ve spent with Marianne, that she needs to be treated in a hospital setting. It would certainly be safer. Does she have a history of violence?”
“No.” Jade slid her hand, the one with the bandaged finger, behind her back. What had she said during their first conversation about a broken finger?
“And she has a history of psychotic episodes?”
“Yes,” Gabriel said, before Jade could lie again.
The spare room door crashed open, and Marianne tore down the stairs and shot into the living room. Moving quickly, Jade went after her, and Darius appeared holding the side of his face.
“What happened?” Gabriel said.
“I tried to get her to put some jeans on, and she slapped me. But it’s fine.”
“No,” Hugh said, “it’s not.”
And then they ran onto the patio, where Jade was watching Marianne prance around in her underpants and the jacket. Arms outstretched like Frankenstein’s monster, Darius moved toward his wife. She jerked back into a ray of sunlight that slid off the grease of her stringy, unwashed hair. A sight harder to stomach than the misbuttoned jacket. Old Marianne had cared so much about her impossibly thick strawberry-blond hair.
“You. Never listen! Hate you!” She lunged at Darius, pounding on his chest.
“Marianne, please. Stop this.” Darius tried to hold her still. “Jade and I are here to help. You have to let us.”
“Hate! Want divorce! You beat me you rape me.”
“I—I didn’t. You need to stop saying these things. They’re not true.” Darius glanced at Hugh. “Please believe me, I would never hurt my wife.”
Hugh stepped in front of him. “Marianne, my dear, this is your illness talking. Mania is a highly treatable condition, which you know, but since your initial plan might be quite involved, it would be best to get you inpatient treatment. Psychiatric medicine has worked for you in the past, and it can work for you again. We just need to get—”
“The devil!” Clutching her head, Marianne turned in circles. “Rising out of garden.” She pointed. “No! No! Not real. Make it stop. Stop!”
“Marianne, please—” Darius said, his hands shaking.
“Go!” Marianne leaped backward and tripped over Gabriel’s terra-cotta pots. She landed in a heap on the grass.
“Hate you. No one. Loves me. Alone.”
“You’re not alone.” And then Darius screamed that he loved her, as Simon had done right before he’d died.
Sound and movement in the garden slowed; air roared in Gabriel’s ears. Was he going to faint? His heart tightened, tight enough to rip. Had Simon felt this unbearable pain as his heart ripped free of its aorta? Grabbing the support beam of his arbor, Gabriel did the only thing he could do: he prayed.
“Voices!” Still holding her head, Marianne rocked back and forth. “So loud. The devil. See him? Coming for me. He knows. I kill babies. No!” She screamed at Darius as he dropped to his knees beside her. “Fuck off! Hate you! Rapist anal hate.” And then she attempted to scuttle away from him on all fours, but just spun in place.
“I love you,” Darius repeated over and over, his legs folded back under him in a picture of abject defeat.
Gabriel kept praying.
Jade came up quietly behind Marianne and sank, slowly, to the grass.
“Kill you,” Marianne yelled at Darius. “I kill babies. Get away, Dar—Gabriel! Help. I need hospital go. Not safe! Not safe. Get me hospital.”
Gabriel jumped to attention. “Does that count as voluntary commitment?”
“Yes,” Hugh said. “Darius, do you have health insurance so we can circumnavigate the NHS?”
Darius nodded. “But money’s no object. Whatever she needs . . .”
Hugh pulled out his mobile and walked back into the living room.
Jade wrapped her arms around Marianne and began to hum a song Gabriel didn’t recognize. Darius bowed his head and shook silently. Yes, hell existed, and here was the proof.
Hugh returned. “I’ve booked her into the Beeches, a private residential facility not far from Heathrow. It has an excellent reputation, and I have admitting privileges. They’re also flexible about GP referrals and good at admitting in a crisis. Jade, can you help get Marianne in my car?”
They eased her into a standing position. Darius stood too, his eyes red. A wasp dipped close to his face but he ignored it.
“Not cheap. However, it is the best,” Hugh said. “A number of music celebrities go there for treatment. I believe she’ll find it a very supportive community.”
Darius flicked back his hair. “I’m coming with you.”
“I recommend against it.” Hugh had his arm around Marianne’s waist. “We need to keep her calm in the car. I can’t have her yelling obscenities at you as I drive.”
“No, she’s not going anywhere without me. I’m coming.”
Gabriel moved forward and rested a hand on Darius’s back. “Might I suggest—”
Darius swung round. “Get. Your hand. Off me.” Gabriel had never heard a person talk in a growl before.
Gabriel lowered his hand slowly but kept his eyes locked on Darius’s. “I have a suggestion. If you’re willing to listen?”
Darius narrowed his eyes until they were almost slits. Gabriel continued. “Jade should go with Hugh and sit in the back with Marianne. We can follow in my car.”
“That’s a good solution. He’s right, boss,” Jade said.
Darius didn’t react.
“If I put my dog collar on”—Gabriel kept staring at Darius; Darius kept staring back—“we’ll have no problem with admittance, even if we arrive after Hugh and Jade.”
A thrush sang, Marianne muttered to herself, and Darius tilted his head back and then rolled it from side to side. Seconds ticked by before he turned to Jade. “Fine,” he said. “But you’re to text me if anything happens on the way there and the moment you arrive.” Jade nodded. “Hugh—name of the place again? I want to do a Google search in the car.”
While Hugh rattled off the address and Darius typed into his phone, Jade ran back into the house. She reappeared moments later holding up a pair of pink sweatpants. They had the word JUICY emblazoned across the bottom. “These are mine, but she can’t go to the hospital half naked. Marianne, let me help you put these on.”
“I’m going to get dressed,” Gabriel said. He began to turn away, but Marianne ran across the patio and threw herself at him. Instinctively, he closed his arms around her.
“No! No! The devil. Don’t let . . . Take me. Gab—don’t.” She grabbed his T-shirt and yanked. “Don’t me leave.” Then she muttered gibberish.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said quietly. “We’ll get through this together. Just like old times, Nightjar.”
“What the fuck?” Darius said.
Jade was between them and Darius in a second. “Darius, look at me.” She pointed at her eyes. “Focus.”
“He called her—”
“Marianne’s needs come first. We’re all in agreement here. I suggest we let the guys get her booked in and settled. We can visit tomorrow. That’s a better plan. Right, Gabriel?”
Jade shot him a look that implied he was a first-class twit.
On the High Street, brakes screeched and a horn blared, and Gabriel tightened his hold. He had loved Marianne, he had lost her, she had returned. He didn’t understand what it meant, nor did he need to. Because he would do what he had always done: keep her safe. Consequences be damned.
TWENTY
MARIANNE
Marianne opened her eyes. Not a prophet, the
n. Bummer. The room smelled like a generic workspace. A cubicle for the unbalanced mind. Gray daylight pinned her to the bed; rain pelted the window. What had they shot her up with this time?
Her eyelids drooped.
When she opened them again, someone was leaving the room. The door shut quietly, blocking out the artificial light from the hall. In the dark corner of her mind, singing echoed. Something about hushing a baby and mockingbirds.
She fell back into the black hole of dreamless sleep.
The next time she opened her eyes, the room was bright with sunlight, and a female voice was talking about individual therapy and the evening yoga class; about group sessions three times a day covering cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness, and self-awareness; about how she would start in module one and graduate to module two when she was ready; about how the therapy assistant would explain this in detail.
Sleep, apparently, was no longer an option.
A shower, the chirpy voice insisted, followed by a meeting with the therapy assistant and then breakfast. Busy, busy. What a shit job, motivating the insane to shower.
Voices passed the closed door and disappeared into nothing.
“I’m here of my own free will,” Marianne said, closing her eyes, “and that free will is telling me to sleep.”
“You’re here because you were smart enough to realize you needed help. That only works if you comply.”
Outargued by a medical aide. Marianne started to sit up, but a memory sideswiped her: Darius’s face red from her handprint. And sounds of breaking glass. Had she thrown something at him? Yes, a lamp. Right after she threatened to kill him. She flopped back onto her too-firm pillow. Darius would insist on seeing her, and she would insist he not. He must stay away, for his own sake.
“What day is it?” Marianne said.
“Monday.”
The Monday morning to end all Monday mornings. And it wasn’t as if she had the memory of a fun weekend to live off. Drug-induced oblivion didn’t count.
“Do you want to resume your old life?” Chirpy Voice said.
“Yes.” Marianne sighed, since no would have brought a truckload of problems. Compliance was the name of the game in mental hospitals. “I want to get better for my family. I have a daughter. I love her.”
That was the thought to hang on to. Gabriel believed in angels, and Jade was hers.
“Then you should get up and start your day.”
Pushing down on her elbows, Marianne forced herself upright. Then she forced herself to put her feet firmly on the floor, and forced herself to stand. “Can you remind me of my schedule again?”
Breakfast, buffet style, was better than anticipated, mainly because the dining room was abandoned—as empty as a tracking room filled with nothing but silent guitars. The décor was contemporary restaurant style, not institutional mess hall clone. All very soothing with floor-to-ceiling windows, linen blinds, and filtered light drifting between stone-colored furniture. The place settings were real. Last time, she hadn’t been trusted with anything but plastic forks and knives.
Marianne stared at what remained of her fruit. Fresh, not canned.
Clearly most people were compliant with their timetables and ate early. But she’d done this so many times—voluntarily and involuntarily. Pushing the limits by a minuscule amount was the way to go. Overt disobedience brought unwanted attention, but minor rebellion worked like a charm. She should write a guide: I Did It My Way—Everything You Need to Know about Surviving Mental Hospitals.
She got up to leave, facing the rear of the room. Fascinating, she wasn’t the only rebel. One young woman—no, a girl—was hunched over a table in the far corner, partially hidden by a pillar. The girl tugged at the skin on the back of her hand; orange hair, stripped of its shine, hid her face. Lost in a huge mushroom-colored cardigan, she could have been a street kid. She could have been a skinnier version of Jade, asleep on the sofa at Girls In Motion, her fiddle wedged under her arm.
Dragging herself through the medicated shuffle, Marianne homed in on her target. She sat next to the girl, who was humming. Dried blood had formed crusts at the edges of several gnawed nails; underneath the ratty cardigan, she was wearing a Media Rage T-shirt.
“Hey, I’m new here. My name’s Marianne.”
The girl kept her head down.
“You’re a Media Rage fan? My husband was recording them last week.” At least he was until she went postal. Had Darius bailed on the band? Had she torpedoed Jade’s big career break? So many reasons piling up as to why they were both better off without her.
The girl glanced up with huge, empty eyes. “Yeah? You’re in the loony bin.”
Marianne leaned forward to hear better.
“Why should I believe anything you say?”
Definitely a younger Jade. She’d come with a ton of attitude, too. “We own a recording studio in North Carolina.”
“How d’you end up in ’ere, then?”
“Quit my meds, saw the devil growing in a garden, threatened to kill my husband. The usual.”
“That is sick,” the girl said. Nothing in her expression had changed, but the rise in her voice suggested sick was a compliment. “I have a mood disorder.”
“Which one?”
“Schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type.” Her voice registered no more life than a flatlined heart monitor. “At least that’s what they say this time.”
“You don’t believe them?”
“Been in and out of places like this since I was thirteen. First time my world went tits up they called it aggressive behavior. Then they said bipolar depression. They make up shit worse than we do.”
“Visual or auditory?” Marianne said.
The girl wrinkled her nose as if she’d smelled fresh skunk.
“Your hallucinations. I’m assuming that explains the change in diagnosis.”
The girl picked remnants of green nail polish off her thumb. “Mainly auditory.”
“Mine are visual. More like faceless shadows, really. Sometimes with the odd voice thrown in. It only happens when I’m off-the-charts manic and psychotic, but you wish you could forget those bits.” Marianne lowered her voice. “Being psychotic’s like being possessed.”
“I started hearing voices when I was twelve. Not so bad at the beginning. Sort of white noise. Then it became more like a radio left on in another room. Got deafening after that. Multiple voices talking over each other all the time. Criticizing, threatening. I stabbed myself in the thigh once. Made sense at the time. Wanna see?” The girl got up and slowly tugged down her sweatpants. She was so thin, so frail, like the kid Marianne had first mistaken her for.
“Once I hallucinated my dead teenage lover,” Marianne said.
The girl pulled up her pants and reached for a squashed packet of Marlboro Lights. “I’m going outside for a fag before group.”
“Mind if I join you?” Marianne said. “It’s my first time, and I don’t know where to go.”
The girl sniffed, and Marianne reached down to grab her napkin off the floor. When she stood up, the girl had gone.
Group therapy started at nine a.m. In other words, sadistically early when you were pumped full of drugs. And then she had to meet her assigned shrink at ten thirty. She’d forgotten that they kept you busy in the nuthouse. The last activity before lunch? The substance abuse session. Oh joy. She’d been clean and sober for fifteen years, but her medical file had been stamped. Once an addict, always an addict.
First up, group therapy.
Marianne pushed open the door to some place called the Rhododendron Room. A seated circle of eight women and two men stared at her. She shuffled into the one empty seat next to the guy with the clipboard. His black-and-red metal glasses were very hip, very I choose my idiosyncrasies, unlike you people. He crossed his legs casually. His socks matched his glasses. How distressing.
“Welcome to group, Marianne,” Trendy Glasses said. “Everything we say in here is confidential, so please remember that. Wh
y don’t you tell us about yourself and how you’re feeling this morning?”
A battalion of lawn mowers fired up outside. Grounds upkeep was, no doubt, important to a place like this, a subliminal message to maintain appearances. Perpetuate the British war mentality: keep calm and carry on cutting the grass.
“What’s there to know?” Marianne said. “I’m insane.”
The girl from the dining room giggled. Trendy Glasses gave a tight smile.
“If you want the full bio, I’m also a record producer; founder of a nonprofit group in Carrboro, North Carolina; and I have one daughter and no pets.” She paused, Darius front and center in her thoughts. He’d walked away from all that success to find authenticity. What he’d found was her. “And I’m married. To an amazing guy who deserves better.” Despite the meds, she had the strongest desire to bawl like a baby. Damned if she’d do that in a circle of strangers. She sniffed.
“I was thinking more about your diagnosis, Marianne,” Trendy Glasses said.
Did he honestly believe a woman with her history didn’t know that? But confessing her sins in public never got easier.
“Bipolar I, alcoholic. And I’m here voluntarily.” Really—even in this setting she was embarrassed, wanted to distance herself from those who didn’t have the luxury of choice? “Stopped taking my meds, and went, you know, raging psycho. I wanted to get somewhere safe before I hurt anyone because I’ve killed. In the past, I mean. When I’ve been manic.”
“What’s your method?” This, apparently, from a young guy with a gray hoodie tugged over his head.
“Excuse me?”
He sat up. “Of murder?”
“Car wrecks.”
“Ace,” he said, and began pulling out his eyebrows.
“How about we go round the room and introduce ourselves to Marianne? I’m Mark.” Trendy Glasses pointed at his name badge as if she couldn’t read.
“EmJ,” the girl from the dining room said. “And since you’re going to ask next how I’m feeling, Mark”—she glared at Trendy Glasses—“let’s get it out of the way. I feel like shit. And I still miss the Molly. Only thing that keeps the void away. Happy?”
Echoes of Family Page 14