by Jw Schnarr
If it was isolated, and not the result of an emerging psychosis, it could have been brought on by a specific factor. Her overdose was an obvious one. Perhaps she was suffering from a trauma related stress disorder.
Dr Weller sighed, rubbed his face with his hands. It was a habit he’d picked up from his mother, something she did when the world was big and ugly and messy and stressful. The subconscious act of wiping her face off with her hands symbolized her need to separate herself from her stresses. Dr Weller smiled inwardly thinking about his own inherited behavior. Human beings really were amazing machines. The clockwork that made them run was more complex than any computer could ever be.
It was a wonder everyone wasn’t crazy. Of course, there were those in the field of psychology who firmly believed everyone was crazy to some extent; and that the ideal of well being was long due for an overhaul. No matter what the ideal was though, there was something terribly wrong with Alice.
If she had been repeating something she thought she was hearing in her head, it could be an indicator that she was suffering from a schizoid disorder. Longtime drug addicts often suffered from what was known as narcotic induced mental illness, usually schizophrenia, brought on by their heavy dependency and abuse of street drugs. Schizophrenia covered a wide blanket of symptoms, however, and a diagnosis like that might mean long-term care, even institutionalization. Provided there was somebody around to foot the bill. If not she’d be back on the street with a prescription for an anti-psychotic. Anti-insanitories, his mind joked, something funny from his university days. Of course, back then the word mostly pertained to beer and shots of tequila.
It was also possible that Alice had some form of MPD. Multiple Personality Disorder. MPD had once been the “in” diagnosis back in the 80s, before a lot of work had been done in the field to really figure out what it was and what caused it. It was generally accepted now that MPD occurred in individuals suffering from heavy physical and emotional abuse as children, and found a way to disassociate themselves from the terrible things happening to them by separating themselves from the act mentally.
Doctors speculated that, the splitting of these actions could, under the right circumstances, actually cause smaller, mini-personalities to appear. Since they were created to deal with only one aspect of a person’s life, they usually only exhibited traits of one or two emotions, and were often tied to cliché personality types. For example, a scared child or an angry old woman. It was these universal cliché’s that made some scientists wonder if MPD was a real disorder at all, and not some offshoot iatrogenic condition.
And although an MPD diagnosis might be difficult because Alice was a drug user, she could have been using drugs in an effort to self medicate an undiagnosed illness. Then, again, perhaps the whole thing was brought on by stress. Or perhaps it was a heroin-related episode. A leftover opiate particle getting loose in her brain and causing a glitch in the system.
One thing was for certain, and it took him in a circle back to his original thought. Something is definitely wrong with Alice. He just hoped he’d get a chance to dig into her a bit before her insurance ran out or she was moved. He’d like to give the smug assholes who worked out at the Pine Woods Centre for Well Being a ready and working case file if they came to collect her. Something to show them he wasn’t just some transition doctor working patchwork psychology on emergency room rejects and junkies. Thank you doctor, we’ll take it from here, they’d say, as though administering institutionalized medicine made them the Alpha and Omega of mental health.
It was petty, and he scolded himself for thinking that way. Of course the only thing that mattered was for Alice to get the help she needed to cope with her life. Still, he’d been at this job a long time. It was important, to be on the front lines, working in a hospital for a major city, but it didn’t always let him sink his fingers into his work the way he’d like to. The dismissive attitudes of his peers didn’t really help things any.
Dr Weller sighed. He closed the folder marked Pleasance, Alice and tossed it to the side. He swished his cold coffee, staring down at the reflection in the bottom of the cup. A tired face looked back. Rippled in the coffee. He’d been here too long maybe. He’d bled for this job, and his life had suffered because of it. He’d been held back while his peers had simply climbed around him up the ladder of success.
He’d never married, either. He supposed that had something to do with his present attitude. His funk, as his mom would have said. Boy look at the way your face is dragging on the ground, she’d say. That must be some funk you got there.
It was futile to spend too much time dwelling on this stuff. He knew that. Good Mental Health 101 – don’t dwell too much on the Negative Aspects of Positive Being. Was that a Bad Religion song? Something like that. If he didn’t have the heart for his work anymore, he would have to find new work or else find his heart. He was fast approaching the crested hill marked 50 though, and the sign read Caution: this road is closer to the end of the line than it looks. He was over qualified for anything other than what he was doing right now, and too close to retirement to start thinking of a new career. He supposed he could look at a change of scenery, apply at the Pine Woods Centre himself and take on long term patients. That might be just about as bad, since he’d be the low man on the totem pole and likely would remain that way until he retired.
He drank the swish out of his mug. Rubbed the coffee smell from his moustache and flipped through the Pleasance, Alice folder again. There was something to this girl. Something about the way her switch had gone off. His intuition was telling him there was a story here somewhere.
If only Alice trusted him enough to talk about her life…
Oh but she has, his mother’s voice said. She was ranting about killing someone.
He wasn’t so sure. It may have been all part of the psychotic episode.
What does your heart tell you?
His heart told him nothing. He hadn’t heard from it in a long time. If it wasn’t for the pulse pounding headaches he got from stress, he’d honestly doubt if it was even there anymore.
Chapter 10
When Alice finally opened her eyes again she was greeted with a miserable stiffness running the entire length of her body. She was also greeted with the sweet, smiling face of Dorothy, sitting in a chair beside her bed with a magazine and Toto in her lap.
There was a black gap in her memory. Had she been sleeping? Or had she just closed her eyes for a moment? She rolled her eyes around the room; h er plain brown and yellow bedroom. Brown curtains. Sunlight leaking in around its edges, dripping down the wall and pooling on the floor. There was a moment of calm as her brain started up again, no noise or feedback or Mad Haters screaming unholy confessions. No guilt. No remorse.
She looked back at Dorothy, sitting beside her bed beaming at her, beautiful face cocked slightly to the side like a puppy. She wondered if anyone had ever looked at her that way before; the look of someone who was so into you that they would sit quietly by your bed for hours, careful not to disturb your sleep but barely able to wait until the moment you opened your eyes and came back to them.
And she barely knew the girl beside her now. But her face was welcome. Softly magnetic.
“Good morning!” Dorothy said. “Sleep well?”
“I feel like a truck load of ass,” Alice said. She tried to sit up but found she was strapped to the bed. She rolled her eyes. Sighed heavily. “Again? What the fuck.”
“Yeah, I hate them,” Dorothy said. She reached up and rubbed her finger along the strap holding Alice’s hips down. She bit her lip and looked into Alice’s eyes. “I had them on me before. When I first came in. I kept trying to get off the ward. Every time the elevator opened.”
A moment of silence passed between the girls. Alice tried not to think about the past few days a moment longer than she had to, focusing instead on keeping the mental dikes in place. Already, they were springing leaks all over her mind. On the other side of the wall was an ocean of gu
ilt and remorse. An ocean filled with sea monsters that had tea parties and had their heads blown off in late model sedans.
“What are you doing?” Alice looked down at Dorothy’s hand, still rubbing the strap on her hip. She looked back into Dorothy’s eyes.
Dorothy smiled again, but pulled her hand back. “I can probably loosen them for you.” Her eyes danced. “If they’re hurting you, I mean.”
“Hell yes,” Alice said. “Get me the fuck out of here.”
Dorothy stood up, eager to please. After a moment’s consideration, she reached across the bed and began to undo the strap on Alice’s chest. She tugged on the strap, but the buckle didn’t move. Dorothy pressed her breasts against Alice’s for a moment, seemingly needing to get leverage on the buckle. It was an obvious grope; in spite of herself
Alice laughed. “Oh God. Just get off me. You’re worse than a guy.”
“What do you mean?” Dorothy said. “That was an accident.”
“Uh huh.” Alice smiled, but the smile withered when she saw the look on Dorothy’s face. “Look, I was just fucking around. Can you undo these straps please? My back is really starting to hurt.”
“I guess,” Dorothy sulked. She went back to work on the buckle, this time flicked it open with one hand and pulled the strap loose with the other. Wordlessly she did the same to the other straps, and Alice stretched out, a soft groan escaping her lips.
Dorothy sat again, deflated, and hugged her stuffed dog close to her chest.
“What’s wrong?” Alice said.
“Uhh, nothing,”
“I didn’t mean nuthin’ by it. Just, you know, it was pretty obvious. Believe me. I know a lot about this stuff.”
Dorothy looked at her with dark eyes.
“I didn’t say it was a bad thing,” Alice said after a moment. “Just obvious.”
This time Dorothy smiled. She rolled her eyes, put a hand up on her face. Toto slipped down between her thighs.
“Oh God,” she said. “I’m such an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot. That doctor in there is an idiot. You’re not an idiot.”
“Doctor Weller?” Dorothy smiled. “Uhh, he’s okay. Just a little tired maybe. He always shuffles his papers when I’m in there, like he has something else he’d rather be doing than listen to me rattle off about my life.”
Alice could hear the Midwest dripping off her voice as she spoke. It was most obvious when she said things like mah lahhf, but it was always there. It gave the sound of her words a welcome, soothing lilt; something Alice could listen to and actually hang on to as they streamed out of her mouth. She found herself smiling again, almost to herself, watching Dorothy speak. The way her hands animated everything she said. The way her face changed to reflect every word she spoke. Alice had a feeling she could watch this girl without hearing a word she was saying and still be able to pick up on the gist of her stories. “So what are you in here for?”
“Uhh, well,” Dorothy said. She smiled; it was the guiltiest and cutest thing Alice had ever seen. Dorothy shrugged. “Officially I’m in here because my aunt thinks I tried to kill myself.”
“Did you?”
“Oh no,” Dorothy said quickly, shaking her head emphatically. “It wasn’t nuthin’ like that. I stole a truck, and uhm, drove it. Somewhere.”
She stopped then, watching Alice’s face carefully.
“That’s it?” Alice said. “That sounds like Grand Theft Auto, not suicide.”
“Well,” Dorothy replied, slowly. “Can I ask you something? And you won’t think I’m crazy?”
Alice laughed.
“Shit, you’re in here,” she said. “I already think your fuckin’ crazy.”
Dorothy rolled her eyes and laughed with her.
“No, silly,” she said. She stopped smiling. “I uhh, I shouldn’t be here.”
“No shit. Me either.”
“You don’t understand,” Dorothy said. “I’m not supposed to be here. Like this place. This country, this world, any of it. I don’t belong here. I’m supposed to be somewhere else.”
She stopped, watching Alice’s face carefully, waiting for any sign of ridicule, any sign of disbelief. Alice recognized the look instantly; it was the look of a deer who thought it might have smelled a wolf in the air. They stood really still, barely breathing, all five senses going on overdrive, and waiting for the snap of a twig, the sound of a mouth closing, or thick hair rubbing against the grass, anything, anything to tell them to get the fuck out of there as fast as they could.
Alice didn’t want to be the wolf. “I know what you mean.” She hoped it would be enough. A simple sentence. Five words. Hopefully Dorothy didn’t take it as a joke and run for the door. She wasn’t sure why it mattered so much that she stay, but it mattered all the same.
Dorothy reached down and grabbed Toto from between her thighs, and pulled him up close to her face. She looked away from Alice, down at her feet. “Do you believe the world is what other people say it is?” she said quietly.
“No,” Alice answered quickly. That was the truth too; she knew from experience that the world was never what people thought it was. Her time with the Hater was proving it true.
“I mean,” Dorothy said. “You watch the news, and countries are going to war, and there’s people sick and dying all over the place, and people are getting raped and killed and in the meantime the world itself is causing earthquakes and mudslides and tornadoes. But what if all of that horrible stuff isn’t what they say it is? What if it’s like, something completely different?”
“You mean, like the news is lying to us?” Alice said. “Well, yeah, no shit they are. I heard that like CNN, Fox News, even big chunks of the internet, they’re all controlled by the C.I.A. or something. Like mass media brain washing, telling us what to eat and what to buy, when to shit even. Hell, it’s all a big lie. Rabbit used to talk about that shit all the time.”
“Not lying,” Dorothy said, stone faced. “Like they just don’t know.” She paused dramatically, like what she was saying had just that moment occurred to her. “What if there is something else going on that is part of the world, but it isn’t at the same time? Like the real world outside of some crazy movie.”
“Yeah,” Alice said, slowly. She wasn’t really sure where this girl was going with her current topic, but there was a feeling there, underlying all her words, and it reminded Alice of her time Down The Hole. It was like things were real and a dream at the same time; as though maybe they were unfolding in her reality but it had all been sanitized, maybe scripted somehow. There were big cogs grinding and moving behind the scenes of her life, and something was in control of the button that started and stopped every part of it. Junk made it worse, sometimes. Mostly being awake made it worse though. Knowing that the Queen of Hearts was out there in the world somewhere, and at the same time knowing that something like that couldn’t possibly exist, well, that seemed to fit perfectly with what Dorothy was saying. “Duality. Yeah, I get what you’re saying.”
“What did you say?” Dorothy said.
“I said it’s like duality,” Alice said. “Like two worlds overlapping each other. Like when two TV channels are coming in on the same station and you can see them both.”
“Yeah,” Dorothy said. “That’s exactly what it is.”
“It’s not fucked up,” Alice said. “I know what that’s like, believe me.” She wanted to add to the conversation. She wanted to tell Dorothy about how she’d followed a rabbit down a hole and had ended up standing knee deep in blood and body parts with a shrill ginger queen screaming at her from atop a heart shaped throne. She also wanted to tell her that her trip back to this world hadn’t been a single ticket trip. Someone had come back with her, someone who smelled like tanning chemicals and fresh leather and was picking through Alice’s memories like a filing cabinet and shouting all her dirty secrets to the world. She wanted to tell Dorothy about that moment in the hallway, when the Hater had appeared and then crawled inside her, and w
here he was now roosting behind her eyes, inside her brain, not as a metaphor or some abstract bullshit but as a real person in their; like if they took an X-ray of Alice’s skull they’d see him in there curled up around her optic nerves like some kind of grotesque parasitic twin.
Instead she said nothing. And then, thinking something might be better than nothing, she said: “So, are they going to let you out anytime soon?”
“I’m on medication right now,” Dorothy said. “Antidepressants, and another one might be an antipsychotic, I’m not sure. The nurses won’t really tell me what I’m taking. I’m going to be here for a little while, and then they might ship me up to the nuthouse if I need it. I hate the medication though, it makes me feel like shit all the time.”
She smiled a little, tossed Alice a What can you do look. She played with her hair. Toto was back in her lap, staring up at the ceiling with scratched plastic eyes. His tongue was hanging half out of his mouth, far to the side, like a summertime mutt trying to beat the heat.