Mr Wicker

by Maria Alexander

  This morning she had arrived at the hospital extra early, just after patient wake-up. She liked to get in about twenty minutes early to take the temperature of the ward, but today she’d slid in at seven a.m. to command the captain’s seat of the asylum she called home away from home.

  Could be worse. Could be a shot jockey at County.

  Arnie greeted her as she slung her lunch/dinner into the kitchen fridge and they held a quick morning conference about who was scheduled to come in. Their newest patient was a woman named Alicia Baum. After deciding how Baum would be integrated into the ward, they’d settled into the morning insanity. Out of the gate, “Jesus” urinated in the patient cafeteria at breakfast and another patient tried to chew through her wrist.

  Today was a double-shift.

  When lunchtime arrived, Rachelle decided she absolutely had to take a break. She heated up her lunch, slipped her insulin from the refrigerator and put the steamy hot Tupperware containers in a bag. She carried the bag downstairs and outside to the park where she could eat in peace. As she exited the side doors of the hospital, the fresh air washed over her. It had been much too long since she ever left that floor for something to eat. She felt alive for a moment as she inhaled the cool air, lifting her nose ever so slightly to take in the fragrance of freshly mown grass. Shiny, contemporary park benches were strewn at various points across the area.

  Something was definitely wrong.

  Rachelle approached an empty bench that stood just beyond a crowd of hospital personnel, patients, and other miscellaneous people staring at the ground.

  “What the hell?” said one man.

  “I dunno,” a woman responded. “They just fell outta the sky!”

  Rachelle’s toe struck something limp, nudging it beyond her stride. She glanced down, thinking perhaps she’d struck a soggy, paper bag. Instead, it was a dead crow.

  So strange.

  Goosebumps raised on her arms as she scanned the grass. Dead crows littered the area, including where the crowd gathered.

  “That’s fucked up!” a younger man exclaimed as he shook his head. “Someone shoot them down?”

  The crowd speculated as the woman continued. “Ah told you, they just fell outta the sky! I seen it with my own eyes. Theh was lightnin’ and like a cloud or somethin’ of electricity. And—BOOM! They jus’ fell, like a rainstorm with black feathahs. I hate them noisy birds, but that ain’t right.”

  Rachelle sat on the bench, listening, but she’d lost her appetite. An eerie feeling balled up inside her and her mouth tasted metallic. Never had she seen anything like this. She looked up: there were no power lines here that the birds could have struck. The power lines crossed the other side of the hospital. Odd. But more than odd. Scary. What could have killed these birds?

  And there weren’t just crows. Rachelle noted sparrows dotting the underside of a nearby tree.

  The faint tang of ozone laced the air.

  Rachelle’s stomach remained knotted but she ate anyway. There was a time when she would have let such sights wreck her blood sugar levels by keeping her wound up and worried. But these days she couldn’t afford not to eat.

  When Rachelle returned from lunch, she found Dr. Mason Sark, Director of Adult Behavioral Health Services, standing at her desk with a pretty but slight woman who appeared to be a nurse. Dr. Sark towered over them both, blond hair swept back from his forehead as his gaze bore a hole in Rachelle’s forehead.

  “Rachelle! A word, please?”

  The psychiatric ward was the ’hood of Headmaster Sark, a blue-blooded New Englander with a faux-Oxford accent and a fastidious manner even when he stirred his tea. Although Rachelle was the Mental Health Registered Nurse—supposedly in charge of staffing, meds, and the day-to-day business of the unit—Dr. Sark micromanaged her affairs to a ridiculous degree. He answered to only one person, Dr. Leonard Dulac, who was at least a decent man with a conscience about his practice. But if Dr. Sark had been diagnosed by one of his colleagues (and he often was from afar), an astute read would reveal a Cluster A personality disorder: a classic narcissist with histrionic overtones. Everything from his bizarre relationship with his mother—whom he alternately claimed to be dead on some days and living on others—to his overtly controlling yet subtly hostile approach to running the ward spelled a man short on ideas yet long on self-importance.

  “This is Nurse Mindy Hannon,” he said, as if they were at a cocktail party rather than in a psych ward. The young woman wore her black hair in two high, tight buns. “She joins the staff today. Mindy, this is Rachelle LaBeau, our Senior Manager of Nursing. You shall report directly to her. Any questions?”

  “Oh, I got a question, Dr. Sark,” Rachelle said, hands on hips, “but I’m gonna ask it in my office. With you. Alone.”

  A bit of air huffed from Dr. Sark’s nose. “I’m already late for a meeting. Check my schedule online and make an appointment.” He glanced at his silvery watch, making a face. “Nurse Hannon, good day and good luck.”

  Rachelle noted a sly, satisfied smile curling his lips as he turned on his heel and began whistling a measure from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. No fan of classical music, she only knew that because he played and talked about that music all the damned time.

  Rachelle tried to cap the steam rising in her ears but she let some escape with the annoyance in her voice. “Mindy, this is a bit irregular so I’m going to have to ask you a lot of questions. Now, tell me about your background.”

  In a squeaky voice, Mindy explained how she was recently licensed, had no experience whatsoever in an acute psychiatric inpatient unit, and was grateful to Dr. Sark for the opportunity to join his staff because she was “fascinated with psychology.”

  Rachelle stared at her in disbelief as she spoke. “How’d you meet Dr. Sark?” Rachelle expected that she’d hear of some acquaintance or even alumni pushing his advantage for Dr. Sark to hire his daughter or some such.

  Mindy shrugged, a bit of color rising in her creamy cheeks. “Through mutual friends.”

  Oh, lordie. Rachelle suspected that there was so much more baked into this pie that she dare not break the crust with her thumb. She might have to talk to Dr. Dulac about this but that might bring repercussions she didn’t want to deal with. Dr. Sark’s revenge often manifested in denying her critical family leave and making other unreasonable demands. The nurses at this hospital weren’t unionized so he could do whatever he wanted.

  That would have to change.

  In the meantime, Rachelle gritted her teeth and decided to set Mindy to perform tech-level work rather than nursing until she could verify Mindy’s credentials. As she handed off Mindy to the two techs on duty that afternoon, Rachelle was immediately paged to the next medical emergency.

  Rachelle was tired and losing the ability to care.

  For fifty-eight years she’d lived on Mother Earth and had learned the value of the human soul, no matter how wrinkled and soiled it might be sometimes. She’d raised four children on her own and they in turn gave her three grandchildren so far, with more on the way. She taught each one the same lesson: love each other more than your own self. The only way to survive this life is to protect each other like the Lord was never looking and, when the Lord did look your way, let Him use your hand to slap the fools that messed with you.

  But for some reason the Lord never looked her way when it came to Dr. Sark. He wanted quiet in the psych unit at any cost. He even went over Rachelle’s head and gave the nurses incentives for silencing patients by any means. Sometimes that meant locking up patients and neglecting them until they either passed out or, in one terrible case, died. The ensuing scandal barely touched him, as no one could finger him for the mistreatment. A nurse instead took the fall.

  Dead birds. A crazy director who was, for all intents and purposes, a murderer. Everything looked especially ugly today.

  For so long, she’d looked for a sign. She wanted to know that God was still listening to her. He seemed very far away, doing whatever i
t was He was doing. Rachelle believed in the afterlife. Her version of God wasn’t strictly biblical but He was compassionate. He came from a lot of sources, those that gave her the most hope and then some. She was no stranger to miracles. She had seen amazing things happen in people’s lives, as well as bizarre coincidences that could only belong to a master architect. God was in the details, someone once said. And that was all Rachelle used to see in her world. Details and God.

  But lately, she couldn’t find either.

  “Damn you! I want my attorney! DAMN YOU ALL!” she heard Alicia yelling down the hall.

  As Alicia’s charge nurse had fifteen other patients to manage, chances were he was missing out on this action. Rachelle couldn’t fill the gaps herself but she was particularly aware of Alicia because of both Dr. Farron and the fact that, well, she had loved Alicia’s books. She’d especially enjoyed the early stuff, but felt the publishers were squeezing things out of her at the end. When nothing new had come out for a couple of years, Rachelle had kept checking Alicia’s blog for updates that never transpired until she gave up.

  When she saw Alicia’s name on the incoming list, she wondered if indeed this was the same person. It was a helluva way to meet someone you admired. They had never received what anyone would call a celebrity. Alicia was the closest thing to it. Of course Rachelle had to serve Alicia some extra concern for the sake of Dr. Farron, but she was otherwise trying not to show her any favoritism. It just wouldn’t be right.

  But James Farron, now that man needed some looking after. When he’d requested to be on the Green Team as Alicia’s psychiatrist, she’d had to swim big rivers to get him assigned because Dr. Sark hated him. She would do that for James. He’d been so good with her grandson Ezequial when he was having debilitating nightmares last fall; she thought the Lord had brought a true blessing to that godforsaken hospital.

  He needed looking after these days, though. Sometimes life just up and strands us on muddy roads, taking what we hold dear with it. Just doesn’t seem right, especially when it comes to people like James, who genuinely try to do good things for others.

  He was a natural healer once. Life broke it from him and left him with an obsession that could have no good outcome. It only drove him further into isolation as fewer people understood what he was doing, or just thought it was entirely too strange. He insisted that the children were creating their own folktales, but the stories he relied on were told by only a smattering of parents and doctors around the globe. There weren’t enough to support his theory. He just did not want to see it.

  Denial. It ain’t just a river in Egypt. We all raft it, though, from time to time.

  During activities and free time, the patients were blocked from their rooms. They were only allowed back to their beds at bedtime and no sooner.

  It was only lunchtime. Something was happening in Alicia’s room.

  Rachelle evaluated the situation at the station and, checking her watch, she judged she could leave for a couple of minutes. When she reached the tiny room, she found Alicia strapped to the bed, face cherry red and wistful.

  “Alicia.”

  Alicia rolled her head slightly to the right and looked at Rachelle. “Hi.”

  “What’s going on? You want to tell me?”

  “Will it get me out of here faster?”

  “I can’t promise that.”

  Alicia sighed. “Dr. Farron’s a fraud. He doesn’t really want to solve his mystery.”

  “What mystery?”

  “You know. The guy the kids talk to in their sleep.”

  Rachelle turned away. She couldn’t discuss Dr. Farron with a patient. “Goodbye, Alicia.”

  Alicia called after her. “He’s a better artist than a doctor. Maybe he should do that instead.”

  “Who says he doesn’t?” Rachelle’s nerves chattered a bit before she could think properly of what to say. She returned to the doorway and leaned against the jamb. “You wanna tell me what happened?”

  “With Dr. Farron? Or the asshole in the cafeteria?”

  “Let’s start with Dr. Farron.”

  She was quiet for a moment, then: “He betrayed me, Rachelle,” she said. “And that’s all I can say.”

  Rachelle doubted that, but tried to look sympathetic regardless. Her sympathy was hard won these days.

  “And what happened in the cafeteria?”

  Alicia told her. Stunned at the bruise blossoming on Alicia’s jaw, Rachelle ordered a nurse to bring ice for Alicia’s chin, as well as some ibuprofen.

  “I promise I’ll look into the assault, but you need to worry more about yourself than anyone else right now. Tomorrow morning, they’re gonna discuss your release and your behavior today won’t look good. They’ve gotta know you aren’t a danger to yourself and others, and you’ve not proved that.”

  “Who do you mean, ‘they’?”

  Rachelle opened her smooth, wide palm and counted on her short fingers: “Your medical doctor, your charge nurse, and Dr. Farron. Maybe even the director, Dr. Sark. And trust me,”—up went the hand and finger—“you do not want Dr. Sark at your evaluation, especially with any strikes against you.”

  “So, what you’re saying is, even though I’m the one who got hurt, because of my outburst today, I can’t go home.”

  “Dr. Farron will do his best for you, no matter what happens.” Alicia looked doubtful. Rachelle laid a hand on her arm. “You are more important to him than you know.”

  Alicia’s face relaxed. Rachelle could tell the fight had gone out of her and the sedatives were working. She unstrapped Alicia and let her apply her own ice bag.

  “Are you a believer?” Alicia asked, blinking like a sleepy cat.

  “Believer?”

  “Do you believe there are things we can’t explain?”

  Rachelle’s guard went up. Bonfires blazed in Alicia’s eyes whenever she spoke. It was as if she had slipped into the rabbit hole and came back waving an open “Drink Me” bottle. And not like one of the regular patients. This woman was much too grounded—especially for someone who had done to herself what she’d done. “I got my beliefs,” Rachelle said. “We all gotta believe in something.”

  “It’s just that—” Alicia laughed. “Actually, changing the subject, Dr. Farron said something about the eighth dimension.” Then, a secret notion danced in her eyes. “Rachelle, can I use the phone?”

  “Sure. But you’ve got to calm down—”

  A dark movement at the window. Alicia had one of the few rooms with any natural light. Rachelle stepped gingerly toward the odd movement to find a glassy black eye peering at her from the window between the blinds. It was the biggest crow she’d ever seen in her life. The bird’s size startled her badly, its weirdly intense focus giving her chills. Rachelle’s heart raced as it sized her up with the boldness of a prizefighter.

  “Or can you call the video store for me? There’s something that Dr. Farron needs to see.”

  One of the nurses leaned in the doorway. “Excuse me, Rachelle. Dr. Bay is on the phone?”

  “I’ll be right there.” She tore herself from the spectacle, wondering if she should shut the blinds or get over herself. She said to Alicia, “You promise to behave?”

  “Witch’s honor,” she replied, her fingers straddling her nose from below in a V-shaped symbol, like Samantha Stevens on the TV show Bewitched.

  For some reason, that gesture didn’t make Rachelle feel any better.

  Chapter 12

  The playroom simmered that night with the emotional heat of the afternoon’s session. Dr. Farron drooped in the big black chair behind his desk, staring at the drawing of Mr. Wicker that glowered at him from the wall. He could not bring himself to take it down. He wrapped up his paperwork for the day, put on his jacket, and then collapsed on the patient couch in a puddle of indecision.

  He could not begin to address what had happened today. Had they really witnessed some kind of supernatural phenomenon? There was probably a logical explanation, but it w
asn’t forthcoming. It scared the hell out of him and he had no desire to look at it. He needed a vacation to regroup. He needed to see his therapist again. He needed to relax and get a grip—or something. Even the look on Alicia’s face when she saw this drawing bothered him deeply. The act of drawing again felt amazing, like lying in the sun on the beach after a brisk swim. It had taken this woman and the insanity of the day to crack open the door to his art. Gripping that crayon awakened him to his long-neglected need to create. But he’d lost that desire with everything else in his life three years ago.

  Was she attracted to this character? The exchange she’d described sounded fairly erotic, a disturbing attraction to say the least. It was just a dream. Just an NDE.

  Or maybe it was something more. But what that might be, he couldn’t fathom. He hadn’t even totally discounted that she might be a cutter with a pronounced imagination, her missing memory probably related to sexual abuse as a child. He didn’t want to “plant” memories in her mind, but he’d bring it up in the next session. The whole idea of the “rose garden”—sub-rosa activity. Dumped by her father with grandparents who may or may not have been good guardians. It seemed pretty likely that was what she’d forgotten about, especially given her rebelliousness and self-destructive behavior. Telltale signs of sexual abuse.

  Dr. Farron felt as though he’d been asleep for three years and finally someone had torn open the blinds to let the sunbeams slash his pillow-smothered face. Everything inside him now woke up at once, and he felt afresh the pain that had put him into that stupor. This attraction, the cry of his soul to draw, the face of his nemesis...everything bit into him at once.

  This was not what he’d envisioned when he signed up to be her treatment therapist—to have his sanity pulled taut like trampoline fabric and bounced on by some elephantine mystery. He had to hold it together, to fight the black waters washing over his head. He pulled open a desk drawer and reached inside, retrieving a medicine bottle.