by D. J. Palmer
Becky had vowed to be the opposite of her mother. She wanted to be the mom her kids could come to for advice about love or school, who could help to resolve some conflict with a teacher or a friend. But Sammy’s death had cast a pall over their lives, and Meghan’s disease had come along later like an uninvited guest who refused to leave.
What she’d give for one day without that selfish guest. What would she give to see her daughter healthy again? Becky did not bother speculating too much, because she doubted that day would ever come.
* * *
DR. NASH WAS waiting to greet the family when they arrived at the ER entrance a little after four o’clock in the afternoon. Becky felt no residual anger toward the woman, but she did notice how Nash’s eyes lingered a bit too long on her husband. Nash had never met Carl before, so her first viewing may have been a surprise. It certainly was not the first time a woman (or a man, for that matter) had taken an extra beat to appreciate her husband’s good looks. He was that kind of man, after all; the ruggedly handsome, dimpled-chin, dark-eyes-you-can-lose-yourself-in type. But even Nash’s brief, if unintentional, flirtation with her husband did not elicit a rise out of Becky. She was here for a purpose. She was here for Meghan.
After their greetings, Nash took Meghan by the arm and seemed to rush her through the swinging doors into the ER. It happened quickly, too quickly for comfort, and the hasty departure left Becky reeling.
Where was Nash taking her? What test or tests would be performed? When should she expect an update? It was as though Nash were Meghan’s handler, ushering her to safety before her fans could converge. But this was no pop concert. This was her daughter, and her daughter was gone now, whisked away in a flash.
Becky turned to face Carl, concern clear on her face. “Did you think that was a bit abrupt? The departure, I mean.”
Carl found an empty chair, sat himself down, and proceeded to unfold a magazine he’d brought with him—the current issue of House Beautiful, which he read faithfully, seeking design inspiration for his business. Becky sat beside him, annoyed that he did not seem to share her worry.
“It’ll be fine.”
“But she rushed Meghan off like there was a fire here. How can you say that?”
“Just trust me,” Carl said as he flipped a page. “Everything will be fine.”
CHAPTER 16
MEGHAN
Something was wrong with this. I could tell right from the start; the whole thing felt off. This wasn’t like going to my other exams or doctor visits. For one, Dr. Nash didn’t simply take hold of my arm as she led me away. She gripped it kind of hard, her fingers digging into my flesh as if she was worried I was going to run or something. And then she basically dragged me from my parents while they were still trying to get information from her. She pulled me through the emergency room doors, tugging at me to hurry the entire time like I was a stubborn mule.
We didn’t go to the ER like I thought we would, like my mom and dad assumed I would. Instead, we went up an elevator and got off on the fourth floor. We followed a hallway to a glass-enclosed walkway that connected the main building where I was to a different building where I’d never been. We hardly spoke as we walked because I didn’t feel like she was being as friendly or warm as before.
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine.”
“How have you been?”
“Fine.”
“Any new issues or symptoms I should know about?”
“No.”
That was the extent of it. It was like we were texting each other. I wondered if she and my mom had gotten into a fight about me or something. Whenever I mentioned Dr. Nash’s name, my mom would get an attitude like I’d mouthed off to her. So maybe that’s why she hurried me away. Could be she and my mom weren’t on the best of terms for reasons nobody thought I should know. I wasn’t all that concerned about making small talk with Dr. Nash anyway. I was more worried that I wasn’t even in the same building as my parents anymore.
“It’s going to be fine, Meghan, sweetheart,” Dr. Nash said, perhaps sensing my growing unease. “Really, not to worry. Okay? I’m here to help.”
I admit that relaxed me some. Even so, I didn’t like how Dr. Nash kept looking at me crookedly, as though I had done something wrong.
While the ER was kind of run-down, everything in this building was sparkling new, very nice looking. Tall glass windows lined a gleaming hallway, and would have let in a lot of light if it weren’t so cloudy outside. But I’m not my father’s daughter when it comes to architecture and design. I didn’t care what this place looked like. I cared more what it was for, which was why I got nervous when I noticed the sign above the double glass doors ahead that read: WHITE MEMORIAL HOSPITAL DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHIATRY.
Why would she bring me here? I asked myself. But I didn’t say anything to Dr. Nash as she ushered me through those doors, then down some other hall, and into a room with a single hospital bed and two—I guess I’d call them reception chairs, each with white leather cushions and a black frame finish.
The chairs were positioned next to each other at an angle, to encourage conversation. The walls were bone white. It smelled of powerful cleansers. The hospital bed had no sheets and no pillow. There were no pictures on the wall. No wastebasket. No other furniture of any kind.
I had all sorts of questions swimming about my head, but those would have to wait because a man entered the room. He smiled at me, said his name was Dr. Peter Levine, and told me that he’d be the one giving me my exam. I must have looked nervous, because he assured me it would be nothing more than a simple conversation. He motioned for me to sit in one of the chairs, and then he sat in the other. Time to talk.
“I’ll be with you in a minute, Meghan,” Dr. Nash said. Her voice sounded sweet, but her smile didn’t comfort me. “You’ll be fine here with Dr. Levine. Just answer his questions and then we’ll take it from there, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Why don’t you let me hold your phone so that you won’t become distracted?”
I pulled my cell phone from my front pants pocket and gave it to her without thinking. She was the doctor, and unless it involved a needle, I simply did what doctors told me to do. But as soon as Dr. Nash had my phone, I wanted it back. It felt wrong not having it pressed up against my leg. That phone was my lifeline. How was I going to call my mother after the exam?
As Dr. Nash slipped my phone into the pocket of her lab coat, a terrible fear overcame me. My earlier premonitions that something was off came back but even stronger. I imagined myself bolting from my chair, pushing past Nash, grabbing my phone back as I knocked her down.
The fantasy didn’t end there. In my mind, I sprinted down the hall, kicking security guards right where it hurt if any of them dared get in my way. And I kept on running, legs churning fast, my arms pumping with purpose, getting back to my parents. But I didn’t stop for them, or for anybody. I was out the door and I just kept on running. At that moment, if only in my mind, I was the unstoppable one on the soccer field again. I was the fighter my dad had always told me he admired.
“Don’t worry, Meghan. This will be fine.”
The sound of Dr. Levine’s high-pitched nasal voice pulled me cruelly back to reality. Dr. Nash left, shutting the door, taking my cell phone with her. Dr. Levine crossed his legs and fixed me with a curious look. I felt two feet tall. I wanted to sink into my chair and disappear. At that moment, I thought I’d rather have needles pushed into my arms.
Dr. Levine was a lot younger than the other doctors I’d seen. He looked so young that if we’d been out together, people would’ve thought it was an awkward date. A thin neck barely filled out his shirt collar, while his sport coat hung like a bedsheet across his narrow shoulders. His wire-rimmed glasses magnified a pair of dull blue eyes. He wore his sandy brown hair in a short, convenient style so that he wouldn’t have to think about it. A prominent Adam’s apple fit his equally prominent nose. In high school terms, Dr. Levine, most cert
ainly, no doubt about it, would have hung with the nerds.
He started talking quickly, like he was nervous or something, but I wasn’t paying much attention. I was still wondering why Dr. Nash had brought me to see a psychiatrist when I thought I was getting an emergency exam. “Emergency” to me meant in the ER, and “exam” meant something involving medical instruments. I’m pretty sure that’s what it meant to my mother as well, but who’d ever heard of having an emergency conversation?
“So tell me, how are you feeling? Meghan?”
“Huh?” I sounded like I was zoning out in math class when the teacher asked me a question.
“How are you feeling?” he repeated.
I looked at my lap because it was easier than looking at him. “Fine,” I said.
“Well, you haven’t been that fine. Dr. Nash tells me you’re not going to school anymore.”
“I’m too sick to go,” I said.
I figured he was going to ask me all sorts of questions about what kind of sick, but he didn’t.
“Do you like school?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said. “Better than being home all the time.”
“Do you want to go back to school?”
I nodded, but still wasn’t looking at him.
“How come you don’t go back to school?”
I shrugged my shoulders. How do I answer that? Give him the truth, I guessed.
“My mom doesn’t think I’m well enough to attend.”
“It must be hard when your mom tells you that.”
I nodded. Of course it’s hard, I thought. What a dumb thing to say.
“What do you think about her decision?”
I shrugged again, thinking about what he’d want me to say. I mean, maybe my mom was a little too overprotective. Maybe I could go and just not do as well in my classes. Maybe I could be a below-average student and just get by. But that would have required me to paint a picture that was less black-and-white and more shades of gray. I felt so tired and defeated. I just wanted to give him an answer that would put an end to this conversation.
“I guess I’m too sick to go,” I said.
“Because your mom says so, or because you say so?”
What does it matter? I wanted to say, but I told him, “Because my mom says so.” I don’t really have an opinion anymore. I do what the doctors say. I do what my mother says because I’m the daughter. I’m the child here. I’m the one who still needs protecting.
“Does your mom give you medicine?”
I nodded. “Right now, I take a drink called a mito cocktail,” I explained. I expected Dr. Levine to ask me what that was all about, but he didn’t.
“Does your mom make you take it every day?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m supposed to.”
“Does she make you take a lot of medicines?”
At that point, I wanted to say, Why are you asking so many questions about my mother? but I didn’t say anything. Usually, when doctors ask me questions, they’re about how I feel, not my feelings. I guess that’s why these questions were so much harder to answer.
“Does your mom make all the decisions about what you do?”
“Sure. But I don’t really do anything anymore.”
“That must be hard for you, when your mom is always telling you what to do or what not to do.”
I nodded again, but this time more emphatically because it was true. It was hard for me, but a lot of things were hard for me these days. Maybe he could ask me something about my dad. Then I’d have an earful for him. I could tell him all sorts of things I knew, the kind of things nobody would want to know about a parent, but he was only interested in my mom. Too bad for him—we’d have a lot more to talk about otherwise.
“Doesn’t seem like you get to do what you want to do.”
“I don’t.”
“Because your mom makes you do things you don’t want to do?”
Now I was starting to get annoyed. Didn’t we cover this already? What does he want me to say? My mom takes me to doctors all the time. She’s always trying new treatments to get me better. She doesn’t have any real friends anymore. She doesn’t go out. She spends more time online than any of my friends do. That’s her world now. She’s all about my sickness and me. Do I want to see different doctors all the time? No! Do I want to keep trying new treatments? No, of course not. So I said, “Yeah, I don’t get to do what I want to do much, if at all.”
“Does your mom make you take these drugs?”
“Yes.”
“Does it make you upset to take so many different kinds of medicines?”
“It all makes me upset,” I said.
“Like the mito cocktail you told me about. Your mom makes you take that, too?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t want to take it?”
“No.” Who would? I’m thinking.
“It must be hard for you, having to do all those things your mother makes you do.”
“Yeah, it’s hard,” I repeated. “When can I go see my parents?”
I bit my nails. Bad habit, like the drinking, but it was a hard one to break, especially whenever I got nervous. Dr. Levine stood. I guess our exam was over. Thank God. He tugged at his jacket, but it didn’t fit any better.
“Thanks so much for being honest with me, Meghan. I’m going to go speak with Dr. Nash, and we’ll take it from there.”
“What am I supposed to do?” I felt my throat tightening as a trickle of fear traced up my neck. I didn’t like the idea of being left alone in here.
“Why don’t you sit up on the bed, and I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Up on that bed I went. I didn’t give a second thought to his instruction, because hopping up on hospital beds was something I’d been doing for ages now. It was a reflex, more than anything. But this was a naked bed. No sheets. No pillows. No crinkly paper beneath me. As he left, Dr. Levine took away the chairs we’d been sitting in, and it became a bare room. I was confused.
“I’ll be right back,” he said.
He closed the door behind him, and I was alone. I sat on the bed, waiting, but after a while, I couldn’t sit anymore. I slid off the bed and started to pace the room like a caged tiger. At least I wasn’t in a “hospital sundress,” but I didn’t have my cell phone, so I felt a different kind of vulnerable. After a few minutes of pacing aimlessly, I decided I’d had enough waiting.
I went to the door, turned the knob, and pulled. The door wouldn’t budge. Trembling, I turned the knob again and pulled harder this time. My throat went dry and tight. The walls really were closing in on me. I turned and pulled again and again, but it was no use.
The door was locked from the outside.
CHAPTER 17
BECKY
She rose from her chair for the fifth time that hour. A check of her phone told her they had been waiting three hours without a word from Meghan or Dr. Nash. Anxiety made it nearly impossible to sit still a second longer. Becky took a single step in the direction of the reception window before feeling Carl’s gentle tug on the waistband of her slacks.
“Where are you going?” he asked in a whispered voice. He tossed the magazine he’d been pretending to read on the empty chair beside him.
Becky swiveled at her waist to break free of his grasp. “I’m going to page Dr. Nash again.”
“You just had her paged a few minutes ago,” Carl said in a displeased tone. “Give it a sec, will you?”
“We’ve been here for hours!” Becky’s voice rose in anger as she gestured toward the bay doors of the emergency room. “Where is Meghan? Where is she? What are they doing to her? What tests are they running? She’s not answering her phone. She always answers her texts. Doesn’t that concern you?”
“It’s just taking time. They’re busy.”
Becky’s narrowing eyes were a form of censure. “And you’re being naïve,” she shot back.
Turning on her heels, Becky marched toward the receptionist’s window, moving past a
mother comforting twin girls, who appeared to have matching ailments to go with their matching pink denim jackets. She knocked on the clear glass window to get the attention of the impassive receptionist, who poked her head out from behind a towering computer monitor. A strained smile appeared when she saw it was Becky summoning her yet again.
“May I help you?” she asked.
“Yes, please page Dr. Nash. I want to see my daughter, Meghan, right now.” Becky made no effort to soften her acerbic tone.
“I just did that for you a few minutes ago,” the receptionist explained. “In fact, I think we’ve paged her twice already.”
“And what? She didn’t respond again? Does she always ignore her page?”
The receptionist returned a nervous shake of her head. The gesture was meant to be conciliatory, reinforcing Becky’s belief that something was definitely amiss.
“Is this unusual?” Becky asked. “Does a doctor often take away a child and not report back for over three hours? Not answer her page? Not even tell the mother what she’s doing? What tests she’s running? Or even where they are?” Becky sensed Carl’s presence looming behind her.
“Sweetheart, she’s just doing her job,” he said of the beleaguered receptionist. “Go easy on her. We’ll sort this out.” Carl leaned down to put his face in the window. “I’m so sorry to be a bother,” he said, addressing the woman behind the glass. “We’re trying to track down our daughter, and we’re growing a bit impatient. We’ll take our seats, just let us know when you hear back from Dr. Nash.”
That’s it, Carl, play nice with everyone because that’s been working for us so well. Sometimes Becky wanted to scream at her husband to step up and get something done for a change, fix one of their goddamn problems.