by D. J. Palmer
“No. I’ve refused to take one until they give me a shower curtain,” Meghan said with disgust. “What do they think? I’m going to hang myself?”
Becky forced the gruesome image from her mind.
“I do,” Meghan said. “Because I’m getting out of here.” Her eyes narrowed into a determined expression.
“In time, yes, you are,” Becky said.
“That’s not what I mean,” Meghan said with conviction. “Who is this Kelly London person again?”
“She’s the special investigator the court appointed. You see, we wanted you to come home with us, and we went to court to make that happen, but the doctors and the judge want to give it some more time.”
“Here? In a mental hospital? Are they nuts? Or am I?” Meghan almost cracked a smile.
“Nobody is crazy, sweetie. We all just want what’s best for you.”
Meghan looked deep into her mother’s eyes. “You’re as bad at lying as I am, Mom,” she said.
“I promise you—we’re going to get you home.” Becky felt herself cracking under the strain. She was trying so hard, so very hard to hold it together for the sake of her child.
“It’s you, isn’t it, Mom,” Meghan said softly, breaking eye contact. “Dr. Levine keeps asking me about you. They think you’re doing something to me. Is that it?”
“Baby, no. No.”
“Don’t lie to me, please.”
Becky almost caved. “It’s not true.”
Meghan looked ready to say something but stopped herself. “Dr. Levine asked if I thought you needed me to be sick, Mom. What’s that all about? Why would he even ask that?”
“I don’t know, honey. I don’t. But … but”—Becky wondered how much to share, and decided to take at least one step over the line—“but if you are sick, I mean really sick, you can get out of here.”
Meghan looked confused, even a bit disoriented. “So you want me to be sick?”
“No, no,” Becky said, maybe so quickly that it sounded defensive. “It’s just that if you are sick, with something the doctors can diagnose, then we’ll be able to bring you home. Dr. Fisher is going to help us with that.”
“Figure out if I’m sick?”
“Yes,” Becky said. “That’s all we have to do. You just have to be patient, okay, baby. Just be a little more patient.”
And be sick, thought Becky.
They spent a few minutes talking about life at the hospital, routines and such, when Meghan clutched her stomach. She bent over in extreme pain and groaned as her pale lips pulled tight across her mouth. When a second rush of agony hit her, all color drained from her face. Meghan’s eyes began to water. She blinked rapidly, similar to the way she had done the night she’d stumbled into Becky’s home office complaining of severe stomach cramps.
“Meghan, honey, are you all right?”
“I don’t feel so good,” Meghan wheezed as she clutched her stomach again. Meghan pushed her chair back and tried to get up. Carl and Nash came into the room just as Meghan struggled to her feet. She managed to stand, albeit shakily, until her legs buckled beneath her.
Becky rose out of her chair in a flash, knowing she was too far away to catch her in time. But Carl was there, and he grabbed Meghan by the shoulders a second before she hit the ground hard.
“Honey, what’s wrong?” Carl laid his daughter gently on the floor.
Nash came over, showing deep concern. With her stethoscope, she listened to Meghan’s heart and checked her pulse with her fingers. “Her heartbeat and pulse are normal,” she said, sounding a bit confused, perhaps because Meghan’s sudden symptoms were so severe.
Meghan kept holding her stomach, groaning.
“Did you do something to her?” Carl asked Becky. His voice turned threatening.
“Me?” Becky said while she knelt at her daughter’s side. “How dare you. Please, she’s sick, can’t you see?”
Soon they were surrounded: Nash, Levine, Annabel Hope, Jill Mendoza, all of them crowded over Meghan.
“Everyone give us some space,” Nash ordered.
They all took two giant steps back. Meghan made another plaintive, pained sound.
“Let’s get her to her room,” Nash said. “I’ll examine her there.”
Meghan moaned even louder as Nash and Levine pulled her to her feet.
Becky grabbed Dr. Levine by the shoulder. “This is your fault,” she said, her teeth bared like fangs. “You did this to her. You put her here. You made this happen, you son of a bitch. I warned you what would happen. I warned you.”
Levine’s eyes were wide, uncomprehending as he moved away from Becky. With Nash’s help, they dragged Meghan toward the door.
Becky went to follow, but Jill Mendoza got in her way.
“It’s best that you leave Meghan to the care of her doctors,” she said.
Becky pushed past Mendoza, shoving the much heavier woman aside like she was not even there. Carl fell into step behind, but as Becky reached the door, a large man with a thin mustache appeared to block her way.
“Let me out of here,” Becky said to him in a growling voice. “I need to be with my daughter.”
Jill Mendoza approached from behind. “I’m afraid I need you both to leave the premises now,” Mendoza said sternly. “Whatever happened here has upset Meghan. I promise there will be another opportunity to visit.”
Annabel Hope was off in the background, looking on with a grim expression. Dr. Levine had left in a rush to help Dr. Nash triage Meghan.
“Another opportunity?” Becky said, whirling around to glare at Jill Mendoza with disgust. “She’s my daughter! She’s sick! I want to see her now! Right now!”
“I’m afraid you don’t have that authority.”
“She’s my daughter,” Becky said, her voice now breaking.
“Becky,” Carl snapped at her. “Don’t make it worse.”
Becky spun around and punched Carl in the shoulder with a closed fist. “Do something!” she screamed at him. “Do something! I want to be with my daughter! I want to know what’s happening to her!”
The man with the mustache came forward menacingly. “Ma’am, please come with me. I’ll escort you out,” he said, his voice thick with authority.
Becky sank to her knees. She looked at all the faces staring down at her. “It’s Dr. Levine, dammit!” Becky cried out in a helpless voice. “Don’t you see? He’s got it in for us. He’s trying to destroy us to protect his career, his reputation. He’s staked too much on this. He has to be right. Don’t you get it? Don’t you see?”
Nobody said anything, not even Carl.
“Damn you all,” Becky said, crying now. “Goddamn you all.”
But even as she cried, she knew one thing was true: Her daughter had been taken away, sick as could be, so maybe now, maybe after this episode, they’d finally believe Meghan’s illness couldn’t possibly be inside anybody’s head.
CHAPTER 28
MEGHAN
“How are you feeling?” The muffled voice pricked my ears before it faded. At first, I thought I was dreaming until I heard the voice say, “Open your eyes if you can.”
I tried, but it felt like someone had stuck tape across my eyelids. Eventually, I got them open. Light flooded my eyes, but for a time my vision stayed blurred. As things began to come into focus, I could make out Dr. Nash leaning over me, studying me. Her concerned look was the kind someone might give you if they’d seen you take a fall.
“How are you feeling?” she asked again.
The heavy smell of astringent cleaners acted like smelling salts, bringing me more fully to my senses. At that moment, I knew exactly where I was. Turning my head slowly, I glanced out the window expecting to see daylight, but instead confronted a darkening sky. The slight bit of movement sent a shattering pain ripping through my skull.
What happened to me?
The last thing I remembered was being with my parents in Charlotte’s Web, and my mom complaining about how silly those room na
mes were because it spoiled her good memories of the cherished book. I was upset because they weren’t taking me home. For a second, I put my hopes on this being a dream, and that I was home, in my comfy bed, but the pain in my skull was too real—and even my nightmares weren’t that cruel.
I tried to swallow, but my throat was so dry I could have choked on air. Dr. Nash noticed and gave me a plastic cup filled partway with water. I propped myself up on one elbow and drank, slowly, savoring the wetness coating my throat. A chill went through me despite the sweatpants and sweatshirt I had on.
“What happened?” I asked, my voice raspy and weak.
It was then I realized Dr. Nash was not the only one in the room with me. Dr. Levine was there as well.
“You gave us quite a scare,” Dr. Nash said.
I stretched my mind, bending and flexing it, trying desperately to remember, but I came up blank.
“You got very sick,” Dr. Levine said.
“Sick?” I said, confused, while Dr. Nash refilled my cup of water.
But then, in a flash, visions came at me like headlights speeding my way, slicing through the void to illuminate all sorts of unpleasant memories. I remembered my stomach burning, cramping, and my vision going blurry. I couldn’t see straight, couldn’t think straight either. My mother was there, scared for me. I could see her panicked face anticipating the worst. And that was the last memory I had before waking up.
“Do you feel up to talking?” Dr. Levine pulled over a rolling chair, then settled in beside my bed.
Talking? God no. What I felt like doing was crying, but I didn’t think I had a single tear left inside. I felt empty and useless as a flat tire. The deep ache in my heart simply wouldn’t go away. I thought of my room at home. If I closed my eyes, I could go there, see the lights I’d draped around the mirror over my dresser. I could touch the Himalayan salt rock on my nightstand, which my mom had bought for me because she’d heard it had healing properties.
I thought of my closet jammed with clothes that no longer fit right and my hiding place, too, where I kept my secrets. My little stash of booze. Letters I wrote but never gave to a boy I thought was cute in middle school, who to this day doesn’t know it. There was a letter I’d written to my mom about Dad that I hadn’t had the courage to give to her. But I’d written it. I’d put those words down on the page, wrote out everything I knew. Afterwards, I felt somewhat better, though no less burdened. My room was my safe place, where I could keep those secrets. It was my sanctuary. Not here. Not in this strange place with this strange man who studied me strangely.
“Meghan,” Dr. Levine said, his voice gentle as a breeze. “Do you remember what your mother said to you right before you got sick?” he asked.
“Said to me?” I asked, repeating his question because I found it so odd. “No, I … I don’t.”
“I’m going to be very blunt with you, Meghan. Did your mother say something that made you think you were sick?”
“What?” I scrunched up my eyes, looking at him like he was speaking a foreign language.
“Did she say something to you that triggered your reaction? Something that might have encouraged you to be sick?”
Encouraged me? My eyes became slits as I tried to wrap my brain around that one, but it was like bending steel with my hands. It couldn’t be done.
“I was sick,” I said, sounding quite sure of myself because, fuzzy as I felt, that memory was vivid and real.
Dr. Nash looked at me with these dewy, sympathetic eyes. You poor, poor thing, she was saying without having to say it.
“Your vitals were completely normal, Meghan,” Nash said, her voice now coolly detached and clinical. “No fever. No irregular heartbeat. We did blood work on you—and, yes, before you ask, we used needles, but you were quite confused and didn’t even notice. With symptoms as severe as those you presented, you’d think there’d be something to clue us in as to the cause, some biological marker that would help us come to a diagnosis. But there was nothing, no markers, no indicators. All your test results were perfectly healthy and normal for an almost-sixteen-year-old girl.”
I was less surprised that she knew my birthday was coming up than I was confused at what she was trying to tell me. “Are you saying … are you saying I was faking being sick?”
“No, dear,” Dr. Nash said, her tone dipping into condescending territory. “I’m saying that you were sick, that you felt sick, that you acted very, very sick. But without a biological indicator, something that tells us your system was compromised—a fever, a dip or rise in your blood pressure, an accelerated heart rate, something of that nature—we have to look at the possibility that your illness was triggered by something psychosomatic. Do you know what that means?”
I wasn’t an idiot. I did pretty well in English even though I didn’t attend school regularly anymore. I knew what that word meant. That’s when I remembered my mother saying something like: If you’re sick, you can get out of here.
I wasn’t sure what she’d meant at the time, because of course I was sick. I’d been sick going on two years now. But was my mom suggesting I might not have been sick enough? Is that why my stomach had cramped? Why my vision had turned blurry? Was it like some weird hypnotic suggestion she’d given me? How would that even be possible? I felt like I was going to die, and that’s not exaggerating.
As my thoughts continued to crystallize, I felt oddly detached from my body. From the start of this ordeal, as I’ve been ferried from one appointment to another, a walking, talking episode of House, there has never been any real diagnosis—not with Dr. Fisher, or Dr. Nash, or with any of the countless doctors my mom has taken me to see. I’ve been a great mystery, as unknowable as Stonehenge or the Bermuda Triangle. But now they think they’ve solved me like the Sunday crossword puzzle: Meghan Gerard is either sick in her head, or Meghan’s mommy is the crazy one. That’s it. That’s the answer. But I knew that couldn’t be true. Not my mother. Not her. Nobody loved me like my mom. Nobody.
A little voice in my head spoke up, asking me over and over again: What if it is true? What if it was “psychosomatic,” to use Dr. Nash’s word? What if my mom had triggered some kind of a strange, subconscious reaction that even I couldn’t understand or control? If so, it would mean I might never get out of here, because every time I’d see my mom, I’d get sick like I did, and they’d run all sorts of tests on me again, and those tests would show nothing wrong, and they’d say it was all in my head, and they’d keep me here, locked up in this shit-hole prison for the rest of my life.
“I don’t know what you’re all talking about,” I eventually said. “I just know how I felt.”
Dr. Levine studied me anew. “Your reaction was pretty intense, Meghan,” he said. “What we’re trying to figure out here is if your symptoms were psychologically rooted, or if there are other symptoms we can’t measure in some way,” he said. “That’s what we need to answer. So, can you help us?”
“I’m not faking,” I told him.
“You can trust me, Meghan,” Levine said. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
“I did tell you the truth.”
I swear he looked like he believed me.
“You saw the labs, Peter,” Nash said.
“Yes, yes I suppose I did. But still—”
“‘But still’ what?” Nash asked, as if I wasn’t even there. “What else could it be? Is there another psychiatric condition here we should discuss?”
“No … no, not that, it’s just…” Dr. Levine sounded concerned about something. But what? “Meghan, this is a strange question,” he said, “but I need you to be very, very honest with me right now. Okay?”
“Okay,” I answered, feeling more than a little apprehensive.
“Has your mother ever been violent before? Has she ever hit you, or threatened to hit you?”
“No,” I said with conviction. “She loves me. She’d never.”
“What about your father?”
“No.”
Dr. Levine rubbed his chin, studying me, and I panicked, thinking he could see right through me.
CHAPTER 29
ZACH
The restaurant was upscale for a pizzeria, but the moody décor, black-clad waitstaff, eclectic artwork, and obscure pizza toppings helped to justify the obscene prices demanded for a ten-inch pie. No doubt Zach’s boy, Will, would never have suffered such a hipster joint. He could not wrap his mind around why someone would actually request pineapple on a pizza. Will liked his pizza plain and cheesy, and his pizzerias a little more on the greasy side. Zach could never predict what things would make him think of his son, which was why he seldom varied his routine. But tonight, on account of Dr. Peter Levine, Zach was willing to make an exception.
Dr. Levine had sent an email near the end of the workday, requesting an off-campus sit-down about Meghan Gerard, claiming to have some big revelation that might change everything. The restaurant was Levine’s choice—neutral ground, he’d called it, away from White, Nash, and other inhibitors to an open dialogue.
Zach sat at a table in the back, scanning the menu halfheartedly while keeping an eye on the front door for Levine, who was nearly twenty-five minutes late. Checking his phone, thinking he’d missed Levine’s call or text, Zach saw only an email from Jill Mendoza. She was responding to a message Zach had sent earlier, an electronic missive of the “ready, aim, fire” variety—an email typed in haste, layered with emotion. While he grimaced slightly at the tone of his correspondence, Zach stood by every word. Even so, he hoped it would not end up in Knox Singer’s in-box.
In Zach’s mind, the Gerards had been hit with charges simply because they disagreed with the diagnosis of two doctors. “You’re using a sledgehammer to try to force a square peg through a round hole,” Zach had written in his email to Mendoza. “The peg may go through, but only if it breaks.”
The system was the problem. The state could not investigate even the suspicion of medical child abuse until doctors formally declared the parents unfit. The parents not only endured the trauma and indignity of losing custody to the state, but they also lost their rights to govern their child’s medical care.