by P.D. Workman
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
HENRY WAITED NERVOUSLY, FLIPPING through magazines that he wasn’t reading. Eventually Dr. Denzel came out. He shook hands warmly.
“Hi, Henry. How’s it going?” he greeted heartily.
“Okay.”
“Come on in.” The doctor gestured for him to enter.
Henry followed Denzel to his office.
“Saw your mom the other day,” Denzel commented. “She’s looking better.”
Henry was stunned. His mouth went dry.
“What?” he said blankly.
“Dorry’s your mom, right?” Denzel glanced at Henry’s new chart for verification. “She was in this week to renew her meds. Looked good.”
“My mom disappeared months ago,” Henry said hoarsely.
Denzel looked puzzled.
“Disappeared?” he repeated.
“Just didn’t come home one day… I figured she’d jumped off a bridge or something. I never thought… did she give you her new address?”
The doctor nodded.
“Yes, of course. But I can’t give it to you, because of confidentiality.”
They sat in silence, just contemplating this for a while.
“So that wasn’t why you came today,” the doctor said finally.
“No.”
“Tell me what’s on your mind,” he invited.
“I… I need to be admitted.”
“Okay. What’s wrong?”
“I—um—I’ve been having some problems, and I—um…”
Henry just didn’t know how to say it. He hated to admit that he had a drug problem. That things had gotten so bad. He tripped over the words. His mouth was so dry. He swallowed and tried again to speak.
“Try to relax, Henry,” Dr. Denzel soothed. “Why don’t you talk about your symptoms? Are you feeling depressed?”
“Sometimes.”
“Anxious?”
“Yeah.”
“How are you sleeping?” Denzel inquired.
“Not… not too well.”
“School?”
“I’ve been missing… grades are down…”
“How are you eating? You look like you’ve lost weight recently.”
Henry nodded.
“Uh-huh.”
“Drugs?”
Henry nodded.
“What drugs, Henry?”
Henry gulped. He licked his lips, rough and dry as sandpaper. This was it.
“Heroine, mostly.”
The doctor didn’t act shocked. He nodded his head understandingly.
“What do you think has triggered all this?”
Henry rolled his eyes.
“A lot of things have happened. I’ve had trouble with the police. Mom leaving. Then I got beaten up, and started on narcotics for the pain.”
The doctor nodded slowly.
“I thought I could get in here, maybe, since this is where ma always came,” Henry explained. “With the regular detox programs… the waiting lists are months long. I have to get dried out soon, before I get more addicted.”
“I agree. You have a lot of risk factors. Your age, your mother’s genes, the stress that you’ve been through. We don’t know how much of this problem is drugs and what might be an emerging disorder like bipolar or schizophrenia. I want to get you evaluated as soon as possible.”
“Okay.” Henry let out his breath, relieved. “Good.”
It was all going to be okay.
Henry paced across the room nervously. He had unpacked his few belongings into the drawers in the room, and now there was nothing to do but wait. It was too quiet. In prison, it had always been too noisy. People talking, arguing, shouting. All of the noise from the whole cell block slicing through the bars of the cells. But with the tiny rooms of the clinic having walls, and doors shut against the hall, everything was muffled. Muted. Smothered. Even yelling sounded far away and unreal.
His skin crawled, and he was sweating again. He wanted more heroine. Sandy had packed his bag for him to be sure that he couldn’t smuggle something in. And the clinic had checked his bag on arrival too. He was going to have to dry out.
“Henry. Henry.”
Henry focused in on Dr. Denzel’s insistent voice, and tried to concentrate. He looked across the desk at the doctor and stared at the center of his face.
“Sorry,” he apologized, “I guess I was daydreaming.”
“That’s all right,” the doctor said calmly. “Why don’t you tell me what you were daydreaming about?”
“I don’t know. I just sort of… phased out.”
“Is that something you do often? Or just when you’re in withdrawal?”
Henry’s eyes wandered to the doctor’s desk lamp, trying to stay focused and present.
“It’s not just the withdrawal,” he admitted.
“Tell me about it.”
Henry thought back to his time in prison.
“I get overwhelmed… and I sort of… escape…”
“Uh-huh.”
“I can’t think, and sort through everything.”
“Is that how you feel right now?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me as many words as you can to describe how you feel.”
“Overwhelmed… stressed… anxious…” Henry held his head between his hands. “I don’t know. Drowning. Lost. Helpless.”
“What’s making you feel this way?” Denton asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What are you worrying about?”
“Bobby. Staying off drugs. Not staying off drugs. Being closed in. I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it.”
“Why don’t you want to think about it?”
“It’s… too hard. I just want to hide. Withdraw.”
The doctor was silent for a few minutes.
“I want you to try a relaxation exercise with me. Close your eyes, and think of a place…”
Henry drifted.
“What do you do to relax, Henry?” Dr. Denzel questioned.
Henry was feeling better today, looser and relaxed, on a new medication to control his anxiety. He didn’t feel shut-down today. He felt free-floating, more like an observer.
“I dunno. I don’t have a lot of time,” he said.
“You have any hobbies?”
“Photography.”
“You like to take pictures?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind?” Dr. Denzel prompted.
“People.”
“Portraits?”
“No, not posed. More like candids.”
“What else? Any other hobbies?”
“No.”
Dr. Denzel took a few minutes to make notes on his file, letting him think about his answers.
“How about your friends? Do you spend time with them?” he questioned.
“Some, not a lot. I’m sort of a loner.”
“Girlfriends?”
“Sometimes. I’m always surprised when girls are interested in me,” Henry chuckled a bit.
“Why is that?”
“I’m not good looking, or popular, or a jock…” Henry shrugged.
“Are those the only ways to get a girl?”
“I guess not—I don’t know why they’re interested in me.”
“Sounds like you’ve had some experience.”
“I guess, yeah.”
“Intimate?”
“Some,” Henry admitted.
“Anyone serious?”
“There has been. Right now… not really. Just casual.”
“How did the serious relationships end?”
Lana. Adrienne. Both dead. And Liz, though that wasn’t serious, just spur of the moment.
“I—they just ended.”
He saw their faces. Their fear at the last moment. The moment just before the end.
“Who ended them?”
“What?” Henry panicked, confused by the images. “Who killed them?”
There was silence. The doctor studied him levelly.
&nbs
p; “Who killed them, Henry?” Dr. Denzel repeated quietly.
“I don’t know,” Henry protested. “It wasn’t me. No one ever proved it was me.”
“But you did, didn’t you?”
Henry shook his head in answer.
“Tell me about it,” Denzel coaxed.
“It’s private.”
“Everything between us is private. You know I can’t talk about it.”
Henry avoided Denzel’s eyes and stared out the window.
“You’ll think I’m an awful person,” he said, “a monster.”
“You’re a patient looking for help. I don’t judge you.”
“Things just happen to me,” Henry explained, shaking his head in confusion. “I don’t go looking for trouble.”
“Yes.”
“Things just happen.”
“Tell me about it, Henry, get it off your chest.”
Henry hesitated, but the medications made it difficult to keep anything in. The words and emotions just bubbled up to the surface despite any initial misgivings, just bubbled up and out.
Henry looked at the pills that came with his dinner tray.
“These are different,” he told the nurse.
“The doctor said he thought you were having more symptoms with the other, he’s changed them up again.”
“Oh, okay.” Henry took them obediently.
Henry jiggled his leg anxiously.
“Do you remember what we talked about last time?” Denzel questioned casually.
Henry avoided his eyes, looking at the floor.
“No,” he lied carefully. “It’s all sort of foggy. Like I was dreaming or something.” The medication he’d been on that day made him too talkative, took away too much control. He had to be on his guard in the future, more careful of what effect the meds might have on him.
“Sometimes, these drugs can affect you the wrong way,” Denzel commented. “Instead of calming your symptoms, they can aggravate them. Make you more anxious, for example, or make you hallucinate or lose your sense of reality.”
“Do you think that happened to me?”
“You were very different last session,” Denzel diverted. “Not like yourself at all.”
“What did I say?” Henry questioned. It was risky, but he wanted to know what Denzel’s intentions were.
Dr. Denzel did not answer right away, studying Henry seriously.
“You don’t remember any of it?”
“No.”
“Well, I think it’s best that we just let it go and not pursue that line any further.”
Henry breathed out slowly.
“You think the meds made me hallucinate?”
“Those particular ones, yes. You seem okay on the current cocktail. How do you feel?”
Henry shrugged. He didn’t feel good. But better to be a little anxious, even paranoid, than to risk another change that might make him say things he would later regret.
“Okay, I guess. Better than before.”
“Good. I want to make sure we have you well-stabilized before you are released.”
Henry nodded. He stared out the window for a while.
“What’s my diagnosis?” he said suddenly.
Dr. Denzel looked surprised.
“Of course. Well, as far as we can tell from your sessions and tests, some mild schizophrenia. With your mom’s bipolar problems, I think you lean a little in that direction as well. You also show the beginnings of obsessive behavior. This is all very mild, easily controlled with some therapy and medication.”
Henry nodded.
“Okay.”