Blind Spot (2010)

by Nancy Bush

  “I’m on my way to work,” Claire told her without waiting for Leesha to speak. “Don’t worry. I’ll meet the transport car. She won’t be alone.”

  “No hurry. Your Dr. Freeson’s meeting her,” Leesha said.

  “She’s his patient.”

  Leesha humphed. “You look out for her, Claire. Don’t let this become some political bullshit.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  Claire’s bungalow sat on a knoll in a small neighborhood of homes that had been built on a sloping hillside above the town of Deception Bay. Through her pane windows she had a peekaboo view of the Pacific Ocean, and now she glanced out angrily, blind to the sunbursts arrowing through the silvery cloud cover, shimmering on the ruffling waves.

  Damn Freeson and the whole Marsdon family. They all wanted to keep her under their thumbs. They wanted her capitulation. They wanted her to write a favorable report on Heyward III and get him moved to the less restricted side of Halo Valley. Their money was grease to the axle that ran the hospital, and therefore they had a certain amount of control on who was a patient and who wasn’t. The Marsdons wanted Heyward’s case reviewed and Claire’s testimony would go a long way to the good, and Freeson and Avanti were more than willing to help.

  Locking the side door, she headed to her Passat, seeing huge drops of rain plop onto its shiny black hood. The staghorn sumac, whose green leaves had turned to orange and fiery red, began to shiver from an onslaught of water. Claire tucked herself into her car and backed down her drive. From along a side gravel lane, which connected her bungalow to the other homes that meandered down the hill, she caught sight of Dinah standing on her deck in a long caftan, her face turned up to the heavens. Dinah lifted her arms and smiled at the skies, her long blondish hair waving around her head like a golden aureole.

  Claire thought about her as she drove the twenty-plus miles inland to the hospital. Dinah had grown up in the area and she had a list of clients, much like Claire, whom she treated with homeopathic remedies and exercise in the form of yoga and her own kind of tai chi. She was also a sometime foster parent to a young boy named Toby, whenever Toby’s mother fell back into her pattern of choosing abusive partners, and she was far more grounded than Claire had originally thought. Claire used her as a sounding board, and Dinah was both a good listener and advisor. And, as she wasn’t totally against alcohol, she would occasionally share a glass of wine with Claire and some good conversation.

  But if Freeson or Avanti—who’d both now been all over Claire about her trip to Laurelton General to see the patient without asking—knew she was friends with an herbalist and even listened to her advice, they would probably try to have Claire’s license yanked. The irony of that made Claire perversely happy. Maybe some of her interest in Dinah was merely a way to thumb her nose at the Halo Valley politicos. Whatever the case, it worked for her. Her own “homeopathic” medicine.

  By the time she drove up the winding two-lane drive to the hospital, she’d gone from annoyed and angry to taut and determined. She wasn’t going to let Freeson have his way with Jane Doe. She wasn’t going to let the Marsdons work their influence on her. She wasn’t.

  She parked in the lot and strode into the concrete-and-redwood side building that housed the medical offices of the hospital doctors, taking the elevator to the second floor. After hours she used a keycard and code, like the hospital, but before seven P.M. the medical offices were accessible and open and anyone could just walk in.

  Inside the office building the hallway was carpeted in commercial grade brown-speckled carpet with halogen can lights offering pools of illumination along its length. Light oak doors with sturdy brushed chrome levers marched down both sides. Claire’s new office was now around a turn and toward the skyway that led to the hospital. She’d been located at the far end previously, but by mutual decision between her and hospital administration, she’d moved.

  Healthier for everybody.

  Today she hung her jacket and purse in the closet, shrugged into her lab coat, then locked the closet with a small key that she pinned into her coat pocket. She didn’t have an immediate appointment, so she headed for the hospital proper.

  Halo Valley Security Hospital was an experimental model, designed more like assisted living quarters. The second floor of the office building led through a skyway and door to the hospital itself, and when Claire inserted her keycard and punched in the code, she could enter the second floor of the hospital itself. Side A. The less restrictive side. A separate, older, brick building stood behind the newer Side A and had been nicknamed Side B—the place where the more disturbed patients, ones who were a danger to themselves and/or others, were housed.

  As Claire pushed open the access door to the hospital, she could hear wailing as loud as a siren.

  Gibby, she thought. In Side A’s morning room. She picked up her pace but didn’t run. There was no running in the hospital. Running panicked the patients. Besides, Gibby had a tendency to scream when nothing was wrong, and Claire knew Darlene, one of the day nurses, was more than capable.

  She walked across the gallery above the morning room—the central meeting area of Halo Valley hospital—and saw, past the main foyer, Balfour Transport arrive, a van service for patients, which could be converted to carry a gurney or a wheelchair, or basic seats. She headed down the curving stairway to the first level and glass front doors as outside a wheelchair was hydraulically lowered to the ground with Jane Doe sitting quietly in its seat. Her hands were folded across her lap and she wore a robe over hospital garb. Wind snatched at her blond locks but she didn’t respond, just stared straight ahead.

  Claire stepped outside to meet them, and the driver, a Hispanic man who couldn’t have been more than five-six but with a weightlifter’s muscles, thrust a clipboard at her. She signed and he looked at the name and asked, “Dr. Freeman?”

  “Freeson. He’s here, somewhere.”

  “I need his signature.”

  Claire turned her attention to the patient. “Let me take you inside,” she said, ignoring the driver, who was looking past her, hoping for Freeson to appear.

  “I can’t leave till I have his signature.”

  “He’ll be here.” She pushed the wheelchair inside and was met by Fran from administration, who did all the paperwork for this side of the hospital. Claire signaled back toward the driver and Fran collected the papers Laurelton General had sent over on the patient.

  Freeson appeared at that moment, racewalking toward them. “I’ll take her from here,” he told Claire brusquely.

  Claire looked past him and saw that Dr. Paolo Avanti had chosen to join Freeson in this venture. His dark hair was smoothly combed to his head, and he wore it a little longish, not too much, just enough to appear more youthful. He was in his middle forties but wanted people to believe he was still in his thirties. He could almost pull it off with his swarthy good looks and quiet, commanding style, but Claire knew him too well. Behind a practiced smile lurked a man whose narcissism surpassed Freeson’s. Avanti liked conquests. In sports. In debate. In women. He wasn’t shy, but he was cagey. Like Freeson, he’d circled Claire early on, though she’d given him no indication she was interested in him at all. Avanti had stepped back, smarter than Freeson, parrying the rejection before it came. But he hadn’t given up entirely. He was biding his time, waiting for a more perfect opening, one that Claire steadfastly refused to give. How he expected this after the way he’d abandoned her in her hour of need, Claire couldn’t fathom. Male ego. Who knew?

  “So, this is our new arrival,” he said, examining Jane Doe with a frown. “She’s young.”

  “Old enough to have a baby,” Freeson observed.

  Claire gave him a look, wondering if that comment had deeper meaning. “We don’t know anything about her.”

  “Pauline Kirby wants to do a follow-up story,” Avanti said, not taking his eyes off the patient. “No one’s come forward since they aired her picture, so I think it’s a good idea.”

&
nbsp; “The news crew’s coming here?” Freeson asked casually, as if he didn’t care.

  Claire schooled her expression. They both wanted the publicity and notoriety. An attractive young woman who would garner empathy by her very looks was perfect for their purposes.

  “You’re not letting them film her, are you?” Claire asked.

  “No, no. Just the outside of the hospital. And a still frame of her face.” Avanti’s dark, liquid eyes bored into Claire. “You do want her to find her people, don’t you, Dr. Norris?”

  “Yes.”

  Nurse Darlene, a tall woman with blunt-cut brown bangs and hair and an attitude to match, fresh from taking care of Gibby, reached them at that moment. “Her room’s ready. Right down the hall.”

  Freeson’s goatee quivered and he looked ready to wrestle Darlene for the patient, but when Claire pretended to lose interest and headed toward the morning room, he simply followed after Darlene, close enough to damn near give her a flat tire. Darlene threw him a look and he backed off while Avanti sauntered off in another direction.

  Determined to check in on Jane Doe as soon as Freeson stopped circling the area and went back to his own office—where he spent most of his time, as his people skills were practically nil and he was best forming speeches and pontificating at hospital fund-raisers—Claire looked for Bradford Gibson, Gibby, a twenty-eight-year-old mentally handicapped patient with the mind and intellect of a five-year-old. In the morning room she saw that he was working on an art project of some kind. His tongue was buried in his cheek as he concentrated. His hair was buzz cut as he had a tendency to rip it out by the roots. He was a little on the heavy side with eyes so round and unblinking that he looked eerily like an owl sometimes. But he was sweet and generally satisfied, unless thwarted in his routine.

  One of the aides, Alison, slim, with a mop of unruly dark hair, said, “He thought Thomas wanted his picture,” as way of explanation for the outburst.

  “Ah.” Claire headed back to her office. She had a ten o’clock appointment with a regular outpatient. She would check on Jane Doe later.

  The morning room was a misnomer at Halo Valley Security Hospital, as it was used all day and it was a patient gathering area with tables, chairs, bookshelves, and a television. The walls were painted yellow and patient artwork was displayed in a haphazard fashion, placed there by the artists themselves. Gibby carefully taped his latest spaceship onto the wall and looked on in satisfaction. It was blue and red and silver flames shooted into the sky. He glanced around and surreptitiously took Maribel’s horse picture down to make room. Maribel was stupid, anyway. She never remembered nothing. Gibby was pretty sure she had that Zimer’s disease. At least she wasn’t really, really crazy like those guys in the other building.

  Shivering, Gibby glanced out the window on the back side of the morning room. They tried to hide it with trees and stuff, but there was a really mean fence over there with curly wire on top, the kind he’d seen on that show about criminals that he wasn’t supposed to watch. Every time he turned on the TV without permission, one of those nurse people came. Greg was okay, but Darlene was a witch with a capital B. That’s what his mom always said. A witch with a capital B, and that meant she was really, really bad.

  But the morning room was a great place. He was safe here. The halls were scary with creatures popping their heads out of rooms. Everyone told Gibby he was just imagining them, that the rooms held people, either patients or hospital personnel, but Gibby knew better. They just weren’t able to see. But here, they never bothered him. Once he got inside the morning room sliding doors, he was safe. He always wanted to close the doors, but it was against the rules. This bothered Gibby, but since the creatures couldn’t cross into this space without burning up from the inside out, he could live with it. And if he was in his special chair, he was really, really safe. If someone was sitting in his chair like Maribel, though, anything could happen, but today the chair was free so Gibby grabbed it and sat down hard. The nurse people had brought in another chair, not as good as Gibby’s but it was blue, which was his favorite color, and it looked not hard like those wood ones. Darlene was helping a lady with yellow hair into it.

  Greg, one of the big nurse guys, looked at the lady and said, “She okay to be here?”

  Darlene stood up and walked away and Greg followed. Gibby heard her say, “Dr. Freeson wants her to have lots of stimuli.”

  Gibby thought that maybe Darlene didn’t think that was the thing to do, but then Darlene was mean. The yellow-haired lady was staring at the TV though the TV wasn’t on.

  Shooting a look at Darlene and Greg, Gibby said in a whisper to the woman, “You have to ast. They won’t turn it on unless you ast.”

  She didn’t respond. Didn’t even move. Gibby saw her belly and wondered why she was hiding a ball under her clothes. “They’ll do it for free if you ast,” he told her conspiratorially. “You just have to ast.”

  Maribel cruised by, then turned around and sat down right on Gibby’s lap. He started yelling at the top of his lungs and Darlene came over and helped Maribel off. Gibby watched as Maribel wandered away, touching everything as she went.

  “You have pretty hair,” Gibby told the woman in the chair. “What’s your name?”

  “She doesn’t have a name,” Darlene said crushingly, making Gibby jump the way she creeped up on him. She was mean, oh, she was mean! He stared at the lady in horrified wonder. No name? “She hast to have a name!”

  But Darlene was heading out of the room. Good. Gibby didn’t like her. She smelled like an ashtray. That’s what his mom always said. She smelled like an ashtray.

  “You have yellow hair like the morning room,” Gibby said, pleased with himself. The lady’s lips moved. He looked closer but wasn’t quite sure if they did. Was she trying to talk to him? “I hope you don’t have Zimer’s disease,” he said. “I want to talk to you.”

  “I want to talk to you, too,” she said.

  Gibby was even more pleased. But her lips didn’t move, did they? He wasn’t sure. He was pretty sure she’d talked, though. Pretty sure…He wished she would turn her head and look at him but she stared straight ahead. He finally got up from his chair and stood in front of her. He had to squeeze down and squat to see into her eyes. They were blue. His favorite color! She didn’t look like she saw him, though. She kinda looked empty. A little like Maribel.

  And just like that Maribel sat down in his chair and started laughing.

  Gibby threw back his head and screamed and lunged for her.

  Claire missed Gibby’s second bout of screaming as she was listening to Jamie Lou Breene’s account of her latest escapades. An outpatient, she suffered from narcissism in a severe form, complicated by a bipolar disorder. When she was “up,” she went on crazy sprees that had landed her a number of stints at the hospital. When she was down, she was almost suicidal. The only thing saving her was, ironically, her own narcissism. She couldn’t take her own life.

  She was also incapable of accepting blame or consequence and had run through a number of psychiatrists before being placed with Claire.

  “I woke up in Salem at some place. Don’t remember how I got there,” Jamie was saying with a hint of pride, lifting her chin. She’d been pretty; she still was. But at thirty-three, with years of wild behavior and hard living behind her, she was showing signs of wear. Sometimes, on her meds, she could keep herself under control. Most times she just let herself ricochet from one disaster to the other.

  Claire tried hard to keep her from hurting herself and others, but the woman was a ticking time bomb. She wouldn’t stay on her meds. She hated the dulled feeling that robbed her of herself.

  “What kind of place?” Claire asked.

  “Some guy’s apartment,” she said with a shrug. “He was nice enough, I guess. I mighta had sex with him. Pretty sure I did.”

  “Did you use precautions?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Dangerous behavior, Jamie.”

  Her f
amily, an ex-husband, a seven-year-old son, and a sometime alcoholic father, had all tried to help but they were falling away from a problem that wouldn’t, maybe couldn’t, be corrected.

  “I’ll get the tests again,” she said. “I’ll…get on my meds.”

  “You have to mean it. You have to follow through.”

  “I know, I know. I’m going to change.”

  There was no conviction in her voice. Or maybe there was, but Claire couldn’t hear it any longer. “It’s not easy to completely change your life, Jamie. Changes are incremental. This isn’t a dress rehearsal. We’ve talked about this.”

  “I said I was going to change.”

  Claire wrote a number down on a piece of paper. “If you get in a situation like this last one again and you need help, call me.”

  Jamie took the paper and stared down at it. “You don’t believe me.”

  “I want you to be safe. Everyone should have someone they can call.” And Jamie had just about run out of those kind of friends.

  She left about twenty minutes later, promising to change, promising that she was definitely better this time, promising she wouldn’t need to call, promising, promising, promising.

  Incremental changes…. Claire just hoped those changes were in the positive direction.

  She glanced at the clock. She dealt with outpatients like Jamie, mostly, but she was also familiar with the live-ins who resided on this side of Halo Valley, like Bradford Gibson. Side B was a different story and out of Claire’s field of work. She’d only crossed to it twice in the three years she’d been at the facility; once as an initial introduction, and once when Heyward Marsdon III had been taken there kicking and screaming and demanding she be with him, much to his family’s disgust.

  Claire had wanted nothing to do with Heyward, either. But she had been his therapist and she had been part of the incident. One moment he was saying how much he loved Melody, then he was threatening to kill her and Claire was trying to talk him down, then he pulled a knife from his pocket and slit Melody’s throat in one smooth movement. So fast. So horrifyingly fast.