Ghosts of Harvard

by Francesca Serritella

  “Not by next Friday,” Cady muttered.

  “What’s next Friday?”

  “The Snow Ball.” Her mother knew that, they had even shopped for a dress together last week. But that was before Eric came home for Thanksgiving break, so it didn’t exist.

  “Oh, honestly, Cady.”

  A different doctor emerged from Room 137, a middle-aged woman with short salt-and-pepper hair and a serious expression. “Okay. So, we’ve got him stable and sleeping, we sedated him with Lexapro. He’s twenty years old, correct?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” her mother answered.

  “So he’s an adult. It’s pretty clear from his history and what you described that he suffered a psychotic episode, but he’s fine now. Normally, I would have to discharge him. However, if you feel he is a danger to himself and others, we can have him involuntarily committed for seventy-two hours to the psychiatric ward for treatment and observation, make sure he’s taking his meds, et cetera. Otherwise, he’d probably do better at home.”

  “Yes, definitely, we want him home,” her mother answered without hesitation.

  “Karen,” her father said softly, putting his hand on her arm. “Maybe we should just slow this decision down for a minute.”

  The doctor glanced over at Cady and frowned. She gestured with her clipboard. “He did this to you?”

  Cady nodded.

  The doctor turned to Cady’s mother. “I thought you said he only cut her hair.”

  “He was trying to cut her hair. The nick on her neck was an accident.”

  “And the injury to her hand?” The doctor was already writing something down.

  “Yes, that happened, but, Cady, you said you accidentally grabbed the knife yourself.”

  “Karen.” Her father said quietly.

  “I’m just saying it was an accident, unintentional.” Her mother went on, “It was a paranoid episode. Eric loves his sister. He would never mean to hurt her.”

  Her father crossed his arms. “But he did hurt her. I think we need to include Cady in this discussion, she should have a voice in the decision about if he comes home with us tonight.”

  Her mother grew flushed, agitated. “Eric is terrified of being institutionalized, we know that. I can barely get him to talk to a therapist. This will be a huge step backward for him.”

  “Our daughter should feel safe in her home.”

  The doctor nodded, her lips pursed. “I have to agree. Safety is the most important consideration. For everyone.”

  Her mother was pleading now. “I’ll make sure he takes his meds. This was a fluke.”

  “Cady,” her father said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “What do you think? How do you feel about this?”

  “Are you afraid for your safety?” her mother asked, a hint of incredulity in her tone.

  They were all looking at Cady. The doctor with her chin slightly raised, her face a mixture of pity and impatience. Her father stood slump-shouldered, his face gray with stubble and his eyes red with fatigue. Her mother looked ragged and desperate, her blue eyes wide, her lips cracked and dry.

  Cady didn’t know what to say. She was angry that her mother rode in the ambulance and didn’t even check on her in the ER. She was angry that neither parent grabbed clothes for her so she didn’t have to worry about her nipples showing through a threadbare T-shirt. She was angry that her hair was ruined and would take months to grow back, angry that she would have to look ugly in front of Jake Verrano on the one night she wanted to be the pretty one. She was angry that her hand hurt when she moved her fingers and her neck hurt when she turned her head. Angry that Eric got all the attention, whether he was the golden boy or the problem child, and she stayed invisible. She was angry that he went off his medication whenever he pleased, leaving everyone else to deal with the consequences. Angry that Eric didn’t try hard enough to get better, that he didn’t want it as much as they wanted it for him. Angry that her real brother, the big brother she adored and the easy relationship they shared, might be gone forever.

  But was she afraid?

  No.

  “Yes,” Cady answered. “I think he should stay here.”

  50

  That quicksand memory wrapped around her ankles and sucked her down until her remorse was suffocating. Cady gulped at the bitingly cold air until it burned her throat, and still she felt starved of oxygen. Eric was never the same after that. The involuntary three-day stay at the hospital turned into a week. When he came home, he apologized and told her he’d never meant to hurt her. He hugged her and they cried. He was her brother again, but he was broken, in mind and spirit. Cady had broken him. From then on, he rarely complained about taking his medication, but whether he actually took it remained a mystery. He grew more isolated and depressed, the only emotion he expressed was his desperate wish to get back to Harvard, as if he couldn’t stand being with the family another minute. She didn’t blame him.

  Cady was almost at Johnston Gate, she could see its stately red brick columns, its iron gates open to her like waiting arms, but her legs felt as weak and wobbly as her spirit. That had been Eric’s turning point. The first step down the path toward his inevitable suicide. And Cady had set him on it, because she was angry that her hair wouldn’t look pretty for a high school dance. That moment of pettiness and disloyalty would haunt her for the rest of her life. So the ghosts were a fitting punishment: to have her mind invaded, to be disbelieved, to be called crazy like the brother she’d betrayed, to be tricked into thinking she’d get a chance to make things right when she was always the one who would only make things worse.

  The ground she stumbled on seemed to warp and curve up around her feet, and her stomach turned with self-disgust. Cady stopped and lifted her gaze, trying to focus on the top of the gate’s frame to fight her increasing dizziness. The ornate ironwork somersaulted in a tangled filigree around the centerpiece: a cross. It was painted black.

  There was nothing she could do, in this world or beyond, to redeem herself.

  The cross blurred into a blot of spilled ink and smeared the sky as the gate dropped out of view. Cady’s eyes rolled up to the cold, blue dome, and the gray tree branches bent inward, reaching for her with their spidery fingers, but they couldn’t catch her any more than she could break her fall. She closed her eyes and let the concrete crack her behind the head.

  She deserved it.

  51

  Cady had woken up to a small huddle of concerned students and passersby. Apparently she had been out cold for a few minutes. Cady answered all the required questions correctly—her name, her location, the year, the current president, plus a political joke to prove how okay she was—but the campus police insisted she be driven in an ambulance for the barely five-minute ride to UHS, University Health Services. There, she was met with a flurry of activity on arrival: eye exam, blood pressure, blood test, CAT scan, IV inserted. It was determined she was dehydrated and had a concussion from the fall but should be fine with rest. That was nearly four hours ago. Now she was just waiting for her body to absorb the full dose of IV fluids and to be seen one more time by the attending physician before discharge. She had been texting with Nikos, but the nurse said it wasn’t good for her to look at her phone, so she was relegated to staring at the ceiling from her hospital bed and trying unsuccessfully to nap. All Cady cared about was getting out of the hospital before her mother arrived.

  “Knock knock! How’s that noggin?” a gray-haired doctor in a white coat said as he entered the room, voice booming. “Dr. Sellers here. You look a lot better than you did when we first met. Color’s back, blood pressure’s normal.” He looked appraisingly at her and the various machines around her. “Good. How’s your pain?”

  “Great, I feel a lot better. Can I leave?”

  “Not yet. We take head injuries seriously at Harvard, it’s all we have going for us.” He winked. “You’ve got some m
ore time before this IV bag is empty. In the meantime, I want to ask you some questions about how you were feeling leading up to your injury. Do you remember what happened just before you lost consciousness?”

  Yes, she thought, I let everyone die. “Nothing, I was just walking.”

  “What about in the days before that? Have you been taking care of yourself?”

  She shifted uneasily in bed and felt the pinch of an IV needle stuck in the inside of her left elbow, the tape pulling at her skin. “I told the nurses, I been feeling sick, I didn’t sleep much the night before …” She shrugged.

  “Your throat and nose looked clear, temperature normal, so we can rule out the flu, but not sleeping—why’s that? Academic pressure, roommate trouble?”

  “My roommates are fine.” Cady didn’t want any medical professional reaching out to Andrea or Ranjoo. “I was out late last night.”

  “Alcohol can leave you pretty dehydrated.”

  “I wasn’t drinking. I was just … out.”

  He peered at her from above his eyeglasses, his blue eyes like searchlights. “Do you want a nurse to administer a rape kit for any reason?”

  “No, definitely not.” What did she have to say to make him leave? “It was probably something I ate at the dining hall.”

  “That ‘emerald beef’ is a menace.” Dr. Sellers was writing something down on his sheet. “Nevertheless, I’m going to send in Vanessa Hightower to say hello, she’s one of our social workers. She’s much younger and cooler than I am, you’ll like her, everyone does. And I will check back soon.” He started for the door.

  The scrutiny of the hospital staff made her anxious. She fiddled with the small plastic clamp that gripped her index finger like a clothespin. “Do I still have to wear this?”

  “Yes,” he said without looking back.

  Cady sighed and lay back, wincing when her head hit the pillow.

  A short while later, a young African American woman came in and introduced herself as simply Vanessa. She had on red plastic-rimmed glasses and wore her shoulder-length hair in twists. Vanessa started with small talk before moving to more serious questions. “Did anything happen last night that might have stressed you?”

  Cady said no quickly, eager to dispel this rape theory she had inadvertently implied to Dr. Sellers. Then an idea occurred to her. “Actually, there is something I didn’t feel comfortable telling the doctor.”

  “That’s okay, that’s why I’m here.”

  “I had unprotected sex last night.”

  “Was it consensual?”

  “Yes. But I took the morning-after pill. Then I felt really sick, I must’ve had a bad reaction to it.”

  “Emergency contraception is known to have some unpleasant side effects, abdominal pain, spotting, it varies from woman to woman. Do you remember the brand? Was it Plan B, where you take the two pills, twelve hours apart, or Plan B One-Step where there’s only one?”

  “Two, and I took them both at once. I didn’t know how I was supposed to do it. I just got them from a friend. It was so stupid, but I was just so nervous and embarrassed I even needed them, I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  Vanessa nodded, and Cady felt relieved that she was buying it. Then Vanessa asked, “How did you feel right before you fainted?”

  “I felt sick, dizzy. My heart was racing, I was out of breath.” That part was the truth.

  Vanessa pushed her glasses up her nose. “It could have been a reaction to the pill. But honestly, it sounds to me like you may have had a panic attack. Have you ever had one before?”

  Cady shook her head.

  “Fainting is a more severe side effect than the medication would typically produce, even if you did take several doses. However, added psychological stressors, like anxiety, can result in physical symptoms. It’s what we call psychosomatic.”

  “You think it’s all in my head?”

  “No, I think it can start in your head. The symptoms you experience are real, but they’re induced or exacerbated by mental health issues, like anxiety, depression, PTSD. We can make ourselves really sick when we don’t have the right ways to cope with stress.” She put a comforting hand on Cady’s arm. “But that’s just my hunch. And it’s something we could discuss more if you want to meet at the Bureau of Study Counsel when things calm down. For now, you’ve been through a scare. And so have your parents.”

  “My parents? They’re here, both of them?” Cady thought she might faint a second time.

  “Oh, well, I was told you were unconscious for a period, it must have been then that they reached out to your emergency contact,” Vanessa explained.

  Cady’s heart sank. Another frightening phone call from Harvard. Another panicked drive to Boston. They must have reached her mother when she was already on her way, her father would have had to leave his retreat. “You have to tell them I’m all right. They have to know, right now.”

  “Okay, okay, don’t worry. I’m sure Dr. Sellers has assured them that you’re stable and doing fine. But the details of what we tell them from here are up to you. Do you want them to come in? Because I can ask the nurses to hold off visitors.”

  “Yes, yes, they can come in.”

  “Hang in, you’ll feel better soon. I can tell your parents love you very much.”

  Which was precisely why she needed to lie to them, she thought. Cady thanked Vanessa and she left.

  Cady had only a few minutes to strategize how to deal with her parents. She looked up at the pockmarked white ceiling tiles, her eyes connecting the dots. The morning-after pill was a solid lie. It was uncomfortable enough to sound plausible, sensitive enough to put off too many questions, but not serious enough to be alarming. The conversation would be awkward, especially with her father, but not catastrophic. There was no question she would rather her parents think she was sleeping around than to think she was mentally ill.

  Her mother came in first, but it was Cady who gasped at the sight of her. Not only did her mother look wild with worry, but her blonde hair was now dyed as red as Cady’s own. “Mom?”

  “Honey! How are you feeling?” Her mother rushed to the bedside with her father following close behind. She kissed Cady’s cheek so hard it hurt.

  “Yes, everything is okay, I’m fine—” Seeing the fear etched on her mother’s face cut Cady open. There had been a time when she longed for her mother to look at her more, to pay attention, to dote on her the way she did Eric. But now she would give anything to take this look off her face. This was the new pressure of being the only child, the last. “Mom, I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize,” her father said, petting her hair. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m good. I’m better. And Dad, you have your partners’ retreat this weekend, I feel terrible, you didn’t need to come. The doctors here overreacted, they shouldn’t have even called you.”

  “Our only daughter is in the hospital, they’d better fucking call,” her father snapped. “Sorry.”

  “They said you were in here with a psychologist?” her mother asked, her face creased with concern.

  “She was only a social worker.”

  “Why did you want a social worker?”

  “I didn’t. It’s just procedure.” Cady repeated the lie about the morning-after pill.

  When she had finished, her mother reached out and touched her arm. “Cady, you know if you wanted contraception, your dad and I support that.”

  “I know, I just, I made a mistake.” Tears came to Cady’s eyes. Her story may have been fiction, but her shame was real. “I’m so sorry I scared you.”

  “Oh, honey. Don’t worry.” Her mother shook her head and gathered Cady in a warm embrace. “I’m here, and we’re going to take you home.”

  “What? No.” Cady pushed her away. “I don’t want to go home. I don’t need to.”

  Her father s
tepped forward. “Cady-cake, you fainted, you have a concussion. You need to recuperate.”

  “No, this was all a big misunderstanding. I’ve been sick, that’s all, and I missed my Psych exam, I have to make it up—”

  “Well, we can talk about it later—”

  Suddenly, Nikos appeared on the threshold, nearly breathless. “Cadence, I came as soon as I could shake my parents, I— Oh, hello.” He stopped when he spotted her parents standing on either side of the bed, staring at him. “How rude of me to barge in. I’m Nikos Nikolaides, you must be Mr. and Mrs. Archer.” He shook hands with her mother, who was standing closest, then he walked around to her father and added, “I can’t believe this happened. You were the picture of health last night.”

  Cady cringed.

  “You were with her last night?” her father said through clenched teeth. He didn’t notice Nikos’s outstretched hand—by the look in his eyes, he was too busy mentally strangling him.

  Nikos prattled on, oblivious. “Yes, we were dancing to jazz, of all things.”

  Cady sighed. “Nikos, I think—”

  “Who do you think you are?” The words exploded from her father’s bright red face.

  “Sorry?” His eyebrows tilted in confusion.

  “You take advantage of my daughter, and you don’t even show her the respect to use protection?”

  “Dad!”

  Nikos scrunched his face like he’d just been slapped. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Not helping, Andrew,” her mother said.

  “Oh, no? Forgive me, Karen, someone has to stand up for our daughter.” Her father’s tone was acid.

  Nikos stood blinking, utterly bewildered, so Cady took over. “Nikos, I’m so sorry, thanks for coming, but I need time with my parents alone. Like, now.”

  “Of course,” Nikos replied, seeming to snap back to earth, but still not understanding. “Mrs. Archer, Mr. Archer.” He nodded to each of them, before turning back toward Cady. “I’ll ring you later?”