Poison

by Galt Niederhoffer

  “Need help ASAP. They have me in the psych ward.”

  A man arrives to take her phone. Just before, a text arrives. “Stay calm and speak slowly,” says Nora. “Scared people are scary.”

  Cass forces a polite smile as the man confiscates her belongings.

  Understanding dawns now with a physical sensation. People describe a heaviness with shock, a weight, something sinking from the head to the stomach. For Cass, it feels more like heat, the way it slowly emanates from the top of her head to her shoulders, from her shoulders to her fingers, from her fingers to her organs, except here the sensation is not warm and sweet. It is the opposite of pleasure. She is in the mental ward of Mercy Hospital in Portland. She is locked inside against her will, and this detainment is legal. Her children are likely getting tired, waiting for their mother and their nightly bedtime ritual. Her children are likely getting scared, wondering what has happened to her, what has happened to their parents, why their world has shattered in an instant. She is trapped in a cage of Ryan’s design that extends far beyond anything he or she could have imagined.

  With this understanding come other revelations. It is essential to remain calm. She must act and appear normal. Any appearance of losing composure, any resisting or protest, will only play into their concerns, the suspicions of these people, and increase the likelihood of the diagnosis that is already their thesis. The irony of this situation is wholly apparent. It is their paranoia, their suspicion, the visceral fear caused by her allegations that has made these witnesses paranoid, crazy with suspicion, while they try to assess the same thing in Cass. It is this very process, the violence incited by fear in another person and the need to predict future violence, that turns friends into enemies, police officers into murderers, peaceful into warring countries, human nature against human nature, human beings into barbarians. This is why a person must move slowly when a cop tells her to put her hands up, Cass realizes, because minor misunderstandings are made in the nanoseconds of confrontations, and those misunderstandings can have the gravest of consequences. Because nine times out of ten, the misunderstanding is the expectation of evil.

  “You can’t give me meds against my will,” she says. She knows this from her basic knowledge of ER dramas, from her time as a journalist covering the space between lunacy and the legal system, the overlap between medicine and the law, the people trapped in this ghetto.

  “Not unless you get out of control,” says the nurse with the gray ponytail.

  Cass takes a deep breath and tries to slow her breathing. In. Out. In. Out. Historically, this has offered solace, some measure of meditation. No such luck at the moment. Instead, she must perform, give an Oscar-worthy performance. At the moment in her life when her body most wants, needs to panic, she must achieve total calmness.

  Ryan has set the course, and there is no getting off it. She is on a plane locked on autopilot, careening into the mountains. Her panic and tone did not help her, nor did her gender. Cass has found herself in a new world that does not presume innocence—but rather presumes madness. She has landed in enemy territory, on the border between two distinct communities—victims of attempted murder and people with paranoid delusions.

  * * *

  Two hours have passed, and Cass still sits in the waiting room of the locked psych ward, listening to the sound of her own breathing and crazy people ranting. Is it rude to think of them this way, she wonders, the most absurd of snobbery? Is it foolish to think she is somehow exempt, that she has been falsely imprisoned, that everyone around her is nuts when she is currently detained for a psych evaluation? Is this her delusion? In. Out. In. Out. The distinct sound of these two acts—one higher and one lower—and the fact that they can be predicted, allows Cass to focus on the only thing that makes infinitely more sense than the place in which she is sitting. Finally a young doctor emerges. He seems to be a doctor—white coat, stethoscope, patronizing smile—but given the current state of things, she must test all assumptions. In. Out. In. Out. He just has a few questions.

  As she begins to speak, she gives herself a few instructions. Speak slowly. Be precise. Say what happened word for word—but not too many words because that can sound like ranting. Begin with Ryan’s threat to her life, the alibi he shared with her—suicide, madness—and the defense that he promised and predicted—that people will believe she is crazy—would enable him to get away with murder (had the attempt succeeded) and (despite its failure) is miraculously foiling her attempt to report it since she has lived to tell it.

  Simply saying the word poison seems to incite suspicion, seems to cast doubt on Cass faster than a criminal record. Ryan has, in a sense, poisoned her mind, her body, and her surroundings, not only with the slow insidious steep of his cruel words and deceitful behavior, with the toxic effect of his lies and carnal betrayals, the contamination of the trust that is the center of a marriage, but with the subsequent crime and its narcotic effect on her audience, the first line of responders, tinting their objectivity like food coloring in water, until their bias all but precludes an objective reception.

  Murderers have a host of alibis available to them. Victims do not have these. Victims have two options: to be believed or dismissed. Deemed credible or crazy. And if dismissed, to be eligible for a new crime, something with its own hefty sentence. An unreliable witness. Credibility, like sanity, has no alibi, no objective criteria, other than projection. One need not look at the history of gender, race, or sexuality for proof that projection often results in false and dangerous assumptions.

  Ryan has chosen the perfect crime and the perfect weapon—although he was not wholly successful—not only because this weapon avoids messy fingerprints altogether, but because it has the ability to transmute suspicion from the hand of the attacker into the face of the victim, turning people against Cass, or at least unleashing skepticism in a way that even Ryan could not have predicted.

  Attempted murder with poison is unlike a crime with a gun or knife. Poison is more like rape in that it penetrates the system, leaving behind a malignant scar with little trace to prove it. In a legal realm, poison, like rape, tends to impugn both the perpetrator and the victim. It has the power to turn supporters into critics, doctors into skeptics, shattering the credulity of those one needs so sorely for protection. Poison has turned her first line of support into a front line of opposition, all but ensuring those she needs for help become unwitting accomplices to Ryan’s mission. Unfortunately, were she to state this theory right now, it might seem like paranoia. She tries to think of the movie in which the falsely accused seems guiltier with every assertion of innocence. “Don’t protest too much” is all she can remember. And a lyric from a well-known song: Talk less. Smile more.

  Cass smiles at the doctor and tries to find composure. She thinks of a prisoner cuffed to a chair. Resisting will only tighten her binds. The best—the only—thing she can do is relax into the chair and hope the ropes loosen. She crosses and uncrosses her legs, tries to make herself smaller. The leather, if it is leather on the chair, squeaks as she does this. Searching her brain for the perfect lede, she calls on her reporter’s instinct. She clasps her hands on her lap to hide a splat of paint on her shirt. Would that she had changed into nicer clothes before leaving the house this morning.

  “My husband made a death threat,” Cass begins slowly. “He told me he would get away with it because—” She stops herself quickly. She should not volunteer Ryan’s alibi—so far, this has not worked for her. It sounds like an admission. It seems only to bolster Ryan’s version.

  “It’s okay,” says the doctor. He seems to sense Cass’s discomfort. “I’ve heard a bit about your situation, and I’ve spoken to your friend.” He gestures out the glass window in the door to the larger waiting room. Cass follows his gaze to find a familiar face. Nora sits on a chair, eyes long and exhausted, head bowed in sleep or prayer. “Your husband sounds like a bit of a scoundrel,” says the doctor.

  Cass nods emphatically. Does this doctor have a
sense of humor? She opens her mouth to say more but decides against it. She knows this from her days as a reporter: less is always more when trying to elicit a response from a subject. Never cut a person off before he has finished his comment. And, most important rule: a source has never finished his comment.

  “Either he’s trying to kill you or scare you,” says the doctor. “Neither one’s very nice.”

  “No.” She shakes her head and tries to minimize the scope of her movement. She shifts her weight from one leg to the other, hears the sticky release of the leather.

  “We can run some tests here,” says the doctor. “Blood work and urine.”

  “What will you test for?” Cass asks.

  “We’ll run for household chemicals, narcotics, heavy metals.”

  Cass’s brow furrows.

  “Not like the music,” he says, smiling. “Lead, mercury, arsenic. The stuff they used in the olden days to kill Victorian woman. And the things that lurked in every household until the EPA wised up and cleaned our pipes and attics.”

  Cass nods and smiles. She is grateful for the doctor’s kindness, grateful to be getting closer to facts, to data, to trade all this hazy speculation for the scientific method.

  “Bleach, ammonia, the oxides. Those are the worst things you tend to find in the house. Especially when they’re combined. The seven-screen is a panel for basic narcotics—pot, coke, booze, hallucinogens. The only one that’s not on it is LSD. Not sure why. PCP’s the one that lands people here. Talk about poison.” He shudders. “That seems like the right place to start given your symptoms. You’ll just have to wait here a couple more hours. We can’t release you until the lab sends back your blood work and urine.”

  “In here?” she asks.

  “Nah,” he says. Another merciful smile. “We’ll get you out of here in a minute. You can sit out there in the big waiting room with all the really crazy people.”

  “How many hours?” Cass asks.

  “Five or six.”

  She shudders.

  “I suppose you could leave now and get these tests run by a private doctor.”

  “I’ll do that,” Cass says quickly. She fields and decides to ignore a message from her better judgment. Intuition tells her to stay, to get these tests done immediately, that she will come to regret any delays to this decision. But she is suddenly overcome with a rush of emotion, the feeling that is the strict and universal domain of all mothers, a feeling too intense to be called sadness and too specific to be called heartbreak, the feeling that comes from time spent away from one’s children—whether a matter of days or hours. And the memory of the locking door, the nonconsensual sleepover she has narrowly averted.

  “One last thing,” he says.

  She looks up, dread rising from her stomach.

  “Urine is better than blood for the heavy metals panel. It only stays in the blood for a few days. It shows up in the urine when the body is trying to excrete it. They take about a week to come back. Sometimes longer.”

  Cass nods and tries for a polite smile on this foul subject.

  “Good luck.” The doctor smiles. His smile is no longer patronizing. It seems to be heartfelt.

  “Thank you,” says Cass. The door opens, and Cass walks quickly through toward Nora. She has never in her life been so happy to see another person.

  * * *

  Cass sits in the passenger seat of Nora’s family schooner, watching the silver bay speed by like a syringe delivering salvation. As she rides back to Nora’s, she takes comfort in familiar sensations, the seep of wind through a slit in the window, the whirl of the massive engine, the purr of the tires as they race from the road onto the bridge’s smoother surface. Something about a brush with death and the relief of her friend’s embrace alights an overwhelming impulse to call home and talk to her father. She regrets it as soon as she hears him.

  “So,” he begins their conversation, this time with a devilish sparkle. “To what do I owe the pleasure of a call? Let me guess. You’re worried your husband is cheating again.”

  Cass digests the tone, the battle she is facing. Calling him was a bad idea. Now it will take time to extricate herself from this situation.

  “Yes, he is cheating again,” Cass says. “But that’s not why I called you.”

  “Did you find something? A matchbook? Suspicious receipt from a hotel bar?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes, Dad.”

  “You always have a theory, Cass. I always thought you’d make a great detective.”

  “I have proof of a couples massage that did not involve me, hair in my shower. It’s not a suspicion, Dad. It’s physical evidence. There’s nothing subjective about it.” And then, because she can’t resist, “And I am a good detective. I won the Columbia Award for Excellence in Investigative Journalism.” At forty she can still be reduced by her father to an adolescent.

  “So what if he’s cheating?” her father barks. “Every man is entitled to a couple of girlfriends.”

  Cass struggles not to respond. It takes physical force to do this.

  “Everybody cheats,” he says. “It’s not a reason to end your marriage.”

  Cass waits in silence for outrage to pass through her. It takes all her strength to resist telling him off in the most florid language. Luckily, she is too nauseated to find the words as quickly as usual.

  “You want some advice?”

  “No,” she says.

  “Stop being so nosy. If you weren’t such a snoop, you’d be happily married.”

  Again, Cass struggles to squelch the bile rising from her stomach. Do not engage, she tells herself. Ignore his provocation. Don’t instigate. Don’t take the bait—as she tells her children. There is no sense debating a man who is immune to reason, a man with no respect for monogamy, and less for women. It is like trying to explain the concept of language to a table. Luckily, she is too distracted by his comment, and the logic issues within it, to begin her rebuttal. She cannot decide which is worse: that he blames her for uncovering Ryan’s infidelity, or the fact that he thinks her best bet is to turn a blind eye to betrayal.

  Revelation travels the same path as nausea in reverse, warmth descending from her throat to her stomach. “Oh, I get it,” she says. “This is about money. You’re worried that if I end up alone, I might become a burden.”

  “Worried?” he says. “That’s a simple fact. Let’s face it. You’re not a college girl anymore. You don’t make a lot of money. You’re forty years old and you have three children. You do not have options.”

  Cass has always known her father to be a misogynist. He believes women have utilities, as opposed to merit. “We disagree on this subject,” she says. This is the best she can manage. “I think we can agree on the simple fact that we have different values.”

  “Has that worked out so well for you?” His rage is palpable, a vibration.

  She faces and foils a strong impulse, the urge to be loved, to be believed, to be cared for and nurtured. To be harbored by her father, to be told everything will be all right, that he will stop at nothing to bring justice to her attacker, that he will stand watch at her door with a rifle. A daughter’s impulse for a father’s love is a hard habit to break, like curing a dog of the urge to bark, or a bird to migrate in the winter. But she will not find this from Marty Rosen. She should know by now: he is not that kind of father. He is not that kind of person. He is not that human.

  “You still haven’t told me why you called,” he says.

  Cass musters the strength to speak, the most credible explanation. As a journalist, she knows the most direct approach is usually the best one. State the facts. Plain and simple. Who, what, when, where, how, why. Then, the counterargument.

  “I just got back from the ER, Dad.”

  “Why is that, Cass?”

  “Because Ryan tried to kill me.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he says.

  “I wish I were kidding.”

  Marty says nothing for a long time.
When he does, the sound of his voice has changed from disbelief to derision. “Oh yeah? How did he try to kill you?”

  Cass struggles to find words that will not estrange her father. She has lived through this presentation enough now to know that simply stating the facts does not yield the support of her audience, but rather makes her vulnerable to a different kind of suspicion. She thinks of something her father once said when describing his success in business. Deals are closed with facts, he said. At least until the signature. “He tried to poison me,” she says.

  “He tried to or he did it?”

  “He did it,” she says. “But I survived. He used enough to make me sick but not enough to kill me.”

  “How?” Marty says. He is listening now. “How did he do it?”

  “He put it in my food and coffee. And possibly in the house. I’m not sure what it is yet and where he put it.”

  “What?” Marty scoffs. “Don’t be absurd.”

  She can hear the cogs of his brain grinding through the analysis, working out the likelihood on a statistical basis of Cass’s statement, other possible explanations. For a moment, the warmth of hope begins to creep into her body. She imagines a flicker in her father of something like empathy, horror. But she is wrong. She has mistaken outrage at Ryan for outrage at his daughter.

  “That’s preposterous,” he says. “You sound like a crazy person.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, Dad.”

  “Don’t ever say that again,” he says. “Or they’ll cart you off to a mental institution.”

  “It’s true,” she says, “that people could easily mistake this statement for a delusion. I learned that all too quickly. But in this case, they would be making a grave error, dismissing the pleas of a person who is in clear and present danger. Dismissing the eyewitness testimony of a victim of an attempted murder.”

  Marty listens now with a new sentiment altogether. Skepticism has turned to something else, confusion laced with anger. He has undergone the switch, the same conversion she witnessed in triage, in which a victim’s cries for help alienate the listener, turning a source of help into a source of derision, converting a needed ally into a new source of opposition. “I’ve told you this before,” he says. “And you never listen. You’ve always had an active imagination, Cass, but this time you’ve gone too far. Your husband is fed up with you. Your family is fed up. And if you don’t stop this nonsense, you will have no one.”