Phantom Limb: A Gripping Psychological Thriller
Page 10
I stared at Thomas. He was too busy glancing back and forth between Dalila and Bob to notice me looking at him. It was hard to imagine that a little over a week ago I was singing sappy love songs about him in my car. I looked at him now and felt nothing but annoyed, as if he’d duped me into falling in love with him and setting this entire ordeal into motion.
“Dalila, when is Emily’s funeral?” I asked.
Her eyes filled with tears. Bob took her hand in his and began stroking it.
“I know this is hard, but we have to talk about it,” I said.
“You have no idea how hard this is,” Dalila said with tears running in thick streams down her face, creating mascara trails down to her chin.
“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this right now,” Thomas said.
“And what would the right time be?” I was surprised by the sharpness in my tone.
“I just think it’s a good idea to let your doctors talk about Emily with you.” His tone was cautious.
“You do, huh? Well, I’m pretty sure my doctors don’t know nearly as much about Emily as her family does.” My tone had gone from sharp to angry. I stared at him until he looked away.
“I tend to agree with Thomas,” Bob said.
“You don’t even know Thomas. You just met him. When did the three of you become best friends?”
“But, honey, I thought he would be the person you’d want to be around. You spend all of your time with him. I mean, we barely talk to you. We don’t know what’s going on with you. We had no clue you were in such a bad state. It seemed like he would know so much more than us,” Dalila said. “He’s been—”
Thomas broke in, “It’s all right. I understand she’s upset. I can step outside.” He started to rise.
“No, sweetie, you don’t need to leave.” Dalila placed her hand on his leg.
I was mad at him, but I didn’t want him to leave either.
“Sorry for biting your head off, Thomas.” My irritation with him still surprised me.
He shrugged. “Not a problem. I understand.”
I was glad he understood because I didn’t understand anything happening right now.
“I still want to talk about Emily’s funeral,” I said.
“God, Elizabeth, can’t you just quit? Please? Just stop this craziness,” Dalila cried.
“I’m not trying to hurt you. I promise I’m not. I just want to talk about it. I don’t know what’s going on with the plans. I want to make sure I can go. Am I going to be out in time to go to it?”
I was hurting her, but the conversation had to happen. Talking about Emily’s funeral made the loss real to her in the same way that seeing her pain yesterday had made the loss real to me. I wished there was some way to lessen her pain, but there wasn’t.
“You j-just, your mom just … I-I-I …” Bob always stuttered when he got nervous.
“Stop, Bob! I’m so tired of all this. So sick of it. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t!” Dalila yelled.
It was the first time I’d heard her yell. She didn’t yell no matter how upset or frustrated she was. I’d never heard her even raise her voice. She’d had plenty of reasons to lose it, but she never did. My feelings threatened to break through the surface, but I swallowed them down as quickly as they came up. I had to stay focused.
“I’m sorry I’m upsetting you. I really am.” I got up from my chair and moved towards her. I embraced her, rubbing her back—something I wasn’t sure I’d ever done, but I felt responsible for upsetting her.
“Maybe if we took her to the grave,” Bob muttered from behind us.
I jerked back as if I’d been slapped, staring at Bob.
“What did you say?” I asked.
He stammered. His face was bright red. “N-nothing. I didn’t say anything.”
“You said something about her grave. I heard you.” My head was swirling. “What? What did you say?”
“Bob, honey, maybe—”
“What did you say?”
I let go of Dalila and stood back to face Bob.
“It’s nothing. Really it’s nothing.” He darted his eyes back and forth between Dalila and Thomas. Thomas’s eyes were wide open and Dalila gripped the bed as if she might crumple onto the floor if she didn’t.
I heard it even though he wouldn’t repeat it. He’d said they should take me to Emily’s grave. They’d already buried her. They’d put her in the ground without me. How could they do that? How could they not wait for me? I jumped up from my chair.
“Get out!” I screamed at them, pointing at the door. “Leave. All of you. Now! You buried her. You put her in the ground without me even being there! How could you? Why would you do that?”
They were all moving towards me, arms outstretched in my direction, trying to get close to me and touch me. I recoiled from them as if they were zombies, sliding underneath the small desk and curling into a tight ball.
“Get out! Get out! Get out!” I pounded my hands on the linoleum floor over and over again. They kept trying to touch me, grab me. They wouldn’t stop. Their words didn’t reach me. My screams reverberated through my brain like shards of glass.
“I think this visit is over,” a man’s voice said from far away, like he was at the end of a long tunnel.
I pulled my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them, and lay my head down on them. They were trying to say good-bye, but I turned away. I couldn’t hear their words. I wanted them gone and didn’t care if I ever saw them again. When I finally lifted my head, everyone was gone except the hippy-looking man. He was standing with his arms crossed, leaning against my bed.
“Can I please go to bed now?” My voice strained. It hurt to talk. My head throbbed.
“Sure. Just let me call a female CA.”
I waited while he pushed the button next to my bed and a large African-American woman appeared in my doorway. She was carrying a black duffel bag. It was mine, but I didn’t remember packing it.
“Get outta here, Mr. Man,” she ordered with a wide grin on her face.
He shuffled out of the room.
“My name’s Felicia. I’m the best thing ya got up here in this place.” She handed me my bag, tossing it at my feet. “I guess you’ve had a long day, huh?”
I didn’t feel like talking. I’d run out of lines for the day. There was a huge lump lodged in my throat. Emily’s face kept flashing through my mind and I couldn’t stop it. Her smile. Her twinkling, green eyes that lit up and sparkled when she was happy. The laughter that used to bubble up out of her, infecting everyone it touched. The pictures hurt.
“You don’t talk much, huh? That’s okay. Just gives me a reason to run my own mouth. Lord knows I’ll never run out of words. You might decide to talk just to get me to shut up.” She laughed heartily. “You gonna stay under there or ya gonna come out and put your nightclothes on?”
I crawled out from underneath the desk. I unzipped my bag and found my clothes neatly folded inside. Dalila must’ve packed my things. I pulled out a white T-shirt and my favorite pajama pants. I stood, holding them in my hands.
“Sorry, for now, I gotta be here while you change.” Felicia shrugged. “But I’ll turn around. I won’t peek. Promise.”
I quickly wiggled out of my hospital scrubs and pulled on my pajamas.
“Done.”
It felt good to be in my own clothes.
“That was quick.” She turned back around. She handed me a small pink pill and a Dixie cup. “Here. This will help.”
I took both and swallowed the pill, not caring what I was taking. I handed the cup back to her.
“Now you just crawl into this bed and get you some rest. I’m gonna be right outside the door. You need me, ya just holler, okay?” she said.
I crawled underneath the crisp white hospital sheets. The bed crinkled with the pressure of my weight. All of it stiff. But I didn’t mind. I fell asleep quickly, long before lights out arrived on the unit.
10
I was awaken
ed in the morning by Polly as she flooded my room with fluorescent light. I wanted to pull my covers over my head, but I put my feet on the floor instead. I grabbed my duffel bag from the chair where Felicia had set it the night before. Dalila had packed well. All of my favorite Tshirts and blue jeans were there. Polly didn’t turn around like Felicia had last night while I changed, but I didn’t care.
“It’s time for breakfast. Your tray has already been brought up. Since you went to bed early last night, you didn’t get a chance to fill out your menu for today so you’ll get the standard breakfast. Make sure you fill out a menu tonight. Each patient fills out their meal menu for the following day the night before,” Polly said as we made our way into the family room.
I didn’t care about food. I felt like I was in a trance as I took my seat in the room. Everyone was already seated except Rose. I wondered where she was, but then remembered she’d been sentenced to isolation while she ate because of the tantrum she threw yesterday. I grabbed a seat in the corner by myself. I didn’t make eye contact with anyone. I didn’t feel like being bothered by having to make conversation this morning. I stared at the tray sitting in front of me. It was filled with cornflakes, pancakes, scrambled eggs, and toast. The thought of swallowing any of it made my stomach flip. I settled on a cup of coffee and sipped it slowly even though it was lukewarm.
Yesterday I’d had a plan, but this morning I had nothing. The only way I’d made it through yesterday was being able to focus on getting out in time to be buried with Emily. There seemed no reason to give a repeat performance if she was already buried and there was no possibility to share a funeral. Now, I was going to be buried alone. I might not even be laid to rest next to her. The only thing I wanted to do was crawl back into bed and sleep. For the first time ever, I understood why Emily spent so much time sleeping. It was the closest you could get to death without physically dying.
I kept telling myself that even though I couldn’t be buried with her, I would follow her shortly. I repeated it over and over again as I drank my coffee because I was afraid I’d stop functioning if I didn’t, or I’d start crying and never be able to stop. For a brief moment, the pain written on Dalila’s face about Emily passed in front of me and I realized how terribly selfish my plan was. I couldn’t help but wonder if terminally ill patients felt like I did when they decided to end their lives. I’d read their stories about how they were in so much pain that they made a calculated decision to die rather than continue to fight for a miserable existence. I hadn’t understood their stories before, but I understood now.
Emily and I were two parts that made a whole and I was only half of a person without her. I came into the world in an intimate relationship and had never lived my life alone. Not even for a single day. For the first seven years of my life, I’d spent every moment with Emily. She was never further away from me than arm’s length. It was as if our brains were sewn together and there was no place where I ended and she began. Even after we were taken away from Mother and everyone tried to separate us, it was impossible. We’d never spent a night away from each other in our twenty years. We finished each other’s sentences and could predict what the other was going to do before they did it. There were times when we would start singing the same song at the same moment. We saw through each other’s eyes, felt what the other experienced, and shared our thoughts. We could communicate without speaking. We were more like conjoined twins who’d never been separated at birth.
Now it was as if part of my body had been suddenly chopped off. I was an amputee, and like any amputee I was left with the excruciating phantom pain of being tortured by my lost limb. Every person who’d lost a body part still felt the burning, throbbing ache as if it was still there, and the empty void of Emily would never leave me. Unlike some who learned to live with the phantom pain, I never would. I was condemned to live with the unseen ghost of my lost part.
My coffee was finished and I stared at the food in front of me. I gave up on the possibility of eating. My throat was constricted and my stomach was even tighter. I aimlessly pushed the eggs around on my plate. I wondered how long you could refuse food until they started to force-feed you like they did Rose. I hoped they tried easier methods first before jamming a tube up your nose.
“Elizabeth?” Dr. Larson’s voice called to me from the corner of the room.
I looked up. He motioned for me to follow him and I stood quickly, moving in his direction. I followed his brown suit as he led me down the hallway and into the same room we’d met in yesterday. I took the same seat I had before as he did the same.
He wasted no time on small talk or surface chat.
“So, your family visit didn’t go well, huh?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Not really.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
I didn’t want to talk about anything. Today I didn’t know what my lines were supposed to be and it took too much energy to form words. I felt empty and depleted, but I had to say something or he’d continue to stare at me in silence until I did.
“It was weird. Dalila got upset and then I got upset too. I think she’s having a really hard time with Emily’s death and it’s hard for her to talk to me about it.”
“What else happened?”
So far he hadn’t taken out his notebook. I didn’t know if this was a good sign or a bad one.
“I ended up freaking out pretty badly. Bob let it slip that they already had Emily’s funeral,” I said.
“Why did that upset you?”
Was he stupid?
“I wanted to go.”
He changed the subject, “Elizabeth, why do you think you’re here?”
Why did he keep asking me the same question over and over again? Rose’s lines were wrong. They weren’t working. What was I saying wrong?
“I tried to kill myself. I found Emily dead and I snapped. But I’m starting to think clearer. I’m not going to do anything stupid like that again.”
My words couldn’t have been more false.
“We are going to begin your treatment.”
What was he talking about?
“The team decided yesterday that it’s time to start the work.”
Work? What kind of work? I was too tired to do anything.
“Have you wondered why everyone keeps asking you the same questions about being here?”
Had he just read my mind?
I nodded.
“How do you feel about that?”
“It’s kinda strange. Feels like a test.”
“There are no right answers.”
Obviously there were or they wouldn’t keep asking me the same questions.
He put his hands on the table and folded them, leaning forward. His brown eyes met mine and the stare was so intense I had to turn away. He really was trying to read my mind. “I want to talk about Emily. Are you ready to talk about Emily?”
No. I didn’t want to talk about Emily and I wasn’t going to have a conversation about her with a stranger who’d never met her and didn’t know anything about her.
“I guess,” I lied.
“Good.” He cleared his throat. He leaned across the desk. He crossed an invisible line on the desk and entered my space. His breath stunk of stale coffee and dirty socks. “I want to begin by telling you this is going to be really hard. However, it’s got to happen if you are going to be able to get well …”
I wasn’t sick.
“Can you think of any reason Dalila may have gotten so upset about Emily yesterday?”
I liked therapy better with Lisa when I was a kid. I wanted to draw pictures. Play games. Cards. Anything. Not answer all of his questions.
“She didn’t want to talk about the funeral. Probably because she knew how upset I’d get,” I said.
“Get about what?”
I wrung my hands underneath the table. He was unsettling me. He wasn’t very good at his job. It was irritating the way I had to break everything down into small pieces of information
for him.
“I would be upset they didn’t wait for me to get out of the hospital before they had her funeral. She knew I’d be angry that I didn’t get to go.”
There. Was that simple enough for him?
“Elizabeth, I want you to listen to what I’m about to say and to do your best to be present for it.”
I was right here. I wasn’t going anywhere.
“The reason Dalila was so upset about the conversation yesterday is because Emily’s funeral happened a long time ago and you did get to go to it. You were there.”
My head swirled around the room as if it was about to roll off my neck and bounce onto the floor. What was he talking about? Maybe he really wasn’t my therapist. What if he was really one of the patients? Or maybe this was just a test of my reality. He was seeing if he could confuse me.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” He spoke slowly, still intensely staring at me.
He was crazy. I looked at the door. It was locked and he had the key. I was trapped in a room with a madman.
He kept talking. “I told you this is going to be really hard and difficult… process … small steps …”
Shut up!
I clenched my jaw so I wouldn’t scream it at him.
Shut up! He’s not going to stop. He’s going to keep going. He can’t keep talking.
“All of this is really confusing for you. Sometimes when people experience severe trauma, they create a world for themselves that separates them from experiencing what is really going on …”
He didn’t know what was going on. He didn’t understand anything.
“The brain is powerful. I believe the trauma of losing Emily caused a split in reality for you …”
What was he talking about? Split? Trauma? Why was he using those words? Why was he saying this to me? I wanted to put my hands over my ears to drown out the sound of his voice. It was screaming in my head. His eyes dug into me.
Shut up, you ugly fat man. Just shut up. I don’t want to hear what you have to say.