Obsessed

by G. H. Ephron

  “Creepy,” Gloria said, fingering one of the tiny gold hoops in her own ears. Gloria rarely wore jewelry. She might even have been wearing a touch of lipstick. “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine,” came a voice from the doorway. It was Emily Ryan, leaning her head wearily on the doorjamb. She had on a navy blue suit, the jacket buttoned. The clothes were a somber contrast to the dark hair tied back in a ponytail. Between her Miata, the preppy outfits, and her all-American good looks, you’d have thought Emily came from somewhere like Connecticut and money. But she didn’t. The scar on her cheek and more on her arms were the only visible traces of a hardscrabble childhood in central California. Her father, a trucker, had been mostly absent while her mother struggled to keep them all fed. Somehow Emily had managed to lift herself out and put herself through school.

  She gave a half-smile, not wide enough to turn on the dimples at either side of her mouth. Her complexion seemed even more pale today, and she had smudges under her eyes. She walked over and settled into a spot at the table.

  “You get any sleep?” I asked.

  “Can I get you some coffee?” Kwan offered.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Gloria asked.

  “Listen, you guys are great,” Emily said, looking at each of us and turning up the smile, “and I appreciate your concern. But I can take care of myself.”

  “No one’s saying you can’t,” Gloria said. “We’re a team here. If one of us is hurting, we’re all in trouble.”

  “You can’t do this kind of work if you’re afraid,” Kwan added.

  Emily’s smile vanished. “I’ve been managing so far.”

  “This wasn’t the first time?” Gloria asked.

  Emily looked down at the table. She shook her head.

  Gloria moved into the chair and put her arm around Emily. “How long?”

  “A few weeks. Maybe a couple of months.”

  A couple of months? I wondered why she hadn’t mentioned that to me or to the security guard last night.

  “Phone calls late at night. I think someone’s been following me to my car in the garage at the MRI lab. I’ve been asking one of the guys over there to walk me out.”

  That was disturbing. Emily had a half-time clinical fellowship with us and a half-time research fellowship at a magnetic resonance imaging lab near Central Square. Whoever the stalker was, he was following her there, too.

  Emily got up, went to the window, and stared out. “It’s so infuriating. I hate that it’s made me change my life. I used to run at Fresh Pond, but halfway around it’s pretty isolated. I realized if he was there, I’d be a goner. He’d drag me off and—” Emily shivered. “That’s why I started running here at the Pearce. I figure there’s more people, there’s Security. Hell, they tow your car in about thirty seconds if you park where you’re not supposed to.” She bit her thumbnail. “I felt safe.”

  Emily didn’t look as if she felt safe now. For the moment she looked small and vulnerable, a little girl in dress-up clothes.

  Kwan was massaging his chin as he listened. Gloria reached out and squeezed Emily’s hand.

  “Any idea who it might be?” Gloria asked. “Your ex?”

  “Kyle wouldn’t, no way.”

  “Someone you broke up with?” I asked.

  “A couple of months ago.”

  “Isn’t that when you said this all started?” Gloria said.

  “Yeah, but Kyle? I just don’t think he’s the type.”

  What type of person got his jollies from following a woman? Vandalizing her car? Taking her belongings? I knew what the literature said. Most often a stalker was an ex-partner who couldn’t accept the end of a relationship. Or a suitor whose overtures had been spurned. Celebrities got stalked by adoring fans. And like the rest of us working in mental health, Emily’s occupation put her at a higher-than-average risk of crossing paths with an individual capable of forming an obsessive attachment.

  I’d never been stalked by a patient, but I had been stalked by a man I helped defend. Ralston Bridges had been on trial for murdering a woman he’d met in a bar. He’d blown up at me when I suggested an insanity plea, banged his fist on the table and bellowed, “I’m not insane. No one calls me that and gets away with it.” Then he’d turned off the emotion like a faucet. And besides, he’d said with the supreme confidence of a man who’d gotten away with murder before and expected to do so again, he didn’t need anyone to convince the jury that he was crazy.

  He’d been right about that. After deliberating for six hours, a jury of his peers found Bridges not guilty. They bought his blue-eyed baby face and his lies. When he got out, he’d stalked my wife, Kate, and me, learned our routines so that he knew when she’d be home and I wouldn’t. He broke into the house and took his revenge, killing Kate.

  Now I could rattle off those details in a matter-of-fact way, hold them at a distance like a news story that had happened to someone else. But the feeling of devastation, of catastrophic loss could still ambush me when I least expected it.

  I was glad I’d been there last night for Emily. I took any kind of stalking threat very seriously—who knew if her stalker would be satisfied with merely scaring her to death?

  Our social worker and the music therapist arrived, followed shortly after by the physical therapist and the occupational therapist. Everyone took places at the table and I started morning rounds. The rhythm of this daily routine where we review the patients on the unit made last night’s trauma seem distant.

  After the meeting I caught up with Emily in the hall. She was standing close to Gloria, their arms linked.

  “You’re looking very chic today,” Emily told her. “Nice outfit.” In addition to the gold earrings, Gloria had on a white silk blouse instead of her usual crisp, button-down oxford shirt with a pair of dark belted trousers. “Got a date?” Emily asked, her voice teasing.

  Gloria gave a self-conscious laugh and looked around, as if to see who was listening. “Just meeting Rachel for lunch,” she said. Rachel was Gloria’s life partner. “It’s our fifth anniversary.”

  Good thing it wasn’t a job interview. Gloria could pretty much have had her pick of jobs at the Pearce, or any psychiatric hospital, for that matter. So much of the order and sanity on the unit depended on her.

  “No donut today?” Emily asked, reaching out and patting Kwan’s stomach as he squeezed past. “You’re looking very trim.”

  Kwan stopped, beaming. “Well, I’m glad someone around here notices,” he said, eyeing me.

  I had to admit, he was looking a bit less paunchy. It was only a month ago I’d been teasing him that he’d had to let his belt out a notch. And the vest that now buttoned comfortably—I remembered how it had strained across his middle.

  “Of course we notice,” I said. “We’re just polite.”

  “I’ve lost twelve pounds,” he said, glowing with pride.

  “No wonder you’ve been in such a pleasant mood.”

  “I’ve been a prince,” he said, and ambled off.

  Now it was just me and Emily in the hall. She pulled a pack of gum from her pocket and offered me a piece.

  “No thanks,” I said. I hated Juicy Fruit.

  “Helps me not smoke,” she said. “And boy, would I love a cigarette right now.” She slid the gum into her mouth.

  “You okay working with your patients?” I asked.

  “I think so. I’ve got Mr. Black later this morning. Otherwise, nothing I can’t handle.” Mr. Black was a clinic outpatient whom Emily had been treating since before she began her rotation with us.

  I took out my datebook and checked my appointments.

  “Maybe I can observe. I expect you’re still feeling the aftereffects from last night. Wouldn’t hurt to have a backup.”

  Emily realized that I wasn’t asking permission. As her clinical supervisor, it was my job to be sure she had the oversight she needed.

  “Actually, that would be great. Maybe you can tell me if he’s getting anywhere or if we�
��re both spinning our wheels.”

  I closed myself into the little room behind the nurse’s station, poured myself another cup of coffee, and tried Annie at home. No answer. Then I tried her office number. “Ferguson and Associates. Squires Investigations,” said the familiar recorded voice. I’d done many forensic evaluations for her business partner, attorney Chip Ferguson, assessing the psychiatric status of defendants. “If you know your party’s extension…” I punched it in.

  “Annie Squires.” Annie’s voice was clipped, as if she’d grabbed the phone on her way out the door.

  “You’re busy?”

  “Actually I was just heading out. I’m really sorry about last night.”

  “At least you called. Don’t worry about it. I never got to the restaurant myself.” I told Annie what had happened.

  “Did you see anyone?”

  “No, but it was dark. I waited with her for Triple-A.”

  “Stalking isn’t something to mess around with.”

  “That’s what I told her. I didn’t realize it had gotten so late until I saw your message.”

  “So that’s a weird coincidence. Each of us standing the other one up.”

  “Where were you?” I asked.

  “Family emergency. I’ll tell you about it. Right now I’ve got to run.”

  “Sounds like you’re pretty busy.”

  “Wouldn’t you know. After all those months of struggling to make the rent, business is booming.”

  “And tonight?”

  “Busy. How about tomorrow night? I’ll be hungry by then.”

  “I’m hungry now and we don’t even have to have dinner,” I said.

  “Hold that thought. How about dinner at my place? Eight o’clock?”

  “You’re going to cook?”

  “Did I say that? I was thinking Chinese take-out. Or pizza.”

  I didn’t care what we had to eat. “I’ll bring the beer,” I said. I’d been strictly a wine drinker before Annie educated me to the finer points of beer. I made a mental note to pick up some flowers, too.

  I hung up. I’d never given Annie flowers. I smiled, remembering the daisies she brought me after I mangled my ankle tackling a man who turned out to be a murderer. It was much too long after the daisies that we finally made love. That had been months ago, but I could still feel my groin tightening and a grin tugging at the edges of my mouth at the memory.

  After Kate was killed all my passions seemed to dry up. Food had no taste. I gave up Bordeaux for bourbon. I buried myself in work. It had taken nearly two years for me to start feeling again.

  I was still getting used to what I was feeling now. Lust. I savored it.

  3

  WHEN I got up to my office, there was a piece of notepaper stuck to the door. “Appointment with Mr. B at 11,” it said. It was signed “E.” The note had printed at the top: FREUDIAN SLIPS. Cute.

  A little past eleven, I entered the observation room and took a seat. Through one-way glass I could see a room the same size as the small one I was in. The room was anonymous but pleasant with its table lamps and eye candy impressionist landscape print. A vase of artificial irises and daffodils stood on the coffee table, and among the flowers was a microphone which connected to speakers on my side of the wall. We weren’t trying to hide the microphone, just make it inconspicuous. Mr. Black had given his permission to be observed back when he’d started treatment.

  I sat in the dark with the lights off and shades drawn. Emily was in the therapy room on the other side of the one-way glass. She sat in an armchair, legs crossed, light streaming in through the window behind her.

  Facing her was Mr. Black. The middle-aged man with a receding hairline and a face and stomach that had gone to paunch was scribbling in a notebook he had balanced across his lap.

  “You know, you won’t be able to do that if you go ahead with the operation,” she said.

  He lifted the pen and looked at his arm. “I’ll learn to write with the other hand.”

  “What are you writing?”

  “Just a note to remind myself of a bunch of things I need to do—find my passport, get a Spanish phrase book.” He closed the notebook. “I’m waiting to hear when they can take me. Sometimes they get a cancellation and you’ve got to get down there right away.” I suspected they had quite a few last-minute cancellations—patients who fantasized about having a limb amputated and then, when the moment of truth came, backed out. “This is going to save my life.”

  “It’s a very big step.”

  “Don’t you think I know that? It’s not like it’s a sudden decision,” he said, setting the notebook down alongside his chair. “It’s like I said, this is about becoming whole, not becoming disabled.” He looked at his arm as if it were a piece of meat past its expiration date. “I feel like I’ve got this…this alien object attached to me.”

  “And what if something happens and the operation falls through?”

  He gave a sly smile. “Don’t worry. I won’t lie down on a railroad track.”

  It was a brutal thought, but I remembered reading about a man who’d been obsessed with amputating his legs. Unable to find a doctor to do the job, he’d lain on a railroad track and let the train do the job. Even survived to tell about it.

  Though an obsession with limb amputation was rare, the syndrome had a name—apotemnophilia. The phrase had been coined by an expert in sexuality at Johns Hopkins. Apotemnophilia victims, he wrote, wanted to cut off their limbs so they could have better sex. The suffix philia grouped it with the psychosexual disorders that the average person thinks of as perversions. Emily and I had discussed whether this diagnosis fit Mr. Black. To both of us, the way he talked about his desire for amputation seemed more about being stuck in the wrong body—body dysmorphia—than about sexual desire.

  “And how do you think things will be different after the operation?” Emily asked.

  “Much better. Infinitely. With this”—he stretched out a perfectly normal-looking arm—“I know how odd I look.” He crossed his other arm over the one he despised.

  “So you think your arm makes you look deformed?”

  “It doesn’t belong there.”

  “Um-hmm.”

  “I don’t feel right, and it’s all I think about. It’s cost me my marriage. My job.”

  “Your boss fired you because of your arm?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what he said?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Some mumbo-jumbo about inadequate job skills. I didn’t swallow it for a minute.”

  “Did he offer you job training?”

  He shrugged. “It wasn’t about that. I could’ve learned the goddamned computer shit. It was about this, not that.”

  “But they’d promoted you before.”

  “Out of pity. That’s all it was. They felt sorry for me so they gave me the promotion. But I know the truth. No one can stand to look at me. I’ve never had a healthy relationship with anyone. It’s why my wife left me. How could she make love to someone as deformed as I am? Not when I’ve got this thing that doesn’t belong to me. I get such an overwhelming sense of despair sometimes.” He glanced quickly up at Emily, then back down. “I don’t want to die, but there are times I don’t want to keep living in a body that doesn’t feel like my own.”

  “I’m sorry—” Emily started.

  “I don’t need your pity,” he said, spitting out the words. “I just need to fix what’s wrong with me. It’s so simple. Why is it such a big deal?”

  “Think about what it’s going to mean,” Emily said. “You cut off your arm, you won’t be able to write, shake hands.”

  He blinked at her, as if unsure how to respond. Then he seemed to stare right at me with a look of loathing. I realized he was looking at himself in the one-way glass.

  “If I had a great big nose, no one would think twice if I got a nose job. And what about all those Hollywood actors who get half their body fa
t suctioned away? My brother rubs Rogaine into his scalp every day and no one tells him he’s nuts.”

  “Those are different, and I think you know that.”

  “My brother actually suggested maybe what I needed instead of an amputation was a new car. After his divorce he got himself a Hummer.” Mr. Black rolled his head around so the bones in his neck cracked. “You drive a red Miata. Isn’t that about the same thing?”

  Emily opened her mouth. She seemed at a loss for words. Course correction…I tried to telegraph the thought. Therapy is about the patient, not the doctor. This was classic resistance. Mr. Black was using this remark to shift the focus onto the therapist. The next thought wouldn’t have occurred to me if Emily hadn’t been stalked: How the hell did Mr. Black know she drove a red Miata?

  “Are you sure this is what you want? You won’t be able to change your mind later.”

  “I know what I want. I’ve known it ever since I was seven. I still remember the first time I saw a man who had one arm. It was like a light went on in my head.”

  “You were seven years old.”

  “That’s when I realized why everyone was staring at me. It was my arm. It didn’t belong there, and they could all see it just as clearly as I could. Now I can’t wait until it’s fixed and I can get on with my life. Get started with my life.”

  “Did you tell your parents about this?” Emily asked. “Or a teacher?”

  “Of course not. It would only make them stare more.” There was a pause. “Like you’re doing now.”

  Emily recrossed her legs. “I’m just trying to understand what makes you hate it so much.”

  Mr. Black leaned forward. Now he was staring at Emily’s legs. “It’s easy for you to say. You have a beautiful body.”

  She shifted her notebook so it covered some of the exposed knee.

  Mr. Black sat back. “One thing that has changed. At least now I know I’m not alone.”

  He talked about the people he’d met on the Internet, men and women who wanted to have parts of themselves amputated. One man had already had a leg removed and claimed he felt reborn, at peace for the first time. A woman had had four fingers from one hand removed and was waiting for surgery on her other hand.