Bound by Suggestion

by L.L. Bartlett

  No more. Not after today. Not ever again.

  I opened my mouth to give my well-rehearsed exit speech on why I’d have to leave—and wouldn’t return—but Krista interrupted.

  “We talked about goals last time,” she reminded us, sitting between Grace and me as moderator.

  Hunched in her wheelchair, Grace looked more gargoyle than childlike. She glared at me, her face twisted in an angry scowl, a spoiled brat coiled on the verge of a super temper tantrum.

  “Have you eaten in the dining room since our last session?” Krista asked Grace.

  Grace tore her gaze from my face. Our emotions were so tangled I wasn’t sure how much of the resentment I felt was hers or my own.

  “I went down there,” she said, “but . . . there were so many strangers, I went back to my room and ate Twinkies.”

  “You promised you’d try. You know you have to try harder if you want to reach your goal of independence.”

  “I did try. Maybe you can make yourself do scary things every day of your life, but I can’t. You’re so goddamn gorgeous you can’t know what it’s like to be a toad. People turn away when they see me.”

  “You’re just making excuses,” Krista said. Was it pique that colored her voice?

  “You’re always pushing me to do things I know I can’t do. I feel worse since I’ve been coming here. Worse than right after the ra—the ra—” Grace couldn’t say the word and choked back a sob. “Can’t you just give me pills that’ll make me feel better—make it all go away?”

  She kept up the tirade, her voice rising, a wave of almost overpowering emotions—embarrassment, frustration, and anger—spewing over me, taking my breath away, gagging me.

  “Stop—” I cried, holding a hand out. “Krista, I can’t do this anymore. It’s too fucking painful!”

  Grace’s eyes filled with tears and she turned on me. “Everybody quits on me. Nobody wants to help me. You’re just like all the rest!”

  Her battering anger flattened me against the back of the chair, sucking the air from my lungs. She started to cry and a ragged sob constricted my throat, choking me.

  “That’s enough,” Krista cried. “Wildebeest!”

  Like a switch was thrown, everything went black and I fell back in my chair, my head hanging, body limp. Grace, too, was suddenly silenced, and stopped broadcasting her parade of corrosive emotions. The sudden cessation left me tingling with numbness.

  Krista’s heels tapped across the hardwood floor. I heard the jangle of keys on a ring, and the sound of a bolt being thrown. Something heavy rumbled across the floor. The pocket doors to the locked room?

  The footfalls approached, stopped in front of me. Krista snapped her fingers. “Sight.”

  I opened my eyes and could see once again, but the heaviness in my limbs remained, the anchor weight on my will still dragging me down.

  “Carry her to the room,” Krista said.

  I wrenched myself to my feet, stepped over to Grace and lifted her from the wheelchair, following Krista to the room.

  I knew that place, had been there before.

  “On the mattress,” Krista directed, pointing.

  I laid Grace down and sat beside her, lowered my gaze to the polished oak floor, feeling like a scolded child awaiting punishment.

  Déjà vu.

  Please, God, don’t let it happen again.

  Krista stood before a metal cart, examined the contents, then picked up a plastic syringe and a vial. She drew the liquid in and then flicked the cylinder, forcing the air bubbles out.

  I looked away.

  Not again, my mind screamed.

  Krista turned. “Give me your arm.”

  I couldn’t resist her command, and offered her the right one. She tied rubber tubing around my bicep, waited for a vein to rise, then stabbed me with the needle. I winced, looked up into her cold eyes. She didn’t seem to see me.

  Krista released the rubber tubing, let my arm drop, and then went back to the cart and prepared another syringe.

  I watched as she performed the same ritual on Grace.

  “Why?” I breathed. “Why are you doing this?”

  “You’re not supposed to talk.” She pushed me back against the mattress.

  My eyes fell back in my head and the darkness was absolute once more, a dizzying vortex sucking me in. She captured my wrists, tying them down. Whatever was in that shot had wasted me. I couldn’t lift my arms, let alone resist.

  She fumbled at my waist, unbuckling my belt, unfastened the button and jerked with the zipper of my jeans. My heart slammed against my sternum. I wanted to cry out, tell her to stop, but my tongue wouldn’t move, couldn’t form the words.

  “You want to feel better, Grace? You want to make a man pay for what you’ve been through? Then take him—he’s all yours now.”

  “I’m almost ready,” Brenda called from the master bathroom.

  Richard looked at his watch. That meant she might appear in five minutes—if he was lucky.

  “I’ll wait for you downstairs,” he said. Not that he was in a hurry to go dress shopping. Before she’d broken it off with Jeff, Maggie used to be available for that boring chore. But Brenda said she needed something with a little more room at the waist for the gala on Saturday night, and what else did he have to do today anyway?

  Richard was almost out the bedroom door when the phone rang.

  “Will you get that?” Brenda called.

  He crossed the carpet and picked up the bedside phone. “Hello.”

  “Dr. Dick.” Wes Timberly had managed an added shot of acid on the slur.

  Richard sighed. “How can I help you, Wes?”

  “You might consider protocol in your dealings with the Hospital’s Foundation. I am the capital campaign chair. In future, all checks you collect should be given to me to give to Mona.”

  The future? Come Saturday their situations would be reversed and Richard would be the campaign chair. No need to rub that in. And he still might have to work with Wes in the foreseeable future.

  “I assume you’re talking about the donations I picked up from Dr. Zimmer’s retirement party,” Richard said.

  “That, and all others.”

  “Does it really matter, Wes? The goal is to raise money for a worthy cause.”

  Silence. Finally, “Yes, it matters.”

  Of course it did—to Timberly. He wanted to take credit for all the fund raising.

  “If you’ll review our charter, page twelve, paragraph seven, addendum B, you’ll note—”

  Wes Timberly gave new meaning to the phrase ‘anal retentive.’ Richard tuned out the rest of the self-serving tirade. After all, he hadn’t planned on soliciting funds in the next few days anyway. But Wes’s call had at least made him aware of the offending paragraph, giving him the first action item of his chairmanship—to delete it from the charter.

  Timberly’s oration wound down.

  “I appreciate your call, Wes. I certainly want to be aware of all the Foundation’s rules and regulations. And I’ll get out my copy of the charter and study it this afternoon. I obviously have a lot to learn.”

  Stony silence followed.

  “I don’t appreciate your patronizing attitude. And I intend to report it to Mona.”

  “As you wish.” It wouldn’t do to laugh out loud.

  The phone clicked in Richard’s ear.

  Brenda came out of the bathroom. “Who was that?”

  Richard replaced the receiver. “My nemesis.”

  She laughed. “Wes Timberly? What did he want?”

  “To annoy me.”

  “Did he succeed?”

  “Not really. Are you ready to go?”

  “Just let me change my earrings.” Brenda headed for her vanity table.

  Richard glanced at his watch again. That would add another five minutes.

  He told her about the conversation, making light of it as she tried on, and decided against, at least three different pairs of earrings.

 
; “You’d better take him seriously,” Brenda said. “That man gives off bad vibes.”

  “I may not feel it like you and Jeff do, but I believe it.” He gazed at Brenda’s reflection in the vanity mirror, watched as she applied a fresh coat of lipstick. “Let’s forget about Wes for the rest of the day. No, the week. I won’t have to deal with him until at least Saturday night.”

  “Unless he calls you at home again.” She blotted her lips, mischief playing at the corners of her eyes.

  “You’ll be a good girl on Saturday night. Right?”

  “You make me sound like a ten-year old.”

  “Just don’t tease Wes like you did at the cocktail party the other night. There’s going to be an adjustment period and I want it to go smoothly. Do it for Jeff’s sake, if not mine.”

  Her smile faded. “That was uncalled for.” Brenda threw the tissue into the wastebasket with unnecessary force.

  “Look, I’m sorry. Waiting for Wes to strike is getting to me. That’s all.”

  Brenda exhaled a long breath and looked up at him. “All right. I’ll be good. So good, you won’t be able to stand me.” She rose from her chair, grabbed her purse from the dresser and headed for the door.

  The dress would cost a lot more now. And there’d be matching shoes, a purse and jewelry, too. He didn’t care about the money—hell, she’d probably pay for it herself anyway.

  Richard followed Brenda out the door and down the stairs.

  It’s hormones, he told himself, pure biology that had her on edge.

  Now what was his excuse?

  My dashboard clock read 2:45—afternoon, I guessed, since it wasn’t dark. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been sitting in my car. The driver’s window was down, and cool air enveloped me. Lake Erie sat before me, but I wasn’t sure where I was or how I’d gotten there. The parking area had been abandoned years before, as evidenced by the cracked asphalt and the weeds growing through it.

  My gaze wandered from the dash, fell further until I saw a brown stain on the front of my shirt. I pulled at the fabric, wincing as newly formed scabs were yanked from my skin. I opened the top button. Three fresh welts oozed blood.

  What the hell?

  I pressed the fabric back down. I needed a band-aid, and there weren’t any in the car.

  Home, I thought. I should go home.

  For a moment, I wasn’t sure where home was.

  I started the car, pulled out of the lot and followed the empty access road until I found the main thoroughfare. Nothing looked familiar, but I figured if I kept heading east I’d eventually find a street I knew.

  I did.

  Driving comforted me, kept me from thinking too much about the hole in my day. There’d been too many of those lately. Well, no more.

  Yet my business with Grace wasn’t finished either. I had to talk to her—without Krista around. There were things she could tell me. Maybe that we could discover together. She didn’t need Krista as much as Krista needed her. I don’t know how I knew that, but I felt it in my bones. And whatever Krista was doing to fuck with her head—and mine—it wasn’t doing either of us any good.

  Why hadn’t I listened to my inner voice? The one that told me that psychiatry was more an ego trip for the therapist than help for the patient. Maybe other people benefited from the experience. I hadn’t, and neither, I felt sure, had Grace. At least not with Krista. There had to be therapists who truly helped their patients. But Krista was bad news, and I still didn’t understand how or why. And because of Richard, I was obligated to make nice to her until at least Saturday. After that, the hell with her.

  A swell of loneliness nearly swamped all my senses. A red light saved me, giving me time to rein-in the roller-coaster sensations peaking and ebbing through me.

  My God, how I missed—wanted—Maggie. She’d made her choice and it wasn’t me. As long as it took, I had to finally accept it.

  I couldn’t ask Brenda for comfort, either. I was going to have to straighten up and fly right. Damn those old clichés were trite, but that’s the way I felt. I needed some old-fashioned John Wayne toughness. I needed to hang onto any kind of strength I could muster . . . but as fast as I resolved to do it, the conviction receded like a wave at low tide.

  Stop being such a goddamn wimp.

  I hit the gas again. I had to think, not feel.

  Grace was the focal point of all the crap in my life. Krista had thrust me into the cesspool of that poor girl’s—I couldn’t think of her as a woman—life, and I had to save myself from drowning. But I had to find a way to help Grace, too. But how?

  Think!

  Nothing came to me. But I owed Grace something. A big-time obligation, although I wasn’t sure where that feeling came from, either.

  I knew her last name now: Vanderstein, daughter of who—William? Krista had said the name with reverence. She was new to the Buffalo area, someone had to have filled her in on the man. Grace’s guardian, no doubt. Having missed out on eighteen years of local history had its drawbacks. Sam would know. Since I was meeting him for lunch the next day, I’d ask him then. It could wait another day.

  Another day. Another eternity. Another goddamn awful misery that passed for life.

  The black hole of eternity beckoned me again.

  Crash the car—plunge it in water!

  I switched on the radio, punched the button for the classic rock station. The Stones, belting out an oldie.

  But no matter how much I tried, there was just no satisfaction.

  Chapter 12

  Marcel’s Parisian more than fulfilled Sam Nielsen’s criteria for a restaurant with linen napkins. Velvet upholstered chairs, cut glass chandeliers, and a tuxedo-clad Maitre d’ with an attitude accompanied the rest of the swank fixtures.

  Paying for this lunch would put me in hock for a month.

  Sam was already seated when I arrived. Before him sat a bottle of what was no doubt vintage wine.

  “I’m glad you wore a tie,” Sam said in greeting. “Although they would have loaned you one.”

  “I’m not entirely without class.” I took the chair opposite him, picked up the folded napkin from my place setting, and spread it across my lap.

  A waiter appeared as if from nowhere. “Shall I pour now, sir?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Sam said, sounding a good deal more genteel than he did in his bullpen office at The Buffalo News.

  The waiter allowed Sam to sample the wine before pouring me a glass, too. Sam nodded his approval and picked up his menu.

  “I thought you wanted a martini?” I said.

  Sam frowned, shaking his head ever so slightly. “I have to go back to work later. I was thinking about the stuffed grouse. How about you?”

  “A burger and fries sounds good to me. I do, after all, have plebeian tastes.”

  Sam’s eyes crinkled over the leather folder that housed the menu, with its embossed type on ivory linen stock. “Order like cost is no object. That’s what I’m doing.”

  Perusing the menu made me wince. No entree cost less than twenty-five dollars—everything else was a la carte. “I think I’ve lost my appetite.”

  Sam set his menu aside, reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, brought out a parchment paper and handed it to me: A gift certificate in the amount of one hundred dollars. “I was going to let you sweat it out, but you don’t look so hot. In fact, it looks like you could use a good meal.”

  “I eat on a regular basis,” I said, handing the paper back to him.

  He signaled the waiter and ordered for both of us: oysters, grouse, and asparagus.

  “You can pay the tip. So, how did you use the info I gave you last week?”

  I sipped my wine. “I didn’t. How could I? It was all good. I don’t suppose you’ve come up with anything else on Doug Mallon in the meantime.”

  “I never dug any deeper,” Sam admitted. He took a sip from his own glass and smiled. “Nice stuff, huh?”

  “I’m a bourbon man, myself. But, it’s tolerabl
e.”

  Maggie would have loved it. I studied the label and wondered about sending her a bottle anonymously. But then, why spend the bucks if I wasn’t going to get the credit?

  The oysters arrived, on the half shell, and were excellent. I hadn’t had them in years.

  Through the appetizers, we chatted amiably about sports, the weather, and the tires on Sam’s SUV. Halfway through the entrée I remembered what I’d really wanted to ask him.

  “Have you ever heard of William Vanderstein?” I asked.

  Sam cut a bite-sized piece of asparagus. “The senator?”

  I stopped chewing as a cold wave enveloped me.

  Grace’s father had important political connections?

  Jesus.

  “He was killed a few years back—head on by a drunk driver,” Sam continued. “The accident also crippled his daughter, as I recall.”

  I swallowed, my fists clenching under the table. “Disabled is the politically correct term.”

  “Do you know her?” Sam asked, surprised.

  “I’ve met her. We go to the same doctor.”

  “Small world.” Sam took another fork full of grouse.

  “Senator Vanderstein . . . was he a bigwig?”

  “That head injury of yours must’ve been a dozy if you don’t remember the man. Head of the Senate Ethics Committee for four years. A big law-and-order, family-values guy.”

  The fork fell from my grasp, making a muffled clatter on the deep-pile carpet. In seconds, the waiter brought me another. My heart pounded. The scratches on my chest throbbed.

  “Did you ever interview him?”

  Sam shook his head. “Politics was never my beat. If you want to look at our files, it’ll cost you another lunch.”

  “Burger King.” I pushed my plate away, too rattled to eat any more. Instead, I gulped my wine.

  “Are you okay?” Sam asked. “Your face has gone kind of pale.”

  I forced a smile. “I’m fine. Uh . . . when?”

  He looked puzzled.

  “When can I look at the files?” I clarified.

  “How about tomorrow?”

  I nodded, taking another mouth full of wine.

  “Any time after one,” Sam said, and took his last bite of grouse.