Unhinged

by Barbra Leslie

  Dave was asleep in a chair next to my bed. Someone had tucked a blanket right up to his chin.

  “Wouldn’t leave your side,” the nurse said, and winked again. I was starting to think she had a tic. “Aren’t you the lucky one.” She said the neurologist would be in within the hour to talk to me, and I’d probably be released. She asked about my pain level, and I hesitated.

  “I need something,” I answered honestly, “but maybe not as strong as what I was given last night.” She said something about Percocet, and started to leave the room.

  “Nurse,” I said, “can I ask you a quick favor please?” I pushed the blankets off me. “I need to see the pattern of the wounds on my lower back.” She hesitated. “Can you take a picture for me?” I looked around for my phone, then remembered that it was in my trouser pockets. The vomit-stained trousers that Angie the stripper had bagged up with my boots. My wallet and phone had been in the pocket, and I know I didn’t think to look for it when the paramedics picked me up.

  And my keys. My keys had been in my hand when I walked into the alley. Because of the security at the bakery, nobody could get in there with just keys, but I wondered if my Honda was still behind the club. I sighed.

  The nurse pulled a phone out of her uniform pocket, and helped me turn over. A lightning bolt of pain shot down my leg, and I hissed through my teeth.

  “Hang in there,” she said. She took a couple of shots, then pocketed the phone before I could see the pictures. She readjusted my hospital gown, and left me on my side when I indicated I didn’t want to move again. “I’m going to see about getting you some meds, and when I come back, give me his number,” she nodded to the sleeping Dave, “and I’ll text them.” She lowered her voice. “We’re not supposed to have our phones on the ward,” she said. “I can’t let you hang onto it, but I’ll send them.”

  “Do you remember the number?” Dave said, his eyes still closed. I nearly jumped out of my skin, which sent another bolt of pain down my leg.

  “Fuck. Me.” I was not going to be good at this chronic pain thing if that’s what I was going to experience. I’ve had far more than my fair share of injuries, some of them pretty major. But I healed. This nerve pain already seemed like a very different beast.

  “I don’t think you’re in any shape for that right now, darling,” Dave said. He pushed his blanket down and leaned forward, stroked my hair. I rattled off his phone number, which was burned into my brain, like his emergency number I had tattooed into a mandala on my inner thigh more than a year and a half earlier.

  Twenty minutes later, the pain meds the nurse had brought me had started to kick in, and Dave and I were looking at the picture of my lower back that she had texted to him.

  “I am a wreck,” I said. My lower back and butt were starting to develop a lovely shade of black, punctuated by what looked, on Dave’s phone at least, like deep red welts. Two of them were covered in bandages.

  “Wow,” he said. “You sure are accident-prone, Cleary.”

  “Fuck off,” I said happily. Pain medication. Happy days. “I just seem to get under people’s skin a lot.”

  “You say tomato.”

  I wanted to talk to the boys, but it was too early in the morning. Those kids were going to have a rude awakening when school started. That’s unless Fred was planning on spiriting them away to southern California again.

  Why couldn’t life just be simple? I no sooner had Dave back – at least, I hoped I had him back and he wasn’t just being kind to the crippled lady in the hospital – when Fred decides to turn into an asshole. I hoped Darren had misheard, or it had just been idle pie-in-the-sky talk.

  “I want to go home,” I said.

  “Soon,” Dave said.

  “I want to soak in a hot tub.”

  “That can be arranged.”

  “I may need help with the getting in and out part,” I said.

  “I’m very amenable to that,” he said.

  “Then I want to hug the boys, following which I plan to punch Fred in his stupid head.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “And we need to get a good lawyer if this crap is all true.”

  “We will.”

  “And I need to talk to Belliveau,” I said. “I need to tell him everything, from soup to nuts. I’m leaving this Helen of Troy crap to him now.” I thought of Ann, draped over some man’s shoulder in an alley, and shook my head to get rid of the image. I couldn’t do all of this. I couldn’t.

  “Sounds like a very wise plan.”

  “I’m not a cop, you know,” I said.

  “And thank God for that.”

  “Belliveau, the Toronto police, they can find Ann and Kelly and Zuzi and figure out what’s going on there. It was a distraction, and sort of a favor for Fred. A way to feel useful.”

  “I know.”

  “Between Fuckface Smith and now Fuckface Fred, we’ve got our hands full.”

  “Agreed.”

  “I keep saying ‘we’.”

  “I noticed that,” he said.

  “Does it bother you?”

  “I think I kinda like it,” he said.

  “I won’t walk out on you again,” I said. I looked at his face, his eyes. “I promise.”

  “Okay, Danny,” he said. His eyes were shiny. He kissed my forehead. “Promise me again in a week,” he said. “When you’re not high. And then maybe a week after that.”

  “I’m amenable to that,” I said.

  “Knock, knock,” somebody said. A new doctor walked in, big smile on his face, wheeling in some equipment, followed by two nurses. “I’m Dr. Janovic, and I’ll be your neurologist today. Howzabout we get this party started,” he said.

  It was a very good thing that I was happy, because there’s nothing I hate worse than a perky neurologist.

  TWENTY-ONE

  One corticosteroid injection later, my herniated disc, pinched sciatic nerve, and I made our way home, aided by Dave, crutches, and a fistful of pain pills.

  Most of the household was downstairs in the gym waiting for me when I came in. There were balloons. There was music. Music I actually liked, as opposed to the boys’ top forty shit. I really hoped there was cake.

  And I really regretted letting Rosen talk me out of having an elevator installed when we were planning the layout of the space.

  “You will be sleeping in my room, Danny.” The boys, of course, hooted, and Rosen went red. “And I will sleep upstairs.”

  Jonas came over and had a bear-hug look in his eye but Dave stopped him. “Give her a mental hug, man,” Dave said. “In her current state, she’s liable to fall over, and we’ll have to go back to the hospital all over again.”

  “I hear you,” Jonas said. “Danny, I used to be a massage therapist in a different life. After you get some rest I’m going to give you a treatment.” God, it was good to see him.

  “First a vegan chef, and now a massage therapist. You’re a renaissance man, Jonas.” I wasn’t sure how I felt about Jonas – who was the best-looking man I’d ever seen in person – massaging my naked, bruised, and battered body. But Dr. Janovic, or Dr. Jay, as he insisted on being called, had said that massage would be a good thing. As long as it was from a licensed professional.

  “I’ve missed you,” I said. “Why don’t you just move in here with us? It’s ridiculous that we have to do without you.”

  “You may miss him, but I need him,” Dave said. “But maybe he’ll be visiting more often.” I could see the boys giving each other a look and the fist bump thing they’d started doing. So the fact that Dave and I were back together – were we back together? – was becoming clear to everybody.

  Dave settled me into Rosen’s room, which had been equipped with fresh flowers and a tray next to the bed with a carafe of ice water and a glass, and, the pièce de résistance, an actual bell on it.

  “Oh, this was a very bad idea,” I said. Marta was laughing and kissing the top of my head over and over and saying something in Spanish. She tende
d to forget to speak English when she was emotional. “I will be summoning all of you night and day to attend to my every need.”

  Mama Estela was standing at the foot of the bed. She exhaled loudly and impatiently – her sighs were more expressive than most people’s vocabulary – but actually patted my foot.

  “Stupid girl,” she said, but nicely. Everybody was silent for a minute, as it was among the first English words we’d ever heard from her, and definitely the first time she’d been anything approaching nice to me.

  “I love you too, Mama,” I said. She rolled her eyes heavenward, said what I presumed were a few choice words in her rapid-fire Spanish, and left the room.

  Yup. She was definitely cut from the same cloth as the Clearys.

  Half the household was crowded into Rosen’s room. Everybody was talking and laughing, and somebody had actually opened a bottle of champagne. I should get duct-taped in alleys more often. Come to think of it, this kind of thing was not unknown to happen to me, but I didn’t usually get this kind of reception afterward.

  Matty was sitting on the edge of the bed and looking at the abrasions on my cheek and forehead. The couple of stitches I’d received on my cheek were bandaged, but I had what looked like road rash covering most of my forehead from lying face-first in the alley.

  “Cool,” he said. “But, Auntie, I don’t think you should have a job anymore.”

  “I second that emotion,” Darren said. “Your aunt is a wonderful person, the cream of the crop, but I’m starting to think that she shouldn’t be allowed out on her own without a minder.” I flipped him the bird, which of course made the boys laugh like idiots. Especially Eddie, who was still getting used to our Cleary humor, as his mother was giving him more leeway to spend time around the grown-ups without her present. She’d even given him an inch of champagne in a flute.

  Luke’s phone tinged. He looked at it and grinned, and slipped out of the room.

  “Moira?” I said.

  “You’ll meet her later,” Matty said. “She’s okay. She’s nice.”

  “High praise,” I said to Matty. “So you approve?”

  “I think he’s too young to be tied down,” Matt said seriously. Dave and Darren both looked at the floor, trying to hide smiles. “But he really likes her. She’s an older woman.”

  “She is?” I said. I looked at my brother. “How much older?”

  “She’s going to be fourteen in December,” Darren said. Luke and Matty would be thirteen in October. I didn’t suppose ten months was going to corrupt him, but parental permission or not, I wasn’t keen on any more sleepovers, even with this Moira girl sleeping on Marta’s floor.

  “Where’s Fred?” I said to Matt.

  “Dunno,” he said. He had gently taken hold of my right hand, which the nurse had lightly re-bandaged from my first night at Helen of Troy. I could tell he wanted to take the bandage off to see how it was healing, so I nodded at him to go ahead. “He’s gone somewhere with Cliff.”

  “Wow, they’re spending a lot of time together,” I said. “Do you guys like him?”

  “He’s alright.” Matt was much more interested in looking at my injuries.

  “Tell you what,” Darren said. “I’m going to order in a bunch of food for everybody, and then those of us who didn’t get much sleep last night can have a nice long nap. Especially you,” he said to me. “You need to heal.”

  “Pizza, please,” I said. “With anchovies,” Matty and I said at the same time, then licked our thumbs and touched them together. “Then, yeah, I could use some sleep. And you too,” I said to Dave.

  “We’ll sit and talk tonight,” he said. Darren nodded, and rubbed his hand over his face. He looked so tired. I did forget, sometimes, how much I’d put him through. I needed to find a balance between doing what I needed to do to feel useful, and putting myself in situations where I wound up in hospital beds.

  “Okay, everybody,” I said. I tried to shift my weight on the bed. I thought maybe the pain was lessening somewhat, but that could have been the opiates. “I’ve got to close my eyes for a few minutes. Wake me when the pizza comes.” Marta started shooing the boys out, and I got my head down. Dave stayed where he was, and stretched out next to me. “I mean it, Darren. I’m starving.”

  After a few minutes of fidgeting, I found a spot with my head resting on Dave’s shoulder. I breathed deeply, and slept.

  * * *

  When I woke up, it was dark out. I’d slept all day, well into the evening.

  Dave was gone, and Darren was sitting in the easy chair in the corner of Rosen’s room, staring into space.

  “If you didn’t save me any pizza, you’re a dead man,” I said. I looked around the room for a clock.

  “Paul Belliveau was here,” he said. He squeezed his hands together. He wasn’t looking at me. “This morning, they found the body of Kelly Pankhurst washed up by the Humber River. Her mother reported her missing a few days ago. She hadn’t answered her phone or turned up for her volunteer shift at The Humane Society. Her cause of death is unknown until the postmortem.” He cleared his throat. “This afternoon, the body of Garrett Jones was found by his ten-year-old daughter when the sitter brought her back from the movies. He’d hanged himself.”

  There was a pounding in my ears. “His daughter,” I think I said. Anne of Green Gables girl, who was so happy to come to Canada. And Kelly, who’d wanted to be my friend.

  I tried to sit up, but the room was twirling, and there was carbonation in my brain. I shouted something, maybe the word “no”, and then I tried to lean my head over the side so I wouldn’t throw up on Rosen’s bed.

  Then Dave was there, and Darren was cleaning me up, but I screamed at them to go, to get away from me, to leave. I kept screaming and screaming, but I don’t think there were any words after that. I think Darren was telling me that I was scaring the boys, and Dave was trying to hold me, to hold my body still, but something in me had broken.

  After a time, Mama Estela came in, moved Dave out of the way, and sat down on the bed next to me. She shoved a pill in my mouth and, with surprising strength, held my mouth and nose shut until I swallowed it.

  I remember moving onto my side facing the wall and welcoming the pain from my back and leg. I think I started to try to hurt myself then, to tear at my hair, but they all held me – Dave, Darren and Mama E. – and eventually the pill I’d swallowed started licking at my brain.

  Eventually, mercifully, I faded to black.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I’d lived through the murder of my twin sister and held my husband as he died, bloody, in my arms. I’d killed people. I’d chopped off the hand of a psychopathic cop who was bleeding to death after I’d stabbed her in both femoral arteries, because in that moment I believed she deserved it.

  I’d been left for dead, and I’d tried to die.

  But it took the deaths of two relative strangers to completely break me.

  * * *

  The days after I’d learned of the deaths of Kelly Pankhurst and Garrett Jones dragged by in some hellish blur. I was afraid to open my mouth, afraid to say anything to anyone, because I didn’t want to start screaming again. And I can’t even say that it was because I was worried about my nephews, about scaring them. I knew they were being looked after. It was because I was sure that if I couldn’t stop screaming, my loved ones would have been forced, eventually, to take me into hospital. And somewhere in my very sick and broken brain, I had decided that once I got taken to a hospital, I’d never get out. I’d be strapped down. Doctors would try to fix me. And at some point some well-meaning medical professional would ask me to try to talk rationally about everything I’d been through, try to make me face who I was.

  I knew who I was. I was a killer. I had killed, and I had caused others to be killed, just by my very existence.

  I had two choices: escape by drugs, or escape by death.

  I thought that the people under my roof would be safe for a little while, because there were so many of t
hem, and they were armed and ready. Staying right where I was until I was strong enough to leave – alone – was my only option, unless I wanted to eventually cause more mayhem and death.

  So I opened my mouth and swallowed the pain pills and whatever sedatives they were giving me. That was one escape. I didn’t fight Dave when he held me, but I didn’t hear whatever soothing words he whispered to me. I just let myself drift into nothingness. If anyone asked me anything or tried to engage me, I put my hands over my ears and turned away. I allowed myself to be helped to the bathroom, and let Mama Estela help me bathe.

  Oddly, she was the person whose presence I minded least in that time. She would sit next to the bed on one of her hard dining-room chairs and speak to me in Spanish, or read to me from one of her magazines. Sometimes she’d poke me to look at one of the pictures – she was a big fan of People magazine in Spanish – and I would dutifully obey. She made me drink some kind of ginger tea, as though I had a stomach upset, and held the cup while I sipped. She fed me from a spoon; bland, invalid food, and I ate like a good child. She guarded my room like a warden, allowing only two people in at a time, and not allowing the twins in at all. Jonas came in and gave me a massage, and he didn’t talk to me. It hurt, but felt better after. Dave and Jonas stretched my hip and manipulated my body into positions that were supposed to help me heal, and I let them.

  But when someone said something light-hearted, or tried to act normal in my presence, it was like a slight buzzing would start in my brain, and I’d have to hide my head under the duvet.

  I’d blocked all feelings of love, for anyone. For the first time in my life, I felt nothing for my little brother. He was just another person in the house. Dave might as well have been a stranger. Take my pills, sleep, feel nothing, say nothing, and perhaps I would eventually just disappear.

  Darren brought in his laptop. I heard him mention Dr. Singh, and I shook my head.