Ashes, Ashes

by Charles Atkins

  ‘I read that,’ she said. ‘But we can’t see it play out with Richard Glash. Have you ever seen his drawings and paintings?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said softly.

  ‘I Googled his name. I found sketches and drawings of his for sale, some on eBay some in galleries. They’re very hot.’

  ‘When he was a child—’ Houssman stopped in mid-sentence.

  ‘What were you going to say?’

  ‘Not important. Barrett, I’ve got to get going. By all means send me the tape. I’ll see if there’s anything in it that will help. But whatever you do, whatever it takes, do not let them transfer Richard Glash to Croton.’ He hung up abruptly.

  ‘George? What the hell was that?’ She was still holding the warm receiver. It wasn’t like him; it made her anxious. She hit the intercom. ‘Marla?’

  ‘Yes, Dr Conyors?’

  It was a slight annoyance that despite having told Marla – for the past four years – that it was OK to use her first name, she was still Dr Conyors. ‘I’m going to need three sets of the Richard Glash interview tapes. Please get them copied ASAP and have a courier get a set to Dr Houssman.’

  ‘I’ll get right on it … and Dr Conyors?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Your sister and Detective Hobbs are getting out of the elevator.’

  ‘Great,’ she said, feeling a dull ache in her gut, ‘send them in.’ She hung up the phone, and put her head in her hands. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’

  The door opened; she didn’t want to look up.

  Justine Conyors, with her long dark hair piled on her head and fixed in place with rhinestone barrettes in the shape of butterflies, took one look at her sister and dryly commented, ‘I guess none of my Rosemary jokes today.’

  ‘Huh?’ Barrett looked up at her beautiful younger sister in a summery lilac linen dress and sandals, and Ed Hobbs in jeans and a light-blue button-down shirt. Recent burn scars covered the lower right half of his face, but he was still handsome as ever in a tall, sexy-ugly way. The leather jacket over his arm was way too hot for the day, but a practical solution for his revolver.

  ‘Don’t,’ Hobbs warned Justine, ‘she won’t find it funny.’

  ‘Tell me what?’ Barrett insisted. ‘I can use anything funny.’

  Justine smiled. ‘Rosemary’s Baby’.

  ‘You’re sick,’ Barrett said, and in spite of herself cracked a smile. ‘Fabulous, I’m carrying the devil’s child.’ From anyone other than Justine, she would have been enraged – Barrett had been raped, and the three of them had barely escaped with their lives; Ralph had not been so lucky.

  ‘Kind of,’ Hobbs said, forcing himself to make eye contact. ‘You ready?’

  ‘Good question,’ Barrett said, getting up and glancing down at her briefcase. She had a moment’s pause, wondering if she should bring it along to the obstetrician’s office for her vacuum aspiration … her abortion.

  ‘I don’t think you’ll need that,’ Justine offered, knowing that now she needed to be the strong one for her older sister. ‘Unless you’re planning to get a bit of work done while you’re in the stirrups.’

  Barrett nodded, and let them lead her to the door; Hobbs on her left and Justine on her right. Why does this feel like I’m being led to the gallows?

  As they passed Marla, Justine tried to keep things light, knowing how difficult this decision had been for Barrett. ‘I love your new furniture,’ she commented, having helped Barrett pick out the light wood office suite with its Asian feel and rough-textured upholstery.

  ‘Nice carpet, too,’ Ed added, keeping her moving forward, his thoughts a mixture of anxiety and dread. What if she didn’t go through with this? What then? Ed snuck glances at Barrett. His feelings for her ran too deep for ‘let’s just be friends’. He’d fallen hard, like a teenage boy with his first bad crush. It wasn’t a little in love, it was the whole damn thing, and up until three months ago, before all of the badness happened, he’d hoped the feeling was mutual. There’d even been one hell of a kiss. But that was old news, not just three months. He’d replayed that kiss a thousand times, her soft lips, her hair silky in his hands, the warmth of her skin, the press of her body against his. In that moment he could have pushed for more; he hadn’t. Her husband had still been alive; she’d been angry and vulnerable. In hindsight he wondered if the kiss had more to do with getting back at her unfaithful husband than her true feelings for him.

  The elevator doors closed, and Barrett turned to Hobbs. He felt her gaze, and blushed – not that anyone could notice under the angry scar tissue that had landed him the precinct-house nickname of the Batman villain Two Face. ‘You OK?’ she asked.

  ‘Not great, how about you?’ he said, daring to look deep into her gray-blue eyes.

  ‘I just want this over.’

  ‘Praise Jesus!’ Justine added, aware of the tension between Hobbs and her sister. As a surgeon, just out of training, Justine took a professional’s stance, looking at his scars. They’d done a good job with the skin grafts, and they still looked bad. They’d fade with time, but kids would always look up, and grab their mothers’ hands tighter. People would stare, then look away and whisper. After 9/11, even though she’d only been a surgical intern, she’d worked on dozens of burn cases. She knew it wasn’t just the physical scars that stayed, but the emotional ones that left burn victims trapped inside their homes, not daring to risk the scrutiny, the whispers and the repulsion. She liked Hobbs, and nothing would make her happier than to see Barrett and him hook up. But unlike Hobbs, who wore his scars on the outside, she knew that emotionally Barrett was skating close to the edge. She’d asked her sister what she felt for the detective. ‘I love him,’ Barrett had told her, ‘like a friend. I thought there might be more. Now, I don’t know.’ Barrett knew that Hobbs’s feelings ran deep, and she didn’t want to hurt a man she cared about so deeply, a man who’d risked his life for her.

  The elevator landed with a thud. The doors clanged open. As they walked through the lobby, half a dozen forensic psychiatrist trainees and social workers greeted Barrett. She mumbled bland responses, pulled on a pair of dark shades and dove through the revolving glass door.

  Hobbs and Justine followed, as Barrett hailed a cab on the corner of 2nd Avenue and 34th Street. She and Justine got in the back and Hobbs sat next to the driver.

  Justine held her sister’s hand.

  Barrett looked at her and at the back of Hobbs’s head. Her thoughts careened off, glad that Justine and Hobbs were here to support her, and kind of wishing they’d just leave her alone. ‘Thanks for coming,’ she whispered.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And you haven’t breathed a word to Mom,’ Barrett said, looking her sister in the eye.

  ‘No. Not a thing, although considering what she’s been through, she’d be able to handle this.’

  ‘I know,’ Barrett said, thinking of their mother, Ruth. ‘I just don’t think she should have to. I just want this day to be over. I want to be through this. I want to …’ her voice trailed off.

  ‘What?’ Justine asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ She tried to smile. ‘I want to go away. Somewhere with a beach and an endless stream of alcoholic beverages.’

  ‘If you want company,’ Hobbs offered.

  ‘Thanks, Ed,’ she said, uneasy with his romantic hints. ‘The way I’ve been feeling I need to be on that beach all by myself.’

  ‘So who’s bringing the drinks?’ Justine asked.

  ‘A robot,’ Barrett answered. A cell phone rang.

  ‘It’s mine,’ Barrett said, pulling it out of her over-sized black pocketbook. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Barrett?’ It was Felicia Morgan, medical director of Croton Forensic – New York State’s largest high-security facility for the criminally insane.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Something bad and I need you to drop whatever it is you’re doing and get up here. I just got a call from the commissioner’s office that the court has issued an end-of-the-business-
day ultimatum on the Tessavian et al v. The State of New York consent decree.’

  Barrett shuddered and immediately thought of Richard Glash. ‘What’s the ultimatum?’

  ‘Worst-case scenario,’ Felicia said. ‘If the combined Departments of Corrections and Mental Health are unable to put in place comprehensive treatment plans for the four inmates by the end of the business day today, the judge has ordered that they are all to be transferred to Croton by eight o’clock tomorrow morning. Can you be here within the hour? You’re the only who’s evaluated all four of them, and if we have a chance in hell, we’re going to need you to draft the treatment plans. This is a nightmare. You can come, can’t you?’

  Barrett saw the four-story, white-faced office building of her gynecologist come into view. She could feel the baby – Jimmy Martin’s baby – growing inside of her. She wanted this to be over, didn’t she? ‘I’ll be there,’ she told Felicia.

  ‘Thank God. I have an awful feeling about this, Barrett. Nothing has gone right with this case. I just know they’re going to end up here.’

  ‘I hope you’re wrong,’ Barrett said, and hung up. She looked at her sister, who’d overheard.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding?’ Justine said.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Hobbs asked, twisting around.

  ‘No choice,’ Barrett said. ‘I have to postpone.’

  ‘Are you crazy?’ he blurted. ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘Barrett,’ Justine added, ‘whatever it is they can do without you for a few hours.’

  ‘It’s a matter of public safety,’ Barrett said, picturing Richard Glash and how he’d nearly killed five guards. She told the cab driver to take her to her condo on West 27th. ‘I have to go to Croton.’

  ‘Barrett, what’s going on?’ Hobbs asked.

  ‘I can’t go into details, but it’s dead serious and I don’t have a choice.’

  Hobbs looked her in the eye. ‘You have a choice, Barrett. You always have a choice.’

  She glanced at Justine. There was so much she wanted to say, and so much that she didn’t want to put in words – because her sister wouldn’t understand. Like the sudden wave of relief that fell over her as the cab pulled away from the clinic. The baby was still inside her; still safe, still alive. Jimmy Martin’s baby … her baby. Tears welled; she looked away from Hobbs and from her sister’s worried face. But now she needed to focus on Richard Glash, to get to Croton and to not think about the baby, or her murdered husband or that having just turned thirty-three, this life was not the one she had planned for.

  The cab pulled up to the corner by her building. ‘I’ll get out here,’ she said, not wanting to look at either Hobbs or Justine. ‘I’ll call you,’ she said, grabbing her pocketbook and automatically reaching for her briefcase, only to remember that Justine had told her to leave it.

  ‘Call me tonight,’ Justine said. ‘We have to talk.’

  ‘Sure,’ Barrett said, wanting to get away. ‘It’s fine. I’m fine.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ Justine said, following Barrett out of the cab. ‘Come here.’

  ‘What?’ Barrett said, ready to bolt down to the garage where she kept her Saab.

  Justine grabbed her sister and hugged her tight. She whispered in her ear, ‘I love you, Barrett. We’re going to get through this.’

  Emotions vibrated through Barrett as she hugged her sister back and held on. They’d been through so much over the years. She hated that she was holding things back from Justine. But that had always been the arrangement; Barrett was the strong one, always doing the right thing for others. Turning down a Juilliard piano scholarship to go to medical school, or doing whatever it took to keep her marriage together despite Ralph’s infidelities. Or like now, canceling her abortion to help out at Croton. ‘I love you, too,’ she told Justine. ‘I’ve got to go.’ And she walked fast down to the garage. She knew that she was doing the right thing – public safety over personal matters. So why, she wondered, as she pulled out her car keys, did this feel like she was running away?

  Three

  Carla Phelps ran a hand through her artfully spiked hair as she sized up Dr Nehru Bai, the young psychiatrist seated across from her at the inpatient conference-room table at Bellevue’s locked ward. She weighed his every word as he laid out his case to the silver-haired probate judge as to why Marion Caldwell – her client – needed to be committed to a state hospital for long-term treatment.

  ‘She’s floridly psychotic,’ he said, speaking fast with traces of a British public-school accent, ‘with both auditory and visual hallucinations. She was admitted after she stopped taking her antipsychotic medication and was noted to have a deterioration in her overall functioning, most notably her hygiene. This is her fifth such presentation in just the last nine months. She’s bouncing from hospital to hospital and needs a longer admission in a state facility to achieve stability.’

  Carla bristled at his cockiness, at how he talked about his patient, not even acknowledging her presence. To him Marion was something other than human, not a real woman – certainly not entitled to her rights. Her green eyes sparkled as she thought about how to rip him – and his case – to shreds. To her right sat – or rather, fidgeted – Marion, a forty-nine-year-old woman with a disheveled mass of steel-gray hair, dressed in a hospital gown and bathrobe. She carried a diagnosis of schizophrenia and had spent most of her life in either a state hospital or a group home. She wanted to be discharged, didn’t want to take the pills that made her drool and feel sedated and she most definitely did not want to be shipped back to the state hospital.

  At the table on her left sat Lucinda Peters, Carla’s latest pretty young legal intern who would spend a year with her learning to advocate for people with serious mental illnesses. Completing the inpatient commitment hearing were the probate judge – Selby Blake – the patient’s sister – Beatrice Coles – and the hospital’s attorney – Sam Dunne.

  Carla waited for a pause in the arrogant young doctor’s dissertation, and then attacked. ‘So, Dr Bai, if I understand you correctly you believe that my client, who represents no acute danger to herself or anyone else, should be involuntarily committed to a long-term state hospital. Is that correct?’

  The just-out-of-training psychiatrist swallowed hard. She knew this was only his second commitment hearing and he’d been warned about Carla. ‘She can’t take care of herself,’ he answered.

  ‘Based on what evidence?’ Carla shot back.

  The hospital attorney and judge both turned to face Dr Bai.

  ‘She’d stopped taking her medications,’ he replied.

  ‘So does one-quarter of the American population,’ Carla answered. ‘Does that mean we lock up everyone who stops their antibiotics too soon? Or in your profession, as I’m sure you’re aware, over fifty percent of prescriptions will not be taken as prescribed. Should we lock up fifty percent of your patients? Is that what you’d like us to do?’

  ‘She wasn’t taking care of herself in other ways,’ he said, casting desperate looks toward the hospital’s attorney. ‘And she’s psychotic.’

  ‘I hear voices,’ Marion said, having been coached by Carla. ‘I’ve always heard voices. Sometimes I see things that other people can’t see. I’ve never tried to kill myself, and I would certainly never hurt anyone. God punishes sinners.’ She stared intently at the psychiatrist. ‘He knows everything that’s bad. He keeps track. He watches me, and makes certain I don’t do bad things.’

  ‘Marion,’ Carla interjected, knowing not to let her client get started on a rant, ‘how much money do you receive a month?’

  ‘Five hundred eighty-four dollars and twenty-seven cents.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Carla said. ‘And tell me, and the judge, how you manage to pay all of your bills with that small amount of money.’

  Carla went on asking Marion a series of questions that made it clear that despite being psychotic, she could in fact take care of herself.

  Carla then turned to the
judge and the hospital’s attorney. ‘I am petitioning the court that not only should my client not be committed, but that she be allowed to leave here immediately. She is not imminently dangerous to herself or to anyone else and she is able to provide the rudiments of self care, as you’ve just heard.’

  Marion’s sister, a neatly dressed woman in her late fifties with bleached and permed hair, half rose from her chair. ‘My sister is sick! She needs to be in a hospital. You need to keep her. You need to make her take her medications. You don’t know what she’s like when she’s out and off her medications. She’ll call me at three in the morning, asking me for money, screaming at me. You can’t do this!’

  Carla looked across at the judge and cocked an eyebrow. ‘Here’s the deal,’ she said, turning her gaze to the hospital’s attorney. ‘If Ms Caldwell is not released this afternoon, I will file a wrongful imprisonment suit against the hospital first thing in the morning. Yes, she’s psychotic and yes she probably won’t take her medications – that in and of itself is not enough to keep her against her will, even under Kendra’s Law. By keeping her you’re infringing on her constitutional rights. Essentially, Dr Bai’ – she fixed the nervous young psychiatrist in a withering gaze – ‘you will find yourself named in a lawsuit that will drag on for years. You’re holding a human being against their will. You’re using your power and authority as a psychiatrist to infringe on Ms Caldwell’s basic rights. You’ve locked her up and coerced her into taking medications that are harmful to her body and that she doesn’t want to take.’

  ‘But she’s sick!’ Bai stammered weakly.

  ‘Any further arguments?’ the judge asked.

  There was silence around the table. ‘Good, if everyone would clear the room, I’d like a few minutes alone with the patient.’

  Carla, during the break, walked with Lucinda through the inpatient unit. ‘I hate these places,’ Carla muttered as she stared through the wire-meshed window that faced the river.