The Blind

by A. F. Brady

“Well, first of all—” he pounds one of his airplane bottles “—I put a drink in front of you last week and you barely hesitated before guzzling it down. Second—” he drinks the second one “—how the hell do you think I got these?” He wags his empty bottles at me.

  “Where did you get them?” My throat is suddenly parched, and I look down at the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet. I know exactly where he got them.

  He sees me eyeing my drawer and throws up his hands. “See? Now, what kind of fucked-up shrink has a ziplock bag full of nips just sitting in her filing cabinet?”

  I can’t argue with this. I look down at my drawer and remember the bag was hidden underneath some art supplies and a shoe box full of crayons. I had been collecting those bottles forever, and after a particularly bad week months ago I brought them to the office. At the liquor store near my apartment, the cashier would always throw a tiny bottle into my black plastic bag when I went in to buy booze. He got to know my favorites. I’m at that liquor store all the time. I would spend my whole paycheck in there; I probably single-handedly pay their electric bill. And now my patient has my bottles. All of them. There must be dozens.

  “How did you find those?”

  “I haven’t just been sitting here reading the paper, you know. I’m watching you, and I see what’s happening with you. I didn’t know what I would find when I went looking, but I knew I would find something.” He shifts forward, readjusts his seat.

  “What the hell? You snooped through my office?” I stare at him, astounded. “You’ve asked me to make concessions for you, and I have.” I’m holding out the fingers of my left hand, using the pointer of my right to list his infractions. “You’ve asked me to give you a break and let you sit in here with your papers, and I have. You’ve made it insanely difficult to be your counselor because you never say anything and I still have no clue why you’re here, and I’m putting up with that! I’m forced to trust you and just keep trying with you, hoping to find out why you’re institutionalized… Well, enough now! Enough. I’m not even gonna ask when you rifled through my office because I’m already angry. You want me to trust you and then you do this?” I slam my hand against my desk, and my water bottle falls over and clatters onto the floor.

  “You left me in here while you attended to some emergency.” He waves his hands as he says emergency as if it were an exaggeration.

  “Because I trusted you! And you took advantage of that?” I’m staring at him in disgust. “You took advantage of me?”

  “I needed some leverage. Because I want another compromise.”

  “Ha! Are you kidding? After this shit?” I return to my computer screen.

  “You need it just as much as I do.”

  “Another compromise.” I shake my head. My voice is softening now; I can’t have passersby hearing this insanity.

  “I’ve made the decision that I’m going to cooperate with you. I’m going to help you finish this file you keep bitching about.”

  I turn to him with eyebrows raised and a tight-lipped smile. I tuck the pages of his file into my drawer and straighten out the remaining documents on my desktop. “You’re going to cooperate with me?”

  “I know what it takes to stay here. I know I can’t just stay silent. So I will complete the file.”

  “What’s the catch? What’s the leverage for?”

  “I’m not going to be treated like a patient.”

  “You are a patient. How the hell do you want me to treat you?”

  “Like a human being, an equal. I’m not going to sit here and spill my guts to you while you revel in the dirty details. I’m not a sideshow.”

  “You think that’s what we do?”

  “Your walls are coming down, too. You’re not gonna stay silent and have all the power. I have collateral now, and I could get you fired in a second. I can expose you. You don’t know where the bottles are. I’ve watched you losing it and I can show your boss the bag of booze, and when I tell her that’s why you’re not living up to your responsibilities, she’ll know it’s true. Look what happened to Adelle on your watch! And I could mention that you’re the one who left the janitor’s closet unlocked. I saw you take that plunger and walk away.”

  “Adelle is fine! She was released from the hospital with a clean bill of health! It was a false alarm!”

  “A false alarm, huh? Well, a false alarm from a medication mistake by a drunk psychologist. And what about the closet? Eddie may not have done himself in if he didn’t have a place to do it. That’s what I could say.”

  “Why do you want to get me fired? How does that help you? And why are you following me?”

  “I am not following you. And I don’t want to get you fired, but I will. I can. If you refuse to agree to this deal. You need to tell me what’s happening with you, just like I need to tell you about me. We’re going to talk like equals. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”

  “Let me get this straight.” I rub my aching eyes and try to wrap my mind around what’s happening in here. “You’re willing to complete your file, and actually participate in therapy, as long as I share my personal stories with you? And if I don’t, you’ll show my boss the ziplock bag—which you stole—and I will be fired? You’ll tell her that I’m responsible for what happened to Adelle and Eddie?”

  “Yes.” He responds as if this were a sane and reasonable request.

  “How do you plan on getting away with this?” I need a cigarette.

  “There’s nothing to get away with. I’ve already gotten away with it. I already know about Adelle’s medication and the unlocked closet. I took your booze, and now I’m holding it hostage until I get what I want. And it’s what you want, too. Even if it’s not the way you wanted it. It’s the only way you can get me to finish my file. The only way you can prove to everyone how wonderful and talented you are as a therapist,” he says with a whoop-de-doo face and twirls his fingers in the air.

  How the hell does he know that I want to prove myself to everyone? I look him over with apprehension, wondering where he’s keeping the rest of the stash. “And if I say yes?”

  “Then you keep your job. And you give me the help I need. And you look like a hero.”

  “And where’s my guarantee that you don’t just turn me in anyway?”

  He stands up and sticks out his hand.

  “A handshake? After all this you think I’m going to trust a handshake?”

  “I can’t offer you anything else. I stand by my word, and if you shake on it, I give you my word. You hold up your end of the bargain, and I’ll hold up mine.”

  Richard eyes me suspiciously, and I smile at him as I dump the two remaining Grey Goose bottles into my empty coffee cup and shove the empties toward him. I lift the cup in a gesture of cheers and pour the vodka down my throat.

  JANUARY 18TH, 10:47 P.M.

  AJ is abandoning me. It feels like everything is different now. He did what he came to do, and now he isn’t interested in me anymore. I was just a mission, the proverbial notch on the bedpost.

  I desperately need the distraction from my own terrible reality, but I’m afraid to see him now and cement this awful fate for myself. He won’t love me, he won’t want me anymore, and then I won’t have anything. I’m forgetting that I started this thing not caring about him. I just wanted something to distract me from Lucas, and now I’m addicted and I need him to need me.

  I’m willing my phone to ring. Now that I have entered into this clandestine thing with him, I’m vulnerable and exposed, so I’m constantly checking my phone. I will check it every couple of minutes until I fall asleep and I will check it again when I wake up.

  I will pour another glass of wine and count the cigarettes I have left in the pack. There’s a deli and a liquor store within twenty yards of my front door, but if there’s any way I can avoid going outside, I will. I have six cigarettes left. Will that be enough to carry me through? Probably not; I’ll call the deli and the liquor store and ask them to bring me some sustenance.
>
  I’m giving up hope, and he’s an asshole. I was using him! He wasn’t using me. I just needed him for a minute as an escape from Lucas. And it doesn’t matter. I don’t need him. He isn’t even that good-looking. He has that stupid smile that looks like a cracked-out Cheshire cat. He isn’t even that sexy. He’s stupid and childish. And then my phone beeps.

  Hey, baby… My heart soars into my brain and I’m sweating, trying to decipher the ellipsis. Do I look desperate and needy if I respond immediately? I wait for what feels like hours but is actually only three and half minutes.

  Hey, you. This response feels laid-back, but now I’m in that awful waiting period where I want him to write back something perfect and do it immediately to prove that he is thinking about me. I want the ball back in my fucking court. I wait. I wait for the three little oscillating dots to appear to show he’s writing back. Come on, little dots!

  And then, finally: You going to Nick’s tonight? he responds. I wasn’t planning on going to Nick’s tonight, but now I’m thinking about it. But something is stopping me. I feel like there’s an anvil on my lap, and I can’t lift it.

  Maybe all I needed was to hear that he is waiting for me at Nick’s and I can choose to go or not go see him. Everything changed when he saw the man behind the curtain when my bruises were exposed two weeks ago. The shine came off, and we were no longer two wild kids sharing a frivolous and shallow frolic in bed. He saw something that he wasn’t supposed to see; he saw me. Maybe, maybe he really likes me. What an idiot. This could be my opportunity to prove to myself that I don’t have to do this anymore.

  Think I’m gonna skip it tonight, I respond. Have fun without me.

  Leave him before he can leave me. Hurt him before he can hurt me.

  JANUARY 19TH, 10:19 A.M.

  “Miss Sam! Miss Sam, come quick!” There’s a slamming at my door, and I hear Tashawndra pleading for me to come help.

  “What is it?” I say as I swing open the door. Tashawndra takes my hand and pulls me down the hallway.

  “It’s Jenni. She’s freaking out. She’s locked herself in a stall, and she won’t come out. She’s been crying all morning.”

  “What’s going on? Did you call Rachel?”

  “No, I came to get you, and Lucy went to get Julie.”

  “Okay.” We hurriedly jog down the hallway and push the door into the women’s room. Lucy and Julie just arrived, and Julie is asking questions through the locked stall door.

  “Jenni, what’s going on in there?” Jenni is sitting on the floor of the stall. We can see her lower back between the bottom of the stall door and the floor. She’s slumped in the corner of the handicapped stall and is heaving from crying so hard. We can hear her cough and choke back her tears, and when she leans forward to throw up, Lucy widens her eyes and glares at me.

  Julie sits down on the floor by the stall. “Jenni,” she coos through the crack, “what’s happening in there?” Jenni coughs and spits and flushes the toilet. She breathes in heavy breaths, and we can see her back moving up and down. Julie reaches her hand under the stall and lays it flat next to Jenni. I hand Julie some paper towels, and she passes them under. Jenni takes one from the stack and blows her nose.

  Julie is now using her thumb to rub Jenni’s back, and we can hear her breath beginning to slow. Tashawndra is crouching in the corner with her knees pulled up to her chest, resting her chin on her fists. Lucy is watching Julie, periodically turning to me and then looking at her own reflection. I’m watching Julie, trying to ascertain if she can handle this situation. Then Jenni speaks.

  “I don’t want to be in here anymore.” Her voice is thick.

  “Then come outta there, girl. We’re right here for ya,” Tashawndra calls from her corner.

  “No, I mean here, in a mental institution. I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to go home.” She sighs a heavy sigh, and I see her hand drop to the tile, and I watch a needle roll out of her hand.

  “Shit. Julie, go get medical. Now. And don’t tell anyone what’s happening! Go, but be discreet.” I hike up my pants and use Lucy’s shoulder for balance as I boost my foot onto the sink. I push myself onto the top of the stall door and shimmy through the space between the door and the ceiling. My feet crash down onto the toilet seat and skid onto the floor. She has a thick hair tie around her biceps and a green lighter on her lap. I look for a spoon, but don’t see one. Then I notice the foil spinning in the toilet bowl.

  Jenni’s head is against the stall, with her jaw slack and her eyes in slits. There’s no way for me to tell how much heroin she has taken.

  “Jenni!” I holler directly into her face. “Jenni, it’s Sam. Wake up. Wake up!” I’m shaking her shoulders, and her head bobbles and her chin falls to her chest. I reach over her and unlock the door. I push Jenni’s body out the door and lay her flat on the cold bathroom tile.

  Tashawndra is staring wide-eyed in the corner and starting to cry. Lucy sits next to her and puts her arm protectively around Tashawndra’s shoulders. Julie comes running back into the bathroom.

  “Oh, my God, Sam, is she dead? Oh, my God!” Julie hasn’t let the door close behind her when she says this.

  “No, she’s not dead. She’s breathing, but barely. Did you get medical?” I’m holding her wrist to monitor her pulse and putting my ear to her mouth to make sure she’s still breathing.

  “Yeah, they’re coming, I called a code blue.”

  “Thank you, Julie. You did a good job. Please take Tashawndra and Lucy to my office, and wait for me there, okay?” I can’t have her in here if she’s going to get emotional and freak out.

  “Okay,” Julie says and stays motionless, staring at the scene on the floor.

  “Now, Julie, right now.” I throw her my keys.

  “Oh, oh!” She jumps to attention and pulls the women up off the floor and ushers them out the door. As she opens the door, I can see two orderlies and two nurses approaching with a gurney and bags full of medical equipment. They shove through the bathroom door with a backboard and ask me what happened.

  “Heroin, I don’t know how much and I don’t know when. Other patients told me she’s been in here all morning, but they didn’t mention any drugs.”

  “What’s her name?” a large male nurse asks as he slides the backboard under her and picks her up.

  “Jenni, her name is Jenni.”

  “We’ll take it from here.” He turns away from me and thumps Jenni onto the gurney. “Jenni! Jenni!” he calls into her ears. “How much heroin did you take, sweetheart?” He pushes her down the hallway toward the clinic as a crowd of patients and clinicians gather to witness the commotion.

  I can’t do any more for her, so I walk back to my office to find the three women on the floor, huddled together, crying.

  “Hey, it’s okay now. Sshhhh. Don’t worry. She’s at the clinic now. They’re going to take her to the emergency room. You guys did a really good job, okay? You did the right thing to come get me and Julie. You probably saved her life.” I’m wiping the sweat from my face and chugging water from the bottle on my desk.

  “Where did she get the drugs?” Julie asks me, but I don’t look directly at her.

  “I don’t know,” I say and I see both Lucy and Tashawndra hide their heads when Julie asks me.

  “Ladies, where did she get them? This is incredibly important; you’re not going to get in trouble. Did she tell you? Do you know?”

  Lucy looks up and shyly responds, “Jenni said her sister brought her the medicine she needs. We figured she meant drugs, but she didn’t say for sure. And she never told us what kind.”

  The heroin-addicted sister. The one Jenni would use with. How the fuck did she get in here? As my breathing starts to normalize, I pull up a blank incident report on my computer and start filling it in. Julie brings Lucy and Tashawndra to a group room to talk, and I promise to meet them there as soon as I’m finished. I reach over to Jenni’s file to copy down the pertinent information. The top sheet in her file is
the visitation record and family-vetting sheet. I see a sloppy red “approved” stamp next to her sister Jackie’s name.

  JANUARY 20TH, 11:14 A.M.

  The light coming in the office windows is especially intense today, and I have to pull the shades to see the screen of my computer without any glare. Even when the shades are down, the brightness in the office feels almost blinding. I fish for my sunglasses so I can concentrate on getting some work done. The stack of files on my patient chair seems larger and larger every time I look back at it. No matter how many documents I complete and move to the pile of finished files, the heap on the patient chair continues to grow. I’m drinking a flat Mountain Dew and it tastes like acid.

  The buzzer on my intercom blares at me, and I see the flashing green indicator next to the security guard’s line. Raul’s voice fills the room. “Sam, there’s a Lucas here to see you. I sent him back to your office; he had a guest pass.”

  A guest pass? Where the fuck did Lucas find a guest pass? He’s never come to the office. Before I can snatch up the phone to tell Raul to get that asshole out of here and strip him of his fraudulent pass, there’s a delicate rapping at my office door. I adjust my sunglasses because the light is still unbearable, then get up to pull open the door.

  Lucas is standing in the hallway—there must be a dead bulb because it’s darker than usual out there—and he’s holding a limp bouquet. It’s a bunch of red roses, wrapped in green cellophane and tied with a thin white ribbon. The bouquet smells of piss and garbage, and before I can turn him away, he shoves me back into the office and crashing into my patient chair. The mound of files tumbles down on top of me, and I can’t seem to find my footing to get back up.

  My sunglasses are askew and I can only see bright light and the silhouette of Lucas’s body as he lunges down toward me. I’m trying to protect my face and chest, and I find my hands are filled with the roses, and the thorns are stabbing my fingers.

  I am kicking at him to get him off me, but every time I land a hit, my foot seems to absorb into his torso like I’m kicking a marshmallow. I can’t get the roses out of my hands, and there’s sticky blood spilling all around me, and Lucas knocks down my Mountain Dew as he reaches for the scissors from my drawer. The can lies upended on the edge of my desk, and so much liquid is coming out, it’s beginning to fill the room.