The Blind

by A. F. Brady

  “Where is this coming from?” I toss my packet back onto the conference table and lean back like I’m above it all, but inwardly realizing and terrified that this is about me.

  “Well, it’s coming from a string of events that have been happening around here that seem to indicate some ethical violations, not to mention legal violations. So, to cover all our bases and keep the playing field level, we are all going to reacquaint ourselves with the expected behavior of staff here.

  “And this goes for all of you.” She points around the table with a sideways index finger and thumb extended like a pistol. “Psychologists, counselors, security guards, everyone. No one is out of bounds here—even the psychiatrists have copies of this, and they’ll be expected to sign the sheet, as well.”

  “What kinds of events?” Julie, knowing full well she would never be in violation of anything.

  “Well, Sal and members of his staff have been finding alcohol on the unit.” My ears scream a piercing squeal into my brain and my body catches fire. I am suddenly aware of my hands and arms, and I have no idea what to do with them. How can I ensure that I don’t draw attention to myself? Stay calm. No one is looking at you.

  “Alcohol?” David leans forward and sits at attention.

  “Yes, small bottles like the ones you’d find in a hotel minibar. They’ve been found in the garbage cans of the men’s rooms, in various group rooms, and pieces of broken bottles have been found strewn about.” Dammit, Richard!

  “They’re glass? I always thought those things were made of plastic.” Gary.

  “Turns out they’re glass, and there have been a lot of them. Now, the patients don’t have access to the outdoors, as you know. The smoking balcony is as much outdoor space as they’ve got while they’re here, unless we’re on supervised outings. Obviously, with the weather, there haven’t been too many of those. Visitors are always searched, but these bottles are very small and I suppose could be snuck in.”

  “Is it possible that a patient brought a stash on intake?” Abdul, the orderly. Oh, God, don’t say stash!

  “It’s very unlikely.” Gerard, the other orderly. “We do thorough checks of all personal belongings whenever a new patient arrives. No alcohol, weapons, drugs or anything like that would be permitted. If anything is found, it’s confiscated.”

  “Where does it go when it gets confiscated? Is there an evidence locker, or a storage room or something? If someone came in with a bunch of mini-bottles, and they’re somewhere on the unit, then someone could have found them.” Gary is beginning to sound guilty with all these questions. I hope the rest of the staff is getting the same impression, and I pray no one is looking at me. I’m holding my fist up to my chin, looking upon everyone like I’m completely disinterested.

  “We keep an inventory of all the confiscated items before they’re locked in a locker in the security office. No one has ever brought in a stash of liquor.” Gerard will not be held responsible for this.

  “And there’s at least one of us in the office at all times, so no one would have the opportunity to walk in and steal things. Only the security officers know the code to the locker.” Raul will not be held responsible for this.

  “Are the bottles you’re finding full or empty?” I will not be held responsible for this.

  “Empty, obviously,” Shirley sneers at me.

  “I don’t know that it’s obvious they’re empty. Patients could be leaving them for other patients. We’ve seen things like this before. Remember when Frankie and Harry did the Valium scavenger hunt? Leaving cryptic notes about the hidden locations of pills one of them was prescribed and the other one wanted? We have about a hundred alcoholics in here. It could be the answer.” Create a diversion, make the staff look at everyone but me. They can’t fingerprint the bottles, can they? They can’t trace them back to Richard, can they? Or me?

  “The bottles Sal’s team have found have all been empty. Although it’s true that patients have been known to find ways to get drugs and alcohol onto the unit before, I’m not sure that’s what’s happening here. What’s very strange is that these are premium, top-shelf liquors. It’s not tiny bottles of Georgi. We’re talking Grey Goose, Patrón, expensive brands. And not one or two bottles here and there. It’s added up to quite a few in the past couple of weeks.” Rachel is ensuring she never looks at any particular staff member for too long while relaying the details of the situation. She doesn’t want to appear accusatory or alienate anyone, but I can’t help feeling eyes on me.

  FEBRUARY 14TH, 11:01 A.M.

  Richard seems uptight this morning. He sits rigidly, and keeps fidgeting with his papers and his fingers and his zippers. I’m eyeing him suspiciously, when he speaks.

  “I know that you had a really hard time telling me about your diagnosis. So I figured it’s only fair that I tell you the story that’s hardest for me.”

  “We need to talk before you start in on any stories today.” I lean forward with my elbows on my knees like Johnny Bench and look him square in the face. “Have you been leaving the empties around the unit?”

  “What do you mean? The nips?” He snaps out of his trance.

  “Yeah. What have you been doing with all the empty bottles? The custodians and other patients have been finding the empties. You can’t blackmail me with this booze and this secret if you’re gonna get yourself caught as well, you know.”

  “I’ve been throwing them away. Separately, in different garbage cans all across the institution. Never near your office, never near my room. Public places. Where it could be anyone. They’re not going to know it’s me. And they’re certainly not going to know it’s you.”

  “We had a meeting about the bottles. The staff is getting suspicious. I’ve let this go on for long enough but now that’s it—this is over. I can’t have the bottles in here anymore. Keep them away from me and this office. I’m serious.”

  “Because you think they know it’s you?”

  “It doesn’t matter why! It’s over now. I am not drinking anymore, I’m definitely not drinking with you anymore, and we are done with this conversation. Now, please, go ahead with your story.” I cross my arms indignantly and, with wide eyes and furrowed brows, challenge him to defy me.

  “That doesn’t mean that you’re off the hook, you know. Even if we don’t drink them together, I still have your stash. The deal remains the same.” He points his huge finger at me.

  “Fine.” I nod along with him. “But they are not to come into this office again, do you understand me? I don’t even know why we were drinking them to begin with! You should have just kept your contraband to yourself and not opened this can of worms. And you better keep them seriously well hidden because the staff is on high alert now.”

  “I figured some social lubrication would help you share your stories, get on board with our agreement.”

  “It would take a lot more than two airplane bottles to get me drunk enough to say yes. I said yes because you’re blackmailing me, not because I’m hammered.”

  “Noted. I will keep the rest of your stash. As collateral.”

  “Right, collateral. I understand. No more booze in this office.” I lean back in my chair defiantly.

  He sits uneasily, waiting for the mood in the room to return to normal. He cracks his neck once to the left and twice to the right, and opens his mouth to begin.

  “I have never told another living soul on this planet what happened that day.” He’s been rehearsing this.

  “Why are you telling me?” My voice is soft and low.

  “You’re the only person I’ve ever met who could use this story to get better.”

  “You think you’re going to make me better?” I smile and nearly scoff at him.

  “Just listen to me, Sam. Please.” My sarcasm and incredulity are not welcome for this story. “I was eighteen. I had been seeing a girl for a while, and she was probably borderline, too. That’s something I learned in prison—that you end up attracted to people who have the same traits
as your parents. Even if it’s the bad traits. Because it’s what you’re used to and what you know. So, I guess I was attracted to women who were manipulative and kind of crazy—” He stops himself midsentence. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to call you crazy, it’s just that borderline is really confusing. One day you’re the best thing ever, and the next day you’re the worst. I couldn’t ever tell who I was going to get.”

  I nod and sip my coffee. I wave my hand, indicating he should continue.

  “Anyway, I was dating this girl, and I think Frances was jealous, because when I would get dressed to take her out, Frances would end up throwing some kind of fit, and I would usually have to stay home and take care of her instead. I would sneak out to meet my girlfriend sometimes after Frances passed out at night. Her name was Samantha, actually. Huh.” He scoffs at this realization.

  “After a while, Frances started going out on dates, maybe to even the score with me since I was dating. Men were always falling in love with her. She would stay with them for a while, and then get bored, or angry, or tired of them, and move on to the next one. She was always very nice to me when she had just broken up with a man. This one time, there was a guy who came to the house, though normally I never met any of her dates.

  “She had been in such a good mood for a long time, and I thought she was getting better. But, this one night, a man showed up to pick her up for a date. I was taller than him, and I think that was a problem, because he was immediately mean to me. He was condescending and rude, and he grabbed Frances, hard, by the waist. I remember I wanted to hit him, but then she started lacing into me along with him. They were both drunk already. They went out. I waited up for her at home. I was worried because he didn’t seem like such a nice guy. I told Samantha that I couldn’t see her that night and I had to stay home.

  “Frances came back very late. It was spring and the sun was starting to come up earlier. It was already getting light out when she walked in the door. I had seen her angry so many times before. And she had taken out a bad night on me so many times before. But I had never seen her like this. Her dress was torn and her makeup was all messed up. She and the guy must have gotten into a fight.” Richard starts breathing deeply, seeming to concentrate on pulling up the memories. He closes his eyes and continues.

  “I remember she had dirt streaked on her shins. I was scared when she came home. She asked me why I bothered to wait for her. She said if I was just going to let her go out with a monster, then I shouldn’t bother to wait up and see if she’s okay. She said I knew she wouldn’t be okay and I shouldn’t have let her go. She had a cigarette in her mouth and started tearing through the drawers and cupboards in the kitchen. She picked up a frying pan and came after me. I was much bigger than her, but I still ducked and tried to cover my head. She kept hitting me over and over again with the frying pan, telling me that I don’t love her, and I never should have let her go out with that man. She put the cigarette out on the back of my neck.” Richard absentmindedly touches the burn scar on his neck as he tells me this.

  “When the frying pan broke off its handle, I remember thinking it would be over. But no. Something bad had happened to her, and she needed someone to blame. She needed to even the score. She kicked me; she threw everything she could find at me. After a while, I just snapped. I couldn’t take it anymore. She was whipping me with an umbrella and I wrestled it out of her hands. I threw it on the floor in the kitchen. Everything was on the floor. I have never heard anyone scream like she did when I stood up to defend myself. She sounded like the devil’s rage. She started pummeling me with her fists and I tried to hold her by her shoulders and get her to stop hitting me, but she wouldn’t stop. She was screaming and punching and flailing all over the place, and I was trying to keep her at an arm’s length so she couldn’t reach me. I was walking her into the corner of the kitchen so her arms couldn’t swing, but as I was…but…as I was pushing her through the kitchen, I stepped on something and I fell forward.” Richard is trembling and out of breath.

  “I was still holding her shoulders, and I crashed into her. She lost her balance and fell backward and I fell on top of her. She hit her head on the steps into the pantry, and it made her forehead bounce forward and smack me in the face. I knew something was wrong immediately because of the silence. Her face was frozen in a horrible contorted scream. I didn’t know if I had cracked her skull or broken her neck or what happened, but somehow I knew that she was dead. Just like that. One second I was trying to stop her from hitting me, and the next second she was dead. I remember I sat next to her and held a handkerchief to her face to see if she was breathing. I didn’t know how to check for a pulse. I was on the floor trying to catch my breath, and the sun was up now, and then I heard Mrs. Choi slapping at the screen door.”

  My heart is trapped in my throat and I can’t swallow. Richard’s enormous presence is softening and shrinking, and he’s turning into an eighteen-year-old boy in my patient chair.

  “Mrs. Choi lived in another apartment in the house we lived in. She knew that Frances would hit me, and when she heard the screams, she sometimes came over to try to save me. Frances wouldn’t hit me in front of anyone else.

  “I heard Mrs. Choi slapping at the door, and I panicked because I knew something was wrong. But the door was never locked, so she came inside anyway. She must’ve been terrified. The scene was such a mess. There was the broken frying pan, the umbrella, me covered in booze and burns and welts, and Frances on the floor. All the glass and the debris all around us, and me out of breath, heaving into a handkerchief. She immediately ran out the door and called the police. It must have taken them twenty minutes to get there, but I didn’t move. I couldn’t move. An ambulance came, too.

  “The ambulance workers rushed in and asked me what happened. I couldn’t say anything. I started throwing up in the middle of the kitchen. The EMTs were doing all sorts of things to Frances and screaming at me to answer them. The cops didn’t even come inside yet, but I could see them standing at the front door. One EMT asked me if I was okay, and I didn’t say anything. I could see Mrs. Choi standing outside with the police, and she was just shaking her head and holding up her palms. I remember shivering and getting sick over and over again until I couldn’t get sick anymore. An EMT covered me with a big wool blanket. Everything else is a blur.

  “The police came inside and asked me questions, but it felt like they were talking in a different language. I couldn’t understand them, so I couldn’t answer them. I didn’t know what had happened, and I didn’t know what to say. I found myself in the back of a cop car, and I still had the EMT blanket, and two cops in the front were talking, but I couldn’t really hear them. They took me to the hospital, and I went to one of those little curtained areas. The cops and nurses were in conversation, but I couldn’t hear anything. It felt like the blackout again—there was all this chaos, but no sounds. I don’t know how long I was there. Must have been hours. They brought me papers to fill out, and they kept asking me questions. I couldn’t answer anything. I couldn’t remember anything else until I got to the jail cell.”

  My mind seems to be operating in slow motion and I’m taking longer than I should to manage a response to this. “Richard, that wasn’t your fault. How could you have been convicted of murder if you didn’t murder her? That was obviously self-defense. That wasn’t your fault!” I’m holding my hands over my mouth, speaking between the cracks in my fingers.

  “Like I said before, you’re the only living soul who knows that story.”

  “Why didn’t you tell them? Why didn’t you show them the bruises and the burns?” I’m nearly hysterical. I’m crying and pleading and trying to change the past.

  “I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring shame to her by telling anyone what she had done to me. All I felt was guilt. For as long as I can remember, I knew that everything bad that happened to me was my fault. Frances had spent my whole life telling me that it was my fault that she hit me, my fault that she drank, my fault that she co
uldn’t work. Even that night she told me it was my fault that man had hurt her.” The way that he’s retelling this story makes me feel like he still believes this. And to me, his story is all too familiar.

  “Are you telling me there was no investigation? How is that possible? How it is even remotely possible that you were thrown in prison for half your life on a fucking whim?”

  “It wasn’t a whim. It’s hard to explain.” He shakes his head and turns his eyes to the ground.

  “I can’t believe you wouldn’t stand up for yourself and you went to prison for half your life as a result.”

  “I didn’t go to prison because I didn’t stand up for myself, Sam.” His lips are trembling. “I went to prison because I did.”

  I’m crying hard now, and I’m desperately looking for the difference between Richard and me. Between me and Frances. I am Richard; I am the guilty, beaten child. I am Frances; I am the unstable, volatile wreck. I am stuck in all the roles in all these stories and I have to get away.

  FEBRUARY 14TH, 12:11 P.M.

  Richard’s story is playing out in my life; I am hysterical with the notion that this is my fate. This is what will become of me, and I can’t handle it. I stumble to the ground in David’s office and plead with his knees to please forgive me.

  “I can’t be like this, David, I can’t be! He killed her! He killed her because she was just like me, and he killed her!” I slobber these words out between sobs and leave smears on his pants. “People like me get killed, David!”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Shh, shh.” David is smoothing back my hair and pulling up my chin. “Who did? Killed who?”

  “Richard! That’s why he was in jail—he killed his mother.” My eyes are so swollen from the tears that squeezing out the next ones feels like pushing out water balloons. “She was borderline. I’m borderline! And he killed her because she’s borderline!” I bury my face in his lap as I say it, hoping it will absolve me, but also hoping he won’t really hear me.