by A. F. Brady
Richard breathes several deep, husky breaths and interlaces his fingers over his stomach. He looks out the window, back at the construction site across the street, which is nothing more than a shiny new facade surrounded by dusty remnants of scaffold and hardware. “Did you read everything?” He’s casually leaning back, seemingly oblivious to the magnitude of this conversation.
“I did. What I could decipher.”
“And?”
“And? And? You’re asking me? ‘And,’ yourself! What am I supposed to make of all of this? You’ve been stalking me? Are you even a patient here?” The calm is gone, and now I’m starting to freak out.
“Whoa.” He sits up quickly and faces me. “Of course I’m a patient here! My name is Richard McHugh, and I have never lied. Well, I’ve mostly never lied. I never lied to you, directly.”
“What does that even mean?” I’m sweating; my knees are bouncing; I am regretting the last cup of coffee.
“I may have employed some dishonesty to get into this institution.” He rubs his thumbs together nervously.
“You may have? You’re not really a patient, are you?” I’m pushing my chair back toward the door, afraid of him again. Feelings from when he first walked through my door are rushing back to me.
“Technically, I am. I was sent here by a doctor. But no, it was not a condition of my parole. You don’t get sent to the loony bin years after leaving prison as a condition of parole. You should probably know that. And, no, I’m not here because I need treatment.” He’s holding his hands up in a gesture of submission.
“Then what are you doing here? And how the hell did you get in here?”
“Getting in here wasn’t very hard. All you really need is a doctor to call another doctor and a couple of forms to get filled out. And then I’m on your doorstep.”
I’m beginning to breathe heavily, and I can feel the snot in my left nostril blocking my panicked breaths, and it’s making a whistling sound. I pull tissue after tissue out of the cube on my desk and begin blowing my nose. I’m honking loudly, and this is unnerving Richard, who now looks disgusted.
“Calm down, Sam.”
“You realize that everyone is here because they need to be,” I snap, tissues still to my face. “They’re here for treatment and to get better, and then get out of here. And you coming in for your own selfish, bullshit agenda, for your own psychotic—I don’t even know what—you’re compromising the treatment of everyone else here! Did you even consider that? Did you consider how faking it, and manipulating the system—Did you consider how that could fuck other people over?”
“Honestly, no.” His composure is in glaring contrast to my flustered resentment, and it looks like we’re in two different movies.
“What were you thinking? Explain this to me!” I slam my hands on top of the stack of papers and, infuriatingly, they don’t budge.
“I am explaining it, but you need to calm down. This isn’t easy for me, either, you know. And I won’t talk to you when you’re like this.” He crosses his arms and cuts off the conversation.
I inhale an enormous breath. “Please, proceed. I will calm down.” I’m incensed. I want to shake his shoulders until the truth rattles out of him and I can understand who the fuck has been sitting in my office all this time.
“May I? Thank you.” He uncrosses his arms and continues, “As I was saying, getting committed to a mental institution is easy. All you need is someone in the right position willing to make a referral. I never lied, Sam. I never told you anything that wasn’t true, either. It’s important that you know that.”
“Dr. Mark. He’s the ‘someone in a position,’ isn’t he? Did he make the referral?”
“He did, yes. He and I stayed in touch. I told him that I needed further treatment, and I had been doing research on institutions. I told him I wanted to come to this one.”
“You told me you never talked to him again after he left Ogdensburg.”
“Yes, you’re right. I did say that. And I’m sorry that I lied, but I couldn’t have you finding out what was going on until I was ready.”
“Ready? Ready for what? What the hell is going on?” I want to cry, I want to throw a temper tantrum and stomp my feet until he answers me!
“Yes. Ready to tell you everything.”
“And you’re ready now?”
“Well, I guess I have to be ready now. You’ve found the papers and you’ve read my notes. I don’t want you to feel confused or scared. I need to tell you.” He’s holding out both his palms, imploring me to calm down.
“I have security on standby! How could I not be scared? I did read your notes, your detailed, invasive, bizarre notes! About me! What did you think I was going to find out from reading them? All the answers? I have more questions than ever now.” I stand up and kick on my white-noise machine when I realize I’m screaming in my office.
“Maybe it’s easier if you just ask me about the things you don’t understand.”
I fall back into my chair, exasperated. “Everything. I don’t understand any of it. Why did you have all the diagnostic stuff in there? The DSM criteria?”
“I don’t remember things as well as I used to. I had to remember how to behave. When you’re depressed, you naturally behave as if you’re depressed. But when you’re better, it’s hard to remember what depression looks like. I needed to look the part. You’re the best doctor here, that’s what I found out, so I knew you’d see through me if I didn’t do it right.”
“So you had the criteria listed so you would know how to act depressed? And the PTSD? It was all a lie?”
“No—Sam. You’re not listening.” He vehemently shakes his head, frustrated. “None of it was a lie.”
“Did you really kill your mother? Was that bullshit?” I feel like the room is spinning and I don’t know anything anymore.
“Everything that I said happened, happened. Exactly as I said it did. I wasn’t lying while I was talking with you. Never. Not once.”
“But you needed to behave a certain way on the unit so no one would be the wiser that you don’t belong here?”
“That’s what the plan was, but it turns out I didn’t really need to do anything that didn’t come naturally to me. I never felt like I was acting. I was being myself. It’s easy to feel depressed in here.”
“So why are you here, if you don’t belong here?” I put my head down between my knees and wheel my chair as far away from Richard as I can. The images of the notes are flying through my head at breakneck speed and I can’t concentrate on specifics. I had so many lucid points to make. This is confusing, and I’m not getting the answers in order. I still don’t understand.
He doesn’t respond to me, instead interlaces his fingers and crosses his ankles as he leans toward me.
“You wrote about forgiveness.” I raise my head slightly to look at him. I’m trying to remember the individual questions I wanted to ask. His lucidity and cooperation are helping my fears subside, and I’m beginning to calm down. His voice is slow and methodical; he’s trying to help me understand.
“Yes. That was from Dr. Mark. When I was at Revelations, the halfway house, I wasn’t getting better. Leaving prison was harder than I thought. I figured the freedom would wash over me and I would build a life. But I couldn’t. The feeling of freedom never came. No matter how many books I read, or mantras I repeated, no matter how many times I assured myself that I was allowed to move on, I couldn’t. I felt like my punishment wasn’t up. I had no family left. And the reason I had no family left was because I killed the only family I ever had. When it got to be too much, and I was afraid I would never get better, I called the closest thing to family I had. I called Dr. Mark. We set up calls for therapy over the phone. He didn’t want me to leave Revelations; he said it was important for me to be in a safe space while I was recovering. So we had weekly calls.”
“That’s why he remembered so much about you. But he didn’t tell me that when I talked to him. Why wouldn’t he tell me that
he had been your therapist?”
“Yeah—” he looks at his feet and fidgets with his thumbs “—that’s why I was nervous when you said you wanted to talk to him. So I told you I didn’t remember his name, to make it harder for you to find him. I called him and told him I wasn’t ready to talk to you yet, and I didn’t want him to share my stories if you ever found him. He said he couldn’t lie to you, and he didn’t want to be involved in any deceit, either. I asked him to be vague. I guess I lied more than I thought I did. I’m sorry about that. My intentions were never to deceive you.”
“I’m hoping you’re going to tell me exactly what your intentions are.”
“Dr. Mark was the one who put the forgiveness idea in my head. The same thing you said to me right here in this office not too long ago. He said to be able to move on, and to find the sense of freedom, I would have to forgive myself for what I’d done. He said, ‘Self-forgiveness is freedom.’ So, I tried to find out how to do that.
“I talked to the staff at Revelations; I asked them about forgiveness. I asked them how. That’s the thing about you people, you always tell us what we need to do, but you never tell us how. So, I read books. I stopped asking questions, and I buried myself in books. Philosophy books, psychology books. Memoirs, biographies. Looking for the answers. And it occurred to me—amends. I needed to make amends. ‘An eye for an eye.’ I killed someone. So, I had to save someone.”
“So, you went looking for someone to rescue? Why didn’t you join the fire department or something?” I scoff sarcastically and shake my head.
“Remember Jesse? My friend from Woodside?” He reaches his meaty paw across my desk.
“Yes, from the blackout. You got arrested together.”
“Right. When I left Revelations, I looked him up. I didn’t have anywhere else to start, back out in the world. So, I looked for Jesse, and he was right there in the phone book, still living in the old neighborhood. I reached out to him, and he met me for a coffee at a diner in Manhattan, down near where the towers used to be. He looked exactly the same. Same puff of hair, same lanky limbs. He seemed happy to see me, I guess. He was working as some higher-up in a construction company. After we talked awhile, I asked if he could help me with a job. I wanted something off-the-books, and Jesse said he could arrange something for me at one of his sites.” Richard’s gaze slowly returns to the window.
“So he got you a job at the site across the street? You were working construction across the street? That’s how you found me?” I look out the window again to see the ghost of a construction site. Richard was there?
“I asked to go to that site. I had already found you, but I needed to know more about you before I could approach you.”
“Richard, this is insane. How long were you there before you came here?” I’m tugging at the hem of my shirt and pulling my sleeves down over my wrists. I’m instinctively trying to protect myself, and everything is starting to get itchy. You may not like everything you find.
“A few weeks, couple months—no more. I followed you a few times. I wasn’t sure what I was doing when I first found you. I needed to get to know you. From a distance, obviously.”
“That’s why you took the Typhlos documents? To get to know me? How did you get ahold of my performance review?” My mouth is dry, and my throat is starting to cramp up.
“That was an incredible stroke of luck, actually. When I was first looking for information, I went through the recycling bags in the alley. Most of the documents in there were shredded or torn to pieces, but now and again I would find a whole one. Usually, it was stuff that hadn’t been filled out, but it was useful. Intake documents, psychological tests—things that helped me figure out how to behave, if I was ever going to get inside. But then I found your performance review. Something that was really about you. It was crumpled up and had coffee stains on it, but it was signed, so I thought it must be significant. So, I tucked it into my pocket.
“It said you were practically perfect. Best doctor here. Saving everyone’s day. But when I followed you, and I saw you away from work, I saw you weren’t okay. I knew all about borderline from researching it for so many years after Frances, and it was easy to recognize. I knew you were suffering.”
A strange stillness falls over me like a warm blanket. My breathing has softened, and long, slow tears are streaming from my eyes. I’m beginning to understand.
“That’s why you had the lists of treatments—you were coming to treat me. You learned how to make it better, how to make me better, and you got yourself institutionalized so you could ‘save me.’ So you could find the forgiveness you needed for freedom.” The newspaper notes are appearing in my head—highlights are popping out in bolded print. I’m putting all the pieces together, and I know exactly what he was doing.
“Yes. I came for you.”
“But why? Why me?”
MARCH 21ST, 7:44 A.M.
There is a funny thing that happens on the train. You’re neither here nor there, and it’s transformative in that way. I leave the person I was at the Fourteenth Street station and become the person I’m going to be at the last stop.
As I get off the train car, I drop my OMH evaluation into a sticky garbage can on the 1 train platform and watch as the maintenance guys empty it along with the other trash into a yellow canvas Dumpster. I’ve stopped fighting against the truth of who I am; I’ve unclenched my fists, and now it’s time to save myself.
There’s a wind tunnel between the train station and the unit, and it will kick up everything the city has to offer in tiny tornadoes of flotsam. I’m not ready for my day until I pick something gross out of the corner of my eye and get the debris out of my hair.
I take David’s hand when we meet at the corner. He kisses my cheek and my heart gets warm. He hands me a coffee, and we walk toward Typhlos. It’s Tuesday.
As we enter through the front doors, David looks at me. “What time is your session with your dad today?”
“Eleven a.m.,” I say, “as usual.”
Acknowledgements
Endless thank-yous to my brilliant agent, Marian Young, without whom I would be sitting alone at a coffee shop wondering if I could publish a book. Thank you for your support and dedication, your guidance, encouragement and advice. Thank you for your belief in me, and in The Blind, and for your tireless efforts.
To my incomparable editor, Liz Stein, thank you for taking a chance on me and The Blind. Thank you for helping Sam and Richard become their best selves, and for making me into a real writer.
Thank you both for your patience and understanding and your willingness to tolerate my eccentricities and bizarre predilections.
What a team of superheroes we can be.
Thank you to the talented and dedicated team at Park Row Books/Harlequin/HarperCollins for all your work and all the help along the way.
Thank you to my family for your love and support, pride and counsel.
To my husband, Bobby, for being absolutely everything. For reading and rereading ad infinitum, listening and relistening ad nauseam. I couldn’t do much of anything without you.
To Dr. EB, Dr. EF and JLBZ for the professional opinions, the unwavering support and the ability to keep me being me. To M, for saving the day.
Copyright
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2017
Copyright © A.F. Brady 2017
A.F. Brady asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the re
quired fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © September 2017 ISBN: 9781474057646
