Come Closer

by Brenda Rothert

  The meeting is almost an hour long, and Heaton refuses to make eye contact with me through the entire thing. I can’t shake the feeling that something prompted Allison to lose her cool with Heaton.

  “Dr. Heaton, can you stay?” I ask her when everyone starts to leave the room.

  She sits back down, and when it’s just the two of us and the door is closed, I say, “What happened with Allison?”

  “I already told you, she broke a gift I was given by a former student.”

  “What happened before that?”

  “I was updating her on the police investigation into her sister’s death.”

  I rub the shadow of a beard on my jawline, considering. “Was that really necessary? I’m guessing whatever you said upset her.”

  Heaton gives me a tight smile. “Psychiatric treatment of the patients here falls under my purview, Dr. Delgado.”

  “With my oversight.”

  “With your general oversight. I’m certainly not required to get your approval for how I approach sessions with patients.”

  I exhale heavily, not interested in a debate. “So what was the update? Has someone been arrested?”

  “To the contrary, Ava Cole’s case is now considered cold.” She gives me a knowing look. “Because the only person who can tell the police what happened refuses to.”

  “Allison may not even remember. She could be suffering from PTSD. It’s your job to support her.”

  “She’s not making any progress, Daniel.”

  I shake my head. “First of all, I disagree. And since when do we require progress?”

  “Progress is always my goal. Why spin my wheels if I can help someone?”

  “Do you think you helped Allison today?”

  Heaton leans forward, her eyes narrowed. “It’s not your job to question my methods. I was recruited to come here for my expertise, so don’t treat me like I’m your intern. Save your superiority complex for Brody Tillman.”

  “I’ll question your methods when something like this happens. I’ve never seen the slightest sign of aggression from Allison.”

  “You do realize she was likely involved in her sister’s murder, right?”

  I balk at that. “What, now you’re a detective?”

  “I spoke to a detective from the Chicago PD this morning.”

  “And he said they suspect her?”

  Heaton’s thin shoulders tense. “No. But she knows something, Daniel. She knows everything. She was the only one who saw the murderer. The police don’t even have a description, which she could provide.”

  “Maybe she didn’t see whomever it was. Maybe she’s not ready.”

  Heaton shrinks back. “Not ready to identify her own sister’s murderer?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m not rushing to judgment.”

  “Daniel, whoever came into Ava’s apartment that night was let in. They were known to her and maybe to Allison, too. It wasn’t a robbery gone bad, because Ava’s autopsy report says she still had on her engagement ring when the autopsy was done. That ring was valued at more than fifty thousand dollars. Photos of it were published in online magazines. People knew about the value of the ring, but whoever came to her apartment that night had only one thing in mind—killing her. Whatever they said and did can help the police, but Allison won’t cooperate.”

  “Dr. Heaton, let me remind you that your only obligation is to our patients. We aren’t here to solve crimes or unnecessarily stress our patients for any reason.”

  “She’s no more mentally ill than you or me, Daniel. I see complete realization and comprehension in her.”

  I scrub a hand over my face, my frustration mounting. “What the hell kind of psychiatrist are you? I specialized in emergency medicine, and even I know she could be suffering from a number of situational illnesses.”

  Heaton stands up. “I won’t be treated this way. Lodge a formal complaint against me if you want to, but this conversation is over. I will treat Allison Cole, and all of my patients, as I see fit.”

  “You won’t be seeing Allison anymore.”

  Her eyes are wide when she turns to me. “What? Why not?”

  “She told me she doesn’t want to do sessions with you anymore, and I agreed.”

  “She told you?” Heaton is aghast. “She talks to you, and you’ve never said anything about it?”

  “She wrote me a message.”

  “That’s still communication. You should have shared that with me.”

  “I just did.”

  “Well, she can write in our sessions if she prefers.”

  I shake my head. “There won’t be any more sessions, Dr. Heaton. I’m honoring her request not to meet with you anymore.”

  “I’ve never . . .” Her voice shakes with anger, and she pauses before continuing. “The Hawthornes have given you too much power here. Patient care is supposed to be collaborative, but you’re a dictator.”

  My laugh is humorless. “Well, that’s a new one. Care is collaborative here, but one person has to be in charge. And I make calls with the patient’s best interest in mind.”

  “What, and I don’t?”

  “You didn’t today.”

  She narrows her eyes. “I will be taking this up with Joanne. We all have bosses, Daniel. Even you.”

  “Feel free to do that.” I stand up and walk to the door, my hand on the knob when I turn to look at her over my shoulder. “I’ll note the end of Allison’s sessions with you on her chart.”

  I leave the room then, my shoulders tight with tension as I walk to my office. I’m so pissed at Heaton—way more so than I let on to her. Allison is being punished because Heaton crossed a line today. I can’t do anything about that, but I can damn well make sure it never happens again.

  When I get to my office, I close the door and sit down behind my desk, unable to find my focus. I know the doctor in me took up for Allison with Heaton. I’d do the same for any patient here. But this lingering sense of helplessness I feel isn’t normal. I know that’s not coming from the doctor in me, but from of the man who has feelings for Allison.

  Though I haven’t outwardly crossed a line with her, I have in my heart. And I feel like a fraud for coming down on Heaton over professional boundaries when they’re looking pretty blurred to me right now, too. I have to keep my feelings for Allison in check, or they may start showing.

  I’VE BEEN BACK AT LEVEL Two for two weeks now, and it’s hitting me harder than I thought it would. I hadn’t realized how much I’d grown to love the wide-open Montana country and my hikes through the forest until they were taken away from me.

  I’ve grown resentful, just sitting in the chair in my room all day and watching the others ride horses and walk through the clearing. I’m angry. Not at Dr. Heaton, as I probably ought to be, because I didn’t expect anything more of her.

  At first, my anger was directed at myself for not being able to withstand Dr. Heaton’s antagonizing comments. She got to me, and she knows it. I hate that worse than I hate being a Level Two again.

  In the past few days, though, I’ve started to get angry at Daniel. It’s not a rational anger. He looks in on me most days, but it’s just a casual stop in the doorway to ask if I’m good.

  I want him to come into my room. I want him to look at me like he did that day when he helped me cross the creek. He hasn’t returned The Scarlet Letter yet, and I want him to bring it in with a note tucked into the cover.

  Mostly, I just want to know he hasn’t forgotten me. I feel like we’re back to a strict doctor-patient relationship, and I can’t help wondering if my freak-out in Dr. Heaton’s office isn’t the reason.

  “Hey, Allison.” I turn to look at the doorway to my room, where Morgan is standing. “We’re doing manicures downstairs, you should come.”

  I shake my head. She walks into the room and sits down on my bed.

  “You can’t just stay in here for a whole month. For one thing, it’s not good for you, and for another, Tim keeps sitting next to me a
t dinner since you never come down for it. He cuts his food into equal-sized bites and then organizes it on his plate before he eats any of it. And he talks about math nonstop.”

  I don’t even shake my head this time. Instead, I stare out the window, looking for a bird whose freedom I can daydream about. I’m not just physically trapped in this place; I’m also stuck inside my own head, where I have to fight against the memories that hurt my heart.

  I’m completely alone in the world. Aunt Maggie hasn’t visited me here or sent a letter. We were never close, and I’m sure she felt like she was doing me a solid just by bringing me here. I’m glad my mother didn’t live to see what’s become of her daughters—one murdered and the other a mute in a mental hospital. When she passed away three years ago from ovarian cancer, I thought I’d never feel another loss so profound. I was wrong. Foolishly, stupidly wrong.

  And while Morgan is my friend, she’s an eighteen-year-old whose world mostly revolves around herself.

  “Okay, fine,” she says, shrugging. “Come down if you change your mind, though. I like you better than Tim.”

  She gets up and leaves the room. I open the book I’ve been reading and return to it, hoping to lose myself in someone else’s world for a while. My current mood has me reaching for darker reads, and I’m reading 1984 now.

  The sky is just starting to shift toward sunset when I hear someone walking in the door with my dinner tray. It always arrives at 5:45 p.m.—fifteen minutes before dinner is served in the dining hall.

  “Hey, I brought your dinner.”

  My stomach does a full flip as I turn to see Daniel standing in the doorway. Usually, a dining hall worker brings my tray. I close the book and set it down.

  He sets the tray on the bed and walks back to the door. My heart sinks as I realize he’s leaving. I want to call out and ask him to stay.

  But when he puts his hand on the door, he closes it, staying in the room. He walks over and sits on the wide window ledge, just looking at me for a few seconds.

  “I finished The Scarlet Letter a few days ago,” he finally says. “Didn’t bring it with me because . . .” He takes a deep breath. I’ve never seen him look anything but confident and in control until now. “I wasn’t planning on coming here, but then . . . well, here I am.”

  He gestures at the tray of food on the bed. “If you want to eat while we talk . . . or while I talk, you know . . .”

  I shake my head. I was mad at him when he walked into the room, but his nervousness is melting my anger. I hope he’s not here to give me bad news, but I can’t imagine why else he’d be nervous.

  He looks at the cover of the book on my table, and the corners of his lips quirk up in a smile. “Well, shit. Things are worse than I thought.”

  I smile back, and his eyes lock on to mine for a long moment.

  “If you’re reading a book about remaining human in inhuman circumstances, I feel like I’ve failed you,” he says. His dark eyes turn serious. “Will you tell me how you’re feeling? On the board?”

  I get up from the chair and pick up the dry-erase board and marker from my nightstand. Then I sit down on the bed across from Daniel and write.

  I miss being outside.

  He nods. “Fifteen more days. I’m sorry you’re stuck in here.”

  I write another message.

  It feels like you’ve been avoiding me.

  He sighs softly and looks down at the ground. “I’m not gonna deny it. I have been. You have an effect on me, Allison. I’m not sure what to do with that.”

  I’m taken aback by his admission. I wipe the message off the board with a tissue, and we sit in silence for a minute.

  When Daniel raises his head again, he says, “The next time you come to my office to return a book, go over to my bookcase and look at the picture in a frame on a stack of books. That’s my son, Caleb. He’s six.”

  Daniel has a son. I never imagined him with a family. And given that his son isn’t here and his expression is pained, I know this is a tough subject for him. I try to reassure him with a look that whatever he’s about to say, it’s safe with me.

  “I used to live in LA,” he continues. “I worked at UCLA Medical Center. That’s where I met my wife, Julie.”

  A wife. My heart constricts in my chest. He has a wife.

  “She was a physical therapist there, and I was doing my residency. We dated for a while, then got married and had Caleb a year later. I was kind of a star on the rise in emergency medicine. I was getting good opportunities and advancing quickly. But the hours were intense. And to move up, I had to work even more. I wasn’t home much.”

  Though his voice is distant, I can tell how hard it is for him to remember the things he’s telling me. His expression is clouded with remorse.

  “Julie and I weren’t getting along. She wanted me to be a better husband and father, but I resented her for it. I felt like she disregarded all the work I’d put in to get where I was. She was right, of course . . . I should have tried harder. But I was too blinded by my own ambition. She left me, and I knew I’d failed my son, but it was too late. I started stopping at a bar near the hospital for a drink after work. Then it became four or five drinks.”

  He stands up, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Allison, I’m an alcoholic. It’s been more than two years since my last drink, but I will always be an alcoholic. When I’m around alcohol, I can’t control myself.” He stares out the window, his expression forlorn. “When I was drinking, I did something I’m deeply ashamed of. It cost me my medical license for a year and finally made me realize I had to go to rehab. And once I got my license back, I came here. Hawthorne is in the middle of nowhere. Alcohol isn’t allowed here. The nearest town is twenty miles away, and I don’t have a car. That’s deliberate. This is where I need to be to keep my demons at bay.”

  When he looks over at me, his dark eyes are swimming with emotion. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I nod, the pain in his eyes shattering my heart.

  “I have to pour myself into this place,” he says. “It keeps me sane. And I’ve never told anyone any of this, but I wanted you to know that there’s always hope. There’s always another path, even if it takes us someplace we never imagined being.”

  Forcing away the tears in my eyes, I write on the board.

  Thank you for sharing that with me.

  There’s a hint of a smile on his lips. “You’ve already survived the worst, and you were fighting your way back up. I could see it. Don’t let this thing with Heaton knock you back a single step. Show her what you’re made of.”

  I write another message below the first one.

  I will.

  He nods and looks at the dinner tray on the bed. “You want to eat that, or come down to the dining room with me?”

  After wiping off the words on the board, I write on it.

  I’ll come down. Also, where is Caleb now?

  Daniel’s smile is sad. “Still in California. Julie got remarried a year ago. But Caleb came here to visit for a week last Christmas, and he’s coming again next month. He’s a great kid.”

  He nods toward the door. I lead the way, feeling his hand brush across my back right before we leave the room. It sends a warm shiver down my spine. That brief touch and Daniel’s solid presence behind me provide all the reinforcement I need.

  MY MIND IS ON BILLY McGrath as I descend the main stairway and head across the great room for the elevator. The Level Three nurses called and told me he’s been manic for almost twenty-four hours now, ranting in a language they don’t understand and throwing himself against the walls of his room.

  The poor kid’s body has to be exhausted. I put in an order for some medicine to relax him, and I’m going up to check on him.

  When I glance at a leather chair near the fireplace, I see Morgan brushing the long, shiny brown hair of someone sitting on the floor. My eyes immediately lock on to Allison, who gives me the slightest smile.

  The light is back in her ey
es now. She’s been coming downstairs during the day and for dinner every night. Just this morning, I laughed when I read a note from her inside the cover of Les Miserables, the last book I gave her to read.

  D,

  I figured the title of this book was misspelled. Less Miserable sounded like a great choice for a mental patient. We can always use a pick-me-up, right? But it’s not less miserable—it’s depressing. Send me something happy next time.

  ~ A

  PS—Caleb is a beautiful boy. He has your eyes.

  I feel about ten feet tall for playing any part in bringing out that beautiful smile of hers. Telling her part of my past also shifted something inside me, and I feel a little less weighted down now. I’m seen as the leader here, the problem solver, the strong, level-headed doctor who usually has all the answers. But I’m just as fallible as anyone, and it felt good to admit my weaknesses to Allison and still see the shine of admiration for me in her eyes.

  A wave of guilt sweeps through me for having these thoughts about a patient. And not just any patient, but one I’m treating at a mental hospital after she experienced severe trauma. No matter how I feel about her, Allison can never be anything more than a secret fantasy for me. I gave up self-indulgence a couple years ago when I checked in to rehab.

  As I step on to the elevator, I try to shake it off. I have to be completely focused anytime I’m on Level Three. The Hawthorne staff still whispers about a doctor who was killed by a patient on Level Three in the 1960s. It was a brutal strangulation by a delusional man. At my size, I don’t worry about being physically overwhelmed by a patient, but things can go wrong in other ways with the severity of the diagnoses up there.

  When the elevator doors open on to Level Three, Sara is waiting for me, wearing the red scrubs of a Level Three nurse.