Crazy Dead (A Cordi O'Callaghan Mystery)

by Suzanne F. Kingsmill

  Feeling like an idiot, unsure of what I was doing, I flattened myself against the wall as I sidled down the hall toward the nursing station. I poked my head up above the wainscotting so that I could look in the window. There were two doors into the station, one from the men’s side and one from the women’s side. Ella was sitting at one of the computers and quietly laughing at something she was reading on the screen. Didn’t know she could laugh. One nurse, 3:00 a.m. How easy it was to be about with no one noticing. I was about to leave when the far door began to open. I crouched down below the wainscotting and waited. Although I couldn’t see I was able to make out some of the words.

  “Bloody hell … refused the …”

  “Need … help.”

  There was silence for a while and then, “Is it true … say about Mavis?” I strained so hard to hear the words.

  “… scarf … peaceful … strange.”

  “Like … the others?”

  “Maybe … shock.”

  “Weird.”

  “Yeah.”

  They stopped talking after that and when I looked, Ella had gone back to her computer and whoever she’d been talking to was nowhere in sight. It seemed like a really boring job, the night shift in a psychiatric ward, but only if something didn’t go wrong.

  I crept back down that long deserted hallway, feeling like a grain of sand lost on the beach. What had they meant by “others”?

  I awoke the next morning feeling like a piece of dirt. I had a throbbing headache and my mind was groggy. Kit tried to sort of tidy me out of bed by making my bed with me in it. I looked at the time: 8:15. Breakfast, and I could not get myself out of bed. Total inertia. What was the point anyway? To eat? To survive? You need a point to your life to want to get up and I couldn’t find that point.

  Kit tried to cajole me and Lucy tried to bully me, but eventually they left for breakfast and I lay there waiting for the inevitable nurse to come and get me. But then I remembered Mavis. And it took my mind off myself for some precious seconds. What had happened to her? How had she died? Why had she died? I was contemplating these questions when Ella breezed into the room. She looked awful, with big bags under her eyes. Maybe the night shift wasn’t all that easy. In any other circumstances I would have felt sorry for her, but how do you feel sorry for someone you suspect is trying to kill you?

  “You know the rules,” she said. “Breakfast means breakfast, so let’s get out of bed now, shall we?”

  When I didn’t move, she said in a soft voice that just sounded menacing to me, “What’s wrong?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Look, I know some days are a bitch and you just can’t get out of bed, but you know that you’ll feel better once you get up.”

  It didn’t help that she had a point. I was arguably better once I got up, but the getting up was sometimes so hard.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  Why was she being so nice? She helped me get out of bed and even found me my clothes.

  “There’s always light at the end of the tunnel, even if you can’t see it.”

  She didn’t wait for me to get dressed, but she did wait until I was out of bed. As she left she smiled and said, “Dr. Osborn wants to see you at ten o’clock,” and then she was gone, diabolical smile and all. I went back to bed.

  Sometime later someone came into the room. I couldn’t see who it was because I had the covers pulled up over my head. The rummaging sounds were coming from Kit’s bed. After a while someone else came into the room, but no one said anything. The rummaging stopped and I heard the shuffling of feet. Even as down as I was, my curiosity got the better of me and I peeked out from under the covers.

  Not what I expected to see. Lucy and Kit were standing with their arms entwined around each other in a silent embrace. Guess they made up, I thought. Some second sense made them realize they had an audience and they quickly let go of each other and moved apart. I gave them a few seconds to get their acts together and then pushed back the covers and sat up. What was it that had passed between them? Simple friendship or was it more than that? Something was going on. I remembered the conversation in the bathroom. Maybe it hadn’t been just the toilet paper that Kit had been talking about. I finally got dressed and went to see if the kitchen staff had left any food out. Orange juice. Coffee. Nothing else. I got myself a coffee, then went and sat by the window overlooking the city. I could see the streetcars moving slowly along the snow-clogged street. Pedestrians had their heads down as they battled the wind and the snow. It seemed so strange to be warm and dry with my coffee and my sofa, while a mere quarter inch of glass separated me from the miserable cold.

  It was Dr. Osborn himself who found me staring out the window at the blowing snow.

  “You know what they say about snowflakes, don’t you?” he asked.

  I knew he was just being friendly — no two are the same — but I wasn’t feeling particularly friendly, so I said nothing. He inclined his head and I slowly got up and followed him through the door to his office.

  This time he had wind chimes as background music, and the moment that I walked from the corridor into his office everything was muted by his thick carpet. It was like walking into a movie set from the bare bones of a hangar. Totally different world. I sat down on the sofa, as far from him as possible.

  He placed a file folder on his desk, picked up another, and walked over to the chair opposite me. I came straight to the point.

  “What did you mean by ‘another ECT’?” I asked.

  He flipped through some pages in the folder and then looked at me above his glasses.

  “You don’t remember the first?” He took off his glasses.

  I asked him all the questions I had asked my brother and got all the same answers. That I had been too severely depressed to give permission myself and that my brother had consented.

  I sat there in that strange cocoon of a room, with the soothing music and the ghosts of all the pained patients who had sat here before me, and I wondered how this could have happened to me.

  “What did you do to me?” I asked softly.

  He more or less walked me through what Lucy had told me. The paralysis. The electrodes. The shock. The seizure lasting about ninety seconds.

  “And what about my memory?”

  “It’s just short term. It’ll come back.”

  “It doesn’t for everybody,” I said.

  He sighed. “Yes, you’re right. A few unfortunate people lose short-term memory and even some long-term memories, but most do not, and I emphasize most.”

  I stared at him and cleared my throat.

  “I looked it up on the Internet,” I said. “My research says it can be as high as thirty percent. Three out of every ten people. That’s still a lot.”

  He had the decency to look down at his file folder and then said, “It helped you, Cordi. It pulled you out. If you go back to that place, you need to consider having another.” He tapped the folder against his knee and I could almost see his thoughts forming. I was about to say, Yeah, but at what cost? when he surprised me and said, “Would you like to go home for an overnight visit tomorrow, if you feel up to it? Do you good.”

  When I didn’t answer, he added, “It’s important for you to reconnect with your outside life as soon as possible, and you have made some progress — the depression has lifted. However, I’m worried about your preoccupation with Mavis, and we need to address that.”

  Just then, the phone rang. He stood up and went over to his desk to answer it, dropping my folder on top of a pile of others.

  It appeared there was some mix-up with meds on the floor and he asked me to wait while he cleared it up. He closed the door behind him so quietly I had to watch to make sure he had really gone. I got up from the sofa and crossed to his desk.

  There were a lot of research papers on the desk, all with
Richard Osborn as co-author with David Ellison. So that was his first name. The papers ran the gamut from CBT studies to medical interventions for Alzheimer’s patients and memory loss. I wondered how he had time to do so much research and attend to all his patients, as well.

  I was torn between looking at his research and leafing through my folder, which he’d left on his desk. My folder won. I was officially patient number 1356 in large red letters and my entire medical history was listed in great detail, including my ECT treatment. I flipped through it and saw where he’d first decided I was a candidate for ECT and where he’d got Ryan’s permission. I noticed some of the other folders on his desk and my heart lurched when I saw that one of the folders was Mavis’s. I was about to pick it up when Osborn’s voice cut the air.

  “Do you always snoop like that, Cordi?” His voice was cold and even.

  I turned to him, my own folder still in my hand and said, “It is my understanding that my medical history belongs to me.”

  He didn’t say anything. He just came up to me and took the folder from my hand.

  “And did you find anything in there of interest to you?” he asked.

  I shook my head. I thought he was going to end the session right then and there, but instead he returned to the topic of my “obsession” with Mavis again. He had nothing new to tell me, however, and I guess I had nothing new to tell him. Nothing I wanted to tell him, anyway.

  Chapter Twelve

  Like Austin, I had my moments too. Mostly just a stomach-clenching fear that the depression would come back. Otherwise I felt pretty good. The fact that I seemed to be collecting clues without too much trouble meant that my mind was on the mend, even though some of my memories were missing, at least according to Ryan and Dr. Osborn. But really, how could I tell if I wasn’t remembering something I’d forgotten? I went to another cognitive behavioural therapy class just to get away from my room and to see if I could find out anything more about Mavis, but it was all dead ends.

  I was feeling restless and irritable, so I left the hospital and walked the hundred feet or so to Tim Hortons for a coffee. I was lucky and found a table by the window. There was a guy standing outside dressed only in a T-shirt, blocking my view as he hurriedly inhaled on a cigarette. I marvelled at the strength of his addiction. It was bitterly cold outside.

  “Hi, Cordi.”

  I looked up in annoyance to find Kit gazing down at me, one hand holding a steaming cup of coffee and the other a doughnut in a wad of napkins. She asked if I minded if she joined me. I minded very much. I was feeling very antisocial, but I still had enough social grace to realize I couldn’t say no without hurting her feelings, and enough compassion to care. So I waved her to a seat. And then said nothing. It was childish, but I felt trapped.

  I watched as she carefully placed her coffee on the table and then wiped off the chair, before wiping off the tabletop with one of her napkins. Then she sat down and folded her used napkin into a tiny little square and looked at me expectantly.

  “You don’t eat doughnuts?” she asked.

  What a conversation starter, I thought. I didn’t feel like telling her about my taste in doughnuts, so I shook my head. She took another napkin and wiped the rim of her cup before taking a sip. She then reached across the table and wiped a spot of coffee that had dribbled off my mug to the tabletop. I resisted the impulse to slap her hand.

  “Why do you come here if you have to clean everything before you sit down, or eat or drink?” It was a pointed antisocial question.

  “I don’t do it because I want to. I don’t choose to be obsessive compulsive,” she said, her voice a bit cold and very apprehensive. “I can’t help it. Even my name, spelled backward sort of, labels me, because my obsessions and rituals are really just tics of the mind.” She took a sip of coffee. I wondered if she had thought of the other meaning for Kit spelled backward. Methamphetamine. I figured it would be unkind to tell her.

  “I worry so much that my mother will die if I step on a single line. It tears me apart, the anxiety is so bad. I can hardly breathe sometimes. Intellectually I know it’s obsessive, but I can’t help myself. The worry is overwhelming and forces me to do all these rituals to defuse things.”

  “Like you and Lucy.” Talk about a non sequitur.

  “What about me and Lucy?” Kit’s voice dropped an octave.

  “Are you close friends?”

  “We get along.”

  “But not all the time.”

  I waited, but she suddenly got up and went to the bathroom without saying a word. When she got back I stared at her, but she just stared into her coffee.

  “Did you hear or see anything the night Mavis died?” I said, switching topics.

  She looked up at me quickly. “What do you mean?” She sounded defensive and looked really uncomfortable.

  “She died in our room. I just wanted to know if you saw anything.”

  “Why do you keep saying she died? The hospital people say she didn’t. Besides, I was asleep. I wouldn’t have seen anything,” she said.

  Avoiding my eyes, she gathered up her things and left me to contemplate the remains of my coffee and the nature of Kit’s and Lucy’s relationship and whether it had any bearing on Mavis.

  It wasn’t until 9:00 p.m. — medication roll call — that anything of interest happened. When I arrived, all the chairs outside the dispensary were taken and so I took up my position leaning against the wall, some distance from the medication room. I fervently hoped that Ella wasn’t dispensing the drugs, because I really did want to get better and that meant taking my medication. Cheeking it too often was not a good idea if I wanted to keep seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, and I’d been cheeking it a lot because Ella was dispensing. I still wasn’t taking any chances.

  I was leaning with my back against the wall and staring at a notice on the wall across from me. It was a notice I’d read the previous night, something about warning the nurses ahead of time if you were leaving the unit for a night or two, so they could get your medication to you. But now there was something written in pen in the space below the words of the notice. It hadn’t been there the night before, I was certain. I crossed the hall to get a better look and then wished I hadn’t.

  My desolate mind cannot erase

  The darkness within … it’s God’s disgrace.

  There’s not much left but a splintered soul

  Why won’t my psyche let me be whole …

  It was so plaintive, so sad. The mental pain, the emotional pain, the brain pain that anybody who has ever been there will understand, screamed its message from this poem written on a hospital wall, outside the dispensary for the drugs designed to ease the pain. Drugs that didn’t always work.

  It wasn’t Ella tonight. It was some nurse I didn’t know. She opened the split door to the dispensary. It was little more than a glorified closet. She closed the bottom half of the door and left the upper half open. As she called our names we went and got our medication. It was all prepackaged in individual doses by the pharmacy downstairs, and it was her job to punch out each bubble-wrapped pill, place it in a little paper cup, and give it to us to take while she watched. There were a lot of people ahead of me and I started to pace up and down the hallway, staring at the speckled linoleum floor. Up and down, up and down. A nurse came and stopped by the notice, apparently reading the poem. I watched her take it down and leave. Up and down, up and down. I even caught myself pulling a Kit — I began to avoid the lines of the linoleum squares.

  “You’re going to wear out the floor if you’re not careful.”

  I stopped pacing and looked in the direction of the voice. Jacques was lounging against the wall and I wondered how long he’d been there. I certainly hadn’t noticed him. Although he was quite noticeable, dressed all in black with his blond hair cascading around his massive shoulders, his mischievous green eyes dancing like wildfire. He
pushed himself away from the wall with one smooth fluid motion and met me halfway.

  “Anything new?” he asked. I hesitated and then decided to tell him about Austin, just to get it off my chest.

  “I talked to Austin.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t think he’s the murderer.” I told Jacques what Austin had told me about killing Mavis.

  “So why don’t you think it was Austin?”

  “He didn’t mention the red scarf once and his language sounded delusional, as if he had seen it in his head and nothing more.”

  “And it’s rare for schizophrenics to get violent.”

  “Exactly, and he didn’t mention the scarf and his story seemed so surreal. If you accept the premise that she was an alien bent on stealing his past, then murdering her has some logic to it. But it sounded so much like a dream, a nightmare haunting a man whose mind is not well….”

  My voice trailed off as I thought about how hard it is to live inside a mind that is ill, and that delusions can kill.

  “You okay?” he asked, looking intently at me.

  He liked to ask me that. I wondered if that was some reflection on me. Did I always appear not okay to him? I pulled myself back from my thoughts and said, “Well, I know why my memory has been so bad.”

  He cocked a blond eyebrow at me and I told him about the ECT I couldn’t remember. Not sure why, but it seemed harmless. He was very interested and asked me all sorts of questions about Osborn and the protocol for ECT and all about memory loss, until I finally said, “Look, I don’t really remember. Why are you so interested?”

  He seemed nonplussed at first by my question, but then replied, “When I was really depressed Dr. Osborn suggested ECT, but I shied away. Coward, I guess. Got right into the room and everything before I changed my mind. I’m glad I did. My treatment seems to be working without imperiling my brain.”