by Carol Coffey
“This has happened before?”
“I told you, Brendan. I told you to leave it alone.When you find him, don’t try to talk him around. And if he is on the tower, do not go up after him. Do you hear me? Do not climb it. He may panic. Just stay with him. I’m on my way. I’ll have to get Kuvic to come in and cover for me – Jane is here but she wouldn’t be able to manage on her own. Cathy is away this week and Alice is out looking for Zeb. It’s best that she doesn’t know about Jonathan anyway until we find him.I’ll phone Dr Reiter and organise to have him taken to him when we’ve found him.”
“I promised him I wouldn’t take him to Dr Reiter,” Brendan said worriedly.
“It’s a little late for keeping promises,” she replied curtly and hung up, leaving Brendan standing on the sidewalk with the receiver in his hand.
He felt like an idiot. Why hadn’t he listened to her and to Eileen? Why couldn’t he have left well enough alone? Jonathan was out there somewhere, alone. He could hear Alice’s voice telling him that Jonathan wasn’t made for the streets and Eileen’s remark that Brendan was living his life through the man’s amazing stories and it was true. He had endangered his friend and all he could do was hope that no harm would come to him.
Brendan was not a praying man but he looked upwards and promised that if Jonathan got out of this unharmed, he would never again try to find out the man’s identity. As he replaced the receiver, he longed to give in to his exhaustion. He felt like he could lie down there right on the pavement and sleep and found himself looking longingly at the grey concrete. His shoulders ached and his stomach growled from hunger.
He hailed a cab back to Marcus Garvey and, despite his exhaustion, he ran quickly through the park which looked ominous in the fading light. He looked upwards to the sky which was still bright but the tall buildings surrounding the park blocked out the sunset and dipped the lush green area into premature darkness.
He made his way to the tower and looked up at its immense columns.
“Jonathan?” he called softly even though the park was now almost empty save for a couple of homeless people lying on nearby benches.
He looked up but he could not see anyone on the metal structure. Brendan lowered himself down onto the dirt and leant against a tree where he sat motionless for an hour and a half until Pilar arrived.
She did not look at him but walked directly to the tower and touched the cold steel with her hand.
“Jonathan,” she said softly. “Por favor, baje. No pasa nada. Ahora está a salvo.”
Brendan came to her side. “What are you saying?”
“I am telling him to come down, that it is safe.”
Brendan could see her eyes moisten and he looked away, painfully aware now of the hurt he had caused and the damage he had done.
“¿Abuelita? ¿Es usted abuelita?” a voice called out from the lookout at the very top of the tower.
Brendan winced as he realised how high Jonathan had climbed.
He saw Pilar tense and look to the ground as though Jonathan’s words caused her pain.
“What?” Brendan asked frantically.
“This is not good. He thinks I am his grandma,” she replied.
She answered Jonathan in Spanish, in soothing words of comfort.
After a while she walked about twenty feet away and took out her mobile phone. Brendan had never owned one. He hated the thought of people being able to reach him wherever he went. He moved closer to her and heard her speak to Dr Reiter in a low urgent voice and listened as she used terms like ‘psychosis’ and ‘psychotic episode’, words that made Brendan’s blood turn cold. He heard her giving Dr Reiter directions so that an ambulance would be waiting outside the 5th Avenue entrance when Pilar managed to talk Jonathan down. When she was finished, she put her phone away and moved back to her spot by the metal pillar.
“Jonathan?” she called. “Please come down and I will take you away from here. I won’t let anyone hurt you!”
Brendan noticed that she called Jonathan by the name he preferred, a name he had never heard her use before.
A silence fell as they held their breath and waited for him to reply. Slowly, they heard the sound of his feet on the metal steps. They heard him cry out in pain. Brendan looked away from her, aware now that he would have to tell her about Jonathan’s accident.
“He got hit by a car – I think he hurt his foot. His head is cut too.”
Pilar glared at him and he looked away. Guilt overwhelmed him and he could not return his eyes to Jonathan until the man had made it painfully down the last rung.
“Pilar?” Jonathan said.
A smile washed over her face and heavy tears flowed down her face. She wiped them quickly away and moved towards him.
“I heard my grandma,” he said.
Brendan was moved by how childlike his friend sounded in the dark, empty park.
“Yes, but she had to go and asked me to take care of you. Is that okay?”
Jonathan looked around himself and appeared perplexed by his surroundings.
“How did I get here?” he asked.
“We can talk about that later,” Pilar replied.
They walked together towards 5thAvenue. Soon they could see the blue flashing lights of the ambulance waiting at the park’s exit.
“Jonathan, we need to get a doctor to look at your foot. Okay?” Pilar asked.
Jonathan tensed and moved backward away from them. He began to shake his head furiously and narrowed his eyes at Brendan.
“You promised!” he pleaded.
Brendan looked away and focused on the neon lights of the bar on the other side of the street.
“It’s okay,” Pilar said. “I will be there too. I will drive to the hospital behind you in my car.”
As they waited at the door of the ambulance, one of the paramedics prepared an injection for Jonathan.
“No!” he pleaded as they pulled his sleeve up.
“What’s that for?” Brendan asked but Pilar did not answer him. He turned to face her and saw that her eyes had once more filled with tears.
As the paramedic injected the long needle into Jonathan’s vein, his eyes glazed over.
“I’m sorry,” Brendan mouthed but his friend’s eyes had already closed and his body slumped forward. “I’m sorry.”
Chapter 18
The New York State Psychiatric Institute on Riverside Drive was an enormousstructure of reinforced steel which dominated the city skyline off Henry Hudson Parkway. The exterior of the eleven-storey building was clad with large panels of green aluminium and huge panes of toughened glass on both sides of the semi-circular building. Pilar swung her car onto the off ramp and parked quickly in the hospital’s staff car park. She opened the door and ran to the hospital’s emergency department with Brendan following as close behind as he could. When they arrived at the emergency desk, Jonathan had already been taken to X-ray.
Pilar sat down on one of the chairs in the waiting area and put her face in her hands. Brendan sat beside her but decided not to try to comfort her – she had not uttered one word to him on the rushed journey down the highway.
She clasped her hands together as though she was praying.
“He called me Pilar when he came down. That’s good,” she finally said aloud though Brendan knew that she was talking more to herself than to him.
Half an hour later, Jonathan was wheeled by on a trolley by two stern-looking orderlies followed closely by a nurse. Pilar jumped up and went to him. Brendan followed her and they stood looking down at their friend with his half-closed eyes. The cut on his head had been cleaned and stitched. Brendan looked closer and winced as he saw that it was in the same spot as Jonathan’s old scar.
“His leg’s not broken. It’ll be right in a few weeks,” a nurse who seemed to know Pilar said.“Dr Reiter will be down shortly to assess him.”
The orderlies briskly wheeled Jonathan away.
Pilar returned to her seat and bent forward, hugging her body.
Brendan instinctively put his arm around her and she did not pull away. She turned and buried her head in his chest.
“I’m sorry,” he said as she sobbed loudly, oblivious to the stares of people in the small waiting area.
“You can’t ever do this again,” she said.
“I won’t. I promise.”
Two hours later Dr Reiter arrived and stood over them. His cool eyes focused on Brendan. He beckoned for them to follow him into a small meeting room and sat at the head of the small, coffee-stained table. Pilar and Brendan sat quietly on either side of the tableand trained their eyes on the cheap veneer wood.
Dr Reiter cleared his throat and turned to Pilar.
“The sedative is wearing off so I was able to speak with him and find out what has been happening,” he said.
He turned his cold gaze on Brendan, placing his hands flat on the table.
“So, I take it you are the one who is going to help John get home?” he quipped.
Brendan swallowed and waited for the lecture he knew would follow. He looked at the doctor who he had not taken to on that first morning they met at the shelter. Reiter had an air of arrogance about him which Brendan detested. The flesh on his bony face was lined with long, narrow wrinkles which ran down his cheeks like streams and gathered around his neck in loose folds. His long bony hands which rested confidently on the table looked menacing, as though they might rise up at any moment and squeeze the very life out of him.
“Do you know what a paracosym is?”Reiter asked.
Brendan shook his head and looked at Pilar who did not move her eyes from the table top.
Dr Reiter leaned towards him. Brendan saw the faint glint of anger in his eye.
“Perhaps Ms Diaz will enlighten us? She is, after all, responsible for John’s care at the shelter.”
The disdain in his tone felt like a punch to the diminutive nurse. She swallowed and focused her eyes on her hands that were clasped tightly on the table.
“No? Well, allow me to do the honours,” said Reiter. “A paracosym is an imaginary world that is created by children.”
Brendan noticed that his voice sounded flat and emotionless as though he was reading the text from an autocue for a television documentary and not referring to a human being.
“Many children who create these imaginary worlds have experienced severe trauma and so they create alternative worlds, worlds that are safe for them to live in. This world can include imaginary people and places they’ve never been to. It may even involve the child speaking an imaginary language. In John’s case, it was, I acknowledge, a real language, but otherwise he presented as a classic case. Unfortunately he did not grow out of this paracosym and clings to the belief that the life he imagined he had was real when in fact it was not. This, young man, is what is known as psychosis – where a person cannot tell what is real from what is imaginary.”
Brendan felt an anger welling up in him, not only because of Reiter’s contempt towards him but because of his treatment of Pilar. None of this was her fault.
“He has given me clear detailed descriptions of his family and the stories he tells me never alter,” Brendan said. “How do you explain that?”
Reiter suddenly began to laugh loudly. Pilar lowered her head into her hands and shook her head. Brendan watched as the smile slowly faded from the psychiatrist’s face and was replaced with a scornful expression.
“What’s so funny?” Brendan snapped as he looked from Reiter to Pilar.
“They are imaginary,” Dr Reiter said. “All of it is – from his white-haired siblings to his blind sister to the apple-picking parents in Virginia. Believe me, the police left no stone unturned in their investigation and came up with nothing.”
Brendan shook his head.
“You don’t agree?” Dr Reiter smirked.
Brendan flushed with embarrassment. He knew the doctor was mocking him.
“No, I don’t. He must belong to someone!”
“Of course he does or once did belong to someone, but have you considered any or all of the reasons that nobody would come and claim him?”
Brendan flushed and looked away from the doctor’s piercing gaze.
Dr Reiter turned his attention to Pilar who slowly raised her head and met his glare.
“Ms Diaz, I helped secure that position for you on the grounds that you used your psychiatric training to inform and educate all people in contact with John at the shelter. You were specifically directed to tell people not to engage in his fantasies. Now, can I expect you to do your job or should I discuss this problem with the charity’s management body?”
“It won’t happen again,” Pilar said as she looked at Brendan who nodded simultaneously.
“I take it your investigation into obtaining more permanent accommodation for John is making progress?” Reiter said.
“Yes,” she replied.
He raised his eyebrows, waiting for more.
“John has appointments at the housing authority coming up. They’ll be showing him a couple of apartmentsin the locality.”
“And Mr . . . ?”
“Martin.”
“Mr Martin . . . will he be . . . ?” he began.
Pilar stood and appeared to return to her calm, aloof ways. She looked at Brendan, who thought he understood what Dr Reiter was asking for, something he wasn’t going to get.
“Brendan will remain on at the shelter but he won’t have anymore personal conversations with John,” she said.
Brendan flashed a look of gratitude at her and hoped that Thompson agreed with her when he found out what had happened today.
Reiter frowned and pursed his lips in disapproval. “Well, then. I don’t see that it’ll do John much good to remain here, even in the short term. It might in fact cause him to regress so I’m happy for you to take him back with you. I’ll be down to see him in a couple of weeks and I’ve prescribed him strong sedatives until he settles a little.”
He handed Pilar a white sheet of paper. She looked at it and for a brief moment appeared concerned by the prescription but said nothing and placed the paper in her pocket.
Dr Reiter opened the door and stood almost in their path, making it impossible to avoid his cold stare as they squeezed by him.
They took the lift to the second floor where Jonathan lay in a bed, still sleepy from the injection. They put their arms around his shoulders and raised him to a sitting position, then helped him out of the bed. Each taking an arm, they led him from the room and to the lift, Pilar making soothing noises all the time and assuring him that they were going home.
When they reached the car, they strapped himinto the back seat.
As they drove out of the car park, Jonathan half opened his eyes and began to murmur excitedly in Spanish. As she stopped at the traffic lights, Pilar looked behind her and murmured something to the semi-conscious man. She turned to Brendan with an expression of anger and hurt.
“I know,” he said.
“This can never happen again.”
As the car left the suburbs of New York and reached Route 78, Jonathan appeared to fall into a deep sleep and an uncomfortable silence settled inside the car.
Brendan leant forward to put on the radio but pulled his hand back when Pilar glared at him.
“He’s sleeping!” she hissed.
He sighed and looked out into the darkness on either side of the highway. He couldn’t see even one house on which to focus his thoughts, one house with a light that he could focus on and imagine the people living there and what they were doing up at this late hour. He checked his watch. It was almost one o’clock in the morning.
Hard as he tried he could not shake the image of Jonathan’sface as he trembled in the corner of that bleak, empty room.
“He was there before, Pilar, in that house. You should have seen his face. He was terrified.”
“Then why bring it up, Brendan, why torture him? Everyone knows that awful things happened to him and that no one is looking for him. So why?
Why do you need to do this to him?”
Brendan did not look at her but kept his eyes focused on the darkness around him.
“Because I am no one,” he replied.“I thought finding his home would help me become somebody, help me find a place I could belong. Instead, I hurt him.”
Pilar took her eyes off the road and looked at Brendan as though she had never seen him before. She took her right hand off the wheel and placed it gently on his leg. He lifted his hand and placed it over hers.
When they at last pulled into the driveway of the shelter, Kuvic came out and tried to help Brendan to lift Jonathan from the car but the confused man’s eyes shot open. Jane followed close behind.
“Leave me alone!” he shouted.
Brendan moved forward and blocked Jonathan’s view of Kuvic.
“It is you he is angry with,” Pilar said gently to Brendan.
He moved back and tried to conceal his hurt as Kuvic rushed forward, smirking, to help Pilar move Jonathan from the car.
They led him inside the house and towards the stairs.
“I’ll manage from here,” Pilar said to Kuvic as she and Jane slowly helped the drugged man upstairs to his room.
When they were gone from view, Kuvic dug his hands into his pockets and began to laugh out loud. In the brightly lit hallway, Brendan could see his cut lip and grazed face from their little early-morning brawl. It was hard to believe that their tussle had happened less then eighteen hours ago.
“You’ve done it this time, Paddy!” Kuvic said.“Oh, and by the way, I haven’t forgotten about how you assaulted me. That’ll look bad when I report it to the police. Not something a guy on probation wants to happen. Or maybe I won’t say anything. That is, if you behave nicely.” He beckoned to Brendan. “Come in here. There’s something I want to show you.”
Brendan squirmed but followed him into the lounge to the left of the hallway. Kuvic had one over him now, so for now he would do as he asked. He looked around the pleasant room which was scattered with several comfortable armchairs and a brown leather sofa placed under the bay window. An oldtelevisionstood in the corner of the room on a wooden table. He had spent very little time in this room and had rarely noticed any of the clients using it.
