“Well, there's no way to be certain of anything, Enim. Though he did mention that you're not entirely happy with your antipsychotics, either, and thought that it might be something worth discussing.”
Graves eyed me carefully when I didn't respond.
“What do you think?” he asked.
I shrugged.
“Does it matter? He's not going to change it anyhow.”
“It always matters, Enim. At least to me.”
He closed my file and laid it on the table between us as though wanting to prepare for my answer without being distracted by anything. I stared at where his glasses were tucked into his top pocket, vaguely wondering if he really needed them for reading or if they were simply for show.
“Well, it shouldn't matter to you at all.”
“Why do you say that, Enim?”
“Because.”
“Because …?”
“Because you're a psychiatrist,” I said testily. “We're not friends, Dr. Graves. We're forced to be here together.”
Graves pressed his fingers to his mouth and breathed through them as he studied me.
“What do you mean by that, Enim? You don't want to be here with me because I'm a psychiatrist?”
“Sure.”
“Do you not like psychiatrists?” he pressed.
“I did kill my last one.”
Graves' eyes shifted over my face, searching for an emotion that wasn't readable there.
“But that was an accident, wasn't it, Enim?”
“Does it matter? I killed him all the same.”
“It matters,” Graves said. “Your intentions … matter.”
He stared at me again as I went silent, his eyes digging for something beneath the forced-calm of my expression.
“You didn't answer my question before, Enim,” he said after a moment. “Do you not like psychiatrists?”
I chewed the insides of my mouth.
“Maybe I don't.”
“Oh? And may I ask why?”
I ran my eyes over him quickly, not wanting to pause on the rolled sleeves of his dress-shirt or the way he folded his hands in front of him with such effortlessness for a moment too long.
“Because – people pay you to care about them,” I said. “It's like prostitution.”
Graves' face pulled into a frown before he could stop it.
“I … have never thought of it that way,” he said slowly. His eyes darted momentarily to the side. “Rather, I … I think it's just the opposite. I care about people, very deeply, and I'm fortunate enough to make a living out of it. And I think, if you were to ask any therapist, their answers would be largely the same.”
His voice had taken on a gentleness that I couldn't stand, and I glowered at him where he sat in his mismatching socks and shoes, his diplomas lined on the wall next to him and juxtaposed with pictures of him with family members and friends, and I had the sudden urge to uplift the table between us and overturn it onto him, pressing him into the floor to block out that feigned expression and leaving him stunned as I ran out of the room and through the front door.
I knew what he was doing. He had read the files that had been transferred over from Beringer's office and he was hoping that if he mimicked the dead psychiatrist perfectly enough, I might open up to him and tell him all of my secrets. He might have thought that I would confess to what had really happened with Beringer, or that I would break down about my mother's passing and Jack's betrayal, and he would be there to comfort me before waving his success to his colleagues, giddily showing them the transcript of our conversation as he listened to their remarks on what a fine doctor he was for being the only one to get through to me.
“Do you know what I think, Dr. Graves?” I said scathingly, leaning forward over the table closer to him. “I think the real reason people become psychiatrists is because they need to. They can't stand themselves, and they can't stand to be alone with themselves, so they surround themselves with other people's problems to keep from thinking about their own.”
Graves was silent for a long moment, his face frozen and mouth slightly agape.
“Well, I … I don't agree, Enim,” he said at last, clearing his throat in an attempt to shake off my words. “Does this analysis have something to do with Erik Beringer?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I only wonder if you’re determined to be reserved with me because you were so comfortable with him, and things didn’t end very well between you.”
I dug my eyes into the fifth volume of a textbook to my right and refused to answer.
“I’m sure that Dr. Beringer would have wanted you to get better, Enim,” Graves said.
“I’m sure that he didn’t want to fall off a cliff, either, but he didn’t really have a choice.”
“Perhaps not. But you still have a choice, Enim – a choice to make progress, or to stand still.”
“I think I’ll be standing still for quite a while, given that my leg isn’t healing.”
“You’re avoiding talking about this, Enim. Can you tell me why?”
“Because I don’t want to talk about it, Doctor Graves. And I certainly don’t want to talk about it with you.”
“Enim,” Graves tried more softly, “I know that you’re still rather confused about what happened with Dr. Beringer, and that’s to be expected –”
“I know what happened with Beringer,” I said, my voice just as adamant as it had been with Karl. I glared at him with such contempt that a headache formed beneath my brow and my jaw ached from clenching it so tightly. “Besides, you’re not allowed to talk to me about the case.”
Graves scratched the side of his neck.
“I was only asking about your feelings surrounding someone involved with the case, not about the events themselves,” he said, but discontinued the subject all the same. Straightening, he looked back at my file in search of another topic. “But, as always, we can discuss anything that you'd like.”
He waited for my answer despite knowing that it wouldn't come, barely able to keep himself from releasing the sigh that was resting on his tongue, and I crossed my arms and looked away from him.
“You're very quiet, Enim. What are you thinking?”
“That I threw the wrong therapist off the cliff.”
Graves' face twitched, though he managed to keep his voice even.
“I see. Well, if you're not comfortable speaking to me today, then we can leave off early.”
I steered the wheelchair out the door and down the hall to my room rather than joining the other patients in the activity room as I was supposed to. I had been prepared to talk about my mother or father or Karl with Graves, or even about Jack, but no matter how many times I practiced keeping myself neutral, I could never arrange my expression well enough to feign that what had happened to Beringer no longer affected me. Thinking of him brought acid from my stomach up to my throat, and the harder that I tried to swallow it down, the worse the pain became.
I pushed the button on the audio player to turn the song from Rusalka back on, but it only spewed a long strand of static. Jamming it off again, I pulled open the bedside-table drawer instead and took the mail out that Karl had brought the previous week, hoping to divert my attention from Beringer if only for a moment. I scanned through the statement giving me legal right to my bank account and allowing me to leave the facility, but it hardly seemed to matter: there was nowhere to go. I tore it up and tossed it into the trash.
“Enim – you're not supposed to be in here.”
The door to my room opened to reveal one of the nurses. She looked over to where I was sitting with a startled expression as though I was the one who had caught her doing something wrong and then stepped to the side to block the door.
“My leg hurts,” I said automatically.
“It won’t hurt any less huddled up in here.”
“Dr. Graves said that I could stay here for the afternoon.”
“Nice try, Enim,”
she said. “I just spoke to Dr. Graves: he told me you were due in the activity room.”
Something shifted behind her and I narrowed my eyes in order to focus on what it was. One of the other patients was standing behind her with his head bent low and a stack of clothing in his hands.
“What's going on?”
She hesitated before answering as though hoping that there was some way around the question, but finally stepped aside to reveal the other patient.
“Enim, this is Walter – he'll be your roommate.”
“My what?”
I moved my eyes away from her face and over to the man. He seemed to be in his mid-thirties or so with pale skin and dark hair. Though large, he stood hunched over and had squinted eyes as though he spent too much time in front of a computer screen. His fingers drummed the clothing that was clutched to his chest to reveal bitten-down nail beds, and though he was beginning to bald, there was a thick beard hiding the lower part of his face. I quickly looked away from him.
“Your roommate,” the nurse repeated. “Walter.”
“I don't have a roommate,” I said.
The nurse hummed and stepped into the room.
“Well, you do now,” she said in her light, airy voice. “Walt, you can put your things on the dresser for now. They'll bring in the bed in an hour or so.”
He shuffled into the room and dumped his clothing on top of the dresser, knocking over the watch that I kept there and ruining the neatness of the room. I turned back to the nurse.
“This is a mistake,” I said. “I have a private room.”
She nodded even though she was hardly listening to me.
“Walter's roommate left the facility a week ago, and he's been waiting patiently for a new one.”
“That's great, but I'm not supposed to have a roommate,” I repeated. Turning to the older man, I added, “I'm violent.”
“Enim,” the nurse chided, but Walter simply shrugged and took a seat at the desk. “I understand that you're uncomfortable with this change, but this was a decision made by Dr. Graves and Dr. Fisker; I have no control over it.”
“Then I want to talk to them.”
“That's fine; you can do that at your session with either of them next week.”
“No, I want to talk to them now – before what's-his-name gets too comfortable touching my stuff,” I said, adding the last part more forcefully as the man began pawing through my collection of music.
The nurse smiled.
“You can talk to them next week,” she repeated. “Until then, you and Walter can get to know one another. Now, why don't you head down to the activity room where you're supposed to be, and I'll help Walt settle in?”
Fuming, I wheeled myself from the room and started down the hall. The decision to give me a roommate hardly seemed coincidental: Graves was undoubtedly trying to punish me for my behavior during our session, or else to get me to leave the facility altogether so that he didn't have to deal with me anymore. Considering as much, I turned and veered down the hall in the opposite direction of the activity room to the front of the building where the line of phones hung upon the wall. Hurriedly asking the aide sitting off to the side if I was allowed to make a call, I picked up the phone and dialed the number that I seldom ever used. It rang several times before being picked up.
“Hello?”
“Karl – I need help.”
“Enim?” He had no time to hide the surprise in his voice, and after a stumbled moment of bewilderment, he quickly went on. “What’s happened? What’s wrong?”
I pressed the phone to my ear and grabbed the booth to pull the wheelchair closer to the line.
“They've given me a roommate,” I said.
Karl waited.
“And?”
“And – and nothing,” I said. “They've given me a roommate – you know they can't do that.”
He sighed, all hint of concern gone from his tired tone.
“Of course they can, Enim.”
“But I'm supposed to have a private room,” I said. “I've always had a private room.”
“You were given a private room because of your outbursts,” Karl said. “Now that the medication is stabilized, there's no need for such precautions anymore.”
“What's that supposed to mean? This is punishment for good behavior?”
“Maybe it is. If anything, you should be happy about this: obviously the doctors feel that you're making some progress.”
“Yeah, right. Graves is just trying to torture me, more like it.”
Karl gave another sigh.
“Enim,” he said wearily, “please try to be rational. No one is trying to torture you.”
“I am being rational,” I countered. “They've stuck me in a room with some weirdo!”
“Dr. Graves has been saying for some time that he wishes you would socialize with the others more. Since you refuse to participate in group therapy, maybe this was the only alternative.”
“I don't socialize because there's no one to socialize with,” I said. “Everyone here is insane.”
Karl made an indiscriminate sound in response.
“So you're happy about this?” I said. “You're perfectly fine that they're expecting me to live with this guy? What if he's a lunatic?”
“Then it shouldn't be so difficult. You lived with Jack for all those years, after all.”
I clenched my jaw.
“Jack's not a lunatic.”
“Of course not,” he said, letting his annoyance get the better of him before correcting his tone. “Never mind – I'm not in the mood to talk about this now.”
“You're the one who brought it up,” I said. “And you're never in the mood to talk about it.”
“That's because there's nothing to discuss. It's over – he's gone. Just forget him.”
“I'm not going to forget him: he's my friend.”
“He's not, Enim, and he never was. He killed that teacher: everyone knows it.”
“Everyone's wrong,” I said forcefully.
“We're not, Enim. They found the evidence in the dorm room –”
“That was research we were doing.”
“– and they know he dropped his key the night it happened, by the way. One of the Bickerby boys said he saw the two of you going to look for it in the forest –”
“Porter?” I said, my anger for the other boy returning. “Did he also tell you he blackmailed me to do his Calculus homework and exams for the entire semester?”
“Jesus, Enim – that’s not helping your case!”
“Neither is anything else I say, considering that no one will ever believe me anyhow.”
Karl sighed into the phone, calming himself as he tried to think of a way to reason with me.
“Look, Enim,” he said at last. “I know your theories – and I know what you think you remember and what it’s led you to believe, and I’m not faulting you for it. But let me just ask you this: given that everyone else who met or knew anything about Jack is positive that he wasn’t a good person, and everyone who witnessed his relationship with that teacher found it disturbing and knows that he was capable of harming her, have you ever – just once – stopped to think that maybe all of them are right, and you’re the one who’s wrong?”
The clock hit the twelve mark; the nurse making rounds would realize at any moment that I wasn't where I was supposed to be.
“No,” I said.
Karl sighed.
“Why not?”
“Because,” I said. “I know Jack.”
“I don’t think you knew him like you thought you did,” he said quietly.
I hung up in lieu of an answer and shifted in the chair as another bout of pain came to my leg. Despite what Karl thought, I knew Jack. I was the only one who knew him, and yet knowing as much didn't make me feel any better.
Regardless of what Graves thought, no amount of time lessened the disconnect that I felt from Jack. If anything, I missed him more with each moment that we were awa
y from one another, and no amount of medication allowed anything other than hollowness to come to my stomach when I thought of not knowing where he was. I missed him in the way that I had missed my mother when she had been hidden in the room at the end of the hall in my grandmother's house for all of those months, and the way that I missed her now that she was buried somewhere unknown and cold beneath the earth. And I couldn't stop missing her because she, at least, was really gone, but Jack was still out there somewhere waiting for me: I just had to find him.
Ch. 3
I was midway through being pushed to the group therapy session the next week when an aide stopped the nurse and informed her that my uncle had made an unexpected visit. Turning the wheelchair around, she pushed me down the hall in the direction of the visitors’ room instead.
“I can walk from here,” I told her at the door.
“If you keep walking on that leg, it’ll never heal,” she warned, but let me up anyhow.
Karl was staring out the window when I entered and didn’t appear to notice me as I reached the table. He had finally taken his suit jacket off due to the heat, but the sleeves of his shirt were still neatly buttoned around his wrists and his tie was done up to his neck just as firmly as ever.
“Whose birthday is it this time?” I asked, sitting down.
He finally looked over when I spoke, folding his hands in front of him on the table.
“Nobody’s. I just thought I’d visit – given the conversation we had on Friday.”
“What about it?”
“Nothing in particular; I just didn’t think it was a good place to end the conversation.”
“So you’re apologizing?”
“No. I just thought there was more to discuss.”
“About Jack?”
“No, about you.”
“Oh.” I rolled my eyes and looked away. “Great.”
Karl leaned forward on the table to come closer to me, his eyes lingering on my absent stare.
“The nurse said you're not eating again,” he started. I crossed my arms rather than answering, unable to argue the point that the last few meals I had skipped were hardly a reason for concern. “The medication should be keeping your appetite up.”
“Well, I guess it's not,” I said. “Don't complain to me – it's Fisker's problem.”
Song to the Moon (Damnatio Memoriae Book 2) Page 3
