Delirious

by Daniel Palmer

  She handed him a paper cup. He put the drink to his lips and swallowed the entire contents in a gulp. The water felt blissful against Charlie’s chapped, dry lips. He closed his eyes again and rubbed them with his hands. Removing his hands from his face, Charlie squinted into the light and tried once again to focus on the woman. This time he could see her face more clearly. She had brown hair and wore glasses. She also had on a white coat and looked to be some sort of doctor. She held a clipboard in her hands and was writing something down. He noticed other voices in the room besides hers. He looked up and saw a man standing behind her. No. There were two.

  Charlie crushed the paper cup in his hands. It was an unconscious release of nervous energy.

  “I can take that from you if you’d like.” She reached forward as Charlie handed her the crushed cup.

  “Thank you.” Charlie’s voice sounded weak and hoarse.

  “Do you know where you are?” she asked again.

  “No.”

  “Do you know what day it is?”

  Charlie thought a moment. What day it is? His brain was starting to come back to life. For a person accustomed to making million-dollar decisions on a weekly basis, sometimes after only a fifteen-minute meeting, being asked to confirm the day of the week felt belittling at best. He didn’t respond.

  “Do you know what day it is today?” she asked again.

  Uneasy at the prospect of some sort of penalty for not answering, Charlie decided it was in his best interest to respond.

  “Thursday,” he said.

  “The month?”

  “Nineteen thirteen,” he said. He remained expressionless.

  “Was that a joke?” she asked.

  “Did you think it was funny?”

  “Was that your intention?”

  Charlie sighed. “September. It’s September,” he said.

  Nothing in her mannerisms indicated pleasure or displeasure at his attempt at humor. “You are in a hospital, Charlie. You’re at Wal-derman Hospital. Do you know why you are here?”

  Anne Pedersen’s face flashed into his thoughts. Then he pictured Rachel Evans. He could see her walking toward him down the long corridor at Mount Auburn. He searched his mind for other memories, but there were none.

  “I saw a woman in the ER at Mount Auburn,” Charlie said. “I needed to talk to her. She ran away from me. I chased after her. Then I woke up here.”

  “Where is here? Do you know where you are now?”

  “You said a hospital. You said that I’m at Walderman.”

  “Yes. That’s right. That’s what I said. I’m going to tell you three words, Charlie. I’d like for you to remember them. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “The words are piano, magazine, and wheel. Can you remember those words?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’d like you to close your eyes now. Can you repeat the words I just told you?”

  “Piano, magazine, and wheel,” Charlie said.

  “Very good. Can you tell me what floor you are on?”

  “You didn’t tell me that,” Charlie snapped.

  “Please just answer the question. Can you tell me what floor you are on?”

  “I don’t know. How should I know that if you didn’t tell me?”

  Charlie watched as she wrote something on her paper.

  “What? Is that bad? Is it?” He heard his voice rising and regretted the weakness.

  “It’s not bad, Charlie,” she said. “I’m just making a note, that’s all. I’m just trying to assess your condition, Charlie. It will help us with your treatment. I can tell you find these questions frustrating. Please trust me when I say that they are extremely beneficial in helping us assess your current state of mind. Can we continue?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  She paused. “Not really.”

  “Then please, by all means.” Charlie waved at her with open palms. He hoped she knew he intended it to be mocking.

  “Do you know what country you live in?”

  “America.” Charlie felt anger rising again but managed to suppress it. Hostility would do him no good.

  “And the state?” she asked. “Do you know what state you are in?”

  “A state of confusion?” Charlie smiled when he said it.

  Again she gave no indication whatsoever that his answers were appropriate or expected. It bothered him that he had no idea what it was she was looking for, the purpose of these questions. She offered no clues, in body language or otherwise.

  “Do you know what state you are in?” she asked again.

  Charlie looked at the two men looming behind her. Both were young. One was dark-skinned; the other fair. Both stared at him, with arms folded tightly across their chests. They regarded him as visitors to a zoo might look at a caged animal.

  “I am in Massachusetts. If I’m at Walderman Hospital, then I’m in the town of Belmont,” Charlie said.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “There are approximately twenty-five thousand residents in Bel-mont,” he added.

  “Are there?”

  “And about four point six square miles of total area.”

  “I see.”

  She continued to write as Charlie spoke. He knew those statistics from the research he did years ago while selecting a town to move to for his relocation back east. He seldom forgot information that he’d read—especially if it was a meaningless data point. Perhaps, subconsciously even, he hoped reciting obscure facts would inspire her to judge him competent and send him on his way. Instead, she remained stoic, turned to the two men standing behind her, and held up her clipboard for them to see.

  “Is that a twenty-seven or twenty-eight?” the fair-skinned man asked.

  “Twenty-seven,” she said. She made a subtle nod toward Charlie.

  The fair-skinned man’s face reddened. He scribbled something on his notepad and looked down at the floor.

  She turned to face Charlie again. “Do you know why you’re here?”

  Charlie let out another exasperated sigh. “Do you mind telling me what the fuck this is all about?” He didn’t mean to use profanity, but his frustration got the better of him.

  The men standing behind her moved in response, positioning themselves on either side of Charlie. The fair-skinned man got as far as reaching under Charlie’s armpit to pull him out of the chair. But the woman stopped him by holding up her hand.

  “It’s okay. Let him go.” She spoke calmly.

  The man lowered Charlie gently back onto his metal folding chair. Charlie straightened his clothes and rubbed under his arm where his skin had been pinched.

  “Thank you,” Charlie said. “I’m sorry. But I don’t understand any of this.”

  “That’s not uncommon. Can you answer my question, though? Do you know why you are here?” said the woman.

  “Because somebody thought I was crazy.”

  “Do you think that you’re having difficulties?”

  Charlie hesitated before answering. “No … yes … I … I don’t know anymore.”

  “Do you think that you need to be here right now?”

  Charlie gave a long, hard stare into her cold eyes. She was no more than thirty. Unlike Rachel, she seemed more practiced at this than natural. For someone so accustomed to always having the upper hand, Charlie found her control over him extremely unnerving. He felt that she was purposefully shaping him with her questions, forming quick conclusions, but he was powerless to do anything about it.

  “I’m not going to hurt anybody, if that’s what you’re asking me.”

  “Do you think it’s a good idea if you stay here?”

  “Clearly, you think it’s a good idea,” Charlie said. “What does that say about me if I say no?”

  “What do you think it says?”

  “That I have poor judgment.”

  “Do you?”

  “And if I say yes … well, doesn’t that mean that my bed is waiting for me? So you tell me. What choice
do I really have here?”

  She scratched more notes on her clipboard while he spoke. All he wanted to do was rip it out of her hands and toss it out the window.

  “I need to ask you some personal questions now,” she said.

  “Oh? What were those? Just a warm-up?”

  “Are you married?”

  “Not yet,” he said, grinning at her. “But I am available.”

  She didn’t smile. Her questions continued for thirty minutes more. For each reply he gave only the facts as he felt she deserved to hear them—unembellished and unrevealing. Yes, my family has a history of mental illness. Yes, my brother is a patient here. No, I’ve never been depressed. No, I have never had episodes of anxiety. No, I don’t hear voices or see things that aren’t really there.

  “Tell me about Anne. That’s her name, right? Anne?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think that she’s out to get you?”

  “Yes,” Charlie said.

  “Do you believe that she is real?”

  “Yes.” Charlie enjoyed his one-word answers. It was childish, but he could do little else to protest. The less he gave, the more he felt he was taking back for himself.

  “Do you believe that you’re here at Walderman now?”

  Charlie looked at her. She shifted in her chair.

  “You know,” he said, “you’ve been poking at my brain for a while now. But I just realized something.”

  “Oh? What’s that?” she asked.

  “I just realized that I don’t know your name.”

  “Okay. I can tell you that. My name is Susan. Susan Bishop.”

  “And are you a doctor, Susan Bishop?”

  “I’m a PhD. A doctor of psychology.”

  “Well, then, doctor of psychology,” Charlie said, “I’m getting a little tired of this, so let’s just breeze through the rest, if you don’t mind. Let me start. I’m not suicidal. I don’t own a gun. I have no interest in hurting anybody, and I want to leave now. Right now!”

  Charlie stood, knocking his chair over backward with a crash. He turned and walked toward the only door he saw in the room, a few feet behind from where he’d sat. Nobody moved in pursuit. A bad sign, he thought. He reached for the handle of the door and pulled. Locked. He pulled again, knowing that it was a futile act but unable to resist the urge. He scanned the rest of the room for any other possible exits. The hopper windows were too small to fit through and were probably locked as well. If they weren’t, they were most likely too high up for him to make a safe exit.

  Charlie eyed his metal folding chair, considering its value as a weapon. The darker-skinned man shook his head. Charlie looked away. Overpowering those two lumberjacks in his weakened condition would be impossible.

  “Okay. Okay. You got me,” Charlie said, walking back toward Dr. Bishop, with his hands held up in a show of surrender. He righted his chair and sat down again. “Listen to me, please. Listen. I’m fine. Trust me. I’m completely fine. You guys are the ones making me nuts. But I want to leave now.”

  “Yes. I understand that, Charlie,” Dr. Bishop said. “But we don’t think that’s in your best interest at this time. A medical doctor is going to come by in a bit to talk with you.”

  “Medical doctor?”

  “A psychiatrist.”

  “I see.”

  “He’d like to speak with you about medications. Are you allergic to any medications?” Dr. Bishop asked.

  “How long?” Charlie eyes flashed.

  “Pardon me?”

  “How long do you intend to keep me here against my will?”

  “Oh, I see.” She averted her eyes.

  “How long?” he asked again.

  “Well, that depends, Charlie.”

  “Depends? Depends on what?”

  “Well, on you, naturally. It all depends on you.”

  Chapter 28

  Anurse approached Charlie from behind, tapping him on the shoulder. He spun around, startling her more than she had him.

  Her hand went to her chest. She was a black woman, late twenties, tall, with an athletic build and close-cropped hair. She reminded Charlie of Halle Berry. She was stunning, but never in his life had he felt so unattractive to the opposite sex. She just saw him as a patient in need, and it felt dehumanizing. No wonder Joe had become a hermit after his diagnosis.

  For the first few years after his schizophrenic diagnosis, Joe had spent more days in the mental hospital than out. His mother rightfully had feared not only for Joe’s safety but for Charlie’s as well. The paranoia, hallucinations, and total lack of inhibition—which had often exploded into a fierce verbal assault directed at anyone Joe felt was deserving—had left his mother no choice. When at home, Joe had acted embarrassed about the disorder, as though he, and not the disease, were to blame for his behavior. He tried to keep to himself, but that had only made his hallucinations worse. Constant stimulation, Charlie’s mother had explained, was the best way to keep his hallucinations at bay, and so she’d encouraged the younger brother to engage the older more regularly. Charlie had pretended Joe’s behavior didn’t frighten him, but it had been a difficult charade to keep up. So began the role of Alison Giles as savior and her seemingly 24/7 relationship with her ill son. In spite of the unsettling circumstances, Charlie had felt abandoned by his mother and envious of the attention Joe received. Intellectually, Charlie had understood why it was so; emotionally, however, he’d still been a fifteen-year-old boy without a father and now a mother, too.

  Laughter had been a prized commodity back then. Charlie remembered Joe once saying, “Epilepsy is easy, but schizophrenia is hard,” parodying the famous quote about dying and comedy. If what Charlie was feeling right now even hinted at the pain of Joe’s near twenty-year relationship with schizophrenia, his brother deserved far more respect than he had got. Charlie wanted nothing more but to disappear. Being viewed by others as weak was almost worse than his confinement.

  The nurse held in one hand a Dixie cup with two green pills and in the other a cup of water, half spilt from his having startled her.

  “Dr. Raymond suggested you take these,” she said.

  “Doctor who?” Charlie asked.

  “Dr. Raymond.”

  “I don’t know anybody named Dr. Raymond,” he said. “In fact, with the exception of Dr. Bishop, I don’t know anybody here by name at all.”

  “Well,” she said, with a slight laugh, “he knows about you, and he wanted you to take these.”

  Charlie grunted as she pushed the cups toward him. “You people are a revolving door of clinicians,” he said. “One minute someone is checking me out, and the next minute somebody else is checking me out and asking me the same dumb questions. Now you’re telling me that somebody I’ve never met is trying to push these pills on me? You guys could take a few lessons on streamlining and efficiencies.”

  “I know exactly how you feel,” she said. “I mean, with all our rotations it’s hard even for us to know whose staff and”—she paused—“who isn’t.”

  “I don’t find that surprising,” Charlie said.

  “Well, perhaps it was one of our residents who spoke with you. They’re definitely green and, I hate to admit it, sometimes lacking in the facts.”

  She smiled at him, and Charlie smiled back but then caught himself. He knew better than to think their brief exchange was an invitation to flirt. It was a manipulation tactic he had often used himself. Get your adversary to trust you by offering information they didn’t have but that wasn’t important. He knew exactly what she was trying to do. Opening up about some of the inner workings of the floor might help lower his guard, make him see her as his ally. It would be that much easier than to goad him into swallowing whatever it was that she was peddling. Charlie had too many business deals under his belt to be that easily fooled.

  “I’m not taking anything,” he said. “I don’t need anything. I don’t want anything. So don’t ask.”

  “Well, we can’t make you take it,
” she said.

  “No. Not without a Rogers guardianship, you can’t.”

  “That’s right,” she said, pursing her lips and shaking her head at him to acknowledge that he “got her.”

  Charlie could see now that she was working even harder to keep the encounter between them conflict-free. She was trained, he assumed, in this exact sort of standoff. He might well be a time bomb just waiting for the right reason to explode.

  “Do you want to make any phone calls?” the woman asked. “The doctor said you haven’t notified anyone that you are here.”

  “There is nobody I want to call,” Charlie said. “But thank you.”

  That, of course, was a lie. Joe was probably frantic. But until he had time to let everything sink in, it would be best to not call his schizophrenic brother to tell him that he’d been committed to Wal-derman.

  Charlie stood alone in a corner of the common area on the psychiatric floor. He was still wearing his street clothes: Levi jeans, a black crewneck sweater, and a gray T-shirt underneath. His other possessions—wallet, watch, and keys—had been confiscated, probably while he was under sedation. He had never thought of his car keys as a weapon, but three hours on the psych ward at Walderman and he was able to ponder uses for them that he had never before imagined. The floor in the common area was linoleum, with flecks of color speckled throughout the floor tiles to help give a little life to the numbing gray slate. The furniture was sparse and made up entirely of mismatched, tattered cloth chairs and stained couches that would have seemed ordinary items at a swap shop or in a town dump. Scattered about were scuffed pine tables used for board games—backgammon, chess, and checkers. No women were on this floor, but Charlie had overhead a conversation between two nurses and knew there were female patients somewhere in the building.

  In the hour he’d spent standing against the wall, staring out into nothing, Charlie had observed that the nurses’ station, where medications were dispensed, was the epicenter of floor activity. Patients and nurses made frequent visits, most leaving with Dixie cups of drugs. There were no clocks or calendars hanging on the walls in the common area. That irony wasn’t lost on Charlie. Apparently, at Wal-derman, both he and time were lost.