“How’s everybody today?” Rachel asked the group.
Most of the men spoke simultaneously, some trying to raise their voices above the others.
She laughed. “Apologies for running late, but thank you for the enthusiasm. It’s a great way to start today’s session. As usual, we’re going to go around the room, and each of you will have a chance to tell the others how you’re doing. Most of you know me already, but for those who don’t, my name is Rachel. I’m director of Neuropsy-chology and a psychologist here at Walderman. There are some new faces here today, so an extra welcome to you.”
This time she held her eyes on Charlie, perhaps intending her gaze to be welcoming. Instead, all Charlie felt was a sharp and hollow pain. The fierceness of the emotion was surprising, but he knew what it was—shame. His only response was to look down at his shoes, to avoid her eyes and his feeling of being judged. His face flushed.
“Charlie,” Rachel said, “I usually like to start a group session by introducing some of the newer members to the group. Would you be interested in introducing yourself to the others?”
Charlie hated that she had used his name in such a public forum. He hated even more how patronized and demoralized her presence made him feel. Then he looked up at her and saw the same beauty that had captured him the day they first met. Before all this, the idea of being with her, though unlikely, was at least tenable. Now, with him on a lockdown floor in a mental hospital, it was beyond reach.
Charlie felt twenty pairs of eyes boring into him. His skin prickled. Sweat secreted from his neck ran in a thin trickle over his clavicles and down his shirt. Undeterred, committed to staying disengaged, Charlie kept his eyes fixed on the floor and said nothing.
“Charlie, would you mind starting us off today?” Rachel asked again. “Could you give the group a little update on how you’re feeling? Or tell them something about yourself? I’m sure everyone would be interested. It’s safe to share here.”
Charlie couldn’t speak. The paralysis from the chemical restraint was nothing compared to the suffocating anxiety that gripped him now.
A person to his left barked an unintelligible grunt, followed by a very clear expletive. He tried to speak but stuttered his words. “Welcome, Charlie!” the man managed to say after much effort.
Tourette’s, Charlie thought. An engineer he knew at SoluCent had the condition. The vocal outburst and the man’s involuntary movements were similar. But still, Charlie was frozen and unable to acknowledge the stranger’s salutation.
“Welcome, Charlie,” many of the others said in unison.
“I’ll start. I’ll start if he won’t speak. Can he speak?” The man raising his hand was the same man who moments before had been eating his fingers.
“Yes, Dennis, you can start,” Rachel said. “Although I’m pretty confident that Charlie can speak. Would you like to talk to the group, Charlie? Or would you rather just listen today?”
“I’m not a six-year-old boy,” Charlie wanted to shout. Instead he breathed in deeply. Accept this and get it over with.
A few short miles away, in Arlington, a man lay dead in a bathtub. It would be only a matter of days before Rudy Gomes’s disappearance would become suspicious. After the body was discovered, Charlie knew he’d be thrust into the center of the homicide investigation. At the very least, his firing from SoluCent was enough to make him a person of interest. Any ammunition they could use against him, they would.
Give them nothing, but don’t be difficult, Charlie thought. Answer her as normally as possible.
Taking another deep breath, Charlie looked up at Rachel, kept his eyes locked on her as he spoke.
“Thank you, Rachel,” Charlie said. “But if it’s okay with you and the rest of the group, I’d rather just listen today. I’m sure that I can learn a lot by just listening.”
Charlie proceeded to make eye contact with each person seated around the room. Many nodded their heads in approval. Some remained expressionless. Rachel gave Charlie a suspicious look but seemed to let it pass.
“Thank you, Charlie,” Rachel said. “I appreciate your willingness to participate. Group?” She scanned the circle for consensus.
“Thank you, Charlie,” somebody said. The others kept silent.
Inwardly Charlie smiled. Surviving here would mean having to play their game. The more coherent and cooperative he could act, the less reason they would have to hold him in lockdown. Keeping their suspicions about him to a minimum would be a winning strategy. Charlie took in a deep breath. He held it a moment.
“On second thought,” Charlie said, “let me tell you why I’m here.”
Chapter 31
Rachel concluded the group session an hour to the second after it began. As everyone cleared the area, Rachel caught up with Charlie and grabbed him gently by his arm.
“Hi there,” she said.
Charlie felt lost in her emerald green eyes. Nothing in her voice hinted at the absurdity of the strange turn of events that had brought them together. Charlie would have preferred more of a reaction from her. Instead, she was treating him exactly as he expected—like a patient.
“What do you want?” Charlie thought he could see some hurt in her eyes. That wasn’t what he’d intended. He didn’t blame her, and he certainly didn’t want to come across as hostile.
Rachel reached out to him, touching Charlie on the shoulder. “I know this must be very difficult for you, Charlie. I had planned on stopping by today to check and see how you’re doing. I’ve been thinking about you a lot. Have you had a chance to speak with any of the doctors on staff? Was there somebody you particularly liked?”
Each time he tried to look her in the eyes, a deep, sorrowful pit formed in his stomach. His only response was to look away. Her touch was equally painful, a bitter reminder of his circumstances. What he wanted at that moment was impossible for her to give: to open her arms wide and allow him to fall helplessly into her embrace. She stood several feet away, but it was close enough for him to smell the sweet almond oil of her perfume. He took an unconscious step forward, and she perhaps an equally unconscious step back. The three feet separating them might very well have been an ocean.
“I haven’t spoken to anybody,” Charlie said.
“You really should try to open up to them, Charlie. They can help you.”
“Help me what?” he asked. “Help convince me that what I know I saw wasn’t there?”
“Perhaps,” Rachel said. “Or perhaps something even more. They might be able to help you understand where all this is coming from.”
“Where all what is coming from, Rachel? What is this? Right now I have only one true belief, and I have to keep holding on to it with all the strength and conviction I have, or this place will make me insane.”
“And what is that belief, Charlie? Can you share it with me?”
This time he had no problem making eye contact with her. His passion and conviction returned to him a confidence he thought had been lost forever.
“I believe that Anne Pedersen is real,” Charlie began. “I believe that I saw her at Mount Auburn Hospital and that she ran away from me when I chased after her. So tell me, why does that belief qualify me for this?” Charlie gestured to the now empty meeting room. “Rachel, a few weeks ago I was an executive director of a major corporation. Trust me when I tell you that if I believed I needed to be here, it would make this experience a whole lot easier to take.”
Rachel started to respond, but something made her pause and think a moment. She looked at Charlie in a different way, he thought. It was with such a deep and honest compassion that for a moment Charlie felt as though he was the only person in the world who truly mattered to her. That was her gift as a psychologist, but he enjoyed believing it could be something more.
“Can I ask you something, Charlie?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Normally I wouldn’t even offer these questions for you to consider. They should be part of your therapy. But since yo
u seem reluctant to talk to anybody, I feel obliged.”
“What’s the question?”
“What do you think of the other patients?”
“What do I think? What does that matter?” Charlie asked.
“Call me curious,” Rachel said.
“I don’t have an opinion.” Charlie tried to bluff his way out, but Rachel wasn’t fooled.
“I’m not sure that’s true,” she said. “Do you think the other patients are different from you?”
“No.” Again he felt the thinness of his lie and was sure she could as well.
“Do you think that you’re better than them?”
“What do you mean, better?”
“Do you think you’re incapable of being ill? Of being sick like they are?”
“I guess I don’t know.”
Charlie turned from Rachel. She continued to talk, but now to his back.
“Anne Pedersen was at Mount Auburn Hospital. Have you ever asked yourself what she was doing there?” she said.
“No.”
“Does it make any sense to you, Charlie, that she was there? Why would she suddenly appear—at that hospital, of all places? If she was there, it wasn’t a coincidence. We looked for evidence, giving you the benefit of the doubt. But she hadn’t checked in for a treatment. There were no visitors registered under that name. It would have had to been you that she came to see. Did you tell anybody but me where you were going?”
Charlie felt his legs weaken. “No,” he said.
“Then how did Anne know you were there, Charlie?”
“I don’t know.”
“Charlie, listen to me. It’s important that you listen to me now.”
He turned back toward her. His face was ashen; the muscles of his jaw tightened around his clenched teeth.
“The men in here with you are not all off the street, Charlie. Many are professional men. Men with jobs and wives. With children and friends. Their illness is no different than cancer or diabetes or any other ailment that impairs quality of life. It just happens to be more frightening because it’s their minds. You have to be willing to embrace all possibilities before you can start to heal, Charlie. You have to be willing to be like everybody else.”
“And how do I do that?” Charlie asked.
“You have to let go of your idea of what it means to be mentally ill and allow yourself to be just like the rest of the patients here.”
“And just what are the rest of the patients here?” Charlie asked, his eyes narrowing.
“They’re people, Charlie. They’re all just people.”
“Of course they’re people,” Charlie said.
“You can say it, Charlie, but can you see it? Can you feel it? Can you stand a minute in their shoes and think they could be your shoes as well?”
Charlie thought of George, then of the man eating his fingers and rocking in his chair, of the ward’s checkers champion.
“I’m different from them,” he said.
“We’re all just people, Charlie. All that I’m asking is that you try to see them that way.” She reached into her purse and handed Charlie a card.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“I want you to talk to somebody, Charlie. If you won’t talk to the doctors here, I have a colleague at another facility who might be able to help.”
“You’re not hearing me, Rachel. I don’t need any help. I just need to get out of here.”
“We all need help, Charlie. It’s sometimes the people who need it the most who can’t see that for themselves.”
Charlie watched as Rachel walked away. When she was out of sight, he crumpled up the card she had given him and tossed it into a nearby trash can without so much as looking at the name.
Chapter 32
Still too upset about last night’s nightmare to write about it, Joe Giles needed to come up with another topic for today’s blog post. It was the second time in as many nights that Joe had had the same nightmare. It began with him sitting astride Charlie, slapping at his brother’s reddened face. Joe’s blows, increasingly fierce, did nothing to deter Charlie from making incessant accusations that Joe had authored the kill list. Then with one frightful smack, Joe’s thick hand connected with such force as to rip Charlie’s head clear from his body with a sickening sound of muscle tearing and bone cracking.
Charlie’s head rolled several feet and came to a rest upon its bloody stump, his maddening eyes glaring back at Joe. Then Charlie’s disembodied head started to laugh; then it spoke, insisting Joe was a liar, pausing only for crazed, cackling fits. Joe screamed as a long, fork-tipped tongue uncoiled from deep inside Charlie’s bloodied mouth and shot forward. The snaking muscle threaded into Joe’s open mouth and slid easily down his throat, until Joe felt intense pressure squeezing his heart. This followed a pulling sensation unlike anything Joe had ever felt before. In the next instant Joe felt something tear inside him, this before seeing a mesmerizing blur explode out from his mouth as Charlie’s tongue retracted. Lifting his head to follow the trail of movement, Joe, horrified, watched as his bloody heart, still pumping, danced in midair, suspended above the floor by Charlie’s devil tongue, which had wrapped itself around the disinterred organ. Joe woke up screaming.
Perhaps because he hadn’t heard from Charlie and was worried about his brother’s well-being, he had the nightmare again. Having settled on a topic, Joe suppressed the gruesome images from his nightmare to concentrate on blogging. He had been blogging for several hours when the phone rang. Monte, well exercised after a two-hour walk with Joe, had fallen asleep and was curled into a quiet ball underneath the desk, at Joe’s feet. The phone’s ring woke him, and he let out a reflexive and sharp bark that startled Joe. The antiquated chimes of the rotary dial bells sounded sickly and haunting in the quiet house, as though a precursor to unwelcome news.
Joe’s immediate thought was of his mother. He stood from his wooden desk chair in his bedroom and raced to pick up the phone before the third ring. Monte trotted dutifully behind. Getting to the phone before the chimes of the third ring stopped had much more significance if in fact the call was about her. Joe’s superstitions were numerous, and most were garden-variety, widely held beliefs—black cats, walking under ladders, avoiding cracks on the sidewalk. But his superstitions about the phone were uniquely his own.
Joe considered answering the phone on the fourth ring to be a bad omen. For him it was a guarantee that the news on the other end of the line would not be good. It was superstition that kept him from checking the answering machine as well—the three-ring rule still in play, awaiting messages wouldn’t be bad news, so long as he didn’t check. He couldn’t remember a single instance when he had answered the phone on the fourth ring. If he couldn’t get to it by the third ring, he usually didn’t answer the phone at all. His brother had called his habits stupid, but Joe couldn’t remember a time when Charlie had answered the phone on the fourth ring, either. Not once.
“Hello?” Joe was out of breath.
“Joe, it’s Charlie.”
“Charlie!” Joe shouted with both surprise and delight. “Where have you been?”
At the sound of Charlie’s name, Monte started to bark excitedly. Standing on his hind legs, he pawed at Joe’s thighs, as though demanding his turn to speak. Joe shushed him and shooed Monte away with his leg.
“I’m out of town on business. Did you get my message?”
“I didn’t check,” Joe said.
Charlie laughed. “My bad. I forgot you wouldn’t have checked the machine.”
“I was worried about you,” Joe said. “Are you doing okay?”
“I’m fine,” Charlie said. “What have you been doing?”
Joe thought a moment. He took careful stock of the last several days. He had practiced his drums both mornings, fed Monte, and taken him for walks. He’d visited his mother at Mount Auburn both days as well. Of course, yesterday was Thursday, and that meant it was chocolate day. Joe always brought chocolate for the nurs
es on Thursday. Not to mention a truffle that he bought for his favorite nurse, June.
“I’ve been fine, Charlie. Monte is, too. But I was worried when I didn’t hear from you. Is there a chance you’ll make it back to town in time to come with me to my progress meeting tomorrow?”
“Sorry, Joe, but I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Charlie said. “I had an unexpected job opportunity come up. I caught the first flight to California. I tried to call you late last night, but you didn’t pick up. Were you working?”
Joe thought. After visiting his mother, he had gone to Walderman for an appointment and a prescription refill. Then he’d gone home and watched TV and fallen asleep just after the eleven o’clock news. The funny thing was, he couldn’t remember what he’d done between leaving Walderman and going home. It wasn’t overly concerning, but he had recently changed his dosage of Risperdal. If anything, it was another reminder of how much he missed his mother and her vigilance in monitoring the side effects of his medication. He’d meant to ask Rachel about the terrible nightmares that kept haunting him at night, but had forgotten. Maybe the lack of sleep was catching up with him. Maybe that was why his memory was fuzzy lately.
“I wasn’t working. I never work the overnight on Thursday. Remember we had had pizza together last Thursday? What time did you call?”
There was a pause.
“I can’t remember,” Charlie said.
“Well, where are you now?” Joe asked.
“I’m … I’m still in L.A. I should be back sometime Sunday evening. Are you okay on your own until then? Can you keep taking care of Monte?”
“Charlie, I’m your older brother, remember? I’m fine if you move to California. I’m not an invalid. And I’ll gladly adopt your dog. He’s been great. A bit eager to visit the Cummingses, though. I guess he’s got eyes for Maxine.”
Charlie laughed. “You can call it eyes if you like. Anyway, sorry for the short notice on this California trip.”
Delirious Page 19
