But they were stories, that’s all. He told stories about death. He recounted movies, books, all with tragic and meaningful
death scenes. He talked about news reports and crime reports. It was just his thing. And I adopted his language; I told stories,
too. It was no big deal. Really I didn’t even notice I’d started doing it. It felt like fiction, all of it. Shakespeare told
stories of death. Poe told stories of death. Stephen flipping King told stories of death, and none of it meant a thing.
So I hadn’t even noticed when the talk increased. Hadn’t noticed when it got personal. Hadn’t realized that Nick’s stories
had become tales of suicide. Of homicide. And mine had, too. Only, as far as I knew, we were still telling fiction.
When I thumbed through the e-mails Detective Panzella had given me on his first visit to my room, I was dumbfounded. How could
I have not seen it? How could I have not noticed that the e-mails told an alarming story that would have made anyone sit up
and notice? How could I have not seen that Nick’s talk had gone from fiction to fact? How could I not see that my responses—still just fiction in my head—would make me look for all the world like I was obsessed with death, too?
I don’t know, but I hadn’t seen it. As much as I wished I had, I hadn’t.
“You mean those e-mails? I didn’t mean it. It was all
Romeo and Juliet
. It was all Nick. Not me.”
He kept talking, as if I’d never said a word. “And we all believe that the best course of action for you at this juncture
is to keep you safe and enter you into an inpatient residential program where you can get some help to battle those suicidal
urges. Group therapy, individual therapy, some medication.”
I grabbed my crutches and pulled myself to standing. “No. Mom, you know I don’t need this. Tell him I don’t need this.”
“It’s for your own good, Val,” Mom said, finally looking up from her shoes. I noticed she had her fingers wrapped around the
handle of the suitcase. “It’ll only be for a little while. A couple weeks.”
“Valerie,” Dr. Dentley said. “Valerie, we can help you get what you need.”
“Stop saying my name,” I said, my voice rising. “What I need is to go home. I can battle whatever urges at home.”
Dr. Dentley stood and leaned over to press the call button on the remote. A nurse scurried in and picked up the suitcase,
then just stood at the door, waiting. Mom stood up, too, edging toward the bathroom, out of the way.
“We’re just going to move up to the fourth floor, where the psychiatric wing is, Valerie,” Dr. Dentley said in that measured
voice. “Please sit down. We’ll take you in your wheelchair. You’ll be comfortable that way.”
“No!” I said, and I guess from the way Mom blinked when I said it I must have been screaming, although I didn’t feel it. All
I could think about was tenth grade Comm Arts class when we watched
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
. All I could think about was Jack Nicholson screaming at the nurse about wanting the TV on and the creepy blank-faced Indian
and the nervous little guy in glasses. And—here is the dumbest thing of all—I even had the thought that when word got
around that I’d been locked up in a psych ward, everyone would totally make fun of me. Christy Bruter would have a field day
with this one. And all I could think was
They’re going to have to take me up there dead, because there’s no way I’m going up there of my own power
.
Dr. Dentley must have had the same thought because once I started screaming, “No! I won’t go! No! Get away from me!” the pleasant
look on his face turned just slightly and he gave a nod to the nurse who scurried out of the room.
A few moments later two big orderlies came in and Dr. Dentley said, “Be careful of the left thigh,” in this very clinical
voice and then the orderlies were on me, holding me down while the nurse came at me with a needle. Instinctively I dropped
back in my wheelchair. My crutches clattered against the floor. Mom bent over and picked them up.
I thrashed as best as I could with what felt like a thousand pounds on top of me and I screamed as loud as my voice would
allow. So loudly, pieces of my words were silent, flinging themselves into the air so forcefully I imagined foreign-looking
people in distant countries picking them up like artifacts in the dust. One of the orderlies moved to get a better hold of
my arm, which gave me just enough room to kick. I kicked out with all I had, landing a good one on his shin. He let out a
shoosh
through gritted teeth, bringing his face kissing-close to mine, but it did nothing to help me. I was pinned. The nurse stole
behind me and I moved the only thing I still had power over—my lungs—when she stuck the needle in my exposed hip through
the open space of the wheelchair.
Within seconds, the only part of me that cooperated with fighting my fate was tears, which smeared my face and collected in
my neck. Mom cried, too, and I took some satisfaction in that, though not nearly enough.
“Mom,” I whimpered, as they rolled me past her. “Please don’t do this. You can stop this…” She didn’t answer. At least not
in words.
They wheeled me down the hallway toward the elevator. All the way I cried, I begged, I repeated, “I didn’t do it… I didn’t
do it…” but Dr. Dentley had disappeared and all that was left were the two orderlies and the suitcase-toting nurse, none of
whom acknowledged they even heard me.
We came to an intersecting hallway with a sign that said
ELEVATORS
and an arrow pointing the way. Just before we turned, we passed a room, and a face that I recognized.
They say that near-death experiences change people. That they suddenly discover what tolerance and love are really about.
That they have no more use for pettiness and hate.
But when the orderlies wheeled me toward that bank of elevators and we passed Christy Bruter’s room, I saw her propped up
slightly in her bed, staring out at me. I saw her parents standing by her bedside, and another, younger woman who was holding
a little boy in her arms.
“I didn’t do it… I didn’t…” I was saying, crying.
Her parents stared out at me with weary eyes. And Christy looked on with just the slightest wry smile. It was the same smile
I’d seen so many times on the bus. Completely unchanged.
The orderlies turned the corner and I couldn’t see in Christy’s room anymore. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. But I don’t think
she heard me.
Still, I wondered if somehow Stacey did.
There would be many times in my life that I would wonder how I survived those ten days in the hospital psychiatric wing. How
I got from my bed to the toilet. How I got from the toilet to group sessions. How I lived through listening to high squealy
voices shouting ridiculous things through the night. How I felt like my life had been taken down to a disgusting level when
a tech came into my room one morning and whispered that if I needed “a hit” we could “probably work something out,” tugging
at the front of his scrubs while he said it.
I couldn’t even succumb to my silent place again—my comfortable space. Dr. Dentley would surely consider silence a regression
and suggest to my parents that I needed to stay longer.
Dr. Dentley made me sick to my stomach. His tartar-caked teeth and his dandruff-flaked glasses and his psychology-textbook
way of talking. All the while, his eyes wandering to something more important while I answered his Super-Shrink questions.
I didn’t feel like I belonged there. Most of the time I felt like everyone else was crazy—even Dr. Dentley—and I was the
only sane one.
There was Emmitt, a mountain of a boy, who continually trolled the hallways asking everyone for pennies. Morris, who talked
to the walls as if there were someone there talking back to him. Adelle, whose mouth was so foul they wouldn’t even let her
be in group with us half the time. Francie, the girl who liked to burn herself and constantly bragged about having an affair
with her forty-five-year old stepfather.
And there was Brandee, the one who knew what I was there for and who regarded me with her sad, dark eyes and questions at
every turn.
“What did it feel like?” she’d ask in the TV room. “You know, to kill people.”
“I didn’t kill people.”
“My mom says you did.”
“What does she know about it? She’s wrong.”
In the hallways, in group, there would be Brandee with her questions. “What did it feel like to get shot? Did he shoot you
on purpose? Did he think you’d turn him in? Did any of your friends get shot or was it all people you hated? Do you wish you
hadn’t done it? What do your parents think? My parents would totally freak out. Did your parents freak out? Do they hate you
now?”
It was enough to make me crazy, but I worked really hard to not let it get to me. Most of the time I would just ignore her.
Shrug my shoulders noncommittally or pretend I didn’t hear her. But occasionally I’d answer, thinking it would shut her up.
I was wrong. Answering her would just bring on a new wave of questions and I’d regret that I’d ever said anything.
The only good thing that happened during those days in the psych wing was that Detective Panzella stopped coming in to grill
me. Whether that meant Dr. Dentley was keeping him away or he’d decided I was telling the truth or he was working up a case
against me, I didn’t know. All I knew was it was good that he wasn’t around.
I moved from place to place like I was supposed to. Changed out of my pajamas and hospital-issued robe like a good girl. Sat
on the couch in the common room, watching approved TV, looking out the window at the highway below, pretending I didn’t see
the dried boogers smeared on the walls next to me. Pretending my heart wasn’t breaking. Pretending I wasn’t angry, confused,
scared.
I wanted to sleep my time away there. Wanted to take painkillers, curl up in bed, and not wake up again until I was home.
But I knew that would be seen as a sign of depression and would only serve to keep me there longer. I had to pretend. Pretend
I was getting better. Pretend my “thoughts of suicide” had changed.
“I totally see that Nick was wrong for me now,” I intoned. “I want to start over now. I think college will be good. Yeah,
college.”
I hid the anger that was welling up inside me. Anger at my parents for not being there for me. Anger at Nick for being dead.
Anger at the people in the school who tormented Nick. Anger at myself for not seeing this coming. I learned to tamp down the
anger, to force it to the back of my mind, hoping that it would just fizzle out, go away. I learned to pretend it was already
gone.
I said the things that would get me out. I mouthed the words they needed to hear and somehow got myself to those group sessions
and said nothing when one of the other patients would lash out at me with insults. I took my meals and tests and cooperated
in every way possible. I just wanted out.
Finally, on a Friday, Dr. Dentley came into my room and sat on the edge of the bed. I didn’t cringe, but curled my toes inside
my socks, trying to distance myself from him.
“We’re going to release you,” he said, so matter-of-factly I almost missed it.
“Really?”
“Yes. We’re very pleased with your progress. But you’re a long way from healed, Valerie. We’re releasing you to intensive
outpatient care.”
“Here?” I asked, trying not to sound panicky. For some reason, even though it would be outpatient, the thought of coming back
to the hospital every day scared me—like if I said or did something wrong, Chester and Jock would pin me down and shove
a needle in my butt again.
“No. You’ll be seeing…” he trailed off, flipping through pages on the clipboard he was holding. He nodded in approval. “Yes.
You’ll be seeing Rex Hieler.” He looked up at me. “You’ll like Dr. Hieler. He’s perfect for this case.”
I left the hospital, a “case,” but a free one.
A nurse wheeled me down to the front door of the hospital in a wheelchair. I was aware of every eye in the building staring
at me as I went past. Probably they weren’t really staring at me, but it felt like it. Like everyone in the world knew who
I was and why I was there. Like everyone in the world stared at me, wondering if what they’d heard was true. Wondering if
God was a cruel God for letting me live.
Mom had the car pulled up outside and was coming toward me, a pair of crutches in her hand. I took them and hobbled to the
car, piling myself inside it, not saying anything to Mom or to the nurse, who was giving Mom instructions just inside the
hospital door.
We drove home in silence. Mom turned the radio to an easy listening station. I opened the window a crack, then closed my eyes
and smelled the air. It smelled different somehow, like something was missing from it. I wondered what I would do when I got
home.
When I opened the front door of the house, the first thing I saw was Frankie sprawled on the floor watching TV.
“Hey, Val,” he said, sitting up. “You’re home.”
“Hey. Like your hair. Maximum height on those spikes today.”
He grinned, ran his hand over his head. “That’s what Tina said,” he said. Like nothing had ever happened. Like I didn’t still
smell like the hospital. Like I wasn’t a suicidal freak come home to make his life miserable.
At that moment, Frankie was the best brother anyone could have asked for.
Dr. Hieler’s office was cozy and academic—an oasis of books and soft rock music in a sea of institutionalism. His secretary,
a relaxed girl with brown skin and long fingernails, was curt and professional, ushering me and Mom in from the waiting room
to the inner sanctum as if we were there to buy rare diamonds. She bustled around a mini-fridge, bringing me a Coke and Mom
a bottled water, and then waved with her arm toward an open office door. We stepped through.
Dr. Hieler unfolded himself out from behind a desk, taking off his glasses and unveiling a closed-mouthed smile that made
his eyes look sad. Or maybe his eyes were always sad. I suppose if I had to listen to tales of pain and misery all day my
eyes would look sad, too.