Unspeakable (6 page)

“Yeah, but the asshole told her to look it up online!” Layne started sobbing again. “She had no idea about the public indecency charge. Now she knows I'm on the registered sex offender list. . . .”

“You spoke with her?” Olivia asked.

Tears streamed down his face. “She doesn't want to see me ever again. She threw all my shit out of the house.
Don't come home
, she said. . . .”

“Okay, Layne,” she said, patting his knee. “We're going to work this out. Everything seems awful now, but believe me, it's not the end of the world. . . .”

He seemed inconsolable. He wouldn't stop weeping. Olivia handed him the box of Kleenex. She remembered hypnosis helped him work out his issues with his mother. While hypnotized, he'd managed to remember and calmly describe for her some of the horrible things his mother had done to him in the past. As a child, when he'd wet his bed, she'd make him stand in the bathtub with the urine-soaked sheet over his head all night. One evening when he'd been nine years old, she'd caught him in his room, naked and staring at himself in the mirror. She dragged him naked outside and tied him to a tree in their backyard. “I'm sure it was only for an hour or so,” Layne had explained. “But it seemed like half the night, because it was—like, November, and I was freezing my bare ass off. Plus I was afraid to scream for help, because I didn't want anyone to see me naked. I was so sick the following week. . . .” It was while under hypnosis that Layne had lifted the back of his shirt and shown her the faint scars where his mother had whipped him with a belt years ago.

“Okay, Layne, I want you to take some deep breaths,” she said. “You always feel better after I've hypnotized you. We can work some of these things out. Does that sound good?”

He wiped his eyes and nodded.

“You know the routine,” she said. “Think of a place where you're safe and happy.”

“I don't have a place like that,” he sighed.

“I know, but don't you remember? You made one up in your head. I want you to go there now. Everything's so peaceful. You don't have to close your eyes to see it. . . .” She held her hand out—the palm toward him. Layne numbly stared at it. Taking her time, Olivia moved her hand toward his face and back again. “You're tired, and all you want to do is sleep. . . .”

She watched him relax and slump back on the sofa. She continued to coax him into a trance with her soothing voice and the careful movement of her hand—until he closed his eyes. He let out a tiny sigh.

“You're in a deep sleep, Layne, and a very safe place,” she told him. “When I snap my fingers and call your name, you'll wake up. But first I want to talk with you about some things. And you'll feel good getting them off your chest. Can you hear me, Layne?”

“Yes, Mama,” he whispered.

Olivia balked. For a moment, she didn't think she'd heard him right. “Layne, this is Olivia. We're talking together in a quiet, safe place. . . .”

“I'm sorry!” he cried. “Please, don't hate me. . . .”

“Layne, this is Olivia,” she said loudly—over his sobbing. “Can you hear my voice?”

He coiled up in the corner of the sofa. He was shaking. “Mama, please, I didn't mean for it to happen. . . .” He kept apologizing, and yet the tone of his voice grew angrier and angrier. Opening his eyes, he glared at her and started to uncoil. It looked as if he might spring off the sofa at any minute. “You can't do this to me, goddamn it!” he screamed. “It's your fault I'm this way! You're the one who should be sorry. . . .”

“Layne, I want you to wake up—”

“What do you expect from me? I was just your fucking whipping boy. That's all I was, and still am. Well, go ahead and take your failures out on me. . . .”

Olivia wondered if Winnie could hear him down the hall. At this point, she would have welcomed some help from another therapist. She didn't know how to deal with him.

“Layne, wake up!” She snapped her fingers. “Can you hear me, Layne?”

It wasn't doing any good.

“The only way I'd ever make you happy was if I were dead!” he ranted, saliva flying from his mouth. “Well, I tried that! Fuck you. Why don't
you
die?”

Olivia slowly got to her feet. “Layne, wake up!”

He curled up in the corner of the sofa again and wept inconsolably.

Olivia felt so helpless. She backed toward the office door and opened it. She glanced down the hall at the closed door to Winnie's office. She knew most subjects under hypnosis normally emerged from a trance on their own after a few moments if their guide couldn't reach them. But what was happening now with Layne wasn't normal.

“Everything's all right, Layne,” she said. “You're safe here. . . .”

Backing out of the office, she turned and hurried down the hall. She pounded on Winnie's door, and then flung it open.

Her supervisor was in the middle of a session with a middle-aged woman. Lying on the sofa, the patient let out a startled cry and quickly sat up. From a chair beside the couch, Winnie got to her feet. “What is this? Olivia, you know better than to barge in—”

“I'm sorry, Winn,” she cut her off. “The sink in the bathroom is backing up.”

That was their code for an emergency situation with a patient. Olivia had only used it twice before, and neither case had seemed quite this serious. She remembered Layne's suicide attempts. Then all at once, she thought about the large windows in her office—and the six-story drop to the cobblestone alley below. All he had to do was smash one of those windows.

Winnie told her patient that she'd be right back and hurried out to the hallway. She shut the door. “Who is it?” she whispered.

“Layne Tipton,” Olivia answered, heading down the hall with her. “I hypnotized him to make him calm down, but he just got worse. I can't get him to snap out of it. . . .”

“You shouldn't have left him alone.”

“I didn't know what else to do. . . .”

Winnie grabbed her arm just as she was about to rush into the office. “We don't want to do anything too sudden or startling,” Winnie whispered. She stepped in front of Olivia in the doorway, and then stopped dead.

Layne stood with his back to the window. He fumbled for something inside the jacket he'd had tied around his waist earlier.

“Layne, I'm Olivia's friend,” Winnie calmly said. “We want to help you. I know that—”

“I'll show you!” he screamed. He pulled a gun from the jacket and aimed it at them.

It happened so fast, Olivia barely had time to gasp before two loud shots rang out.

“Oh!” was all Winnie said, and then she collapsed. Her body hit the floor with a thud—right at Olivia's feet.

Paralyzed, she stood and stared at Layne as he fired the gun again.

Olivia felt the stinging, searing blow to her shoulder. She staggered back into the hallway. She braced herself against the wall to keep from falling. Horrified, Olivia gazed down at the pool of blood beneath the crumpled form of her friend. When she looked up again, her eyes met Layne's.

For a moment, he seemed to realize what he'd done. His mouth dropped open and he shook his head at her. It was as if he'd finally come out of his trance.

Helpless, she watched him turn the gun on himself—just under his chin.

“No, wait!” she screamed.

He fired, and the blast of the final shot reverberated in the room. Layne's blood and brains splattered against the window behind him. Then his body flopped down on the floor.

Olivia stared down at him. But her vision began to blur. She could hear someone running up the corridor. She didn't know who it was, but they were calling out to her. She couldn't answer. Her body was shutting down and her legs gave out from under her.

Everything started to get dark.

But she was thinking about her friend, Winnie—and about Layne.

At last, poor Layne had found a peaceful, quiet place.

 

 

Olivia woke up and squinted at the window in her hospital room. The afternoon sun shone through the open blinds. The TV bracketed to the wall was on mute, and tuned to a baseball game. Any one of three people could have turned it on: her husband, her dad, or her college-age brother. The latter two had come down from Seattle, and were staying at a Best Western.

Blindly reaching for the button at her side, she elevated the head of the bed until she was almost sitting up. The IV tube in her arm flopped around a bit as she reached for her water glass and took a sip. The nightstand also had a stack of magazines:
People, Us Weekly, InStyle
, and several others. If she never saw another photo of a Kardashian again, it would be too soon.

She rubbed her eyes and focused on the visitor's chair. She recognized Clay's baseball cap, sitting on the cushion. Clay must have stepped out for a minute.

A foil
Get Well Soon
helium balloon was tied to the arm of that chair. It was from Clay's niece, Gail, who had stayed with them for two weeks last summer. Cool air from the vent by the window made the balloon dance.

Olivia gazed at the menagerie of plants, flowers, and cards on the dresser. On the cover of one card was a cartoon of a guy with a broken leg; a rectal thermometer joke was on another; and a photo of a sexy, shirtless intern was on yet another. The shooting incident that had put her here in the hospital had occurred just three days ago. She appreciated the cards, but wasn't quite ready to laugh yet. Several of those cards and flower arrangements were from Clay's baseball buddies and their spouses. It was nice of them to think of her, and she felt guilty for not having tried harder to make friends with them.

She felt guilty about a lot of things right now.

The pain in her left arm was a constant reminder of what had happened. The shooting incident at the Portland Wellness Cooperative had made the front page of
The Oregonian.
The ongoing postmortem analysis of Collin Cox's murdered mother and her lover had gotten bumped to page two. Reporters had been hounding Clay and her coworkers. Clay had the hospital operator screen all the calls to her room.

Her official condition was stable. They'd removed the bullet from her shoulder, but she'd developed an infection. This morning was the first time her temperature had finally dropped below a hundred and one. The doctor thought she might go home the day after tomorrow—and he recommended bed rest after that. He advised against her attending Winnie's funeral on Tuesday. Clay had promised to attend for her.

“You're awake,” he said, strutting into the room with a Starbucks Frappuccino bottle. He looked sporty in his khaki shorts and red polo shirt. He had a healthy tan and his dark blond hair was sun-kissed flaxen. “Can I get you anything?”

“No, thanks,” she said, working up a smile. “How long have you been here?”

“About forty-five minutes.” He turned to look up at the TV. “Who's winning?”

“I have no idea.” She didn't even know who was playing.

He swiped his cap off the chair and sat down. “Feeling a little better?”

She just nodded.

“Well, the home phone was ringing off the hook today,” he said, taking a swig of his Frappuccino. “Liz Noll called this morning from Seattle. She and Tom send their love. Also your friend, Nancy—um, Nancy What'sher-name from your old job with Group Health . . .”

“Nancy Abbe,” Olivia said.

He nodded. “I gave her your number here. Also Margaret and Bev left messages.”

Olivia nodded again. “That's sweet.” Margaret and Bev were work friends—and for just a second, Olivia wondered why Winnie hadn't called, too.

Then she remembered, and her shoulder started to hurt again.

“You sure I can't get you anything?” Clay asked.

“No, thanks, honey.” She looked toward the window and sighed. “I—I keep thinking
‘what if?'
I mean, if I'd stayed with Layne, maybe I could have stopped him somehow.”

“And maybe he would have shot you dead—and then shot a lot more people on your floor before killing himself. We've been through this before, sweetheart. No one blames you. You want to blame anyone? Blame him—or maybe blame the douche bag who sold a gun to a crazy person.” He set down his Frappuccino. “I mean, hell, didn't the guy have a record?”

Before she could answer, the telephone on her nightstand rang.

“Stay put. I'll grab it,” Clay said, getting to his feet. He snatched up the receiver. “Hello?
Who
?” He covered the mouthpiece and looked at her with one eyebrow raised. “You want to talk to a Debi Donahue?”

Debi was another coworker. It had been Debi's voice Olivia had heard in the corridor just as she'd blacked out.

“Of course, I'll talk to her,” Olivia said, reaching out with her good hand. “You know who Debi is, silly. She was the first one on the scene. It was in all the news stories, honey. . . .”

Clay shrugged apologetically. “Hi, yeah,” he said into the phone. “You can put her through.” He handed Olivia the receiver.

Olivia sat up a little. “Hello, Debi?” she said into the phone.

There was silence. She wondered if the operator had lost the connection.

“Deb?”

“Is this Olivia Barker Bischoff?” asked the woman on the other end of the line. It wasn't Debi's voice.

“Yes. Who is this?”

“You evil bitch,” the woman whispered.

“What?” It suddenly occurred to Olivia that anyone could have gotten Debi's name out of the newspaper. “Who is this?”