Thirty minutes later, we were both dressed and out the door to head to the psychiatric hospital where my mother’s records would be. I didn’t expect to find much—after all, it had been eighteen years. I was lucky the hospital was small enough that they hadn’t deleted the files. The backups were our only shot.
“Can I ask you something?”
“No.”
Michael ignored me and continued anyway. I was still a bit mad at him but at least he hadn’t tried to bring the argument up again. “How come you didn’t do this sooner?”
I thought about blowing him off, but telling him the truth at least kept my mind off our spat. “I wasn’t able to leave my aunt’s place until I was sixteen. I’d gotten a job at fourteen and hid money around the apartment. When I had enough, I ran for it and hitched a ride to the first thing smoking out of Jersey. An old woman drove me to Albany and that’s where I decided to set up shop. Her name was Selina Lebeau. She let me rent the room above her candy store while I got another job. Took me forever just to be able to afford basic household stuff. Got lucky one night at the restaurant when I met Lauren and she helped get me a full time job there. I just couldn’t save up enough to get back to Jersey, no matter how hard I tried. Why do you ask?”
He shrugged one shoulder, concentrating on the road ahead rather than looking at me. “She’s important to you. I knew there had to be a reason why you hadn’t done it before now.”
Further talk was hindered by the fact that we’d pulled into the parking lot of the psychiatric hospital. Like last time, I felt the creeping sensation of a panic attack coming on: muscles tightening, pupils dilating, cold sweat, and rapid breathing. I gripped the side of my car door and closed my eyes, breathing in and out slowly until the symptoms faded. This time, there would be no faceless men dragging me away from my mother, nor would Belial or Mulciber be waiting for me. I had to believe that with all my heart, or I’d never get out of this car.
Finally, I opened the door and stepped out, squaring my shoulders and doing my best not to wince as I looked up at the sparkling white hospital, stark against the bright green grass and the vibrant blue-sky overhead. Cheerful place. I wasn’t buying it.
The automatic doors whooshed open, sending a blast of frigid air against my skin. I shivered and glanced about the lobby. Pristine baby blue walls, linoleum floors, and framed pictures of smiling people. It felt oddly like walking into an eye doctor’s office.
I brushed the thought aside and walked up to the front desk where a black guy sat with a phone tucked against his shoulder. He smiled when we walked over, lowering the receiver.
“Can I help you?”
“Yes. We have an appointment with a Dr. Reginald,” I said.
He faced the computer in front of him, typing in a few things. “I see. I’ll send a call for her. Make sure you have your paperwork ready. Please have a seat over there.”
He pointed to the plush navy chairs in the carpeted waiting room to my right. I withdrew the paperwork that had been folded up in one of my inner pockets and sat down. Michael took the seat to my left. Silence fell over us as the minutes crept by, punctuated only by a clock ticking on the wall and the typing of the male secretary. Anxious energy began to build in my nerves. It wasn’t until Michael touched my left leg that I realized I had been bouncing it up and down.
He flashed me a reassuring smile and leaned over a bit to murmur something to me. “If you don’t stop doing that, I’m going to staple your foot to the floor.”
A challenging smirk touched my lips. “Try it and die.”
The angel adopted a haughty expression. “Is that a threat, mortal?”
“I most certainly hope it is.”
“I could take you blindfolded with one arm tied behind my back.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Is that how they did it back in your time, Grandpa?”
“Ouch. That’s a low blow.”
I would have replied but then a short Asian woman in her forties walked over, offering her hand.
“Hi, I’m Dr. Reginald. Are you Jordan Amador?”
I stood, accepting her firm handshake. “Yes, ma’am. This is my friend Michael O’Brien. He’s here for moral support.”
She paused, pointing at him and then me. “Michael…Jordan?”
I couldn’t help but smile a bit. I’d gotten used to people making that reference over the past couple months. “Yeah, I know. It’s weird.”
She grinned at my admittance. “Nice to meet you. If you’ll follow me, we’ll get started.”
Dr. Reginald led us past the front desk and down the hallway of the employees’ offices, meaning that all the patients were on the upper three floors. She opened the door to the stairwell and we followed her to the basement, which was even colder than the sub-zero first floor.
“Pardon me if I have a little trouble with the files,” the doctor said, taking a set of keys out of her pocket. “It’s very rare that we have past relatives coming in to find information about loved ones.”
“It’s fine,” I assured her.
“May I see your information?”
I handed her the file containing my birth certificate. She scanned it briefly and handed it back to me, turning to unlock the door. Inside, the room was filled with row after row of file cabinets, all with elaborate letters and codes for organization. Must have been hell to have to catalogue things this way.
“Our recent patients’ information is in our computers upstairs, but everyone who was at this facility from ten years ago or longer has hard copies. We keep them in case the state or federal government needs them.” Dr. Reginald ‘s dark eyes scanned the rows until she recognized the one we needed to be on. We approached a worn out black file cabinet and she opened it, mumbling to herself as she looked through the folders’ tabs. I chewed my bottom lip, but at last she found the right manila and pulled it out.
“Here we are. There’s not much on there—just your basic profile and how long she stayed at this hospital,” she said, handing it to me.
My hands shook the tiniest bit as I opened the folder, coming upon a grey document with my mother’s name, former address, marital status, and so on. A picture was paper-clipped in the top right corner and it made my breath catch to see her face again. Morena, just like me. Staring into the photograph was like looking into a mirror of an older, much stronger reflection of myself. After a moment, I tore my gaze away from my mother’s brazen brown eyes and instead read through the information.
“Wait, this says that she was never legally released from the hospital because she ran away. I thought my mother’s body was found here?” I asked, frowning.
Dr. Reginald’s brow furrowed as well as she stepped on my left side, since Michael towered over my right, and scanned the profile. “That’s odd. If you want more clarification, you’d have to see if there’s a police report attached.”
She turned the page and I read it out loud: “Found three blocks away from psychiatric hospital with a deep laceration in her rib cage that suggest it was self-inflicted. No signs of struggle. The weapon was found in her chest cavity with her fingerprints and the prints of another unidentified dead man on it. Her male accomplice fled the scene. Male accomplice?”
Behind that page, I found a rough sketch of a dark-haired man in his late thirties with a thin scar over his right eyebrow and another peeking up from the collar of his shirt on the left side of his neck. I couldn’t breathe.
It was Mr. N.
Beneath his picture, in an untidy scrawl, was a name.
Andrew Bethsaida.
Andrew Bethsaida was the name of the man I killed.
My throat tightened upon seeing his face again. I swallowed hard a couple of times before speaking to the doctor.
“Do you have a profile on this man?”
“He was brought in as a consultant later on during your mother’s stay at the hospital. He specialized in schizophrenia, paranoia, and other psychological problems in people with multicultural backgrounds. However,
if you aren’t his next of kin then I’m afraid I can’t divulge his personal information.” She sounded regretful, as if she noticed the distraught look on my face.
“It’s…okay. I just wanted to know. Would I be able to get a copy of this file?”
“Sure, I’ll get that for you upstairs.”
“Thank you. One more thing—is there a chance that she had any personal items put in storage here?”
Dr. Reginald paused, thinking about it. “Most likely, no. The policy is to keep a patient’s things for about a year and then either donate them or throw them away. However, I did see something on the other page.”
She flipped back to the first sheet and pointed down at the bottom.
“It says here that her personal belongings were forwarded to this address.”
“God,” I whispered.
Michael touched my shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
“That’s the address to my Aunt Carmen’s apartment.”