“I’m sorry, Danny. I know this must have been rough. I’ll finish things here immediately. If you can wait here, I’ll write this up and have your belongings brought back to you. I can get you a voucher for the cafeteria, if you’d like.”
“I appreciate it. I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t sweat it, Champ.”
He’s gone, I’m alone with my thumping pulse and the phantom drone of the fluorescent tubes above me.
I almost wasted everything. I can be so smart sometimes. And sometimes I can be so stupid. Slide a chair back to the wall, scoot the metal table close and lean back, put my feet up. Watch the fish. They swim in a slow, oblong Coriolis circle, all the same direction, different speeds, different degrees of ellipse, all clockwise. Soothing. I close my eyes.
———
Sometimes I know things before I know them. Memories stare me in the face, one after the other, mute. The freckle-mole on her collarbone, the three on the side of her neck like three corners of a constellation. Her eyes, their color. Her smile, the way one side of her mouth stretches more than the other, almost staying still when she laughs, like it can’t move at all. I remember the woman in the emergency room, metal finger splints and ring-stain bruise on her neck, staples running along the edge of her jaw, left eye socket purple-black and the white of her eye dark with blood. She mustered a smile for the nurse who brought her a paper cup of water. Thank you, trying to look grateful, one side of her mouth stretching into a smile while the other side couldn’t move, teeth bolted together with industrial braces. She’ll have to carry wire cutters in her purse for emergencies. Thank you.
Why did Keara put clothes on me, give me my wallet and keys after calling an ambulance?
Double Wallace-rap on the wireglass and I snap awake, the question from my half sleep hovering like a flashbulb afterburn. Door opens and Wallace says, “You got a visitor. Girl named Keara, someone named Jimmy.” Said Jimmy like someone would say asshole.
Something’s stuck, no room for shock or fear. The numbers aren’t adding up, the waterfall flowing backward-wrong like an Escher print. She dressed me. Wrong wrong wrong. No need for that. And she told the hospital her name was Molly.
“What’s she look like?”
“Cute. She your lady? Tall, skinny blonde. She got a sister?” Wallace laughs.
Hot-cold bone melting is back.
“Can I go?” I ask.
“As soon as I get the ‘all clear,’ you can go.”
“Ask ’em if they can wait. Thanks.”
Door closes and I’m awake, cattle-shock fear awake. Think. Think. Think. That’s not Keara, but they want me to think she is. Coax me out of here. Jimmy shouldn’t have said anything to him, but I’m glad he did. Think. She okay? Has to be. Else she’d be with them, and make sure I knew it. Can see the Executive’s reptile eyes, no smile, if I close my own.
We’re downsizing. We’ve decided to eliminate your position. Through the dead alarm exit to the rooftop. Thanks for your dedicated service. Please follow me to discuss the terms of your severance.
Now, I need those seventy-two hours that I’ve worked all morning to escape. My biggest fear coming true—what I’ve been trying to escape all along—is the only way I’m not leaving here in Jimmy’s trunk. I should have threatened to slit my own throat as soon as the Evaluator introduced himself.
Where’s Keara?
To: Brian Lomax, M.D.
Cc: Wayne Kelly, M.D., Ph.D.
From: Richard Carlisle, M.D., Ph.D.
Date: 8/18/87
Re: Suicide Risk Assessment of Daniel John Fletcher
Referral Summary:
Patient admitted to Queen of Angels Emergency Room on 8/17/87 suffering from an overdose of Carisoprodol. Chief complaint was a chronic headache for which physicians could find no basis. I have been asked to assess the patient on two fronts. a) validity of the chief complaint, above and b) the potential risk of suicide. Given the parameters, I have looked for evidence of a somatoform disorder and signs of depression (or a possible bipolar disorder) from both the patient’s personal and family history.
Interview Summary:
See attached Mental Status workup. Following that, the interview was conducted according to standard measures, beginning with inquiry into specifics of the chief complaint, followed by questions including family, school and current employment status. Having developed a comfortable rapport with the patient, the interview probed more sensitive areas such as sexual activity, interpersonal relationships and drugs and alcohol. Further, specific signs of depression such as any past suicidal thoughts, family history, sleep patterns, drug dependency and recent life changes were probed.
Overall, patient shows virtually no signs of depression, chronic or otherwise, nor any potential accompanying mania. Patient is clear-headed, with a sharp memory, mild sense of humor and appears highly intelligent. He is currently employed in a blue-collar fashion and involved in a monogamous relationship. These factors most strongly negate the argument for depression. He shows no history of suicidal behavior (as indicated in the interview and an absence of any other medical records) nor has anyone in his family, and speaks fondly of his late parents (see below).
However, given the death of his father during the patient’s adolescence, the death of his mother several years later and the distance (both personal and physical) from his siblings, I would place him at a high risk of substance abuse. He readily spoke of his drug experimentation, though I do suspect some malingering here, in light of the above and given his acquisition of a prescription painkiller and the inexplicable headaches.
Specific questions about drinking alcohol yielded benign answers that conflicted with the patient’s repeated mention of drinking during the course of the interview. In particular, he was very quick to answer the ‘abstinence question’ negatively, when asked.
Regarding his polydactyly, I personally am not equipped to remark on organic mood or cognitive disorders that might accompany such a pronounced case of polydactyly as with patient. However, it undoubtedly acts as a stigma that could exacerbate his risk of substance abuse, above.
Further, his above-average intelligence, coupled with a body of answers so deliberately pointing away from suicide or substance abuse suggests a certain degree of malingering, as mentioned previously. However, given that the patient has no medical or psychiatric record, and has not requested additional medication for his headaches, I cannot make myself liable with any further statements about possible malingering on the patient’s part.
Diagnosis:
Severe but aberrant migraine led to an accidental overdose of prescription painkillers. Subject is of sound mind and poses no immediate threat to self or others.
Recommendations:
Discharge immediately, though making notes in the patient’s file. In the event that Daniel Fletcher is readmitted under even remotely similar circumstances, a detailed psychiatric recommendation should immediately follow.
—Richard Carlisle, M.D., Ph. D.
County of Los Angeles Department of Mental Health
TWENTY
“You’re free to go, Danny,” says the Evaluator. He sits back down, my file nowhere to be seen, his notebook shut. He hands me a card with his name, office number, and a separate emergency number.
“In the future, if you’d like to discuss anything else, please feel free to call me.”
Face, chest, hands, pinprick tingling numb. No panic, no fear. Nothing. Try to picture my apartment, Keara, my job, the bar. It’s like remembering scenes from a movie I saw a year ago. So this is what resignation feels like, a warm and weightless relief is just behind it, and I can have it if I want. Need to think, think, think, but my brain is cold.
“You ever play chicken?” I ask him.
“You mean with cars? No, never did that sort of thing when I was younger.”
“No, I’m talking about pills.”
He pauses, one eyebrow arched, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
??
?Usually one-on-one,” I say. “Two guys face off, alternating Seconal or Nembutal, back and forth, swallowing them with whatever they happen to be drinking.”
“Sounds dangerous. Have you ever played chicken, Danny?” He’s measuring his reaction, staying in neutral.
“Alone, yeah. Plenty of times.”
He wants to start writing again, but won’t make a show of re-opening his notebook. He meets my eyes, clicks his ballpoint pen open and shut with his right thumb. Nervous gesture.
“The pain gets so bad that I don’t care,” I tell him, “so bad that I don’t give the threat of death a second thought. I just start taking something, anything. One after the next in measured intervals and I figure that either the pain will stop or I will. That life-or-death equation is as simple as making change for a dollar. It’s that bad.”
“Daniel, do you think you might do this again?”
“Not might. Will. I’ve got six months before it starts. I will do this again.”
“Danny, we can talk about this as much as you’d like. I’d be very happy to see you at any time, and I can work out an hourly rate that you can afford if your insurance doesn’t cover it. But what I won’t do is send you away with a prescription or green-light your discharge if I think you’re a suicide risk. Is that clear?”
Need to hit him, hard. I cannot walk out of here. No room for error. Dig backwards, remember:
The undistilled fear I felt earlier when I met him, the shame of almost groveling, of actually apologizing to him later. Think of how much I hate my own fear and don’t pull any punches.
“Pick a number.”
“Pardon?”
“Pick a number.”
“I’m not following you.”
“Any number. The bigger the better.”
Puts his pen down, shrugs, says “Two hundred twenty-three.”
“Two hundred twenty-three, two hundred sixteen, two hundred nine, two hundred two, one hundred ninety-five, one hundred eighty-eight,” rapid-fire. “Serial Sevens. I could keep going but testing mandates that you always stop after five. Am I wrong?”
“What are you getting at, Danny?”
Pull the bowstring back, wait for him to move, show his Achilles’ Ego: his work, his dedication, his long hours, to cling to whatever ideals he harbors or hide from whatever reality he can’t go home to. Then I let it snap loose and fly.
“What I’m getting at is that I skated through your decade of expertise in half a morning. While I’m thinking about it, your shorthand could be more inventive, or you could at least make an effort to shield your notes. H is ‘hand,’ that was the first one I figured out. Therefore, HS means ‘hands, static,’ HE means ‘hands, emphasis,’ which indicates honesty, versus HC or ‘hands, concealed,’ which indicates deception. Am I right?”
He’s still. He’s feeling for the first time how one of his involuntary patients must feel, having someone look right through his eyes and into his brain.
“Those were easy because I spoon-fed you my Nervous Gesture,” I brush my hair from my eyes, “and I watched you write HN. After that, your codes for eyes, posture and everything else might as well have been in longhand block capitals.”
“Listen, Sport, this isn’t a court of law. Double jeopardy doesn’t apply here.”
“There’s more laws that don’t apply here than do.”
“Danny, if I have reason to believe you might hurt yourself, then I am bound by law to disclose that. What you’re telling me now is enough to warrant seventy-two hours of observation. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
His voice is droll, impassive, punctuated with the condescending, cryptic chuckle of the coward with the desk, the badge, the bankroll, the executive nameplate. I give him one more push. He won’t be compelled to act until he thinks he’s lost control.
“You’re blind, Richard.”
Pause, one, two, three. The Evaluator takes off his glasses in a practiced show of indignation.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that you take your glasses off to look me in the eye so that I’ll think you’re being more sincere. But it’s easier for you to hide that way because you can’t see a goddamned thing.”
“We’re finished, Danny.” He starts to put his glasses back on.
“It’s the same thing you do when you have to talk about sex.”
He stops cold, stands up and stares at me, or at least toward where I’m sitting, stares at my blurry outline with his blind, pinched, mole face.
“Sex, Richard. Sex, Dick. Molly and I fucking on our living room floor. And the only time you took those fish-eye lenses off during my entire interview was when you had to address the topic of sex, on which you dwelled for a proportionately longer time than on the rest of the questions.”
His glasses are back on, the color gone from his face.
“I want to help you, Danny.”
“Is ‘help’ being shot full of sedatives so I don’t feel it when your un-background-checked, pervert orderlies have a speed-jack-off contest over my face while I’m asleep so I can wake up with sperm in my nostrils?”
“Jesus, Danny.”
“Spare me. Don’t try to tell me those things don’t happen. Observation, my ass. Next time I’ll remember to rip the phone out, put a stop to some damned Samaritan’s 911 call.”
Up, he taps on the wireglass, gives a hand signal. Wallace enters, two hundred sixty very quiet pounds, the Evaluator steps out. Wallace stands by the closed door, smiling, his arms across his chest for three minutes of silence. When the Evaluator returns, he’s flanked by two shorter but thick-shouldered men, nearly identical. Same height, hair color, mustaches, and khaki uniforms with Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy on their badges and shoulder patches.
One of them says, “We’re the men in white coats.”
I’m going to become a name on a file in a cardboard box in a moldy basement in County records, and my chest and stomach begin to warm up and relax, and I’m thinking finally, and it doesn’t feel so bad, doesn’t scare me anymore. So long as Keara’s safe. This is what resignation feels like.
The Evaluator ignores the “white coats” remark and says, “These gentlemen are going to escort you to an observation facility. I’ll speak with you tomorrow, Mr. Fletcher, after you’ve rested and eaten.”
The equation’s not right. Wallace can handle me. I’m thinking these guys don’t belong here, and then I get it. Someone in the chain figured out Daniel Fletcher. And I think what took them so long?
One last middle finger to all of them:
“My name isn’t Fletcher.”
TWENTY-ONE
The door to the interview room is propped open. The deputies don’t want secrecy here. The Evaluator and Wallace are gone, nowhere to be seen. A nurse hands them a yellow piece of paper, an administrative carbon triplicate slip designating me for a transfer to a County mental health facility.
The cop who said white coats steps up, gun belt at my eye level, radio at his hip stuttering garbled static.
“If your name isn’t Fletcher, then what is it?” Don’t know how much he knows.
“Doesn’t matter anymore,” I say. For once, not thinking about where my eyes are moving or what my hands are doing.
White Coats pulls out a field interrogation card, wants my basics. No more Daniel Fletcher. My real name is on my lips when a blast of hazy transmission hisses from his radio, whipcracks the side of my brain like a slap to an old television, and knocks a memory loose: talking to another cop on a Hollywood side street when my name was Paul Macintyre.
White Coats says, “Look at me. One more time, Champ, I need your name.”
The memory, saying Paul Macintyre into a flashlight, starts the synaptic-domino reaction through my head, the heat-rush of putting the puzzle together like a flash behind my eyes and it burns all my resignation into a ghost.
“My name is Steven Edwards.”
“What’s your middle name?”
“Ben.”
“As in Benjamin?”
“Yeah.”
Their own checkbox procedure follows, the other cop steps out of earshot, talking into his radio. He returns, shows White Coats something on his notepad and White Coats looks at me, half scowl, half eye roll.
I’ve got a less than even chance that Steven Edwards, five-ten, red hair and blue eyes, age twenty-six, is already in custody or dead.
“Can you stand up for me, Steven?” The second cop is polite, because that’s how he gets people to cooperate.
“You carrying anything we should know about?” Without waiting for my answer, he begins a standard search of my pockets, seams, waistline in case I cavity-smuggled a revolver into the hospital while I was dying. My fingers are locked behind my head and I don’t remember putting them there, dormant reflexes waking up from a long slumber.
Polite Cop, he’s gentle, brings my wrists down one at a time and I cooperate, feel the first nickel-plated cuff, then the second.
White Coats is back in my face. Raising his voice, getting tough now that my hands are locked behind my back.
“If you’re lying to me now, I’m gonna find out. You’re telling me the truth? That’s your name?” His voice is the bark of a chained dog, thrashing against its own leash, wants so badly to get a few inches closer.
Not sure what he knows, but if I buckle now, I don’t have a chance.
“That’s my name.”
“Did you bring any ID with you to prove that?”
“I came here in a coma, so it sort of slipped my mind.” The hospital has my Daniel Fletcher wallet, but I’d rather he not know about that. Gotta hope White Coats runs a check on Edwards before he finds my Fletcher ID. He’s finished for now, pissed off but can’t show it in front of three dozen hospital staff.
“Take this kid to the car,” he says. He’s keeping his cards close, doesn’t say where they’re taking me so I can only hope. I hate hope.