*
I put my orange juice in the fridge for later and called Penelope. She wasn’t off work yet, but said she’d love to talk to me later, and gave me directions to her house so we could talk in person.
It was just a professional visit, but I still spent some time checking out my appearance in the mirror before I left, and I was happy to see that I looked even better after a few days out on my own. Even the lines in my forehead from long years of worry had faded some now that my face was constantly relaxed. The sweat and urine soaked clothes from the incident in the street were a problem, but a quick shower and change took care of that.
I knocked on her door, and waited nervously. Not in an abnormally nervous way like you might be familiar with me being, just in the regular sort of nervous way when you like someone. It might seem futile, since several times she had seen me weeping openly about things which existed only in my mind, but I still hoped to make a good first impression. This was the first time we had seen each other outside of the hospital and outside of the nurse-patient relationship, and I was anxious for it not to be awkward.
She opened the door.
“Hi,” we both said, at the same time.
“Sorry,” we said, again at the same time. I decided not to say anything further, and mentally berated myself for not stopping after the first word to let her say something. Now I’d made it awkward.
She looked down and took my hand. “Come on in,” she said, and led me inside.
I sat down at her request. She brought drinks for us, and then sat down next to me.
“I’m just going to say it,” she said. She spoke quickly, but I still had time to worry about what it was that she might say. “I’m sorry I made it awkward for you. This is the first time you’ve seen me outside of the hospital, and I wanted to make a good impression as a hostess. I want you to see me differently; as Penelope, not Nurse Penelope.”
“It’s alright,” I said, and laughed. “Actually I thought I’d made it awkward for you.”
“Really?” she asked. “You seemed very calm and cool, standing there silently. I thought you must be thinking I was an idiot and wondering whether you should turn around and go back home, and I was thinking the same, about being an idiot.”
“Well, I guess we’re a pair of idiots, then. I was actually taking that time to shout at myself inside for spoiling our greeting.”
“I don’t think it was spoiled at all,” she said, softly. “I’m happy you’re here.”
Something about the way she was looking at me as she said that made my heart speed up. “I’m happy too,” I said. “About us,” and then, quickly: “I mean about me, and about you, and we’re here, right?”
“We are,” she said, leaning towards me. I had read that a very effective way to show someone you like them is to mimic their actions during conversation, so I leaned towards her as well. And when her lips parted, so did mine. It worked, and I think she realized I liked her from my expert copying of her actions, because then she was kissing me, which is an even better signal that someone likes you. She put her arms around me as we kissed, pressing her soft lips and her soft body against me.
“You understand me, don’t you, Oscar?” she asked, pulling back a few inches. “I want you to understand me. I’ve wanted someone who understands me.”
“I do understand you,” I said. Did I? It didn’t seem like the time for uncertain answers. Maybe I understood her.
“Then you’ll understand if I want to frisk you for any kind of weapons or listening devices or vials of infectious diseases.”
“I…” I wasn’t sure. “Sure,” I said.
She had me stand up and moved her hands over my body, checking for contraband. Everything seemed to be to her satisfaction, because then we were kissing again. After an indeterminate amount of enjoyable time, I stopped to speak. I wanted to make things clear.
“Penelope, I like you,” I said, and then pressed my lips to hers again.
“I like you too,” she said, breaking contact for a moment. “I hope you don’t think I was too forward.”
“You only seemed about the same amount forward as me,” I said. “I think we were both leaning at the same angle.”
She laughed, and asked if I would like something to eat. I said I wouldn’t mind something, and so she went to get food for us. I spent the time while she was away looking at a houseplant next to the couch, which had particularly long, fuzzy leaves.
“I know you came here for professional reasons,” she said, setting two plates on a low table in front of the couch. “It probably almost seems like I convinced you to take Psylocybin back at the hospital just so I could take advantage of you and your new trusting nature.”
“Again, I felt the same way. Don’t get me wrong, I called you for a legitimate reason, but I was hoping there’d be something more. Not that whatever more there might be wouldn’t be legitimate, just that it might not be so professional. Not that it would be amateur. And I don’t mean to imply that you’re a professional at this——”
“I get it, Oscar,” she said. “Why don’t we talk about what you called about? What happened?”
I told her about my experience earlier in the day when I was lost, how I had seen the movement and felt so paranoid and nearly hit a small boy with a stick. I left out the part where I had peed my pants, because it didn’t seem integral to the story.
“It sounds like you just had a standard mild panic attack,” she said, when I had finished. “It’s nothing to worry about.”
“Isn’t a panic attack bad?” I asked.
“It’s not exactly good,” she said, “but it’s a normal thing. Your excessive sweating probably lessened the effect of Psylocybin, which I’ve seen happen before, and that might have made it a bit worse.”
“Every time you feel worried, scared, or even paranoid, it doesn’t mean that your condition is coming back. Regular people get those kinds of feelings all the time. For example, I left work late today and it was already getting dark. I was alone in the parking lot, and my car was one of the only cars there.” She had been looking down as she spoke, and now she looked up at me, slowly lifting her eyelids. “I felt a little scared, and I wished someone was there with me, someone who could understand that paranoid feeling. Sometimes when I get in my car, I check in the back seat, even though I’ve had the doors locked. The chances of being attacked in a parking lot are small, but it doesn’t make you a paranoid delusional to feel a bit worried that something might happen; in fact, it makes you normal.”
“I didn’t feel normal, getting ready to beat a small child with a stick,” I said.
She dismissed what I said with a wave of her hand. “You weren’t ready to beat a small child with a stick. You thought you were being stalked, possibly by someone violent, certainly by an adult. When you saw that it was actually a child, you weren’t paranoid anymore and you didn’t feel threatened.”
“You’re right,” I said, leaning back into the couch. “Other than that, I haven’t felt paranoid at all since I’ve been back at home. It’s funny, because I had dinner with my parents last night – which went really well, by the way – and they were the ones who seemed paranoid.”
“I’ve had that sometimes with my family and friends too,” she said, nodding. “Last year, when birds with the flu was our biggest national concern, my mom tried for weeks to get me to wear one of those surgical masks every time I went outside.”
“Yeah, that’s how it was with my parents,” I said. “I’ve just got a new job and they’ve installed a few cameras in my house——”
When I said that, Penelope sat up straight.
“Cameras?” she asked. “Did you say cameras?”
“Yeah, it’s just a few cameras for work, so they can keep an eye on what I’m up to.”
She got up from the couch and locked the doors. I noticed that her front door had an elaborate series of locks and bolts on it; she locked and bolted each one. I remembered that was how my door ha
d been before I had ended up in prison and Maple Ridge. The insurance company must have removed nearly all the locks on the door before I came back, because there was only the regular lock and the deadbolt left. Penelope’s door looked like mine before I was taking Psylocybin.
“What company did you say you were working for?” she asked, as she curtained the windows in the room.
“I didn’t say, but it’s Global Partners & Associates. Here’s my card,” I said, holding it out, meaning to impress her. She took a step back as if the business card was a live tarantula. I hadn’t counted on that, and now I didn’t know how to lead into a description of how I was an associate to all those global partners. I noticed that her hands were shaking.
“Penelope, what’s the matter? What’s going on?”
She fixed me with a long stare. I felt uncomfortable, and lowered my eyes. When I looked back, she seemed to have relaxed, and her hands were no longer shaking. The curtains remained shut, though, and the door remained securely locked.
“It’s nothing,” she said, and let out a deep breath. “It’s just… I get this way sometimes. I told you how sometimes everyone gets an irrational fear of things. Well, sometimes you get that irrational fear and it stays with you for your whole life. I knew a guy who would fall to the floor, weeping, and clutch his knees to his chest if a bee came within twenty yards. I guess I’m like that, but with cameras.”
“You’re afraid of cameras?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. Her explanation didn’t seem to fit with her behavior.
“Don’t make light of it, please. From what you experienced earlier today you know the Psylocybin isn’t always one-hundred percent effective, and some things make it less effective, like sweating, or a raised heart rate like mine has been tonight because of you. It’s nothing to worry about, anyway; it will pass.”
“I don’t understand, though. There aren’t any cameras here. They’re back in my house. What’s to be afraid of?”
“Out three days and already they’ve got cameras in your house,” she said, halfway to herself. “How did you get that job so fast? Was there even time for an interview?”
“I saw the job in the paper——”.
“In the paper! Who even reads the paper anymore?”
Penelope lifted the corner of a curtain and peeped out the window. She looked at me expectantly and said, “Go on, then.”
“Well, um, I went to the company’s location, in a storage building——”
“You had a job interview in a storage building?”
“It’s a small company,” I said, feeling defensive about my new employer because I had invested so much into them already, “they can’t afford large facilities.”
“But didn’t you feel worried that… nevermind, of course you didn’t.” She paced behind the couch.
“I can probably get you an interview too, if you want,” I offered, thinking that maybe she felt envious of me and my great job where I got to eat a bacon sandwich anytime I wanted.
She stopped pacing. “I don’t think you understand, Oscar,” she said. Her face was sad. I resolved to set up an interview appointment for her. “I can’t make you understand, either, not right now. I think you’d better just go for now. You can use my secret entrance, in the back.”
“You have a secret entrance?”
“Actually, I guess it’s better to use the front door. Everything is fine, right?”
“But why do you have a secret entrance?”
“For entering secretly,” she said, pushing me gently towards the door. “It’s… you know, sometimes you just need to avoid someone. But you don’t need to avoid anyone, so it would be suspicious if you used it.”
She unlocked several things and opened the door for me. I went out onto the first step.
“Oscar?”
I turned around; she pulled me close and kissed me.
“Remember: everything is fine, right?” She said.
“Everything is fine,” I repeated, although it didn’t seem actually true.
“I’ll call you,” she said, and closed the door. As it shut, her face lit up with light reflected from the door’s window and I saw a tear sliding down her cheek. I heard the locks and latches being fastened again on the other side of the door.
What had I said that had affected her that way and made her so worried? She was behaving almost like me when I wasn’t on Psylocybin. I realized how tremendous that thought was as soon as it entered my mind. Maybe she wasn’t on Psylocybin. Maybe it wasn’t working. If it stopped being effective gradually, you wouldn’t even know; you’d just feel paranoid again, but you wouldn’t realize anything had changed. Maybe her body had become resistant to some of the effects and she needed a stronger dose. If it was true, though, she’d never listen to me about it. Once it stopped working you’d probably become paranoid about taking it at all, so you’d completely come off it. That explained the multiple locks, the pacing, the frisking, the fear of cameras, and everything else.
What could I do, though? If it was true, I knew she wouldn’t listen to me. Maybe she would listen to someone else, though. I decided to call Dr. Boggs. He was her boss, a respected medical professional, and had been her friend for years. He’d helped her through her own crisis of paranoia just like she had helped me, and I knew she would trust him.
Back at home, I looked for his card but couldn’t find it. I knew I’d put it in a drawer with some other names and addresses, but I looked through a few drawers and it didn’t seem to be in amongst any of the various rubbish filling them up. I looked up the phone number for Maple Ridge instead, and called there.
“Good evening, you’ve reached Maple Ridge Psychiatric Hospital, where we stop dreams from coming to life. How may I direct your call?”
“I’d like to speak to Dr. Boggs, please,” I said to the receptionist.
“I’m afraid he’s already gone home for the day,” she replied. “I can put you through to his voicemail if you like, though.”
“Alright, put me through, please. Thanks.” It wasn’t especially urgent; Penelope had probably been resistant to Psylocybin for a few days already, so waiting one more night wasn’t going to cause anything terrible to happen.
There was a click as the receptionist transferred the call, then ringing for a few seconds, and then another click.
“Dr. Boggs,” a voice on the other end stated. I waited for a moment, but there was no beep; it wasn’t his voicemail. “Hello?” he said, after I didn’t say anything.
“Dr. Boggs, hi,” I said. “I was expecting your voicemail. The receptionist said you had gone for the day. This is Oscar Well.”
“Oscar, I’m glad to hear from you. Has something gone wrong with your medication? Have you had a paranoid relapse?”
“No, everything’s fine with me,” I said. “The Psylocybin is incredible and I’ve never felt better. I’ve started to rebuild my relationships with my friends and family, and I’ve even got a job already.”
“That’s great to hear,” Dr. Boggs said. “It’s quite refreshing, actually; patients don’t usually call me unless there’s a problem.” His chair creaked as he leaned back in it. “What can I do for you, then?”
“Don’t feel too refreshed, Doctor. There is a problem; it’s just not with me. It’s Penelope.”
“Nurse Penelope?” His chair creaked again as he leaned forwards. “What’s the matter, then?”
“I was at her house earlier for a professional consultation about a paranoid experience I’d had – it turned out to be nothing – and I noticed a few strange things. First, she had tons of locks and bolts on her door even though she lives in a nice neighborhood.” I considered whether I should say anything about the secret entrance. I decided not to; it wouldn’t be very secret if I did. “I mentioned the cameras my employer has installed in my house——”
“Ah yes, the cameras,” he said. “Go on, Oscar.”
“Right, well; I mentioned the cameras, and she began to behave very unusually. She locked e
verything up and shut the curtains. She paced as she talked, and did a lot of hand wringing.”
Had she wrung her hands? I couldn’t remember exactly, but it made my story more credible.
“She made me leave soon after. I know she’s on Psylocybin too, and I feel like maybe it isn’t working properly for her, because the way she was acting made her seem like someone with at least mild case of paranoia.”
Dr. Boggs’ chair made a long, slow creak, and then he spoke. “That’s very interesting, Oscar. Very interesting. I’ll speak to her tomorrow when she comes in, I’m sure I can find the underlying cause of it. And thank you for calling, Oscar. I’m sure you know what the paranoia you both suffered from can be like; most people under the influence of an overactive amygdala would never tell anyone or ask for help, because to them, everyone else is the problem. Without you calling, I likely never would have known about this at all.”
I hung up feeling satisfied with the situation. He would speak to Penelope, she would get a stronger dose of Psylocybin if she needed it, and then perhaps more kissing would be forthcoming. I was pleased that he’d said without me calling he wouldn’t have known about it, it made me feel useful, and like I had done a good deed. Penelope would probably also feel pleased when she found out.