Breaking the Silence (18 page)

“She used to be a nurse on a cruise ship. My father took a few cruises over the years. Maybe that’s where he knows Sarah from. Maybe they met on a cruise.”

“I bet you’re right.” Dylan turned off the water and picked up the sponge to wipe the counters. Laura seemed a bit consumed with trying to figure out the relationship between her father and the old woman, but he had to admit he’d wondered about it himself.

He heard a sound from the living room, a vaguely familiar squeaking sound, and it took him a few seconds to place it. When he did, his heart leapt into his throat.

“The guns!” he said, dropping the sponge. He ran into the living room and spotted Emma balancing on the armchair below the glass cabinet that contained his father’s old gun collection. She had the cabinet door open and was reaching for one of the guns.

“Get down!” Dylan yelled as he raced toward her. “Get away from there!”

Emma turned toward him, cowering, terror in her eyes at the angry sound of his voice. Losing her balance, she fell onto the arm of the chair and toppled over backward, landing on the floor. Dylan tried to reach for her, but she got quickly to her feet. Crying loudly, she ran to Laura, who was standing in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, a stunned look in her own eyes. Emma grabbed hold of her mother, burying her head against Laura’s stomach and sobbing.

Dylan turned back to the gun cabinet, his hands shaking as he closed the door. He didn’t even know if those damned guns were loaded. Probably not. He’d probably blown it with Emma over a bunch of harmless guns.

Laura leaned over her trembling daughter. “You know better than that, Emma,” she scolded, her voice firm but soft. “You mustn’t play with guns.”

Dylan looked at Laura helplessly. “I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I was afraid she’d—”

“It’s all right,” Laura said. “You had to stop her.” She bent over her daughter again. “Did you hurt yourself when you fell?” she asked. “Are you okay?”

Emma pressed her face more firmly against her mother’s stomach.

Laura glanced toward the TV in the corner of his living room. “Can she watch cartoons while we finish cleaning up?”

“Of course.”

He went into the kitchen while Laura settled Emma on the sofa in front of the TV. When she returned to the kitchen, she leaned against the counter, arms folded across her chest.

“They’re loaded?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” He’d picked up the sponge, but now set it down again. “They were my father’s. I’m not a…gun guy.” He smiled weakly. “I just stuck the cabinet up there with the guns in it and never bothered checking to see if they were loaded or not. I never had to worry about it before.” He sounded like an idiot. Who would have guns in his house and not even know if they were loaded?

“She’s had a fascination with guns ever since Ray killed himself,” Laura said. “She plays with them—with the toy guns—in her therapy sessions. She probably thought they were toys.”

He ran his hand through his hair. “I shouldn’t have blown up at her like that,” he said.

“You had to,” Laura said again. “It was an emergency.”

“I’m supposed to watch my anger around her. That’s what Heather said.”

“This wasn’t anger,” Laura said. “This was fear. True?”

“Yeah, but I’m sure it all sounds the same to her.”

“She’ll get over it,” Laura said, but he heard the lack of certainty in her voice.

Looking through the doorway toward the living room, he could just see the top of Emma’s head above the back of the couch. He imagined how she would look from the front—eyes puffy and red from crying, thumb in her mouth. If she could speak, she’d be telling her mother she wanted to go home, to get away from that mean man who was pretending to be her father.

“Thanks for helping me clean up.” He looked around his kitchen. It was in pretty good shape.

“You’re welcome. And thanks for breakfast and for letting us watch the balloon go up.”

She walked into the living room, and he followed her.

“Come on, honey,” she said to Emma. “Time to go home.”

Emma flicked off the TV and ran to the front door, not even glancing at her mother or Dylan. She was out the door quickly, and when he and Laura walked onto the porch, she was standing on the steps with her back to them.

“Whoa, she’s mad,” Dylan said quietly to Laura, his sense of powerlessness mounting. He would never be able to turn this around.

“Tell her why you did it,” Laura said to him, just as quietly.

He took a step closer to Emma and spoke to her back. “I’m sorry I yelled at you, Emma,” he said. “I got scared. I was afraid
you might hurt yourself if you tried to play with the guns. They’re real guns. Some of them might…have bullets in them. I was trying to protect you.”

Emma scrunched her shoulders up to her ears as if she could block out his voice.

Laura touched his arm and offered him a smile as she passed him. “We’ll be in touch,” she said. “Thanks again. And don’t beat yourself up over this.”

“D
O YOU THINK MY FATHER MIGHT HAVE MET YOU ON A
cruise?” Laura asked as she and Sarah set out for their walk. “I remembered the other day that he’d taken several cruises over the years.”

“What cruise line?” Sarah asked.

Laura tried vainly to remember. “I don’t know.”

“Where did he go?” Sarah asked. “I was mostly in the Caribbean. Though Alaska was my favorite.”

“I know he’d been to the Caribbean at least once.”

“What was his name again?”

“Carl Brandon.”

“He flies dirigibles, right? I saw the
Akron
once. I think I was about ten.”

“Dirigibles? No, he—”

“Hot air balloons!” Sarah said. “He flies hot air balloons?”

“No, that’s Dylan. My daughter’s father. I was talking about
my
father. Carl.”

Sarah shook her head, a helpless expression on her face. “I’m lost,” she said, and the words sounded so small and pathetic that Laura put her arm around her shoulders and gave them a squeeze.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “It’s not important. Let’s just enjoy our walk. And you can tell me more about your job at Saint Margaret’s.”

Sarah, 1956–1957

“They’re poisoning me,” the new patient, Julia, said as she pushed away her breakfast tray.

“No, they’re not,” Sarah said. “Which food do you think is poisoned?”

“The potatoes.”

Sarah picked up the teaspoon from the tray and swallowed a mouthful of the mashed potatoes. “See?” she said. “I certainly wouldn’t eat them if they were poisoned. They’re delicious, actually.” She pushed the plate toward the patient again.

Julia slowly picked up her fork and began to eat, and Sarah smiled to herself. She was making progress with this patient everyone had described as impossible to deal with.

Julia was twenty-eight years old and very beautiful. Her thick auburn hair fell to her waist, and it was the one thing about herself that she bothered to take care of. She brushed her hair many times a day and kept it very clean. It was a lovely sight to behold.

Julia was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, and she had been on ward three since breaking the nose of an orderly on ward two. Already, since she’d been moved, she had injured one of the aides and cracked her own head against the wall of her room. And she’d spent one entire night singing at the top of her lungs. That was after Dr. Palmiento gave her the injection of LSD.

“Julia Nichols is one of the most deeply disturbed patients we’ve had here in a while,” Dr. P. had said at a staff meeting. “She broke a neighbor’s boy’s arm when she thought he was
stealing from her. She claims to hear voices telling her to harm others and herself. The LSD will open her up. It will break down the walls of her resistance to treatment. It may be the only way to get to the root cause of her illness.”

Sarah was not so sure. Dr. P. was bolder than ever with his syringe of LSD, using it on his patients with, it seemed to Sarah, little concern for their diagnoses. She’d seen the drug work well on a couple of patients, freeing them up so they could finally talk about their deepest troubles. But in most cases, she thought the drug made patients lose touch with reality altogether. It made Julia sing, and Dr. P. was itching to inject her again.

Sarah was beginning to feel old-fashioned in her approach. All she had to offer was herself. She used to believe a relationship with a concerned and empathetic person could be enough to help her patients. Such an approach was beginning to seem ludicrous in light of Dr. P.’s advanced techniques.

In the staff cafeteria one afternoon, a young woman took the seat across the table from Sarah.

“Hi.” The woman smiled. “I’m Colleen Price.” She was petite with an adorable, blond pixie haircut, and Sarah recognized her as a nurse from ward two.

Sarah lowered her sandwich to her plate. “Sarah Tolley,” she said.

“I was the nurse assigned to Julia Nichols when she was on ward two,” Colleen said. “I hear she’s yours now.”

They talked a bit about Julia’s history. “Dr. Palmiento’s trying LSD with her,” Sarah said.

Colleen lifted the top slice of bread on her sandwich, removed the lettuce leaf and set it on the edge of her plate. “And is it helping her?” she asked.

“Too soon to tell,” Sarah said.

“Do you think that’s the right approach for her?”

Sarah hesitated. It was blasphemy to disagree with Dr. P., but when she looked at Colleen, she knew she was looking into the eyes of a comrade. “No,” she said. “I’m not one hundred percent sure it’s the right approach for anyone.”

Colleen smiled. “Neither am I. Nor am I sure about half the things Dr. P. comes up with.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

“How long have you been here?” Sarah asked.

“Nearly a year.”

“I’ve only been here a couple of months,” Sarah said. “I’m shocked by some of the things he does. The high voltage of the ECT, for example.”

“And doing ECT every day on some patients.”

“And the slumber room.”

Colleen rolled her eyes. “What are you giving the patients in there? When I was up on ward three the other day, I saw a couple of them walking around like zombies, bumping into the walls. One of them peed right there on the floor.”

“They get a mixture,” Sarah said. “A little bit of everything.” She rattled off the names of the drugs. “Have you seen the isolation room?”

“I did,” Colleen said softly. “It just about made me cry.”

The isolation room had been a terrible shock to Sarah. It was not a room at all, but rather a long, rectangular box, barely larger than a coffin. The patients wore goggles designed to keep them in total darkness and earphones that emitted a constant, monotonous hum. Their arms and legs were padded to reduce their sense of touch. Except for bathroom and meal breaks, they remained in the box as long as a month. It was another way to achieve the extreme confusion Dr. P. valued so much.

“I feel old-fashioned,” Sarah said, “but I simply can’t understand how such treatment can help more than it can harm.”

Colleen nodded her agreement. “The word
torture
comes to mind,” she said.

Sarah sat back in her chair, both relieved and disconcerted by this conversation. “I thought I was going crazy,” she said. “Everyone seems to think what Dr. P. is doing is so great. So innovative. I figured I must be the one out of step.”

“Well, you may be. But if you are, then I’m out of step with you.”

“I’m beginning to think this is the wrong place for me,” Sarah admitted. “I’m upset every night when I go home.”

Colleen surprised her by reaching across the table and grabbing her hand. “You mustn’t leave!” she said, leaning closer. “Listen to me. I’ve thought of leaving a million times. But if those of us who really care about the patients leave, who’s left to speak up for them?”

“Don’t you think the rest of the staff cares?” Sarah asked. “Don’t you think Dr. P. truly wants his patients to get well?”

Colleen looked thoughtful. “I
do
think Dr. Palmiento believes he’s doing the right thing,” she said after a minute. “He has tremendous optimism and self-confidence in his ability to cure people, and I like that about him. He tries hard, and his ultimate goal is the same as ours. And the staff cares, too. I think they believe they’re doing the right thing in following Dr. P.’s treatment protocols. But I don’t agree with them, and neither do you. And I think we have to stay here to provide some balance.”

“Are there others who disagree with Dr. P.’s methods?”

“There are a few. And there were more. But as soon as they spoke up, they were fired. So I don’t speak up.” Colleen swal
lowed a bite of her sandwich. “What do you think Julia Nichols needs?” she asked.

Sarah set her plate and its unfinished sandwich to the side of the table. “I think she needs antipsychotic medication,” she said, “and then I think she needs to be treated with respect and understanding. She needs to be listened to by someone who cares. Who empathizes. Dr. P. listens, but if she doesn’t tell him what he wants to hear, he berates her.” She looked across the table at her new friend. “How can we expect her to get well…to become a mentally healthy woman…when we treat her like she’s less than human?”

“We can’t,” Colleen said. “That’s why she needs you. You and I have the same approach. Some day we’ll open up our own little clinic, but for now, we’ll stay here and do all we can to help these patients.”

Colleen was right. They would have to stay at Saint Margaret’s, quietly doing their best despite the uphill battle.

“Are you married?” Colleen suddenly changed the subject.

“Yes. My husband is a reporter for the
Washington Post
.” She felt the tension ease out of her body at the thought of Joe. “How about you?”

“I’m divorced,” Colleen said quietly, as if the fact shamed her. “But I have a little boy, Sammy, who’s two. He’s my sunshine.” She grinned. “Do you have any kids?”

“Not yet.” She and Joe were trying their best. “What do you do about a baby-sitter for Sammy while you’re at work?”

“My ex-mother-in-law takes care of him. She’s a gem, even if her son is a jerk.”

Sarah began eating lunch with Colleen every day. Talking with her friend, whether about work or their private lives, gave her the strength to go back upstairs and face the suffering on ward three.

She thought she was making some progress with Julia. For as long as an hour, Julia would talk rationally with her about her childhood, and citing this, Sarah was able to discourage Dr. P. from giving her any more LSD. He’d spoken of putting Julia in the slumber room, but Sarah had been able to thwart that, as well. Then it all blew up in her face.

She walked into Julia’s room after lunch one day while the patient was brushing her glorious hair. At first, Julia smiled at her, but the smile quickly disappeared. Pulling open her top dresser drawer, she began flinging the clothes from it into the air, as if hunting for something buried among the garments.

“You stole it!” she shouted at Sarah, who took a step back, disturbed by the anger in Julia’s voice.

“Stole what?” she asked.

“My pin!” She pointed to the pin attached to the collar of Sarah’s uniform. “It was right here in my drawer, and you took it!”

“This?” Sarah touched the pin. “This was a wedding gift from my husband,” she said. “You’ve seen me wear it many times before, Julia.”

Julia ripped the drawer from the dresser and turned it upside down, shaking it. “It was here and now it’s there!” she screamed, staring at Sarah’s collar.

“No, see?” Sarah dared to step a bit closer. “See the way the pin is formed? It’s an
S
and a
J
together. It stands for Sarah and Joe. My husband and me.”

Julia did not seem to hear her explanation. With impressive physical power, she swung the drawer forward and let it go, sending it flying through the air in Sarah’s direction. Sarah ducked, but the corner of the drawer caught her right temple.

The pain was instant and searing. Pressing her hand to her head, Sarah opened the door and ran into the hall.

“Security!” she called.

The bulky men dressed in white were already racing toward the room. Someone must have overheard the altercation and called them. Sarah leaned against the wall, the blood dripping through her fingers and down her wrist, as she listened to the men try to subdue the shrieking, furious woman who thought she’d been robbed.

Another of the nurses ran up to Sarah and pressed a piece of gauze against her wounded temple. “You’ll need a couple of stitches,” she said. “And Julia Nichols needs a month or so in the slumber room.”

“No,” Sarah said weakly. And then she fainted.

The following morning, Dr. Palmiento called her into his office.

“How are you?” He stood up and put one of his big hands on her shoulder, genuine concern in his face. He led her to a chair.

Her temple was bandaged. The cut had required only three stitches, but her head still ached from the blow.

“I’m all right.” She smiled. “I shouldn’t have argued with her. I should have found some other way to—”

“Hush,” he said softly. He leaned against his desk, half sitting on its edge. “I’ve made a decision about Julia Nichols that I want you to know about,” he said.

The slumber room, she figured. She was not sure she had the strength to argue with him about it. “She was doing well with me,” she said. “I think she was—”

He stopped her with a hand in the air. “I let you try your way with her,” he said. “The talking approach. It’s been tried for many years with these patients, but it simply isn’t enough when they’re so disturbed. Still, I wanted to give you free rein with her, and I thought perhaps it was helping. But the reality is, there is only one way to rid Mrs. Nichols of her violent
behavior.” He hesitated, his green eyes impaling her. “I’ve scheduled her for a lobotomy on Wednesday.”

“A
lobotomy?
” Sarah stared at him.