Breaking the Silence (22 page)

Sarah laughed. “Gilbert?” she repeated. “And he goes along with Dr. Palmiento’s methods?”

“Goes along with them?” Colleen asked. “He’s even inventing new ones. He’s the head of the Psychic Driving Program.”

“Psychic driving? What’s that?” In the eight months she’d been gone, things seemed to have changed a great deal.

“No one except Palmiento and Gilbert seem to know for sure, but it involves—” Colleen leaned forward as if what she was about to say was a secret “—these helmets.”

“Helmets?” Sarah laughed again, still lighthearted from her
time off with her husband and new daughter but knowing that feeling could not last long at Saint Margaret’s.

“They look something like the helmets football players wear,” Colleen said. “But inside each helmet is a headset that’s attached to a big tape player they put on the patient’s bedside table. The tape plays constantly, and when it stops, they start it over again, and the patient listens to it for fifteen hours a day!”

“You are making this up,” Sarah said, suddenly suspicious. It was too ludicrous.

“You’ll see for yourself soon enough.”

“What’s on the tapes?”

“Messages Dr. P’s recorded for them. Each tape is specific to that patient. Things like, ‘You’re an imbecile. You destroyed your marriage. You’re worthless.’”

“What?”
Sarah asked.

“That plays over and over on the tape, and they listen to it for about a month. Then they get a positive tape. ‘You love your family. You are an excellent wife and mother. You worship your husband.’”

Sarah’s jaw had dropped nearly to the table. “Tell me you’re joking,” she said.

“The patients who aren’t drugged or shocked into oblivion sometimes cry or even scream when they’re listening to the tapes,” Colleen said.

Sarah let out a sound of exasperation. “When are they going to come up with something that will actually help people get better?”

“They say this will,” Colleen said. “It’s one of those ‘get worse before you get better’ sort of treatments.”

“Just like everything else they do here,” Sarah muttered. “Palmiento will probably win an award for this, too.” She looked down at her sandwich, then pushed it away. Her appetite was gone. She was back at Saint Margaret’s.

Dr. Palmiento seemed pleased to have her back and had her assist him in two lobotomies that first week. It worried her that she no longer fell apart as she observed someone’s spirit being destroyed. She feared she had grown hardened to the experience.

One of her new patients was a woman called Cinderella by everyone on the staff, because she thought she had cinders in her hair and on her clothes and was constantly trying to brush them off. A middle-aged woman, she was unkempt and overweight, but her face and demeanor were very sweet, and Sarah was drawn to her. It was through Cinderella that she finally met Gilbert, although she’d been hearing about him since her return.

Gilbert called her into his office to discuss Cinderella. His office was next to Dr. Palmiento’s, and nearly as large. Sarah knew immediately what Colleen had meant about him being a “kid.” He looked nineteen, at best, although everyone said he had to be older than that, since he was in a doctoral program studying psychology. Hard to believe, though. His cheeks were still dotted with acne.

“Please sit down.” Gilbert remained standing as he waited for Sarah to take her seat on the other side of his desk. He wore an engaging smile, and she felt herself soften toward him. “I’m pleased to finally meet you, Mrs. Tolley,” he said. “I’ve heard fine things about your nursing skills.”

“Thank you.”

“I wanted to explain to you our treatment plan for your patient, Mrs. Lucas. Cinderella, I guess she’s known as.” He spoke like someone much older, his words a bit stilted. She’d expected him to be cocky; what young man in his position wouldn’t be?
Cocky
was not a word that fit him, though.

“Cinderella, yes,” she said.

“We plan to enter her into a program that is probably un
familiar to you, since you’ve been gone a while. It’s called psychic driving.”

“The tapes,” Sarah said.

“That’s right. It’s quite exciting.” His cheeks flushed with color. “We will give her whatever combination of medications Dr. P. decides is appropriate in her case and put her in the slumber room. Then we’ll fit a helmet to her head with earphones fixed inside it. The earphones will be connected to a tape recorder, and she will listen to the tape for most of the day. She can have occasional bathroom breaks, and she can take the helmet off for her meals and sleep. But the rest of the time she’ll be listening to the tape. You, of course, will be providing the usual slumber room care—turning her to prevent bedsores, bathing her and such.”

Sarah squirmed in her seat. “What will be on her tape?” she asked.

“Something from her sessions with Dr. P. We’ll pick whatever she revealed that’s most emotionally charged for her. We’ll also attach a wire to her lower leg, and each time she hears the negative message, she’ll receive a small electrical shock.”

“Oh, Gilbert,” Sarah protested. “That’s too much.”

“Not at all.” He leaned toward her, smiling, his black hair catching the light from above, his dark eyes gleaming. Even with the acne, he was a handsome young man. “This is a way to wipe those negative thoughts from her mind and replace them with positive ones,” he said. “It’s a way to change her behavior without thousands of hours of therapy.”

And without human contact
, Sarah thought, but she kept the words to herself. He was a kid, yes, but he was already in a position of power, and she had the distinct feeling she should not challenge him.

“Have you seen this treatment help anyone?” she dared to ask, keeping her voice as even and pleasant as possible.

“We’re still in the early stage of our research,” he said, averting his eyes and shuffling a few of the papers on his desk. “But we’re beginning to see some improvement.” Piling a few of the papers together, he stood up, and she knew she was being dismissed.

He was a not a good liar, she thought as she left his office. He believed everything he’d said up to his last comment about patient improvement, when his eyes shifted and his anxiety betrayed him. Good. At least she would know when he was trying to pull the wool over her eyes.

In three weeks, Cinderella no longer brushed imaginary cinders from her clothing. As a matter of fact, she did nothing except lie in the slumber room, eyes closed or staring at the ceiling, listening numbly to the tape playing in her helmet. Her features were flat. She ate her meals in silence. Was this improvement? Sarah didn’t think so.

“They kill the unique personality in each of their patients and call it progress,” she said to Colleen in the cafeteria one day.

“I know.” Colleen raised a spoonful of soup to her mouth.

“I think we need to do something,” Sarah said.

“What can we possibly do?”

“We need to tell someone what’s going on here.”

Colleen laughed. “Saint Margaret’s is considered one of the top psychiatric hospitals in the nation, and Dr. P. won the coveted whatever-it-was award,” she said. “Who’s going to think a couple of nurses know better than someone like Palmiento what’s best for the patients? And maybe we don’t, Sarah. Maybe we are old-fashioned. Maybe this sort of treatment is going on at all the best hospitals.”

“I certainly hope not.” She leaned toward Colleen. “Even if it ultimately worked, the cost is too high. I don’t think we’ve succeeded if we’ve taken away a patient’s dignity in the process of treating them.”

“Well,” Colleen said, “if we make waves, you can bet we’ll
lose our jobs. I don’t know about you, but I need this income. We’d probably never be able to get a job anywhere else, either. Palmiento’s hardly going to give us sterling references after he fires us.”

Colleen was right, on all counts. And yet, Sarah could not shake her discomfort over what was happening at Saint Margaret’s. Even when she was home with Joe and Janie, her mind was often filled with concerns about work. Occasionally, she’d awaken in the middle of the night, having dreamt that she was in the isolation room, and she’d have to reach out to reassure herself that Joe was lying next to her. She’d get up to bring Janie into bed with them. Only when the three of them were cuddled together, safe and warm, did she feel truly at peace.

“Quit the job,” Joe said to her one night. “We’ll get by somehow. It’s taking too much out of you.”

They were sitting in the living room. Janie had just eaten and was asleep on Sarah’s shoulder.

“I can’t just quit,” she said. “I think something is terribly wrong there. I can’t turn my back on those patients.”

“If you truly think something’s wrong, then you need to do something about it,” Joe said.

She shrugged. “But what if I’ve simply built this up in my mind into something it’s not?”

Joe picked up his ever-present pad and pencil. “Let’s make a list of all the things that bother you there,” he said. “Then we’ll take an objective look at it.”

She rattled off the things that disturbed her, and it was a relief to say them out loud. “The lobotomies,” she said, watching as Joe wrote down her words. “I know they’re still being done elsewhere, but I doubt it’s with such frequency. The electroshock treatments. He—Palmiento—uses a very high voltage, and gives them far more frequently, jolting the patients over and over again, even while they’re having convulsions. The isolation
room. The isolation
box
, really. And this crazy Psychic Driving Program of Gilbert’s. And the drugs. They use far too many drugs, with little concern for what’s wrong with the patient. There’s not much human contact with the patients, either, except from some of the nurses. It’s as though they’re trying to automate psychiatric care.” She kissed Janie’s temple, then stood up and lowered her into the bassinet next to her chair.

Joe studied the list while she sat down again. “Are you sure these methods aren’t becoming common all over? After all, Palmiento—”

“I’ve looked through recent journals,” she said. “There’s no mention of anything like it. If anything, lobotomies have fallen into disfavor. There are some experiments being done with the new medications, but nothing like what’s happening at Saint Margaret’s.”

Joe leaned back in his chair, the list balanced on his thigh. “I think you
do
need to take some action,” he said. “How about a call to the American Board of Psychiatry? You wouldn’t have to identify yourself.”

She hadn’t thought about making the call anonymously, and the realization that she could do so relieved her. Now that she’d verbalized her concerns to Joe, she knew she had no other choice but to tell someone in authority what she knew.

The following morning, she sat at the kitchen table and called work to say she would be in late. Then she contacted the board of psychiatry, asking to speak to the person in charge of investigating unethical practices. After a short wait, a man came on the line. Sarah had Joe’s list on the table next to the phone, and she slowly enumerated the procedures that distressed her at Saint Margaret’s. She pictured the man at the board writing down her concerns as she spoke, but he gave her little feedback. His flat voice reminded her of the voices of the patients in the slumber room.

“I appreciate the information,” he said finally, “but I didn’t get your name.”

“I’d rather not give it,” she said.

“We need it for our records,” said the man. “And to give your report here some credibility.”

“I work there. That should be credibility enough.”

“How do I know you’re not just a patient there?”

“I’m not. I’ve worked there…” She nearly told him how long she’d been there before realizing that information might make her identifiable. “You’ll have to take my word for it,” she said.

“Well,” the man said, giving up, “I’ll pass this information on to the proper authorities.”

Sarah got off the phone, feeling lighter than she had in a long time. She had done all she could.

Laura held the retirement home door open for Sarah, and the older woman stepped inside, her gait far slower than when they’d started out. They had walked a good distance today, and even Laura felt exhausted, more from hearing about the odd goings-on at Saint Margaret’s than from the exercise. She’d been startled to learn that Sarah had a daughter. Laura’s father had said there was no other family. Joe could easily be dead by now, but Janie?

“Where is Janie now?” Laura asked when they reached the door bearing the movie projector silhouette. She was afraid of the answer, afraid of opening up a sad memory for Sarah.

“She’s gone,” Sarah said.

“Do you mean…” She couldn’t bring herself to ask if Janie had died.

“Janie’s hiding,” Sarah replied. She said goodbye to Laura, went into her apartment and closed the door behind her.

E
MMA
’
S GRIP TIGHTENED ON
L
AURA
’
S HAND
. T
HEY WERE
walking back from the lakeside playground, and Laura followed her daughter’s gaze to their house, barely visible through the trees. Behind the screen of maple leaves and kudzu vines, she spotted Dylan sitting on the front porch, holding a large box in his arms.

“Dylan’s here!” Laura said cheerfully, ignoring the anxiety behind Emma’s lock on her hand. Laura had been expecting Dylan to stop by sometime today, and she knew what was in the box. “I think he has something for you,” she added.

Emma’s fingers loosened their grip then, and Laura shook her head. How had she and Ray managed to raise such a materialistic child when they had lived so modestly?

Laura had spoken with Dylan the night before, giving him the okay to bring over the gift and telling him about Sarah’s daughter, Janie. They’d spent a futile half hour trying to decipher what Sarah might have meant when she said that Janie was in hiding.

Dylan walked down the porch steps when he saw them approaching.

“I have something here for you, Emma,” he said.

“That was nice of you, Dylan.” Laura looked down at her daughter, whose eyes were on the wrapped box. “Do you want her to open it out here or in the house?”

“It’s heavy,” he said. “Let’s take it inside.”

Emma ran into the house and waited for them in the middle of the living room, eyes huge with anticipation.

Dylan laughed. “Greedy kid you’ve got there,” he said under his breath to Laura.

“She’s your kid, too,” she whispered back.

He set the package on the floor. “Have at it, Em,” he said.

Sitting on the floor, Emma ripped off the wrapping paper, exposing an empty aquarium. She stared at it, her face expressionless.

“Do you know what it is, Emma?” Laura asked.

Emma nodded, a hint of a smile crossing her lips, and Dylan joined her on the floor, the aquarium between them.

“We need to find a place to set it up,” he said. “Would you like it in your room, or somewhere else in the house?”

Whoops, Laura thought. He hadn’t asked a yes or no question, and Emma simply stared at him.

“In your room?” Dylan repeated.

Emma nodded.

“Okay. We have to filter the water we put in it and let it heat up a bit. And while we’re doing that, we can drive to the fish store in Middleburg and get some pretty fish for it.”

Emma looked quickly at Laura.

“I’ll go, too,” Laura said, interpreting the fear in her daughter’s eyes.

“Okay,” Dylan said, rising to his feet. “First thing we have to do is find a good spot for it. You want to show me your room?”

Emma stood up and grabbed Laura’s hand, then marched with the two of them upstairs.

They found the perfect spot by turning a short, broad bookshelf perpendicular to the wall and setting the aquarium on the top shelf, so that it could be seen from both sides. Dylan filtered water, poured it into the tank and installed the heat pump, while Emma and Laura watched.

“I’ll take care of cleaning the tank every couple of weeks,” Dylan said to Emma. It was part of the promise he’d made to Laura when getting her permission to bring the aquarium into the house. “Your mom said she’d test the water and check the filters and heaters every week. But
you’ll
have to feed the fish, Emma, twice a day. Mom can watch you do it, at least at first. Do you think you can handle it?”

Emma nodded, and Laura smiled at Dylan calling her Mom. Even Ray had never referred to her with such casual intimacy. “Your mother will watch you,” Ray would have said. She liked “Mom” much better.

Dylan and Laura talked about fish during the twenty-minute drive to Middleburg, Laura learning more than she’d ever wanted to know about algae and live bearers and the pH of water. Once in the fish store, she took a back seat to the action as Dylan and Emma picked out fish and accessories. Standing next to the aquariums, her nose practically pressed to the glass, Emma wanted every beautiful fish she saw. Dylan was patient as he explained to her why certain fish would not thrive in her small, sure-to-get-minimal-care aquarium, and that she needed to start with just a few fish in order to keep them healthy. She accepted his explanations, and by the time Dylan carried the carton of fish-filled plastic bags to the car, Emma seemed quite content.

Laura was sitting on the corner of Emma’s bed, watching as her daughter and Dylan transferred the fish into the aquarium, when the phone rang. She stood up to take the call
in her bedroom, and Emma left the aquarium to follow her. Laura looked apologetically at Dylan. Emma still was not ready to be alone with him.

Dylan shrugged. “I’ll just stay here with the fish,” he said. “Just me and the neon tetras.”

Emma flung herself onto her mother’s bed as Laura picked up the phone from her night table.

“Hello, Mrs. Darrow?” It was a woman’s voice. No one ever called her Mrs. Darrow, and Laura assumed the woman was a solicitor.

“I’m sorry, there is no Mrs. Darrow,” she said, and was about to hang up when the caller rushed ahead.

“Ray Darrow’s wife?”

She hesitated. “Yes,” she said. “Who is this?”

“Oh, you go by Brandon, don’t you?” the woman said. “I forgot. Sorry. I’m Becky Reed, the publicity person at Lukens Press who’ll be handling your late husband’s book.”

“Oh,” Laura sat on the edge of the bed, and Emma shifted so that her head rested on her mother’s lap. “Sorry,” Laura said. “I didn’t mean to be rude. My name is Laura Brandon.”

“No problem,” Becky said. “I just wanted to talk to you about the promotional punch we’re planning to give
For Shame
. We’ve sent out press releases, and we’re already getting requests from talk shows.”

“Talk shows? But Ray’s…dead.”

“Yes, but
you’re
alive, right? Talk shows are an incredible avenue for promoting a book, so we certainly want to make use of all the offers we can get. We’re hoping you’ll be willing to speak for him. Surely nobody knew Mr. Darrow better than you.”

Speak for Ray? “But I don’t—”

“I know you’ve had experience handling interviewers
because of the comet discoveries,” Becky Reed continued. “I remember reading an interview with you last year in…
Time
, was it?”

“Yes, probably.” Laura’s mind felt foggy. “What would I talk about?” she asked. “The book was based on Ray’s work, not mine.”

“But you certainly know about his work with the homeless and his other humanitarian endeavors. The information would have so much meaning coming from you. It would be very poignant.”

“I’m not sure I’d have time to do it,” she said, although that argument seemed weak. She wasn’t even working, yet it was true that she felt overburdened these days. “I’m trying to devote my energy to my daughter,” she said, stroking Emma’s hair. “She’s had a difficult time of it since Ray died. And—”

“We’d try to accommodate your schedule,” Becky said. She paused briefly, and when she spoke again, her tone was more than a bit didactic. “I’m not sure you understand the significance of
For Shame
,” she said. “There have been lots of books on the homeless, but this one’s going to hit the mark by pushing everyone’s guilt buttons. That chapter about the mentally ill being out on the streets will do it, if nothing else. It’s going to be the most talked-about book on Capitol Hill. We expect that even the president will read it. And getting it on the talk shows is absolutely critical to its success. Please consider doing this for us.”

“All right,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll think about it.” She said goodbye and hung up the phone, then looked down at Emma. The little girl’s thumb was in her mouth again, but her eyes were wide open, staring at her mother.

“Come on, sweetie,” Laura said, gently moving Emma’s head from her lap to the bed. “Let’s go see how Dylan’s making out with your new fish.”

Dylan had all the fish in the aquarium by the time she and Emma returned to the room. Emma walked slowly toward the tank, thumb still in her mouth, and she was far more subdued than she’d been a few minutes earlier.

“The fish look beautiful,” Laura said, and they truly did. Gold and blue and spotted brown. The light from the window shone through the water, splashing color through the room. Still, Dylan seemed to sense the preoccupation behind her enthusiasm.

“You look kinda green,” he said, cocking his head at her. He was standing on the opposite side of the aquarium, wiping his hands on a rag. “Bad phone call?” he asked.

“Not bad, exactly.” She sat down on Emma’s bed again. “Just…troubling.”

Dylan set the rag down on the bookshelf. “Well?” he said. “Spill it.”

“It was Ray’s publisher. They want me to go on talk shows to promote his book.”

“Hey, that’s good news, isn’t it?” Dylan asked. “Not too many books get touted on those shows.”

“Yes, it’s good. So, why don’t I feel good about it?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Why don’t you?”

Laura rubbed her temples with her fingers. “Ray’s gone,” she said. “I want to close that chapter, not reopen it and relive all the pain. And it just feels like one more thing for me to worry about in a string of things. Yet, that’s ridiculous. I’m turning into a wimp who can’t handle more than one situation at a time without decompensating.”

Emma had been staring at the fish, but now she walked slowly toward her bed. With a sudden movement, she dropped to the floor, rolling beneath the bed, and Laura felt the sting of alarm. Emma had spent hours burrowed under furniture in the few weeks after Ray’s death. The first therapist they’d seen
had said it was a normal reaction to what had happened, that Emma was simply seeking a sense of security, and not to make an issue out of it. But for Emma to suddenly begin doing it again was unnerving.

Dylan gave Laura a puzzled look, and she shrugged, wondering if her face gave away the fear she felt over Emma’s strange behavior.

“Well,” Dylan said as though nothing were unusual, “the so-called things you have to handle are pretty taxing, Laura. The other day you said your life’s turned into a guessing game. You don’t know what’s really going on inside…the people you’re trying to help.” He glanced toward the bed, as if uncertain whether to speak this way in front of Emma. “You’re already carrying a burden,” he said. “Don’t do the talk shows if it feels like too much for you.”

The solace he offered felt alien to her. “I should do them for Ray, though,” she said.

Dylan glanced at the bed again, then nodded for Laura to walk with him outside the room.

Laura followed him into the hallway, her eyes hot with tears. “She hasn’t done that in months,” she said, once they were out of hearing distance of the bedroom.

“I think it’s because we’re talking about Ray.”

“She must still be confused or upset about his death,” she said.

“And she can’t tell you what’s confusing or upsetting her. And you wonder why you feel overwhelmed. Laura, you’re dealing with too much. You have my support, for what it’s worth, to tell the talk shows to take a hike.”

She smiled weakly. She wanted to touch him, to wrap her arms around him, but she settled for offering him a simple “Thank you.”

“Hey, no problem,” he said. “Any time you need some sense talked into your head, you know who to call.” He looked at his watch. “And now I’ve got to run.”

He walked into Emma’s room on his way down the hall. Laura listened from outside the room as he spoke to his invisible daughter. “I’m leaving now, Emma,” he said. “But I wanted to tell you something first. You know my big fish tank? Whenever I’m feeling upset or angry or scared or sad or any of those bad feelings, I just sit and look at my fish. They make me feel very calm. Just wanted to tell you that.”

He stepped back into the hall, waved to Laura, then headed for the stairs.

She leaned against the wall, watching him go, and for the first time in her life, knew she was falling in love.