But Inside I'm Screaming (20 page)

K
risten crosses the deck of the smoker’s porch with a smile stretched across her face.

“You’ll never guess what I’m doing tomorrow,” she says to Isabel, who is tilting her head back to soak in the warm sun. She shades her eyes so she can get a better look at Kristen.

“What?”

“Guess!” Kristen is beaming.

“Oh, for God’s sake, just tell me—I’m no good at guessing games.”

“I’m going to visit my brother! I got a pass to go to Long Island and he’s sending a car here to pick me up. A Town Car. You know—one of those limo wannabes? It’s coming to pick me up in the morning and then it’s going to wait for me all day and bring me back at night. It’s all arranged. Can you believe it?”

Isabel closes her eyes, lets her arm fall back down and resumes sunbathing. “No, I can’t believe it,” she says wearily. “Good for you.”

“
That
sounded real sincere.” Kristen is miffed at Isabel’s lack of enthusiasm. “What’s wrong with
you?
By
the way, Melanie’s on a mission to steal your mattress so you better watch out.”

“What?”

“Melanie’s big kick today is that her back hurts because her mattress is old. She thinks it’s a conspiracy against Jews, that you have a better mattress than her. I’m just warning you.”

“Whatever.”

“Wanna know a secret?” Kristen asks. “Can you keep your mouth shut?”

It takes all Isabel’s energy to tilt her head back upright and shade her eyes once more. “What?”

“I may not come back tomorrow night.” Kristen is gleeful. “My brother’s cool. He’ll back me up if I tell him I don’t want to come back here.”

“Aw, Kristen.”
I do not have the energy for this.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“What’re you, my mother all of the sudden? Just be happy for me. This is what I want to do. They’re always telling us to be ‘true to ourselves—’” she takes a long drag of her cigarette “—I’m just following doctor’s orders.”

Kristen looks pleased with herself.

“Okay, first of all I’ve never heard them say ‘be true to yourself.’ And second of all, I know you aren’t taking your meds.”

Kristen looks like Isabel slapped her. Isabel stretches her legs out in front of her so they can get some sun.

“What?” Kristen recovers and tries to act as if she has no idea what Isabel is talking about.

“Look, I won’t tell anyone your little secret.” Isabel is too tired to continue much longer.

Kristen hardly makes a sound as she steps on her cigarette and walks away.

“Kristen! Someone’s here for you!” Ben hollers down the hall toward Kristen’s room. He sees Isabel turning the corner. “Isabel, did you know Kristen’s got a day pass?”

“Yeah.” A part of her knows Kristen is caught in a downhill spiral and wants to reach out to help her, but the other part feels beleaguered.
I have to concentrate on saving myself…I can barely do that…I can’t save Kristen, too.

“I wonder where she’s going.” Ben is excited about the flurry of activity Kristen’s day pass has inspired. “Do you know where she’s going?”

“Long Island.” Isabel answers Ben over her shoulder as she signs herself out for a walk around the grounds so she won’t have to be confronted with Kristen’s smug determination to ruin her life.

“Walk,” she writes in the taped-off square next to her name. Then she fills in the time: “9:00,” even though it is 8:55, buying thirty-five minutes of freedom before she has to check back in.

Isabel turns abruptly and leaves the unit when she hears the sound of Kristen’s door shutting and footsteps coming toward her.

Outside it is muggy and overcast. Coming from the freezing air-conditioned unit into the sticky air feels, at first, like sinking into a warm bathtub. Isabel rubs her bare arms as she follows the path to the parking lot. There, idling silently, is Kristen’s sinister escape module. The windows are tinted so Isabel cannot get a look at the driver, but as she walks past she glances into the car through the clear glass of the front windshield. The driver is staring directly into her eyes. It unnerves her so she quickens her pace up the gentle slope of the driveway.

Isabel knows Kristen is right behind her so, to avoid the awkwardness of a furtive farewell, she breaks into a light jog around the corner and out of view of the road she knows they will take.

On cue, the car slowly turns the corner and gently makes its way over the speed bump that separates the unit’s parking lot from the main driveway. Isabel watches the car pick up speed then slow down at the front gate, pausing for oncoming traffic.

After its taillights blend into the stream of cars hurrying past, Isabel begins to run, sprinting at first and then tapering off into a slower pace. The air is thick with clusters of gnats but she does not mind.

“I
sabel, telephone!” Ben bellows down the hall after dinner.

Isabel had been writing in her journal. “Booth or kitchen?” she calls back.

“Hey! Keep it down, will you?” Regina yells from behind her closed door.

Isabel ignores her and asks again as she heads toward both pay phones. “Phone booth or kitchen, Ben?” Since Ben does not answer she checks the kitchen first. A visitor is in the middle of a conversation on that extension. Around the corner she sees the light beaming from the booth.

“Hello?”

“Isabel?” The voice is unrecognizable.

“Yes? Who is this?”

“It’s me,” the voice sniffs. “Kristen.”

“Kristen, what’s wrong? Are you on Long Island?” Isabel sits forward on the hard metal folding chair that barely fits inside the collapsible booth door.

“Um, no.” Kristen is crying.

“What is it? Where are you?”

“I’m in the hospital.”

“Oh, my God. Are you okay? What happened?”

“The driver,” she sobs. “He was bad. He was a bad guy. Bad.”

“What? What’d he do?”

“We ended up at JFK.” Isabel strains to hear Kristen, who sounds as if she is sneaking the phone call. “When I got in he asked if I minded if he smoked in the car and I said no. Then I asked him if I could bum a cigarette and he handed me back one. There was something in that cigarette, Isabel. I just know it. I could taste it.”

“Was it pot? Was it a joint?”

“No, not like that. It was like a menthol, but not really. I felt a head rush after two drags. Anyway, I kept smoking. I knew I shouldn’t have but I thought, what the hell. Then I think I must have passed out or something because the next thing I know we’re circling the airport. I told him I wasn’t going to the airport, I was going to Long Island, and he just started laughing and saying for me to be quiet. That I didn’t know what I was talking about.” Kristen starts sobbing harder.

“Calm down. It’s okay, Kristen. Just calm down.” The words are empty, but Isabel does not know what else to say.

“Anyway—” Kristen takes a deep breath “—anyway, he told me to get out of the car, that the ride was over. He made me get out of the car at JFK!” Kristen dissolved into tears. “When I got out of the car I realized my shirt was on backward and two buttons on my jeans were undone. I turned around but he was gone.”

“Jesus. What’d you do?”

“I wandered around for a while, I don’t know how long. It was so scary. I haven’t been out of the hospital in a long time.” Isabel remembered her own confusion in Grand Central. “All the loud speaker announcements. It was frightening. Then some cop in the terminal came
up and asked me if I needed directions. I must’ve looked lost or something.”

“Then what?”

“I started to tell him what happened and then I started crying so he took me to this customs room—some weird room with nothing in it but a table and two chairs. The light was really bright. That’s all I could think about, how bright the light was. Anyway, I started to tell him the whole story and he asked where the car had picked me up and when I told him he left a few seconds later to make a phone call.” Kristen is sobbing too hard to continue.

Isabel waits.

“The next thing I know a different cop, at least I think he was a different cop, came in and asked me to follow him and they put me in an ambulance. I hadn’t even finished the story yet!”

“But, Kristen, it’s good they took you to the hospital. You said yourself the guy was a bad guy. They wanted the doctor to check you out, make sure you’re okay. Maybe they think…well, maybe you were taken advantage of. Sexually assaulted…”

“Isabel, you aren’t hearing me!” Kristen raises her voice. “I’m not in a regular hospital! I’m at Bellevue. They took me here because I told them I’d come from Three Breezes.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Yeah. And I have no idea how I’m going to get out of here. They gave me some pill and
made
me swallow it. I have no idea what they made me take. They don’t believe me about the driver, either. I can tell. They think I made the whole thing up.”

“What about your brother? He lined that car company up—can’t he talk to the police? They can track down the driver through the company. They keep logs of who goes out on which pickup. In the meantime, can’t he get you out of there while they look into it?”

Kristen’s sobs turn into a hacking sort of laughter.

“What?” Isabel is bewildered. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh, Isabel,” Kristen sighs.

“What? Tell me what is so funny!”

“I didn’t think you bought it.”

“
Bought it?
What do you mean?”

Kristen starts laughing again.

“Kristen, what? What’re you laughing about? Is it this story? Are you kidding about this story?”

“No, not
this
story.” Kristen is impatient. “The
other
one.”

“Kristen, what the hell is going on? What are you talking about?”

“I don’t have a brother, Isabel!” she laughs triumphantly.

Kristen pauses to marvel at her own cleverness. “God. I thought
you
of all people would have figured it out, but I guess not. I guess I should thank you for cheering me up. I thought I’d never smile again after this whole disaster.”

There is silence between them while reality takes hold.

“How’d you get your day pass?” Isabel’s stomach lurches as she tries to piece together the puzzle. “Your doctors signed off on your pass—how’d you arrange that?”

“Listen, I don’t have time to go into all that right now. I’ll tell you later,” Kristen says, the smile in her voice gone. “You’ve got to help me. Please. I don’t know how I’m going to get out of here but I’ve got to.”

Oh, now I’m supposed to help you?

Kristen’s self-destruction simultaneously scares Isabel, sickens her and fills her with frustration. What frightens her the most about Kristen’s determination to ruin her own life is the realness of it.
How long before I start to unravel? How long until I have a relapse?

After a moment Isabel decides to put some distance
between her sick friend and herself.
I am not like you. And I cannot save you.

“Kristen, even if I wanted to help you I don’t know how I could. Why don’t you call your doctor?”

“My doctor there, you mean?”

“Yes. Your doctor could talk to the people there and get you transferred back.”

“I don’t want to go back on medication, Isabel. I’m not going back on that stuff. It’s poison. They can’t make me start taking that again. Besides, I don’t need it anymore.”

“Are you listening to me? Call your doctor. You should be talking to your doctor, Kristen. Okay?”

“Okay.” Kristen takes several deep breaths. “Okay. I’ll call my doctor.”

“Good.”

“Thanks, Isabel.” Kristen sounds genuinely grateful.

Isabel hangs up the phone, leans back into the folding chair and closes her eyes.

“Isabel?” Ben is standing outside the phone booth.

“Yeah?” she answers as she stands and flattens herself against the door frame so that she can squeeze past him without coming into contact with his perpetually sweaty frame. She holds her breath against his smell.

“Sorry to bother you,” Ben says nervously, oblivious to Isabel’s attempts to circumvent his imposing body.

“Excuse me! I’m trying to get by here.”

“Oh, sorry.” He moves to the side.

“What is it?”

“Have I told you about Wellbutrin?” He smiles hopefully.

“Yes, Ben,” Isabel sighs, and walks away. “I believe you have.”

“It saved my life, Isabel. It’s that simple.” Ben follows
Isabel down the hall. “I just can’t say enough about it. Wellbutrin. It’s amazing.”

“That’s great, Ben. Well, thanks for walking me back to my room. I’m going to be shutting the door now….”

“Wait! Isabel?”

“Bye, Ben.”

“Isabel!” Ben continues after the door shuts in his face. “I wish you’d just listen to me, Isabel. Why won’t anyone listen to me when I talk about Wellbutrin?” Ben knocks a few times and finally lumbers off.

“H
i, this is a message for Isabel. Isabel, this is Deborah in Ted Sargent’s office. Just wanted to let you know that we got your message and will plan on meeting on October 2. I’ll be in touch on the first to confirm. Until then, hope you’re feeling better. If you need to reach me I’m at extension 5421.”

“Isabel, hi, it’s me, Alex. Look, I’m sorry our conversation didn’t go very well. I still get so upset hearing your voice. Please call me back. I promise I won’t lose my temper again. I need to talk to you. I do love you, you know. Bye.”