Mind Over Mind (2 page)

Ydrel gave the last of his smile to the couple, then turned back to Joshua and resumed his circling. Edith merely watched. So much for “that’s enough”—or was she testing Joshua already?

Ydrel continued his monologue. “
Doctor
Malachai knows I have paranormal abilities—good words, eh? His words. He’s studying me, like a lab animal, until he finds a way to duplicate my talents in normal humans. Until then, he’ll keep using me. If I resist, I get punished. If I cooperate, he gets that much closer to his goal. Either way, I’m stuck here.”

Then, Ydrel stopped. Joshua glanced sideways at him. He had a faraway look, as if he was seeing something that surprised and scared him a little. When he spoke, his voice matched his expression. His pupils seemed unusually contracted for the light.

“One day, I won’t be so useful. I’ll learn to do something Malachai can’t control. He’ll find some way to get rid of me. He’ll convince everyone I’m really psychotic. Violent. And he’ll drug me, take away my will...”

Joshua watched the man stiffen and the woman start to twist her hands in her lap.

“You know,” Joshua cut into his reverie, “I don’t think anyone has to convince your family of anything. You’re doing a fine job of scaring them yourself.” He wasn’t sure if he’d overstepped his bounds. He didn’t know Ydrel’s case, but he trusted his instincts.

Ydrel blinked, then looked at Joshua with surprise and some respect. “You’re right. Sometimes, I get a little caught in my Gideon persona.” He brightened then and settled down on the couch next to the psychiatrist. Edith’s expression didn’t change, except that she arched her eyebrows and tilted her head slightly in the direction of his family.

He looked at them, then his head turned sharply away, as if he’d been struck. He paused like that, eyes squinted as if in pain, then let out a shuddering sigh and looked back at them. “Some party, huh? I’m sorry. He’s right. I scared you and I, I’m sorry. Please. Can we start again? Joshua Abraham Lawson, meet my family: Aunt Katheryn and Uncle Douglas. Aunt Kate, Uncle Doug, meet Joshua Abraham Lawson, the new intern come to study me. He’s my present from Edith—an unusual gift,” he said, smiling at Joshua, then Edith. “Couldn’t you have at least found a girl?”

“Darrel!” his aunt spoke for the first time, pronouncing the “a” like “ah” and emphasizing the “e,” which struck Joshua as weird. Almost atop her scolding, her husband commented, “Hell, if that’s what you wanted, you should have said something!”

“Douglas!”

Laughter broke the tension in the room. Edith motioned Joshua to sit, so he pulled a chair over from the table and sat on it backwards, his arms draped across the back.

Douglas reached into his inner jacket pocket. “I did bring something else appropriate for one’s eighteenth birthday.” With a flourish, he pulled out a transparent flask. Dark amber liquid caught the light from the florescent lamps.

“Douglas! How did you sneak that in here?!” Katie demanded.

“Plastic flask. Happy Birthday, Darrel.”

“It’s Ydrel. I’m eighteen. I can choose my own name. It’s not like you ever spelled or pronounced my old one right, anyway.” But nonetheless, he reached for the flask.

Edith was quicker. “I think I’ll hang onto this. It’s against regulations—and in any case, you’re still underage.”

“Legalistic crap. If the boy’s old enough to vote, he’s old enough to drink.”

“Can the committed vote?” Ydrel asked.

“Hell, how do you think Clinton got elected?”

“Douglas!” Katie rolled her eyes. “Republicans,” she said to Joshua, as if it were a bad habit she couldn’t quite break her husband of.

“At least my party wouldn’t put up a womanizing, draft-dodging, bureaucratic—”

Edith started to interrupt what was apparently an old argument, but Ydrel stopped her with a raised hand. “It’s been a long day. Let them have their fun.” Then he looked over at Joshua. “Feeling vulnerable?”

“What?”

Ydrel indicated Joshua’s backwards-turned chair with a lazy wave of his hand, then shrugged. “’S OK. We all need barriers. Most of mine are up here.” He tapped his temple.

“It’s comfortable,” Joshua bristled.

“Mine are, too. When they work. Hey,” he turned the arguing couple. “How about we shelve the politics and have cake instead?”

The men sat in silence as Katie and Edith prepared the cake with candles. Douglas shifted uncomfortably and watched his wife gather paper plates. Ydrel, too, seemed to focus on his aunt, but then seemed to focus through her, then not focus at all, lost in dark thoughts. He smiled but didn’t seem to listen as they sang “Happy Birthday”; when the song died, he was still focused elsewhere.

“Darrel, honey, make a wish.”

Ydrel suddenly glared at his aunt. “Why? I wish for the same thing every year. It’s not like it’ll come true. I wish for my freedom. I wish to find someplace where people will believe me and not think I’m crazy or a guinea pig or—I wish I could go—” He bit his lip, stared down at his hands. Silence.

Finally, he looked up, met his aunt’s sad eyes. “Tell you what: I’ll make a wish for you.” He made a great show of closing his eyes to wish hard then blowing out the candles in one long puff.

“So, what did you wish for?” Her voice quavered a little and she drew in a breath.

Ydrel smiled, this time a genuine happy smile. “Oh, you’ll find out in about six months.”

Douglas turned to his wife. “Katie?”

Edith smiled. “Kate, are you pregnant?”

She smiled and nodded, but more nervously than Joshua would have expected. “I, I wasn’t going to tell anyone. I’ve lost so many—”

“Not this one.” Ydrel spoke confidently. “This one will be strong and beautiful and healthy. I
know
.” Again, he met her eyes and smiled.

The smile she returned was shaky, and full of hope and fear.

CHAPTER 2

“Here we are.” Dr. Bartlebort stopped at a door whose fancy nameplate declared “Office of Dr. D. Randall Malachai” with an accompanying alphabet of credentials. He smiled at Joshua. “Time to meet the head man himself. Dr. Malachai is head of the institution—but don’t worry; he’s just like any of us.”

You mean he’ll treat me like I’m fourteen?
Joshua kept his face schooled into polite neutrality. Most of the staff had treated him with respect, even though curious, but most of the psychiatrists seemed suspicious of this “kid” one of their own hired as an intern. He wondered how many had even bothered reading his résumé. He didn’t want to come off as an uppity intern, especially his first day, so he bit back the urge to finish sentences for them and settled for asking questions that displayed a depth of knowledge.

Apparently his strategy worked, because Dr. Bartlebort introduced him to Dr. Malachai as “Edith’s project, though he seems to know his stuff” and didn’t bother to hide the surprise in his voice. He left Joshua at the door.

Joshua walked into an office that was tasteful, professional and completely devoid of humor or warmth, despite the rich colors of the décor.

A large cherry wood executive desk dominated the view as they first walked in. On the left corner was a pen and pencil nameplate with “Dr. D. Randall Malachai, MD, PhD,” and a slew of other initials in smaller print. A slim, black 21-inch computer monitor perched on the right corner. A small notebook with a pen sat with studied neglect among a stack of files. Behind the desk, the wall was plastered with framed professional certificates, guarded on either side by the matching cherry wood file cabinet and a bookshelf filled with professional books and journals. Those with Malachai’s name on the spine were on the perfect shelf to be noticed by someone sitting in the visitor’s chairs, Joshua noted. To the left of the desk were a low sofa and a higher quality version of the wing-backed chair Joshua had sat in the waiting room, with a coffee table between them. The room was so large it also held a small conference table; Dr. Malachai’s spot at the head was readily apparent by a small butler’s table, also in cherry wood. No expense spared here.

“Sit.” Dr. Malachai indicated one of the two leather chairs in front of his desk, then stood and pulled his executive chair from behind the desk. His was slightly higher than the others. Dr. Malachai leaned back, ankle resting on one knee, arms crossed lightly. He smiled a patronizing smile that made Joshua’s hackles rise. Joshua had automatically put on the polite but distanced aura he always wore around people he disliked. He was usually successful at hiding his feelings, but something in Dr. Malachai’s smile said he saw through the facade. “So, you’ve met Deryl, or Ydrel, as he prefers to be called.”

It was not a question, but Joshua answered anyway. “Yes, sir.”

The smile quirked smugly. “It shows on your face. Tell me, did he describe me as a Nazi madman or a modern Dr. Strangelove?”

“Uh, neither, sir, really, though he did give the impression you and he did not get along.” He kept his answer as neutral as possible while he tried to figure out where this was leading. He’d only known the senior psychiatrist for a minute, yet he already had the impression that Dr. Malachai never did anything idly.

The psychiatrist chuckled. “All right. Keep your confidences if you feel you must. Just remember that there’s a line between developing trust and endangering an employee or client.” Then he looked away, and sighed. “You know, there was a time when Deryl confided in me. I like to think I was a father figure of sorts. Perhaps that explains some of his behavior to me now; developmentally, he’s at an age where he needs to define his identity, establish his independence, and of course, there’s only so much independence he can have due to his condition. Therefore, he seeks to make that ‘break,’ as it were, by rebelling against the closest thing to parent he has. Surely, you can identify with such teenage rebellion?”

As Malachai spoke, Joshua caught himself leaning forward, a student listening to the wise words of a mentor. Deliberately, he changed his posture to match that of the psychiatrist’s, replying peer to peer. “Actually, I never went through that, personally; my parents were strict, but gave me a lot of room to make my own decisions. I did witness it in some of my friends, however.” He did not add that those who rebelled the most were the ones whose parents were the most controlling.

“Then you are lucky, indeed. At any rate, Edith believes Ydrel is at a stage where he may respond more openly to a peer rather than a parent. However, let’s talk about the rest of your internship: What do you intend to accomplish?”

The rest of the conversation went smoothly, even pleasantly. Soon Malachai rose, saying he had some appointments, and led Joshua back to the nurse’s station, where he would be passed on to the next person on his agenda. Dr. Malachai spent a few minutes chatting with the nurses before going back to his office.

“He’s so nice,” one nurse commented as he left.

Somehow, “nice” was not a word Joshua could associate with Malachai. Charismatic, yes, and such charisma set his teeth on edge. Hitler had such charisma—

Maybe Ydrel made a bigger impression on me than I thought.
He had no reason to think so ill of the senior psychiatrist, yet his instincts clamored.

Nonetheless, he thought of his mother. “Trust your feelings, Joshua,” she often told him, sometimes mimicking Obi Wan Kenobi, sometimes in complete earnest. She was a firm believer that there was more to humans than intellect and emotion, something she called “body knowledge,” so part of his education had been biospiritual focusing, intuitive medicine, and other “hocus-pocus chick stuff” as some of his friends—and even one of his professors—called it. Rique called her “Mama Kenobi” when she said those things to him. Joshua knew that his mother would tell him to trust those instincts; they’d tell him more than his intellect. Even when in opposition to what his intellect told him, his body knowledge was most often right.

I wonder if Ydrel just has an abnormally strong inclination himself, so strong he can’t ignore—

“Joshua?”

He realized he’d been woolgathering about his encounter with Malachai and snapped back to the present. He turned to smile at Edith and they returned her office.

She closed the door and opened the blinds to let in the late afternoon sun, then motioned him to sit while she filed notes and pulled out other files in preparation for tomorrow. She offered him time to collect his thoughts before answering. “Well, what do you think?”

While he thought, he leaned back and let his eyes wander around the office. He hadn’t looked at it closely earlier, other than to note that it was large, expensive and full of plants and photos. Now he saw that the photos were of horses, some with her astride them, some framed with ribbons. The obligatory bookcase housed books on horses as well as a wide variety of fiction:
Black Beauty, The Red Tent, The Nanny Diaries: A Novel
.

“Where’s your DSM?”

Edith laughed. “On disk. I keep the rest of my books in the library or at home. I’d rather have my clients here thinking about other things than how I’ll diagnose their pathos.”

Josh grunted. “Do a lot of riding?”

“Did. Dressage. Went to Nationals twice. But that was a long time ago. Now, I just ride for pleasure. My husband’s a trainer, and we have a small horse farm. I’ll take you sometime. But you haven’t answered my question.”

“I’m the first intern here, aren’t I?”

“Was it that apparent?”

He gave her a half-smile-half grimace in answer, and she sighed.

“I think we have a lot to teach, and an obligation to do so. I finally convinced the board to give it a try, and you’re our trial run. Does that bother you?”

He shrugged with a nonchalance he didn’t quite feel. “I guess I should be honored. I’ve been the guinea pig before, so no, it doesn’t bother me. Besides, I think I’ll learn a lot here.” It was a neutral answer, but one he meant. Edith had asked one of the therapists to show him all three facilities, then had taken him along on her afternoon rounds. He’d met a few clients he automatically pegged as “high-society whiners,” seen a few cases that were similar to those he’d helped with in Colorado, and encountered a pathos he’d only read about. He had three or four he was dying to study further, and he hoped they would work them into his schedule. He was to spend most of the summer in the minimum intensity care ward, but would be allowed to work with a few more serious cases in July or August—if he proved himself. With study, he’d probably be working twelve hours a day, but the knowledge he’d gain would be worth a semester of courses.
And the experience, not to mention how it’d look on a résumé. Just in case the agent doesn’t work out.

He shifted into a less comfortable position on her very comfortable couch. “So what’s the deal with Ydrel? How much does he have to do with my being here?”

She didn’t answer immediately, but pulled out a large file—it took two hands to carry—and set it on the table in front of Josh. “I really should put it on CD. This is a summary of the highlights of Ydrel’s time here. I have an entire drawer on him, and Randall has even more, I’m sure.

“He’s incredibly difficult to pin down, diagnostically. In fact, I won’t even tell you his current designation. I want to see what you come up with. Regardless of how we label him, the key lies in what keeps him here: He’s hooked on this delusion that he’s psychic, and what makes it worse is that he’s such a good reader of people, he can make it seem true.”

Joshua shrugged. “Lots of people make money using ‘psychic’ abilities. Some of them probably even believe they have powers.”

“Ydrel doesn’t stop at ‘reading’ someone. He internalizes what he picks up, and not just emotionally, either. We have to be very careful who we put in the rooms next to him. Twice we had someone on suicide watch in the next room, only to find Ydrel trying to kill himself. Several times, he’s begged me to move someone. Once, he said the girl was ‘making him’ violent—and in fact, she did attack several clients in the common room—and another time, he said he was thinking suicidal thoughts. Again, Ydrel was right. You’ve seen his reaction to Mr. Goldstein.”

“So how is he around, well, regular people?”

Edith smiled sadly. “The one time he left on a family visit, it…didn’t go well. He’s not been out since. No one knows how he’d react to a crowd. His family is afraid he’d hurt himself, more than anything. The staff is concerned he’ll encounter someone really troubled—whether a street person or a criminal—and pick up that persona. More and more, too, Dr. Malachai and some of the others on the board are concerned that, if given a chance, he’d try to escape.” She sounded doubtful, almost regretful.

“But he won’t escape,” she concluded. “He doesn’t think he has anywhere he can go. I’ve been working his case for the last three years, and every year, I see him becoming more and more hopeless. He’s being convinced he’s a freak with no place in the outside world.

“That’s where you come in, Joshua. I want you to give him back hope.”

Joshua felt his jaw drop. He tried to hide it by smiling. “Really?”

She sat on the couch opposite him. The file sat on the table between them and she idly ran her hands over the cover as she collected her thoughts. “Ydrel has spent some of the most formative years of his life surrounded by mentally troubled clients and the mental health staff—hardly a typical cross-section of the population.” She quirked a smile, then turned serious. “Most of the clients are in their late twenties or older. He hasn’t been around a single mentally healthy person his age since he was first committed. But given his situation…I was discussing his case with your father—with Doug and Kate’s permission, of course—”

“—and he suggested me.” Joshua couldn’t keep the disappointment out of his voice. He’d thought they’d come to an agreement on that sort of thing.

But Edith looked up sharply in a way that he’d learned meant he was insultingly off-base. “Your father suggested an intern, and when I told him the resistance I’ve met in starting such a program, he suggested you might be able to change some attitudes. I meant it when I said you’re good—even exceptional. Some of the staff already knew you by reputation from papers you’d published with your father—and were amazed to learn your age. If you prove yourself here, it would benefit you and help future interns. Nonetheless, setting up this program has been a lot of headache for me, and frankly, I did it with Ydrel in mind.

“I know that’s not what you were expecting. Your internship is more than just his case. But, frankly, he needs someone his own age, someone he can relate to. If you could make him believe he can have a life outside those gates—” She let the sentence hang and just looked at him. He met her eyes for a moment, then studied his shoes. Silence stretched out between them.

Finally, he broke it. “Any ideas?”

She smiled and let out a breath. “The usual psychological methods won’t work. That’s certain. Ydrel was right when he made the crack about my giving him a friend. He needs someone to just be a friend. Not a doctor, not a mentor, not an intern. Don’t study him. Treat him like you might treat a new roommate, maybe a foreign-exchange roommate who’s suffering from culture shock. Help him understand that he can adapt if he tries. If you come up with any ideas, run them by me. I’ll give you as much leeway in this as I can.”

“And Dr. Malachai?” He was Ydrel’s primary caregiver.

“You let me handle Randall.”

So he’s not too keen on your plan.
He’d guessed that from their conversation earlier. That only motivated Joshua more. He thought carefully about his next words. Edith, he’d learned, was a person who thought in feelings and visuals, and he knew to convince her, he’d need to meet her on that level. “I’m very excited about this internship—I see it as a clear chance to both learn psychology and practice it, outside my father’s influence. I can’t promise not to do that when I’m with Ydrel. I’ll see what I can do about befriending him, though frankly, if we’d had a run-in like that in the dorms, I’d be looking for a new roommate.” He smiled, and she smiled in return. “I’ll try. I’ll clear what I can with you, but if I see an opportunity to help him, I’m going for it. I can promise not to use the ‘usual’ psychotherapeutic methods, though, and I can promise to try to make him feel he has a life outside these walls.”