Whisper to Me (10 page)

“Please, Dad, I don’t want to go anywhere.”

He couldn’t meet my eyes. “I’m sorry, Cass. I don’t know how else to help you.”

“
Help
me? You never help me. You’ve never been there for me.”

He took a step back. “Maybe I … I don’t know. But this is what I’m doing now. I’m getting you some help.”

I pointed to the two men. “
This
is help?”

He made a
what can I do?
gesture. Then tipped his head to the guys, to say,
take her
.

“YOU CANNOT LET THIS HAPPEN,” said the voice, and in that moment I was so afraid, so unable to deal with what would happen if these men took me someplace where I would have to talk about the voice, so freaked out by the thought of how much it would punish me, that I grabbed onto Dad, onto the front of his shirt, and I think I started to cry then, and I said, “Please, please, please, Dad, please, please, please, please …”

You get the idea. I said please a lot.

I begged, I’m ashamed to say.

I cried, and I begged.

AND THEN …

AND THEN:

Dad literally put his fingers in his ears, like he was a kid and I was saying something he didn’t want to hear. “Don’t, Cass. Don’t make this harder,” he said.

“I’m not making this hard,” I said, through my sobs. “You’re making this hard.”

Dad turned to the two guys. “Come on, let’s get this over with,” he said. He
was
crying. I could see it now, his eyes overflowing. He turned to me. “They’re going to take you someplace you can get some help.”

In my head I thought,
If you see aliens, you get taken away by the men in black; if you hear a voice, you get taken away by the men in green
, because one of the things I do is to think of lame jokes in really incredibly serious situations.

“Please, Dad,” I said, one last time.

“No.”

And, oh, what an echo that was, that little exchange.

The muscle-bound paramedic looked at him. “Let’s be clear here, sir,” he said. “You’re saying she’s a danger to herself?”

Dad indicated my arms. “What do you think? Plus she had an allergic episode at the library and injected herself with adrenaline, but she didn’t go to the hospital. I don’t even know if she
had
an episode. Maybe she just injected herself for whatever reason. I don’t know.”

“And her behavior up till then?”

“Erratic. Private. She’s been holed up in the apartment above our garage. Her teachers are worried about her. She’s been cutting herself in her room and talking to herself and God knows what else and I just can’t—”

To my surprise, he burst legitimately into tears.

He took a breath.

“She’s been withdrawn since her mom died. But since she found the foot on the beach … ”

“That was her?” asked the young paramedic, the kid.

“Yes.”

The older one nodded slowly. “Okay, sir,” he said. “Sign here.” He held out a clipboard to Dad. Then he and the other guy lifted me up.

“You going to struggle?” he asked. It was almost kind, his tone.

“Oh yes,” I said. “But not with you.”

He looked at me strangely, then shrugged.

And they took me to the ambulance. They didn’t exactly carry me, but it wasn’t far off. I mean, it was clear I had no choice in the matter.

On the way, we crossed the yard, and I saw you, just for a second. You were in the space under the stairs where the shared washing machine and dryer are; I guess you were doing laundry.

You didn’t turn around, thank God.

But even then, even being escorted to an ambulance, I noted the elegance of your stance, the lines of your shoulders. You were working your way into my heart already, I think. Like people say that splinters do, slowly easing through the bloodstream until they hit the chambers of your—

Although I think that’s an urban legend, so this is a bad analogy on a number of levels.

It was just a glimpse, and then you were gone. Or I was gone, more accurately speaking.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

There’s a whole load of static in my memory after the trip in the ambulance.

I know I walked into the hospital, and it was raining, a damp warm smell rising from the asphalt. People smudged into ghosts. There was a low glass-walled restaurant taking up a whole city block by the hospital parking lot with the words
EARLY BIRD SPECIAL $4.99 5–6 P.M. FILLS YOU UP ALL NITE
frosted into the glass.

I know I was in room 314A on ward PP2. It was small and square, with beige walls, and had a small bathroom adjoining it, with an emergency pull cord, bright red, hanging from the ceiling by the toilet. The bed frame was made of metal, and there is something that immediately sickens the soul about a bed made of metal.

I remember all of that. But a lot of the sequence isn’t there. It’s like someone took a film and cut it into pieces, then stitched it back together in any order.

I
don’t
know how many days I was in that place. That’s because of the sedation. Have you ever been sedated? There are so many things we have never talked about. So many things I still want to learn about you.

If you will let me.

The thing about being sedated: You don’t remember what happened when the drugs were in your system. But you remember
being conscious
. So you knew what was going on; you just can’t recall it.

It’s really hard to explain.

Anyway, the reason for the sedation is that apparently when I first arrived I tried to hurt myself quite a lot, I assume because the voice told me to, but like I say, it’s a bit foggy to me.

So, the first thing that stands out clearly, like an island in the sea, is when I first met Dr. Rezwari. She was the psychiatrist. They must have dialed down my sedatives so that I would be able to talk to her.

I met her in her office. There was a window that looked out over the ocean, and over the older end of the boardwalk where there aren’t any stands or restaurants or gift shops, just old warped boards with grassy mounds of sand sticking through them. I watched seagulls wheeling in a pale blue sky, puffs of pink cloud scattered across it. From that I figured it was dawn or dusk, the time that Mom always called the gloaming.

We must have been three stories up. There was a collection of bonsai trees in the corner, like a little bonsai woods.

Dr. Rezwari saw me looking at them. “Someone gave me one as a gift once,” she said. “Now everyone does it. I don’t even like them. They strike me as unnatural. You know?”

I blinked at her.

She smiled. She had long eyelashes and black hair and the grayest eyes I had ever seen. Aqueous, like looking into a stream running over pebbles. Her face was small and delicate. Her desk was immaculate: some sort of antique, I thought, like something you would have seen in a lawyer’s office in the nineteenth century. There was a single pad of paper on it and an expensive-looking pen next to the pad. No computer—just a single silver plaque on a little wooden stand.

Not much
stuff
in the room in fact—no certificates on the wall, no photos, no personal effects that I could see. It was less like a doctor’s office and more like some person’s memory of a doctor’s office, the details elided by time.

The only exception, the only sign of personality at all, was a whole wall lined with books on shelves, behind me.

Out of habit, I turned and glanced at them. I was surprised to see that they weren’t textbooks, not psychiatric journals or whatever. They were nearly all fiction—Margaret Atwood, Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, Alice Munro story collections, a set of Dickenses, Mark Helprin—

“You like reading?” asked Dr. Rezwari. Her voice was soft.

Almost reflexively, the voice said,

“Speak and I remove your feet.”

So I didn’t say anything.

Instead I looked at the plaque on the desk. On it was written:
A CLUTTERED DESK IS A SIGN OF GENIUS
.

I did not know what to make of it. I looked at the desk. It literally could not have been tidier. There were only three objects on it, not counting Dr. Rezwari’s elbows, which were propped there, her hands under her chin.

Was it a joke? Was it supposed to be ironic? Or was the desk usually a mess, and so someone had gotten her the plaque, and then she cleaned it? It bothered me and so I opened my mouth to ask—

“Your feet,” said the voice. “And your father goes under a bus.”

So I closed my mouth again.

Dr. Rezwari was studying me, but she made it seem friendly and curious, not detached and scientific. She picked up the pen and spun it around her thumb. That surprised me. It’s usually guys who do that.

“I like reading,” she said. “I think
Middlemarch
is my favorite novel. Don’t you just love it? It’s like she created a whole world, totally real and believable. I don’t think I have ever loved fictional characters more.”

I very much wanted to reply to this. I wanted to say that
Middlemarch
was my favorite novel too, but I couldn’t. Dr. Rezwari must have seen something in my eyes though, because she smiled.

“Of course I love Stephen King too,” she said. “I’m not snobbish.
Bag of Bones
, that’s an amazing book.”

YES!
said my mind.

My mouth said: .

She kept spinning the pen. “Your father seems to think you have been speaking to people who aren’t there.” It was a statement, not a question.

She waited, then when I didn’t say anything, nodded.

“I’m here to help, you know,” she said. “I would dearly like to help you. I can see that you have been through some very traumatic times. You must borrow any of my books, anytime you like. I know from your father that reading is a great hobby of yours.”

She paused. Then she said something totally unconnected—I learned that this was one of her tricks. “Tell me, Cassandra, do you ever hear voices?” she asked.

The voice said,

“I’m warning you. Do not speak to her about me. I will make sure you burn in hell.”

I closed my eyes.

“You can answer yes or no, Cassandra,” said Dr. Rezwari. “You can even just nod or shake your head. I’m only trying to ascertain what we’re dealing with here. But we’re good, and we have good drugs.
I’m
good. I can help you. It occurs to me, from things your father has said, that perhaps you may be afflicted by this voice-hearing, which is what we call it.”

I wasn’t listening now, I was focusing on those words: NOD OR SHAKE YOUR HEAD. I opened my eyes again.

Did the voice have access to my thoughts? Would it know if I tried to use this loophole?

I waited. Nothing from the voice. I remembered how I had waved at Jane, and the voice had not punished me. Perhaps it only knew what I said and did, not what I was thinking?

Dr. Rezwari just went on spinning that pen. “Sometimes,” she said, as if it was a passing thing that had come into her mind, “sometimes, people hear voices that tell them to hurt themselves. It’s important to know that these voices are not real. They don’t exist. They are fictions, created by the mind. Of course this may not apply to you. Although you could nod if it does. We would protect you. We would not let anyone hurt you. Or anything.”

I was trembling with fear and hope. I wanted to nod, I so desperately wanted to nod, but I was terrified of what the voice might do to me. Truly, I don’t know when I have ever been more scared. I felt as though my heart might burst and splatter Dr. Rezwari with blood and fragments of rib.

Please let this be over
, I thought.

“These drugs,” said Dr. Rezwari in that way of hers, that way she would go silent for ages and then say something as if it were some incidental piece of information she was passing on because it might, just might, be of interest. “They make the voices go away. Always. I can guarantee that.”

I looked at her. The twirling of her pen seemed to slow, the room seemed suspended in time, as if we were held in an invisible, viscous fluid.

I took a deep breath.

And I nodded.

Dr. Rezwari took a breath too. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, thank you. That is helpful. We will start you on risperidone right away, while we try to establish a diagnosis. I am thinking psychotic dissociation, perhaps brought on by … what happened with your mother. But this is not a worry. You will be fine, we will help you. And you must borrow any book you like.”

“What did you do?” said the voice.

I sat there, a mouse between two cats. “What did you do? She will take me away. She will take me away, and you will be defenseless. You know how ****** pathetic you are. You ****** idiot. Take it back. Take it back and I won’t rip out your nails; take it back, you ******* *********** ************** ************** ************** **** ******* ***** ******.”

I put my hands over my ears, but it didn’t stop. The language—I have never heard anything like it, before or since. There was something strange, though: the voice sounded afraid.