A Cure for Madness (5 page)

I watched the nurses, their eyes shadowed and rimmed red. There was no idle chitchat or discussions about grandchildren or summer vacations. There were two other occupants of our tiny waiting room, but both were staring at their phones and avoiding eye contact.

Finally a nurse stopped in front of my chair. Her navy scrubs had gray and white kittens gamboling across them. “Clare Campbell?”

“That’s me.” I peeled myself off the plastic chair.

“This way.” She walked briskly down the hallway, more drill sergeant than nurse. She opened the door to a small office, and I stepped inside after her, expecting to see Wes. But no one else was there. My heart jolted.

“I understand you’re concerned about your brother,” she said, closing the door behind us.

“Is he okay?”

She smiled tightly, deepening the wrinkles in her cheeks. “Yes. There’s nothing to worry about.”

I relaxed. So he wasn’t mortally injured, and he hadn’t tried to kill anyone—himself included.

“So where is he?”

“You can see him in a minute; don’t worry. I just wanted to touch base with you first, since I understand you’re his guardian now. Is that right?”

“Yes. Can you tell me what happened? Why did he get moved?”

She waved a wrinkled hand through the air. “Nothing happened. We just wanted to run a few more tests on him before he was released, make sure everything was okay.”

That’s what Rob had told me, but they hadn’t explained it to him either. “Why? He was supposed to be released yesterday. Wouldn’t any tests have been done before then?”

The nurse’s smile faltered, then recovered. “Well, I don’t know all the details, only that his physician ordered the tests. But I assure you it’s nothing to worry about; all perfectly standard.”

“What were they for?”

Her hand fluttered again, dismissing my concerns. “Basic blood work, the usual. Seeing how he’s reacting to his new medication.”

“Yeah, but why move him over here? Couldn’t you do that on the psych ward?”

She put her arm around my shoulders—I flinched—and opened the door. “I understand you’ve having the family meeting this afternoon. I’m sure all of your questions will be answered then.”

“So is Wes free to go?” I wanted my questions answered
now
, not later.

“We’re still waiting for the results, so it could be as late as tomorrow. But again, they’ll have more information for you in the meeting. Now if you’ll just follow me, Wes is in a room right around the corner.”

I followed her down the hallway until she stopped in front of a white door marked 416B. She reached inside one of her kitten-festooned pockets and withdrew a small gold key on a white plastic keychain. I frowned. I didn’t know hospital doors had locks on them. But knowing my brother, maybe it was a sensible precaution. She turned the key in the lock, then rapped on the door before entering.

“Your sister is here, Wes.”

Before I could say anything, I was engulfed in a ferocious hug. I returned the embrace as best I could, ignoring the chains and piercings pressing uncomfortably against me. Then we stepped apart, and I got a good look at my big brother.

He’d gained a little weight since the last time I’d seen him. His round, still-boyish face was marked with tattoos on both sides of his temples and cheeks—crosses on one side, tribal markings on the other. His first tattoo had been a black spider on the side of his skull. He’d attempted to do one on the other side himself; I still couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be. He must have been fifteen at the time, and our parents had nearly lost it. But they soon got used to it, as one tattoo followed another—some professional, some not so much.
I’d rather buy tattoos than food
, he used to say. But it didn’t look like he was starving, at any rate.

He was attempting a Mohawk with what was left of his hair, thinned by years of drug use, malnourishment, and now medication. He’d gained some new piercings since my last visit: the other eyebrow, and the space beneath his bottom lip. His tangled beard, naturally blond but dyed orange to match the fauxhawk, almost hid the tattoo that read “Tracey” across his neck. Years after her death, Wes had become convinced she was communicating with him from the spirit world. I wondered if he still believed that.

“Hey, sis,” he said, showing black and yellow teeth.

“Hey. How are you?”

He shrugged. “I’m a fucking guinea pig, and Mom and Dad are dead. How do you think I am?”

I glanced nervously at the nurse, who had pursed her lips.

“I’ll leave you two alone for a minute,” she said. Then she pointed at what looked like a doorbell on the wall. “If you need anything, just ring this.”

“Yeah, right,” Wes muttered as the nurse left, leaving the door ajar.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked. “All they told me was that they needed to do some more routine tests before you could leave.

“Routine, my ass. They didn’t do this any of the other times I was discharged.”

“Well, maybe that’s because this time you’re getting out of here for good,” I suggested hopefully.

“That’s for sure. I’m never coming back to this hellhole.”

I sat down in a chair beside the bed, but Wes stayed standing. It seemed to be a rather nice hospital room, with a single bed, two chairs, and a bevy of tubes and equipment hanging from the walls. There was even a window looking out on the parking lot below. But why the lock on the door? Maybe they all had locks on them and I’d never noticed.

“How are you feeling about . . . Mom and Dad?” I asked tentatively.

He responded by baring his teeth and growling. “Let’s just say that the motherfucker who shot them is lucky he killed himself. Otherwise he’d have me to deal with.”

I shot a nervous glance toward the hallway. “You can’t say things like that. That’s how you got yourself here in the first place, remember?”

His face darkened even more, and I flinched. Wrong thing to say.

He stomped over to the window. “So when are you getting me out?”

“I don’t know exactly. I have to meet with your social worker and psychiatrist first. The meeting’s this afternoon, though, so hopefully you can leave later today. But the nurse said we had to wait for the test results, so you might have to stay here one more night.”

“Fuck that. Let’s just go right now.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

He huffed. “Still following the rules, eh? How long are you home for?”

“I . . . I don’t know,” I said, caught off guard. “I haven’t booked my return flight yet.”

“You staying with Uncle Rob?”

“I did last night. I don’t know where I’ll stay tonight. Maybe I’ll go home.”

He nodded approvingly. “That’s where I want to go. If they’d stop doing experiments on me, that is.”

“They’re not experiments. They’re just tests to make sure you’re healthy,” I pointed out.

He snorted. “Whatever. I know what’s really going on.”

I was about to ask him what was really going on but caught myself in time. I didn’t want to get into it. We’d have plenty of time for conspiracy theories later.

He slammed his hand against the window, making me jump, then pressed his forehead to the glass. A foggy patch appeared near his mouth.

I glanced back toward the open door. The kitten nurse was headed toward us.

“How are we doing in here?” she asked.

“Fine,” I said. Wes just glared. “Um, I’m going to get myself a coffee. Do you want anything?”

“Yeah. Coffee. Black,” he said.

“Is that all right?” I asked the nurse. “Can I get some food and bring it in here?”

She nodded. “That’s fine, but Wes needs to stay here.”

“I’ll be right back,” I told him. He had already turned back to the window, both hands pressed against the glass as though in surrender. I stepped into the hallway and waited while the nurse locked the door.

“Why are you locking it?” I asked, pitching my voice low so he wouldn’t be able to hear me.

“We don’t normally have psychiatric patients on this side,” she explained. “It’s just a precaution.”

“Has he tried to get out?”

“Twice today,” she said, giving me a significant look. “I left the door open while you were in there because I thought it might make you more comfortable, but I had a security officer keep an eye on it.”

“Sorry about the trouble,” I muttered. “Can I get you anything from the cafeteria?”

She raised an eyebrow and shook her head. “Just come back to the desk when you’re ready to see him again.”

I took the elevator down to the main level, my head swimming. This was already more complicated than I’d anticipated. Jet lag and stress and grief pulled on my nerves. I wondered if it was too early for a martini.
Later
, I told myself.

My phone buzzed in my purse, and I pulled it out. It was Latasha.

“Hey,” I answered.

“How is it going?” she asked. “I’ve been worried about you.”

“Thanks. It’s okay.” I told her about the chaos at the hospital and Wes’s unexpected tests.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “Did your brother seem . . . okay?”

“As okay as he ever does. Oh, shit.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m fine. Everything is fine. I just . . . have to go.”

Kenneth Chu was walking toward me.

C
HAPTER FOUR

“Clare.” His body was rigid. He wore a white lab coat and held a tablet tight in one hand. A stethoscope hung from his neck.

I tried to smile, but my face was stiff and uncooperative, even as my stomach churned and my heart rattled against my rib cage. Latasha had warned me, but I hadn’t really thought I’d see him. The years had been kind: he’d lost some of his college roundness; his body was lean and his high cheekbones more pronounced. His dark hair was brushed back off his forehead. His eyes were the same—soft, warm . . . and piercing.

“Hi,” I said.

“I heard about your parents. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“I wondered if you would come back.”

Ouch.
I looked away.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said quickly. “It’s just—”

“It’s okay. How are you?”

“Fine. Busy.”

“Latasha told me you’d moved back home.”

He nodded. “How’s Latasha?”

I managed a small smile this time. “She’s great. Soaring career and all.”

“Great.”

We stood awkwardly for a few seconds. I gestured toward the cafeteria. “Well, I was just going to get a coffee. I should—”

“Yeah. Fine.”

I took a step away, then stopped and forced myself to look at him. “I know this is several years too late. But . . . I’m sorry. About what happened. I’ve regretted it.”

He pressed his lips together. “Which part?”

I looked at the floor, unsure of what to say.

“Never mind,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.” The shadow of a smile flitted across his face. “It was a long time ago, Clare. We’ve both moved on. At least, I know I have.”

“Of course you have,” I stammered. “I didn’t think—”

“You didn’t think I’d pine after you forever?” His laugh was forced. “I did, for a while. Too long, maybe. But I’m over it now. What’s it been, nine years?”

“Something like that.”

“Long enough. So why are you here? In the hospital, that is?”

“Oh. Wes. My brother. He’s being released today.”

Kenneth raised a dark eyebrow. “I didn’t know he was here. Is he injured?”

“No, he’s been in the psych ward . . . for a while.”

“Ah. I see. Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”
Fine. Great. Sorry
. So many meaningless words.
What happened to the two of us?

You know exactly what happened
, my bitchy inner voice told me. But despite the way we’d parted, it felt good to see an old friend right now. “Do you want to join me?” I asked, gesturing toward the cafeteria.

He looked at his watch. “I could probably spare a few minutes. The coffee here isn’t great, but at least it’s caffeine.”

“That’s all I need. Jet lag is not my friend.” We ordered our coffees and sat down in a couple of gray metal chairs around a small table.

He was right; the coffee was pretty bad. I made a mental note to get a fresh cup for Wes before I went back up, and to add plenty of sugar.

“How long have you been back?” he asked.

“Just a day,” I said. “Got in last night.”

“It’s a horrible reason to come back home. I can’t imagine how you must be feeling.”

“Not great,” I muttered.

“And Wes being released . . . was that supposed to happen before . . .”

“Yeah. They were going to pick him up. But I’m his new guardian now, so they have to do the family meeting with me before they can let him out, and they did some extra tests, and it’s all a little . . . overwhelming.”

“I can imagine,” he said. “And it’s been really . . . busy here lately, so things are probably taking longer than usual.”

“Why
is
it so busy?” I asked. “I especially noticed it over in the psych ward. I’ve never seen the hospital like this. It’s frightening.”

He frowned into his coffee cup. “There’s been a rise in . . . erratic behavior, for lack of a better term. Remember how I have an aunt with schizophrenia? And there’s your brother, of course. It reminds me of that, in a way—as if there’s been an increase in schizophrenia, but that doesn’t make sense. This past week in particular has been intense. A colleague told me that they called in the CDC a few days ago to help figure out what’s happening here.”

“The Centers for Disease Control? That seems a bit over the top, doesn’t it?”

He shrugged. “It’s their job to step in when the state health department feels overwhelmed or out of its league. There’s a staff meeting later today, so hopefully we’ll get an update.”

“What are the symptoms like? You said erratic behavior; what do you mean?”

He hesitated. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but when I heard about your parents . . . well, you deserve to know. Some of the people who’ve been admitted in the past few days are completely withdrawn. Talking to themselves or to people who aren’t there; unable to remember loved ones. Typical symptoms of dementia, except these patients aren’t old. But most of the patients are more like . . .”

“Like Wes.”

“Like Wes at his unmedicated worst,” he admitted.

“So you think the man who killed my parents . . .”

“I can’t say for certain, of course, but it fits the pattern.”

I must have looked stricken, because Kenneth leaned in and said, “Hey, you’ve got enough to worry about. You just focus on taking care of yourself.”

We avoided each other’s gaze for a few seconds. Then he said, “I know this is the last place you want to be.” There was bitterness in his voice, but it was soft, like an echo. “But . . . it’s good to see you again. I just wish it were under better circumstances.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“How are you really?” he asked. “Before all this, I mean. Were you happy?”

I remembered Rob asking me the same thing as we drove from the airport. “I was,” I answered, truthfully. “I don’t know how I’m going to feel . . . going forward.” A sense of unease hovered in my chest. “And you? Are you happy?”

“As happy as a recently divorced single father can be, I suppose.” His eyes crinkled when he smiled.

I flushed. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It was my fault. Workaholics don’t make good husbands, or so I’m told. It’s part of the reason I moved back here with Maisie. She’s five. My mother helps look after her. And I’m trying to be around more. This current . . . whatever it is, it isn’t making that easier. Do you have kids?”

“Me? God, no. I can barely keep houseplants alive.”

He smiled. “I remember that. I bought you a cactus for Christmas one year, and you managed to kill it.”

I stood up. “I should go. I told Wes I’d bring him a coffee.”

“I should go too,” he said, glancing again at his watch.

He waited in silence while I bought another coffee, then walked alongside me to the elevator.

“Well,” I said. “It was good to see you.”

He pulled a card out of the inner pocket of his lab coat and handed it to me. “Listen, I know this is a really hard time for you. If there’s anything you need . . . well, my cell number’s on the card.”

The doors opened and I stepped inside. I slipped his card into my pocket. “Thanks, Kenneth.”

I closed my eyes as the elevator ascended. That was . . . not as bad as it could have been. Awkward, yes. But it had felt good to see him again.

When the doors opened on Wes’s floor, I had to double-check that it was the right one. A half-dozen men and one woman were huddled behind the nurses’ desk, peering at a computer screen over the shoulders of a harried-looking nurse. Two of them were speaking quickly into cell phones pressed to their ears. They were all wearing suits, as though this were a board meeting.

“This can’t be right,” one of them was saying. “Can you run that again?”

The nurse at the desk huffed. “I’ve run it three times,” she said. “I don’t believe it either, but there it is.”

I slipped down the hall to Wes’s room. The security guard outside recognized me and let me in. Wes was sitting in the chair near the window, reading a worn copy of
Fahrenheit 451
.

“Sorry for the wait,” I said. “I ran into Kenneth downstairs.”

“Who’s Kenneth?”

“My old friend from college, remember? You met him once or twice.”

“Oh yeah, that guy. The one you dumped the same time you left me.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Whatever. You don’t look too happy about seeing him,” he said.

“It’s not a big deal. There are more important things going on right now.”

Wes nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, I get that. Relationships are tough.”

“We don’t have a relationship,” I insisted. “Do you have a girlfriend?” I asked, both to change the subject and because I was suddenly curious. I had never given much thought to Wes’s love life.

“Oh yeah. She’s awesome. Her name’s Brandy.”

“Where did you meet her?”

“Church. One of the times they let me go home for the weekend.”

“You met someone at Mom and Dad’s church?” I found that hard to imagine; I couldn’t think of one person under the age of sixty in our parents’ church.

“Nah, I went to the Meeting House downtown. It’s a cool place. You can be yourself there, y’know? If you want to dance, you can dance. If you want to prophesy, you can prophesy. No one gives a shit what you look like. Anyway, I say she’s my girlfriend, but we’re waiting for each other.”

“Waiting . . . to have sex?”

“Nah, man, we’ve done that! But the problem is that she’s married, and she doesn’t believe in divorce. And I’m not a home wrecker. So we can’t be together in the physical realm. But we’re still together in spirit.”

“Um . . .” I was beginning to wish I hadn’t asked . . . but I also had a morbid sense of curiosity. “So how does that work?”

“Well, you know I’m telepathic, right?”

“Uh, right.”

“So is she. So we can talk to each other without being together. She loves me and I love her, but we have to wait until it’s the right time to be together.”

“But what if she doesn’t ever get divorced? What if she grows old with her husband?”

He shrugged. “It’s all in God’s plan. He’ll take care of it.”

I sincerely hoped God’s plan didn’t involve this woman’s husband dying mysteriously anytime soon.

“You want a book? I brought some over with me from my room.” Wes held out a stack of paperbacks. I took them and examined the titles. Most of them were thrillers and mysteries, a genre I’d never really read. But I still had an hour to kill before the family meeting, and there wouldn’t be much point in leaving and then coming back.

“Thanks,” I said, picking one at random and giving the rest back to Wes. “I’m just going to call Uncle Rob first and let him know what’s going on.”

I stepped outside the room and dialed Rob’s cell.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Clare.”

“Hey, Clare, I was starting to worry about you. Everything go okay?”

I filled him in on the change of plans, which he seemed to take in stride. “Ah, bureaucracy. Everything takes longer than it needs to, and we have the pleasure of paying twice as much for it. Speaking of which, you’ll want to talk to your parents’ insurance providers sooner or later.”

“Let’s add it to the list,” I said. “Everything okay on your end?”

“As okay as it can be. You want to head back here after your meeting? Don’t suppose you’ve had a chance to think more about the obituary?”

“Not yet. I’ll come by later and work on it.”

“I’ll see you later then. You remember how to get here?”

“Yeah. See you later.”

I went back into Wes’s room and sat in the unoccupied chair. I opened up the book I’d chosen at random—
Terminal Man
by Michael Crichton. But I couldn’t get further than the title page. I kept glancing up at Wes every few seconds, as though I couldn’t quite believe he was really sitting here in the same room, calmly reading. In less than an hour, I’d be in a meeting with his social worker and psychiatrist. I knew they’d have questions for me. But I had no answers.

I didn’t want to disturb him, so I sat there pretending to read, but all the while my mind was jumping from my parents to Wes to Kenneth and back again. I started composing an obituary in my head, but it all got jumbled up and I didn’t want to get emotional, not now, when there were so many decisions still to be made.

Finally I could take it no longer and stood up. “I have to go to that meeting now.”

Wes grunted. “Tell them to let me the fuck out of here.”

I tried to look encouraging. “I’ll do my best. I’m going to go to Uncle Rob’s afterward . . . so I’ll see you in the morning, okay? Everything should be clear for you to leave then.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Wes shifted his chair so that his back was to me and returned to his book.

As I stepped into the hallway, I heard his voice. “Clare.”

I stuck my head back inside. “Yeah?”

He turned in his chair to face me. His light-blue eyes were wide and earnest—and afraid.

“Don’t leave me here.”

I nodded at the security guard, who locked the door.