Blind Spot (5 page)

“You have yellow hair like the morning room,” Gibby said, pleased with himself. The lady’s lips moved. He looked closer but wasn’t quite sure if they did. Was she trying to talk to him? “I hope you don’t have Zimer’s disease,” he said. “I want to talk to you.”

“I want to talk to you, too,” she said.

Gibby was even more pleased. But her lips didn’t move, did they? He wasn’t sure. He was pretty sure she’d talked, though. Pretty sure…He wished she would turn her head and look at him but she stared straight ahead. He finally got up from his chair and stood in front of her. He had to squeeze down and squat to see into her eyes. They were blue. His favorite color! She didn’t look like she saw him, though. She kinda looked empty. A little like Maribel.

And just like that Maribel sat down in his chair and started laughing.

Gibby threw back his head and screamed and lunged for her.

Claire missed Gibby’s second bout of screaming as she was listening to Jamie Lou Breene’s account of her latest escapades. An outpatient, she suffered from narcissism in a severe form, complicated by a bipolar disorder. When she was “up,” she went on crazy sprees that had landed her a number of stints at the hospital. When she was down, she was almost suicidal. The only thing saving her was, ironically, her own narcissism. She couldn’t take her own life.

She was also incapable of accepting blame or consequence and had run through a number of psychiatrists before being placed with Claire.

“I woke up in Salem at some place. Don’t remember how I got there,” Jamie was saying with a hint of pride, lifting her chin. She’d been pretty; she still was. But at thirty-three, with years of wild behavior and hard living behind her, she was showing signs of wear. Sometimes, on her meds, she could keep herself under control. Most times she just let herself ricochet from one disaster to the other.

Claire tried hard to keep her from hurting herself and others, but the woman was a ticking time bomb. She wouldn’t stay on her meds. She hated the dulled feeling that robbed her of herself.

“What kind of place?” Claire asked.

“Some guy’s apartment,” she said with a shrug. “He was nice enough, I guess. I mighta had sex with him. Pretty sure I did.”

“Did you use precautions?”

“I doubt it.”

“Dangerous behavior, Jamie.”

Her family, an ex-husband, a seven-year-old son, and a sometime alcoholic father, had all tried to help but they were falling away from a problem that wouldn’t, maybe couldn’t, be corrected.

“I’ll get the tests again,” she said. “I’ll…get on my meds.”

“You have to mean it. You have to follow through.”

“I know, I know. I’m going to change.”

There was no conviction in her voice. Or maybe there was, but Claire couldn’t hear it any longer. “It’s not easy to completely change your life, Jamie. Changes are incremental. This isn’t a dress rehearsal. We’ve talked about this.”

“I said I was going to change.”

Claire wrote a number down on a piece of paper. “If you get in a situation like this last one again and you need help, call me.”

Jamie took the paper and stared down at it. “You don’t believe me.”

“I want you to be safe. Everyone should have someone they can call.” And Jamie had just about run out of those kind of friends.

She left about twenty minutes later, promising to change, promising that she was definitely better this time, promising she wouldn’t need to call, promising, promising, promising.

Incremental changes…. Claire just hoped those changes were in the positive direction.

She glanced at the clock. She dealt with outpatients like Jamie, mostly, but she was also familiar with the live-ins who resided on this side of Halo Valley, like Bradford Gibson. Side B was a different story and out of Claire’s field of work. She’d only crossed to it twice in the three years she’d been at the facility; once as an initial introduction, and once when Heyward Marsdon III had been taken there kicking and screaming and demanding she be with him, much to his family’s disgust.

Claire had wanted nothing to do with Heyward, either. But she had been his therapist and she had been part of the incident. One moment he was saying how much he loved Melody, then he was threatening to kill her and Claire was trying to talk him down, then he pulled a knife from his pocket and slit Melody’s throat in one smooth movement. So fast. So horrifyingly fast.

Do it,
Melody had said, and Heyward had complied.

Later, Heyward had screamed for both Melody and Claire. He couldn’t quite fathom that Melody was gone, let alone at his own hand. He’d begged for Claire, too, though his family did their best to keep her away from him. Not that she was anxious to be with him, either. She stayed away until the day he was moved from the jail cell where they’d first thrown him to his more permanent home at Side B. Crossing from Side A to Side B had been like being forced down a gangplank. Her steps were slow as she headed down one of the two skyways that led to the back building, through the guard’s station with its security cameras and deadlocks. When she reached the room where Heyward was detained, he stared at her beseechingly and begged to see Melody. Claire had quietly told him Melody was gone. He shook his head in denial. He didn’t remember any of it. His family all eyed her with suspicion, and his grandfather, Heyward Marsdon Sr., glared down at her from icy eyes beneath white, bushy eyebrows. Heyward Marsdon Jr., fifty-ish, whose distaste of the hospital showed on his face though he tried very hard to be neutral, was less interested in Claire and more in his son, the way it should be. He wanted Heyward III out of Side B. Period. There was no real interest in helping his son cope; he only cared how Heyward III’s incarceration would affect the family name.

Claire hadn’t felt really secure until she was back past the guard’s station. She knew the histories of some of Side B’s inmates and she knew very well that she would never be equipped to treat them in any way. They were seen by professionals who thrived with those kind of patients: the irredeemable, in Claire’s opinion. Monsters that they were, they were treated humanely. Sometimes it even helped a little, most times it didn’t.

Did Heyward Marsdon III fit in there? Claire wasn’t really quite sure. He was a danger, definitely. A schizophrenic, plagued by visions, acting on the crazed counsel of the demons within his own mind. In his lucid moments, he understood right and wrong, life and death. In the throes of his disease he was a maniac. But everyone save Claire had believed he was on his meds and in control enough for outpatient treatment. Claire had worried about that; she’d wanted him admitted into Side A where she and the rest of the staff could monitor him. But, as ever, the Marsdon family had pressured the administration and they, in turn, had pressured Claire. When she’d waffled about whether he should be admitted, a momentary indecision that she’d rescinded almost immediately, she’d been brushed aside and Heyward had been released. No, she hadn’t sanctioned it, but nobody wanted to remember that now.

And for a while Heyward had stayed on his meds and managed a fairly productive life, going the charity rounds with his well-connected family, who swept his “little problem” under the rug, as if it had been cured, or more likely, never existed. But then Heyward met Melody Stone, who was young, beautiful, and completely screwed up. Claire had continued to see Heyward professionally, a condition of his release from Side A, and Heyward had brought her Melody, who viewed Claire as an interference between her and her boyfriend. Melody was not Claire’s patient, merely another piece of the Heyward Marsdon family/friend picture. But Claire saw that Melody needed help. She had a complete disaffect: she was unable to relate to anyone, even Heyward.

Claire told Freeson, Avanti, and others about Melody, but since she wasn’t a Halo Valley patient, she wasn’t their concern, and the powers that be advised Claire to treat Heyward III and forget about his messed-up girlfriend.

Do it…

It was a recipe for disaster. That last night that Heyward brought Melody to Claire’s office he swore his love for Melody, but his eyes were deep hollows, staring somewhere past Claire’s ear to a distance beyond what Claire could see. Melody was passive at first. But she was uncomfortable, scratching her arms, moaning a little. Claire suspected she was high on something.

Suddenly Heyward said, “I hear them! They found us!”

“It’s just us, Heyward,” Claire said, aware he was fighting a delusion.

“They’re here.”

His voice was hushed. He was holding Melody tightly. She wriggled a little in his arms, but her eyes were stretched wide, as if she were also looking for the evil beings pursuing them.

Claire said calmly, “I’m going to call a friend to join us.”

“No.”

“Would you like to speak to someone from your family?” She let her hand move toward the phone. “No!”

“Are you sure?”

“They want me to die. I embarrass them.”

“They don’t want you to die, Heyward.”

“Shhh!” A harsh whisper. “They’re coming!”

Melody leaned into him, singing a little tune, her eyes closing. A lullaby, Claire realized much later.

Claire’s fingers touched the receiver. “Heyward, it’s late. I was just on my way home. I’m calling a good friend of mine.”

“You’re calling the police!”

“No.”

Melody’s lashes fluttered and she opened her eyes. She fixed her gaze on Heyward, looking at his profile.

Heyward trembled violently. A look of intense fear crossed his face. “You!” he shrieked. “You!” He was looking at Melody in horror.

“Don’t,” Claire said, holding out a hand, sensing true danger.

“Do it,” Melody whispered into his ear.

And Heyward Marsdon III ripped a knife from his pocket, slit Melody Stone’s throat, and came for Claire.

Tragedy. Disaster. Horror.

The news hit the airwaves and the hospital scrambled to cover its ass. All the right words were uttered. All the careful platitudes of sorrow and regret mouthed over and over again. Heyward was a killer, but a victim of his disease, too. The Marsdons didn’t like that angle, but that’s how Pauline Kirby and her news crew played it, along with a healthy dose of all the personal tragedy that had plagued the Marsdon family for generations. It made good television. It placed the hospital in the background and the unlucky Marsdons in front. It worked.

And Melody Stone?

Apart from Langdon Stone, Melody’s hotheaded brother, no one seemed to care too much about Melody herself. She was just the woman Heyward Marsdon III killed. Almost nameless.

Do it.

In the first few moments after her rescue, in a stream of nearly incoherent words, Claire related to Wade from security what had transpired in her office. She told him what Melody said. She told him everything. But much later, when she was asked for her account of the incident, she couldn’t make herself reveal Melody’s last words to Freeson and Avanti. It seemed…unfair and unnecessary at the time. Still, that reckoning was yet to come, because Melody’s illness was part of the whole unfortunate series of events that led to her death.

“Claire?” a voice called from the hallway, breaking into her thoughts. She glanced up to see Alison duck her head inside the room. “Jane Doe is in the middle of a fracas in the morning room. Gibby’s mad at Maribel for taking his chair, and Jane’s chair got pushed out of the way with her in it.”

“What’s she doing in the morning room?” Claire jumped to her feet. “Is she all right?”

“Dr. Freeson told Darlene to take her there. She didn’t fall out of the chair. She just hung on to the sides, so she’s okay. Just thought you should know.”

“Thank you.” Claire was already on her way out the door. She glanced at her watch. Another appointment in thirty minutes.

She hung on to the sides.

Even though Freeson had put the patient in a situation she might not have been ready for, Jane Doe had sensed danger and had recognized what to do to save herself. A great sign that maybe she was coming out of her catatonia. Encouraging, even if it galled Claire to admit that Freeson might not have been completely wrong.

The morning room looked deceptively serene when she reached it. Lester, an octogenarian with dementia, was rocking on his feet in the corner and looking out the window toward Side B, mumbling softly. Maribel, an Alzheimer’s patient who was wily and intuitive, was sitting at a table, clutching a doll, but her eyes were sliding back and forth, as if she were looking for some kind of opening to make mischief. Two older women were seated in wheelchairs and talking quietly. They were Mrs. Merle and Mrs. Tanaway, and they enjoyed taking imaginary tea together. Thomas McAvoy, a borderline personality, glared at the two of them as if they were plotting against him, but he always looked that way. Gibby was seated in his favorite chair, and beside him, in the chair she apparently had grabbed onto, Jane Doe was staring silently toward the television.

Greg Fanning, one of the orderlies, asked Claire, “You here to see Cat?”

“Cat?”

He shot a look toward Jane Doe. “Cat Atonic,” he dead-panned. “Better name than Jane Doe.”

Claire was noncommital, as she didn’t want to encourage Greg, who took things to the nth degree sometimes. But he was good with the patients, and that was the most important thing.

“Hello,” Claire greeted the new patient. “My name’s Claire.”

“I’m Bradford,” Gibby interrupted. “Don’t you has a name?”

“Call her Cat,” Greg said.

“Cat,” Gibby repeated.

The woman in question stared straight ahead. Her hair was blond, straight, and hung down to lie just past her shoulders. Her eyes were a crystal blue. Brilliant. Icelandic. Claire wondered who her people were, her family, her friends. It had been over a week since she’d been found, so where were they?

“You’re safe here. Your room is down the hall,” Claire reminded her. “Would you like to watch television?”

“She don’t talk,” Gibby said. He was gripped onto the sides of his special chair as if expecting someone to steal it from him, which happened at least once or twice every day.