My Lost Daughter (18 page)

“I'm afraid that's not possible.”

“What do you mean?”

“Shana signed a voluntary commitment order. She also gave us explicit instructions that she not be contacted by you or anyone else during the initial stage of her therapy.” She paused and waited for Lily's reaction. “Your daughter is an adult, Ms. Forrester. Her insurance will cover her treatment here at Whitehall, so there's no reason for you to be involved. Now, if you will excuse me, I have other matters to attend to.” She stood to leave.

“Don't you dare walk away from me!” Lily shot out. “I know my daughter and she would never sign herself into a place like this. I demand to see the commitment papers.”

“Certainly,” she said, removing a piece of paper from her clipboard. “Is that your daughter's signature?”

Lily's hands trembled on the paper. There was no doubt it was Shana's signature. She stood and her fingers involuntarily opened, the document floating on a pocket of air to the floor. Ignoring Michelle Newman, she walked toward the front door and exited the hospital.

 

Dr. Charles Morrow shuffled across the dark parking lot of Clearwater General Hospital. A reflection of light in his shiny black leather shoes caught his attention and he looked up at the sky. Among the scattering of stars was the full moon and he gazed at it with longing. Where he should be right now was behind his telescope unlocking the mysteries of the universe. As a young man, his dream was to become an astrophysicist. But his mother was convinced he would become the next Sigmund Freud. By the time the initials M.D. appeared beside his name, his mother was dead. Just as well, he thought. In the world of psychiatry, he was no more than a name in the yellow pages.

In every respect, Morrow was a failure. His wife had left him, obtaining a court order prohibiting him from seeing his son. He was teetering on the brink of financial ruin. Even his nest egg had disappeared.

His most profitable enterprise was the thirty thousand shares of stock he held in Whitehall, a privately owned and operated psychiatric hospital located fifteen miles from Clearwater General. The place had been a gold mine until someone alleged they were picking up drunks and homeless people off the streets in New York and depositing them in Whitehall. Every year they would send a few employees to Manhattan in the early winter months, where they canvassed homeless people who would qualify for Medicare or SSI and enticed them with postcards of sunny beaches in California. Once the attorney general established clear proof of such activities, the government would stop picking up the tab.

Employers and insurers all over the country were trying to rein in health care costs and were becoming more vigilant in rooting out fraudulent and inept providers. HMOs had become Whitehall's worst nightmare.

The heydays were over.

A hospital in Los Angeles, which had been operating along the same lines as Whitehall, had recently made the press for sending out security guards to pick up insured patients from their homes and transport them to their facility. Whitehall was not quite as blatant. They didn't go to people's homes, nor did they try to coerce other patients into coughing up the names of their drinking or drug buddies who had insurance with the right kind of benefits. Whitehall caught most of their cases from emergency rooms. Being in the right place at the right time was the name of the game.

Because Morrow had to see patients at Whitehall during the day, he searched for potential patients at night. This was the sixth hospital he'd visited tonight. He was bone tired and thus far had nothing to show for his efforts.

The automatic doors swung open. The three nurses and the intern standing at the nursing station turned their heads in his direction.
At this hour the staff was eager for a serious case, possibly an accident victim or a coronary. The time went faster that way.

Recognizing Dr. Morrow, the three nurses returned to their charts. At five-nine, the psychiatrist was a thin, edgy man in his midforties. His dark framed glasses needed to be adjusted to fit his face, as they always seemed to rest precariously on the tip of his nose. His limp brown hair fell several inches below his ears, and his normal mode of dress consisted of a white dress shirt and black slacks, the case for his cell phone clipped to his belt.

Morrow was about to give up when a haggard-looking young intern walked up and pointed to the supply room. Once they were both inside with the door shut, the intern began speaking. “You're just the man I've been looking for, Morrow,” Harvey Beckman said, smiling. “I've got the perfect situation for you. It's going to cost you more than the usual five hundred, though.”

“You know how it works, Harvey,” Morrow told him, shoving his glasses back on his nose. “You don't get paid until the patient is admitted and the insurance benefits are verified. The last guy you referred was good for only two weeks and about twenty percent of our charges. We had to sue him for the balance.”

“This is the real deal,” the intern insisted. “We're talking Blue Cross PPO. Not only that, take a look at what we found in this broad's purse.” He reached under a stack of linens and pulled out a black bag. “We could open our own jewelry store.”

“Christ!” Morrow exclaimed, his brows furrowing as he stared at the numerous pieces of what appeared to be expensive jewelry resting in a pile of tissue paper. “Why are you hiding her purse in the supply room? Get one of the nurses to lock it up with the rest of the patient's property. We're not thieves, Beckman. You want to end up in prison?”

“I wasn't suggesting we steal anything,” he answered, closing the purse and placing it on a shelf. “I just wanted you to know that this lady is worth some serious money.”

“Give me a rundown.”

“Came in by ambulance around nine o'clock last night complaining
of chest pains. EKG was normal. Her blood work isn't back yet. At first, we thought it was an overdose. Come here, look at this.” Beckman reached behind him and retrieved a plastic bag, dumping the contents onto the shelf. “We found these when we were looking for her insurance card. Let's see, we've got empty bottles of Percodan, codeine, and Darvon. Regular little drugstore here. Guess she faked the chest pains to get more narcotics.”

A look of pleasure spread across Morrow's face. Things were looking up. “Anything else?” he asked as they left the supply room.

“Everything you need, my man,” Beckman continued, glancing toward one of the examination rooms. “She even came strolling out with her ass hanging out of her hospital gown. I put a guard on her door to keep her from leaving.”

Just then, a voice rang out and Morrow turned toward the sound. Beckman laughed. “That's your gold mine. If I hear ‘Amazing Grace' one more time, I'm going to gag her. Reminds me of all those boring Sundays I spent in church when I was a kid. Take her, Charley. She's all yours.” He slapped the woman's file into the psychiatrist's hands as he walked away. “Don't forget my money. I expect to be paid by the end of the week. Oh, I forgot, she claims her husband is a billionaire, so if you get to keep her longer than the usual six months, you owe me at least a grand. It's double for double, my man.”

Morrow took a seat at one of the nursing stations to complete the paperwork. Perfect. Empty pill bottles, bizarre and erratic behavior. Singing hymns was bizarre enough for his needs, and since the divorce, his needs were substantial. What he needed was money. The intercom came on. Morrow heard a woman's voice pleading for a nurse. A slender, blond RN leaned over from the other side of the counter. “Dr. Beckman instructed us not to enter the patient's room until he had a chance to consult with you,” she told him, a concerned look on her face. “I feel sorry for her. Maybe we should at least give her something to sleep.”

“The woman's psychotic,” Morrow said, tapping his pen on the counter. “For all we know, she could be dangerous. How can we
give her medication until the lab reports come back and we determine what medications she's already taken? You don't want to overdose her, do you?” He paused, scribbling instructions in a chart. “I'll have someone pick up Mrs. Hopkins and transport her to Whitehall by nine tomorrow morning.”

“Fine,” the nurse said. “Doesn't the patient have to sign a voluntary commitment order before you can move her? She's conscious and outside of being somewhat bedraggled and scared when the ambulance brought her in, she seems perfectly normal.”

“Are you a psychiatrist?” Morrow snapped, outraged that the nurse would question him. “You do your job and I'll do mine. Are we clear?” Although there were a number of interns at Clearwater who provided him with referrals, most of the nursing staff was unaware that anything irregular was going on.

The blond nurse dropped her head and walked away. Morrow thumbed through the patient's chart. His cell phone rang and he saw that it was Whitehall. “Dr. Morrow.”

Michelle Newman said, “We have a new patient.”

“How long do we have?”

“Her insurance covers up to six months of inpatient treatment.”

“Excellent.” Morrow started adding dollar signs in his head.

“Oh, and I used the picture this time. I'm getting pretty good with Photoshop.”

“Good work, Michelle. You may meet your monthly quota after all.”

FRIDAY, JANUARY 15
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

The woman with the brown curly hair who looked like a bank teller told Shana that she had to sign a release of liability before the hospital could discharge her since in their professional opinion, she should be admitted. Shana was so furious and exhausted from fighting the muscled goon, she would have signed anything. After she scribbled her name on the form, the woman left, leaving her in the room alone.

Shana got up and tried the door, finding it locked. “Shit, damn, fuck!” she yelled, kicking the door as hard as she could until her feet began throbbing.

Her mother couldn't have her committed. She was an adult, for God's sake. Why would she want her to be in this place anyway? All she'd talked about was her graduating from Stanford with a law degree. If she didn't get back to her studies, everything would be ruined. She'd flunk out and have to find another school that would accept her. Then the Stanford diploma she had worked so hard for wouldn't be on the wall of her law office.

Her mother had completely lost it this time. Yeah, Shana was upset about breaking up with Brett but she knew she'd meet someone
else eventually. Having a boyfriend was a huge distraction. She had to tell them what she was doing every minute of the day. And there were all those ridiculous text messages. “How you doing, baby?” or “I can't get your boobs off my mind today.” Brett was the jealous kind and became paranoid even when she went out with her girlfriends. All he thought about was sex, sex, and more sex. She enjoyed having orgasms but sometimes guys were so inept and self-centered, she was seldom satisfied. Her vibrator never failed her.

She just hated being dumped. Ever since she could remember, she'd been the most popular girl at school. Although she knew what to say and do to get people to like her, somewhere deep in her subconscious, anyone with a penis was a potential rapist. Brett made her watch porno movies, which she despised. Almost all of them contained scenes that were degrading to women. In reality, the whole porno industry was degrading to women. Did men really believe girls wanted them to come on their face? And what girl really wanted a guy to fuck her asshole? Then there was the proverbial threesome, every man's fantasy. At least Brett hadn't pushed for that, although he had mentioned it on several occasions, mostly just before they had sex.

Men were disgusting pigs. Why did she even want one? Because it was normal and she didn't want to spend her life alone. Someone had to wash the car and carry heavy things, and two incomes were mandatory today if you wanted a good life.

Where in the hell was the woman?

Since there was nothing else to do, she crawled into the bed and entered into the only kind of sleep she got lately. Her eyes would close to slits and she could faintly hear sounds, but she wasn't really asleep and she wasn't truly awake. She called it twilight sleep.

When she came to hours later, only inches away loomed the strangest-looking face she had ever seen. “My name is Peggy.” The woman's voice sounded as if it had been recorded on worn-out tape, or like a children's toy in need of a new battery. The toy she remembered was called a See 'n Say. Her mother gave her one for
Christmas one year. When she turned it to the picture of a particular animal and pulled the string, she heard the sound the animal made. She repeated the woman's name in her mind: Peggy. Then she knew the sound that would come out: the sound of a pig. She looked up again and saw two huge nostrils set in a mound of putrid pink flesh.

Miss Piggy spoke: “Welcome to Whitehall.”

 

Lily drove back to Shana's apartment in a daze. Once she was inside, she started tearing the place apart, looking for Shana's drug stash. She took a broom and shoved it underneath the beds, both in Shana's room and the one her former roommate had used. The only thing she found was a bra and a shoe.

She then shoved the mattresses off the beds onto the floor, but there was nothing there. Shana's drawers were a mess and she desperately needed new underwear. With the kind of money she'd been sending her, she could buy a lingerie store.

Tears streamed from her eyes. Had Shana committed herself just to spite her, knowing she was ruining any chances she had of graduating with her class? Why did she hate her? All she'd ever done was love her and try to protect her, give her a decent life.

It might have been the wrong thing to do, but Lily had killed Bobby Hernandez so he would never be able to hurt Shana again. She didn't expect Shana to appreciate it, and in reality, knowing her mother had committed such an act might be one of her unresolved conflicts.