The Blessed (5 page)

As she was taken through the patient corridor, she snuck peeks in the rooms. Having never been in a psych ward before, curiosity got the best of her, and she couldn’t help but rubberneck. Besides, all the girls in the tiny dormitory-style rooms were doing the same to her.

Face after face, all hopeless-looking and lost. Some just staring into nothingness and others just . . . waiting. She felt she had nothing in common with them, except she did.

The nurse gestured for her to enter an office until the doctor could see her. It wasn’t like the movie psychiatrist’s office she’d been expecting, with the heavy drapes, thick carpet, comfy couch, and box of tissues. A smoldering pipe
burning cherry tobacco and wall-to-wall bookcases featuring Freud and Janov were nowhere to be found either. The room was tiny, sterile, painted beige, and harshly lit—a perfect match to the hallway, except for the noticeable lack of religious iconography that peppered the rest of the hospital. No statues, paintings, no Eyes-Follow-You-Jesus 3-D portraits. Against the wall stood a glass-doored, stainless-steel apothecary cabinet filled with old charts and replicas of brains, whole and cross-sectioned. She took a seat in the chair, a padded pea green job with metal armrests, across from an institutional desk and standard issue high-back office chair. There was a nameplate on the desk but all she could read from this angle was
CHIEF OF PSYCHIATRY
. She was seeing the boss.

Agnes soon found herself mindlessly picking at the puscolored foam lurking just beneath the old, cracked leather seat covering, patience not being one of her virtues. If she wasn’t picking at that, it would have been her wounds, but they were tightly bandaged enough that she couldn’t do much more damage. The austerity of the surroundings made her more and more nervous and she found herself thinking about the boy in the hall. He was so young to be so whacked-out. Until now, she imagined her youth, her obviously defiant nature might help to put her recent behavior into perspective, to excuse it as a momentary lapse of judgment, and that she’d be let go with some kind of warning. Clearly,
she
wasn’t mentally ill.

The door sprang open and a well-groomed middle-aged
man in an old-fashioned white lab coat charged in. Agnes flicked away the last bits of foam from under her fingernails and sat at attention, hands clasped daintily over her abdomen. She noticed that her charm was peeking out from her bandage and quickly pulled her hair around and over her wrist to cover it.

“Hello . . . ”

He paused. Scanning her chart to find her name.

“Agnes . . . I’m Dr. Frey. Chief of psychiatry.”

“So I see,” she said, unimpressed, tossing her gaze toward his desk plate. “Working so late on Halloween night?” Agnes asked.

“One of my busiest nights of the year,” Frey replied, smiling.

One thing she hated about herself was her impulsivity. She tended to make quick judgments, and already she didn’t like him. There was something about the rote politeness and elitist formality in his manner that put her off, but then she wasn’t exactly planning to open up either. Or maybe it was simply that he hadn’t bothered to find out her name before the appointment. Whatever. The doctor wasn’t much for small talk, it appeared. Neither was she. Agnes decided to cooperate for as long as it was in her interest. She wanted out.

“I’m sure you’ve heard this before but—” Agnes sputtered.

“But you’re not crazy,” he interrupted, matter-of-factly finishing her sentence without even looking up at her.

“I don’t belong here,” she almost pleaded, leaning in toward him with her hands outstretched, inadvertently
revealing the bloodstains from her self-inflicted wounds.

“Are those tattoos, Miss Fremont?” He looked over the top of his glasses. “No? Then you probably do belong here right now.”

Agnes pulled her arms back and dropped her chin, unable to look him in the eye, but she could still hear him and he kept on talking.

“It says in your file that you are a good student, very social, never been in trouble to mention, no history of depression.” He flipped back and forth between the stapled pages in a manila folder. “So what changed?”

Agnes did not respond, shifting uncomfortably in her chair from both the pain of the question and the charm.

“Do you want to tell me about him?”

“Why does it always have to be about a guy?” Agnes blurted, trying to dam the tears that said otherwise.

“Because it usually is,” said Frey.

Agnes paused. She recalled in an instant almost every relationship she’d ever had, as far back as her first crush. There was definitely a pattern. They didn’t last. Even her friends were starting to joke that she couldn’t hold on to a guy. As far as she was concerned, her heart was just too big for those boys to handle. If she could just find one who could, everything would be okay.

“My mom thinks I fall in love too easily.”

“Do you?”

“I just follow my heart. I always have.”

“That is a virtuous quality. But it almost led you to a dead end, Agnes.”

Agnes shrugged indifferently. “When relationships end, it’s like a death. There are always scars.”

“It is easy to be disappointed when you feel so deeply, isn’t it?”

Agnes wasn’t usually so cynical, but the doctor had hit a nerve.

“Yes.”

“What’s his name?”

“Sayer.”

“Tell me about Sayer.”

Agnes was a little weirded-out talking openly with a nurse standing behind her—placed there mostly for the doctor’s protection, legally and otherwise.

A witness.

“Well, according to my mom . . . ,” she began.

He waved her off and leaned forward, his chair creaking. “What about according to you?” He paused. “According to Agnes?”

“She wants to run my life because she hates hers,” Agnes exploded.

“I get that you and your mother disagree about things, but I asked you about the guy.” He was intent. Intense. What started off as an evaluation was snowballing into an interrogation.

It wasn’t until that moment that Agnes realized that she hadn’t given her temp boyfriend a thought since she’d been admitted, her interest in him draining out of her veins along with her blood the night before. “Oh, Sayer wasn’t really that important. Just the most recent.”

“Not important?” Frey squinted her wraps into focus. “I can’t help you if you aren’t honest with me.”

“I liked him. Okay, I liked him a lot. But my mom thought he was poison, just like every other guy I date. It put so much pressure on the . . . relationship. He couldn’t stand it anymore. Neither could I. Obviously.”

“What about him was wrong?”

“Everything, apparently. It’s not even worth talking about.”

“But it’s worth killing yourself over?” Dr. Frey probed. “Are you angry that it didn’t work out or that she might have been right?”

She was starting to feel like her mom and the doctor shared a brain. He was reading her, pushing her places she didn’t want to go, and she didn’t like it. “Maybe both. But I believe in love.”

“Did you feel pressure to have sex?”

“I didn’t say sex. I said love. True love.”

“Do you think that may be a bit too idealistic at your age?”

“How old was Juliet?” she shot back.

He paused, noting her quick-wittedness, especially under the circumstances. It wasn’t a medical diagnosis, but it occurred to him that she could probably be a handful.

“But that’s just fiction, Agnes. Fantasy. And look how it turned out.”

“Without dreams there are only nightmares, Doctor.”

Agnes felt she’d schooled the expert.

“There are other ways to solve problems, to cope with
them. Therapy, for example,” Dr. Frey explained. “Suicide is not a solution.”

She took it in, wondering seriously how much of this attempt was a suicide bid or simply a way to get revenge—to hurt Sayer for cheating, to hurt her mom for not being supportive—by hurting herself.

“I’m not sure there would even be a need for therapy,” Agnes said, “if everyone had someone to love who loved them back equally. Unconditionally.”

Dr. Frey smiled at her naïveté, or at least that’s how she saw it. Clearly, for him, love was not the only answer.

“What do you think happens after we die, Doctor?” she asked, her attention shifting to the brain models neatly displayed in the apothecary cabinet.

“I think you are in a better position to answer that question than I am, Agnes,” Frey said, feeling agitated, as if Agnes were trying to get to him. “You came pretty close tonight.”

“I mean, you certainly talk to patients all the time who’ve tried to kill themselves or had some kind of out-of-body experience.”

“I’m afraid the afterlife is above my pay grade,” Frey explained coolly. “I’m a scientist. I don’t spend a lot of time speculating about things I can’t observe, reproduce, or prove.”

“Life is probably more of an out-of-body experience, I guess,” she said. “But aren’t you curious?”

“I can only verify the biochemical processes that occur at
the moment of death. The collective firing off of synapses, the death of brain cells from oxygen deprivation. If you’re looking for an explanation for the light at the end of the tunnel, that’s it.”

“In your opinion,” she clarified.

“That’s what you asked me for, isn’t it? I’m sorry if it’s not what you wanted to hear.”

“I guess we all find out, eventually, who’s right. Who’s wrong.”

“Perhaps, but there’s no rush, right, Miss Fremont?”

The more they spoke, the more she hurt. Couldn’t be the pain meds wearing off yet; she’d just gotten shot up with a ton downstairs. Agnes thought she might even be bleeding, but didn’t dare expose the bracelet in front of him. Exactly why, she couldn’t say. Anyway, the boy had been so secretive about it and she didn’t want to get him in trouble.

“Are you all right?” He nodded to the nurse to note her distress for the record.

“I’m fine. Really. I can do this.”

“We can wrap this up. . . . ”

Agnes swallowed hard. “No. So you’re saying we’re like any machine, a car engine or a computer breaking down suddenly.” She saw a wry smile on the psychiatrist’s face. “Is that what you think?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not very romantic.”

“No,” he replied. “But it’s honest.”

“Then why work in a Catholic hospital?” she asked. “Isn’t that hypocritical?”

“It’s where I’m needed right now.”

The pain of her wrists was searing and Agnes couldn’t continue even if she’d wanted to.

Frey made a few notes in her file and closed it, handing a prescription order to the nurse.

“Are you going to let me go?” Agnes asked, returning to the matter at hand. “Or is my mom going to commit me?”

“That’s a bit drastic.”

“You don’t know my mom.”

“I expect you will be released tomorrow, but I will need to keep you overnight,” he said, eyeing her wrist. “For observation.”

“Like one of your experiments?”

“You wouldn’t be the first.” He extended his hand almost to force her to reach for his. “Nice to meet you.”

7
Lucy rubbed her eyes, tossed her keys on the table, kicked off her spiked heels, crawled onto the couch on her belly, and logged on to her laptop. She adjusted the contrast on the screen to see it more clearly and pulled it toward her. The Web address appeared as she typed it. She hit enter and waited anxiously for the screen to change. She’d been stealing Wi-Fi from another tenant’s unsecure account for ages, and access was not a guarantee. Since she’d been on her own, she’d gotten good at cutting corners and funneling all her disposable cash into her outward appearance.

“No passwords make for good neighbors,” Lucy said to herself as the website loaded, filling the entire screen. There it was on the home page. Just as Jesse said.

Breaking now: LUnaCY

Has LULU really lost it? Her mind, that is? Downtown Party Girl LUcky LUcy Ambrose sure did live up to her moniker last night as she was carted from just-opened Brooklyn burlesque hot spot BAT in the wee hours by EMTs and then transported to the Perpetual Help Hospital in Cobble Hill. The pAArty girl was at the club in the VIP room celebrating hAArd at their Halloween couture costume benefit, and what happened next was downright whorrifying! Those close to her say she was found classy smashed, passed out on the floor of the MEN’S bathroom and that she received treatment on the scene. She was released from the hospital this morning for an undisclosed condition. The NYPD were dispatched to Perpetual Help to interview her. Neither the celebutante nor hospital spokesman were available for comment.

Status: DEVELOPING!

Click
HERE
for an exclusive photo gallery of LULU arriving at the club earlier that night.

As she scanned the page, she nodded approvingly. The photos were good, which meant mainly that it was big. And
they’d gotten a clear shot of her new shoes and bag. That was money. And placement, which meant more free stuff.

“That will travel,” Lucy said matter-of-factly, uploading the link to all her websites. “Heart it, bitches.”

Lucy began to click through all the other gossip sites. And there it was. Despite it being her best coverage to date, she had a sick feeling in her stomach. Even her favorite pastime—judging others—wasn’t comforting her. She’d had an epiphany while thumbing through the plethora of tabloids that had piled up on her comforter. Rather than just flip through the pictures of stars at awards shows, on vacation, clothes shopping, eating lunch, and getting jealous, Lucy slowed down and spent an extra second staring at each photo. The longer she looked, the uglier they became, and the more enjoyable the experience became for her.