Wildwood Road (25 page)

“What happened to her, Tom?”

Barnes shrugged, but he met Michael's gaze again. “I don't know. She was the kindest person you'd ever meet, but she was just never the same after that. You won't get much from her now but nastiness, but if you want to talk to her you'll find her over at Pentucket Hospital. She's a permanent resident in the psych ward there.”

He began to close the door even as he spoke, disappearing from view. “You'd better hurry. Visiting hours are over at nine.”

T
EDDY FELT LIKE A BURGLAR
in the Danskys’ house. He sat on the sofa watching television, the volume on low, and surfed channels with the remote control. Nothing seemed to catch his attention. The strangeness of the situation was simply too distracting.

Her behavior is erratic,
Michael had said.
She knows something is wrong with her,
but . . . look, if she does anything stupid . . . she kind of scratched up her chest. If she tries to hurt herself again, just call the police.

Well, what
is
wrong with her?
Teddy had wanted to know.

Some kind of chemical imbalance, I think. It's hard to explain.

It sounded plausible enough. Put aside the phone call at dinner time and the urgency and there was no reason Teddy should have doubted him. There were all kinds of drugs these days for depression and bipolar disorder and all that kind of shit. He figured it was something like that. But where the hell was Michael off to, if what Jillian really needed was to see her doctor?

Teddy hadn't asked. If Michael had wanted him to know, he would have volunteered the information. In the scheme of things it was not a major inconvenience for him, and so Teddy had decided it was best to just be a friend, and help out, no questions asked. Not now, at least. Later, if it didn't seem too sensitive a subject, he would want to know what was going on.

Yet the longer he sat in Michael and Jillian's living room, the more he felt that something was
off
. He did not feel welcome. Though he was sort of hungry, he didn't get up and raid the fridge or the cupboards. Teddy had been to the house dozens of times and normally felt very much at home there. He ought to have been able to grab some chips and a beer if he wanted them. But the whole situation was just too odd for him, and so he planted himself on the sofa with the remote and tried not to get comfortable. Once, in the seventh grade, he had left for school and purposefully missed the bus, hiding out until his parents had left for work. But his day off had been completely spoiled by the feeling that at any moment one of them might come home unexpectedly and catch him where he wasn't supposed to be.

That memory was strong tonight.

He surfed through the news channels, several movies, and finally left it alone when he found a comedy on BBC America.

“Comfortable?”

Teddy's pulse spiked and he nearly threw himself off the sofa, twisting around to see Jillian watching him from the arched entrance to the room. Her hair was disheveled, and she had black circles around her eyes that seemed a combination of exhaustion and tear-streaked mascara. She wore only a cream-colored tank top and pink panties, but there was nothing sexy about her stance or her expression. The tank top was revealing enough that he could see some of the scratches Michael had told him about. Jillian's nostrils flared and her lip curled back in revulsion, as though Teddy were the most distasteful creature she had ever laid eyes upon.

“Jillian, hey. Are you okay? Can I get you anything?”

“Can
you
get
me
anything? It's my house, Ted.”

The way she looked at him he felt like a fool, as though he were the one standing there in his underpants.

“Wait, didn't Michael tell you I was here?”

“Yeah. Baby-sitting. You're a pal.” She said this without expression, voice desert dry, then turned and moved deeper into the house.

Teddy's face flushed and he stood awkwardly between sofa and television, listening to her open and close cabinet doors in the kitchen, probably rooting for a snack of some kind. The remote control was on the floor where it had fallen when she had startled him to his feet. He hesitated to sit down again. Teddy Polito had never felt more out of place in his life. But he sure as hell wasn't going to follow her into the kitchen to make conversation. For one thing, she was practically naked. And for another, she was behaving like an absolute bitch. If he had never met Jillian before he would have despised her. But Teddy knew her, and so instead he was worried.

Worried, and a little afraid.

It was possible that something had gone wrong between Michael and Jillian. An affair, maybe. Nothing else he could conceive of would have engendered so much spite. But if that was the case, why would Michael have asked him to come here? It confused the hell out of Teddy. Regardless of what was going on, whether it was something between them or some kind of personality disorder, he wanted them to work it out. Seeing Jillian like this gave him chills.

Whatever you're up to, Michael, I hope it helps.

When Jillian passed by again on her way back upstairs, Teddy was back on the sofa. His head was turned toward the television but he could not focus on it, all too aware of her. Only after he was sure she was back on the second floor did the tension begin to leave him, and even then, the awkwardness remained. He didn't belong here. He wanted to leave. But he had told Michael he would keep an eye on Jillian all night if he had to. Now Teddy regretted those words as he mentally hurried Michael along, hoping he would get home quickly.

It was going to be a long night.

T
HERE WERE PERHAPS TWO DOZEN
cars in the main parking area behind Pentucket Hospital, all but one clustered near the front entrance. The other, a lone Cadillac, was three quarters of the way across the lot. Michael figured the people who’d parked up close were nighttime visitors, recently arrived, and whoever the poor bastard was who owned the Caddy, he had come much earlier in the day and had reason to stay until the hospital threw him out. It might have been for good reason, something happy like the arrival of a new baby . . . but odds were he had been there for a long time because something very unpleasant was going on in his life.

Out of an impulsive burst of solidarity, Michael parked beside the silver Cadillac and walked across the barren lot to the wide front entrance. As a boy he had loved revolving doors, but they were mostly electronic now and moved too slowly, so he hadn't stepped inside one in years.

The lobby was unlike most hospitals he had been inside. It reminded him far more of a hotel, with a sprawling oasis of greenery, comfortable chairs and carpets in the center, and all of the important counters, services, and stations ranged around the edges. Information. Gift shop. Au Bon Pain bakery. Florist. Patient services. There was a large clock on the wall that revealed the time as 8:36, and he worried that though visiting hours didn't end for more than twenty minutes, he might not be allowed in to see Susan Barnes. The prospect of this made his face flush and his pulse quicken as he approached the information counter.

“Can I help you?” The girl behind the counter had exotic features and caramel skin, with just the faintest accent. He thought she was Middle Eastern but wasn't certain. There was a tiny diamond piercing in her left nostril and it glinted in the light.

“I'm here to see a patient in the psychiatric ward. Where do I go from here?”

She was pleasant enough, giving him a small square map of the hospital and showing him which corridor to follow, even marking it with a pencil. But as she slid it across the counter she glanced at the clock.

“You should know that visiting hours are—”

“Almost over. I know. Thank you.”

He hurried to the elevator and was lucky enough to catch one headed up almost instantly. On the third floor he stepped out and then strode quickly along the corridor, turned left, and walked through a long covered footbridge that separated the main hospital building from the psychiatric services center. Michael resolutely refused to look at his watch.

The double doors at the entrance to psych services swung open at his approach and he saw an abandoned waiting room beyond, with another door past that. There was a long desk by that door, and a formidable-looking black woman sat sentinel behind it. She glanced up at him as he entered, and her gaze flicked toward a clock before turning back to him.

“Can I help you, sir?” she asked, her tone and expression indicating that she thought he had lost his way.

“Yes. I've come to see a patient. What room is Susan Barnes in?”

She sighed and gave him a look to let him know he was a moron. “I'm sorry, sir, but you can't simply go to her room. That isn't the way it works in this part of the hospital. Also, are you aware that—”

“Visiting hours are almost over,” he finished for her. “Yes, but I need to speak with Susan Barnes, please.”

He hoped that his own urgency was enough to let her know that she was wasting his time asking questions. Whatever had to be done for him to talk to Susan Barnes, he had less than twenty minutes in which to get it done.

“Ms. Barnes is in a restricted wing. She cannot have visitors in her room. If you want to speak with her, I can have an orderly escort you to a public meeting room and have her brought to see you there.”

“Please,” he replied, now glancing at the clock himself.

If the nurse or receptionist or gatekeeper found his hurry odd, she did not remark upon it. Instead she picked up her phone and barked a couple of orders to have Susan brought from her room and for an orderly to fetch Michael from the entrance.

“It will just be a moment,” she said, hanging up the phone. “Just fill this out.”

“You knew just who she was,” Michael noted with admiration as he put his name and address into the visitation form. “That she was in a restricted wing. You didn't even have to look up her file. That's pretty good. Do you remember all the patients?”

Her smile was thin and false. “Only the dangerous ones.”

He blinked, taken slightly aback.

“Just don't turn your back on her,” the woman said. Then a spark of amusement lit her eyes. “Anyway, her son called a little while ago, said someone would be coming to see his mother and that you had his permission. You think just anyone gets into this wing to see a patient when they want to?”

Michael stared at her a moment, amazed that Tom Barnes had made the call. “No, I . . . I guess I never thought about it.”

Then the door beside the desk opened with a clank of a lock turning and an orderly emerged. He grabbed a clipboard upon which was the form Michael had just filled out. It included not only his own information, but the details on whom he was visiting. The man had not been young for twenty years, but his size and his bearing, the cut of his hair and the line of his jaw, all suggested military service in his past.

“All right, Mr. Dansky,” he said. “Come on with me.”

“Have a nice night,” Michael told the receptionist out of reflex.

“Yeah,” she said, apparently tickled by the concept. “You, too.”

As they walked down hallways redolent with the smells of human sweat, ammonia, and disinfectant, Michael felt a shivery sort of dread creep up the back of his neck, as though dozens of sets of eyes were upon him. Most of the doors were closed, but he saw into some of the patients' rooms as he passed. A man sat in a rocking chair watching a television anchored to the wall and moved the chair in the tiniest jerks, this weird rhythm that could barely be called rocking. In another, an androgynous figure sat calmly knitting, softly singing an old Coca-Cola advertising jingle in a voice of ethereal beauty.

It struck him then that he actually missed the presence of the lost girl in his peripheral vision, or the passing sight of a figure in a shapeless coat on the side of the road. They were leaving him alone for the moment—perhaps because of whatever strange short circuit had happened when they had tried to control him earlier—and he should have been pleased. Instead he was unnerved. He did not want to be here, in this awful place. Some of these people had spiders crawling in their brains, at least metaphorically, and it made his skin go cold. It would have been better if his own madness was still with him. He might have felt more like he belonged here, but if not, at the very least it would have propelled him along. Terror and dread and helplessness were powerful motivators.

The orderly led him deeper into the ward. Michael knew that once upon a time the place would not have been so much like a hospital. Pentucket's psych services wing was all about patient treatment, observation, and in some cases, long-term care. But the latter was far less common in modern times than it had once been. In an earlier era, the place would have been filled with chronic patients, permanent residents. The laws had changed, and so had drug therapy. Depression, bipolar disorder, and so many other things that altered human behavior now had clinical cures. Miracle pills that could fix the problem, as long as the patient kept taking them.

But there were always some people who were simply crazy.

The orderly took him into a side corridor that opened up almost immediately into a large public room with an air hockey table, a large television set, and a number of sitting areas arranged with plush chairs, throw rugs, and card tables. On the far side of the room was a set of double doors with a red light above. Set into the wall beside it was a window into an office, where a tall, thin man sat behind a desk. Michael's escort waved to the man as they approached, and the tall man nodded and reached for something beneath the desk. The light above the heavy double doors turned green.

“Jesus, it's like a prison,” Michael muttered, mostly to himself.

“Some of the patients can get violent,” the orderly replied. “It usually isn't a problem, but that doesn't mean you don't take precautions. Particularly with the limitations of the facility. If it was built from scratch today, the layout of the place would be completely different. A lot more PC, at least on the outside. But we have to make do with what we have. With the way things are going, it's not like the state's going to pay for a shiny new upgrade.”