The Blessed

7 Sunday morning.

The day of rest. Regret. And cotton mouth.

Lucy was lying on her side when she came to. She listened for a while before opening her eyes, holding on to that serene moment before what she had done the previous night revealed itself to her sober and fully conscious mind. The sliver of time before excuses of a sick grandmother or friend in turmoil emerged, all while performing an underwear scavenger hunt.

Her first reflex was to feel beneath the pillow for her Hermès flask, half gray and half salmon-hued with black leather straps and a sterling silver lid, it resembled an oversize necklace rather than something camouflaging alcohol. The promoters at Sacrifice, an upscale DUMBO nightclub, gave it to her after they hosted an exclusive Hermès party for fashion week . . . along with free top-shelf refills for life, which always kept her coming back, because drink tickets were so last millennium. This morning, however, there was no comfort to be found, under her pillow or anywhere else; she didn’t feel a flask.

The pillowcase had slid partially off and her mouth was in direct contact with the plastic blue cushion. It took an instant before she realized this and panicked, logging a mental inventory of who could have potentially died on it and then lay there for hours, leaking body fluids over it and inside it. Hospital pillows, like airline pillows, were reusable and no one had actually ever seen them changed, she was sure. The plastic cover didn’t fool her one bit—all of its infectious contents were now swirling around her mouth playing a game of tag with her immune system. Whatever it was, it was in her.

Lucy opened her ghostly pale blue eyes—blood vessels creeping through the whites of them like a spiderweb—and knew she was in a hospital. She tried to go back to sleep, back to numb, but the whiz and buzz of medical equipment booting up along with the hallway chatter made it impossible as did the commingling vapors of ammonia, feces, drying blood, and puke that seemed to permeate the entire ER.

“I need to get out of here,” Lucy said, peeling her face off of the plastic pillow.

The nurse simply ignored her and began taking Lucy’s vitals before she retreated to paperwork. Lucy’s eyes were fixed on her Parisian weekender, the one that she got from her dad when they visited a flea market in France. It was made from an antique rug—hand-woven blooms of rich reds, bright magentas, royal blues, and peridots.

He took her to Paris when she was ten, right before her mother left them, saying that he wanted her first trip to Paris to be with a man who would always love her. Lucy’s mother left when she was young. She decided that she didn’t want to be tied down with a husband and a kid. She up and moved to L.A. Later, Lucy realized that those, too, were her initials. Los Angeles, the city of angels, among other things. Whether the abrupt move was some previously unfulfilled ambition or just a fight-or-flight response to a traditional lifestyle, she never really knew. For Lucy, it was both formative and informative, coloring her views of life and love with a decidedly unsentimental palette.

Whatever the reason, her dad was all that she had, and now she barely even talked to him. Unless there was a problem with her rent check. She held on to that bag and to what he said as it shifted from a sweet memory to a bitter lie. All that was left—baggage. When she did talk to him, she was always accused of being just like her mother, which to her father was unforgivable.

Lucy grabbed her clothing from the night before out of the bag. It was bad enough, she thought, that she’d wound up in the hospital, but without anything else to wear, a “walk of shame” was guaranteed. She wondered who might pay for such a shot and how much, and instantly reached for her cell phone, and as she did, something dropped to the floor.

She looked down and saw a bracelet made up of the most exquisite off-white beads with a peculiar, double-eyed gold charm.

Some Fifth Avenue version of the Kabbalah bracelet, Lucy thought, leaning over to pick it up. Probably some Holy Roller looking for a handout.

Before it even made it up to her eyes, she decided to incorporate it into her look. Barney’s New York was doing a whole SACRED line for next fall, and this little number would give her a jump on the season. Definitely fake, but I can make it work.

As she brought the piece closer to her face and studied it, she realized that it was anything but fake. The reflection from the fluorescent light above caused her to squint like a jeweler. She could usually tell cheap from a mile away, and this was the real thing. It was unbelievable. Looked as if it were antique. Heavy. Hand-carved. She fantasized for a moment that it had been passed down through the ages like estate jewelry or hidden like buried treasure only to be found centuries later.

Unearthed.

I’ll bet this cost a freakin’ fortune. Not like those gum-machine knockoffs for sale on the flying carpets along the sidewalks of Atlantic Avenue, she thought. She turned over onto her back and held it up in front of her face, fingering the golden charm. It was unlike anything she’d ever seen, not even at celebrity auctions, and it was certainly one of a kind. Strange and familiar to her all at the same time. Almost too much to look at. But she felt, in a way she could not describe even to herself, that it should belong to her. And now it did.

“Was my father here?” Lucy asked the nurse, hope in her voice as if she were a little girl at Christmas again, fondling the rare find. “Did he leave this for me?”

“No,” the nurse said, tamping down Lucy’s childlike eagerness.

“Yeah, he would never step foot in a Brooklyn hospital. He rarely leaves Manhattan.”

The nurse just rolled her eyes.

“What time is checkout?” Lucy asked, still transfixed by the bauble.

The nurse shrugged dismissively and returned to her business.

“Bitch,” Lucy mumbled as the short and stubby nurse waddled away.

Watching the nurse leave, she noticed a familiar face across the hall—not a friend or even much of an acquaintance, but a former classmate and a die-hard competitor for precious gossip-column space. The girl never had a bad thing printed about her, until recently when rumors of a pregnancy by an ex-boyfriend, now in college, began to circulate. Lucy knew all about it because she had started the rumor. And right next to her was the girl’s boyfriend.

There was no curtain on their bay. They were totally exposed.

“Hey, Sadie,” Lucy called out, getting the girl’s attention.

Sadie was clenched over in pain, moaning, holding her stomach. She was too weak to respond or to defend herself.

“Wow. Can’t believe how fantastic your postpregnancy bod looks,” Lucy said. “Hard to believe you were pregnant like . . . an hour ago.”

The girl tucked her head inside her hoodie, knowing what was about to happen, much like a mobster who’d been taken away in the backseat of a rival crime family’s car. But the guy didn’t even try to hide his face. In fact, quite the opposite.

Ratting Sadie out would surely impress Jesse and get her ER story better placement. In fact, it might even warrant a vlog post. All she could think was jackpot. In her circle, teen pregnancy was one thing, good for a few days of embarrassing coverage before it got turned into some noble endeavor, but termination, that was quite another. That could mean exile. And for Lucy, one less rival. She couldn’t count the number of times they had tried to humiliate her.

Eye for an eye.

Lucy took a picture with her cell and looked it over. It was a perfect snap, capturing all Sadie’s tears and torment. But the distraught look on Sadie’s face, her vulnerability, reached Lucy in a way she hadn’t expected. Even more moving to Lucy was Sadie’s boyfriend, Tim, hand in hand with her, right by her side. There was no one there for Lucy. Not even the man who should have cared the most, her dad.

She locked eyes with the couple, felt them pleading silently with her for media mercy, felt their pain, which was completely unlike her, and pressed send.

“You’re discharged,” the nurse said curtly to Lucy on her way down the hall. “Your things are in that bag and the paperwork is at the front desk.”

“That’s it?” Lucy asked, somewhat disappointed.

“Ha! What did you expect?”

Lucy frowned only slightly, but still just enough to give the night nurse a smirk of satisfaction.

“What do you think?” Lucy inquired, brandishing her bejeweled wrist regally.

“I think it suits you,” the nurse said. “Try not to pawn it too quickly.”

Lucy bared her teeth and raised her perfectly manicured hands into claws like an angry cat and hissed away the nurse’s bad energy.

She grabbed her weekender bag and headed out through the revolving doors. It was dawn, the time when people were getting up for work and, in her case, returning from going out. Her rush hour.

She walked to a food cart and ordered some scrambled egg whites and street meat on a bagel and a hot cup of coffee. Still thinking about what she’d just done to Sadie. How low she’d sunk. She watched the vendor crack the eggs and separate the yolk, the core, the most substantial part, and discard it.

“Scoop it,” she ordered, insisting he shell out the bagel, as she watched an obviously downtrodden couple order their toddler a Dr Pepper.

Right on cue, she felt a spindly hand grab her arm. She didn’t need to look to know whose it was. Jesse’s black-sleeved jacket was a dead giveaway.

“Get your hands off me, prick,” she barked, jerking free without even turning around to face him. Jesse was tall, slightly hunched over from all that time spent on the computer, and thin. He tried, to a fault, to be on trend, and looked as if he were uncomfortably dressed by a girlfriend—which he did not have.

“Awwww,” he whined. “Wake up on the wrong side of the gurney?”

Lucy was suddenly struck by the reflection of the sun bouncing off the double-eyed charm. She could have sworn it was staring back at her.

“I’m done, Jesse. This time I mean it.”

“Done with what? You’re living the dream.”

“Whose dream?”

“Yours, remember?”

“All I know is I could have rotted away in there and nobody would give a rat’s ass.”

“I’m here.”

“Like I said.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Lucy. You’re all over the place.”

He wiggled his phone in his hand, screen side up.

“I don’t mean morbidly curious about me, Jesse,” she said. “I mean concerned.”

“You just need some sleep.”

“You have no idea what I need.”

Jesse studied the disheveled girl in front of him. He was good at reading her, usually, but something was different this morning. She was more melancholy than he’d ever seen.

“You couldn’t stop in the bathroom to fix your face?”

Lucy lifted her hand to her cheek, and as she did, he saw the bracelet.

“Nice,” he said, reaching for the dangling charm. “Where’d you get it?”

“Don’t touch it!”

“Damn. Well, at least somebody cares, right?”

“You’re evil.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“I’ve gotta go.”

“Don’t forget. We have a deal.”

Lucy couldn’t help but notice that the shadow she cast completely engulfed him. “I don’t owe you anything.”

“Loved the snap of Sad Sadie. Already ran it.”

“Then we’re more than even.”

“Did you catch something in that ER?” he ribbed, trying to keep up.

“Yeah, a conscience.” Lucy rummaged through her purse for a cigarette and taxi fare. “Stay away from me, it might be contagious.”

Jesse saw that she came up empty-handed. “Money for a cab?” He pulled a crisp bill from his jacket pocket and dangled a twenty from between his long, thin fingers.

“Don’t tempt me like you do everyone else.”

“Too late for that, isn’t it?”

“It’s never too late.” Lucy spun around on her four-inch spikes, dropped her oversize rehab shades over her eyes, putting a proverbial period on the conversation, and walked away, blowing him off as only she could. She didn’t have a penny and he knew it. Every cent she had, or had borrowed, she was wearing. If she were lucky, Lucy thought, the Metrocard she was carrying might have one fare left.

“Check your e-mail when you get home,” Jesse called after her, unconcerned.

She stopped for just a second, pulled down her dress, which she could feel riding up her thigh, and continued down the block. Checking to make sure that no one was watching, she then jaywalked over to a bus stop just across the avenue, praying no one would see her in her outfit from last night. Or worse, at a bus stop. All the walk of shame boxes were checked.

Hair—matted.

Lipstick—smeared.

Eyes—black from running mascara.

Clothes—stained and wrinkled.

Head—hung in shame.

Dignity. Lost.





3 The psychiatric floor of Perpetual Help also happened to be the highest floor. “The Penthouse,” as the ward staffers liked to euphemize it. At that moment, all Agnes could think was that it was a pretty good place to jump from, which might have been what the administrators had in mind when they moved the unit up there. The simplest cost-cutting measure of all.

Agnes was wheeled into the waiting room flat on her back but forced herself upright and into a sitting position after she was “parked,” slowly rotating her torso toward the edge of her gurney until her legs fell over the side. She was dizzy and grabbed the edge of the gurney and squeezed down, which, it turned out, hurt like hell. She hadn’t realized how much the wrist and forearm muscles were used in steadying yourself like that. Agnes lifted her head to check out her surroundings.

It was grim, barred up, quiet, dimly lit, with walls painted in neutral colors and furniture discretely bolted down, not a sharp edge to be found. Dull and drab, with one exception: an ornate stained glass window. Agnes bathed in the splintered moonlight that blazed through it. It was the only color to be found anywhere on the floor and the kaleidoscopic jewel-toned glow was soothing, maybe even a little mesmerizing. On the not-so-bright side, the place smelled like meat loaf, instant mashed potatoes, soggy canned green beans, and disinfectant. Nauseating. Lunchtime for the lunatics, she thought.

The wait seemed endless, but it did give her time to reflect. She was by herself without anyone in her ear. Suddenly, the door opened and a young nurse escorted a little boy into the room and locked him in behind her without saying a word. He was very young, not older than ten. Far too young to be there, surely, and definitely didn’t fit the funny-farm profile she was expecting from the campfire stories her ER nurse was telling downstairs.

Agnes smiled at him, but he wasn’t interested in gestures or even eye contact for that matter.

They were alone.

“What’s your name?” Agnes asked.

The boy sat quietly for an uncomfortably long time. In his own little world and not interested at all in small talk with some stranger.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to—”

“Jude!” he shouted, as if the word had been building pressure inside of him and had now been launched like a rocket. “My. Name. Is. Jude.”

With that labored introduction out of the way, Jude darted toward an old and weathered statue of Jesus, with its left hand pointed gently at its exposed heart. Time and indifference had taken its toll on it. Flecks of white where paint and plaster had chipped or broken off dotted the figure. Agnes guessed that it must have been moved up to the psych ward and out of the way, just like everything and everyone else up there. It reminded her of the statues that adorned her school lobby, Immaculate Heart Academy, but in worse condition, lending it, ironically, a kind of unforced sympathy, which was more than likely originally intended.

Out of nowhere. Without warning. The boy jumped up on the statue’s pedestal and grabbed it with both arms, grunting and struggling with it as if it were fighting him back.

Maybe this kid isn’t too young to be a mental patient after all, she thought.

“Say ‘Uncle,’ Jesus!” he said, trying to catch his breath.

Agnes tried not to look.

The boy was getting increasingly agitated and maniacal . . . hanging from the neck of an almost life-size statue, driving his knuckles repeatedly into the Savior’s plaster of Paris head.

“Say it!” the boy demanded as if the statue were resisting him.

Agnes was astonished at what kind of kid would bully a statue, let alone one of . . . Jesus. She stared intently at the painted face as several drops of blood suddenly appeared, trickling down the forehead and off the brow.

Her eyes incredulously followed the streams down as they fell to the floor, bright red spots peppering the white, waxed marble. Proving that one—a certain one perhaps—can indeed get blood from a stone.

Startled for a second, she thought she might be seeing things, something miraculous even, until she noticed Jude’s knuckles, which were rubbed raw and bleeding. Undaunted, the boy examined his hand, shook it off, and returned quickly to his noogies, stopping only to feel around behind the statue’s head. As he pulled his hand away, and hopped off the pedestal and back toward her, Agnes noticed he was clutching something.

“He left this for you,” Jude said, handing Agnes the most spectacular white bracelet that she’d ever laid eyes on. “He wanted me to make sure you got it.”

Agnes was stunned. Without words. Her heart felt as if it were going to beat right out of her chest and she was sure, if someone looked close enough, they could see it through her smock. The chunky beads—maybe pearls, she gathered—were strung beside an unpolished gold charm embossed with a heart set aflame. She felt her incisions tingle and twitch as she gently fingered it.

“Tell him that I gave it to you,” the boy said proudly, without the slightest hesitation or stammer. “Okay?”

“Agnes Fremont,” the nurse called out.

Jude heard the nurse and dutifully returned to his seat and his silence.

“Who? Tell who?” Agnes queried the boy with sudden urgency, eyeing the statue suspiciously.

The boy did not answer her.

Agnes, meanwhile, was in a kind of shock. Whatever his problems, the trinket was extraordinary. Agnes hid the beads under her hospital gown and tucked the gold charm under her bandage to keep it safe and out of view. The flaming heart emblem that hung from it pressed uncomfortably into her wound. It hurt, but the pain it caused felt somewhat reassuring to her. She really was still alive.

“Agnes Fremont,” the nurse called out again, this time with more impatience. “Are you coming?”

Agnes jumped off of her gurney and waited anxiously by the door like a pet that hadn’t been out all day. She looked back at the boy who was now sitting like an angel in his seat, and followed the nurse down the hall.

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.

She measured her life in hits, and followers and status—of both the actual and online varieties—was everything. Not one to wring her hands over anything, she had taken shamelessness to new heights, crashing book parties, record parties, movie premieres, department stores, fund-raisers for even the most obscure diseases, attending the opening, as they say, of an envelope. It was a time-tested technique that could barely be held against her, but it was the fact that she got so much coverage that irked everyone, especially on BYTE, the most influential and widely read blog in town. Thanks to her.

She thought back to how BYTE began as a vile little online journal authored by Jesse Arens less than a year earlier to settle perceived slights with his enemies, a snotty clique of blue-blooded party-hopping prep schoolers of which Lucy was a charter member. As was he, for that matter. But it didn’t take off until Lucy came on board, involuntarily at first. Jesse knew that Lucy was not nearly as well-to-do as the others in her circle, that she blew her “allowance” from her absentee father at the beginning of the month, and then, at the end, was hard up and desperate for cash and attention. He also knew her secrets, her mother’s backstory—a source of huge embarrassment for Lucy, and one she did not want shared.

In an effort to avoid an all-out personal tabloid assault by the release of the humiliating details, Lucy complied. She would secretly provide him with embarrassing information about her high-profile friends, and he would see that every little move she made, everything she said, ate, or wore, would be covered. The more exclusive the info, the more widely read was BYTE, the more famous “Lucky” Lucy or LULU became in turn, which translated into free stuff, gift bags, and coveted invites for her. The “lucky” moniker came from the fact that nobody could quite figure out what she’d done to merit so much notice. With little more than guts and ambition, she’d mastered the fame game. Lucy’s deal with the digital devil had paid off.

Fame could bring many things: personal appearances, sponsorships, free travel, clothing, accessories, carte blanche at clubs—but there was an even bigger thing that it couldn’t bring her. As she brushed the screen gently with her fingertips and spun through the backlog of personal e-mails on her smartphone, there wasn’t a single entry from anyone she knew asking how she was doing. They had to know, had to have seen the hospital coverage. Not one relative or girlfriend, not one ex-boyfriend, few though there were. Actually, she didn’t have friends anymore, just competitors, sacrifices, distanced from her peers both by her own sudden fame and the means by which she’d achieved it. It was harder to betray people you were close to, even for a media mercenary like Lucy. Especially lately, when her onetime BFFs were becoming increasingly suspicious of her.

Truth be told, she didn’t miss them until she found herself in the ER and found out firsthand that no one genuinely missed her. No one besides Jesse, but his motives weren’t exactly pure and always came with strings attached. The more frantically she searched for some online sympathy, the more depressed she became. Then the cell phone rang. She checked caller ID and wasn’t sure if she should answer, and then she did anyway. “What?”

“Didja see it?” Jesse asked.

“How could I miss it?”

“We did it again. The site is almost crashing from the traffic.”

Lucy fought back the sick feeling that began brewing in her stomach.

“Where are you gonna be in the next hour?”

“In bed.”

“I’m coming over.”

“Ewww. No. Pig.”

“Not for a booty call. For a photo call. I need a picture. The premium subscribers want some exclusive content. To see how . . . you look.”

Lucy was used to being treated like this. As a thing. Mostly she didn’t mind, but tonight things were different. “Can’t you wait until the body is cold?”

“Not on BYTE. We only run hot.”

Even our verbal sparring revolves around branding, she thought.

“Wear something sexed-up, you know, heels and boxers, but maybe no makeup,” he said, art-directing her as he usually did.

“You’re so gross,” she said, douche chills running up her arms and legs.

“Don’t be so self-righteous, Lucy. Nobody put a gun to your head.”

“I wish someone had,” she said. “I’ll send something tomorrow.”

“I need eyeballs and advertisers,” Jesse insisted. “Now.”

Lucy crossed her legs and stared at the chaplet. The open eye carving on the charm freaked her out a little, like it was looking right at her again. She looked at it for a second and then turned it around so that the eyes were facing away from her. “Don’t ever speak to me like I’m your bitch. You’re the one that needs me. More people read what I write on my shoe than read your blog. Last word, jerk-off!” she screamed, slamming the phone back in its charger cradle.

The phone rang immediately.

“What the f*ck’s gotten into you?” Jesse asked.

“Don’t you get that all this is really disgusting?”

“I’m not a priest, so don’t waste your time confessing to me.”

“I’m not looking for your forgiveness, dickhead.”

“We have an arrangement, Lucy.”

“It’s forever, Jesse. It never goes away. Their grandkids will be able to search it.”

“And?”

“And I have to live with these people, look them in the eye. They know it’s me. I see the look of betrayal on their faces when they read this crap on your site.”

“Not crap,” Jesse admonished. “Content. That you provide. Besides, you dropped out. You barely see these people except for a few hours across some sticky leather banquet.”

“I need a break.”

“You can’t cash checks without consequences, Lucy.”

“I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. Jesus, Jesse,” she said, revolted by his desperation at pimping her out.

“If we don’t get the picture in the next hour, the buzz dies,” he said. She could hear the desperation in his voice.

“It’s always the next thing—the next shot, the next tragedy, the next failure, the next high. Always chasing . . . something.”

“Just remember what’s at stake.”

“You mean like the reputations of people I rat out for a slimy item?”

“Their reputations,” he began. “Or yours.”



3 The nurse escorted Agnes out and handed her a plain white Dixie cup with a mint green pill.

“Take it,” the nurse demanded.

“No more therapy or anything?” Agnes asked.

“This is therapy.”

Agnes placed the pill on her tongue. Stuck it out at the nurse and then washed it down with a swig of metallic-tasting tap water. Normally, she would be reluctant to take such a medication. She only took holistic remedies, unless she was really ill. But now, she hoped that this pill would help her to stop thinking of Sayer, or anyone else she’d ever fallen for. She wanted to be numb.

“Open,” the nurse ordered.

Agnes opened her mouth to show the nurse that she did indeed swallow.

After documenting the proof on her clipboard, she handed Agnes a loose-fitting bleached ultrawhite psych ward top and white scrub pants and then led her down the hallway.

Once there, she was stripped down.

Bare.

All except for her bandage and her concealed bracelet.

A maze of tiled and mildewed shower rooms beckoned, each with open stalls, steamy windows, oversize showerheads, and ceramic flooring, slightly beveled toward the center to promote proper drainage. In the entry room, there was a little sitting area, also tiled and peppered with drains and a long, wooden, locker-room bench.

She couldn’t decide whether it looked more like a condemned day spa or the funeral home that she worked at for one unforgettable summer job. While there, it was her responsibility at the end of the day to pull out the hose and wash the hair, nails, flakes of skin, powder, gauze, and whatever else was mixed in down the drain—all of it swirling together with the bright orange embalming fluid, transforming it into a melting creamsicle of runoff. She only worked there for one summer because the owner, the mortician, killed himself. Agnes found that somewhat comforting in a strange way and it had given rise to her preoccupation with life and death that she’d shared with Frey earlier. The mortician worked with the dead, after all; maybe he had some inside info that helped with the decision.

Then, the washing.

Agnes was showered. It was undignified, but like so many undignified things, it felt kind of good. The water was cool, not brisk enough to snap her completely out of the drug-addled stupor she was in, but just enough to remind her that she was a human being—flesh, blood, and five senses. She was suddenly alert enough to cry; warm tears were birthed from her eyes, free falling, mixing seamlessly with the water, until they hit the ceramic tile and disappeared down the rusted drain. She wanted to go with them.

Agnes dried off and put on her hospital issued “outfit.” There were only two occasions where one could pull off this all-white ensemble—being committed to a psych ward and one’s wedding day. She then was taken to a tiny, boxy room with no windows and a roommate.

The place was unremarkable, impersonal, resembling a dorm room that belonged to someone who never received care packages from home. The only thing hanging on the wall was a faded picture of what looked to be a religious icon.

Agnes studied it closely, losing track of time and the fact that she wasn’t alone.

“Saint Dymphna,” her roommate said in a weak tone. “The patron saint of nervous disorders and the mentally ill.”

Agnes looked at the girl lying on her bed facing the wall.

“She was murdered by her father,” the girl said. “See, he was a pagan king and her mother was a devout Christian. When Dymphna was fourteen, her mother died. Her father loved her mother so much that he went totally crazy after her death and tried to get with Dymphna ’cause she reminded him of her.”

The girl closed her eyes and mustered the strength to continue. “She ran away. And, when he found her . . . he drew his sword. And then he . . . ” She paused and swallowed. “CUT off her head. She was sixteen. Like me.”

“You sure know her story well,” Agnes said.

“I’m Iris.”

Iris turned around to face Agnes. She was sickly looking and sunken-eyed.

It hit Agnes that Iris knew Dymphna’s story all too well.

“I’m Agnes.”

“So, Agnes, why are you in here?”

After looking into the vulnerable girl’s eyes, Agnes put her arms in front of her and exposed her bandaged wrists.

“Yeah, me too,” the girl said.

“Why did you do it?” Agnes asked.

“Doesn’t matter. No one believes me, anyway.”

The girl turned back over in bed, again facing the wall.

“I will,” Agnes said, surprising herself with the certainty of her reply. Maybe it’s the pill, or maybe it’s something else, she thought.