Morning came too quickly and the long drive to the hospital was too short. I had expected Sophie to be happy and grateful to see me. She wasn’t. She was as uncomfortable and quiet as I was while a nurse guided us to a room with Dr. Christe. He half stood to shake my hand and we exchanged names as though we didn’t already know them. He was grinning in a slightly unnerving way that probably felt more natural to his loose-minded patients than to their families. His dirty-blond hair was slightly mussed, but in a way that even I had to admit was a little sexy. Sophie looked absolutely taken with him.
He sat on the business side of a small pressed-board desk with cherry-colored veneer pulling off at the corners and seams. The room smelled like lemon furniture polish, which felt suspicious given the layers of dust and the absence of any real wood to polish. When he gestured to the only remaining chair in the room, a beaten-up red pleather office chair with wheels, I made an awkward wave to Sophie and sat. The space was so cramped my knee was pressed against hers. And when the nurse in pink elephant scrubs, which I thought were in poor taste, moved to pull the door closed, I almost bolted for it. Instead, I coughed and sputtered, “Can we leave that open, just partway? The air is just a little … well, I need some air, is all.”
She raised one eyebrow, looked at the good doctor, and then left without pulling the door.
“I can imagine this is difficult for you,” he said with a practiced sympathetic lowering of brows and a slight nod. “But it’s important everyone who may have contact with Adam be aware of the way his mind works these days. Recognizing certain signs will help us keep him on track.”
And keep us alive.
“Do you know anything about schizoaffective? Have you read some things?”
I nodded, struck mute.
“Well. You can probably identify which symptoms match Adam’s better than any of us. So the important thing moving forward is to recognize when these manifest and alert us if they get worse.”
Worse than tossing my computer hard drive in a Dumpster? Worse than trying to take his own life? The good doctor seemed to want me to speak. But most of the things circling my brain and fighting for my tongue were completely inappropriate. I wondered if everyone who sat in this chair was afraid of saying the wrong things. Words that might warn a nurse to bar the gates and lock them in, turn them from a guest into a patient.
“Worse than what?” I managed. “Because if they get worse, who will be alive to note changes?” It wasn’t what I planned to say when I opened my mouth, and from the way his jaw opened and closed, it wasn’t what he expected to hear. Not exactly politically correct? Was the danger of insanity a secret? Even here?
“Based on his response to medication so far, now keep in mind there are more we can try, and we will, but based on the effects to date he isn’t going to get complete relief from medication. Some people really can control their symptoms with medication, mind you, but other cases are more complex. We can’t expect he will ever behave perfectly normal, but we can expect improvements. It will be difficult to answer your question about what might be worse until we establish a new baseline for his behavior, a new norm.” He stared at me, hard little eyes drilling holes in my skull.
Well, that was a useless mouthful. I clenched my jaw, wondering if airborne truth serum was a thing, and if it was, if it smelled like lemon wood polish.
“I’ll tell you what might be the most useful.” He turned a soft, sweet smile to Sophie. “And you tell me if you disagree, okay?”
She nodded, and smiled, and her cheeks turned pink.
I rolled my eyes, a completely involuntary reaction.
He turned back to me, and all sweetness melted away. “Let’s go have a look, shall we?” He stood, towering over us, at least six foot two, which I never would have suspected behind the little desk. His chair must have been lowered nearly to the floor.
I didn’t move even though Sophie stood and was hemmed in by my knees.
“He won’t be able to see you. It’ll be fine.” He fluttered his fingers, waving me toward the door. “A picture’s worth a thousand words.”
I had enough pictures burned into my mind to last a lifetime. I didn’t want to see him. Not even if he couldn’t see me back. I had the feeling he would know I was there, sense me, and I didn’t want to be on his mind in any way. Another part of me worried more about the opposite, about my reaction to seeing him. Would I feel enough compassion to take him back? I couldn’t imagine that being a positive thing for me and the kids.
But Sophie put her hand behind my shoulder, lifting and pushing. “It will help. It will be good for you to understand. Dr. Christe wants to help. He knows what’s best.”
Sharp words wanted out but I held them behind my teeth and got to my feet. I refused to lead the way, waving for the good doctor to ignore Southern hospitality and precede me. He rocked forward and back, shaking his head until he was sure I wasn’t budging. If there were dangerous people in straitjackets lurking around the corners, I wasn’t going to step blindly out among them. Part of me knew that I was being unkind, I was stereotyping, but another part of me had already seen enough to know that this time the reality was even more frightening than stereotypes had ever suggested.
Sophie walked beside Dr. Christe through a maze of blue-green hospital hallways with me trailing behind, mentally jumping into a fighting stance every time we turned a corner. When he swiped his card beside a set of double doors and pushed the one on the right open, I held back, frozen with fear.
“You aren’t going to see anything worse than what you’ve already been through,” he said, soft and gentle. This time his lowered brow looked genuine.
I walked past him, to where Sophie was standing in front of a long window, silent and stone-faced. On the other side was what I thought of instantly as a dayroom, even though I wasn’t sure where the word came from or if it was actually correct.
Each corner was arranged with a round table, neatly lined with four chairs. To my right, a game of chess had put one of the players to sleep, a reaction I could sympathize with. A woman working a zillion-piece puzzle rocked sideways, performing a complex pat-a-cake with herself each time a piece fit in place. All in all, they looked more normal than I expected. A half dozen patients were sitting or standing in pairs and talking, as normal as if they were planning a barbecue or bragging over how the kids were doing in school. They all wore street clothes, though the quality ranged from teen-boy holey to designer chic. If it weren’t for the doctor and three nurses keeping an eye on them, I would have guessed they were family members rather than patients.
The idea unnerved me, that the dividing line between patient and visitor was so thin. But it also reassured me that I wasn’t the only one who might have missed the signs until it was almost too late, that insanity can be totally invisible unless you really want to see it. The door on the far side opened. It had a small security-glass window guarded by a bulky man who probably made more money moonlighting as a bouncer. A man wearing blue scrubs shuffled in, his slippered feet sliding forward in six-inch increments. His head angled down, chin to chest, and even though the hair was familiar, he was too small and round-shouldered to be Adam.