After its taillights blend into the stream of cars hurrying past, Isabel begins to run, sprinting at first and then tapering off into a slower pace. The air is thick with clusters of gnats but she does not mind.
Fifty-Six
“Isabel, telephone!” Ben bellows down the hall after dinner.
Isabel had been writing in her journal. “Booth or kitchen?” she calls back.
“Hey! Keep it down, will you?” Regina yells from behind her closed door.
Isabel ignores her and asks again as she heads toward both pay phones. “Phone booth or kitchen, Ben?” Since Ben does not answer she checks the kitchen first. A visitor is in the middle of a conversation on that extension. Around the corner she sees the light beaming from the booth.
“Hello?”
“Isabel?” The voice is unrecognizable.
“Yes? Who is this?”
“It’s me,” the voice sniffs. “Kristen.”
“Kristen, what’s wrong? Are you on Long Island?” Isabel sits forward on the hard metal folding chair that barely fits inside the collapsible booth door.
“Um, no.” Kristen is crying.
“What is it? Where are you?”
“I’m in the hospital.”
“Oh, my God. Are you okay? What happened?”
“The driver,” she sobs. “He was bad. He was a bad guy. Bad.”
“What? What’d he do?”
“We ended up at JFK.” Isabel strains to hear Kristen, who sounds as if she is sneaking the phone call. “When I got in he asked if I minded if he smoked in the car and I said no. Then I asked him if I could bum a cigarette and he handed me back one. There was something in that cigarette, Isabel. I just know it. I could taste it.”
“Was it pot? Was it a joint?”
“No, not like that. It was like a menthol, but not really. I felt a head rush after two drags. Anyway, I kept smoking. I knew I shouldn’t have but I thought, what the hell. Then I think I must have passed out or something because the next thing I know we’re circling the airport. I told him I wasn’t going to the airport, I was going to Long Island, and he just started laughing and saying for me to be quiet. That I didn’t know what I was talking about.” Kristen starts sobbing harder.
“Calm down. It’s okay, Kristen. Just calm down.” The words are empty, but Isabel does not know what else to say.
“Anyway—” Kristen takes a deep breath “—anyway, he told me to get out of the car, that the ride was over. He made me get out of the car at JFK!” Kristen dissolved into tears. “When I got out of the car I realized my shirt was on backward and two buttons on my jeans were undone. I turned around but he was gone.”
“Jesus. What’d you do?”
“I wandered around for a while, I don’t know how long. It was so scary. I haven’t been out of the hospital in a long time.” Isabel remembered her own confusion in Grand Central. “All the loud speaker announcements. It was frightening. Then some cop in the terminal came up and asked me if I needed directions. I must’ve looked lost or something.”
“Then what?”
“I started to tell him what happened and then I started crying so he took me to this customs room—some weird room with nothing in it but a table and two chairs. The light was really bright. That’s all I could think about, how bright the light was. Anyway, I started to tell him the whole story and he asked where the car had picked me up and when I told him he left a few seconds later to make a phone call.” Kristen is sobbing too hard to continue.
Isabel waits.
“The next thing I know a different cop, at least I think he was a different cop, came in and asked me to follow him and they put me in an ambulance. I hadn’t even finished the story yet!”
“But, Kristen, it’s good they took you to the hospital. You said yourself the guy was a bad guy. They wanted the doctor to check you out, make sure you’re okay. Maybe they think…well, maybe you were taken advantage of. Sexually assaulted…”
“Isabel, you aren’t hearing me!” Kristen raises her voice. “I’m not in a regular hospital! I’m at Bellevue. They took me here because I told them I’d come from Three Breezes.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Yeah. And I have no idea how I’m going to get out of here. They gave me some pill and made me swallow it. I have no idea what they made me take. They don’t believe me about the driver, either. I can tell. They think I made the whole thing up.”
“What about your brother? He lined that car company up—can’t he talk to the police? They can track down the driver through the company. They keep logs of who goes out on which pickup. In the meantime, can’t he get you out of there while they look into it?”
Kristen’s sobs turn into a hacking sort of laughter.
“What?” Isabel is bewildered. “What’s so funny?”
“Oh, Isabel,” Kristen sighs.
“What? Tell me what is so funny!”
“I didn’t think you bought it.”
“Bought it? What do you mean?”
Kristen starts laughing again.
“Kristen, what? What’re you laughing about? Is it this story? Are you kidding about this story?”
“No, not this story.” Kristen is impatient. “The other one.”
“Kristen, what the hell is going on? What are you talking about?”
“I don’t have a brother, Isabel!” she laughs triumphantly.
Kristen pauses to marvel at her own cleverness. “God. I thought you of all people would have figured it out, but I guess not. I guess I should thank you for cheering me up. I thought I’d never smile again after this whole disaster.”
There is silence between them while reality takes hold.
“How’d you get your day pass?” Isabel’s stomach lurches as she tries to piece together the puzzle. “Your doctors signed off on your pass—how’d you arrange that?”
“Listen, I don’t have time to go into all that right now. I’ll tell you later,” Kristen says, the smile in her voice gone. “You’ve got to help me. Please. I don’t know how I’m going to get out of here but I’ve got to.”
Oh, now I’m supposed to help you?
Kristen’s self-destruction simultaneously scares Isabel, sickens her and fills her with frustration. What frightens her the most about Kristen’s determination to ruin her own life is the realness of it. How long before I start to unravel? How long until I have a relapse?
After a moment Isabel decides to put some distance between her sick friend and herself. I am not like you. And I cannot save you.
“Kristen, even if I wanted to help you I don’t know how I could. Why don’t you call your doctor?”
“My doctor there, you mean?”
“Yes. Your doctor could talk to the people there and get you transferred back.”
“I don’t want to go back on medication, Isabel. I’m not going back on that stuff. It’s poison. They can’t make me start taking that again. Besides, I don’t need it anymore.”
“Are you listening to me? Call your doctor. You should be talking to your doctor, Kristen. Okay?”
“Okay.” Kristen takes several deep breaths. “Okay. I’ll call my doctor.”
“Good.”
“Thanks, Isabel.” Kristen sounds genuinely grateful.
Isabel hangs up the phone, leans back into the folding chair and closes her eyes.
“Isabel?” Ben is standing outside the phone booth.
“Yeah?” she answers as she stands and flattens herself against the door frame so that she can squeeze past him without coming into contact with his perpetually sweaty frame. She holds her breath against his smell.
“Sorry to bother you,” Ben says nervously, oblivious to Isabel’s attempts to circumvent his imposing body.
“Excuse me! I’m trying to get by here.”
“Oh, sorry.” He moves to the side.
“What is it?”
“Have I told you about Wellbutrin?” He smiles hopefully.
“Yes, Ben,” Isabel si
ghs, and walks away. “I believe you have.”
“It saved my life, Isabel. It’s that simple.” Ben follows Isabel down the hall. “I just can’t say enough about it. Wellbutrin. It’s amazing.”
“That’s great, Ben. Well, thanks for walking me back to my room. I’m going to be shutting the door now….”
“Wait! Isabel?”
“Bye, Ben.”
“Isabel!” Ben continues after the door shuts in his face. “I wish you’d just listen to me, Isabel. Why won’t anyone listen to me when I talk about Wellbutrin?” Ben knocks a few times and finally lumbers off.
Fifty-Seven
“Hi, this is a message for Isabel. Isabel, this is Deborah in Ted Sargent’s office. Just wanted to let you know that we got your message and will plan on meeting on October 2. I’ll be in touch on the first to confirm. Until then, hope you’re feeling better. If you need to reach me I’m at extension 5421.”
“Isabel, hi, it’s me, Alex. Look, I’m sorry our conversation didn’t go very well. I still get so upset hearing your voice. Please call me back. I promise I won’t lose my temper again. I need to talk to you. I do love you, you know. Bye.”
Fifty-Eight
“Isabel?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s Kristen. Sorry to wake you up in the middle of the night. It’s just that there’s only one pay phone here and there’s always a line for it.”
“What’s up?” At the sound of Kristen’s voice Isabel goes from groggy to wide awake. “Are you still at Bellevue?”
“Yeah. Isabel, you’ve got to get me out of here. Please? Please help me get out of here….”
“Kristen, I have no idea how to get you out of there. In case you forgot, I’m in a mental hospital, too. Did you call your doctor yesterday?”
“Yeah, and he wouldn’t do anything. He said he’d handle it and I haven’t heard word one from him. Listen, I can’t talk long,” Kristen whispers urgently into the phone. Isabel pictures her cupping her hand over the mouthpiece. “They’re making me participate in a medication experiment. I don’t have time to explain but I want you to know if anything happens to me, that I’m doing this against my will. Got it?”
“Kristen, what are you talking about?”
“I’ve got to go in a second. Someone’s standing right behind me trying to hear what I’m saying. You’re a reporter, you can do something about this. They use us for medical experiments against our will. I’m telling you, Isabel, this is a huge operation. My doctor said he was going to try to get me out of here but he hasn’t called me back and frankly I think he’s in on it, to be honest with you. Please help me. Please get me out of here.”
Why me?
“Kristen, isn’t there anyone else you could call? What about your parents? Can’t you call them?”
“No! They don’t know where I am and I want to keep it that way!”
“Why?”
“I’ve always been an albatross around their necks,” Kristen says in a disgusted tone. “They wouldn’t hesitate to write me off for medical experimentation if they thought it would get rid of me once and for all.”
Isabel is tired and knows there is no reasoning with paranoia. “I’ve got to go.”
“Okay, I read you. I’m with you. They’re tapping the phones, right? You don’t want them to be able to record this…thanks, Isabel. You’re always one step ahead of me. God! I knew you were the one person who would understand. I’ll call you back later. In the meantime, you’ll do what I told you?”
“What?”
“Work on getting me out of here, remember?”
“Goodbye, Kristen.”
“Bye!”
Isabel hangs up the phone and looks at her watch. Two in the morning. She thinks about staying up and watching television but instead makes her way back to her room and crawls back into her crinkly bed. Her sleep is fitful and unsatisfying.
At daybreak Isabel changes into her running clothes and tiptoes down the hall to the sign-out board. She heads out the door into the warm fall morning. She puts her head down and watches the pavement as she picks up speed.
“Wa-hey there, my friend.” Sure enough, the gardener. “Lovely day we got here!”
Is he ever in a bad mood? Jesus.
“Yeah,” she answers without meeting his eye.
Fifty-Nine
“I need to talk to you about a day pass.” Isabel shifts uncomfortably in her seat. Tell her. Tell her about Kristen.
“Sure,” Dr. Seidler says. “What’s up?”
“I’m getting fired,” Isabel says matter-of-factly. “I set up a meeting so they can go ahead and get it over with.”
“You mentioned they were calling you.” The therapist pauses. “How do you feel about the prospect of meeting with them? Who, exactly, would you be meeting with?”
“Ted Sargent—the head of the news division. He’s the one who’s been gunning for me ever since the Diana thing. I expect someone from Human Resources will be there as well. They don’t know what I’ve been doing on this medical leave so I’m sure they feel like they’ve got to be careful, in case I’m in rehab for a drug problem. Wouldn’t it be against the law for them to fire me if I was in rehab?”
“Yes, if you had a drug or alcohol problem they would have to hold your job for you if you were making a good-faith effort to be clean and sober. But that’s not what we’ve got here, unfortunately, since you’re on contract, and, as you’ve pointed out, your contract just happens to be expiring.”
“So they get rid of me by not renewing. I know, I know. In a way it’ll be a relief. I feel like this pressure’s been building…I’m so ready to prick the balloon.”
“Are you?”
“Yeah. I’ve thought about it and I’ve realized that that job, that life, is not for me. Plus, I don’t want to go back into a work environment that’s not friendly. Everybody’d be gossiping about me…speculating about what happened to me, blah, blah, blah. I’d rather have them do it and get it over with. The rest I can deal with.”
Across the office optimistically filled with colorful southwestern decor, Dr. Seidler smiles at Isabel. She’s been smiling at me a lot lately…she gay or something?
“What?” Isabel shifts again in her seat. “What’re you smiling at?”
“You,” she replies. “I’m smiling because you sound like you’re feeling a bit stronger and, if my instincts are correct, more sure of yourself and what you want—or don’t want—as the case may be. Is that a safe assumption?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Isabel says. “I do feel stronger. I don’t know what’s changed, but I do feel a little more sure of myself. Maybe being here in the Nut Hut has actually helped me. Go figure.”
Dr. Seidler laughs. “Go figure. A lot of patients can’t ever see their way to feeling better. In fact, I’d say that’s true more times than not. Many people don’t take advantage of the help they have access to here so they remain caught in the grip of their illnesses. Of course, many can’t help it—they’ve been ill for so long or have gone without help for so long that a stay here is too little too late. It’s refreshing to see someone like you come along. Someone who is self-reflective and open, for the most part, to receiving help….”
“There’s something I need to tell you. Not about me. About another patient here. I feel bad for not having come forward sooner. Because she’s in trouble.”
“Who?”
“Kristen. Let me start from the beginning…” Isabel tells her doctor everything: about Kristen’s not taking her medication, about Nick the orderly, the bizarre car ride that ended at JFK, about Kristen’s paranoid phone calls from Bellevue…everything.
“I’m glad you told me.” Dr. Seidler is looking up from the yellow legal pad she’d been scribbling notes on. “I’ll take it from here, don’t worry. You did the right thing coming to me about it.
“Switching gears, because our time’s about up. About your day pass. When do you need to go?”
“October second
. I’d need to leave in the morning—our meeting’s first thing—and then I’m going to meet with Alex to cap off a warm-and-fuzzy love-fest day. I’ll probably be getting back kind of late.”
“That’s fine.” Dr. Seidler writes the date down on her calendar. “I’ll have the pass for you tomorrow.”
As Isabel leaves the session she scans the grounds looking for the gardener, feeling bad she had been abrupt with him earlier in the day. She looks along the tree line, where the manicured lawn meets the woods, at the beds of impatiens circling the cafeteria, and toward the sad structure on the hill where Peter is.
Sixty
“Excuse me? Could I speak with Peter, please?” Isabel is nervous. The nurse looks up from her desk and cocks her head to one side.
“I know you!” she says. “You’re the jogger!”
“Huh?”
“I see you running on the grounds every time I come in to work. You run right past the employee parking lot.” She smiles.
“Ohhh…”
“We’ve been talking about you…we’ve never seen a patient running on the grounds before.”
“Really?” Isabel smiles weakly.
“I think it’s great,” she says. “Good for you. Now, let’s see where Mr. Peter might be.” She swivels in her chair and checks a schedule hanging on the wall behind her. “He’s in art. You can go meet him there, if you want to. You know where the art studio is, right?”
Ah, yeah.
“Yes. Thank you.” Isabel goes back out the door.
Isabel tentatively enters the art studio.
The children are all engrossed in their various projects. The art teacher looks up and smiles. “Hello! Can I help you?”
“Um…” With a not-so-subtle flick of her head, Isabel motions for the teacher to step out of earshot from the children so they can speak privately. “I was wondering if I could borrow Peter for a moment,” Isabel asks shyly.