Ty slapped the vending machine on the side trying to eke a few more drops of stale coffee into the paper cup.
“They’re waiting for you,” Nurse Renee said from behind.
He grabbed the cup, downed half, and turned. “I know.”
She grimaced. “How do you think they’re going to take the news?”
“Oh, about like a bad case of the stomach flu.”
“Don’t let Dr. Serrat get to you. He treats everyone like crap. He’s not a happy man.”
“Yeah.” Ty headed for the door to the conference room, stopped just outside. Karl Serrat was definitely not a happy man, and Ty had a feeling he was about to make him a lot unhappier.
The Kaiser sat stiffly at the head of a scarred work table. Beside him, an older woman he recognized from the night before as Mia’s mother-in-law, Nana, fidgeted in her chair. Her short gray hair curled neatly around her head, but her face was as crumpled as the tissue she wrung in her aged hands. A woman about Ty’s age sat between the two Serrats, wavy red hair pulled back in a ponytail and just a smidge too much makeup.
“Ma’am,” he nodded toward the older woman.
“My niece Citria,” Karl introduced, gesturing toward the younger female. “Mia’s sister-in-law.”
Ty hadn’t known Karl had a niece, or a sister for that matter. Then again, it wasn’t like the two of them sat around drinking beer and talking over a hand of cards on Saturday nights.
Karl folded his hands on the tabletop. “I’ve filled in my sister and Citria on Mia’s condition from your report last night and what the hospital staff told me this morning. What do you have to add?”
Ty took a moment to study the faces in front of him before answering. Karl sounded almost blasé. Not at all the belligerent defense of a family member he’d expected. The man had to know where this was going.
Nana seemed appropriately concerned, her eyes welling and hands clutching that ragged tissue. Citria mirrored Nana’s worry, but there was something a bit more…saccharine in the expression.
Strange family.
“Mia has had two delusional episodes,” he said carefully, waiting for an explosion that never came. “She believes someone is trying to kill her.”
“Oh.” Nana dabbed at her eyes. “I should have seen this coming. I knew something was wrong. I knew it wasn’t right.”
“What wasn’t right?” Ty asked.
“She was talking about leaving. Why would she want to leave? Take Todd away?”
“Did she say why she wanted to leave?”
“Just that it was time. She needed to get back on her feet. She wasn’t ready. I told her she wasn’t ready.”
Citria rubbed her mother’s forearm. “It’s not your fault, Mom.”
Nana shook her head. “I should have known.”
“Your daughter’s right, ma’am. It’s not your fault. Sometimes these illnesses reappear without warning, or the warnings are so subtle they’re easy to miss. Did Mia ever give any indication that she wanted to leave because she was afraid of something here? Because she thought someone was watching or stalking her?” he asked, trying to confirm the onset of paranoia.
“No. No, nothing like that. Do you think she made up those stories because she didn’t want us to know she tried to hurt herself again?”
“It’s possible,” Ty said. “But I got the feeling that she really believed what she was saying.”
“So what is your recommendation, Doctor?”
Ty resisted the urge to squirm at Karl’s question. He looked squarely at the man who held his career in his hands. “Mandatory seventy-two-hour commitment to a mental-health facility for full evaluation.”
“Based on what criteria?” Karl knew the drill damn well. But it would be unethical for him to make a psychological evaluation on a member of his family. He needed an independent opinion, thus putting Ty smack between a rock and a hard place.
“She is a potential danger to herself and her son.”
“Mia would never hurt Todd,” Nana chimed in.
Citria didn’t look so convinced. “Mom, we can’t take the chance.”
“We don’t know the extent of her delusions,” he explained. “She could mistake him for her assailant at some point. Or if she believes she is being attacked and he is nearby, she could actually hurt him in a misguided attempt to protect him. What if, for instance, she thinks she’s being chased by a car, and she drives recklessly while Todd is with her, thinking she needs to escape? We really need to get a handle on the extent of her delusions, and the best way to do that is to control her environment, keep her under observation.”
Silence lay heavy in the room. Karl finally spoke up. “We agree. We have a judge faxing over the papers now.”
Ty’s heart bounced. He’d expected a fight. Most families weren’t generally so quick to accept that their loved one needed that kind of intense help. But then, most families weren’t the Serrats.
Mia soaked in the scenery as the ambulance ambled up the winding drive to the Massachusetts Hospital of Mental Health, knowing it would be the last she’d see of sunshine for a while. Her stomach turned, and she fought in vain to tamp down the fear. Locked doors, cries rolling up and down the hallway in the night, walls that seemed always to be closing in on her. Those were the memories of her first days at the California hospital where she’d been confined for eighteen months.
Later she had to admit this place didn’t look quite so bad. The fence outside was brick and wrought iron, made to look ornamental from the outside, but still tall and sturdy enough to discourage climbing from the inside. The corridor walls were painted pastel yellows, greens and blues instead of austere white, and fresh flowers sat on small tables outside each patient room.
Mia was led to room 213. Inside she found an old-fashioned spindle bed with a soft chenille cover, a marble-topped dresser and a wicker rocking chair in the corner. It would have passed for a guest room in a quaint bed-and-breakfast if it wasn’t for the wire mesh over the window.
The orderly in purple scrubs who had shown her to her room lifted the bag Nana had packed for her. “I’ll have this back in a flash.”
Mia nodded. She knew the drill. They’d take her shoelaces, the compact from her makeup case because it contained a little glass mirror. Anything that could possibly be used to hang, cut, poison or otherwise do herself in. She supposed it was necessary, but that made it no less humiliating.
She flinched when the door snicked shut behind her, and then lowered herself into the rocker to wait. One of the first things a patient gave up in a place like this was control of her schedule. She would eat when they told her, go to bed when they told her, see the doctors at her assigned time. Resistance was futile.
The wicker creaked as she swung slowly forward and back. On the table next to her was a small book of poetry. Not the heavy, dreary stuff, but a collection of silly little rhymes.
Mia smiled as she turned page after page, thinking how much Todd would like the limericks. Maybe she’d ask if she could take it when she left in a few days.
If she left.
Floor nurse Nancy Popadopalous’s curly black hair bobbed into view over Ty’s shoulder as he leaned a hip on her desk, flipping through patient charts. He’d finally had a shower, shave and a change of clothes. He felt almost human. Now he just needed to read through staff notes on what had been happening with his patients and prioritize twelve hours’ worth of work into the six hours left in his day.
In reality, he already knew what his priority was. She should be settled in her room by now. She was a puzzle he needed to solve—how a person who appeared to be so together could fall apart so completely. But first, he had a responsibility to the twenty-two other patients in his care.
Nancy poked him with her pen. “Get your butt off my desk, hotshot.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled, standing.
“Heard you drew the short straw.”
“Huh?”
“Got Mia Serrat as a patient.”
He looked up. “Yeah, you know her?”
“No. My son Scott goes to school with her son, though. Heard she downed a whole bottle of phenobarb a couple of years back. Man, I can’t imagine taking on the Kaiser’s niece as a patient. Talk about pressure—you screw up, or just piss him off, you’re toast.”
“Thanks for the pep talk, Nance.”
“I’m just sayin’…”
“Yeah, yeah. So maybe you help me stay un-toasted? Request her files from California. The family will sign the consent.”
He left Nancy cracking her knuckles as she booted up her computer and strode down the hall with a stack of charts under his arm and a pen between his teeth.
Three hours later, he’d seen the most urgent of his patients, rescheduled the therapy sessions he’d missed this morning, and finally gave in to the need to check on Mia.
Peeking through the small window on her door, he saw her sitting cross-legged in the wicker chair, her head sagging and a book slipping off her lap. For a moment his pulse leaped, sure something was wrong, but he realized when he opened the door that she was sound asleep.
He watched her unabashedly, enjoying the occasional soft snuffling sound and the way her lashes fluttered. In her sleep, she looked vigorous, happy, healthy, the way a young mother in her prime should. There was no sign of the malignancy within her. She was so different from many of the patients he saw, from his own mother, whose face had twisted in misery even in sleep.
She didn’t belong here. This place would eat her alive, steal that vitality bit by bit. He’d seen it happen too many times already, even in his brief career. Hospitals were supposed to help, but so often the isolation and the fact of being surrounded by a population of the mentally ill only seemed to make people worse.
His hope to help her hardened to resolve. He had to help her, had to help her get back what she’d lost.
And that was a slippery slope, professionally.
How many lectures had he sat through on the importance of professional detachment?
Quietly Ty pulled the cover off the twin bed against the wall and tucked the spread around her, pausing to sweep a lock of dark hair away from the corner of her mouth.
She was a picture, a painting. She rubbed her cheek against his hand as he pulled it away.
How was he supposed to detach from that?
As he walked out of the room, Nancy stopped him. How long had she been standing there?
“Those records are on the way. They promised to e-mail them within the next hour.”
“Thanks, Nance.”
He headed to the office to log on to the computer. It looked like it was going to be another long night.
“Let the interrogation begin!” Mia greeted Ty cheerily from the door to his office. It was smaller than she’d expected, and a little dingy, with worn carpeting and folders stacked a foot deep on his metal desk. Her room was nicer than this.
“Ah, there it is!” he called back just as cheekily.
She frowned. “What?”
“That moxie of yours. I missed it this morning.”
“Moxie?”
“You know. Chutzpah. Courage.”
She edged into the room. “You think I have courage?”
“Yup. And this isn’t an interrogation room.”
“Isn’t it where I stretch out on your couch—” She glanced around his dismal domain. “Which you seem to be missing, by the way. And you grill me about my domineering father, my submissive mother and how I feel about everything from global warming to rap music?”
How on earth did he cure the infirmed without a leather couch?
He picked a coat off the back of his chair—the coat that had been taken from her at the front door yesterday—and threw it at her. “Actually, this is where we take a walk.”
She blinked. “Really?”
“You’re a runner, right? Figured you’d appreciate a little exercise. I’d jog with you, but I’m afraid I’d collapse before we made it around the building.”
What was it about him that he knew exactly how to throw her off balance? “And here I came with sword in hand ready to do battle, and you’re being nice,” she said.
“Nice is bad?” He grabbed his own beat-up leather coat and ushered her out the door.
“No,” she admitted. “Nice is good.”
Nice was really, really good when she got outside and filled her lungs with fresh, crisp air.
They walked in silence awhile, meandering down a path that had been blown clear of snow. A few hardy birds flitted among the fir trees and sun blazed off a crystal-blue pond not yet frozen over at the bottom of the hill.
“Are you really not going to ask me any questions?” she finally blurted.
He gave her an innocent look that was pure mischief. She should recognize the boyish expression. She’d seen it a thousand times on Todd’s face.
“What should I ask?”
“Very clever. Making me set the agenda.”
“I’m serious. What do I need to know about you?”
There he went again, upsetting her equilibrium. “That I’m not crazy?” she tried.
“I never said you were.”
“I have no desire to hurt myself.”
“That’s good.”
She stopped. “You are infuriating, you know that?”
He nudged her along, toward the pond. “How so?”
“You’re not following the rules. You’re supposed to ask stupid probing questions and I’m supposed to dodge them.”
One corner of his mouth quirked up. “Look, you’ve been through this before. It’s obvious you had a doctor who was not, shall we say, very creative in his therapeutic technique. I’m just trying a different technique.”
“What technique would that be?”
“Getting to know you.”
Whammo! Not just off balance, but knocked on her butt.
“You want to know me?”
He shrugged. “Sure, why not? You seem like an interesting person.”
“I’m just used to doctors who would rather dissect me.”
“Like I said…not very creative.”
“Or sincere,” she added, and looked at him quizzically. “So if you get to know me, and I turn out to be a pretty normal, okay kind of person, are you going to break me out of this nuthouse and let me get back to my life?”
“That’s the goal, yes.”
“The goal, but not the plan.”
“I don’t have a plan. We’re working on your agenda, remember?”
“My agenda is to get home.”
“You’ve made that clear.”
She studied him as they walked. He had a good face. Not classically handsome, but kind eyes, a strong jaw. A little white scar beneath his lower lip to remind her that boys will be boys.
“All rightie, then. Getting to know me. I’m five foot eight, one hundred and twenty-eight pounds. I wear a size-eight shoe and my favorite comfort food is macaroni and cheese. I pretend it’s a treat for Todd when I make it for Saturday lunch, but really it’s for me. What about you?”
“What about me?” He jammed his hands in the pockets of his jacket.
“My agenda, right? If I’m going to tell you all my secrets, I want to know something about you, too. Turnabout is fair play.”
“Hmm.” He jammed his hands in the pockets of his jacket as he mulled it over. “I suppose. I’m five foot eleven and a half—it always pissed me off that I never hit six foot. A hundred and seventy-eight pounds and I wear a size nine. Good enough?”
“Stat sheet. What about the good stuff?”
“Right, comfort food. Sushi.”
She made a gagging sound. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Seaweed and raw fish. Gotta love it.”
“My husband liked sushi. He dragged me along whenever he found a new place, always insisting I’d find something on the menu I would like.”
She wondered if he’d known about Sam’s sushi taste somehow, and was devious enough to use the little details of her married life to get inside her head.
“Did you? Find something?”
“Every time.” She grinned. “The sake.”
“Ah, the liquid diet.”
“What else do you want to know about me?” She found herself surprisingly willing to tell him. He was disarming that way.
“No questions, remember? You decide what we talk about.”
She sighed. “All right, let’s get to the meat of it, then. A few years ago, I was feeling pretty down because I’d lost my blood family. My mom, dad and sister were all gone. Then Sam was killed in a car accident on Highway 1, took a curve too fast in the dark and drove right into the ocean, they said. All of a sudden, the loneliness was overwhelming. I started to have a hard time doing the simplest things, like making the bed or reading Todd a story. That was the hardest part, knowing that I wasn’t giving my son what he needed. He’d lost his dad, and now it was like his mom was just fading away. I felt…transparent. And the more pressure I put on myself to get with it, the guiltier I felt when I failed. Eventually I just gave up. Trying was too painful, so I sent Todd off to day camp and swallowed a bottle of pills. I didn’t even know what I was taking.”
She shook her head. “Now it all seems like a dream—a nightmare really—or a story I read or something. It doesn’t seem real. Even I can’t understand why I did it, so I don’t expect you to.”
“I have a pretty good idea how desperate life can become when you’re in constant pain.”
She wasn’t sure what that meant. Wasn’t sure she wanted to know that much about him after all. He was her doctor, and she needed his professional support to end this latest nightmare.
“Luckily for me, I had totally forgotten my housekeeper was due that day. When I didn’t answer the bell, she let herself in with her key and found me on the floor in the bedroom. She’s the one who called 911.”
“Maybe it wasn’t really luck.”
“You’re saying it would have been better if Roberta hadn’t been there?”
“Of course not. I’m saying sometimes our subconscious is smarter than our conscious mind. Maybe you didn’t really forget that the housekeeper was due. Subconsciously you knew she’d find you. I’m saying you didn’t really want to die.”
“Maybe.” She wasn’t sure she believed that, but she’d take anything positive he offered. “I ended up in the hospital, as you know. For a while, I just felt sorry for myself, but eventually I knew I had to get out of there. I couldn’t live like that. I worked hard and got my body and my mind healthy again. Despite my doctor’s lack of creativity, I did everything he told me, everything he asked of me. He really was a good doctor, and in time, I got better. I did it for myself and for Todd. On the day I was discharged, I swore I’d never go back. I’d never let myself fall so far again. And I haven’t. I don’t want to kill myself, but apparently someone else out there does.”
She tipped her chin defiantly, daring him to contradict her. He didn’t.
More silence from him.
“It’s okay. You can ask me questions now.”
“Nope. I have a better idea.”
She hooked one eyebrow at him.
“Let’s head back inside. I want to get you some paper and a pen from the nurses’ supply.”
“What for?”
“You have a homework assignment. I want you to write down exactly what happened on the bluff and in the clinic in Eternal.”
“Why?”
“So that we can give it to the police. If someone’s trying to kill you, they should be investigating.”
She stopped in her tracks. She just about had to pick her jaw up off the ground to talk. “You believe me?”
He kept walking ahead of her. “We’ll see. Let’s just get it all written down for now.”
She jogged to catch up to him. Her pulse hammered in her veins. Could he really believe her? She hardly dared hope, yet she couldn’t help herself.
Hope, it seemed, was as hard to kill as she was.
