Chapter 28

Anurse approached Charlie from behind, tapping him on the shoulder. He spun around, startling her more than she had him.

Her hand went to her chest. She was a black woman, late twenties, tall, with an athletic build and close-cropped hair. She reminded Charlie of Halle Berry. She was stunning, but never in his life had he felt so unattractive to the opposite sex. She just saw him as a patient in need, and it felt dehumanizing. No wonder Joe had become a hermit after his diagnosis.

For the first few years after his schizophrenic diagnosis, Joe had spent more days in the mental hospital than out. His mother rightfully had feared not only for Joe’s safety but for Charlie’s as well. The paranoia, hallucinations, and total lack of inhibition—which had often exploded into a fierce verbal assault directed at anyone Joe felt was deserving—had left his mother no choice. When at home, Joe had acted embarrassed about the disorder, as though he, and not the disease, were to blame for his behavior. He tried to keep to himself, but that had only made his hallucinations worse. Constant stimulation, Charlie’s mother had explained, was the best way to keep his hallucinations at bay, and so she’d encouraged the younger brother to engage the older more regularly. Charlie had pretended Joe’s behavior didn’t frighten him, but it had been a difficult charade to keep up. So began the role of Alison Giles as savior and her seemingly 24/7 relationship with her ill son. In spite of the unsettling circumstances, Charlie had felt abandoned by his mother and envious of the attention Joe received. Intellectually, Charlie had understood why it was so; emotionally, however, he’d still been a fifteen-year-old boy without a father and now a mother, too.

Laughter had been a prized commodity back then. Charlie remembered Joe once saying, “Epilepsy is easy, but schizophrenia is hard,” parodying the famous quote about dying and comedy. If what Charlie was feeling right now even hinted at the pain of Joe’s near twenty-year relationship with schizophrenia, his brother deserved far more respect than he had got. Charlie wanted nothing more but to disappear. Being viewed by others as weak was almost worse than his confinement.

The nurse held in one hand a Dixie cup with two green pills and in the other a cup of water, half spilt from his having startled her.

“Dr. Raymond suggested you take these,” she said.

“Doctor who?” Charlie asked.

“Dr. Raymond.”

“I don’t know anybody named Dr. Raymond,” he said. “In fact, with the exception of Dr. Bishop, I don’t know anybody here by name at all.”

“Well,” she said, with a slight laugh, “he knows about you, and he wanted you to take these.”

Charlie grunted as she pushed the cups toward him. “You people are a revolving door of clinicians,” he said. “One minute someone is checking me out, and the next minute somebody else is checking me out and asking me the same dumb questions. Now you’re telling me that somebody I’ve never met is trying to push these pills on me? You guys could take a few lessons on streamlining and efficiencies.”

“I know exactly how you feel,” she said. “I mean, with all our rotations it’s hard even for us to know whose staff and”—she paused—“who isn’t.”

“I don’t find that surprising,” Charlie said.

“Well, perhaps it was one of our residents who spoke with you. They’re definitely green and, I hate to admit it, sometimes lacking in the facts.”

She smiled at him, and Charlie smiled back but then caught himself. He knew better than to think their brief exchange was an invitation to flirt. It was a manipulation tactic he had often used himself. Get your adversary to trust you by offering information they didn’t have but that wasn’t important. He knew exactly what she was trying to do. Opening up about some of the inner workings of the floor might help lower his guard, make him see her as his ally. It would be that much easier than to goad him into swallowing whatever it was that she was peddling. Charlie had too many business deals under his belt to be that easily fooled.

“I’m not taking anything,” he said. “I don’t need anything. I don’t want anything. So don’t ask.”

“Well, we can’t make you take it,” she said.

“No. Not without a Rogers guardianship, you can’t.”

“That’s right,” she said, pursing her lips and shaking her head at him to acknowledge that he “got her.”

Charlie could see now that she was working even harder to keep the encounter between them conflict-free. She was trained, he assumed, in this exact sort of standoff. He might well be a time bomb just waiting for the right reason to explode.

“Do you want to make any phone calls?” the woman asked. “The doctor said you haven’t notified anyone that you are here.”

“There is nobody I want to call,” Charlie said. “But thank you.”

That, of course, was a lie. Joe was probably frantic. But until he had time to let everything sink in, it would be best to not call his schizophrenic brother to tell him that he’d been committed to Wal-derman.

Charlie stood alone in a corner of the common area on the psychiatric floor. He was still wearing his street clothes: Levi jeans, a black crewneck sweater, and a gray T-shirt underneath. His other possessions—wallet, watch, and keys—had been confiscated, probably while he was under sedation. He had never thought of his car keys as a weapon, but three hours on the psych ward at Walderman and he was able to ponder uses for them that he had never before imagined. The floor in the common area was linoleum, with flecks of color speckled throughout the floor tiles to help give a little life to the numbing gray slate. The furniture was sparse and made up entirely of mismatched, tattered cloth chairs and stained couches that would have seemed ordinary items at a swap shop or in a town dump. Scattered about were scuffed pine tables used for board games—backgammon, chess, and checkers. No women were on this floor, but Charlie had overhead a conversation between two nurses and knew there were female patients somewhere in the building.

In the hour he’d spent standing against the wall, staring out into nothing, Charlie had observed that the nurses’ station, where medications were dispensed, was the epicenter of floor activity. Patients and nurses made frequent visits, most leaving with Dixie cups of drugs. There were no clocks or calendars hanging on the walls in the common area. That irony wasn’t lost on Charlie. Apparently, at Wal-derman, both he and time were lost.

An orderly approached to announce that dinner was ending soon, to which Charlie replied that his appetite had taken a leave of absence and would return when he was around sane people again. The orderly didn’t smile. A man approached him from behind. Charlie didn’t see him coming and jumped reflexively when he spoke.

“The queen has no oven,” the man said.

Since his arrival, Charlie had been mindful to speak only with the Walderman staff. He had yet to have a single conversation with any of the fellow patients, or inmates, as Charlie liked to call himself. The less he was involved with them, the less it felt real. For someone who prided themselves on fastidious dress and grooming, Charlie found the man’s appearance frightening.

“I beg your pardon?” Charlie said.

“There are no more pancakes in Denmark. The queen has no oven.”

The man was an imposing figure, standing nearly six-five and a good hundred pounds heavier than Charlie. He had a rugged face with a strong, pronounced brow and fierce brown eyes that had the wild look of a lost hiker. His brown-and-gray hair was thick and mangy and curled wildly just below his shoulders. Masking his face was a tangle of unkempt beard, twisted into knots by his fingers, which tugged nervously at the hairs. His skin was pockmarked and dotted with spiderlike red splotches, which Charlie recognized as symptomatic of alcohol abuse. But the fingernails were the most distressing feature of all. They were long daggers, with crusted bands of thick bluish dirt caked under them. He carried with him the unmistakable odor of dirty socks and sweaty running clothes.

“What are you talking about?” Charlie regretted the question the moment he asked it. He would have preferred to give the man no openings. The last thing he wanted was for this encounter to become an open invitation for all the patients to engage him on a regular basis. A low profile was the only way he could survive.

“I’m talking about the queen,” the man said, more agitated. “And how we’re just going to have to make do with something else to eat.”

“That’s great. Really, great.”

Charlie had no idea what to say or how to react. He turned and walked toward his room. If it weren’t for having to share sleeping quarters with a four-hundred-pound narcoleptic who snored at the decibel level of a jet engine, Charlie would have opted to spend his Walderman time locked in that room. Better still, if he had his guitar with him, he could stay in there without ever coming out, not even to eat. Now it appeared that he’d have to endure the displeasure of his roommate’s company if he wanted to escape from Grizzly Adams’s crazy brother.

Charlie marched down the corridor, glancing over his shoulder to confirm that he was being followed. Reaching the door to his room, Charlie marveled at how a cell could become a sanctuary. Grabbing the handle, he pulled to open the door but was distressed to find it locked. He pulled again. He started banging his fist hard against the door.

“You in there? Open up if you are!”

Charlie didn’t announce himself by name. To his knowledge nobody on the floor but the staff knew it, and he wanted to keep it that way. In his mind, giving out his name somehow legitimized his residency. The only person he was fooling into thinking that he wasn’t a patient here was himself, but that didn’t bother him much.

Charlie saw a man approaching him from the other end of the corridor.

“That door’s locked,” the man said.

“That’s why I’m trying to get the person inside to open it,” Charlie said through gritted teeth.

“Well, that will be tough, because there is nobody inside. The door is locked from the outside. It’s intentional.”

“You locked the door to my room?” Charlie asked. “What am I? Twelve?”

The man laughed. “We do it to encourage patients to integrate. We lock the doors while meals are being served downstairs. Otherwise, many would spend their time here barricaded in their rooms. It’s important that you meet some of the other people here. It has a powerful and often underestimated healing effect. It’s Charlie, right?” The man reached out a hand. “I’m Dr. Alan Shapiro.”

Dr. Shapiro was several years Charlie’s junior. He wore a blue oxford shirt, red tie, and tweed sports coat. Charlie had never seen him before. Yet somehow this doctor, like most of the staff, knew his name.

“Well, that just might be the dumbest thing I’ve heard yet,” Charlie muttered.

“It’s not healthy to spend too much time by yourself on the floor,” Dr. Shapiro said.

Charlie let out a loud laugh. “And you think getting jumped by this psychopath is healthy?”

Charlie turned and pointed down the other end of the corridor, but the grizzled old man who had shadowed him moments before had vanished.

“Yes, I see,” Dr. Shapiro said.

“Great,” Charlie sighed. “Now you think I’m seeing things.”

“Actually, believe it or not, I was coming to find you, but it wasn’t for that. We’ve signed you up for group in the morning. This is your first night in the hospital, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“And how have you been adjusting so far?”

“Oh, it’s been a breeze.”

“Great,” Shapiro said, either missing or ignoring Charlie’s sarcasm. “Well, I was going to ask you to come to my office to talk—”

“And who are you?” Charlie asked.

“Right. I’m Dr. Alan Shapiro.”

“No. I know that,” Charlie said. He did nothing to hide his hostility. “I mean who are you and why do you want to speak with me?”

“I’m your psychiatrist.” Shapiro rubbed his thumb back and forth against his index finger.

Nervous habit, Charlie thought. Not a good thing for a psychiatrist.

“You mean psychiatrist du jour, don’t you?”

“I’m sorry … I don’t …”

“It’s nothing. When does that door unlock?” Charlie pointed at the door to his sleeping quarters.

Shapiro looked down at his watch. “Ten minutes more. I think it might be a good idea if we touch base, to check and see how you are feeling. Why don’t you come down to my office for a minute?”

“No need. I’m feeling fine,” Charlie said.

“This can be a tough adjustment. I understand that.” Shapiro seemed to completely misjudge Charlie’s apprehension. He looked down at his notes. “According to the records I have here, it says you haven’t been very forthcoming or open with the staff. You know, it’s important that you talk to us, Charlie. We can help. We’re here to help you.”

“I don’t have anything to say to you people. I’m not sick. I don’t belong here. This place is going to make me crazy.” Charlie waved his arms about to drive his point home.

“I see. Have you had any thoughts of hurting yourself?”

“Before I got here or after?”

“I’m just trying to help, Charlie.”

“You want to help me?”

“Yes, I do,” Shapiro said.

“Open that goddamn door,” Charlie said.

Shapiro took a step back. “There is no need for that type of language, Charlie.”

“I’m just making my point, Doc,” Charlie said.

Fumbling with a large oval ring that held several dozen different keys, Shapiro unlocked the door to Charlie’s room.

“You’re only hurting yourself, Charlie. It’s important that you begin to open up to us so we can help you to heal faster.”

“Funny thing is, Doc, before I came here, I wasn’t even sick. Now, you have a good night.”

Charlie stepped inside his room and closed the door behind him. The only blessing was that his roommate was locked out as well. That meant a good fifteen minutes of privacy. Charlie’s twin-size bed was more like a cot, with fake wood paneling on both ends to mask the cheapness of its construction. In the corner, next to a pine armoire, which held a small dresser, was a small desk with a black vinyl chair. On the adjacent wall hung a rectangular mirror. You can write your crazy thoughts in your diary while looking at your crazy self in the mirror, Charlie had thought when he first saw the desk. The bathroom was a white tile masterpiece. A toilet, sink, stall shower with a yellowing shower curtain. Almost all the inmates on the floor had a beard, or at minimum a decent amount of growth on their faces. Razor blades, Charlie concluded, were a rare commodity.

His body fell hard onto the thin mattress of the tiny bed. The sheets were stiff and smelled of powerful detergents. The nappy blue blanket itched at his skin. He stared numbly up at the ceiling, his hands interlocked behind his head. His eyes felt heavy. He had no idea what time it was. It could have been eight o’clock in the evening or midnight, for all he knew.

The pressure and stress of his first day at Walderman had been building. Charlie let down his guard, and his eyelids drooped. The door to his room locked only from the outside. It made for a disconcerting sleep, but he couldn’t resist—his eyes shut as if willed by another force. And then he slept.