Asylum (24 page)

            Sam
nodded and reached for her backpack.  She pulled out a class folder and slid
the yellowed sheet inside.  Chloe watched her.  She felt off-keel.  Everything
on its side.  The world skewed because her sickness was making sense again. 
Sam zipped the folder up in her backpack not a moment too soon. 

            A
knock announced Dr. Willard’s arrival.  He burst through the door and surveyed
the girls with a satisfied and benign smile under his villainous moustache.

            “Hard
at work I see,” he beamed.

            “Yup. 
Plugging away, Dr. Willard,” Sam answered quickly, snapping Chloe back into
reality.

            “Excellent. 
Really excellent.  Well ladies, what have you got for me this week?” Dr.
Willard held his hands out.

            Sam
climbed to her feet, gripping the folder.  Chloe followed.

            “Just
a few things this week, sir,” Sam was all business.  “First there was Samuel
Blythe.  He was on your list of transient patients.  We have a record of him at
Eloise in 1881, and another at Pontiac in 1885.  One on a patient register and
the other on…what was it Clo?” Sam prodded.

            “In
a doctor’s notes,” Chloe added.

            “Then
there’s two records of patient groups.  One is an article about the Anti-Insane
Asylum Society, and it mentions Elizabeth Packard and her history,” Sam said
producing the crumbling clipping from the file, “And the other…” she trailed
off, glancing at Chloe.

            “The
other one we weren’t sure about,” Chloe took up the narrative.  “The other is a
letter from a patient to her family that might possibly mention a group.”

            “Let’s
have a look,” Dr. Willard suggested, reaching for the folder.  He skimmed
through the contents with pursed lips.  Sam clasped her hands over her backpack
subconsciously.

            “Others,”
mused Dr. Willard, “and from which institute did this come?”

            “I
think it was Traverse City,” Sam tried to sound uncertain.

            “It’s
interesting.  We can’t say for sure that it is a group, but let’s do this…let’s
add, what was the name?  Oh yes, Elizabeth Decker Mathers, let’s add her name
to the list.  Anything you can find out about her would be most interesting
indeed,” Dr. Willard decided. “Ah yes, and before I forget-”

            Dr.
Willard swung the black leather case he always carried with him, onto the bench
and unzipped it.  He pulled out two sheets of paper and handed them to the
girls.  They were identical hand-written lists with more names on them.

            “I
have a few more names for you.  I’m constantly tracking down and finding new
material for my collection, and more often than not it always seems to make
more work!” He laughed heartily.

            The
girls joined in politely though with much less enthusiasm.

            “So
that’s it for this week then, nothing else?” he asked.

            “We
just didn’t have a whole lot of time this week…midterms,” Chloe shrugged.

            “Of
course, of course,” Dr. Willard agreed. “Well, just keep moving, slow and
steady wins the race ladies.  Shall we say same time, same place next week?”

            “Sounds
good, sir,” Sam agreed.

            “Big
game tonight, first home game of the season,” he reminded them. “Do you plan on
attending?”

            “Yeah,
we were thinking of going.  We wanted to get through another box first though,”
Chloe assured him.

            “Very
good.  I’m headed to the rink right now, never miss a game,” Dr. Willard
declared.  “We have a great team this year.  You probably heard we won last
week in Minnesota?”

            “Yes,
sir,” Chloe said proudly.

            “Well,
good luck ladies.  We’ll see you next week.”

            Dr.
Willard nodded to them and made his exit.  Chloe and Sam listened to his
footsteps echo down the hallway.

            “A…M…,”
Sam said in a small voice.

            “I
know,” Chloe said.

            “Don’t
say it’s coincidence again,” Sam warned.

            “I
wasn’t going to.  I wish I could, but I don’t believe that,” she admitted.

            “What
do we do?  How do we find out what A.M. is, what it stands for?” Sam asked.

            “I
guess we should focus on Traverse City.  There’s at least one earlier letter
that I know of.  There may be even more, we know the general time period.  She
died sometime between 1889 and…well, it doesn’t say, does it?  But the box is
1885-1895 and he must have had some way of dating it if it’s in here. Like,
maybe he got it with a bunch of papers that did have dates.  So we’ll say
between 1889 and 1895,” Chloe decided.

            “Do
we have time to start now?” Sam asked, glancing at the round school clock on
the back wall.  Chloe followed her gaze.

            “I
don’t know.  I don’t think so.  I want to make sure we get there by face-off. 
I know this is important.  I know it is, but I kind of remember my therapist
saying something about how when your obsession takes over your enjoyment of
life, that’s when you know you’re unhealthy,” she reasoned.

            “You
just want to go ‘eye hump’ Seth in all his hockey gear,” Sam giggled.

            “Well…yeah. 
That too,” Chloe agreed.  “Did you get the whole thing with the hat?  His mom
made it!  Tell me that isn’t sweet.”

            “Oh,
and speaking of moms again, I forgot to ask--did he meet yours?  Because if he
did then at least she‘s good for something.  He probably took one look at her
and thought, ohhhh score, if Chloe’s going to look like that in forty years, I
should totally marry her,” Sam mimicked.

            “He
did meet her…and then he made her leave,” Chloe smiled.

            “Wait…what? 
Tell!” Sam demanded.

            “He
came in to drop the tickets off and was really nice and introduced himself to
her and then she started ripping into me.  Completely saying everything about
how I was all crazy and embarrassing and how it seemed really strange that now
I’m just fine, and have a boyfriend and I‘m acting all normal. Basically
accusing me of doing it all for attention, and she wouldn’t leave when I told
her to, and he was all like, ‘I-think-you-had-better-go!” Chloe mimicked in a
deep voice.

            “He
didn’t!” Sam laughed.

            “Yes,
he did! I was there and I couldn’t believe it!”

            “Wow. 
So wait though…she called him your boyfriend?  I mean, have you guys talked
about it? You know, defined what you are or-” Sam trailed off.

            “No,”
Chloe admitted. “I guess that didn’t even occur to me.  I was kind of focused
on the part where she told him I was a psychopath that acted out for
attention.  Thanks for reminding me though, I really needed something else to
worry about.”  Chloe patted Sam on the back.

            Dr.
Willard cracked the door open, making both the girls jump.

            “Sorry!”
he apologized, “sorry, should have knocked.  I completely forgot.  I think I
mentioned the fact that I recently acquired some new material?  I left it in
the backseat of my car.  I had meant to bring it in with me.  Here it is.”

            He
dropped another cardboard box, this one unlabelled, on top of the nearest
stack.

            “When
you get the chance, I’ll need you to sort through this and file away the
contents by year and hospital.  Most of them are Newberry papers, a few
Traverse City, and you’ll need to start a new box for Waverly Hills.  I made a
recent trip to Louisville and followed some leads that turned out to be
excellent.  Alright ladies, au revoir, this time I mean it.”  Dr. Willard made
them a rather comical bow and was gone before they could reply.

            Sam
heaved a frustrated sigh and glared at the box as though she could burn in with
her eyes.

            “Great,
just what we need, more to do,” she complained.

            “Well,
not right now anyway,” Chloe said, grabbing her bag and stuffing Dr. Willard’s
new list inside. “We’ll worry about it this weekend.  We don’t want to be late
for the game.”

            Sam
nodded in agreement and reached for her bag.  Chloe had just started for the
door when she heard Sam gasp.

            “What?!”
Chloe demanded, whirling around.

            Sam
held her copy of Dr. Willard’s additions in her shaking hands.  Her face, Chloe
noticed had gone white.

            “Clo…look!”
She squeaked.

            Instead
of grabbing Sam’s copy, Chloe ripped her bag open and snatched the list out of
it.  There was that strange and elaborate handwriting again.  This time it was
a list that only included names.  She skimmed it once, and saw nothing
unusual.  She read through it again, slower.  She stopped.  The third name down
the list…she had seen it before.  Seen it a lot actually, as she had spent the
past month searching tirelessly for it…George Townsend.

            “George
Townsend,” she said out loud.

            Sam
brushed past her and dropped to her knees in front of the box Dr. Willard had
set on the floor.  She ripped off the cardboard top and flung it.  Without
gloves, she reached in and pulled out a handful of papers, giving some to
Chloe.

            “If
he got these names by reviewing new material, there has to be something in here
on him,” Sam explained.

            Chloe
sat down beside her.

            “Did
you see the letters next to his name?” she asked.  “the N has to be for
Newberry, of course, but he has a TCSH and an IACI with a question mark.”

            “IACI?”
Sam wondered.

            “Ionia
Asylum for the Criminally Insane,” Chloe spelled out glumly.

            Sam
nodded and began skimming through papers.  Chloe copied her, both girls reading
with the same sense of urgency.  Without agreeing on a system of organization
they quickly began discarding pages into four piles.  Those that seemed to
refer to Newberry in one, those from Traverse City in another, those from the
new asylum in Kentucky made up the third pile, and the last and largest pile
were those that they couldn’t identify with total certainty.

            Sam
was still tearing through the writing when Chloe remembered the game and
glanced up at the clock.

            “Sam,
we’re gonna be late,” she said, pointing at the time.

            Sam
nodded and continued reading.

            “We
can come back, or we can do this tomorrow,” Chloe insisted.  “Sam, I know this
is important, but I don’t want to miss the game.”

            “Let’s
take the box!” Sam decided.

            “We
can’t, what if he comes in and notices it’s gone?  What are we going to do,
take it to the game with us?” Chloe demanded.

            “He’ll
probably think we’ve just sorted it out into other boxes, and he won’t come
anyway.  We’ll take the box back to the room, and then we can spend all weekend
trying to find George,” Sam suggested.  “Besides, we’re already going to be
late, what’s another ten minutes?”

            Chloe
glanced nervously at the clock and nodded her agreement.  Arguing with Sam
would take more time.  Sam stacked the piles one on top of the other and shoved
them back into the box which she hauled up onto her hip.  The girls took off
for the elevator at a speed walk, Chloe setting the pace.

            Outside
on the street, it was full dark.  Sam and Chloe hurried towards the bus stop. 
In the distance, where the library road joined the main campus drag, Chloe
could see hundreds of red flickering lights where an endless line of cars
inched towards the arena.

            “Come
on, come on,” Chloe whispered under her breath.  She stepped out into the
street, looking for the bus.

            “It’s
all the traffic to the game,” Sam called, “it’s probably stuck trying to cross
Seller road.  Hey wait!  Chloe?  Doesn’t that guy live on our floor?”

            Without
waiting for an answer, Sam raced toward the parking lot, the cardboard box
bouncing against her hip at every step.  Chloe took one last look for the bus
and chased after her.

            Ahead,
Chloe saw Sam come to an abrupt stop.  She back-stepped, and almost began to
turn around when a dark sedan pulled up in front of her and rolled the window
down.  Chloe was too far away and it was too dark to see who was inside.  The
only thing she knew for sure was that Sam had not wanted to talk to or be seen
by the person in it.

            Chloe
crept up behind Sam stealthily, trying to get a look at who was in the car.

            “-And
we just wanted to get a head start on sorting through what was in here, so we
thought that if we took it home, we could go through it tonight, after the
game…” Sam was explaining.