DeBeers 05 Hidden Leaves (9 page)

It did and I vowed to myself that I would pull back and spend more time as her doctor and not as her lover. I could see her realizing and perhaps hoping this was so. too. She looked at me with the sort of plea and desperation in her eyes that I had seen in many of my other patients: this cry for help that even they didn't realize they were making.
Of course,
I
would be dishonest if I didn't tell you that I was afraid she would either do or say something which would reveal our relationship. Ralston was back in the room. I gave her the sedative and urged her to sleep. promising
I
would find her teddy bear. She said nothing. She turned her head and soon afterward she fell asleep.
"I have noticed a change in her these past few weeks. Claude," Ralston said when we both stepped back. "Maybe you're reducing her medications too quickly." he suggested.
"I'll look into it," I said, not wanting to get too deeply into her situation at that moment.
The hallway was cleared. Sandy was medicated and the other patients were guided back to their activities. Nadine Gordon joined us in the hallway.
"Do you know anything about this teddy bear of hers?"
I
asked quickly.
"I haven't seen it. but I haven't gone looking for it, either," she said.
"What about Sandy?" Ralston asked. Have you checked her room?"
"Not yet. but
I
will," she said.
"I have
noticed that Grace Montgomery was more agitated these days and that was after her medications had been corrected." she added before I could say anything,
"She
hasn't done anything in
the
arts and crafts room. She doesn't have the patience to read or watch television lately, either.
I
was going to bring it to your attention at our next patients' meeting. I don't believe we are
at
the proper dosages with her yet." she added,
^-
Claude?" Ralston asked.
"Yes,"
I
said. "She's
right.
I'll
reconsider
her medications and get on it." I said,
"What a shame. The girl was making such progress.
I
actually thought you would please her mother very
soon."
Ralston said.
"I did as well." Nadine interjected. She held her eyes on me a moment, and then
she
added. "I'll search Sandy's room."
We watched her leave,
"Careful. Claude." Ralston advised in a very unspecific way. "Wings of wax." he muttered and left me standing outside Grace's doorway, feeling as if
I
were truly in the midst of a great descent.

9
The Teddy Bear's Arm
.
The teddy bear was nowhere to be found.

Willow.
I
literally did turn the clinic inside out, spending every available minute looking for it. I had the kitchen staff search every cabinet and shelf. I ordered the attendants to look under every bed. I had Joan Richards take apart her arts and crafts area, and then I had the custodians search the outside of the clinic, especially under or around every window.

How could such a thing disappear into thin air? It was puzzle enough for me, but to Grace it began to corroborate one of her old fears and revive problems I thought we had resolved, When Jackie Lee heard about Grace's regression, she threatened to take her from the clinic and have her put somewhere else. She phoned me, shouting hysterically at times.

"Why did this happen? She was almost cured, wasn't she? Maybe
I
was right. It was time to take her out. Maybe the longer she is around those other disturbed people, the worse it will be for her,' she said, practically lunging at me through the phone.

"No, no. Jackie Lee," I said. "If she can have this sort of setback while she is here, it could be worse for her and for you if it happened out there," I reasoned. It gave her some pause.

"Well, what do you expect now? What are you going to do about this?"
"I'm reviewing her treatments. Give me a little time."
"Time! That's all you doctors want, time, and of course, money," she chastised.
I was silent,
"All right," she said. relenting. "But I want a weekly report now, If you can't do it yourself, have your secretary call me or a nurse,"
"Very good," I said.
"This teddy bear thing. It's inexcusable."
"I agree. I'm not giving up on finding it for her."
I
promised.
"Maybe she hid it herself somewhere," she suggested. "Maybe she wants to be crazy."
"I don't think so. Jackie Lee. No one could enjoy that sort of pain."
"In the state of mind she's in, anything's possible," she muttered.
Then she went into a rant about her own state of mind and how difficult things were for her.
"People know the truth, you know. I've done the best
I
can to prevent it, but they find these things out eventually. They know where she is and they talk about us. They even know about Linden. People feed on this sort of thing here. Now I don't know what will become of her."
I
wanted to say I didn't, either, that perhaps Grace would be here a long time if not forever, but
I
kept my secret thoughts lacked in my heart and did the best I could to relieve her of her anxieties.
Soon afterward Grace began to accept the disappearance of her teddy bear the same way she had learned to accept the death of her father. She went into a period of deep mourning, retreating to the shadows in her room, spending hours and hours staring into space, occasionally permitting a fugitive tear to trickle down her cheek and off her chin. I was at her side constantly, trying to break through her sadness, trying to give her renewed hope.
Finally one day she turned to me and said. "He's gone."
I wasn't happy with this conclusion. She was hardened with the realization and the finality. She lost the softness and the innocence and optimism I had been able to restore in her, and in fact, in myself. It was as if some light had gone out of her eyes and a deeper, darker glint appeared through which she now saw the world in all its reality. She could no longer see angels. The clouds we once playfully imagined being this or that were now simply clouds. It was as true for the stars as well.
I hated what had happened to her and what was still happening to her. When I was first starting out in the practice of psychiatry. I used to fixate on the mental problems and see them as small, distorted, ugly creatures. I would focus on killing them, hunting them down through the darkest corridors of a patient's mind, pursuing them relentlessly with my psychiatric weaponry until
I
had either destroyed them or driven them so far underground, they could do no more serious harm. I hated none as much as I hated the one or ones plaguing Grace, my lovely, wonderful. beautiful Grace.
I know I was
a
different man at home because of all this. Willow. For the first time my temper was short with Alberta. I had little or no patience for any of her nonsense and everything she was doing those days seemed to me to be bigger and bigger nonsense. It got so she was afraid to come to my office to ask me anything.
I
would argue with her over trivia. What wasn't trivia to me, however, was her new insistence that we spend a small fortune on upgrading our landscaping. She had brought in a landscape architect who had created a project twice as costly as what the house was probably worth. It envisioned a pond that could qualify as a small lake!
"I can't touch the outside of this precious, historical building, but I can at least improve our grounds," she insisted.
She needed me to convert some investments into liquid cash for her to begin such a project and I resisted. Our normally strained relationship was hanging by threads.
I
took to spending even more time away from home just so Alberta couldn't harangue
As to Grace and her treatments. I did return to the earlier, heavier dosages of her medicine. I hated to do that, but for a while, it seemed to be helping. We spent hours talking about that curse again. The clinic wasn't as sacrosanct as she had come to believe after all. The demon would enter and it would get to me. too. I didn't know at the time, but she already knew she was pregnant and was keeping it a secret just as much because of these troubling ideas as anything else.
How,
I wondered.
can I turn this around?
Why hadn't I realized how delicate her recovery had been? I began to think that perhaps I was not capable of helping her after all. Maybe Jackie Lee wasn't so wrong. Maybe Grace belonged somewhere else and my keeping her here with me was a purely selfish thing. Maybe I should get her away from me as quickly as I could. I thought.
These questions and thoughts troubled me so much. I know I began to show it in my face. Miles was asking after me constantly. He easily saw the differences in me and was full of concern. When I came home from the clinic. I went right to my office and perused case study after case study trying to find some clues, some technique, some method to make proess with Grace. I often fell asleep in my chair and woke realizing it was the middle of the night.
Obviously, this all had an impact on my relationships and my effectiveness with my other patients, Willow. It occurred to me that Grace might very well be right: my relationship with her was destroying me from within, destroying who I was supposed to be and what I was trained to do. Do you know that for a while there I actually considered the infamous curse?
Like a parasite my frustration fed off of me, draining me, sapping me of my otherwise high-octane energy. Ralston expressed concern and even Nurse Gordon commented about my workload and gave me advice. The irony was the more effort I put into helping Grace, the worse things became because she saw my struggle and my fatigue to be a direct result of my relationship with her. She refused to go on our special walks, and she began to talk more and more about leaving the clinic, claiming it would be better for both of us.
I appealed to her sense of guilt.
"If you do that now." I told her, "I'll feel like more of a failure and instead of helping me, you will hurt me deeply. Grace."
For a while that staved off her talk of leaving. Jackie Lee, however, continued her pressuring, her frequent phone calls, and her threats of simply sending a car and an attorney to pick Grace up. It actually reached the point where my heart would skip a beat whenever I saw a strange automobile make the turn onto our clinic driveway.
And then one night when
I
was doing
everything I could to postpone my returning home, delaying, finding- little things to take up my time, just so I wouldn't have to confront an increasingly belligerent Alberta, something terribly explosive occurred. I was making some notes on a report I was completing concerning another patient when Suzanne came running down the corridor to my office. She burst in crying. "Come quickly, Dr. De Beers, something horrible.'
"What?"
I
stood up. "Who is it?"
"It's Grace Montgomtry."
My heart did flip-flops. I could feel my legs go numb, "What happened. Suzanne?" I asked as I followed her out.
"Someone put this on her pillow." she said and pulled the teddy bear's arm out of her uniform pocket. I stopped dead in the hallway and took it from her, turning it in my fingers. Willow, it was as if this toy arm with its stuffing leaking out was a real arm, bleeding in my hand.
"It can't be,"
I
said, shaking my head like one of my own patients going into self-denial. "We looked everywhere."
Suzanne nodded.
The impact of what such a thing might have done to Grace hit me and I charged ahead. I found her sitting as still and as firmly as a statue on her bed, staring at the wall. She had a strange, mad smile on her face, Willow. For a moment she looked so different, it was as if a stranger had wandered into her room.
"I heard her screaming and came quickly," Suzanne said, standing beside me.
"I
saw the ripped teddy bear arm on the pillow and scooped
it
off
as
quickly as
I
could. That stopped her screaming, but she was as rigid as she is right now. Doctor. It's almost as if she's gone into rigor mortis," she added. Her arms are locked. I couldn't move her."
I
shoved the teddy bear arm into my pocket and approached her. She didn't look at me. Her eyes
were
so glassy.
My
biggest fear was
she
had gone catatonic.
"Grace," I said and reached for her right hand.
It
was pressed over her left and both were on her stomach. To lift that hand
would take some major
effort, prying as if
with
a crowbar.
I
have seen patients who are in such a catatonic, stiff state. Willow, that forcing their appendages in any direction resulted in actually breaking the
bone.
I
quickly ordered a sedative and Suzanne went out
to
get it.
"Grace,"
I
began. "don't do
this to yourself. Don't let this
happen. We can be strong together. Don't retreat from me. Grace. Stay with me," I pleaded, more like a husband or lover than a doctor.
"I
need you, Grace. Please."
There was an ever so slight flicker in her eyes that gave me hope. If I could keep this incident to a single reaction of shack.
I
could keep her from falling into a chronic condition. The nurse returned with the syringe, and I gave Grace the shot. Shortly afterward her body became more pliable, and I was able to get her to lie back.
"Talk to the attendants." I told the nurse. "See if you can learn how this terrible thing happened. Who was in the hallways? Who had access to her room? What did you see?"
"I didn't see anything. Doctor," Suzanne replied. "because I just came an duty a short time ago. Grace must have just pulled the blanket down to prepare for bed when she saw... saw it," she told me.
"Okay. I want to be sure there isn't anything else in the room."
I
began to search. Nurse Cohen returned with two of our male attendants who joined me, and we examined every inch of the place before determining there was nothing else of any shack value present.
Meanwhile, the nurse checked Grace's pulse and blood pressure. She was resting comfortably. but I decided
I
would not leave her bedside. I went out and told Miles
I
was going to remain at the clinic all night. I sent him back to the house for a change of clothing far me, and then
I
returned to Grace's room and slept in the chair beside her bed, waking every once in a while to observe her. She groaned and moaned a bit, her lips twitching and her eyelids showing rapid eyeball movement. I could just imagine the horrors she was reliving in her deep sleep. and I wished I could somehow crawl into her mind and drive them away.
Just before morning, she woke. I was still sleeping. but I heard her call my name and I opened my eyes. She was on her side, staring at me. I leaped up and knelt beside her bed, reaching for her hands.
"Grace, how are you?"
"I feel so tired, so tired inside." she said.
"I imagine you would. You've been through a terribly traumatic time
She closed her eyes and seemed to drift off again.
I
waited. The minutes went by, and then she opened her eyes and looked at me in a strangely cold way.
"I have to leave you, Claude. I have to go away," she said.
I shook my head. "More than ever, you have to stay here now, Grace. I wouldn't let you out. Your mother can bring an army to the door and I'll fight them back."
"I'll destroy you if you don't let are go," she said, then closed her eyes and drifted off again.
This time I let her sleep. I went to my office, got my change of clothing, and went to shower and shave and freshen myself as best I could. I was surprised by Miles's arrival, He came directly to my office to tell me Alberta was very angry.
"I never saw her in such a rage." he said. "After she saw what I was doing and heard you were staying at the clinic. I think she broke something."
"I'll take care of it. Miles. Thank you."
"I thought I'd better let you know." he said and left. There was no doubt in my mind that he would stand beside me on a trip to hell.
I
was fortunate to have such a dedicated friend and still am.
I
know he'll always be dedicated to you as well. Willow.
As soon as Nurse Gordon returned to duty, I told her what had occurred and ordered her to conduct a more vigorous investigation.
"Either some attendant is having a sick, jolly time here or we have another patient who is smarter than everyone working here. Nadine. One way or another. I want this brought to an end, a conclusion." I said.
She looked at me and shook her head as if I was the one having delusions. Then she went to carry out my orders.
I
returned to Grace's room and found she was more awake, albeit still quite groggy from the medicine and the trauma. I asked one of our female attendants to help her wash and dress, and then I ordered some breakfast for her and had it brought to her room. where
I
sat with her to make sure she ate something,
"I'm sorry about what happened last night. Grace." I told her. "But I'll not rest until I find out who did that and how. I promise you." I said.
She didn't reply. She ate slowly, her eyes fixed on the floor.
"You've got to help me help you. Grace. I want you to exercise more, take walks again, get back to work in the arts and crafts room, read again, by. If you don't try, you won't get better," I said.
"I've got to leave you. Claude." she repeated, shaking her head. "I've go to go."
"That's silly. Grace. Where will you go? You don't want to return to Florida and to your little boy while you are like this, do you? How will that be for him?"
She pressed her lips together and began to tremble.
I
put my arm around her shoulders and held her close to me, kissing her cheek and her temple and her hair.
"I won't rest until I help you. Grace. I swear."
"You can't help me," she insisted and then added a cryptic, "I can only help you."
"You can only help me if you get better," I countered. She didn't respond. It was as though she could hear nothing but the voices within her now.