Hemlock Bay (3 page)

“I thought the patient could administer the morphine when needed.”

He was stumped for a moment, she saw it clearly. He said, “I’m sorry, but we can’t give you that.”

“Why?” Her voice was very soft.

“Because there is a question of attempted suicide. We can’t take the chance that you’d pump yourself full of morphine and we couldn’t bring you back.”

She looked away from him, toward the window, where the sun was shining in so brightly.

“All I remember is last evening. What day is it? What time of day?”

“It’s late Thursday morning. You’ve been going in and out for a while now. Your accident was last evening.”

“So much missing time.”

“It will be all right, Mrs. Frasier.”

“I wonder about that,” she said, nothing more, and closed her eyes.

•
Dr. Russell Rossetti stopped for a moment just inside the doorway and looked at the young woman who lay so still on the narrow hospital bed. She looked like a princess who’d kissed the wrong frog and been beaten up, major league. Her blond hair was mixed with flecks of blood and tangled around bandages. She was thin, too thin, and he wondered what she was thinking right now, right this minute.

Dr. Ted Larch, the surgeon who’d removed her spleen, had told him she didn’t remember a thing about the accident. He’d also said he didn’t think she’d tried to kill herself. She was just too “there,” he’d said. The meathead.

Ted was a romantic, something weird for a surgeon to be. Of course she’d tried to kill herself. Again. No question. It was classic.

“Mrs. Frasier.”

Lily slowly turned her head at the sound of a rather high voice she imagined could whine when he didn’t get his way, a voice that was right now trying to sound soothing, all sorts of inviting, but not succeeding.

She said nothing, just looked at the overweight man—on the tall side, very well dressed in a dark, gray suit, with lots of curly black hair, a double chin, and fat, very white fingers—who walked into the room. He came to stand too close to the bed.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Dr. Rossetti. Dr. Larch told you I would be coming to see you?”

“You’re the psychiatrist?”

“Yes.”

“He told me, but I don’t want to see you. There is no reason.”

Denial, he thought, just splendid. He was bored with the stream of depressed patients who simply started crying and became quickly incoherent and self-pitying, their hands held out for pills to numb them. Although Tennyson had told him that Lily wasn’t like that, he hadn’t been convinced.

He said, all calm and smooth, “Evidently you do need me. You drove your car into a redwood.”

Had she? No, it just didn’t seem right. She said, “The road to Ferndale is very dangerous. Have you ever driven it at dusk, when it’s nearly dark?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t find you had to be very careful?”

“Of course. However, I never wrapped my car around a redwood. The Forestry Service is looking at the tree now, to see how badly it’s hurt.”

“Well, if I’m missing some bark, I’m sure it is, too. I would like you to leave now, Dr. Rossetti.”

Instead of leaving, he pulled a chair close to the bed and sat down. He crossed his legs. He weaved his plump, white fingers together. She hated his hands, soft, puffy hands, but she couldn’t stop looking at them.

“If you’ll give me just a minute, Mrs. Frasier. Do you mind if I call you Lily?”

“Yes, I mind. I don’t know you. Go away.”

He leaned toward her and tried to take her hand, but she pulled it away and stuck it beneath her covers.

“You really should cooperate with me, Lily—”

“My name is Mrs. Frasier.”

He frowned. Usually women—any and all women—liked to be called by their first name. It made them feel that he was more of a confidant, someone they could trust. It also made them more vulnerable, more open to him.

He said, “You tried to kill yourself the first time after the death of your child seven months ago.”

“She didn’t just die. A speeding car hit her and knocked her twenty feet into a ditch. Someone murdered her.”

“And you blamed yourself.”

“Are you a parent?”

“Yes.”

“Wouldn’t you blame yourself if your child died and you weren’t with her?”

“No, not if I wasn’t driving the car that hit her.”

“Would your wife blame herself?”

Elaine’s face passed before his mind’s eye, and he frowned. “Probably not. All she would do is cry. She is a very weak woman, very dependent. But that isn’t the point, Mrs. Frasier.” It wasn’t. He would be free of Elaine very soon now, thank God.

“What is the point?”

“You did blame yourself, blamed yourself so much you stuffed a bottle of sleeping pills down your throat. If your housekeeper hadn’t found you in time, you would have died.”

“That’s what I was told,” she said, and she swore in that moment that she could taste the same taste in her mouth now as she had then when she’d awakened in the hospital that first time when she’d been so bewildered, so weak she couldn’t even raise her hand.

“You don’t remember taking the pills?”

“No, not really.”

“And now you don’t remember driving your car into a redwood. Your speed, it was estimated by the sheriff, was about sixty miles per hour, maybe faster. You were very lucky, Mrs. Frasier. A guy just happened to come around a bend to see you drive into the tree, and called an ambulance.”

“Do you happen to know his name? I would like to thank him.”

“That isn’t what’s important here, Mrs. Frasier.”

“What is important here? Oh, yes, do you happen to have a first name?”

“My name is Russell. Dr. Russell Rossetti.”

“Nice alliteration, Russell.”

“It would be better if you called me Dr. Rossetti,” he said. She saw those plump, white fingers twisting, and she knew he was angry. He thought she was out of line. She was, but she just didn’t care. She was tired, so very tired, and she just wanted to close her eyes and let the morphine mask the pain for a while longer.

“Go away, Dr. Rossetti.”

He didn’t move for some time.

Lily turned her head away and sought oblivion. She didn’t even hear when he finally left the room. She did, however, hear the door close.

When Dr. Larch walked in five minutes later, his very high forehead flushed, she managed to cock an eye open and say, “Dr. Rossetti is a patronizing ass. He has fat hands. Please, I don’t want to see him again.”

“He doesn’t think you’re in very good shape.”

“On the contrary, I’m in splendid shape, something I can’t say about him. He needs to go to the gym very badly.”

Dr. Larch laughed, couldn’t help himself. “He also said your defensiveness and your rudeness to him were sure signs that you’re highly overwrought and in desperate need of help.”

“Yeah, right. I’m so overwrought—what with all this painkiller—that I’m ready to nap.”

“Ah, your husband is here to see you.”

She didn’t want to see Tennyson. His voice, so resonant, so confident—it was too much like Dr. Rossetti’s voice, as if they’d taken the same Voice Lessons 101 course in shrink school. If she never saw another one of them again, she could leave this earth a happy woman.

She looked past Dr. Larch to see her husband of eleven months standing in the doorway, looking rather pale, his thick eyebrows drawn together, his arms crossed over his chest. Such a nice-looking man he was, all big and solid, his hair light and wavy, lots of hair, not bald like Dr. Larch. He wore aviator glasses, which looked really cool, and now she watched him push them back up, an endearing habit—at least that’s what she’d thought when she’d first met him.

“Lily?”

“Yes,” she said and wished he’d stay in the doorway. Dr. Larch straightened and turned to him. “Dr. Frasier, as I told you, your wife will be fine, once she recovers from the surgery. However, she does need to rest. I suggest that you visit for only a few minutes.”

“I am very tired, Tennyson,” she said and hated the small shudder in her voice. “Perhaps we could speak later?”

“Oh, no,” he said. And then he waited, saying nothing more until Dr. Larch left the room, fingering his stethoscope. He looked nervous. Lily wondered why. Tennyson closed the door, paused yet again, studying her, then, finally, he walked to stand beside her bed. He gently eased her hand out from under the covers, something she wished he wouldn’t do, rubbed his fingers over her palm for several moments before saying in a sad, soft voice, “Why did you do it, Lily? Why?”

He made it sound like it was all over for her. No, she was being ridiculous. She said, “I don’t know that I did anything, Tennyson. You see, I have no memory at all of the accident.”

He waved away her words. He had strong hands, confident hands. “I know and I’m sorry about that. Look, Lily, maybe it was an accident, maybe somehow you lost control and drove the Explorer into the redwood. One of the nurses told me that the Forest Service has someone on the spot to see how badly the tree is injured.”

“Dr. Rossetti already told me. Poor tree.”

“It isn’t funny, Lily. Now, you’re going to be here for at least another two or three days, until they’re sure your body is functioning well again. I would like you to speak with Dr. Rossetti. He’s a new man with quite an excellent reputation.”

“I’ve already seen him. I don’t wish to see him again, Tennyson.”

His voice changed now, became even softer, more gentle, and she knew she would normally have wanted to cry, to fold into herself, to have him reassure her, tell her the bogeyman wouldn’t come back, but not now. It was probably the morphine making her feel slightly euphoric, slightly disconnected. But she also felt rather strong, perhaps even on the arrogant side, and that, of course, was an illusion to beat all illusions.

“Since you don’t remember anything, Lily, you’ve got to admit that it wouldn’t hurt to cover all the bases. I really want you to see him.”

“I don’t like him, Tennyson. How can I speak to someone I don’t like?”

“You will see him, Lily, or I’m afraid we’ll have to consider an institution.”

“Oh?
We
will consider an institution? What sort of institution?” Why wasn’t she afraid of that word that brought a wealth of dreadful images with it? But she wasn’t afraid. She was looking at him positively bright-eyed. She loved morphine. She was tiring; she could feel the vagueness trying to close her down, eating away at the focus in her brain, but for this moment, maybe even the next, too, she could deal with anything.

He squeezed her hand. “I’m a doctor, Lily, a psychiatrist, as is Dr. Rossetti. You know it isn’t ethical for me to treat you myself.”

“You prescribed the Elavil.”

“That’s different. That’s a very common drug for depression. No, I couldn’t speak with you like Dr. Rossetti can. But you must know that I want what is best for you. I love you and I’ve prayed you were getting better. One day at a time, I kept telling myself. And there were some days when I knew you were healing, but I was wrong. Yes, you really must see Dr. Rossetti or I’m afraid I will have no choice but to admit you for evaluation.”

“Forgive me for pointing this out, Tennyson, but I don’t believe that you can do that. I’m here—I can see, I can talk, I can reason—I do have a say in what happens to me.”

“That remains to be seen. Lily, just speak to Dr. Rossetti. Talk to him about your pain, your confusion, your guilt, the fact that you’re beginning to accept what your ambition wrought.”

Ambition? She had such great ambition that her daughter was killed because of it?

She suddenly wanted to be perfectly clear about this. She said, “What do you mean exactly, Tennyson?”

“You know—Beth’s death.”

That hit her right between the eyes. Instant guilt, overwhelming her. No, wait, she wasn’t going to let that happen. She wouldn’t let it happen, not now. Beneath the morphine, beneath all of it, she was still there, hanging on, wanting to be whole, wanting to draw her cartoon strips of No Wrinkles Remus shafting another colleague, wanting . . . Was that the great ambition that had killed her daughter? “I can’t deal with this right now, Tennyson. Please go away. I’ll be better in the morning.”

No, she’d feel like hell when they lessened her pain dosage, she thought, but she wouldn’t worry about that now. Now she would sleep; she’d get better, both her brain and her body. She turned her head away from him on the pillow. She had no more words. She knew if she tried to speak more, she wouldn’t make sense. She was falling, falling ever so gently into the whale’s soft belly, and it would be warm, comforting. Move over, Jonah. She wouldn’t have nightmares, not with the morphine lulling her.

She stared at the IV in her arm, upward to the plastic bag filled with fluid above her. Her vision blurred into the lazy flow of liquid that didn’t seem to go anywhere, just flowed and flowed. She closed her eyes even as he said, “I will see you later this evening, Lily. Rest well.” He leaned down and kissed her cheek. How she used to love his hands on her, his kissing her, but not now. She simply hadn’t felt anything for such a very long time.

When she was alone again, she thought,
What am I going to do?
But then she knew, of course. She forced back the haziness, the numbing effect of the morphine. She picked up the phone and dialed her brother’s number in Washington, D.C. She heard a series of clicks and then the sound of a person breathing, but nothing happened. She dialed a nine, then the number again. She tried yet again, but didn’t get through. Then, suddenly, the line went dead.

She realized vaguely as she let herself be drawn into the ether that there was fear licking at her, from the deepest part of her, fear that she couldn’t quite grasp, and it wasn’t fear that she’d be institutionalized against her will.

Lily awoke to feel the touch of
fingers on her eyebrows, stroking as light as a butterfly’s wing. She heard a man’s voice, a voice she’d loved all her life, deep and low, wonderfully sweet, and she opened to it eagerly.

“Lily, I want you to open your eyes now and look at me and smile. Can you do that, sweetheart? Open your eyes.”