Love Gone Mad (18 page)

Another door opens. She hears voices, laughter. It must be a party. There’s more music. Sounds like rap—ugly, brutal. Violent words in forced rhymes. It gets louder, peaks, and then fades. Turns to a bass thumping and penetrates the room’s walls.

Paper-thin walls, cheap fiberboard, joint compound, and spackle, Home Depot construction … what a prefab world it all is
.

Erin says, “Can you believe it? The kids love this place—no school, a flat-screen TV in the bedroom …”

Megan nods, wanting desperately to believe something good will come of this.

“Just try to get some sleep,” Erin says. “Did you take that other pill …?”

“I will … but you know me, I’m not a pill person.”

“Tonight you need a pill or two. Just take it.”

When they hang up, Megan lies back on the bed and stares at the ceiling. She tries to connect the dots of her life—reviews the seemingly random yet linear chain of events all leading up to this moment where she’s in this hotel room on this awful night and she fears for her life. And she’s afraid for Marlee and Adrian, too. Despite the sequential connections of her life’s events, it strikes Megan that none of it makes sense. It’s all so crazy.

The phone warbles. She nearly jumps, grabs the receiver, and puts it to her ear. But before she can say a word, a harsh buzzing comes from the earpiece.

Is it a hang-up?

Conrad?

How can he know she’s here? It’s impossible. She’s so wired, she thinks she needs another Xanax. Maybe even two … just to take the edge off. There are three more inside that little capped bottle the ER doctor gave her. Maybe she’ll just let the medication snow her; she’ll drift into a mindless fog. She’s taken maybe three pills in her whole life, but now Megan understands why some people become addicts, complete junkies.

She trudges into the bathroom, opens the plastic bottle, dumps a Xanax tablet in her palm, peers at its whiteness, shakes her head, and then thrusts it in her mouth. A cup of sink water washes it down.

Back in the bedroom, the telephone jangles; it seizes her.

Her hand hovers.

Pick it up … The known is better than the unknown …

There’s another ring.

“Hello …”

“Megan, it’s Adrian.”

“
Adrian
,” she gasps. “Where
are
you?”

“At the hospital. I’ll be leaving soon. More important … how’re you?”

“I’m okay,” she hears a small voice say. “Did you just try to call me?”

“I don’t know. The police patched me in to you. Why?”

“The phone rang and nobody was there.”

“My call must’ve been dropped. But you sound so nervous … Maybe you need another Xanax.”

“I just took one.”

“You’ll take the Ambien tonight, right?”

“Yes …”

She can hear—even feel—the worry in his voice.

“Adrian, I’m worried about
you
… about what Mulvaney said. He could come for you.”

“He doesn’t know where I am.”

Biting on her lip, Megan feels the flesh between her teeth. A sliver of skin peels back. She licks her lip and it burns. There’s a fissure where she bit; it’s as raw as she feels inside.

“Adrian, why don’t you just stay at the hotel …? Don’t go to the hospital tomorrow.”

“Megan, my love, Eastport’s crawling with cops. Besides, they’ll find him.”

“Find him? No way. He grew up in the Rockies, Adrian. He could live in the wilds if he wanted to.”

“Megan, this is
Connecticut
, not the Wild West.”

“Adrian?”

“Yes, darling?” he whispers.

“Do you realize how much you mean to me?”

“Nothing’ll happen. Listen—”

“And to Marlee.” Her eyes are so wet, the room blurs. Her voice bubbles in her ears, and tears collect at the back of her throat. “Marlee’s become so attached to you in only … what is it, a month …? A little more …?”

“Megan, I—”

“
No
, Adrian, I want to say this,” she blurts, nearly gurgling through her tears. “Other men”—she quivers—“other men’ve been interested, but I didn’t want Marlee to get attached, to be disappointed. I didn’t let them in. But, Adrian, I let you in. I let you into our lives.”

“I know, Megan. I know. I love you and I love Marlee,” he whispers. “I love you both
so
much.” She thinks she hears him choking. “Okay, Megan,” he says. “Just tell me where you are and I’ll leave now. I’ll come and stay with you.”

“No, Adrian. I’m being selfish,” she says, closing her eyes. “Erin’s here.”

“Megan, you and Marlee are all that count. I’ll talk to the chairman. He’ll get another surgeon—”

“No, Adrian. We’ll be fine. But I love you, and I can’t stop worrying.”

“Megan, when I saw the way you looked tonight, I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you. It made my heart ache.”

“Oh, Adrian.”

“Megan, my love, we’ll be together … the three of us,” he says, his voice cracking.

“Adrian, you and Marlee are my whole world now. I just want us all to be safe.”

Megan senses he’s about to offer some anemic reassurance—but he doesn’t, thankfully. As a doctor, Adrian knows better than to mouth empty promises.
You don’t use balm on an open wound
, she thinks, recalling when she worked in oncology. Morphine dulls pain. It’s palliation—an attempt to relieve suffering—but the cancer marches on, metastasizing everywhere.

And that’s what Conrad is: cancer.

I
n the bathroom, Megan slides the vinyl shower curtain aside, turns on the bath spigots, and adjusts the valve so water pours into the tub. She knows she needs sleep, desperately.

No, girl … If you think you’re going to sleep well tonight, you’re in another world; you’re in some dreamlike fantasy of a place. You have to stay real. You’ve been through a trauma, as the psychologists would say
.

It’s so strange, she thinks, because she never in her life dreaded sleep. In fact, years before, when Conrad was getting crazier, sleep was a welcome sanctuary.

But tonight Megan
knows
he’ll come back to her in her sleep. He’ll haunt her.
God, it’s like Freddy Krueger
. She’ll shoot awake in a clammy cocoon of sheets.

At the bathroom sink, she picks up the other translucent orange vial and reads the label.

Ambien. For the short-term treatment of insomnia
.

She unfolds the insert and reads about the side effects: dizziness, drowsiness, a “drugged” feeling, weakness, a bunch of others. It occurs to Megan that it might be a good idea to take one now, to give it time to do its thing—dope her up before she crawls into bed. But she’s already half-bombed from the Xanax. It’s going to be some combination.

Knock yourself out, girl. Just go for it. Get some sleep. That’s what you need
.

She pops the container lid, drops a tablet into her palm, and slips it onto her tongue. She pours water into the glass and lifts it to her lips. Swallows. The Ambien drops down.

Go ahead, work your magic, Mr. Ambien. Are you the one with the butterfly hovering over the bed? No, that’s Lunesta
.

Bath water pounds heavily into the tub and turns hot. The bathroom steams up; fog covers the mirror. The air is heated, dense, wet. She turns the directional lever up so water spurts from the showerhead. She strips off her clothes, steps into the tub, and slides the shower curtain shut. Water sloshes over her. She lathers up. The hotel soap smells like tangerine—bringing on a hint of nausea. Reminds her of the paramedic’s cologne that night they were run off the Post Road. Her legs quiver like gelatin, but the water feels soothing and forms a hot liquid wrap.

Megan looks down and sees soapy water circling the bathtub drain. Her heart jumps. She should have known this would happen: she thinks way too often about movies.

She’s reminded of the shower scene in
Psycho
. Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh: the shower curtain is ripped aside; Megan recalls Norman Bates in an old woman’s dowdy garb and then black-and-white quick shots, a close-up of the showerhead, water streaming out in arcs, the knife slicing through the air, screeching violins, the blade plunging into Janet Leigh’s body, the soft
thushing
sound of the steel puncturing flesh, blood circling the drain, washing away, and suddenly—in less than the second it takes to recall it—Megan’s knees buckle, and she’s ready to collapse in the tub with the water running, lying with open, dead eyes, just like Janet Leigh. She realizes she’s left the bathroom door open.

She slides the shower curtain aside, reaches through the steamy air, closes the door, and with a shaking hand, turns the latch and locks it.

My God, I’m going berserk. I’ll drive myself as crazy as Conrad
.

Megan thinks it’s difficult to believe her life’s funneled down to being in this tub with its yellow, floral nonslip bathtub appliqués, showering in this cookie-cutter hotel, right off a major, clogged highway, and she realizes that no matter how long she lives, she’ll always see herself as a
survivor. Yes, from now on, each day is a gift
, she thinks,
life granted by nothing more than luck
. Everything good—whether it’s time spent with Marlee or Adrian, helping a fragile preemie struggle for life, watching the ecstatic parents of a newbie or anything else, for that matter—is little more than a bequest.

L
ying in bed, Megan is thankful the bass beat from down the hall has stopped. With a thermal-pane window, the room is sealed off from the distant roar of I-91.

She hears footfalls in the hallway. Then that ice machine churns again; the elevator bell dings; the doors slide open.

My God, it’s so loud
.

I’m going out of my mind
.

More footsteps, then sibilant whispering, a woman’s voice; then there’s a high-pitched giggle in the hallway. It grows distant, recedes down the corridor, and fades like the drift of a radio station at night, a ribbon of sound lost in darkness.

She lies there, stone still, trying to ease her tense muscles, the covers pulled to her chin, waiting for sleep, amnesty.

The telephone sends out a shrill tone. She bolts up, fumbles for it, picks it up, and puts it to her ear. She hears only a buzzing dial tone. She slips out of bed, turns on the lamp, and dials reception. “Did anyone call my room?” she asks.

“No, Ms. Haggarty,” says the operator.

“Are the police there?”

“Yes, two officers are in the lobby. One’s near the elevators.”

“Thanks,” she says, and slips the phone onto the receiver. She switches the lamp off and slides beneath the covers.

The sodium vapor lamps three floors below cast pastel illumination onto the hotel; shadows of sycamore branches form a dancing tracery on the room’s ceiling. Eerie, but better than darkness, Megan thinks. She hates the blackness of night and has always feared how it makes her feel there are no boundaries, just dark emptiness. Like the universe—an endless void. But those shadows are so creepy. Why didn’t she pull the drapes closed?

But no one can see into the room. She’s on the third floor. There’s a huge parking lot across the street, and it’s surrounded by a high chain-link fence. Beyond that, darkened warehouses, low-lying buildings, and in the distance, cars are snaking along in a pall of fumes on I-91, their headlights piercing the night air. In the other direction, a ribbon of red taillights stretches to a black horizon.

She decides to close the drapes. Pitch blackness is better than those ghostly shadows on the ceiling. Slipping out of bed, Megan turns on the bedside lamp. Feeling weak, she plods unsteadily to the window—a double-paned glass expanse. About to pull the drapery rod, she peers down at the parking lot. The sodium vapor lamps cast pink, pyramidal-shaped spotlights, and amid the bleached-looking tints of a hundred parked cars, she sees him. A large man, he wears a hoodie and jeans, stands stone stock-still. She can’t make out his face. Is he looking up at her? Megan’s heart falters and then flutters in her chest. She feels every nerve ending in her body fire. As her heartbeat drubs heavily, she squints, trying to focus on him, but everything’s blurred and then seems to tilt. Megan blinks a few times and then closes her eyes, rubs her face, opens her eyes, and looks again.

Yes, he looks up, right at her. She realizes she’s backlit by the bedside lamp, so she backs away from the window. She stands there for a few moments, trembling. Then she moves slowly back to the window, angles herself to the right side, and peers down to the parking lot.

He’s gone.

She looks left and then right, cranes her neck, presses her cheek against the cold window glass, and peers down the street, both ways. She sees no one. How can that be? She’s certain she saw him. Was it her imagination? Can she even trust her senses now? Between the double dose of Xanax and then the Ambien and her fear, the anticipation of terrible things, and after what happened tonight—was it tonight or forever ago?—she can’t trust her senses. Everything’s disjointed, so out of place, and here she is, uprooted and alone in this dreary hotel room. Maybe she
is
going crazy.

She slides the drapes closed and turns off the lamp.

Back in bed, Megan’s thoughts swim back to high school, to Mom and Dad and Erin back in those days, and it occurs to her that the Ambien, now mixed with Xanax, is doing its thing. She’s floating languidly through space, and there’s a brief flash of Adrian as she recalls their first meeting that day in the cafeteria—
Your soup’s getting cold
—and everything tumbles in some pleasantly cascading stream.

It’s so drifty-dreamy, and there’s no linear thread; everything’s a delicious hodgepodge of stuff. Even as it’s happening Megan knows she’s hovering in a silken web of sleep—some netherland. It’s almost like being drugged. Yes, she’s getting deliriously bombed by the Ambien and Xanax and fear-driven fatigue, and she’s thinking about another movie—not something scary for a change. She won’t do that to herself again. Instead, she recalls
Hope Floats
. That line:
Childhood is what you spend the rest of your life trying to overcome
…

But right now, Megan’s no longer certain where she is, and nothing is quite real. She’s just floating in darkness … somewhere …