Once Upon a Day (6 page)

“Thank you,” I repeated.

We got back in the cab and headed off into the early evening darkness, though it wasn’t dark at all compared to home. There were streetlamps and office buildings still lit, traffic lights changing colors, stores with blinking yellow bulbs. I wondered if anyone had trouble sleeping with all this brightness, but then I remembered that I’d taken a nap in this very cab in broad daylight. At home, I never slept after sunrise, and I certainly never napped. Maybe everyone in the city was exhausted from all this light and motion.

Mr. Spaulding drove for about twenty minutes before he stopped at a building right in the heart of what I could tell was downtown from the closeness of the Arch, which he’d pointed out earlier. He told me this was a shelter.

“A shelter?” I said.

“For the homeless.”

The very idea made me sad, and I was almost glad Jimmy wasn’t there. But the next place Mr. Spaulding stopped was even worse. He told me it was a hospital, and I could tell it was from the horrible noise as an ambulance blared into the driveway marked “Emergency.” But then we drove to the other side of the building, by the sign that read “Psychiatric.”

“My brother is not crazy,” I said, leaning forward, grabbing the front seat. “I know all those people called him crazy, but it isn’t true! I’ve known him my entire life, and he’s as sane as I am. He’s not in the nuthouse!”

“The what?”

“The insane asylum! Isn’t that what this is?”

“This is the psychiatric ward of the county hospital. No one uses the terms ‘nuthouse’ and ‘insane asylum’ anymore.” His voice was incredulous as he turned around to look at me. “Jesus, where do you come up with these things?”

I felt stupider than I’d felt all day. “An old set of encyclopedias and some even older novels,” I admitted, dropping my hands. “My father’s library wasn’t very modern.”

“You were homeschooled?”

I’d never heard the word, but it fit perfectly. School at home. Homeschooled. I told him yes, but then I pointed at the hospital. “I really am very certain that Jimmy isn’t in this place.”

“He probably isn’t,” Mr. Spaulding said, but he turned around and got out of the taxicab. I followed, though I knew it was a waste of time.

But I was wrong, Jimmy was there. He’d been brought in because he was “self-destructive.” This was what the doctor told Mr. Spaulding. The doctor’s name was Dr. Phillips, but Mr. Spaulding called him Jay, and he called Mr. Spaulding Stephen. They talked entirely to each other in a language I couldn’t follow, much less understand, until finally I coughed and reminded them in the firmest possible way that this was my brother we were talking about.

“I’m sorry, Miss O’Brien,” Dr. Phillips said.

This man’s “I’m sorry” wasn’t appealing. He didn’t sound sorry; he sounded like he thought I was too much of a nincompoop to bother talking to.

We were standing in the waiting area. Over on the left, I could see a pair of swinging doors that obviously led somewhere important because doctors and nurses kept going in and out of them. I was feeling very bold now that I knew Jimmy was here. I was about to see my brother for the first time since he left twenty-one months ago.

I waited until Dr. Phillips and Mr. Spaulding were talking again, and I made a break for those doors.

“Dorothea!” Mr. Spaulding scolded, as both men started after me. But tough toenails, as Grandma used to say. I wasn’t going to stand there listening when I could be putting my arms around Jimmy. I broke into a run.

They caught up with me, but not before I’d gone by a large white board that listed Jimmy’s name and his room number, and not before I managed to get down the hall to where I stood right in front of room 328.

The door was locked, but I pressed my face to the small square window and there he was, wearing the same green hospital dress I’d seen on other patients being wheeled around in the halls; so skinny, his beautiful red hair a tangled mess, but otherwise the same boy I’d always known. I started pounding on the glass and he saw me too. And then he did something I never expected from such a brave person as Jimmy, something I hadn’t seen him do as far back as I could remember. He started to cry.

Still, I did not cry myself, not even when that horrible man Dr. Phillips told me I couldn’t hug my brother, I couldn’t even speak to him. “You are not allowed down this hall,” he said, panting a little from trying to catch me. “It’s a violation of hospital policy for a relative to barge in like this.”

“But why?” I said.

He gave a list of reasons that seemed to make sense to Mr. Spaulding, but made no sense at all to me. I raised my hand to pound on the glass again, and Dr. Phillips grabbed it and pulled me away from the window.

“You have to tell her she can’t do this,” he said to Mr. Spaulding. He looked me up and down with a sneer. “I don’t know who she thinks she is.”

Mr. Spaulding said gently, “Dorothea, please.”

“But why can’t I see my brother? He’s crying. He needs me.”

“They’re keeping him for observation. It’s standard procedure in cases like these.”

“Keeping him? Can they do that?”

“In this case, yes.” Mr. Spaulding took a deep breath. “He’s tried to hurt himself. They have to watch him until they’re sure he won’t do it again.”

“What do you mean, ‘hurt himself’?”

“It’s not as bad as a suicide attempt, but he did come in here with a serious infection.”

“But he looks fine.”

“Take another look, Dorothea.”

Dr. Phillips said that wasn’t allowed, but Mr. Spaulding convinced him to let me, primarily by telling Dr. Phillips I was very stubborn and I wouldn’t give up until they did.

When I looked this time, Jimmy smiled at me through his tears. I smiled back and I kept my face just like that even as I finally saw what they were talking about.

Before, he’d been sitting with his left side facing me, and I hadn’t seen his right arm. I hadn’t seen the gashes all over it, healed enough to be out of bandages, but not out of stitches.

“It doesn’t look that serious,” I said.

“Because you can’t see his naked body,” Dr. Phillips snapped. “When he came here, he had four-inch-deep lacerations on his arm and his stomach and his chest. He had taken so many chunks out of himself that he needed a blood transfusion.”

“Oh,” I whispered.

They pushed me away from Jimmy’s window then, but I maintained my smile until the last second. I even managed a little wave to my brother, before I broke down in sobs.

While I still had enough air to gasp, I asked Mr. Spaulding to get me out of here. I knew it was going to be a bad attack, and I might lose consciousness. I was crying too hard.

I was already running out of air when Dr. Phillips shouted, “Is she asthmatic?” Mr. Spaulding didn’t respond. He took me by the arm and we moved to the nearest exit sign. Somehow he managed to get me to the safety of the cab, even though he had to lug me most of the way. He did what I desperately wanted, even though he
kept cursing and mumbling that it was against his better judgment to take a person who couldn’t breathe
away
from the hospital. He also told me it would be all right many, many times. Jimmy would be all right, he said, and so would I.

From that point on, I was proud to call him by his given name. He was Stephen now, my first friend.

S
TEPHEN
S
PAULDING
was lying on his couch at 2:47 a.m., wide awake. Nothing unusual about that. He’d had insomnia nine nights out of ten since the accident. What was unusual were his thoughts, or more precisely that he was letting himself think, rather than turning on the TV or drinking himself senseless or even staring at the ceiling until his mind was perfectly blank, something he’d become an expert at in the two years since he’d lost Ellen and Lizzie. Maybe the explanation was simple: he finally had something to think about. He could, for instance, wonder if he was losing his mind. He could wonder what the hell he’d gotten himself into, bringing that woman back to his apartment.

He’d driven her all the way to the Radisson first, despite how frightened she’d looked when he suggested it. She admitted she’d never stayed in a hotel before—why wasn’t he surprised? She also admitted that she’d never spent a night away from home before, except on the Greyhound bus, which really didn’t count, she said,
because it wasn’t like night when you were traveling on a bus. You didn’t have to sleep. You could hear talking at all hours. It was friendlier than she’d expected. Nothing like being alone in a room in a strange place.

“I’ll help you check in,” he said. “But then I really have to go.”

She didn’t protest, only said thank you. Yet before they were even through the Radisson front door, he heard her start with the goofy singing again. He checked her pulse and it was up to 165. Not as bad as outside the hospital, when she was at 202, but still a cause for concern.

Her reaction when he suggested she stay with him instead was just another in a seemingly endless list of weird things about her. She said, “Do you have any extra socks?”

He couldn’t help laughing, but this time rather than staring at him like she’d never seen a person laugh before, she laughed too. Who knows what she would have said if he’d asked her why. In any case, it wasn’t long before she was back to the vaguely sad expression she’d had all day.

Was he trying to make her happier by offering to take her to the twenty-four-hour Wal-Mart? No, he told himself, he was just passing the time. It was only nine-thirty. Too early to go to his apartment, especially as she’d spent the afternoon asleep in his cab. Maybe some part of him was thinking it would be distracting for her. Wherever she was from—and he still hadn’t asked her, he hadn’t wanted to pry—she’d obviously never been to a Wal-Mart.

Her first reaction was the overwhelmed shyness he’d seen every time they stopped at another dump looking for her brother. She’d actually stepped behind him when the Wal-Mart greeter came forward. “Who is that person?” she whispered. “Do you know her?” But after about ten minutes, she seemed to get comfortable, and then the rapid-fire questions began. She was curious about damn near everything: from address books to headphones, from a cappuccino maker to a shag toilet seat cover. “What is this used for? Do most people own one of these? Do you think I should buy one for my father?”

He talked her out of buying everything except a large jar of pickles and some normal clothes. “We can come back again before you leave,” he told her, though he wondered later why on earth he’d suggested that. And why he’d stood outside of the dressing room—guarding the door for her, supposedly, like she’d asked—while she tried on skirts and dresses? (No pants, she said, she wasn’t sure her father would approve. Stephen wondered if her dad was some kind of religious nut.)

He was dreading the idea that she would ask his opinion as she was trying things on. How could he know which looked best? With Ellen, it had always come down to two questions: Does it make me look fat? Does it make my boobs look too big? They were both ridiculous, but he’d gotten good at helping her find something she was happy with. He couldn’t imagine Dorothea asking either of these questions, but even if the questions were only in his mind, it would be a problem. Hell, even that they could have been in his mind was already a problem, because wasn’t he thinking about Dorothea’s body even as he thought that he couldn’t think about those questions?

Luckily, she came out of the dressing room after only a few minutes, ready to go. She said she’d picked two outfits, adding, “I hope they will keep Dr. Phillips from being so rude.”

Stephen had already told her they would go back to the hospital tomorrow. What he hadn’t told her was most of the day-shift psych attendings were decent people, not assholes like Jay Phillips. Even if they couldn’t release Jimmy to her—which they just might, considering that Dorothea was a relative and Phillips had told him they’d had Jimmy for weeks at this point—they would at least let her see her brother.

But of course none of this had anything to do with her clothes. After he asked her why she thought it did, she said, “You have on a very modern outfit. I’ve seen several men wearing tan pants and a blue shirt, though most of them aren’t as trim as you. Even your brown shoes seem to be a very popular style.”

He blinked at her. “Not sure I follow.”

“Dr. Phillips wasn’t rude to you.”

He told her it wasn’t his clothes, but he didn’t explain. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Do you think I could meet you in the socks?” he said, nodding across the aisle. “It’s right over there.”

“Fine.” Though she looked confused, she didn’t ask any questions for once.

He headed outside to think—and to smoke. A bad habit from his teen years that he’d taken up again since he started driving the cab. He wasn’t addicted because he could go a whole day without a cigarette, but he could also have one when he really needed one, like right now.

When he returned, he discovered that Dorothea had found a basket and loaded it up with her new clothes and jar of pickles and what appeared to be at least a dozen pairs of knee-highs. “I’ve always liked socks,” she said, a little sheepishly.

He waited until they’d made it through the mercifully short checkout line. They were walking to the cab when he told her, “I don’t want you to do this anymore.”

“Do what?”

“Try to figure out why a guy like Phillips is rude. I know you come from a nicer place, but this is the real world. People can be bastards for no reason. It has nothing to do with your clothes.”

“Something made him treat me like I was beneath him though. If it wasn’t my clothes, then what was it?”

“You’re doing it again.” He exhaled. “Look, I know Phillips. I used to work with him, and he would treat anyone in your position the same way.”

“And what is my position?”

“Your brother is in the county hospital. It’s one of the few hospitals in the city that has to take any patient.” He shifted the bag from one hand to the other, wondering if this would insult her or if she would even understand it. “What I’m saying is they mainly treat people who can’t afford to pay.”