When She Was Bad: A Thriller (5 page)

“Lily, no!” Dr. Cogan leapt from her chair as the girl buried her face in her hands; she grabbed Lily’s wrists and forced them apart. “Stay with us, honey, you need to stay with us.”

Corder had jumped to his feet. “Alter switch?”

Cogan nodded; Lily struggled halfheartedly to free her hands.

“No, let her,” said Corder softly.

But it was too late. Still herself, Lily glanced up, embarrassed, as the psychiatrists sat down again. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be,” said Corder. “Before we’re done, you and I, I’m going to want to meet all your alters. I have something very important to teach them.”

“What’s that?” Lily wanted to know; so did Irene Cogan.

“That they’re not welcome here—that their, ah, time is up.”

“I don’t think they’re going to like that,” said Lily, almost inaudibly.

“Makes no never mind what they like or don’t like,” said Corder folksily. “Around here we’re much more concerned with reinforcing the original personality—that’s
you,
young lady.”

“I know that,” said Lily; the doctors chuckled pleasantly, pointlessly again, as though she’d been cracking jokes left and right.

“The way we do that is by making you as happy and comfortable as possible. Gourmet cuisine or comfort food, as you prefer—I warn you, you may put on a few pounds; I certainly have.” He patted his belly. “Walks in the arboretum, swimming in the lap pool, movies in our own little theater—basically anything that will help you avoid stress, since stress is the number-one trigger for alter switches.”

“No kidding,” said Lily, to another round of forced chuckles.

“That’s the spirit,” said Corder. “Now, if you’re both ready, I’d like to show you around. And if
you
don’t mind, Irene, there’s someone I’d like Lily to meet. Someone who’s, ah, been through what she’s been through, and come out the other side.”

It took Irene another few seconds to realize what Corder had in mind; when it dawned on her, she felt a sudden chill, followed by a churning in her lower bowel, as if she’d just polished off a plateful of bad mussels.

4

No matter how badly Lyssy’s day was going, he always felt better in the arboretum. His senses started coming alive the moment he passed through the entrance arch, two red-lacquered vertical timbers supporting a slanting, overlapping red lintel beam, which together, according to Dr. Corder, formed an oriental character symbolizing tranquillity. Lyssy drank in the dappled light, the satisfying crunch of the blue-gray pea gravel underfoot, the dry biting scent of the evergreens, the harsh chatter of the jays.

Sitting with Dr. Al on a marble bench at the end of a short allée of pine trees were an older woman with helmet-shaped, reddish-blond hair, and a dark-haired girl in jeans and an oversize leather bomber jacket, huddled with her knees together and her elbows pressed against her sides, as if she were waiting for a bus in the cold. Lyssy’s heart went out to her—he would, he thought, have recognized her as a new patient even if Wally the psych tech hadn’t already clued him in in the elevator on their way down.

Dr. Al performed the introductions. Lyssy stuck out his hand, palm down to hide the scars, shook hands with each woman in turn, and asked them how they were. They both said they were fine; the girl asked him how he was in return.

“Just fine,” he replied, glancing over to Dr. Al to see how he was doing, phatically speaking.

Dr. Al gave him a circled-thumb-and-forefinger okay sign and an encouraging nod. “Lyssy knows the arboretum like the back of his hand,” he told Lily. “Perhaps he’d, ah, be willing to show you around.”

“My pleasure,” said Lyssy, crooking his arm the way he’d seen men do it in old movies. But Lily made no effort to take it, leaving him standing there with one elbow awkwardly akimbo for a few seconds, before he turned and limped away up the gravel path. After a frightened-doe backward glance toward Dr. Cogan, who gave
her
an encouraging nod, Lily followed Lyssy. Wally started after them, but Corder caught his arm.

“Let’s give them a little time to get to know each other, Walter,” he said.

“It’s not so bad here, really,” Lyssy explained, when Lily had caught up to him. “Everybody on the staff is nice—the mean ones don’t last long. And the patients on 1-East aren’t even very crazy. Dr. Al calls them the Desperate Housewives—some of them come here more for a rest than anything else. If they have enough money, of course.

“Then there’s the ODDs and CODs—those are teenagers with oppositional defiant disorder or conduct disorder. Dr. Al says their parents send ’em here either as a voluntary alternative to military school or an involuntary alternative to reform school. They’re mostly on 2-East, where the game room is. He treats ’em with behavior mod—he says the smart ones usually figure it out pretty quick.”

He was interrupted by maniacal laughter from somewhere overhead. They looked up, saw a bird with a round red cap clinging vertically to the trunk of the oak. “That’s an acorn woodpecker,” Lyssy explained. “The other day I saw one of ’em fly into a wire—”

Lily flinched.

“No, no, it didn’t hurt itself,” he added quickly. “Just clipped it with a wing, caught itself in midair, then it was all like—” He puffed out his chest, darted his head around stiffly—a dead-on imitation of an embarrassed woodpecker:
“‘I meant to do that, really I did.’”

“That’s pretty good,” said Lily, smiling tentatively.

“Want to hear my imitation of Dr. Al?”

“Sure.”

He glanced around to make sure the other three were out of earshot, then drew his chin back against his chest to double it.
“‘Perhaps, ah, Lyssy would be willing to, ah, show you around.’”

Lily’s smile faded as a tall, unshaven man shuffled toward them wearing a seersucker bathrobe over pajamas and slippers. Instinctively she dropped back and ducked behind Lyssy. “Don’t sweat it,” he whispered, proud at how she’d sought his protection. “That’s Colonel Lamp. He’s a schizo. Completely harmless—they keep him medicated to the gills. Here, watch this.” As he passed the old fellow, Lyssy snapped off a salute.

Stiffly, the colonel drew himself up to his full height to return the salute, but missed his forehead by a few inches, hitting himself in the side of the jaw instead. “Carry on,” he said thickly, spittle flying.

“Boo-yah,” replied Lyssy.

The path looped and forked and curled in on itself so many times that after walking for a few minutes, they were only twenty or thirty yards from the entrance, as the crow flies. By then Lyssy’s limp had grown more pronounced—he had to use the railing to help him across the wooden footbridge, red-lacquered like the entranceway, that arched steeply over a little streamlet with cement banks bordered by flower beds.

On the far side of the bridge, terraced steps led up to a cozy-looking little domed gazebo with flowering vines climbing the trellised sides. They sat next to each other with a good eighteen inches of marble bench separating them. Try as she might to convince herself that it would okay to ask him about his limp, she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. They sat in silence, listening to the maniacal laughter of the woodpeckers. “Have you seen your room yet?” he asked eventually.

“Just for a second. It’s on the second floor of the front building? Kind of peach colored, with an adjoining bathroom?”

“That’s just the observation suite,” Lyssy told her. “It’s only temporary, until they decide how close of an eye they need to keep on you. A word to the wise, though: there’s a reason they call it the
observation
suite.”

But the warning did not fully register—nor would it, until the following morning. “Can I ask you a personal question?” Lily asked him after another uncomfortable pause.

Lyssy’s heart sank. Here it comes, he thought. For a few minutes there, he’d allowed himself to hope that she hadn’t recognized him, that she didn’t know anything about his murderous past. “Go ahead,” he said, bracing himself.

“Is it true you used to have DID, and Dr. Corder cured you?”

“Oh, that,” said Lyssy, almost giddy with relief. “Yeah, sure—I haven’t had an alter switch in like, two years or something. No fugue states, no blackouts. Sometimes, though…. “But he caught himself just in time. No sense scaring her, when Dr. Al would have wanted him to be as encouraging as possible. Besides, out here in the sweet air of a summer afternoon, it was easy to believe he’d only imagined the dark place and the muttering voice.

And even if he hadn’t, divulging the existence of either would have been risky—if the girl passed his misgivings on to Dr. Al, it would mean an end to Lyssy’s hard-earned privileges. No more trips to the game room to hang out with the ODDs and CODs, no more meals in the dining hall, and worst of all, no more visits to the director’s residence to visit Alison and Mrs. Corder—Lyssy would be spending his remaining time at the Institute in a locked room on the locked ward.

“Well, you know, sometimes, it seems like it’s almost too good to be true,” he finished awkwardly.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” said the girl. Then those dark round eyes narrowed. “But if you’re better, how come you’re still here?”

“Actually, I’m due to leave pretty soon,” said Lyssy, truthfully enough.

“And you’re cured? You’re really,
really
cured?”

“A, ah, paragon of mental health,” replied Lyssy, once again mimicking Dr. Al.

5

Alan Corder had long maintained that the standard setup for a modern psychiatric evaluation—two people sitting on opposite sides of a desk; one asks questions or administers tests while the other responds—left much to be desired.

Once she’d recovered from her initial shock at finding herself face-to-face with the man who still figured in her nightmares, Irene had to agree. Walking with Lyssy in the pleasant pocket forest after she and Corder had caught up to their patients at the gazebo, observing him as he interacted with the enriched sensory environment, she found that the disarming awkwardness of his body language, his mercurial attention span, his childish delight in the magical appearance of a hummingbird, as well as his eagerness to share that delight with his companions, all spoke volumes—volumes that would never even have been opened in the usual office setting.

What she didn’t see was equally as important. As a multiple, Maxwell had almost always exhibited an upward, rightward eyeball roll when changing alters, and the new alter had frequently exhibited grounding behavior afterward, rubbing a thigh as if to verify that he (or in the case of one alter, she) was in fact in the body.

But Irene observed none of this behavior during their walk. When she made eye contact with Lyssy, even when she caught him unawares, there was no sign of Max or Kinch, the Maxwell alters she’d learned to fear—with good reason.

“I have to admit, I’m impressed,” she conceded to Corder when they were alone in his office, sitting in matching leather armchairs in front of the fireplace. “How long since an alter has surfaced?”

“Just under two years,” replied Corder.

“You’re sure about that?”

“I can show you the optical exams if you’d like.” Variations in optical functioning were among the most reliable indicators for a personality switch: a 1989 study had confirmed that DID subjects had close to five times more such changes than control subjects who’d been asked to feign the disorder.

“I’ll take your word for it,” said Irene, smoothing the travel wrinkles from her skirt. “What about the possibility of co-consciousness?” That was a state of being, uncommon but not unknown, where one alter was able to directly and simultaneously experience the thoughts, feelings, and actions of another. (Researchers still weren’t exactly sure how the mind managed the feat, but one thing they all agreed on was that the human brain seemed to have evolved with redundancy as one of its basic design principles: there was more than enough gray matter in there to operate two personalities simultaneously.)

“There’d have been some indication—confusion, mini–fugue states, contradictory responses.” Corder grinned suddenly, then slapped the arm of his chair. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to face it sooner or later, Irene: I
can
treat DID successfully.”

“But you’re not going to tell me how, are you?”

“No, I’m not.” Corder grabbed a poker from the brass stand by the fireplace and prodded at the neatly stacked logs—a bit of fidgeting that would have been less revealing if there’d actually been a fire going at the time. “And for good reason. I’m sorry to have to be so mysterious about this, but the last thing I want to do is get caught up in a debate about my methodology until I have my ducks in a row and I’m ready to publish.”

“At least give me a hint—I’m feeling badly enough about leaving Lily, as it is.” The decision to have Lily committed to Reed-Chase had been made by her new guardian, her uncle Rollie, who’d learned about Corder’s success with multiples from various DID websites. Irene’s feelings had been hurt, of course—her first inclination had been to wash her hands of the whole damn case. She and Lily had grown too close over the last dozen years anyway, she’d told herself—it would probably be a relief to have all that weight off her shoulders.

But that was sour grapes, and she knew it. And in the end, she couldn’t leave Lily to be hunted down and dragged off to an asylum by strangers. So she’d enlisted Ed Pender in the cause. Pender in turn had brought in a skip tracer from Santa Cruz who’d tracked Lily to Shasta County; the rest of the story had played itself out in the coffee shop in Weed.

“All right, one hint,” said Corder, begrudgingly. “But you have to promise not to tell
anybody anything
until I publish.”

“I swear on my DSM.” A little professional humor: the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
was sometimes referred to as the clinical psychiatrist’s Bible.