Darlene, close enough to damn near give her a flat tire. Darlene threw him a look and he backed off while Avanti sauntered off in another direction.
Determined to check in on Jane Doe as soon as Freeson stopped circling the area and went back to his own office—where he spent most of his time, as his people skills were practically nil and he was best forming speeches and pontificating at hospital fund-raisers—Claire looked for Bradford Gibson, Gibby, a twenty-eight-year-old mentally handicapped patient with the mind and intellect of a five-year-old. In the morning room she saw that he was working on an art project of some kind. His tongue was buried in his cheek as he concentrated. His hair was buzz cut as he had a tendency to rip it out by the roots. He was a little on the heavy side with eyes so round and unblinking that he looked eerily like an owl sometimes. But he was sweet and generally satisfied, unless thwarted in his routine.
One of the aides, Alison, slim, with a mop of unruly dark hair, said, “He thought Thomas wanted his picture,” as way of explanation for the outburst.
“Ah.” Claire headed back to her office. She had a ten o’clock appointment with a regular outpatient. She would check on Jane Doe later.
The morning room was a misnomer at Halo Valley Security Hospital, as it was used all day and it was a patient gathering area with tables, chairs, bookshelves, and a television. The walls were painted yellow and patient artwork was displayed in a haphazard fashion, placed there by the artists themselves. Gibby carefully taped his latest spaceship onto the wall and looked on in satisfaction. It was blue and red and silver flames shooted into the sky. He glanced around and surreptitiously took Maribel’s horse picture down to make room. Maribel was stupid, anyway. She never remembered nothing. Gibby was pretty sure she had that Zimer’s disease. At least she wasn’t really, really crazy like those guys in the other building.
Shivering, Gibby glanced out the window on the back side of the morning room. They tried to hide it with trees and stuff, but there was a really mean fence over there with curly wire on top, the kind he’d seen on that show about criminals that he wasn’t supposed to watch. Every time he turned on the TV without permission, one of those nurse people came. Greg was okay, but Darlene was a witch with a capital B. That’s what his mom always said. A witch with a capital B, and that meant she was really, really bad.
But the morning room was a great place. He was safe here. The halls were scary with creatures popping their heads out of rooms. Everyone told Gibby he was just imagining them, that the rooms held people, either patients or hospital personnel, but Gibby knew better. They just weren’t able to see. But here, they never bothered him. Once he got inside the morning room sliding doors, he was safe. He always wanted to close the doors, but it was against the rules. This bothered Gibby, but since the creatures couldn’t cross into this space without burning up from the inside out, he could live with it. And if he was in his special chair, he was really, really safe. If someone was sitting in his chair like Maribel, though, anything could happen, but today the chair was free so Gibby grabbed it and sat down hard. The nurse people had brought in another chair, not as good as Gibby’s but it was blue, which was his favorite color, and it looked not hard like those wood ones. Darlene was helping a lady with yellow hair into it.
Greg, one of the big nurse guys, looked at the lady and said, “She okay to be here?”
Darlene stood up and walked away and Greg followed. Gibby heard her say, “Dr. Freeson wants her to have lots of stimuli.”
Gibby thought that maybe Darlene didn’t think that was the thing to do, but then Darlene was mean. The yellow-haired lady was staring at the TV though the TV wasn’t on.
Shooting a look at Darlene and Greg, Gibby said in a whisper to the woman, “You have to ast. They won’t turn it on unless you ast.”
She didn’t respond. Didn’t even move. Gibby saw her belly and wondered why she was hiding a ball under her clothes. “They’ll do it for free if you ast,” he told her conspiratorially. “You just have to ast.”
Maribel cruised by, then turned around and sat down right on Gibby’s lap. He started yelling at the top of his lungs and Darlene came over and helped Maribel off. Gibby watched as Maribel wandered away, touching everything as she went.
“You have pretty hair,” Gibby told the woman in the chair. “What’s your name?”
“She doesn’t have a name,” Darlene said crushingly, making Gibby jump the way she creeped up on him. She was mean, oh, she was mean! He stared at the lady in horrified wonder. No name? “She hast to have a name!”
But Darlene was heading out of the room. Good. Gibby didn’t like her. She smelled like an ashtray. That’s what his mom always said. She smelled like an ashtray.
“You have yellow hair like the morning room,” Gibby said, pleased with himself. The lady’s lips moved. He looked closer but wasn’t quite sure if they did. Was she trying to talk to him? “I hope you don’t have Zimer’s disease,” he said. “I want to talk to you.”
“I want to talk to you, too,” she said.
Gibby was even more pleased. But her lips didn’t move, did they? He wasn’t sure. He was pretty sure she’d talked, though. Pretty sure…He wished she would turn her head and look at him but she stared straight ahead. He finally got up from his chair and stood in front of her. He had to squeeze down and squat to see into her eyes. They were blue. His favorite color! She didn’t look like she saw him, though. She kinda looked empty. A little like Maribel.
And just like that Maribel sat down in his chair and started laughing.
Gibby threw back his head and screamed and lunged for her.
Claire missed Gibby’s second bout of screaming as she was listening to Jamie Lou Breene’s account of her latest escapades. An outpatient, she suffered from narcissism in a severe form, complicated by a bipolar disorder. When she was “up,” she went on crazy sprees that had landed her a number of stints at the hospital. When she was down, she was almost suicidal. The only thing saving her was, ironically, her own narcissism. She couldn’t take her own life.
She was also incapable of accepting blame or consequence and had run through a number of psychiatrists before being placed with Claire.
“I woke up in Salem at some place. Don’t remember how I got there,” Jamie was saying with a hint of pride, lifting her chin. She’d been pretty; she still was. But at thirty-three, with years of wild behavior and hard living behind her, she was showing signs of wear. Sometimes, on her meds, she could keep herself under control. Most times she just let herself ricochet from one disaster to the other.
Claire tried hard to keep her from hurting herself and others, but the woman was a ticking time bomb. She wouldn’t stay on her meds. She hated the dulled feeling that robbed her of herself.
“What kind of place?” Claire asked.
“Some guy’s apartment,” she said with a shrug. “He was nice enough, I guess. I mighta had sex with him. Pretty sure I did.”
“Did you use precautions?”
“I doubt it.”
“Dangerous behavior, Jamie.”
Her family, an ex-husband, a seven-year-old son, and a sometime alcoholic father, had all tried to help but they were falling away from a problem that wouldn’t, maybe couldn’t, be corrected.
“I’ll get the
