Thirteen West (12 page)

Ms Leveret, the relief evening charge nurse, injected the tranquilizer into Laura Jean there at the door while Sally and Connie held her. Soon they were able to lead her back to her room, her eyes glazed, steps shuffling.

"I hate to see her like this," Sally said.

"You'd rather she was terrified?" Connie asked.

"No, but she's like a—a zombie."

"A zombie may have inner peace," Connie said. "Who knows? At least she'll be able to sleep."

Sally tightened her lips, saying nothing. She liked Connie and didn't totally disagree with her, but a note in Laura Jean's old chart had suggested that drugs might have precipitated her schizophrenia. Of course that meant street drugs. Still, it seemed paradoxical that she was now being given other drugs to keep her quiet.

"Yes, she'll sleep," Sally said after they'd put Laura Jean to bed. "But then she'll have the nightmare."

Connie shook her head. "You can't allow yourself to absorb the suffering of others. They'll destroy you. Come on, we're due for a break.

"I'll be along in a minute," Sally said. Left alone, she blinked back tears. Connie was right—feeling sorry for Laura Jean was no help to the girl. Was it empathy she felt, knowing how she teetered on the brink after Em died? For awhile she'd actually believed Em was talking to her, believed she could see her beside the bed—with Em already cremated, her ashes thrown into the ocean.

Fortunately she'd been too frightened to tell anyone. If she had, would she be locked up now like Laura Jean, zonked on Thorazine?

Was she all right now? Would she go to bed some night again and find Em there with her? Sally bowed her head, clutching her hands together. Tears spilled over and ran down her cheeks.

"Hey," David said.

Sally sniffed and gulped, wiping at her eyes.

"You're crying." He put an arm around her. "It's not that bad, whatever's the matter."

She turned her face into his chest and sobbed.

After a moment she felt him urging her to walk and let him lead her into one of the rooms.

"The Preacher's holding forth," he said. "and Jacko's watching TV for a change. Their room is empty—sit down." Sally sat on the edge of Simpson's bed, feeling foolish and fumbling in her pocket for a tissue. David sat beside her, not too close.

"Anything I can do to help?" he asked.

"No, it's nothing anyone can help me with."

"One of the patients?" he asked. "Laura Jean? They get to you once in a while. You got to learn to block it out."

"That's what Connie told me. I know you're right."

He eyed her assessingly and she hung her head.

"So, it's more than that," he said. "Maybe you need to talk about it."

"In a way it concerns Laura Jean. I—I could be her."

"No way."

"But I could. I had hallucinations. They were so real. I believed—"

"LSD?" he asked.

"No. I've never even smoked pot. Nothing. But after Em died I—I saw her. She was there."

"Who's Em?"

"My—she was my friend."

David was silent a moment. "A special friend. More than a friend." There was no question in his voice.

Sally raised her head to stare at him. "How could you know?"

"I just do. So, Em died?"

"She—she killed herself. In front of me. We were in her apartment and I was supposed to—she wanted me to die too. Only I couldn't. I was afraid. I wanted to live. I argued with her and she—she called me a coward. When she picked up the gun and pointed it at me, I ran out of the room. I heard a shot and when I got up enough courage to go back she had blood on her head, on her face, only her eyes weren't dead, they saw me, even with this terrible hole in her head and gray stuff, brains..." She couldn't go on.

David eased over and put his arm around her. "Take it easy. You're shaking all over."

She clutched at his hand. "I—I ran off, I left her like that and no one found out I'd been there when it happened. I got sick, really sick with a fever and had to stay in bed two weeks."

"Maybe you were delirious when you thought you saw her."

"No, no, it wasn't then, it was after I was better. She came and sat on my bed and put her arm around me like—like this. And she said she'd never leave me now, that we were— wedded forever."

"Could be you had a psychic experience," David said. "Em's spirit contacting you."

"I don't believe in that," Sally said. "It was a hallucination."

"Well, whatever it was, you're okay now."

"Am I?" Sally's voice trembled. "What if she appears again? What if I really am becoming psychotic?"

David gave her a little shake. "Hey, I don't believe that. You got to realize what Em was like—possessive, jealous, she even wanted you to die with her so no one else could have any part of you. Right?"

"How—how could you know all those things about her?"

"Aren't they true?"

"Yes. It's like you knew her." She gazed at David in wonder.

"So you're well rid of her. What kind of love is that, wanting you to die? No wonder you thought you saw her still trying to hang on to you."

"I don't understand. Did you know Em?"

"There's more than one like her in the world."

"Oh. You have a girlfriend like Em."

"Not exactly."

"Not...?" Sally let go of his hand, her fingers flying to her mouth as the truth hit her. "I—I don't know what to say. I guess sorry isn't the right word."

He took his arm away. "I had a choice. We all have a choice in the beginning. But now it seems like I don't."

"No wonder you understood about Em and didn't sneer or look disgusted. I was always so afraid people would. She used to yell at me and say I—I didn't love her and maybe I didn't. I can't tell anymore."

"Just Em?" he asked. "You ever make it with a guy?" Sally shook her head.

"Maybe," he began, then shook his head. "No, forget it."

"Tell me," she said. "I've never talked to anyone about Em. I never thought anyone would really understand. Oh, David, I feel so much better. Tell me anything, ask me anything."

He smiled slightly, but didn't speak.

Impulsively, she leaned over and brushed her lips across his cheek. "I hope you don't mind. It seems like we've been friends for years and years."

They stared into each other's eyes.

Not until he began groaning with approaching orgasm did they hear Jacko and turn around, startled to see he'd slipped into the room and was masturbating to one side of them.

* * *

On Tuesday Frank Kent made rounds on Thirteen West, taking more time than his usual walk-through. His first day back on duty and
Alma
's second day off. Not that Dorothy Leveret wasn't capable, but it was
Alma
's ward, after all, so she was more likely to spot problems before they had mushroomed into crises.

"Did you know Laura Jean McRead's vaginal smear was negative for sperm?" Ms Leveret asked as she made the rounds with him. "Days called the lab to ask."

"Glad to hear it," Frank told her.

"Now we can relax and stop eyeing those men on nights as though they were all rapists."

Frank grunted. As far as he was concerned they all were potential rapists. He extended the suspicion to any man because he knew what was buried within himself, needing to be tamped down with all his will.

Still, the absence of sperm argued against rape in this case.

"Dr. Jacobs says he's considering electric shock for both Laura Jean and Adolph Benning," she went on.

"How's Dolph eating?"

"We've been able to get enough down him so he hasn't needed a feeding tube inserted, but he's still very withdrawn."

"I hear the Preacher orating," Frank said.

"...a desolation, a lair of jackals...he makes the mist rise from the ends of the earth...he brings forth the wind from his storehouses..." Simpson intoned as they passed. "...bringing forth evil upon these people, the fruit of their devices..."

"Jeremiah again, the cheery prophet," Frank said. Dorothy Leveret stared at him. He could see the wheels going round in her head—who'd have expected Frank Kent to know the Bible?

"I couldn't tell Jeremiah from Moses," she confessed.

He kept himself as private as possible, making no friends at the hospital with the exception of Sal Luera, the night supervisor—they got along well together. But not even Sal knew Frank was taking college courses during the mornings that would lead to a degree in hospital administration.

David and Sally were seated in the lounge and looked up simultaneously when Frank entered. He frowned, getting a feeling of concealment, of secrets.

"I have to get back to work," Sally said, rising and glancing at David as she did so.

"Not even hello?" Frank asked.

She flushed. "Oh, sorry, I didn't mean—hello, Mr.
Kent
."

"Are you any more enthusiastic about becoming a psych nurse?" he persisted.

"I—no," she said, edging past him.

David was on his feet, following Sally. Frank watched them go out, two slim young bodies without much visible sex differentiation except for Sally's smaller bone structure. She certainly wasn't afraid of David. Frank half-smiled. No need to be, if what he'd heard was true.

It might or might not be. Rumors swarmed about the place like cockroaches. Undoubtedly, since he didn't date women, it was also whispered that Frank Kent was gay. Better they thought that than knew what he'd been tempted by in the past. Yes, the past. Behind him.

Sally wasn't all that young—nineteen, almost twenty, he'd looked at her record in personnel when he checked the records of William Rhone and Joseph Thompson, the regular night techs on Thirteen West.

Only one of the night relief techs on Thirteen West was a man and he was well known to be homosexual. In fact, he lived with one of the male psychiatric social workers in what was apparently a stable relationship. They were buying a home, raised Rex cats—very domestic.

The other was a woman, a sexy piece by all accounts, who was currently balling a married psychologist. Or had been, anyway. Her husband had recently given the erring doctor a black eye.

So, as far as the night shift went, only
Rhone
and Thompson were unknowns. Nothing out of the way on either of their records, if you discounted
Rhone
's brief jail sentence. He'd recently transferred here from down south, a fairly new graduate, rumored to be a swinger, probably unlikely he'd risk rape if he was getting it elsewhere.

Thompson was moonlighting, Frank had found out, not unusual for the night people. That ought to make him too tired for it.

Besides, Laura Jean was a schiz with known hallucinations, which meant no one might be molesting her. She was terror-ridden. Schizophrenia had rightly been called the kingdom of hell.

Hell must be worse than purgatory. He knew about purgatory. But Sally was almost twenty, after all, and she attracted him.

"Hi, Mr.
Kent
," Sven Taterson said as Frank passed him in the corridor. "How's chances of me getting back to Twelve East?"

"Tate, you know only a doctor can order a transfer."

"Yeah, but this Doc Jacobs, he don't know me very well yet and I thought maybe you could put it to him, tell him I don't belong over here with the crazies. You know." Tate jerked his head toward his room where Dolph Benning curled fetus-like.

"The idea is having guys like you around will help the others, the ones who are withdrawn," Frank said. "Anyway, aren't you about due for discharge?"

"They said something about a half-way house, but I don't know. Sure, I want to get out of here but it don't sound like they trust me to get by on my own."