Shouldn’t have tried to convince him about the aliens and the AllFather coming for the Earth. Shouldn’t have asked him to stretch his imagination even one little bit because Chuck doesn’t have an imagination. To him I just sound crazy.
“I’m sorry, but other patients are waiting to use the phone,” the nurse said sternly, even though there was nobody else at the nurse’s station. “Please hand me back the receiver, Ms. Morrison, or I’m afraid I’ll have to revoke your phone privileges for the foreseeable future.”
“But—” Torri started, and then realized it was no good. Even if she got them to call Chuck back for her, he wasn’t going to take the call. He might never take a call from her again and he was her only way out of here. Her only way out and she had pissed him off and made him cry. Chuck hated to get emotional—he would hate her for making him get that way.
She had probably just ruined any chance she had of getting out of here in the foreseeable future.
“Ms. Morrison?” The nurse’s voice had grown sharp.
Numbly, Torri handed back the phone.
What else could she do?
Four
After break time, Torri had one-on-one therapy with Dr. Burrows.
Burrows was the psychiatrist who had been assigned specially to her, but he was also the head of the entire unit. He was a skinny man with thinning black hair and bulging, china-blue eyes who always wore a long white lab coat with his name embroidered on the pocket.
“Ah, Torri, come have a seat,” he said, when she entered his office after a perfunctory knock. “I understand you’ve been having a rough day today.”
He gave her a meltingly sympathetic look which Torri returned with a flat stare. She wasn’t falling for his bullshit anymore. He had given her that exact same look when Chuck had brought her in for the “overnight observation” and explained about her night terrors. Dr. Burrows had pretended that he only wanted to diagnose her and then he would let her go.
It had all been a lie. She was stuck here now and this man was one of the reasons why—Chuck being the other one.
“I’m fine,” she said, sitting in the hard plastic chair he had indicated, in front of his desk. The desk was a heavy piece of oak furniture and the walls were filled with Dr. Burrows’ degrees and accolades as well as pictures of him shaking hands with some of the government bigwigs here in DC.
Dr. Burrows shook his head and made a tsking sound.
“You’re fine, hmm? That’s not what I’ve heard. Care to tell me about this?”
From behind his desk, he drew out the 11 by 7 picture of the tree with the crude crayon noose hanging from it.
Torri took a deep breath, willing herself to be calm.
“This is a picture I have been working on for weeks, which I really liked,” she said evenly. “Tanya drew that noose and ruined it. Then she took it to the therapist and told her I did it, to get me into trouble.” She shrugged. “Looks like it worked.”
“Oh, you’re not in any trouble!” Dr. Burrows hastened to assure her. “We just want to make sure you’re not thinking of hurting yourself, Torri!”
“Yes, I suppose it would be really hard to charge my insurance for keeping me here if I was dead, wouldn’t it?” Torri raised an eyebrow at him.
Dr. Burrows frowned reprovingly.
“This kind of flippant attitude isn’t exactly conducive to your recovery, I’m afraid.”
“Well, it’s just that I know St. Elizabeth’s is a pretty expensive facility and I further know that Chuck has really excellent insurance under the DOJ,” Torri said. “I mean, say what you want about the Federal Government, but they take care of their own, right? So, as long as you’re holding me here, my insurance is paying you the big bucks, which makes everybody happy. Well, everybody except me.”
“I’m sorry you’re not happy here,” Dr. Burrows said, his frown deepening. “But it sounds to me as though you’re developing something of a persecution complex, Torri.”
“Oh my, imagine that!” Torri snapped. “I’m only being held here in this shit hole against my will and I’ve only been here three months longer than I was told I would be—I can’t imagine why I might feel unhappy or persecuted.”
“Please watch your language and your tone, Torri,” Dr. Burrows said primly. “I wouldn’t want to have to call any of our caretakers to restrain you.”
“Restrain me? Because I’m finally speaking my mind?” Torri rose and put her hands on his desk. Leaning forward she said, “Dr. Burrows, I am not crazy. When are you going to let me out of here?”
“Please sit down, Torri, or I really will have to call the orderlies.” Dr. Burrows glared at her. “And no one ever said you were ‘crazy.’ The diagnostic term is ‘delusional.’”
“Delusional?” Torri took her hands off his desk but refused to sit back down. She put her hands on her hips instead and glared at him. “Dr. Burrows, I am not suffering from delusions!”
“What about the aliens coming to take over the Earth?” Dr. Bowers asked quietly. “What about them, Torri?”
Torri felt as though the wind had been knocked out of her—as though he’d sucker-punched her with those quiet words.
“What…who…who told you that?” she managed at last.
“I’m afraid I got a rather distraught phone call from your husband just a little while ago,” Dr. Bowers said. “He told me everything, Torri. Everything he now admits he should have told me in the first place, during your initial intake.”
Torri sank back into the hard plastic chair feeling sick. When she had first agreed to come in to St. Elizabeth’s for the “overnight evaluation,” she had made Chuck promise not to mention the nature of her Seeing Dreams.
“We can talk about the night terrors—but we can’t talk about what I see in them,” she had told Chuck, who had agreed—he would have agreed to anything to get her through the front doors of this place, Torri thought.
She had known that if the word “aliens” came out of her mouth, there was going to be trouble. So she had told Dr. Burrows that she had terrible nightmares she couldn’t remember and woke up screaming. Only that and nothing else. And Chuck had sworn not to say anything either.
But now he had. He had broken his promise and opened his mouth and let everything out into the open.
Guess that phone call you made did a lot more damage than you thought, whispered a reproving little voice in her head. Told you it was a bad idea.
“Tell me about the aliens heading for Earth, Torri,” Dr. Burrows said softly, steepling his fingers on his desk and leaning forward. “Do they tell you to do anything to yourself or others? Do they tell you to hurt yourself?”
My God, he thinks I’m a paranoid schizophrenic now, Torri thought dismally.
“It’s not like that,” she said in a low voice. “I’m not like…like Donnie.”
Donnie had been a patient on the Non-Violent wing when she had first come to St. Elizabeth’s. He spent most of the day crouching in the corner and muttering to himself about the “voices” and what they told him to do.