“So you know I was kind of tricked into coming here,” she said.
“Well,” he said briskly, “I’m not sure I’d put it that way. I’m thinking you feel you were tricked. But it sounds more like you might have misunderstood—maybe you didn’t want to understand—some of what Dr. Mukherjee told you last night. Maybe the painkillers and the anesthetic and the pain and lack of sleep and the general stress of the situation impaired your judgment, but—” Lil began to speak but he held up his hand. “I was going to say that you’re a very intelligent person and my take on the situation is: You understood, if only partly, that you would be brought here to the clinic, a psychiatric hospital. But later, after you agreed, you regretted your choice.”
His voice maintained its original gentle, friendly tone, but his words now took on a scientific efficiency that, like his joke, reminded her of her father, lecturing her about 401(k)s and filing her taxes on time. How could Emily—Emily, of all people—have married a doctor?
“Does that sound at all right to you?” he asked, squaring his eye with hers. It did and it didn’t. Instead of answering, she found herself beginning to cry, the knowledge, inescapable, that these tears weren’t exactly genuine making them come all the faster.
“I guess you think I’m crazy and I belong here,” she sobbed.
He shook his head. “People belong here if they need help.”
She rolled her eyes. “So do you think I need help?”
“From what I’ve heard and seen in the last few minutes?” he said, raising his finger pedantically.
“Yes—”
Again, he held her off with a small gesture. “Do I think you’re mentally ill? No.” Lil let loose a stream of air. She’d been holding her breath, she realized, while she awaited his verdict. Why do you care? she thought. Why do you always need everyone’s fucking approval?
“Really?” she said. “You don’t think there’s anything wrong with me?”
“No more than the next person. I’d say that, from what I know of it, you’ve had a big shock. A miscarriage can be devastating, especially if there’s no specific cause. And especially if you’ve been trying to conceive for a significant period of time. That aside, I’d say maybe circumstances have contrived to make you feel like your life is no longer within your control.”
“Yes,” she said, amazed, relieved. How did he know? “That’s exactly how I feel!”
“And I also think that you may have lost a bit of perspective on certain things. Spending a few days—or maybe a week—here can help you figure out how to put things back in order. And regain that perspective.”
This was starting to sound a bit like something out of a manual or maybe the clinic’s promotional brochure, and Lil’s mouth twitched with disappointment. Josh was not, as she’d thought for a fleeting moment, brilliant. He was boring, safe, conventional, perhaps not even all that smart, just like her parents, her family, wondering why, oh, Lillian, why would you want to marry that man or move to that apartment or wear that dress or raise your voice at dinner? He was, Josh was, advocating for her to stay in the hospital, just as her father would do in the same situation. She could hear him now, the words he said a thousand times a day, to patients unhappy with their noses or ears or chins, “If there’s a problem, you may as well fix it.” Everything, in her parents’ world, could be remedied by this drug or that procedure. And everything that wasn’t perfect needed remedying.
“You’re talking about Tuck, right?” she said sullenly. Josh nodded. “You think I should leave him.”
“I don’t know,” he said, and she could see he was being truthful. “But I think you’ll benefit from being away from him for a few days. In a neutral place.”
“But couldn’t I just go to the Bahamas by myself?”
“Yes,” he said, “but you’re here. And Aetna doesn’t pay for trips to the Bahamas.”
She nodded. “And I guess that would be running away from things, rather than confronting them,” she said, supposing that was what he was going to say next.
“Depends,” he answered. “But that’s beside the point.”
The truth was, she liked the idea of a few days, even a week away from the endless cycle of work, dinner, laundry, shower, errands, away from the pressure of having to talk to Tuck, from the arguments, sparked by who knew what (an appreciation of the dinner salad, a refusal to pick up the phone), from the awful creep of his hands on her, which she craved and dreaded. In the hospital, she could lie in bed and read novels all day, like she did when she was a kid, and watch movies on television, and write in her journal, if Tuck would bring it, that is, if she was willing to ask him to bring it, running the risk of him reading it. She could talk to the doctors about all the things that were bothering her—Tuck’s lethargy, his inflated ego, his inability to finish rewriting his book, his strangely chauvinistic ways (why did she have to cook dinner and do the dishes every night?), at odds with his liberal persona. It would be like a vacation.
What she didn’t like was the idea of Josh trying to convince her to stay—which did indeed seem to be the case, and which made her wonder if he was keeping something from her, if he thought she was worse off than he was letting on. “If I said I wanted to leave now,” she asked tentatively, “would you let me go?” Josh cocked his head to the side, apparently gathering his thoughts, and Lil’s stomach dropped. Her suspicions had been correct. “Because you said that you thought I was fine, right?” she said, to fill the silence.
“Yes,” he replied, “and yes, if you want to go home, you can go home, but it might take a day or two. You’ll need to be evaluated by Dr. Goldstein and a couple of others. They need to make sure that you’re stable. Because if they release you and something happens, they could be held accountable. You get that, right?”
“But isn’t it obvious that I’m stable?” she asked, mostly because she wanted Josh to say “Yes, of course.”
Again, he took too long to answer. “Honestly? In psychiatry, you learn to never take anything for granted. The obvious answer is not always the right answer. The person who seems perfectly well-adjusted could jump off a roof tomorrow.”
“I’m not going to jump off a roof!” Lil cried. “My God.”
“Okay,” said Josh, nonplussed, which only served to further Lil’s annoyance.
“I don’t need a fucking lecture on psychiatry,” she said before she thought better of it. “Why don’t you just tell me? Just tell me what you think. Obviously, you’re thinking things about me, things that you’re not saying. Just tell me.” Even as these words were forming in her mouth, she knew she’d taken the wrong tack; she was pushing him away, literally, for now he was unfolding himself from the ugly vinyl chair and walking over to the window, his back, in its white coat, facing her. It was a nice back, broad and tapering, and for a brief, mad moment, she thought she might get up and put her arms around his waist, breathe in his clean, doctor scent, of orange antibacterial soap and powdered latex gloves and bay rum and Pepto-Bismol tablets, and he would turn in her arms and tell her she was the one he really loved, the one he wanted, and kiss her and grab her hair with his clean fingers, and tell her that he would take care of her, as he had taken care of Emily, and Tuck would just disappear, as if he’d never existed. And then he turned, a sharp movement, and gave her a look of such blank pity that she thought she would scream. “Tell me,” she shrieked. “Stop treating me like a child. Just tell me.”