She was imagining things. She was too keyed up, her adrenaline pumping. There were moments in time that coincidence lent a greater importance; this was simply one of them.
Jess took the notepad out very slowly, telling Sarah exactly what she was doing in an easy, quiet voice. "What I said before, everything I told you is true. I'm here to listen to you, when you're ready to talk. That's all. Do you understand?"
"No friends for me here."
"I see why you might feel that way. But I'm not from this place. I was asked by a friend of mine to come see you. They thought I might be able to cheer you up."
The girl regarded Jess with some curiosity. Jess was reminded once again of an animal that had been abused. Her heart ached for this girl.
"Do you remember when I came to visit you the very first time? You asked me to help you."
"My head. It's fuzzy."
"When you want to say something, it comes out different. All mixed up. Is that it?"
" They do it. They're watching me all the time."
Delusions of persecution was a common symptom of a schizophreniform disorder. And yet, so far Sarah had followed their conversation better than Jess could have hoped. She had showed a clear progression of thought, memory recall, cause-and-effect reasoning. These things didn't add up.
"Do you know where we are, Sarah?"
"Prison."
"Do you know why you're here?"
"I was bad."
"And what did you do when you were bad?"
"Hurt people."
"Who put you here?"
"Them."
"Am I one of them?"
"They're white."
"You mean they have white skin? What do they look like?" For a moment she was puzzled, and then, suddenly, "You mean they have white clothes. White coats. Is that it?"
Sarah just looked at her.
"They're doctors," Jess said, "and you're right. I'm not a doctor. You can tell that, can't you?"
"No doctors."
"Why don't you like them?"
"They hurt my head."
"Does your head hurt right now?"
"Yes. I know what they're thinking. They don't like me."
Where to go from here? She was running the risk of overwhelming the girl, of pressing too hard. "Sarah, would you like to play a game?" Jess dipped into her briefcase again and pulled out a series of test cards. "I'll ask you some questions, and show you some pictures, and you tell me what you think. Okay?"
She went through the deck, testing Sarah first on colors, then shapes, both concrete and abstract. She had to use tricks several times to make the girl focus. Then she moved on to a TAT test, giving Sarah scenes on cards and asking her what was happening in them. It was a simple way of determining mood, the idea being that the subject would describe a scene in a certain light depending on how he or she was feeling, giving the interpreter a glimpse of the deeper emotions underneath.
Sarah reacted mostly as Jess had expected, when she would react at all. Her answers indicated hostility and depression.
Jess tried Rorschach. "What do you see here, Sarah?"
"People. Big and mean people. Ugly."
"And here?"
"Fire. A roof on fire."
"It's a building? A house?"
She shook her head. "It's burning. They're gonna go away. They're gonna be gone." She wouldn't say anything more. Jess tried another inkblot, and another, but Sarah kept silent, withdrawn inside herself again.
Jess found herself at a loss. Sarah was exhibiting signs of mental distress, but nothing to the extent that had been described by Wasserman. Absent were the unusual postures or mannerisms, loose associations that were common to schizophrenics. Her observation about the "white" doctors was perceptive and her fear was understandable.
Something still did not add up. It was as if her file were written about someone else.
Suddenly the girl stiffened. Jess paused and put the inkblots down. Sarah had turned to face the door and was clearly growing agitated. Her eyes seemed to turn a deeper, violent color. And there was something else in her gaze, something Jess could not pin down. The feeling she got was of looking at a lake of dark water and seeing a huge, black shape rising to the surface.
Jess stood up and stumbled to the narrow window, aware of a new depth to the air, a sudden charge. She could hear muffled footsteps coming along the corridor. She craned her neck as Maria came into view, carrying a tray and another set of restraints. Maria stopped outside the door, fumbled in her pocket as if for her keys; then she looked up and made a gesture. The door was locked.
Jess tried the bolts, but they wouldn't budge. She fumbled in her own pocket. Maria's keys were here somewhere; she had let herself in with them. But they were not in her pocket. They were nowhere to be found. She rattled the handle.
When Sarah began to shout, the sound was so sudden and so loud in the tiny room that Jess flinched and whirled around.
"Leave me alone!" There was fear in the girl's eyes, and something else. "I don't want you to come here!"
Jess saw Maria freeze outside the door. She heard a popping sound and the tinkle of glass as several lights blew in the hallway. Maria's tray clattered to the concrete floor. Jess Chambers felt the hair on her head lift as if she were rubbing her feet across a carpet. The air temperature dropped. Something had entered this room; she felt the air ooze thick and heavy, filled with a presence that snapped and writhed like live electrical lines.
She tried the bolts again, but they would not budge. She scanned the room and struggled to keep herself calm. She had never been irrational; there was no reason to start now. There on the floor, nearly at her feet, were the keys.
She looked back at the girl through the liquid air.
Sarah's eyes had rolled up into her head. Droplets of sweat slid off her forehead and spattered to the floor. Her limbs were shaking. Jess immediately thought of an epileptic fit, but the indications were not quite right. It was more like a concentration so tense and desperate as to cause a seizure. She shouted Sarah's name, and the girl whipped her head back and forth, teeth chattering together, making one long unintelligible sound: "N-n-n-n-n-n-n-n--"
It built, swelled--
--then, all at once, ceased. It was as if a wave of water had broken over their heads, as if a light switch had been flicked off. In the sudden stillness Jess could hear Sarah's unconscious body slump to the floor, and her own breathing, rough and ragged, loud in her ears as a bellows. Quickly she went to the girl, felt her pulse, quick and light as a bird's wing, her breath fast and shallow. But the skin of her forehead had smoothed and she looked peaceful.
Jess went back to the door. This time the bolts slid back smoothly into place with a soft click, and the door swung open. Maria was on the floor on hands and knees, scrambling to sweep up the contents of the tray. A syringe and several vials, more pills . . .
Emergency lights had blinked on, throwing feeble orange light on the hallway. Slivers of glass from the broken bulb glinted orange on concrete. There were shouts from the other rooms, someone running above their heads.
"She's okay," Jess said into the silence, more for herself than the nurse. "She's out cold."
Maria seemed to flinch at her voice. Then the big woman climbed to her feet and took a new syringe out of her pocket. Wordlessly she entered the small room and knelt at Sarah's side; lifted the syringe to the light with trembling hands, tapped it, squirted a tiny fount of sparkling clear fluid, and bent again to the girl's arm.
Only then did Jess remember that she had forgotten to put Sarah's straitjacket back on. But Maria did not seem to notice.
--9--
"Evan Wasserman called this morning," Shelley said. She sat straight in her chair with her hands folded over the papers strewn across her desk. "He told me you went directly against his orders and removed Sarah's restraints."