Bingo. A thrill ran up Jess’s limbs. “Who, Sarah? Are they with us right now?”
Sarah did not move or indicate that she had heard. Jess got the sudden idea the girl had been talking to herself. Still, she glanced around, more to satisfy Sarah than anything else. All she saw were the ash-gray walls and ceiling, and the padded metal door.
She took this opportunity to examine the girl’s face more closely. A plain face, pale and broad, but her eyes were large and set widely apart above a long nose. She was the sort of girl who might have been pleasant-looking, under certain circumstances; but here under the blue-white lights she looked like a dog that had been kicked too many times.
Of course she was drugged. And judging from the way the skin stretched across her skull and limbs, Sarah had not been eating well.
Jess tried again: “Who’s watching you, Sarah?”
Sarah looked up from beneath a black slash of hair. Jess was pinned by the sparks of light dancing in her eyes. Those eyes did not belong to that face. She felt like a burglar caught in a searchlight, exposed, naked, open to ridicule.
Don’t be silly. She’s just a child.
“I could kill you. Stop your heart if I wanted. If you’re lying.” Suddenly Sarah dropped her gaze from Jess’s face and turned, muttering, “No. No. No. She isn’t one of them. Not that one. No.” Her voice had quickly become rhythmic, almost a muttered incantation. A method of coping with something that cannot be faced. A defensive tactic meant to soothe the mind. Meaning to distract her, Jess moved quickly to her briefcase for her notepad, but as she moved she felt the girl’s eyes seize her again, and for a single, groping moment a hand tightened inside her chest.
And then it was gone. She froze with her fingers on the notepad inside the case, her heart fluttering.
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.