“And what happened then?”
“My mother started drinking more heavily, staying out at night. She treated me as if I weren’t there. I suppose she blamed me too, in her way.”
“Or herself, for leaving you to watch him.”
“Maybe so.” But now they were getting too far off the subject. She did not want to dig into the past any longer. Suddenly she felt as if there weren’t enough air in the room to breathe.
“I’ve thought this case over very carefully. I’ve studied the facts and the data at hand and I do not believe Sarah is schizophrenic. She has some obvious adjustment problems and hostility toward the staff, but I won’t know what else she needs until she’s given a better chance to be lucid. I don’t believe she should be locked up alone and I don’t think she’s a danger to anyone.”
Jess listed off her reasons; Sarah had followed their conversation, been receptive to questions, showed short-term memory recall, scored well on cognitive tests. Her paranoia about the people in white seemed valid given the circumstances. And there were other, less tangible reasons; Jess might have called them gut instincts.
“Perhaps the antipsychotics are finally having an effect?”
“I just don’t see it happening all at once like that. According to Dr. Wasserman she’s been having breaks with reality for several years now, and the medications haven’t done a thing. She’s been so withdrawn and then so violent they’ve been forced to confine her to what is basically a cell. But I’ve seen little evidence of any of that.”
Wasserman’s voice, inside her head: she can be devilishly clever. Sarah playing possum. Could she be doing that again now? But she couldn’t be this clever, Jess thought. How could you be psychotically disturbed and still plan such an elaborate game?
Instead of dismissing her, Shelley looked troubled. “I feel like I let her down,” she said. “I should have been more involved the past few months, checked in more frequently. When Evan called I was ashamed because I hadn’t looked in on her recently.” She paused and her long, elegant fingers plucked absently at her sleeve.
“I’ve been distracted,” Shelley said. “But of course that’s no excuse.”
“You could come with me to see her. It might do her some good.”
“Sarah may associate me with the people in white coats. She’d see you with me and then in her mind you’d be one of them too.”
“Maybe that’s a chance we should take.”
“No.” Shelley shook her head. “That would complicate things. Evan is a capable psychiatrist and the Wasserman Facility is well known. I know from our conversations that he is at the end of his rope. Bringing you into this was quite a gamble. If you don’t get anywhere, he’s still exposed an outsider to an extremely difficult and controversial case. He opens himself up to criticism. And if you do succeed in making a connection with Sarah, he’ll be getting questioned left and right as to why a graduate student could come in and do in a couple of weeks what he’s failed to do in eight years.”
Because he’s an unimaginative asshole, Jess thought, but resisted saying it in spite of the pleasure the idea gave her. “I have to ask you. You delivered this girl. Was there any indication from the start she wasn’t normal?”
“The circumstances were unusual. It was a difficult time.”
“How do you mean?”
Shelley looked away. For a long time Jess was not sure if she would speak at all. “Sarah was born in the middle of one of the most intense snowstorms I have ever seen. What made matters worse was that somehow the storm turned electrical. I don’t know the physics of it, but when Sarah’s mother went into labor we lost power. Everything happened very quickly. We were working under primitive conditions to say the least.
“She delivered very fast. One moment she was dilated and there was nothing, and then…”
Shelley became very still and her face grew tight. The professor did not even breathe. And then she seemed to ease, as if a sharp pain had come and gone.
“The hospital was hit by lightning. We weren’t sure what had happened at the time. All we knew was that all hell was breaking loose. The world seemed to be caving in. The emergency lights were on but most of the equipment was useless. The noises… it sounded like the earth was splitting at the seams.” Shelley smiled, but her face held no warmth. “We got out but it was close. The hospital burned to the ground.”
My God. Jess tried to imagine the scene, the frantic cries of the hospital workers, the storm howling all around them as the flames reared up and licked across the building’s innards. “I think Sarah has some sort of memory of it. Could that be possible? When I administered the Rorshach she described something about a building being on fire.”
“As far as I know no one has ever mentioned it to her. It hasn’t been proven that newborns are even aware of their surroundings, at least in the way you or I might be. Sarah wouldn’t have had any idea what was happening. She wouldn’t even have a working concept of life and death.”
“Her mother, then. Maybe she picked up on her mother’s feelings.”
“Sarah’s mother is mentally disturbed,” Shelley said. “I never saw her react to anything.”
Jess breathed in deeply. Is? She felt a spark of something and fumbled for it. Talking about this case with Shelley was like pulling teeth, and she couldn’t understand why. Wasserman too, for that matter. What were they hiding and why would they feel the need to hide it from her, when they had been the ones responsible for bringing her into this in the first place?
“You’re wondering why that isn’t in her file,” Shelley said. “Evan and I have been going back and forth on this from the start. The fact is that there are some ethical and legal issues involved. But we all know that one of the most important aspects of diagnosis and treatment of mental disease is a family history, and you’ve been denied that.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sarah’s grandparents are alive,” Shelley said. “Her mother too. They live in Gilbertsville, New York.”
—10—
The Newton Fliers’ Club meets every third Friday of the month in the Jacob’s Field Lounge. Made up of people who don’t have the money to own a plane privately, members contribute to the initial cost and maintenance by paying monthly dues and sign up for use of the aircrafts.
Jess Chambers had been a member since she moved to the area two years ago. “Before that I logged my hours at a private strip back home,” she explained as she pulled through the gates of the tiny airport. “There was a man in my town who used to fly in air shows, doing tricks in an old single-engine Cessna he kept in his barn. They called him the Flying Frenchman. He ran a small farm with a dirt landing strip in a cornfield. To make more money he would crop-dust during the summers, and give flying lessons. He taught me to fly when I was twelve.”
It was another thing she had learned to keep to herself. The truth was she had always loved planes and flying was something she had dreamed of doing since she was five years old.
Most people said something like it was the last thing in the world they expected. Boys grinned and punched her in the arm, as if she were putting them on. Jean Shelley just looked at her from the passenger seat. “Your mother let you go up in a plane with someone called the Flying Frenchman?”