Where was her son?
I sat down on the brown chair, tried to shift it closer to the bed. No movement. Another bolt-job.
Zelda continued to sleep and I thought about what it would be like to get stuck in here.
My chest tightened and I felt my pulse begin to race. An issue I’d thought I dealt with years ago.
You could call it claustrophobia. I think of it as a nasty little childhood memento.
All those hours spent hiding in crawl spaces and sheds, crouched behind shrubbery, or squeezing between rocks, trying to escape my father’s unpredictable drunken rages.
I’ll never enjoy small spaces but I really thought I’d gotten past notable anxiety. Even Robin doesn’t know. No reason for her to know.
But here it was again. Nothing serious, I could handle it. Just as I did years ago, practicing my own preaching, drawing upon all those nifty cognitive behavioral techniques.
Mostly, though, I choose to avoid anything close to confinement, maybe because I don’t want to let go of the memories, fearing freedom will soften me when the next big threat rolls around.
I’ve constructed a world for myself that allows lots of elbow room, living in a spacious, sparely furnished house with a view of miles of canyon and an occasional snip of ocean on clear days. My work — short-term custody and injury work for the court, consults on murders with my best friend, a veteran detective — allows me to come and go as I please.
I run for exercise, choosing times when I’m unlikely to encounter company.
I spend a lot of time by myself and when the dreams arrive unbeckoned and I really need to step out of myself, there’s always the grand distraction of helping others.
Now here, in this absurd, surreal place, the person I’d come to help remained drugged up and inert and I craved escape.
Deep breath. Focus.
After a bit of that, I scooted to the edge of the chair and touched Zelda’s cheek. Coarse with some kind of rash.
Not a stir. I patted her again, more firmly.
My third attempt caused her to frown.
I said, “Zelda?”
She murmured but kept her eyes closed. Then she sat up, shook her shoulders, and looked around. The blanket rolled free, revealing what I first thought was an institutional yellow top but turned out to be a cheap Tijuana blouse with ragged black stitching along the seams.
“Zelda?”
She lay back down, rolled away from me, returned to sleep.
I sat there and did more deep-breathing, closed my own eyes and tried to summon up a pleasant scene.
What I ended up thinking about was a small boy building castles with tiles and that brought on the what-ifs.
A woman’s voice shook me alert.
“You.”
Not an accusation, just a pronoun uttered without inflection.
As if the word existed in a vacuum.
Zelda Chase had sat up again, blanket gathered at her waist. This time her eyes were wide open and aimed at me.
“You,” she repeated.
“Do you know who I am, Zelda?”
Confusion.
I said, “Dr. Delaware.”
Her lips screwed up like a pig’s tail. She scratched her chin, then her cheek, then her forehead. Burped loudly and did it again and rotated her head and flittered her fingers.
Five years had wreaked decades of damage, the once-oval face a lopsided hatchet collapsed at cheek and jaw. A caved-in mouth said most of her teeth were gone. Her complexion was livid — street sunburn — her lips shrunken and blistered and parched. Deep furrows ran vertically from her nostrils to her chin. Her eyes were pink where they should’ve been white. Thirty-five years old, but I’d have guessed fifty-five, minimum.
“Zelda—”
She drew her hands up defensively but without confidence, like an outclassed boxer.
I sat back as far as I could in the immovable chair. “Alex Delaware. We met a few years ago.”
Nothing.
“I was told you asked for me.”
The hands dropped a bit. The near-stuporous confusion behind them might’ve been mental illness but I bet the real cause was Kristin Doyle-Maslow’s manipulation. Zelda had no conscious need to see me; The Hyphen’s project required an inaugural documented patient and I was the sucker who’d responded to a guilt trip.
I tried anyway. “We met five years ago, Zelda. When you were seeing Dr. Sherman.”
Blank stare.
“He was your psychiatrist, Zelda.”
A single blink.
“I’m a child psychologist, Zelda. I spent some time with Ovid.”
Blink blink blink.
“I got to know Ovid while you saw Dr. Sherman. While you lived in the Beverly Hills Hotel.”
Blank as the wall behind her.
I continued, prattling like a serious obsessive. “Dr. Sherman and I arranged babysitting for Ovid so you could return to work. Actually, I did. From the HGK agency?”
Now a hapless smile, the kind you see with aphasia patients who know something’s wrong but aren’t sure what it is.
“Do you know where you are, Zelda?”
Brow-knitting consternation. I repeated the question, expecting very little.
She said, “Here.”
“Where’s here, Zelda?”
“This...”
“Do you know what this is?”
She squinted. Laced her hands together and dropped them into her lap.
Maybe the lack of acuity was a good thing, what the hell would I tell her? You’re a federally funded lab rat?
Where was the boy?
I said, “Yesterday, you were in a hospital, Zelda. You were moved here but just for a couple of days.”
No reaction.
“Do you know what day it is, Zelda?”
“Now.”
My next question was routine and idiotic. “How about a day of the week?”
I might’ve been speaking Albanian.
“Do you remember what got you to the hospital, Zelda?”
Her hands pulled apart and shot up, blocking her face. Twin fists made small tight arcs.
“Zelda, I’m sorry if these questions—”
“Disappeared,” she said, suddenly loud and harsh.
“Who disappeared, Zelda?”
“Mommy.”
“Your mother—”
“No no,” she said, punching air. “Nononononononono.”
All those syllables but any budding anger was gone — more like a weary mantra. She slumped, pressed her hands to her temples.
I said, “Mommy—”
“Gone.”
“When?”
Nothing.
“You were looking for your mommy.”
She snuffled.
“You didn’t find her.”
She regarded me as if I were the crazy one. “I find her, they don’t put me here.”
“Of course — so you were looking for Mommy when—”
Growling in frustration, she slammed back down, drew the blanket over her head.
“Zelda—”
The blanket heaved. I waited.
This time her sleep was punctuated by aggressive, raspy snoring.
For the next half hour I waited, passing time and suppressing my tension by conjuring pleasant imagery. Intruded upon far too often by bad thoughts.
Eleven years old.
When Zelda’s breathing slowed further and she showed no sign of waking, I used the key and let myself out.
Kevin Bracht looked up from his book. “Anything?”
I shook my head.
“So what now, Doc?”
I gave him my card. “I’ll be by tomorrow before she’s discharged. Let me know if there’s any sort of problem.”
He walked me to the door. “What’ll happen to her?”
“I’ll try to get her somewhere safe.”
“But only if she agrees. What a system.”
I knew what he meant. The rule for involuntary commitment was clear: If a patient displayed imminent danger to others or self, I’d be obligated to file. If not, total freedom, no exceptions. That started me wondering what Zelda had done to qualify in the first place. I asked Bracht if he had any idea.