Oliver was upset, but Dr. Dorothy beat him to it. “This is what I’m talking about. A real lack of respect among the staff for the hard work and expertise represented by the doctors, and it is undermining the authority that we have among the patients.”
Jacob rolled his eyes. “Oh, please. You got a D.O. from the University of Barbados, and you teach kids how to pet dogs.”
“Mr. Blaumann, I won’t tolerate disrespect toward the doctors here,” snapped Oliver. “Clearly you are aware that the code of conduct expressly forbids venturing outside the building in the company of a patient. So why did you feel it was within your rights to do so?”
Jacob had never heard him shout before — it gave him chills, how much it sounded like his father.
He knew he had no chance here. Despite the fact that he hadn’t said anything inappropriate to Ella, and certainly hadn’t done anything, he had legitimately broken the rules in letting her outside without permission. It was definitely a fireable offense, and it wasn’t like his record was sterling otherwise. For years he’d worn his contempt for this place on his sleeve — talking back to the doctors, calling in sick, cutting corners, arriving late, leaving early. He’d been daring them to fire him almost since he started working there. Losing the job now wouldn’t keep him up at night exactly, but if he told Dr. Dorothy to shove it, then he’d be gone and Ella would be on her own. On the other hand if he promised to give Ella a wide berth from here on out, there wasn’t much point either.
“Ella Yorke,” he began, much more flushed than he felt he had any reason to be, “is a very bright girl. We had a conversation one afternoon in Sissy Coltrane’s art room—”
“Dr. Coltrane,” Dr. Dorothy stressed.
“Okay, but she’s not a doctor though, she’s—”
“Mr. Blaumann, please,” Oliver urged.
“I’ve just got to say, all this doctor this, doctor that crap is getting kind of Second Commandment. ‘I am the Lord your doctor, thou shalt have no other doctors before me!’”
Dr. Dorothy nearly spit on the carpet. “Is he serious? He’s really out of his mind. Oliver, he’s — this kid needs help.”
“He’s not a kid, Dorothy, he’s twenty-eight years old. And as I understand it he’s having a difficult year, but Jacob, as a sign of respect in this workplace, you will refer to the doctors by their proper title, and that is final. Am I understood?”
“Does that mean I’m not fired then?”
There was a little flirtatious hint in Oliver’s eye as he said, finally, “You have to promise me that you will not engage Ms. Yorke any further without guidance from professionals. From doctors. My door is always open.”
Jacob reluctantly promised, and Oliver called the meeting to a close.
But as they were all standing up, Jacob turned to them both. “Can I just ask? Have you seen any kind of improvement, therapeutically speaking, in Ella Yorke since she came back?”
Dr. Dorothy gave him a dirty look. “That’s not something we can discuss with you.”
“Oh, come on. You tell us all the time which patients are doing worse, so we can keep a closer eye on them. What’s wrong with saying if one is doing better?”
Oliver, surprisingly, accepted this logic. “Ella’s actually been improving a lot since she came back. Her dosage of Prozac has been reduced. Dr. Feingold notes that she’s been participating more in her group work, and Dr. Coltrane has nothing but good things to report. In our sessions she is… optimistic. It’s a big improvement. In fact, if things stay positive, we all think she’s going to be ready to leave by the end of the summer so she can start school again.”
At this, Jacob smiled widely, and it seemed to confuse both psychiatrists — and even himself. Was he smiling smugly? Cryptically, sarcastically, menacingly? No. It was just an actual smile. A natural reaction to hearing something he’d been hoping to hear.
“Is there something — Jacob? Is there something we should be aware of?”
No end of things, he thought.
• • •
As punishment for the incident, he was put onto night shifts for the remainder of July, beginning the very next evening. After riding in on a bus packed with people heading home after a long day at work, Jacob arrived at Anchorage House just as the sun was setting behind the main gates. He’d been up since morning, spending the day alone in Oliver’s flat, watching television in his underwear. It was vaguely boring but hardly a punishment. More like a punishment for Oliver, for now Jacob would hardly ever see him except on weekends.
He was still in a fine mood when he went to the bathroom to change. He had been eyeing a few of the longer novels in the common area library. Anna Karenina? Did they assume the kids would simply never finish it? Not like there were trains around, but still. Either way he was rather looking forward to the solitude. Only as he stood up, about to leave, did he notice something on the stall a few inches above his head where he’d etched his heart a month ago.
Someone had turned it into the top of the letter R, in the word PRAY.
Whatever. Probably one of the visitors had done it. No big deal. He left the bathroom.
By midnight he’d abandoned the Tolstoy with barely ten pages read. Anchorage House was practically silent with all the patients in their beds. After another hour he was desperate for some kind of incident: nightmares or insomnia were common, but only rarely did they erupt into anything that required an orderly’s help. The doctor on staff was Patrick Limon, a slow-moving man in his seventies whose white hair burst Koosh-like from his skull and flowed seamlessly from his nostrils to his mustache and beard. In his white lab coat he glided from room to room, administering the odd night dosage and then sliding off again.
Jacob walked the length of every hallway. Then he walked them all backward. Then he tried the stairs backward and nearly broke his neck. Finally he marched back to the bathroom, looked again at the defacement of his graffiti. PRAY. So imperative! He took out his keys and scratched a response beneath it, in gigantic letters: WHAT FOR? But he didn’t feel better. He checked his watch again. Four in the morning, and nothing left to do but tackle Dr. Limon and demand to be given a sedative. Something — anything — to stop the running commentary in his own head.
Once he’d heard beautiful whispering, poems begging him to write them down. He still heard whispering, only now it was considerably nastier. All you’ve done is get her hopes up. Why? So she can head on back out into the world only to find that it is exactly as twisted and black and sick and fucked up as she thought it was? She isn’t depressed, she’s just thinking fucking clearly. Mind your own business. Haven’t you learned anything? You can’t save her. You are not special.
He couldn’t handle another hour, let alone another month, of this solitary confinement — which is what it was. How did these kids do it? Two hours left to go. There was no way. He was never going to make it. After another twenty minutes he’d decided to just leave. It was long overdue. He could probably walk to the bus station in an hour and then just go right on up to Boston. He sure as hell couldn’t stay here. He went to his locker and took his real clothes — not even bothering to change into them — and then went back to the common area and grabbed Anna Karenina, thinking that if he got picked up by some creepy trucker, he could at least club the guy with it if he tried to get fresh.