Hearing Voices Read online

  Julius Rafferty was one of the orderlies who worked in the hospital. His colours were green and red, a nasty amalgam of anger and jealousy. He was a pig who harassed most of the women, including Phillipa. She’d talked to me about it exactly once. She’d said it started the moment she’d arrived, because she was pretty, and because she was a prostitute.

  “Even prostitutes say no,” she’d said. “But he never could figure that out.”

  I assumed that him asking her for sexual favours day after day after day had probably pushed her to commit suicide. She said he had nothing to do with her decision, but I didn’t believe her. Colours didn’t lie.

  “I forgot about Julius,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “Besides, all they watch in there is game shows and soaps,” she replied. “Can’t have the goon squad getting all worked up, now. Can they?”

  “Don’t call them that,” I replied, but I knew she wouldn’t listen to me. She never thought she needed to be here. After all, it was the drugs she’d taken before she’d been admitted that had given her the psychotic break, and she always said that if they’d just let her detox properly, she would have been fine. Maybe she was right.

  But some of us had needed this place. It had felt safe here, for the most part—the world and all its craziness locked out, so we could rest and regroup. Until we’d died here, of course.

  Which meant that only most of the craziness was locked out.

  “Maybe you should leave her alone,” I said. “We don’t want to overwhelm her. After all—”

  “She’s in the loony bin, isn’t she?” Phillipa said, and laughed. “With the rest of the loons. She’s probably already overwhelmed.”

  “Jesus, Phillipa,” I said, impatiently. She could get on my nerves, when I let her. “We were just like them, before.”

  “But we’re dead now,” she said. “And we can’t even pick our own frigging television shows.” She sighed and shook her head. “Fine. I’ll leave her alone until she’s settled in. All right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sure.”

  I noticed that she didn’t mention talking to the girl about stopping Julius or catching the killer. Just the stupid TV show.

  I guessed it would be up to me. That should have made me feel better, but it didn’t. Somehow, I needed to get myself under control so that I could talk to the new girl about everything that was wrong. And then she’d help me solve all our problems, and I’d be the hero. To her, and to everybody else.

  I hoped.

  Marie:

  Meeting the Staff. And Everybody Else

  ALL RIGHT, SO being locked up in a little room with no TV and no books—not that I read, but even I needed something—could actually drive a person crazy. It didn’t take me long to be convinced of that. About an hour and a half, if I’d guessed the time right. Of course, there was no way to know whether I was guessing the time right, because there wasn’t a clock in the room either.

  The room wasn’t even big enough to properly pace. Seven and a half steps from wall to door, and then seven and a half steps back. A half a step. Another bit of business that wouldn’t take any time at all to drive me absolutely nuts.

  A different nurse came in to see if I needed anything.

  “I hear you’re a vegetarian,” she said. “Remember to mention that when Dr. Parkerson comes in.”

  I didn’t bother correcting her about the vegetarian thing. “Can I get some paper and a pen?” I asked. A To-Do list would be a good way to keep myself from losing it before the good doctor who’d locked me up in this place finally showed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and for a second, she looked like maybe she really was. “I can’t do that. Ask Dr. Parkerson—”

  “When she comes in,” I finished for her, trying to keep my voice from sounding like so much acid spilling out onto the floor of the small white room. “Yeah, I get it.”

  “Good,” she said. She pointed at the bed. “Try to get some rest. You’ve had a rather eventful day.”

  I looked at the too-soft bed and shook my head. “Thanks,” I said. “But I don’t nap.”

  “Oh,” she said, like she wished she could write that down in my permanent file or something. “Well, it’ll be just a few more hours until you see Dr. Parkerson.” She smiled again, but it was a tight, unhappy affair. “Try to keep calm.”

  “Will do,” I said, and nodded. Because there was no point in saying anything else to her. She held my fate in her hands, for the next few hours, at least.

  Jesus, this was horrible.

  ANOTHER GHOST SHOWED up a few minutes later, just to keep things lively. This one was a woman in her thirties, I guessed, with a bed sheet tightly knotted around her throat. She wandered around the room, staring at the walls, the top of the small dresser, and then my wrinkled bed. Never at me, though. Like she wasn’t willing to actually see me.

  I reminded myself where I was (as if I could forget) and that I was probably dealing with someone who had been troubled before she died. And it looked like she’d offed herself to boot. Better to be gentle while talking to her. If I could remember how to do that.

  “What’s your name?” I asked, thinking that was a fairly gentle way to start things off.

  “You writing a book or something?” the ghost replied, staring intently at nothing. She looked just behind me, but not—definitely not—at me.

  “No,” I said. “But if you’re going to hang around my room, I thought maybe we could exchange names. You know, the usual pleasantries.”

  “Sounds pretty civilized,” she said. She almost glanced at me, then quickly looked away. “Think that’s going to fly in here?”

  “What?”

  “The civilized bit. We’re all crazy, you know.”

  I blinked. She waved her hand at me dismissively and wandered into the corner. Stared at the wall as though the small cracks in the plaster would tell her the secrets of the universe or something.

  “I just came here to tell you to leave Jasper alone,” she said. “He doesn’t need to get all worked up. Actually, none of us do. But him especially. He’s—delicate. You know?”

  She was talking about the ghost who’d lost his mind in my room earlier. Jasper the overly hysterical ghost.

  “Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Well, he is,” the ghost snapped. “And he doesn’t need someone alive giving him hope.”

  “Hope?” I asked.

  “Hope that the deaths here will stop,” she said. “Yeah, somebody’s probably killing some of us, but hell, that’s been going on forever.”

  “Do you know who it is?”

  “No. I never tried to figure it out. I probably could, but why bother? If they’re caught, they’ll just be replaced, and there’s a line out the door of people who would be quite willing to hurt us.” She sighed, leafless branches in the wind. “The strong love hurting the weak. It’s a thing.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess.”

  “So, you’ll leave him alone?”

  The time for being nice was over. I never did react well to someone telling me what I could and could not do.

  “Only if he leaves me alone,” I said.

  “What?” The ghost whirled and stared at me for the first time. Looked like she had trouble with people standing up to her.

  Tough, little ghosty.

  “I said only if he leaves me alone. After all, I’m the one on the locked ward, not him.” I shrugged. “If he shows up, and wants to talk, I’ll talk to him.”

  “But—”

  “And if he wants to move on, I’ll help him do that, too.” I smiled, and was pretty sure it was not a gentle “I want to be your friend” smile, but to hell with all that. “I’ll help anyone who comes to me. I can even help you move on, if you want.”

  “What?” The ghost looked nonplussed. I’d never actually seen that expression on anyone’s face before, but James had used the word a couple of times, so I’d looked it up—because there was no way in the world
I was asking him what it meant.

  My question had surprised and confused her so much that she wasn’t certain how to react. I’d nonplussed the hell out of a ghost.

  I liked it.

  “I can help you move on to the next planeof existence,” I said. “You and Jasper. In fact, I could help every ghost in the place. Easy-peasy.”

  She blinked and stared, her mouth opening and closing like—well, like she was nonplussed. “None of us want that,” she finally said, backing away from me like I had a really bad, really contagious disease. “Just leave us alone,” she said, and her voice got loud. Booming loud. “Leave us all alone!”

  I put my hands over my ears. “You don’t have to yell.”

  “I’m not yelling.” The nurse who’d been in my room earlier, and who’d snuck back in to bring me water, glared at me. She’d caught me yelling at a ghost that she couldn’t see.

  “Son of a bitch,” I muttered.

  “Looks like you’ve got all the problems you can handle right here,” the ghost said, and sniggered. “So, leave Jasper alone until you got your own backyard cleaned up. ’Kay?”

  Then she disappeared, and all I was left with was the nurse with the fake smile.

  “Who were you yelling at, if it wasn’t me?” she asked.

  As I tried to think of something—anything—to say to her that would sound believable, I imagined that the look on my face was pretty close to the ghost’s, mere moments before.

  Completely and absolutely nonplussed. Dammit anyhow.

  I DIDN’T DO a very good job of convincing her that I had just been yelling for the heck of it. That I hadn’t heard anyone. That I wasn’t talking to anyone.

  “Just trying to work things out,” I’d finally mumbled. “Sometimes I talk to myself, just to work things out.”

  “So, no one is talking to you,” the nurse said. She looked like she was itching to write that bit of information down on my chart. “You are not hearing voices. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Yes,” I said. I tried to smile but my lips caught on my teeth, and I wished she’d put the plastic jug of water down so I could have a drink. “I am not hearing voices.”

  “You were talking to yourself?”

  “Yes.” I ran my tongue over my teeth and tried smiling again. Felt like a fraud and a liar, but kept smiling, just to get her out of the room. “Just talking to myself.”

  “Hmm.” She finally set the pitcher down, and I reached for it. Poured some lukewarm water into the plastic glass and sucked it back like I hadn’t had a drink in days. “So, you’re all right?” she asked, as I poured myself another glass full.

  “I am,” I said. Then I shrugged. “Just because I talk to myself doesn’t mean I’m crazy, right?”

  Her face stiffened. “We do not use that word here,” she said. “Please remember that.”

  “Right,” I said. “Sorry.”

  She glanced at her watch, then at me. “Dr. Parkerson will be here in an hour,” she said. “And I’m sure she’ll want to see you. Is there anything you’ll need for her visit?”

  I frowned, unsure what she could possibly think I’d need for the first visit of the woman who had decided it was a good idea to have me locked up. A baseball bat, perhaps?

  “Maybe you’d like to freshen up,” she said. “You know, straighten your hair and such.”

  I imagined that I looked like hell, but I hadn’t brought anything with me. “I don’t have a brush,” I said. “Or a comb, or anything.”

  Then, dammit, my throat tightened. I didn’t even have a brush.

  “Your young man dropped off a bag of your belongings,” the nurse said. “You can’t have it, of course, but if you want, I could get you a brush. Maybe even a toothbrush, if he remembered to pack it for you.”

  James. James was always doing what was right. I wished he was there with me, so I could throw my arms around him and give him a great big hug, and then whisper, “Get me the hell out of here.” But that wasn’t happening. Not before the meeting with the shrink.

  “That would be nice,” I said. “Thank you.”

  WHEN DR. PARKERSON finally arrived, I was in decent shape, physically. Teeth and hair brushed. Bed straightened, as though the fact that I’d remembered to make my bed would have any bearing on the way the conversation was going to go. But I still didn’t have a clue what I was going to say to her.

  I sure couldn’t yell at her for what she did to me, even though I desperately wanted to. I needed to act all cool and calm, so I could convince her that there was no reason to keep me here. That I wasn’t a danger to myself, or to anyone else. That it was all a terrible mistake. She’d made a terrible mistake.

  “Have you settled in?” Dr. Parkerson asked. She was clutching a file, and I noticed she stayed close to the door, as though she wanted to have easy access to an escape hatch if I decided to lose it on her.

  Good grief.

  “Yes,” I said. “But I still don’t understand why you’ve done this to me. I wouldn’t hurt anyone—”

  “You hurt Andrew Westwood,” she said. “You hurt him badly. And you said that a ghost did it. A ghost.” She stared at me, waiting for my reaction and then smiled, thinly. “You do have to understand how that sounds.”

  Actually, a bunch of ghosts had done the deed, but whatever.

  “Why did you take his word for it?” I asked. I felt my throat tighten and took a deep breath so I wouldn’t start crying in front of her. “Why didn’t you talk to me, first?”

  “We can talk now,” she said.

  I looked around the room, pointedly. “I’m locked up,” I said. “And you did it. Doesn’t really give me any reason to trust you now, does it?”

  “I understand why you feel that way,” she said. “Eventually, I hope you’ll understand I have your best interests at heart.”

  Eventually. She’d said eventually. Which meant I wasn’t going to be able to talk my way out of this place today, or even tomorrow.

  “Can’t see it happening,” I said, snippily. I probably shouldn’t have spoken to her that way, but man, I was feeling a bit snippy at that particular moment. No doubt about it. “Not even eventually.”

  “I understand,” she said again, and I dearly wanted to slap the patronizing tone right out of her mouth. “For now though, you’ll just have to believe me. I am doing this for your own good. We will be assessing you over the next while, and you will begin the drug regime you and I discussed previously.”

  I’d been seeing her for eight months. Ever since my mother died, and I couldn’t sleep. She’d suggested medication, repeatedly.

  “I told you, I’m not taking that stuff,” I said. My mouth went fear-dry, but I didn’t reach for the water glass. Just kept staring at her like she was a terrifying snake that had just appeared in front of me. “And you can’t—”

  “Sorry Marie, but the time for you saying no to my expertise is well and truly over,” she said. She still had the patronizing half-smile on her face, but her hand creeped to the doorknob like she was expecting me to suddenly attack.

  Maybe I looked like a snake to her, too.

  “So, what you’re saying is you’re going to force me to take that Seroquel or whatever it was you prescribed for me before,” I said. “With or without my consent.”

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s it, exactly.” And, damn her, she looked even more pleased now that I understood that she had the power in this situation. “You’ll begin immediately. A low dosage to start, but I imagine that will go up fairly quickly. And once we get you stabilized, we can reassess. Understood?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I understand.”

  “Good.” She looked at the door, like she dearly wished she could just leave without having to bother with any more pleasantries. “Do you have any questions?” she asked.

  “What is this assessment you’ll be doing on me? Like a series of tests, or what?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what it will be. Some will be question
naires, some will be medical exams, and the staff will be watching your interactions with other patients, and what you do while you are alone.” She smiled. “Full disclosure. See? You have nothing to worry about.”

  I didn’t believe that for a second.

  “Is there anything you need for your stay here?” she asked. “From home?”

  “I need to talk to James,” I said. “I—I had a lot of things on the go, and I need to be able to have him take care of them for me. You know?”

  “I understand,” she said, but her smile had disappeared. She was going to say no. “I’m sorry, but he’s not family—”

  “Come on!” I cried. “Just so I can get my affairs in order.” Jesus, it sounded like I thought I was going to die in here or something. That made me think of Jasper and his warning. Maybe I was going to die.

  Maybe I was going to die.

  I realized I was on the ragged edge of losing it and took a big deep breath to calm myself. The last thing in the world I needed to do was lose control in front of this woman. She would take that as a sign of weakness—or craziness—and I’d never get out of this place. She’d make certain of it.

  All right, even that was a bit over the top, and way in the back of my brainpan a tiny voice whispered, “Maybe she’s right. Maybe you need help. Professional help. Her help.”

  Screw you, little voice, I thought, and glared at the woman cowering by the door. Well, not really cowering, but it made me feel better to pretend that she was.

  “Just give me five minutes with James,” I said. “So I can take care of a few things. Please.”

  Dr. Parkerson thought, her hand still on the doorknob. “All right,” she finally said. “I’ll let you have one visit with him. But it will have to be after you’ve started your drug regimen. Understand?”

  I stared at her, feeling that nonplussed look steal over my face, once more with feeling. She was going to blackmail me into taking those drugs without kicking up a stink.

  “Is that the only way you’re going to let me see him?” I asked. “Really?”

  “Really,” she said. “It’s for your own good, Marie. Honestly. And once you start, you can have a nice visit with—James, is it?”