Bridget’s shift is nearly over. She should be finishing her notes, but she can’t concentrate. She keeps thinking of home, of how no one will be there. She doesn’t know how she’s going to make it through the night without Michael. It’s weak and pathetic, but she needs him there. Just for a few more days, until she gets used to the idea. She promised herself earlier that she wouldn’t call him, but now that the end of her shift is only minutes away, she’s starting to panic. If she texts him, he can get there before her. Maybe she is a co-addict, or codependent, or whatever anyone else wants to fucking label her. All she knows is that she’s a terrified pregnant wife. She takes out her phone and stares at it.
Hannah never called back. Bridget hadn’t pegged her for a cold person, but maybe Bridget’s intuition about people is screwed up.
After all, she thought Michael was a good guy, honest to his toes. She thinks about the time, a few years back, when they went out with Janice and Janice’s boyfriend. The boyfriend went to the bathroom, and Janice checked his phone. Michael shook his head, disgusted, and said he and Bridget didn’t play those sorts of games. Bridget snuggled closer to him, thinking she was the luckiest girl in the world to have someone so decent and respectful. It still shocks her to think that so much of him was just a scam.
Lizzy didn’t call back, either. Gail was the only one who replied. It almost seems funny now, how much Bridget couldn’t stand Gail when they first met.
Hey, can you
she begins her text to Michael, then erases it. She needs to hold on, make it through at least one night.
Hector, the other nurse on duty, joins her at the desk that sits behind the huge glass shield. The patients are all in bed. The quieter the ward, the more agitated Bridget feels.
“Outta here in fifteen,” Hector says as he glances at a clipboard. He’s a no-bullshit kind of guy, and for the most part, she likes working with him.
“Yeah, thank God,” Bridget replies, stuffing her phone in her pocket.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You’re usually swearing up a storm by this point.”
She shrugs. Michael didn’t even text her to see if she was all right. It just feels unreal. How can the man who she believed read her every thought just be out of her life?
The desk phone rings. Hector picks up. “Floor ten.” He nods. “Now? Can you wait like five minutes, until the next shift?” He nods again. “Yeah, of course. Bring him up.” He hangs up.
“A new intake?” Bridget asks.
“Yep, in a full-blown psychotic state. Should be fun. I say we get him into the back quiet room and let the next shift do the rest.”
“No, I’m up for it. What did they tell you?” she asks.
“Name is Marc Backstram, but I guess he likes to go by Saint Bartholomew. They checked him at the hospital. Seems fine physically. Gave him some Thorazine to calm him down.”
She watches as two attendants carry in a thin man with long hair and a scraggly beard. A cop shuffles at the rear. Marc’s arms are restrained by a white jacket. It doesn’t matter how many times she’s seen it, or how many times she tells herself that the cloth restraints are painless and safe, it still gives her the chills. They carry him around the corner. She follows.
Bridget signs the paperwork. The attendants leave.
“Why you here?” she asks the large, burly cop.
“He caused a scene. Was with some kid, who might have been running away. We just gotta make sure nothing happened. You know?”
“He probably just freaked the kid out. Happens with schizophrenics.” She glances at Marc. All she wants now is to lose herself in someone else’s fucked-up world.
“Can’t say I know that much about the disease,” the cop remarks.
“We like to calm patients down, and it’s normally best if there aren’t too many distractions. It would be better if you wait outside. Let me talk to him.”
“Fine by me. But I gotta listen.”
“Grab a chair.” She points down the hall. “And there’s coffee at the nursing station.”
Marc is flat on his back, staring at the ceiling. The pale room is furnished with a mattress and one hard plastic chair. She doesn’t use the chair. Instead she sits cross-legged on the floor next to him.
“My name is Bridget,” she says softly. He stares at the ceiling and shivers so violently his teeth chatter.
“I’m going to stay here and talk to you for a little.”
He turns to her. His skin is thin and papery, his eyes bloodshot.
“Can you hear me?” she asks.
He doesn’t respond. He could be catatonic. They probably roughed him up good when they brought him over.
“Marc, I’m here to help. I want you to know you’re safe.”
“Whore,” he hisses.
“Good to hear you talk,” she replies.
“Whore,” he says again.
“Do you know where you are?”
He glares. “Inside a spaceship.”
“You’re on a psych ward in Jamaica Plain. We’re going to help you get better.”
“Free me or you’ll be damned.” He kicks his legs. The cop pokes his head in. Bridget nods, signaling all is fine.
“You’re not a prisoner here. No one is going to hurt you.”
“You come in the middle of the night and take out people’s brains. I was trying to help that girl. Now she’s gone.”
“She’s safe.”
“You’re a liar and a whore.” His breathing is jagged. “My name is Saint Bartholomew, and I am without guile.”
“I like people without guile,” she tells him.
He looks at her again, and although his eyes are still wary, she can see she has an opening.
“I am without fear. I will be skinned alive and nailed to a cross.”
“That sounds frightening.” She reaches over and touches his shoulder.
“I live without guile and without fear.”
“Wish I could do that.” She likes this man, this Bartholomew without guile.
“The earth will end in a great fire. Sin will taint all the lovers, and they will burn until their skin is charred and their eyes melt.”
The cop steps in. “There a place to order takeout around here?” he asks.
Bartholomew snaps to sitting. “Go to hell,” he shouts.
Bridget glares at the cop. He backs up. “He’s leaving,” she says to Bartholomew.
“You whore. You tricked me. I see what you’re doing. I see through your glass eyes.” He tries to free his arms but can’t. He twists and grimaces.
“I’m not trying to trick you,” she assures him.
He pulls up his knees and drops his head. His breathing becomes labored again. She will stay with him and give him all the time he needs. She guesses he’s in his fifties, although he looks much older. And in another way, much younger. As she watches him begin to rock, she sees herself, stubborn, fighting battles she can’t win, never wanting to put down the sword because the surrender, the pain that comes with it, is distilled, pure loneliness. For thirteen years, since her mother died, she’s been trying to run from it, and now here it is, pressing fiercely on her chest.
“Saint Bartholomew,” she whispers. Her voice falters.
He glances at her. His eyes are sad. For a second she feels as if the two thin threads of their universes entwine.
“I am without guile,” he tells her.
“I admire that,” she says. And she does. As sick and psychotic as Bartholomew is, she knows that he is never dishonest, would never purposefully hurt or deceive.
“You’re a whore. Your mother is a whore.”
He lies down, faces the wall, and curls away from her. She leans toward him and strokes his snarled hair. “You are not alone,” she whispers.
After he is asleep, she stands to leave. On her way out, the cop stops her. His eyes are compassionate. “Tomorrow will be a better day.”
Her lips quiver. She forces a smile. “It fucking better be,” she says, trying to get some of the old Bridget back.
Outside, it’s still as muggy as it was at two in the afternoon. But she doesn’t care anymore. She can handle it. Not once when she sat with Bartholomew did she think about calling Michael or wonder why he hadn’t called her.