The genetic link can’t be ignored. With each family member afflicted with the disease, the risk factor for fellow family members does go up.
She heard Dr Barakat’s words play over and over and over again in her head, with the same inflection and reflective pause as when he had said them in his office last week. She saw herself in that room, admiring his faux-painting and rich leather chairs, never once thinking he was talking about her.
And the risk is cumulative. So if Mom, Sis and Grandma have schizophrenia, Junior is at least twenty-six times more likely to develop the disease than, say, you or me.
Than, say, you or me.
We’re different, was what he meant. We don’t have mental illnesses like the defendants do. We wouldn’t get that dirty disease.
And in the courtroom just two days ago, casually discussing the cause-and-effect relationship of schizophrenia with the experts, she’d been right there on center stage, with all eyes on her, asking the dramatic, breathless questions and secretly relieved to be part of the club. The Majority Club. A part of the Than, Say, You Or Me crowd. At that moment she was an intellectual, able to discuss and examine the clinical causes and frightening symptoms from an objective perspective in a courtroom full of other intellectual professionals. Now that was all gone. She was a percentage now – a statistic waiting to be realized. And just the word alone suddenly sounded repulsive and dirty and terrifying. Schizophrenia. Schizo.
She wiped the tears with the back of her hand, but it was useless. It was like an unending stream that she had not been able to shut off for two days. Maybe something was broken, she thought. Maybe the crying would never end.
Rain poured off her windshield in heavy sheets, whipped around by the gusty wind. Even with headlights, it was impossible to see more than a few feet in front of the car, and traffic on 95 had slowed to a stop-and-go crawl. She probably should’ve called the airport before she’d left her apartment to see if her flight had been delayed or cancelled, but she hadn’t. After finding a seat on the last JetBlue flight of the day, she’d quickly thrown some clothes into a duffel bag and hurried to drop Moose at the kennel before they closed. She had to keep packing, moving, going, hurrying – or else risk stopping to think. And right now, she knew that was just too dangerous. Because she didn’t really know what she was going to do when she got off that plane in New York. And with too much thinking, she might not go. There were still stacks and stacks of memories inside her head that she couldn’t bring herself to drag out and examine just yet. The ones that she knew now might never have even existed the way she once thought they did.
It was like the shock of suddenly finding out Santa wasn’t real, without ever having once questioned his existence. One small fact had changed everything. It had even changed history. Only it wasn’t just Santa she’d found out didn’t exist today. Or the Easter Bunny. It was her whole life. She turned the music up on the radio, hoping someone could sing loud enough or strong enough to stop the thoughts that kept running through her head while she waited for the traffic to inch forward in the driving rain. She wondered if the voices did come for her, would she know they weren’t real? Would she know the difference between a DJ on the radio and a phantom?
She felt so alone. So incredibly alone with shameful secrets no one could ever know. No one wanted to be friends with the girl whose parents were murdered. The girl whose brother was a murderer. Old friends had stopped calling right after the funerals. Even Carly. New friends wanted no part of someone who was so different. So she’d made sure she wasn’t. She buried her past in secrets and lies that she kept from everyone. Friends, boyfriends, teachers, professors, bosses. Her parents had died in a terrible car crash. She was raised by her aunt and uncle. She was an only child. She’d told the same lie for so long that, on occasion, even she’d thought it sounded right. For just a little while, sometimes even she’d forget what it felt like to be so damn different.
Andrew’s sweet, young face flashed before her, with his milky skin and dark curly hair. The deep dimples when he smiled. Bobby Brady, her mom thought he looked like. He had never looked evil to her, even that night when he pulled away in the police car, covered in the blood of their parents. A boy of barely eighteen. That’s all he’d been. A boy. Ten years younger than she was now. She’d abandoned him all this time, while he sat alone, going through a cold, indifferent justice system that she knew he didn’t understand and that didn’t understand him.
She chewed her thumbnail till it started to bleed, staring straight into the blurred red brake lights of the Mazda in front of her. Now there was one more horrible secret to bury from friends and co-workers and boyfriends. She blinked back tears again. Only this one she might not be able to keep all to herself.
‘Schizo,’ she said aloud in the empty car. Then she opened her window and spit the dirty, scary word out into the rain.