ANNASOPHIA
The razor Alexandra holds at a surgeon’s precise angle over her ankle throws off a lethal glint. Blood drains from my brain. I sway in the bedroom doorway, vocal chords frozen.
Soshanna steps around me, bumping my hip, and I jerk upright. From the backyard, Magnus’s faint laughter adds a bizarre dissonance to the scene.
“What’s with the razor, Zandra?” Soshanna’s voice is quiet and measured—the polar opposite of the high-pitched howl in my head.
“Can shrinks talk without asking questions?” Alexandra leans over the leg pulled up under her chin and touches the inside of her ankle with the razor blade. “FYI, this little scene is exactly what it looks like. I’m going to slice a major artery and bleed out in Mama Bear’s big, soft bed.”
“While two docs stand here with their thumbs up their butts.”
In my brain fog, I’m unsure if I hear disbelief or sarcasm in Soshanna’s statement.
“Don’t bother taking your thumbs out. Or trying to distract me with verbal repartee.” Alexandra giggles. “If I don’t finish the job this time, there’s always another opp.”
Adrenaline fires into my nerve-endings. Flight is no longer an option. I strain to convey my intention to Soshana. She tilts her head as if encouraging Alexandra to keep talking.
“Now,” I yell and charge into the room with Soshanna one step behind me. Hand fisted, I thump Alexandra in the middle of her forehead.
She screams and topples backward. The razor slides off her ankle. A jagged red trail meanders toward her instep. I yank her wrists over her head. She kicks like a goat. I pinch her nostrils. Her eyelids flutter. Soshanna sweeps the razor onto the floor, rolls a sheet over Alexandra’s wound, and applies pressure. I release her nostrils and monitor her respiration.
“First-aid kit. Bathroom. Top middle drawer.” My directions to Soshanna carry the same detachment I use in ER. “You clean the cut. I’ll go with the smelling salts.”
“Better thee than me.” Soshanna jogs to the bathroom, returns, and swabs the cut with a sterile pad. “A scrape.”
Relief jitters in my chest. Teeth gritted, I pass the ammonia salts under Alexandra’s nose. She coughs. Rolls her head from side to side. Swats at my hand. When she doesn’t open her eyes, I pass the ampule again.
“Bitch.” Kicking out at Soshanna, she whips her head back and forth on the pillow.
“Not even close.” Soshanna repacks the white box and picks up the razor.
“Go ahead, take all the scissors. Knives. Nail files. Take everything sharp out of the house. Doesn’t matter. I have lots of resources.”
“Soshanna.” My heart rings in my ears, and my voice goes tinny and breathless. “Call Hill View. If they can’t take us, call Stanford.”
“Nooooooooooo!” Alexandra’s shriek echoes the pain of a wild animal caught in a flesh-tearing trap. Her whole body gyrates, shaking the big, sturdy bed. “I won’t go. You can’t—”
Soshanna appears at the bedside. “Want a dose of happy stuff?”
Alexandra kicks out with short, violent jabs. “Get away from me, bitch.”
Soshanna sidesteps the kicks. “Hill View. Then Stanford.”
“Bitches. Bitches. Bitches.” Alexandra curses in a rising voice as if repeating an incantation that will turn us to stone. She intersperses each set of repetitions with kicks and oaths and warnings for me to stay away from her or she’ll rip off my head.
Her tone carries the pent-up venom of a baited snake. I stand at the foot of the bed out of reach of her feet. Hurry, Soshanna, hurry.
As if reading my mind, she lifts one finger, nods into the phone, listens, shakes her head, disconnects, and announces, “Hill View’s ready. Ambulance here in ten.”
“Better knock me out,” Alexandra screams. “I won’t go.”
Her drawn-back lips and bared teeth raise a buried memory. The Exorcist scared me so much I slept in my parents’ bedroom for a week after seeing all hundred and twenty-plus minutes on TV at a sleepover with six teenage girls high on buttered popcorn and Cokes and Snickers bars. All my friends screamed in the right places. No one but me freaked.
Now, forty years later in my sun-filled bedroom, I tense—expecting my teenage daughter’s head to spin as she hisses and spits. No sign of that smiling, happy baby I nourished in my womb. Nurtured with love. Pampered when ill. Protected from her father.
Did his death or my weakness as a mother turn her into this demon-possessed soul?
Soshanna strokes my arm. “Want me to ride with her?”
“Want me to puke?” Alexandra screams. “You hate me. I hate you. You can go to hell.”
She begins to cry in huge, tearing gasps. I take a step. Soshanna drags me back.
She whispers, “What about Anastaysa and Magnus?”
Anastaysa and Magnus? I stare at my best friend as if she’s speaking in tongues.
“They can stay alone for fifteen minutes,” Soshanna points out. “I’m not letting you go to the hospital alone.”
I lick my lips. What is she babbling about?
“I’ll call Ari. Anastaysa and I kept him awake all night, but he’s coming for breakfast.”
Something in her tone punches through the layers of fog. “We can’t wait.”
“I’ll ask the detective.”
“Speak up, bitches. I can’t hear you.” Alexandra slams her heels into the mattress.
“With reason,” Soshanna says in a tone so dulcet my nerve-endings unknot. She adds, “Your time to hear is at the hospital.”
“Nooooo.” Alexandra’s scream is sharp enough to shatter steel.
A knock at the door increases the volume to the level of torture.
It’s too soon for the ambulance, but I throw open the door. White-faced and big-eyed, Anastaysa stands on the other side.
“What’s wrong with Zandra?”
“Staysa? Is that you? Don’t let them take me. Don’t let them take me. I’ll die if they take me.” Alexandra writhes and twists on the bed as if suspended over hot coals.
Anastaysa pushes past me, but Soshanna catches her and turns her back to the hall. “Your sister needs help. You have to trust me and your mother.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“We’ll tell you later.” Soshanna hugs her. “I promise.”
Anastaysa looks at me, and I grab her hand. “Me too.”
The doorbell interrupts further protest. I put an arm around Anastaysa’s shoulders, lead her to the front door, and open it to two male EMTs with a gurney.
Holding onto my younger daughter, I provide relevant info on Alexandra’s age and physical status but skate over the precipitating factors that led to the 911-call. “Dr. Soshanna Levi-Hoffman’s a clinical psychiatrist at Stanford. She’s in the bedroom with my daughter. She speaks for me.”
The EMTs trot into the hall, and I nudge Anastaysa toward the patio. No way I’ll let her see her sister taken from the house in restraints. Her eyes flare, but she whirls around, head high. At times I’ve wished she was more rebellious. Now is not one of those times.
Alexandra’s non-stop obscenities fly past the EMTs wheeling the gurney into the hall. Despair sucks me downward with dizzying speed. My brain fast-forwards to images of my beautiful, brilliant child crazy for the rest of her life.
“Call Ari.” Soshanna climbs into the ambulance.
My head spins. What’s happening? I can’t think. I yell, “You stay. Until Ari comes.”
Alexandra shrieks as if being torn limb from limb.
“Tell Patel to bring you to Hill View,” Soshanna counters.
The ambulance door swings shut. A second later, the vehicle glides out of the driveway. I turn on matchstick legs and feel neurons and synapses blast open memories I’d long ago buried. After Michael was killed, I convinced myself I could fill the void for Alexandra.
His favorite child. His most indulged child. His most manipulative child.
Out of sight, out of mind, I’d thought. Tears blind me. I imagined us one happy family without Michael’s menacing presence. Without his mood swings. Without his swift punishments and slow rewards. Without his cold, calculated emotional cruelty.
My three children needed me and no one else to thrive. They’d forget my maternal failures to protect them as we all achieved bliss. My over-confidence bloomed, but Alexandra didn’t forget.
I scrub my eyes. Enough wallowing. Toss the rose-colored glasses. Admit the undeniable. Our oldest daughter—her sicko father’s pet—is still haunted by his ghost.
Tormented, she’s never dealt with his ultimate abandonment—death. His letters …
My stomach drops. I collapse against the nearest wall. How the hell can I call myself a mother? A doctor? I was so happy Michael was dead I missed Alexandra falling apart. Chalked up her rages and defiance and withdrawal and self-mutilation to adolescence. Turned a blind eye to obvious symptoms of on-again/off-again charisma coupled with her outright conning me. Symptoms third-year med students would recognize. Symptoms I must be imagining.
Air whooshes out of my lungs. My brain speeds up, spewing out specifics. Borderline personality disorder—as prevalent as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Harder to diagnose.
Harder to treat.
Harder to accept because of the long-term prognosis.