“WHEN CAN I GO HOME?”
“We’re not sure yet.” Leigh still wore his scrubs, and there was a stain on the shirt that looked suspiciously like blood. Her gaze was drawn to it again and again, perhaps so she wouldn’t have to see how her husband looked off to the corner, or above the bed, or down at his fingers … or anywhere else to avoid looking at her.
“Is it hard for you?” she asked.
“What?”
“Having a psycho for a wife.”
“Eve —”
“Do you tell anyone, the other doctors and nurses you work with, that your wife is locked up in Riverbend?”
Leigh opened his mouth, and then perhaps thought better of whatever he was about to say. He shook his head, and his gaze travelled up to her face for just a moment. “Dr. Jeffries will be here soon to discuss your results, and a plan of action.”
“She’s a bitch.”
“Eve,” Leigh said. “I get that you’re scared. But we’re all trying to do our best here.”
“Screw that. Your best is locking me up like some kind of criminal.”
He scrubbed a hand across his face, so hard she heard the rasp of his stubble against the palm of his hand. “You know what’s bothering me? You’ve been here for five days —”
“I have?”
“And you haven’t asked about Gabriel. Not once.”
“Oh.”
“Did you forget about him?” he asked, and she could hear the fear in his voice.
“Of course not. What kind of an awful person would forget about their child?” Even to her own ears, her protest was too strident.
“Not awful. Just in need of help.”
“I don’t —” But she was cut off as the door to her room opened.
“Mrs. Adler.” Dr. Jeffries strode purposefully into the room. “Dr. Adler.” She extended a hand to Leigh, who stood to shake it.
Dr. Jeffries looked exactly as she had the last time Eve saw her, right down to the pale slick of hair, the ice-coloured eyes that swam behind thick lenses, and the incongruously girlish freckles dusting her nose and cheeks.
“I have the results of the MRI and the neuroplasticity workup. Comparing the results to those done six months after your accident, we can see some interesting anomalies.”
She took the only seat in the room and crossed her legs. She wore tweed pants and brown shoes with pointed toes. Flopping the thick chart open on her lap, she said, “The good news is, there’s significant improvement in areas of the brain that weren’t directly impacted in the accident. But I found this part curious.”
She turned the folder so Leigh could see. “Take a look at the hypothalamus.”
Leigh frowned. “Huh.”
“Eve, did you have trouble getting pregnant?”
“Not at all.”
“Any difficulty breastfeeding?”
“No.”
“We had to supplement with formula,” Leigh said. “Because her milk production was poor.”
“Right.”
“Do you sleep well at night?” Dr. Jeffries asked.
“Most of the time.”
“She rarely sleeps,” Leigh said at the same time.
The doctor looked from one of them to the other, but neither elaborated.
“Do you often feel too warm? Or too cold?”
“Cold,” Leigh said.
“I can never get warm.”
“And when did that begin?”
“Um.” She paused, thinking. “It’s been a long time. I rarely think about it anymore.”
“It’s been getting worse lately,” Leigh said. “She’s been wearing sweaters while the rest of us are sweating in T-shirts.”
“I’m not surprised, considering what I see here.” The doctor nodded at the chart in her lap. “Your hypothalamus function has deteriorated significantly since the last time we ran these tests. It’s responsible for many functions, including helping to control the pituitary gland. This can affect everything from sleep patterns to reproductive issues to the body’s ability to regulate temperature. Your blood tests show that you’ve become hyperthyroid, and your estrogen level is higher than we would like. But medication can bring both these issues under control.”
“Well. That’s good.”
“Yes,” the doctor said. “That’s all very good news. However, there are other issues of concern. Your husband believes there’s been a decline in your cognition since the birth of your son.”
“If he says so.”
“You don’t agree?”
She shrugged, glancing at Leigh for guidance. The bloodstain on the front of his scrubs, which she remembered as being about the size of a nickel, had grown to several inches in diameter.
“Eve?” Dr. Jeffries said.
“Sorry. What?” She turned back to the doctor, who watched her with a mixture of interest and concern.
“Your husband tells us that you’re having increasing moments of forgetfulness, and you’re also experiencing some aural hallucinations.” Dr. Jeffries leaned forward, giving her an earnest look. “This is not uncommon after a significant head injury. It’s also fairly common for this to start happening years after the initial injury. However, this level of psychosis —”
“Psychosis.”
The doctor held up her hand, smiling. “It’s a term that’s bandied about very liberally in popular culture, with negative connotations, but in medical terms all it means is a break from reality.”
“A break from reality. Uh-huh.”
“This woman who visits you while you’re painting —”
“I don’t want to talk about her.”
“I’m afraid we must. If we’re to get to the bottom of this problem, we’ll need to have some open and honest communication.”
“Not about her.”
“Hmm,” the doctor said. “Are you afraid of her?”
“Of course I am.”
“Is she telling you to do things you don’t want to do?”
“Like what?”
“Like hurt yourself? Or hurt others?”
She shook her head. “No. Nothing like that.”
“Then what?” Leigh asked, reaching out to stroke her hair. “What is she saying?”
“I don’t remember.” She was on the verge of tears, her body quaking with pent-up tension.
The doctor leaned back in her chair, watching her. “What?”
“Well, how can we know if it’s safe for you to be around your child, or your grandmother and husband, if we don’t know what she’s telling you to do?”
“You’re saying I’m not leaving here.”
“I’m saying it’s hard to treat something when we don’t know exactly what it is. However, I suspect that the presence of this woman is a symptom of your poorly functioning hypothalamus. And that’s good news.”
“How?”
“Because with the right treatment, we should be able to eliminate this symptom and many others.”
Eve grew suspicious. “And how do we do that?”
“Science is a marvellous thing.” For the first time since entering the room, the doctor’s smile seemed genuine. “By isolating the areas in your brain that have been damaged, we can go in and fix them.”
“You’re going to shock me again.”
“Again?” Leigh asked.
She turned to him and froze. The stain on his shirt had grown to the size of a dinner plate. It was perfectly round, bright red, and glistening wet.
“Oh my God, Leigh. You’re bleeding.”
He looked down. “Where?”
“Your chest.”
He pulled the shirt away from his chest, craning his neck to examine it, and then looked at her with raised eyebrows. The doctor gave her the same look. They couldn’t see the blood.
“Never mind. Just a trick of the light, I guess.” It was thick and gelatinous, oozing down the front of his shirt and glopping onto his pants.
Leigh turned to the doctor. “Do you really think an ECT is the best way to go?”
“I understand the concern,” Dr. Jeffries said. “But much of the stigma still associated with this kind of treatment stems from a time when it was used in high doses, without any specific targeting, and without general anaesthetic. It’s a completely different procedure now.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
Dr. Jeffries went on as though Eve hadn’t spoken. “I’m talking about targeting a precise location in the brain with electrical current, which triggers a brief seizure. There is minimal risk, and potentially a lot to gain.”
Drips of blood hit the linoleum floor by Leigh’s feet — plop-plop-plop — and oozed toward Dr. Jeffries’s pointed shoes.
“How quickly do you usually see results?” Leigh asked.
“It’s cumulative,” the doctor said. “Sometimes we see results almost immediately, but usually things really begin to improve after the third or fourth procedure. Every time the brain has a seizure it releases hormones, and this is where the work really happens.”
“No fucking way,” Eve tried to say, but her voice didn’t make it past her throat.
“Quite frankly, this is the only possible solution I see,” Dr. Jeffries said to Leigh. “If the results are good, I expect Eve will be able to go home to you and your son.”
“And if not?” Leigh asked.
Dr. Jeffries shrugged. “I’ll give you two some time to talk. Dr. Adler, if you’d like to arrange a meeting, I’m happy to go over the procedure in detail with you.”
“Thank you for your time, Dr. Jeffries.” Leigh stepped forward to shake her hand and his shoes made a squelching sound.
“Of course.” When the doctor departed, she left a trail of bloody shoeprints in her wake.
“Well,” Leigh said.
Eve raised a hand to stop him from getting any closer.
“Get out.”
“I understand if you’re scared. But we really need to talk about this.”
Holding grimly to the last of her self-control, she said, “I need some time alone. Okay?”
“We need to talk about this.”
“Well.” Leigh looked at his watch. “If I leave now I’ll be home in time to tuck Gabriel into bed.”
“Yes. Do that.”
He leaned over to kiss her, and a clot of blood splatted onto the blanket. Eve pulled back, her gorge rising. With a sigh, he moved away.
“Eve,” he said at the door. “We’ll get through this together, like we always do. Just you and me, right?”
Plop.
She bit down on her tongue, unsure if she was going to scream or vomit.
The door clicked closed behind him. She managed to hold on until his footsteps had faded down the hall, then she gave in to her horror. Retching, she kicked the soiled blanket off the end of the bed.
She grabbed the pillow and rammed it against her face, blocking her view of the room. But as clearly as if her eyes were still open, she could see Leigh’s footprints smearing gelatinous clots of blood.
The flowers looked like daisies, but they had blood at their roots.
She screamed into the pillow until she wore herself out. Eventually, she slept. Her dreams were full of silver things soon forgotten, and she awoke to the sun shining through the blinds and birds chirping outside the window.
Wrapping her wool sweater around her shoulders, she climbed out of bed and stumbled groggily to the bathroom to relieve herself. Her head felt stuffed and thick, her eyes bleary from tears and sleep.
The sound of her urine hitting the water reminded her of the previous day’s blood. Stretching out one pale foot, she pushed the bathroom door open. From what she could see, the floor was clean.
“Motherfucker.”
She wiped, flushed, washed her hands and face with water as warm as she could get from the tap, and then brushed her teeth. Feeling slightly more human, she moved back into the bedroom. She examined the floor carefully, even getting down on all fours to look beneath the chair Dr. Jeffries had been sitting in. There was nothing but faded linoleum.
Relieved, she sat back on her haunches, a smile spreading across her lips. And then she saw it: a small smear on the metal leg of the chair, dark red like old ketchup.