CHICAGO
August 1979
TWO DAYS AFTER HER BREAKDOWN, ANGELA WAS AT THE DOCTOR’S office, sitting on the table in a thin gown and pulling at her eyelashes.
“Relax, darling,” the nurse said as she prepped the syringe. “I just need two vials. You won’t feel a thing.”
Angela looked the other way when the nurse pressed the needle to the inside of her elbow, but it wasn’t the threat of a needle that had her on edge. Her panic attack had set Thomas’s radar on high alert, and he’d forced her to see the doctor before things got out of control. Little did he know that things were far beyond that. Baring her paranoia to Thomas had set loose even more angst now that she was at the clinic. She’d been through this routine before. Most of her adolescence had been spent in doctors’ offices and on psychiatrists’ couches. Back when she was under the rule of her parents, doctors and shrinks were her way of life. Her parents believed that if Angela saw enough of them, and the right ones, they could psychoanalyze her back to health. When none of the therapists could do for their daughter what Angela’s parents demanded, they admitted her to a juvenile psychiatric facility.
Angela was seventeen when her parents forced her into that place, and she spent seven months there until she discharged herself on her eighteenth birthday. It was only with the help of a dear friend that Angela had escaped that life. She had been on a (mostly) smooth trajectory for the last several years. Since meeting Thomas, she’d tightly managed her anxiety and had even felt like she was starting to fit into society. Her autism was something no one understood, including the many doctors who pretended otherwise, and Angela had long ago stopped trying to explain to others how her mind operated. She had learned over many years of criticism and failure that no one could fully comprehend the way her thoughts were organized. Yet, here she was again, waiting for a doctor to explain what was wrong with her.
She knew, though, that Thomas meant well. His eagerness for her to seek psychiatric help was simply his way of trying to protect her. He didn’t know her full history. Angela had tried her best to keep hidden the dark days of her teenage years. And until just recently, the ruse had worked. Thomas had opened her life to new opportunities. He made her feel safe. But despite the progress, the events of the summer had made her realize how frail a hold she had on it all. The missing women who had run through the folds of her mind, and the idea that they were part of a longer string of violence, had started Angela down a road with no turnoffs. Despite Angela recognizing that her obsession with these women was unhealthy, she felt a connection to them that she couldn’t ignore.
The stranger from the alley, who had reappeared in Catherine’s kitchen, had set loose her anxiety in ways that transported her through the years and back to her adolescence. The obsessive-compulsive disorder she thought she had tethered and stowed in a locked-off compartment of her psyche had been reawakened to wreak havoc, like when she was younger. On top of it all, she feared that her affliction would push Thomas away. She feared now that Thomas had gotten a clear look at her paranoia; the anchor that had steadied her for the last couple of years was breaking free from its mooring to leave Angela adrift and alone. So many worries ran through her mind, she had trouble keeping track of them all.
“All done, darling,” the nurse said, bringing Angela’s thoughts back to the present. The nurse held two vials of deep red blood in her gloved hand.
“The doctor will be right in.”
A few minutes later, the doctor entered the room and performed a cursory exam.
“Have you had panic attacks in the past?” the doctor asked while he scribbled in the chart.
“No,” she said. “I mean . . . when I was younger, but they didn’t call them that.”
The doctor took a minute to finish writing, and then looked at Angela. “You used to take lithium as a teenager. Was it effective?”
Angela, who normally would shy away from a man staring at her, peered back with an intensity that surprised even herself. The horrors of her teenage years fueled her rage.
“No! He forced me to take it, and my parents went along with him.”
“Who?”
“The psychiatrist my parents sent me to. The one who kept me locked away in the psychiatric hospital. He believed I had a behavioral disorder, and that I was a manic-depressive. They used lithium to sedate me. Besides putting me to sleep, it gave me wild hallucinations.”
The doctor paused before nodding. “Yes, not everyone responds to it.” He pulled a prescription pad from the breast pocket of his jacket and jotted on it. He tore the page free and handed her the slip. “This is for Valium, it will take the edge off with none of the side effects of lithium.”
He jotted again onto the pad and tore a second slip free.
“And here is the name of a psychiatrist. I think you should talk with someone. I’ve been referring many of my female patients to him lately. The missing women from the city have gotten a lot of people spooked. Talking with someone will help. In the meantime, push fluids until the vomiting passes. The Valium should help, and, Mrs. Mitchell,” the doctor said as he stood, “the police are good at what they do. They’ll catch this guy. That will be the best cure for everything you’ve got going on.”
On the way out of the clinic, Angela crumpled the paper that held the shrink’s name, dropped it in the trash bin, and climbed into her car. She walked into the pharmacy ten minutes later to fill her Valium prescription.