The Aperture

Chapter 19

The Psychiatric Ward

The orange afternoon sun shone feebly through the blinds of Dr. Gilbreth’s office. The psychiatrist ushered Alyndia to a chair in front of his desk. Outside, the snow was melting, and large drops of water dripped from the roof outside the window.

“Make yourself comfortable, Ms. Bain,” Dr. Gilbreth said as he took a seat at his desk.

“I assume you brought me here to discuss the results of my tests.”

“You are correct,” he said, opening her folder on his desk.

As the doctor pulled out a few sheets from the folder, Alyndia noticed that the number of papers in the folder had increased immensely in the last few days since she and the doctor had last met. She knew these were the results of the tests the hospital psychologists had given her in the last few days—the multiple choice questions, the puzzle block test, the ink blots, the interviews, and the MRI. Alyndia thought the people of this world put a lot of emphasis on analysis of the person. Whereas in her world, much could be learned of a person by merely reading their aura, slow tests were needed here. She wondered what they had to say about her.

The doctor fixed his glasses higher on his nose. “I suppose I’ll begin by saying I’m quite surprised by the results here.”

Alyndia sat up in her seat. She did not like the doctor saying this. “Is this good or bad?”

“Well, your test results in themselves are not atypical for marginally adjusted individuals. However, when juxtaposed to previous psychological profiles, we found an aberrant polar shift.”

“Say that again?”

The doctor peered at her over the lenses of his glasses. “It means you’ve undergone a personality change since the test was last taken.”

“For the better, I hope,” she said, recalling her conversation with MacGregor.

“Well, just different.”

Dr. Gilbreth pulled out a few dark blue photos from her folder on his desk, moved aside a couple of trinkets, and laid them out for her to see. She moved her chair closer to the desk to have a look. The images, which were cross-sectional images of her brain, appeared to have been painted with watercolors.

“From the sudden shift in your personality, I would have expected the MRI to show something in this area.” He pointed to the frontal section of the diagram. “Or maybe this area.” He pointed to another section. “The good news is that the MRI does not show evidence of brain damage.” He put the page back into the folder. “This does not mean that you weren’t injured by the accident, however. Something has happened. We just don’t know what.”

“You still haven’t told me what is different.”

“Well, okay.” The doctor flipped through the papers in her folder and pulled out two sheets for her to view side-by-side. Each sheet had the same graphs, but the graphs were different. He pointed to the graphs with the pencils. “This sheet on your right is the profile that was taken when you applied for work with the CIA. The one on the left is the result of the test we gave you a few days ago. Can you see the difference? See this graph?” He pointed with the pencil on the old sheet. “Now look at the graph in the test we just took. Here, it seems you’ve acquired tendencies toward depression. You are far more introverted than you were. Your energy level is lower. You’re less analytical, more intuitive. Less headstrong, more submissive. Your self-esteem has dropped…”

The doctor continued describing the meanings of the chart. Despite their sometimes less-than-flattering descriptions of her, there was no doubt about the accuracy of the tests. She thought it was incredible how they could learn so much about her by asking only such innocuous questions as whether which term she preferred, such as a tower or a foundation.

Dr. Gilbreth withdrew the graphs. “The other tests we gave you corroborate the results of this one. Your I.Q. level is roughly the same as before your accident, the same with your verbal skills. Your reading comprehension has increased markedly. Conversely, your mathematics ability and mechanical aptitude have decreased. Similarly, your long-term memory of events and places has been compromised.” The doctor studied Alyndia’s reaction for a few seconds. Suddenly, his eyes lit up as he remembered something. “Let me show you something else.” He pulled out two more sheets of paper and placed them side by side on the desk before her. “These are your signatures on the test release forms before and after your accident. Do you see a difference?”

Alyndia examined the two signatures. The one she sighed a few days before, on the left was smaller but curved and loopy. Connie Bain. The one on the right was not quite as loopy, more straight up and down with higher pressure applied to the pen. Constance Bain.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say these signatures were written by different people,” the doctor said.

“What does it mean?”

“It means that something has happened to you.”

“So, my signature has changed. Can I leave soon?”

Dr. Gilbreth deflected her question, “At around ten last night, you were viewed holding a conversation with yourself in the bedroom and standing on your bed. Do you remember that?”

“Yes.”

The doctor stared at her without responding, waiting for her to elaborate on her answer. She did not know what to say. Her intuition told her that if she told him her true reason for her actions that night, there might be trouble.

“The nurse gave me something to help me sleep,” she responded simply. “Maybe that caused it.”

Dr. Gilbreth frowned. “I very well doubt that. By the way, your medical records show you have a current prescription for Valium. What do you take the Valium for?”

“What is Valium? Why would I take it?”

The doctor said no more. He was staring at her again. His expression seemed to cajole her to try again. This time, Alyndia did not answer. She focused her eyes on the orangy afternoon light behind the window. She wished she was anywhere but here. Finally, after a minute passed. The doctor abruptly put the documents back into the folder.

“That will be all, Ms. Bain.”

Alyndia frowned at him, puzzled by his statement. “That’s all?”

He nodded.

“You mean, I can leave?”

“Yes. You may go back to the ward.”

“To the ward? Can’t I go home?”

“In due time, yes—but not now.”

“Why not? I took all those tests as you asked me to.”

“It’s not my decision on whether you can go. As I mentioned earlier, your employer has an interest in your case.”

“So, what happens now?”

“First, I will submit them to the agency, and then they will review your test results, along with my recommendation. After that, they will decide the next step.”

“How long will that take?”

He shrugged. “I have no idea what their processes are.”

“Any idea on the time? One day? Two days? A week?”

“It could be days. It could be weeks.”

She sat back in the leather chair, stunned on hearing this, wondering what her next move should be. She thought of Gerald. She missed him as much as she was beginning to hate the hospital.

Dr. Gilbreth was now staring at her again. A curious, interested look had crossed his face. “What are you feeling right now?” he asked.

“I feel sad,” she replied.

“Why do you feel sad?”

“I want to leave.”

“Why? Is there somewhere else you’d like to be?”

“I’m missing someone.”

“Who?”

Alyndia did not reply.

“Do you miss your partner—William MacGregor?”

“No,” she replied resolutely.

“Is it someone you haven’t mentioned?”

She noticed the telephone on his desk. “May I use your phone?”

“Who would you like to call?”

“Gerald—Gerald Layton.”

“Professor Gerald Layton? The one you embraced and kissed at the interrogation?”

It didn’t surprise Alyndia that the doctor knew about what she’d done during the interrogation, but his bringing it up at that moment embarrassed her.

“Yes. Him.”

“Really?” Dr. Gilbreth said. He seemed genuinely interested in this.

“What would you like to say to him?”

“It’s private.”

“I see. Do you have his number with you, or do you have it memorized?”

“No.

“Then how do you intend to call him if you don’t have his number?”

She hadn’t thought of this. “I suppose my intuition will guide me on finding the right combination of numbers.”

The doctor gave her a peculiar look on hearing this. “Your intuition? I say you’d call a lot of wrong numbers before you finally reached him. Let’s call information instead. It will at least be faster.”

Alyndia detected a slight but unmistakable shift in the timbre of the doctor’s voice as he said this. She now suspected that he was mocking her or playing a role in order to elicit some kind of reaction from her. This put her on edge.

He picked up the handset of the phone. “Is that a local or long-distance number?”

“I changed my mind. I don’t want to talk to him,” she said.

“Are you sure? We can call him at home.”

“He’s not at home. They have him at a police station, remember?”

“Who is ‘they’?”

“The CIA, of course.”

“I see.” He repositioned the phone slightly so that he could more easily punch in the number. “What police station are they holding him at?”

“I don’t know.”

He raised his eyebrows at her. “You don’t know the name of the station?”

She shook her head.

“How could you, as a CIA agent, not know where your suspect is incarcerated? And didn’t you yourself visit him at the facility a few days ago?”

“I don’t remember the name of the place. That’s all.”

“Would you like me to call your partner and ask him for you?”

“Definitely not! Doctor, just forget it. I don’t want you to call anyone for me.”

“As you wish.”

Dr. Gilbreth put the handset back on the cradle and sighed. He took off his glasses and wiped them with a lint-free cloth on his desk. Alyndia watched him. He looked strikingly different without his glasses on—a lot less intelligent and imposing and a lot more mousey.

“That will be all for today. You can go back to the ward now. I’m going to make some changes to your medications. We’ll start you on them this evening. Then we’ll meet again later in the week to see how you’re doing. Have a good afternoon, Alyndia.”

He put his glasses back on, picked up a pen, and began writing in her file. He paused and looked up when he saw she was still sitting in the chair in front of his desk.

“I said you can go back to the ward now. We’ll meet later in the week.”

“You just called me by my name.”

“Yes. I called you Alyndia.”

“Why did you me call me that?”

“I can call you Connie if you’d like—or would I be mistaken if I do so?”

Alyndia stared into the doctor’s eyes, unsure of how to answer him. Was he just humoring her, or was he being sincere? She decided it was the latter. Perhaps he had finally realized that it was she who now resided in Connie’s body. After all, there was no other reason for him to call her by her true name, as he had just done. In any case, it felt good to hear him address her that way after their tense conversation, which did not seem to go her way at all.

She smiled at him. “Thank you, doctor.”

He went back to writing notes in her file. He had already written nearly half a page.

“You can leave the door open on the way out.”

The orderly escorted Alyndia back to the psychiatric ward. He set her loose in the recreation room. Now she sat on the far end of the stained, lumpy couch, her knees drawn up to her chest, watching Dr. Phil. The afternoon’s lewd topic: Men Who Leave Their Women for Other Men Who Dress as Women, or something like that.

Alyndia was only half paying attention to the show. She focused mainly on her own thoughts: Gerald, where are you? She felt that if he were here with her, all things would be all right. Now her thought turned to Joy and Connie’s mother. Not only did Gerald not know where she was, neither did Joy, that is, unless Joy called the apartment and MacGregor told her where she was. Alyndia sighed, fretting that perhaps Joy thought she had changed her mind about returning to their mother. She bit her lower lip. She had been there three days now. Time was slipping by. Alyndia remembered Joy had written her phone number on the back of her husband’s business card. She had put this card in her purse back at the hotel. Alyndia thought that if she had the number, she could call Joy and let her know where she was. There were no telephones available to patients in the ward. This would have to be a special request.

After fifteen minutes, one of the nurses entered the recreation room holding two paper cups. One of these cups Alyndia knew contained water, the other held tablets. Cups of water and medication were given to many of the other patients at specific times throughout the day. She was the exception. This time, to Alyndia’s surprise, the woman stopped before her at the couch. Alyndia looked up at the woman. This was a sweet-smiling nurse, heavy-set, with bottle-red hair peeking out from beneath her cap. Her badge read, Geri Miniver, Pharmacy.

“I have something for you, Ms. Bain,” the nurse said as she lowered one of the cups to Alyndia.

Alyndia stared warily at the cup, then at the window still filled with the afternoon light. “I’m not sleepy.”

The nurse sighed. “This isn’t to help you sleep. It’s your medication. It will help you feel better.”

“Who thinks I’m not feeling well?”

“Dr. Gilbreth is handling your case. He prescribed them.”

“But I don’t want to take anything.”

“You have to talk to Dr. Gilbreth about it the next time you meet with him. I’m just doing my job. Now here, take these.”

“But he didn’t say anything about having to take medication,” she said without taking the cup. “And I don’t have to take them if I don’t want to.”

“Didn’t you sign a release for treatment when you entered the ward?” the nurse asked patiently.

“Yes, but I didn’t sign up for this.”

“You don’t want to stay longer than you have to, do you?” Geri spilled the tablets in the cup into Alyndia’s hand. “You’ll feel better faster if you don’t resist your treatment.”

Alyndia looked at the tablets in her hand. There were a few different types of tablets. She shook the cup. “What are these?”

“Demerol and Thorazine.”

“What do they do?”

“One will relax you. The other is an anti-psychotic.”

“What is an anti-psychotic?”

“Anti-psychotic drugs are prescribed to treat schizophrenia,” she replied.

Alyndia tried to decode the meaning of this term. She drew a parallel in meaning from the pages of Connie’s mind: schizophrenia meant possession of the vessel by an evil spirit. At this conclusion, she scowled at the nurse.

“Are you saying the doctor thinks I have schizophrenia?”

The nurse smiled smugly at this question. “No, I just said these are prescribed to patients with schizophrenia.”

Alyndia knew Geri was being evasive with her. “I will not take these,” Alyndia said.

The nurse’s smile fell away at Alyndia’s reaction. “You’re going to take them,” she said.

On hearing that, Alyndia tossed the tablets across the room. They struck the powder blue wall and bounced on the white-tiled floor with a light ticking sound. Having not seen Alyndia throw the tablets, a number of the other patients looked around the room in an attempt to locate where the sound came from.

Startled but not surprised by Alyndia’s sudden reaction, the nurse quickly and purposefully walked back to the nurses’ station.

Alyndia returned to her thoughts. She had to find a telephone someplace to call either Gerald or Joy and let them know where she was. She sensed that if Dr. Gilbreth had diagnosed her with schizophrenia, then her stay at the psychiatric ward would be interminably long.

About ten minutes later, the nurse returned to her on the couch, holding the ubiquitous white cups. This time, two male orderlies accompanied her. They stood to either side of the nurse. One of them held something small and white in his hand. The other stood by with his arms crossed at his chest. Their presence, along with the nurse, alarmed and angered Alyndia. Now the other patients noticed that something was going on. A few of the more lucid and curious wandered over to view the confrontation.

Geri held out the cup of fresh tablets to Alyndia again. “I’ve come to give you your medication, Ms. Bain.”

“I already told you—I will not take your medication.”

“Don’t make this hard for everyone,” the nurse warned.

Alyndia and the nurse locked stares for a few seconds, and then she closed her eyes and turned away from the nurse. “I will not allow you to do this to me.”

“Okay, if that’s the way you want it,” the nurse said. “Sammy, give me the syringe.”

Alyndia turned to see the nurse trade the paper cups for a plastic hypodermic syringe one of the orderlies held. Alyndia watched the nurse remove the plastic cap. She held up the syringe up to the light and pressed the plunger. A tiny bit of liquid squirted out of the top. Now she positioned the syringe in her fingers in preparation to give Alyndia an injection.

“Hold her down,” the nurse ordered.

The orderlies converged on Alyndia. Suddenly, terrified, she jumped off the back of the couch and ran to a corner of another part of the rec room. When she turned, the orderlies were approaching her quickly, making their way quickly around the card tables. The nurse followed slowly behind, brandishing the syringe with the shiny needle in her fingers like a weapon.

Now only a flimsy card table on which sat a half-completed, 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle of a vintage steam engine stood between Alyndia and the orderlies. Once they breached the table, intending to go around either side, she shoved the tables toward them hard. The table flipped over, sending pieces of the puzzle flying through the air. Now she ran through the rec room toward the hall, knocking over tables, chairs, and people as she went, scattering checkers, dice, and books to the polished room of the floor.

Once at the entry to the main corridor, she turned to see the orderlies making a beeline toward her. She turned and bolted down the hallway. Moments later, she reached the night areas where the patients stayed at night. She checked the door to the stairwell. It was locked—she was trapped!

The two orderlies slowed down their pace once they saw she was trapped. They stopped about three paces from her. The nurse walked behind them at a brisk pace, the syringe still in her hand. A number of the patients peered down the hallway at her from the recreation room.

Backed against the end of the locked stairwell door, Alyndia turned to face the orderlies. They stood there staring at her impassively, waiting until the nurse caught up. At that moment, Alyndia sorely wished she had some spells to cast at this bunch. The conflict would already have been over.

“Get away from me!” Alyndia shouted in Connie’s most vicious voice.

“Easy now,” one of the orderlies said. “No one is going to get hurt.”

Now the nurse had reached the three of them. She glared at Alyndia. “What did you do in the recreation room?” the nurse asked as if she were scolding a small child.

“I told you to leave me alone. You wouldn’t listen to me.”

Just then, she spotted another orderly and nurse walking toward them in the hallway.

“What’s going on here?” the second nurse asked.

“Ms. Bain is causing a disturbance because she doesn’t want to take her medication,” Geri said.

“Do you need any help?”

“No, I think we have this under control. Is Dr. Gilbreth still in the building?” Geri asked.

“I saw him leaving a little while ago. I think he’s gone home for the weekend.”

“Do me a favor and call his pager. Tell him what’s going on here.”

The nurse nodded once, then headed back down the hallway from where she came.

“Are you going to take your medication now?” Geri asked the patient she knew as Connie.

“No,” Alyndia said, fuming.

Geri nodded to the three orderlies. They converged on Alyndia while Geri waited behind them with the syringe. As the first of the orderlies came within a pace of her, another part of her mind took over. Almost without thinking, she thrust her fist forcefully into his ribs. She felt a slight pop beneath her knuckles as she did this. Immediately, the man let out a yell and fell against the wall, clutching his side. Another orderly approached her. Before he could reach her, she spun around and, arching her leg effortlessly through the air, kicked the orderly hard in the side of the head. The orderly let out a small sound and crumpled to the floor unconscious.

Alyndia then took a few steps back and surveyed the situation, astounded at what she had just done.

The nurse stared at her, her eyes wide with shock and fear. The third orderly standing next to her watched Alyndia warily, appearing unsure as to what to do next. Just then, the second orderly, who she’d kicked in the ribs, lunged at her. She deftly moved aside and round kicked him in the abdomen. He let out a loud grunt and fell to the floor. The third orderly leaped at her. His arms caught her neck, and he threw her to the floor. She twisted in his grasp, trying to get free, but he was stronger than he looked. Before long, he had caught her in a headlock. Alyndia still flailed in his grasp, kicking and writhing in an effort to get free.

“Hold her right there,” the nurse ordered.

A second later, Alyndia felt a slight sting and then a pressure in her upper arm.

This enraged Alyndia. In a moment of frenzied energy, she jabbed her elbow in the ribs of the orderly that held her and then punched him in the groin two or three times in succession. He let out a shout and released the headlock. But before she could rise, the orderly with the broken rib grabbed her by the collar. Immediately, she struck him in the throat with the flat side of her hand. He felt to the floor grasping his neck, choking.

Alyndia quickly rose to her feet and surveyed the surrounding scene. The three orderlies lay at her feet—two groaning, one unconscious. Despite the violence of the altercation, it hardly winded her. But now a strange weakness began in her muscles. It traveled up her spine and to her head. Geri stared at her at about five paces away. Two more orderlies and a black-shirted security guard were now running down the hall toward them.

Alyndia realized that there was no use in resisting further. She then became aware of a deep ache in her upper arm. She looked down and noticed an empty syringe hanging from her arm, its needle fully inserted. She yanked out the syringe and tossed it to the floor. The footsteps of the approaching men sounded loud in Alyndia’s ears. The echo resonated endlessly in her head.

When the three of them arrived on the scene, they stared incredulous at the three orderlies lying at Alyndia’s feet at the end of the hall. Alyndia glared at the hospital staff standing before her, feeling strangely groggy and weak. The feeling grew more intense by the second. She felt as though someone were slowly wrapping a pillow around her head. She saw spots before her eyes. Fearing she would lose her balance, Alyndia stumbled to her knees. Within seconds, numerous pairs of hands seized her.