The clinic was larger
and more expansive than the one I had worked for in Mexico. It was a four-story
building with four acres of plush greenery at the back. The fields held more
ground than the actual land in which the building occupied. It was painted a
dull beige color and the secluded enclave were concealed and locked in
black-coated gates. The patients took to the field during the day for games like
cricket, miniature golf, art classes, leisure walks and sometimes poker and like
any psychiatric hospital there were spectacles along the way.
At the reception, there
wasn’t a nurse to attend to us so we stood there patiently waiting our turn.
Two burly male patients walked up to us and one of them had a baby’s bib on
his neck with stains I assumed were condensed milk, because it was white and
congealed, dripping. The other man had on a space suit, I assumed because that
outfit belonged nowhere else. He must have crafted it from paper and pieces torn
from his old clothes. In his hand was square shaped box, with buttons and
controls drawn sketched on them, which was meant to be---I supposed---his
walkie-talkie to talk to the command post to warn them of his arrival. The
undeveloped baby walked up to Nick and muttered loudly, spewing bits of food at
his face as he spoke. Nick’s bodyguard soon walked up to arrest the situation,
urging the man gently away, to stand a few feet from us. That only irritated him
and his face turned golden brown before he launched into loud tantrums, yelling
and screaming in pain—like a baby who’s toy was crushed right in front of
him. Nick was mortified, his face turned a frozen pale color and I was
embarrassed, just seeing him distraught I clasped my eyes shut. So my mother was
behind these doors living with all these loonies. What if she is just as bad as
these people are, am I sure I can take that?
An
orderly arrived to our rescue and yanked the wailing “baby” out of our
midst, apologizing profusely as he hurled him inside effortlessly. He explained
that he had thought he had put the patient under restraints but he had no idea
that his space station buddy would set him free. Nick accepted the apology like
a gentleman, wiping off his forehead as his skin slowly came back to color. He
asked the man to explain it to me, since I was more stressed out from the
outburst. I wasn’t. I was more perturbed that my mother lived with these
people.
“Baby, are you
alright. It’s okay, baby,” he apologized to me, pretending there was a
situation when in fact there was not. I rolled my eyes at the hyperactivity
level of their patients and asked Nick to quickly inform him of our mission
here.
Just then the nurse
appeared from her hiding place, a small woman in her twenties, with light brown
hair and sturdy legs with which she wrestled the patients one on one. She
offered no apologies before she pranced inside her cabinet, retrieving the file,
picking out my mother’s name. “Oh…Mrs. Sawyer. You’re her daughter?”
she looked at me incredulously.
Yes, I am, why don’t I
look like her? I fumed under my breath. I had shown her my ID and a slip from
Dr. Harrow what else did she want before she could believe that I was indeed her
daughter. Apart from the fact that she had failed to cover her position at the
front desk leaving guests prone to the aversion of the patients, she was
disinterested and overly officious, scrutinizing every detail from the visitors
distrustfully.
“Miss… if you
don’t mind, we’ve flown a long way and my friend needs to speak...” Nick
began to plead on my behalf jumping in before my lacerating tongue could unleash
a formidable reply to her stupid question.
She looked up at Nick,
and rewarded her face with a smile. “You’re that guy from…?” she began,
masking her enthusiasm. She had a peculiarly small face that caused her smile to
spread from one ear to the other.
“Yes, I am,” Nick
jumped in, aware of where this statement was headed. He too was getting
frustrated with all the questions. “Okay, what do you want an autograph or
something?”
She shook her head in
absolution, her smile still fixed, frighteningly extending even further.
“No…but I might want one when you get done with Mrs. Sawyer though…we
don’t get many celebrities around here…” she was flirting at Nick now, so
I could see her mouth aim for a pout, batting her eyelids and arching her small
bosoms at him.
“Okay, miss...show’s
over, can we leave now?” I urged, impatiently. Miss Thing here was getting on
my last nerve if she had any idea how big a day this was for me, she wouldn’t
be playing “flirt with your local celebrity” with Nick.
She startled, her smile
falling out of position, comporting her self she asked one of their male
orderlies to escort us to the cricket pitch and he obediently obliged.
“Your mom likes to sit
and watch cricket all day,” she pitched in.
We made to follow the
huge guy in his white uniform when she stopped us again. “I must warn you…if
you are her daughter, I doubt if she would remember you. She doesn’t remember
anything; she’s schizophrenic and talks gibberish all the time, and,” she
stopped herself when the male orderly signaled with an obvious clearing of his
throat. “Anyway just go…” she waved us off with her hands before she could
give away any more warnings. I could tell miss thing was not wishing us a
peaceful journey. No problems I was prepared for the worst already so nothing,
absolutely nothing would faze me.
The orderly filled us in
on some important details on my mother’s case. His voice was deep, and he had
a strong southern drawl that made me feel at home, but he also spoke
dictatorially somewhat like the nurse, extinguishing any hint of familiarity to
his tone. Maybe he didn’t want to undermine his authority by being affable and
jovial to people.
“Your mother was
brought here a little over a year ago. They determined her mentally unfit to
stand trial for first-degree murder. She was unable to speak then, and her motor
skills were considerably hindered like she was suffering from a debilitating
stroke. But when we checked her health, vital signs and all, there were no signs
of a stroke; she was just suffering a severe case of shock, which has a tendency
to induce partial paralysis, especially if you’ve witnessed something so
horrific that it numbs you. But we put her on medication, strong meds and lots
and lots of outdoors to invigorate her. She likes the sun a lot, and she has
been reacting very well to the medication and…”
He continued, rambling
on and on suddenly I stopped listening as the words all formed one deep hole
sucking me in with each step. Nick glanced over at me intermittently and I could
see underneath his glare he silently wished I didn’t have to hear this man
talk about my mother like she was a case study of a lab rat. She was a human
being, so why did he sound like she was some specimen reacting to some
existential experiment. He was on the verge of plugging up my ears when we got
to the lawn, and thankfully the man stopped talking.
He stood arms at akimbo
and surveyed the array of loonies running around on the field.
There were at least fifty
of them alone on the field, not to mention those that had been kept indoors. I
summarized that the hospital must keep two-hundred patients, more or less. Some of them
indeed were playing crickets, badly too; some were playing Frisbee, tossing it
into the wind at some imaginary animal who was supposed to pick it up; others
were in a circle holding hands and chanting some very inaudible songs, a
cacophony of sound, bad imitation of tunes we know and love.
Then amidst all these
chaos, my mother was seated on a lawn chair under a bright yellow umbrella
fanning her self with a wide fan, admiring the activities of the others, with a
profound sneer on her face, looking every bit the rich southern belle she was
bred to be. Her eyes were covered with an old pair of sunglasses to shield the
glare of the sun and I wished I could see them. She wore a pretty, purple
short-sleeved floral sundress that showed off her arms, and her legs were
covered up in neat white mules. She had gained a little weight from the last
time I saw her, the gaunt thinness had faded, with a little fill in her cheeks.
However, she still looked too old for a woman of a mere fourty-eight, she looked more like
sixty-eight, all the wrinkle veins straining her arms and her frail neck. Her black hair
was covered with a silvery layer that concealed its true dark spirit depicting
that her grays had certainly gotten worse. She let her hair down and at the ends
it was held by a pink girlie bow, to keep it from flying with the wind. So there
she was, my mother in all her grace and beauty…you would not believe a
helpless woman such as this would murder a man twice her size in cold blood,
practically with her bare hands.