Jonathan Nasaw - When She Was Bad

Corder put his hand on Patty’s beefy arm to get her attention, and shook his head forcefully. “Don’t want to plant any suggestions,” he whispered, then tugged her back from the table and took her place in the patient’s line of vision. “How are you feeling?”

“My head,” she whispered, “Oh God, my head.”

“We can give you something for the pain in just a second. First though, I need you to tell me your name.”

A moment of panic; Lilith felt the seconds ticking by as she searched her memory-or rather, searched for her memory. Then it all came flooding back to her-the tent, the circle of ogres, Mama Rose and Carson, the coffee shop, the psychiatrist, the photos, the tape recorder-and somehow, though confused and disoriented, Lilith understood that her very survival depended on these sadists thinking she was that poor little rich girl the shrink had told her about. “Lily,” she whispered, in a rough approximation of the girlish voice on the tape recorder. “Lily DeVries.”

“Is it?”

It is as far as you’re concerned, asshole, thought Lilith, nodding her head gingerly. But even that slight motion sent nauseating, purply-black waves of pain sloshing against the inside of her skull. “I think I’m gonna-”

“Hasten, Jason, get the basin,” recited the mountain of mulleted flesh at Lilith’s side as she slid a curved metal pan under Lilith’s chin.

Lilith turned her head and vomited clear bile into the receptacle. “Better out than in,” said the other woman, tenderly wiping the clinging strands from Lilith’s chin.

Fuck you and the ox you rode in on, thought Lilith, closing her eyes to hide the murder in her heart. Just a little closer, she thought-just bring that nose a little closer….

Lyssy was in love. Lily had been his last thought before he fell asleep and his first upon awakening. Picturing her-those eyes, so big and dark; that rich dark hair, like midnight and cream when the light hit it just so; the soft voice; the shy smile; the promise of a luscious figure under that too-large bomber jacket-filled him with emotions he’d only read about before. He took all his meals that day in the dining hall and wore the psych techs out with repeated requests to visit all the places he might run into her-the arboretum, the library, the pool, the game room. When she wasn’t at any of them, he realized why people said love hurt-and why five minutes of that hurt was preferable to a hundred years without it.

But the timing! Falling in love just as his life was beginning to crumble around him struck Lyssy as profoundly unfair. He tortured himself with wild schemes and improbable hopes, even allowing himself to consider, for the first time, the possibility of escaping from the Institute before the deputies came to take him away. Then when Dr. Al dropped off the invitation to Lyssy’s own birthday party, hand-lettered and decorated by Alison with birthday icons-balloons, a cake with candles, packages tied up in ribbons and bows-he realized with a heady sense of guilt that that would be the perfect opportunity: freedom would be as close as the front door of the director’s residence.

But Lyssy couldn’t think of anywhere to escape to, even if he had been able to convince Lily to come with him-nor could he think of any reason she’d want to. Outside of Lyssy’s fantasies, they scarcely knew each other. Perhaps, though, that could be changed-when Wally brought him down to the director’s office for his weekly therapy session that afternoon, with his heart beating like a rabbit’s from the strain of trying to sound offhand and casual, he asked Dr. Al how the new girl-what was her name, Lily? — how Lily was doing.

“Settling in,” the doctor replied, not at all fooled. “I noticed you two seem to have hit it off quite nicely yesterday.”

“Yes sir, we did. Matter of fact, I was hoping I could invite Lily to my birthday party tomorrow.”

“Well I can’t make you any promises yet,” said Dr. Al. “There are quite a few variables that would have to be-Lyssy? What is it, son?”

For Lyssy’s gold-flecked brown eyes were swimming with tears. Turning away, he shook his head in anguish. “I love her, Dr. Al. I know it sounds stupid, but I really really love her.” And it all came pouring out-or almost all: Lyssy knew better than to mention that he’d even considered the possibility of escape.

“There’s nothing for you to be ashamed of,” said Corder, when Lyssy had finished. “She’s a lovely young lady, and the two of you have so much in common, it would be almost unhealthy if you weren’t attracted to her.”

“But of all the times for this to happen,” Lyssy moaned. “It’s all so…so hopeless.”

You can say that again, thought Corder. His heart went out to poor Lyssy-he decided to inform the staff that if Lily seemed amenable, they were to give the two patients a little more room and a little more privacy. Let them have their walks, get to know each other in the short time Lyssy had left.

As for the birthday party, he told himself, that would depend on how quickly Lily recovered from the morning’s ECT therapy. If there were no complications and no further alter switches, he decided, he’d ask Patty to escort Lily to the party tomorrow after work. It would mean paying two, three hours at time-and-a-half to Patty as well as Wally, but that was a small enough price to make Lyssy’s last birthday here as happy as possible. (It was also fully billable.)

And in the meantime, there was one other thing he could do to help relieve Lyssy’s anxiety. “Grab some couch, young man,” he said, pushing his chair back from the desk. “I think we’re long overdue for a hypnotherapy session.”

The book of things that all DID patients have in common would be a short one indeed: 1) they all suffered egregious abuse in childhood, really over the top stuff; 2) they all have at least one alter identity; and 3) they are all tremendously suggestible when it comes to hypnosis-which may in fact be the very quality that engenders the disorder in the first place.

For a psychiatrist, having a patient who can be slipped into a trance state so easily is the equivalent of an internist having a patient with a glass abdomen-it makes it a lot easier to see what’s going on. For that reason, and to save time, early in their association Al Corder had implanted a code phrase in Lyssy’s subconscious mind, one that would trigger a hypnotic trance state whenever he heard it.

From then on, all Corder had to do to put Lyssy under was whisper that trigger phrase in his ear. It even worked on the alters, which indicated to Corder something that may have been intuitively obvious, but had never been proved clinically: that the alters all share the same subconscious from which they had sprung.

After dabbing away his tears and blowing his nose with a tissue from the box on the desk, Lyssy limped over to the green leather couch across the room from the fireplace and lay on his back, his head resting on a hard leather cushion encased in a disposable paper pillow cover-a cootie protector, Lyssy called it.

“Comfy?” asked Dr. Al, taking a shiny silver dollar out of his pocket, holding it over Lyssy’s head, and deftly walking it from knuckle to knuckle to distract Lyssy’s attention while he leaned in close and whispered the trigger phrase into Lyssy’s ear: “Lyssy is a goooood boy; Lyssy is a goooood boy.”

That was all it took: Lyssy’s breathing slowed, then his eyes fluttered closed. To test him, Corder suggested to Lyssy that his right arm was growing lighter and lighter, so weightless it was floating off the chair-and it did.

The rest of the session occupied only a few minutes, which Corder used to implant the following suggestion in his eminently suggestible patient: that when he, Lyssy, grew frightened thinking about the future, about leaving the Institute, about his trial, about jail or whatever, instead of giving in to panic he would tell himself: Whatever happens, I can handle it; I can handle whatever happens.