A.F. Brady - The Blind

A. F. BRADYis a New York State Licensed Mental Health Counselor and Psychotherapist. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Brown University and two Masters degrees in Psychological Counseling from Columbia University. She is a life-long New Yorker, and resides in Manhattan with her husband and their family. The Blind is her first novel.

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2017

Copyright © A.F. Brady 2017

A.F. Brady asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © September 2017 ISBN: 9781474057646

Version: 2018-02-13

For the misunderstood

“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “We’re all mad here.

I’m mad. You’re mad.”

“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.

“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

—LEWIS CARROLL,

ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

PART ONE

OCTOBER 18TH, 9:40 A.M.

OCTOBER 19TH, 11:12 A.M.

OCTOBER 19TH, 1:15 P.M.

OCTOBER 20TH, 7:44 P.M.

OCTOBER 21ST, 8:55 A.M.

OCTOBER 23RD, 11:37 P.M.

OCTOBER 26TH, 3:35 P.M.

OCTOBER 28TH, 9:12 A.M.

OCTOBER 28TH, 11:00 A.M.

OCTOBER 28TH, 10:01 P.M.

OCTOBER 31ST, 10:25 A.M.

NOVEMBER 1ST, 11:11 A.M.

NOVEMBER 2ND, 10:53 P.M.

NOVEMBER 3RD, 8:31 A.M.

NOVEMBER 6TH, 6:14 P.M.

NOVEMBER 8TH, 11:03 A.M.

NOVEMBER 9TH, 10:00 A.M.

NOVEMBER 9TH, 4:46 P.M.

NOVEMBER 11TH, 8:36 A.M.

NOVEMBER 14TH, 12:34 P.M.

NOVEMBER 14TH, 9:21 P.M.

NOVEMBER 16TH, 9:14 P.M.

NOVEMBER 18TH, 12:03 P.M.

NOVEMBER 22ND, 11:06 A.M.

NOVEMBER 23RD, 2:14 P.M.

NOVEMBER 26TH, 12:45 A.M.

NOVEMBER 29TH, 9:11 A.M.

DECEMBER 1ST, 5:30 P.M.

DECEMBER 1ST, 7:06 P.M.

DECEMBER 1ST, 8:23 P.M.

DECEMBER 5TH, 9:21 A.M.

DECEMBER 5TH, 2:49 P.M.

DECEMBER 6TH, 11:13 A.M.

DECEMBER 7TH, 7:22 A.M.

DECEMBER 7TH, 12:27 P.M.

DECEMBER 8TH, 4:17 P.M.

DECEMBER 8TH, 11:28 P.M.

DECEMBER 9TH, 12:14 P.M.

DECEMBER 10TH, 10:24 P.M.

DECEMBER 12TH, 3:23 P.M.

DECEMBER 14TH, 7:11 P.M.

DECEMBER 15TH, 4:33 A.M.

DECEMBER 15TH, 6:16 A.M.

DECEMBER 16TH, 2:12 P.M.

DECEMBER 19TH, 1:19 P.M.

DECEMBER 20TH, 3:46 P.M.

DECEMBER 21ST, 9:46 P.M.

DECEMBER 22ND, 11:34 A.M.

PART TWO

DECEMBER 27TH, 8:37 A.M.

DECEMBER 27TH, 11:22 A.M.

DECEMBER 28TH, 3:20 P.M.

DECEMBER 29TH, 12:47 P.M.

DECEMBER 29TH, 5:11 P.M.

DECEMBER 31ST, 11:47 P.M.

JANUARY 3RD, 11:40 A.M.

JANUARY 3RD, 2:00 P.M.

JANUARY 4TH, 10:56 P.M.

JANUARY 5TH, 1:17 P.M.

JANUARY 5TH, 5:34 P.M.

JANUARY 10TH, 11:00 A.M.

JANUARY 12TH, 3:09 P.M.

JANUARY 13TH, 9:50 A.M.

JANUARY 17TH, 11:08 A.M.

JANUARY 18TH, 10:47 P.M.

JANUARY 19TH, 10:19 A.M.

JANUARY 20TH, 11:14 A.M.

JANUARY 20TH, 2:23 P.M.

JANUARY 20TH, 3:15 P.M.

JANUARY 24TH, 10:44 A.M.

JANUARY 31ST, 11:02 A.M.

JANUARY 31ST, 12:01 P.M.

FEBRUARY 2ND, 9:37 P.M.

FEBRUARY 7TH, 11:22 A.M.

FEBRUARY 9TH, 7:21 P.M.

FEBRUARY 10TH, 9:13 A.M.

FEBRUARY 14TH, 11:01 A.M.

FEBRUARY 14TH, 12:11 P.M.

PART THREE

FEBRUARY 21ST, 10:57 A.M.

FEBRUARY 21ST, 2:37 P.M.

FEBRUARY 24TH, 5:41 P.M.

FEBRUARY 28TH, 10:32 A.M.

MARCH 1ST, 4:46 P.M.

MARCH 2ND, 3:20 P.M.

MARCH 3RD, 1:14 P.M.

MARCH 7TH, 1:57 P.M.

MARCH 11TH, 1:41 P.M.

MARCH 11TH, 7:11 P.M.

MARCH 12TH, 2:39 P.M.

MARCH 13TH, 9:22 A.M.

MARCH 13TH, 10:04 A.M.

MARCH 21ST, 7:44 A.M.

Acknowledgements

I’m kneeling on the floor in my office, tying the top of the garbage bag into a knot and squeezing out the excess air as I do it. The maintenance guys always leave extra bags at the bottom of the garbage can, so I can replace this one with a fresh one and just dump the tied-off bag into the bin. I find this is the most discreet way of hiding the rank stench of alcohol when I throw up into my garbage can. I want to believe that my tolerance is high enough that I never throw up, but the truth is, more often than not, I find myself on my knees in my office the morning after.

My name is Sam. I’m a psychologist, and I work in a mental institution. It’s not like the ones you see in Rain Man or Girl, Interrupted . It’s in Manhattan. It doesn’t have sprawling grassy lawns and manicured hedges. It doesn’t have wide hallways and eleven-foot doors like in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest . It smells like a combination of antiseptic and bubble gum because they added bubblegum scent to the antiseptic. The lights are fluorescent and the toilets are always broken. The elevator is the size of an airplane hangar and it’s always full. I’ve been working here for six years and I’ve never been in the elevator alone. Someone pushes the alarm button every day.

The ceiling tiles in the unit have leak stains in the corners. All the doors are painted gray and have oval windows with chicken wire in the glass. Except the office doors. There are no windows on the office doors, and they’re painted pale yellow. They all have paper signs on them saying things like Lunch and In Session and Do Not Disturb. We have to make new ones pretty regularly because patients write stuff on the signs.

It always feels like once you walk through the front doors, the world gets smaller. It’s impossible to hear outside sounds and, even though I’m in the loudest city on Earth, I can’t hear it in here. There’s only one group room that faces the sun and that’s where the plants are, but it’s always dusty and no one likes to go in there.

We have a lot of different kinds of patients here, 106 of them. The youngest is sixteen and the oldest is ninety-three. The oldest used to be ninety-five, but he died a few months ago. There’s one wing where the men live and another wing where the women live, and pretty much everybody has a roommate. If a patient is violent or something, they can get a single room. Once patients find this out, they almost always become violent. What they don’t realize is that a single room is just a double room with an accordion divider running through the middle, and when the room splits, someone loses a window. The institution is called the Typhlos Psychiatric Center and I’ve never asked why.