Elizabeth Flock - But Inside I'm Screaming

“I don’t know. I just really want to be by myself, Larry. I don’t have anything to say.”

“Okay. I’ll leave you alone for now. One more question and then I’m out of your hair, so to speak.”

“Yeah?”

“Were you aware of the extent of Lark’s mental illness?”

“What? Don’t you have doctor-patient confidentiality to think about? Should you be telling me stuff about Lark? Jesus.”

“You didn’t hear me. I am not telling you anything about Lark. I am simply asking if you knew the depth of Lark’s illness. Did you?”

“No,” Isabel replies. “Not like you knew about it, I’m sure. We weren’t close friends, Lark and I, if that’s what you mean.”

“Okay. Well, I suppose, then, if you didn’t know how deeply troubled Lark was then you couldn’t have been expected to save her, right?”

“Point taken.”

For a few moments neither of them say a word. Isabel tries to concentrate on an industrious line of ants carrying specks of dirt away from their M*A*S*H unit.

“Isabel, I’m going to be direct. You’re going to have to decide whether this forces you to sink or whether it helps you swim. None of us can decide that for you. There are a lot of Larks here at Three Breezes. There always have been and there always will be. You are not one of them. You are in the unique position to be able to help yourself. Many of the patients here will never be able to do that. This is tough to hear, I know, and please don’t mistake my bluntness for a minimization of your pain. But I sense that deep down inside you know you don’t belong here much longer. You can lift yourself up. Lark was never going to be able to do that.”

Tears are falling down Isabel’s cheeks as she turns to Larry.

“Maybe you could’ve helped her. Maybe I could have,” she cries. “She could have lifted herself up….”

“Never,” Larry says gently.

He stands up, stretches and shades his eyes from the sun. Isabel looks out across the field and wipes her nose.

“Goodbye, Isabel.”

She twists around to watch him make his way back up the hill to the unit. Waiting for him on the smoker’s porch are Ben and Kristen, who, Isabel can just make out, is scratching at her wrist. As Larry approaches them Ben jumps to his feet and claps his hands together like a child at Christmas. They follow the therapist inside and the door shuts tightly behind them.

“ What’re you doing?” Isabel asks Kristen.

“Shh! Keep your voice down. Want one?” Kristen whispers over her shoulder while reaching into the vending machine for a Snapple.

“No.”

“No one’s going to find out,” Kristen says defensively as she shakes the bottle of iced tea and breaks the safety seal. “I do this every day and no one’s said a word yet. They don’t even know. Plus, the dollar-feeder thingy is broken. Score!”

“You don’t pay for it?”

“I watch the nurses doing it. How come they get to do it and I can’t?”

“Well, let’s see,” Isabel says in a purposely patronizing tone, “for one thing, it’s in the staff cafeteria. Emphasis on staff. You know. People who are actually paid to be here. Get it?”

“Little Miss Goody Two-Shoes,” Kristen laughs as she takes a swig of her drink. “I always finish it before it’s time to get back to the unit.”

“What an accomplishment,” Isabel mutters. “Who are they to say that we can’t have something good to drink?”

“You’re a regular Norma Rae.”

“Who?”

Isabel turns and walks away.

Larry’s right. I don’t belong here. I’ve got to get out of here.

Thirty minutes later she signs herself out for a walk.

Without planning on it she finds herself outside Peter’s unit. There she settles on a large rock and watches the door, wondering what Peter is doing on the other side of it.

Maybe he’s coloring something. Maybe he’s reading. Harry Potter? I hope so…I hope he has some way to escape his madness.

“I want to get out of here,” Isabel says as she sits down in her therapist’s office. “How do I go about doing that? Seriously. Tell me.”

Dr. Seidler smiles. “It’s about time.”

“How do I do it?”

“First things first,” Dr. Seidler begins. “Let’s talk about how you’ve come to this decision.”

“I had an epiphany…I woke up on the right side of the bed…I had a good dinner…I don’t know.” Isabel does not want to go into detail. Her mind is made up. “Just tell me what I’ve got to do.”

“Okay. Let’s do this. Your outside therapist, Mona, and I have talked—remember I’ve been telling you about our phone conversations—and we both think it might be a good idea for you to ease back into life by going to your session in the city this week. Then you can come back here.”

“Commute into Manhattan?”

“That’s right. A field trip. That way it might not be such a shock to your system.”

“Then you’ll sign the papers to let me out? For good, I mean. If I pass this test?”

“This is not a test. I think it would benefit you to go slowly, that’s all.”

“Okay, I’ll do it. Where can I get the train schedule?”

“There’s a schedule at the front desk—I’ll get it for you by tonight. It’s really easy. The nurses will call a taxi for you that will take you to the station and the train goes right in to Grand Central. You go to your appointment and then hop back on the train and come back here. You up for it?”

“Yes.”

They trust me? How do they know I won’t stop at Duane Reade and pick up razor blades?

“I think you’ll do just fine, Isabel,” Dr. Seidler smiles. “I think you’re ready. In the meantime, I wonder if we can talk about what that last day at work was like for you. The day before you came here. What happened after—” she cleared her throat “—ahem…”

“After I wigged out on live television?” Isabel snorted.

“Speak,” said John without looking up, so accustomed was he to multitasking that his colleagues knew not to wait for his full attention.

But Isabel was unable to obey his command. She fixed her stare on the crown of his head, which was bent over his laptop, which fought for space with a Chinese carryout container balanced on a heap of folders in the clutter of his desk.

“You snooze you lose,” he muttered, reaching for the phone while clicking on his keyboard.

Isabel simply stood there. After a moment, in an attempt at watering her incredibly dry mouth, she cleared her throat, hoping the phlegm would help cancel out the sick taste in her mouth.

After a curt phone call, John hung up. “What?” he glanced up at her, looked back down and then brought his head back up as though he couldn’t quite believe what he’d seen when he first saw her standing there. After that his head did not move.

“Talk to me.” For once, she had John’s full attention.

Still, she could not form the words.

Focus. Focus.

“Can we—ahem—sorry,” she coughed. “Can we close the door?” she whispered.

John went over to his office door and batted down the coats slung over the top of it. Wordlessly he clicked it shut and motioned for her to sit down.

Isabel perched on the edge of the chair and looked down at her knees.

“What’s going on, kiddo?”

Kiddo.

“Whatever it is, we can fix it,” he said kindly.

Isabel took a deep breath and then dove in. “It’s like this…” But the words stopped their outbound journey.

“You can do it,” John coaxed.

You can do it.

“I need a medical leave of absence and I need it to start now.”