James Siegel - Detour

“Damn system,” she said to no one in particular.

It might’ve been an indictment directed at everything, not just the computers. The system, for instance, that made a mental institution smelling faintly of urine a safer alternative to juvenile prison. That warehoused children in trouble, kept them ignorant and medicated, until they could be loosed on the world at eighteen.

Damn system. Yes.

The computer finally responded, either to the vicious assault on the poor mouse or to the woman’s tongue-lashing. It sprang to life with an ear-grating hum. A few, this time gentler taps on the mouse elicited the asked-for information.

“Uh-huh, okay,” the woman said. “Ruth Goldstein. What about her?”

For a moment Paul didn’t answer. A part of him had expected to be told there was no such person here by that name. That he’d been misinformed. That the door was that way.

“I told you,” Paul said, equilibrium regained. “My client recently passed away. It was sudden and unexpected. There’s a certain amount of paperwork that needs to be processed. A reevaluation of who’s paying what. Obviously, we need to ensure that Ruth continues to receive the same good care.”

Paul doubted the word good was warranted. But he wasn’t here to offend anyone. He was here on a rescue mission—though oddly enough, the about-to-be-rescued weren’t in Mount Ararat Psychiatric Hospital, but three thousand miles away. He could only cross his fingers and pray they were still breathing.

“So you want the Financial Department. Why didn’t you say so?” the woman asked.

“I’d like to see the girl first.”

“The girl? Well, I’d have to ask a doctor about that. You haven’t been properly vetted, have you?”

Paul thought vetted was an appropriate term, given that he was standing in the zoo .

“Well, could you ask, then?” Paul said. “I assume her father was pretty much the only one who visited her, but he’s gone. Someone’s got to tell the poor girl what’s happened.”

When the woman didn’t immediately answer, he said, “He did, right?”

“Did what?”

“Visit her?”

The woman looked down at the computer, hit the mouse a few times.

“ Miles Goldstein?”

“Yes.”

“He was on the list. Doesn’t say whether he visited her.”

“Well, can you talk to the doctor—explain the situation?”

“Okay. I can only do one thing at a time.”

Paul wondered what that other thing was that was conflicting with calling the doctor. Apparently, it was picking up a Styrofoam cup filled with coffee and slowly sipping it.

After she had swallowed some coffee, making a sour face in the process, she picked up the phone with extravagant lethargy and punched a few numbers into the keypad.

“Yeah,” she said. “Dr. Sanji? . . . Yes—I have someone from an insurance company here to see Ruth Goldstein . . . That’s right. The father died . . . Yeah. He says . . . Uh-huh. Okay.”

She threw the phone back in its cradle— there, take that.

“Dr. Sanji will come get you.”

DR. SANJI WAS A WOMAN.

She was Indian. She looked harried, overworked, and pretty much no-nonsense.

“You say her father passed away?” the doctor said in a singsong Indian accent. They were sitting in the waiting room off the lobby. What did people wait for in a place like this? Paul wondered. For sanity? For the bats to leave the belfry?

“Yes. A few days ago.”

“I see. And you came to inform her of this?”

“Yes. And to make sense of the financial arrangements. We want to make sure the girl’s still taken care of, just as her father would’ve wanted.”

Dr. Sanji looked down at a folder. “The mother is deceased as well.”

“Yes.” True enough. Miles had lied about everything else, but not about that. “She’s alone in the world.”

“Well, Mr. . . . ?”

“Breidbart.”

“Yes, Mr. Breidbart. I will tell you she is no more alone than she was before. Of course psychically, she is. Her father wasn’t what you would describe as doting. He hardly visited. Birthdays, I think. The odd holiday.”

“How long have you been her doctor?”

“Not long, Mr. Breidbart. Two years.”

“So you weren’t here when she was admitted.”

“Most definitely not.”

“May I ask you how she’s doing?”

“Relative to what?”

“Relative to normalcy.”

“ Normal is a pejorative term. You’d be better off asking how she is doing relative to her. To how she was doing last year, or the year before that. It’s like golf—a sport that regretfully I’ve just taken up. You play against yourself. You improve in increments.”

“Okay. Then how’s she doing relative to her?”

“Ahh . . . there we have a problem. We speak in relative terms, but you, I’m afraid, are not a relative . You are, as you’ve clearly stated, merely her late father’s insurance agent. As such, you are not privy to the information you are seeking. Sorry.”

“She has no one,” Paul said. “Not anymore.”

“Legally, yes. Even, I suppose, literally. But I am bound by confidentiality laws, much as you are, Mr. Breidbart. Until you or someone else is appointed her legal guardian, we have little to talk about. Let’s simply say that she is no harm to herself or others. That, like Dilsey in one of your great American novels by Mr. Faulkner, she endures.”

“Can I see her?”

Dr. Sanji launched into another exquisitely presented argument detailing his rights, or lack thereof, in this matter.

Paul interrupted her.

“Look, I know I don’t have a legal right to see her. I’m simply asking to. What’s the harm? I’m going to be responsible for seeing that she continues to get care. That the bills are paid. And someone needs to tell her that her father’s no longer alive.”

“The person who will tell her about her father’s death is assuredly not going to be you. You have neither the necessary legal standing nor the necessary experience dealing with the emotionally handicapped. Secondly, these bills you speak of? It is my understanding that Mr. Goldstein did little in the way of subsidizing anyone. His daughter’s bills, I have been led to believe, are primarily covered by New York State.”

“New York State?”

“Yes, indeed. I can only assume that Mr. Goldstein pleaded indigence at the time, something, it’s clear from your expression, he may have merely pretended to.”

Okay, Miles had struck a business deal and, like most good businessmen, had striven for maximum profit. He’d wanted to keep his overhead costs low, and the fact that his overhead was the care and feeding of a sick little girl hadn’t deterred him. Why pay when New York State will?

When had the whole thing occurred to him? Paul wondered. From the very moment he laid it out in that letter to Galina? Or later, when she was already on her way and he thought back to his halcyon days in juvenile court.

The best I could do was get them committed to a Bronx hospital. For them it was the safest place on earth.

Lies to Galina aside, it’s clear he never intended to actually adopt her. He’d never once mentioned it to his wife. Had he considered—even for a minute—someone else? One of the many childless couples beating a path to his door? A home instead of a ward? Or, like the schizophrenics Paul could hear bellowing on the other side of the double-hinged door, had he deluded himself into a kind of justification? That the safest place for an emotionally disturbed child with a murderous father looking for her was a room with bars on the windows.