Chapter 51
Fifty-One
Beckett
The house is lit up like a stadium. As I kill the engine and grab my medical bag from the passenger seat, the air feels charged.
I find Madison in the hallway. She looks like she’s been through a war. Her shirt is wrinkled and pulled at the shoulder.
Her eyes lift the moment she sees me, and whatever she’s been holding fractures just enough to let me see it.
“Are you hurt?” I ask, already scanning. Her posture is tight, and she’s pale, but there’s no blood or visible injuries.
She shakes her head. “No. It’s not me.” Her voice is steady, but her hands aren’t. “It’s my mother.”
I rub my hand up and down her arm, doing my best to transfer heat to her bones. She’s shivering.
“Tell me what’s happening.”
She swallows. “She has bipolar.”
“What type?”
“Type I.” She runs a hand over her face.
“She was diagnosed after Piper was born.” She keeps her eyes fixed on my shirt button as she rattles off facts with the precision of a head nurse.
“She’s had four major hospitalizations in my lifetime.
Two depressive, two manic. This is the worst manic break since I was twenty-five. ”
That’s detailed. It’s the language of someone who’s been in too many exam rooms and hospital corridors to count.
She quickly gives me the rundown of her mother’s medication. “The doses were adjusted last year after a depressive episode. She’s been stable for a while.”
“When did she stop taking them?”
Madison’s jaw tightens. “Weeks ago. Maybe longer. I’m not exactly sure. She hid them.”
“She didn’t tell anyone?”
“No.”
“Does she know she stopped?”
“Yes and no,” Madison says quietly. “She thinks she doesn’t need them anymore. She says she feels good. That she’s having good days.”
I process the data. Bipolar I with psychotic features. Off-meds. The brain is basically on fire at this point.
“Is she aggressive?” I ask.
“Frantic,” Madison clarifies. “She’s pulling at us. She’s trying to scrub the skin off her hands.”
I look past Madison and see a man I assume is her father standing in the shadows of the hallway. He looks between Madison and me before stepping forward to shake my hand.
“Beckett, I assume?”
I dip my chin.
“Thanks for coming. I’m Arthur. Madi’s father. Donna is in the bedroom. She’s trying to fold the same sheet over and over. She won’t stop. She’s… she’s talking to people who aren’t there.”
“Madison tells me she’s been off her medication.”
“I promised her, after the last time, I promised I’d never send her back. It broke her. It broke her spirit.” He closes his eyes, a single tear escaping. “I can’t be the one to put her back in a cage. I love her too much.”
I look at Madison. She’s watching her father with a mixture of pity and weary frustration. She’s been the one holding the line while her father held the heart.
“Arthur,” I say gently. “This isn’t my primary specialty.
I can assess her, and I can try to get her to take a sedative to break the cycle of sleeplessness, but if she’s a danger to herself or if her vitals are compromised, we have to consider hospitalization.
The brain can’t sustain this level of activity indefinitely. ”
He exhales and nods once, while Madison gives me a small look of thanks.
“She’s in the bedroom,” she repeats. “She won’t take anything. She thinks we’re trying to ‘poison the light.’ She’s terrified of being sedated.”
I either forget or just don’t care when I reach out and wipe a tear away from her cheek with my thumb. She sighs into my touch.
God, I want to pick her up and run away with her.
Arthur mumbles another thanks before he disappears into the kitchen.
“If I go up there alone, do you think she’ll remember me?”
Madison huffs a sad laugh. “We’re married with a dog, remember?”
“A Golden Retriever?”
She smiles. “Right.”
“I’m going to call a friend of mine. He’s a psychiatrist.”
“Thank you.”
I look at her then, really look at her.
This woman has lived in crisis for so long that she speaks its language fluently. She’s carrying decades of knowledge and responsibility that no child should ever have had to learn.
“You’ve been through this before.”
She meets my gaze. “More times than I can count.”
I nod. “Let me talk to her.”
“She’s scared.”
“I know.”
Before I step away, I press a kiss to her forehead.
“Madison?”
She looks up.
“You’ve done everything right.”
She squeezes my hand once, offers a wobbly smile, then goes to be with her family.
As I walk toward the bedroom, I’m already pulling out my phone. I send a quick text to Hudson.
Me: I have a Bipolar I crisis. Off meds. Manic. Family is resistant to commitment. Need a consult and possibly a mobile crisis unit that won’t arrive with sirens.
I pocket the phone and push open the bedroom door.
The room smells like bleach. Donna is sitting on the edge of the bed, her movements fast as she folds a white pillowcase, snaps it straight, then unfolds it and starts again.
“Donna?” I keep my hands visible. “It’s Beckett. Do you remember me? I’m Madison’s neighbor.”
She looks up, and for a second, the mania clears just enough for me to see the woman Madison loves—the woman who is currently drowning in her own mind.
“Beckett,” she whispers, her hands finally stilling. “You thud.”
It’s so unexpected I almost laugh.
“That’s right. I thud.”
She finally puts the pillowcase down and sits with her back against the wall. “You’re here for the baby? We’re almost ready. The light is coming. Can’t you feel the light?”
I sit on the floor a few feet away from her, lowering my eye level.
“I feel it,” I lie. “But even the light needs to rest sometimes. Let’s talk about how we can get you some sleep.”
“You’re a doctor,” she accuses, her finger darting out to point at me. “Madison brought a doctor. She thinks she’s clever. She thinks she can trick the light.”
I push the medical bag away from me, well out of reach.
“I’m a lot of things. And yeah, I went to med school, but I’m not the doctor you’re thinking of.”
She tilts her head. “What does that mean?”
“It means I fix broken bones and car-crash lungs. I’m a mechanic for people who’ve had a really bad day.” I give her a small, tired smile. “And right now, I’m just your daughter’s neighbor.”
I scan the room without moving my head. I’m looking for the threats, but the room is sparse. The dresser top is clear. Even the pictures on the walls are secured. Madison has been doing this for a long time. She’s stripped the environment of every potential weapon before I even put my car in park.
“You’re lying,” Donna whispers, but the edge is gone from her voice. She’s looking at my hands and the faint bruises on my knuckles from the punching bag nights ago. “Why are your hands hurt? Did you fight the dark?”
I look down at my hands. “Something like that. Sometimes the noise gets so loud you just have to hit something until it stops.”
“It’s loud,” she agrees. “It’s like a thousand radios playing different stations. It’s beautiful, Beckett. It’s so bright. But my heart… my heart is trying to keep up, and it’s getting tired.”
“I know,” I say, and I mean it.
I’m looking at the jugular pulsation in her neck. Her heart rate has to be sitting at 130, maybe higher. Her skin is flushed. We need to break this cycle.
“Donna, look at me,” I say gently. “Just me. Forget the radios for a second.”
She locks eyes with me.
“You’re not going back to a cage. Not right now. But we need to turn down the volume on those radios for a few hours, so your heart can catch its breath.”
“No needles,” she says, her lip trembling. “No silence. I don’t want the gray.”
“No needles,” I promise. It’s a calculated risk, but I need her trust more than anything right now. “I have a pill. It’s like a dimmer switch. It won’t turn the light off; it’ll just take the sting out of it. You’ll stay right here in your room. Arthur is downstairs.”
“With my girls?”
“With your girls.”
“And Noah is on his way,” she tells me, but I think she just needs the confirmation.
“Noah is on the way. And I’ll be sitting right outside that door, and I’m a very big guy to get past.”
She watches me for a long beat.
“Madison is sad,” Donna says suddenly, her eyes filling with tears. “I made her sad, didn’t I? My strong girl. I broke her again.”
The lump in my throat is unexpected. I think of Madison in the hallway, looking like she was carrying the weight of the entire house on her narrow shoulders.
“Madison isn’t broken,” I tell her. “She’s just tired. She’s been holding the rope for a long time. She needs you to help her hold it, and the best way you can do that is by taking a breath. By letting me help you sleep.”
She looks at the window, then back at me. She slowly uncurls her legs and crawls across the carpet until she’s a foot away from me. Then she reaches out a trembling hand and touches my knuckles.
“Does it hurt?”
“A little,” I say. “But I’m okay.”
“Okay,” she whispers. “Okay, Beckett. Just the dimmer switch. No gray.”
“No gray,” I repeat.
I reach into my bag and pull out a single tablet. It’s fast-dissolving. It’ll hit her system quickly and start to quiet the dopamine storm.
I hold it out in my palm.
She takes it and swallows it without water.
“There,” I say. “Now, let’s get you under the covers.”
I help her up and tuck her in like she’s a child.
“Beckett?”
“Yeah, Donna?”
“You’re a good doctor,” she says, her eyes drifting shut. “Even if you’re a terrible liar.”