Chapter 30
T echnically, I’m not doing anything wrong.
Jade is my patient this evening. Yes, we do have a prior relationship. But that was a very long time ago. And it’s not like Jade told me I couldn’t look at her chart. She seemed to assume I had already looked.
It’s completely quiet at the nurses’ station.
Even Ramona has disappeared somewhere. And of course, Cameron is gone for the night.
I can’t even imagine what the family emergency could have been.
I hope his parents are okay. I met them once, and his dad got short of breath just from walking up the steps to their front door. He looked like a walking heart attack.
I push away thoughts of my ex-boyfriend as I grab for the chart in the rack labeled CARPENTER. I sit on one of the stools and spend a second just staring at the chart. This is it. Once I open this, I have crossed a line.
Then again, I’ve crossed lines before.
I flip to the first page, where the emergency room notes are stored.
Sure enough, there are several pages from her initial intake.
She came in the same day Will did, but her diagnosis is different.
Jade’s diagnosis is right at the top, and it hasn’t changed from when we were sixteen: bipolar disorder type 1.
I start reading the entire sordid story of Jade’s most recent manic adventure.
Apparently, she was not alone on this one.
She and her boyfriend decided to rob a string of banks in the area.
She would be in jail right now facing theft charges, except the two of them were armed only with beer bottles that they were pointing at the poor bank clerks like weapons, and they didn’t leave any of the banks with any actual money.
A typical manic episode for Jade. And apparently, this boyfriend of hers isn’t exactly the best influence. Glad I said no to the double date.
I skim through a quick summary of Jade’s prior hospitalizations, and the list makes me ill.
When she first got hospitalized, my mother assured me she was going to get help and it would make her better.
But it hasn’t made her better. She’s been in and out of the hospital every few months since we were teenagers.
She never managed to get her bipolar disorder under control.
Mental illness is really difficult to treat.
While I’m flipping through the chart, a noise comes from around the corner of the nurses’ station.
It’s a sickening sound, like somebody is gagging or choking.
And that’s when I realize how quiet it has been since I’ve been sitting here.
Ever since they locked Miguel in Seclusion Two, he’s alternated between singing pop hits and yelling about Damon Sawyer.
But now the singing has stopped. In fact, there’s no sound at all from the seclusion rooms.
I abandon Jade’s chart on the desk. I step out into the hallway, instinctively feeling for the knitting needle that Mary gave me and being reassured by its presence.
There might be better weapons at the nurses’ station, like a pair of scissors, but I would look like I was nuts if I started walking through the hallways, holding out a pair of scissors.
Not that a knitting needle is any better.
I step through the dark hallway in the direction of the seclusion rooms. I hear that choking sound again, coming from Seclusion Two, and now it almost sounds like someone is gasping for air.
“Miguel?” I call out. “Are you okay?”
Then something emerges from the crack under the door. A dark liquid.
It’s blood. And it’s leaking out from under the door.