Chapter 12 Sloane
Sloane
“I can’t wait another day. He wouldn’t leave me here if he knew I was awake.” Carrie’s composure is slipping by the minute; she’s so anxious that I’m considering giving her another sedative just to calm her down.
“Then give me his number. I’ll let him know.” Zeth. His name is Zeth. It feels strange having a name to put to his face, but then I only got to put a face to the voice yesterday, so I guess this whole thing is strange.
Carrie gives me a look—nice try, bitch. “How about you wheel me to a payphone so I can call him myself ?”
“You’re not ready for that yet, Carrie. You’re too weak.”
She looks confused. “Carrie?”
“Yeah, Zeth said your name was—” I break off when I realize I’ve been stupid. Of course he didn’t give me her real name. Why would he? He paid in cash for her treatment (twenty-three thousand dollars) and signed off on her paperwork as K. Vonnegut, for fuck’s sake. “What’s your real name?” I sigh.
“If Zeth says it’s Carrie, then it’s Carrie.” With her arms folded across her chest, she stares glumly down at her bandaged wrists.
“Well, okay, Carrie, if you don’t want to tell me that’s fine, but you’re not leaving this room. And they’re going to be asking a lot of questions when Dr. Dixon comes down here later on.”
“She the shrink?”
“Yep. She’s going to wanna know why you did this to yourself.”
“Who said I did it to myself ?” She pouts like a petulant child, but her words set my heart to thrumming.
“Why, did… did Zeth do it?”
“No. Of course he didn’t.”
The girl is playing with me. Even if I do have the time, I don’t have the inclination to deal with her today. I’d rather be helping the nurses change bedpans than deal with attitude like this. “All right. Well, whatever. You can tell it to Dr. Dixon when she comes down here.”
Carrie stops scowling and sits up, real emotion finally washing over face: fear.
“No! Please. I—I can’t handle a shrink. Don’t leave me.
Please.” She reaches for my hand, which is gripping the rail of her bed, and weakly she clasps my wrist. It’s going to be a while before she regains any strength in her hands considering how deep she cut yesterday. “You don’t understand,” she whispers.
“Dr. Dixon is amazing, Carrie. You should trust her. She might be able to help.”
“She can’t! Please. Zeth’s the only one. The only one. I need him. If you leave me with that shrink I—I swear I won’t mess it up this time. I’ll kill myself. I’ll do it, and it’ll all be your fault.”
I don’t usually bargain with patients in this situation. They’re hardly ever in a position to know what’s best for them, but I can see from the desperation in her eyes that Carrie’s telling the truth. She really will kill herself.
“Shit.” I exhale, squeezing my hand into a tight fist. “I made a promise when I became a doctor, Carrie. I swore that I would do no harm, and I consider you not seeing Dr. Dixon to be harmful.”
“Do you consider me dying as harmful? ’Cause that’s what’ll happen if that bitch comes down here and tries to psychoanalyze me.”
Double shit. I run a hand through my hair, trying to think of a way to convince her that she’s being foolish.
There’ll be no reasoning with her, though.
I can see that. But she definitely needs help.
I can think of only one resolution where we both get what we want.
“All right. I’m not saying that I’m going to help you leave here, because I’m not.
That goes against everything I stand for as a health care provider.
You still need at least another three days’ bed rest, and we need to check the range of movement in your hands to make sure none of your tendons were permanently damaged.
But… I will loan you my cell phone, and I will be gone for the next three hours on afternoon rounds.
And I won’t make you see Dr. Dixon, but I want you to see my friend instead.
I can ask her to see you off the books, so you won’t need to tell her your details. ”
She’s already shaking her head before I can finish my sentence. “They’re all the same. Your buddy’s not going to make any difference, okay?”
Clearly, I’m not going to sway her. Her mind is so made up. “How old are you, Carrie?”
She answers begrudgingly, but only after considering my question and obviously deciding no harm can come from parting with the information. “Twenty-six.”
I nod, thinking this over. “We’re the same age, then. And tell me, Carrie… how long have you felt”—Suicidal. Useless. Crushed by the chaos of this life—“like this?”
“Always.” Her swagger from earlier was pretty transparent, but now she’s dropped the act. She’s just a broken girl in a sea of hospital sheets, still holding on to my wrist like she needs the physical connection to stop herself from drowning in them.
“So for twenty-six years you’ve felt a despair so grave that you wanted to end your life because of it?
Seems pretty awful to me. When you look to the future, can you imagine feeling like this for another twenty-six years?
” Her bottom lip wobbles, but she keeps quiet.
“Wouldn’t it be better if you saw someone who could help you work past whatever is making you feel like this?
That way, in twenty-six years’ time, you can look back and see the light you’ve had in your life, not just the darkness. ”
Carrie is quiet, gaze fixed on her knees, which are covered by her blankets.
If I were a betting woman, I wouldn’t be laying down money that my little speech was going to have any effect.
But the girl surprises me when her shoulders sag.
“Okay, fine. I’ll go and see this friend of yours.
Once. And if she’s full of shit, then I’m leaving. ”
“You promise?”
“I promise. Now hand over that cell phone.”
“Fine. Just make sure you leave it in the drawer of the nightstand when you’re done.” When you go. I can’t believe I’m condoning this.
Despite the bad vibe in my gut when I give her my phone, I also feel like I’ve won three small victories.
The first victory: She’s promised that she’ll go to get help.
She might not keep that promise. If she does, I’ll have to beg Pip to take her.
Either way, the seed has been planted in her mind.
I have hope that it’ll take root. The second victory: She’ll be out of here today, a full twenty-four hours before Zeth promised to come looking for me.
The third victory: She’ll probably be too overwhelmed to realize that she’s typing the bastard’s telephone number into my cell phone.
Having his number will be a huge win. I’ll have taken back my power.
A small piece of it, anyway. And I’ll finally have something over him.
Something I can provide to the cops if I need to.
I go on afternoon rounds, careful to avoid the east wing of the ICU, where Carrie is being kept.
I do not want to run into Zeth when he comes to secret her out of the hospital.
It’s the end of my shift, seven p.m., by the time I head back to her room to collect my phone.
Just as I’d suspected, Carrie’s bed is empty and her ruined clothes from yesterday are gone.
But when I look in the drawer of the nightstand, my precious victories wither on the vine.
My cell phone isn’t where I asked her to leave it. She’s taken it with her.
Fuck.