Chapter 16
“THANK YOU FOR SEEING US on such short notice,” Dr. Blake said as he shook Dr. Franklin’s hand. Graham shook his hand as well, feeling like he needed to disinfect his skin immediately after. Instead, he sat in the chair offered and wiped his hand on his slacks.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Franklin,” Dr. Blake went on. “I’ve heard a lot about your hospital, and the care offered to the patients.”
Graham noticed that Dr. Blake had neglected to say what it was he had heard about it.
Dr. Franklin smiled. “Thank you, Dr. Blake. As you must know, your reputation precedes you. I’ve been familiar with your work for years. As a matter of fact, I think you wrote the textbook for my undergrad Psych 101 class, many years ago.”
Dr. Blake let out a jolly laugh. “Yes, I’ve been around since Hector was a pup.” He looked at Graham. “It’s an old saying, implying that I’m ancient.” Turning back Dr. Franklin, he said, “I was sad to see that Miss Reed was admitted to the hospital after an incident. I don’t know if you were aware that I had been working with her for the last two months.”
Dr. Franklin’s forehead creased. “In what capacity?” he asked. “I was not aware that you did clinical work, Doctor.”
Dr. Blake shook his head. “That’s because I don’t. You see, Mr. Graham—”
Graham leaned in closer. “It’s Mr. Reed, Professor. First name Graham.”
Dr. Blake nodded. “Oh, yes,” he said. “I was just testing to see whether or not you were paying attention. Mr. Reed is in my program at the university, and has been in several of my classes. Three years ago, he came to me to talk about his sister and her unusual symptoms. That led to several more conversations, and a rather unconventional collaboration. I met Miss Graham—I mean, Miss Reed—last year when she came to visit, and she agreed to participate in some research with me. You see, I was intrigued by her condition. She had been hearing voices for three years, with no sign of disability. She was able to function in her life like a normal teenager, participating in cheerleading, having a boyfriend, and getting decent grades in school. She showed no other symptoms, and the presentation of her auditory hallucinations was quite different from any other subject I’d ever studied.”
“How so?” Dr. Franklin said, folding his hands in front of him on his desk. Graham was coming to realize that this was a sign that someone had his attention.
“Miss Reed’s hallucinations are exclusively of the voice of the person standing beside or in front of her. At least in proximity to her location. The messages she receives present themselves as thoughts coming directly from the person. As if they were speaking their thoughts to her. Have you ever seen anything like that, Doctor?”
Dr. Franklin shook his head. “I have not,” he admitted. “But auditory hallucinations often present themselves differently to each individual experiencing them.”
Dr. Blake nodded. “Indeed,” he said. “But something else caught my attention. Well, actually two things. The first is that the content was so benign. So benign as to include thinking she heard one classmate say that he had a sesame seed stuck between his teeth, and he needed some floss. Very mundane, actually. Sometimes, she could hear humming, or singing. Other times, it appeared that a young man might be having romantic thoughts about one of her friends. Very unusual indeed.”
“And the other thing?” Dr. Franklin asked.
“Excuse me?” Dr. Blake asked.
Dr. Franklin looked slightly impatient. “You said there were two things that caught your attention. What was the second thing?”
“Ah, yes,” Dr. Blake said, sitting back in his seat. “It’s nice to see you’re paying attention. Yes. The second thing is that Miss. Reed appears to be extremely perceptive.”
“How do you mean?” Dr. Franklin asked. Graham thought he might have picked up on the slightest bit of nervousness on the part of the hospital administrator.
Dr. Blake shrugged. “Miss Reed does a remarkable job interpreting expression and body language,” he explained. “I’ve done some testing on her in my lab. She scored remarkably high in the area of perception. I suspect that this talent has led to the content of the voices she hears. Miss Reed is sometimes very much on the mark when it comes to her voices.”
Dr. Franklin laughed. “Are you trying to tell me that the things she hears, or appears to hear, have a basis in reality?”
Dr. Blake nodded and pointed directly at the other man. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, Dr. Franklin,” he said. “Sometimes, Kaya’s voices turn out to be quite near the truth.”
Dr. Franklin pushed his chair back. “Dr. Blake,” he said. “With all due respect, you are a very well-perceived member of our community, and I have learned a great deal from reading your work. But what you’re saying right now, I can’t see how any of it can stand up to any empirical study. The young lady in question clearly has a psychotic disorder, and it sounds like you’ve been putting ideas in her mind that the things she hears might be based on reality. Clinically, this sounds like a very dangerous direction to be taking.”
Dr. Blake raised his eyebrows. “I can understand your skepticism, Dr. Franklin,” he said diplomatically. “This is all new to me, as well, and I had to spend a lot of time reviewing my data and trying to reconcile it with my previous research.”
Dr. Franklin shook his head. “To put this in another way, Dr. Blake,” he said, “it appears that you are saying that Miss Reed can read the thoughts of people around her.”
Graham looked up. “I didn’t hear Dr. Blake say that,” he said. “He said that she can perceive the thoughts of the people around her, and then she translates those impulses into auditory hallucinations. Isn’t that correct, Doctor?”
Graham saw Dr. Franklin shoot him an annoyed look. He had not made friends with the good doctor in the past few days.
“That is correct, Reed,” he said. “I have not made any mention of anything supernatural, Doctor. I have just said that I, as well as Kaya’s family, have noticed that she has an amazing accuracy when she conjectures as to what other people are thinking. You, for example, Dr. Franklin.”
Dr. Franklin was looking at something on his desk, but now he looked up at Dr. Blake. “Me?” he asked. “Just what exactly did she think she heard me thinking about?”
Graham spoke up. “The same thing she told you the other day,” he said. “You told us that she was accusing you of some sort of financial fraud with insurance. She told us the same thing.”
Dr. Franklin’s face grew dark, but Graham could tell he was getting worried about where this conversation was going. “The rambling of a psychotic girl,” he said, picking up his pen. This was the same action he had taken a few days earlier right before dismissing Graham and his mother. “A homicidal girl who has been suffering from mental illness for many years, and had a recent break, causing more severe symptoms. You think that what she was saying about me was based in truth? Gentlemen, I am seriously considering ending this conversation right now. This is absurd! I feel like someone might break out a crystal ball any moment and tell me they can see my future. I don’t want to entertain this type of talk any longer.” He stood up.
“Are you still keeping your ledger locked in the file cabinet in the basement?” Graham said calmly, still sitting in his chair, his legs crossed in front of him.
Dr. Franklin stopped and turned sharply to face Graham. “Excuse me? What are you talking about?”
Graham shrugged. “Your ledger. The blue one. The one that you use to keep track of the actual services you’re providing. You know, before you ‘cook the books.’”
Dr. Franklin sat back down and glared at Graham. “I have no idea what you’re going on about, young man, but I’m warning you. Don’t you dare make accusations that you can’t back up.”
“Or what?” Graham asked. “You’re gonna put me on a hold and bring me to a commitment hearing?”
Dr. Franklin was getting angry. Graham could see his face turning red. “What is it you’re trying to get at, Mr. Reed?”
“It’s just that I was under the impression that Medicare fraud was illegal,” he said. “I have no idea how someone could get away with it for fifteen years, but I guess some people do. They have to really know what they’re doing, and maybe even be in on it with another administrator at their establishment. Maybe someone who trusts them, but maybe wouldn’t trust them as much if they found out that their partner was double crossing them.”
A vein on Dr. Franklin’s forehead started to pulsate. He stared at Graham and then at Dr. Blake. “What is it you want from me?” he asked quietly.
“Did Miss Reed make threats to go after the young man, Mr. Stratton?” Dr. Blake asked. “The one that she said was dangerous? Did she make threats against his life?”
Dr. Franklin closed his eyes for a moment. “No,” he said, the sound of resignation in his voice.
“Does my sister really have symptoms of increased psychosis, such as paranoid delusions, Dr. Franklin?” Graham asked.
Dr. Franklin stared daggers into Graham’s eyes. “She does not.”
Dr. Blake nodded. “As I thought,” he said lightly. “I’m usually correct in these situations. I’ve been doing this for some time, you know, Doctor.”
He stood, motioning for Graham to stand, as well.
“I’ll be going to Miss Reed’s room to help her get her belongings together while you complete the paperwork to drop her hold and complete the discharge papers. Let’s go, Graham.”
“Wait!” Dr. Franklin said, getting to his feet again. “About the things you said, the details that you knew. How . . . ?”
Dr. Blake turned around and looked at Dr. Franklin. “I guess I have no idea what you’re getting at, Dr. Franklin,” he said. “We were just making conjectures. Whatever you heard us say, I cannot know. We will be waiting for you to give the discharge orders.”
He left the office, Graham behind him, and walked straight for Kaya’s room.
When they got there, Kaya was waiting anxiously. “Well?” she asked. “How did it go? Did it work?”
Dr. Blake fell onto Kaya’s bed and wiped his brow. “Gather your things, Miss Reed,” he said. “I imagine you’ll be out of here within the next fifteen minutes. And I can pretty much guarantee that you’ll never step foot in this hospital again in your life.”
Kaya ran into her mother’s arms. “I’m so sorry to have put you through this, Mom,” she said through her tears. “It must have been so awful for you!”
Mrs. Reed pulled away, still holding her daughter’s arms. “For me!” she exclaimed. “Kaya, I was only thinking about you, locked in that place, being forced to take medication that you didn’t need.”
She dropped her hands and took a step back.
“Kaya, all that time that I made you see the doctors, and tried to force you to take the pills—”
Kaya shook her head. “Mom, there’s no way you could have ever imagined what was really going on with me. I mean, how could you? I don’t even believe it, and it’s me it’s happening to! I’m still not really sure that it’s real. It doesn’t make any sense. How can I even do any of this? How can I read people’s thoughts when I touch them? It’s not possible. I’ve always wanted to believe there was such a thing as magic when I was younger, like fairies and stuff. But this is beyond that. This is me, not some movie. How do we even wrap our heads around this?”
She sat on the hotel bed.
Mrs. Reed shook her head. “I guess we keep working with Dr. Blake and try to learn as much as we can, and we just get used to the fact that there are things about our brains that we just don’t understand. Kaya, maybe there is a scientific explanation. Maybe there isn’t any magic to it.”
She sat next to Kaya on the bed.
“Remember when you had your MRI back in high school, and the doctor said you had a strange, well, knoblike thing on the receptive language area of your brain?”
Kaya nodded. “The temporal lobe,” she remembered. “He said it was probably a throwback to our caveman ancestors, kind of like the appendix.”
“Right,” Mrs. Reed said. “But what if it’s something else? What if that little anomaly is what makes you hear thoughts?” She looked up at Dr. Blake.
Dr. Blake thought for a moment and then nodded. “Like your mother said, Miss Graham, there’s a lot we don’t know about the brain. There are millions, billions of human brains walking around the world every day, and there’s no way we can take a good look at all of them. I would guess that there are many other anomalies out there that we’ll never see. There might be an endless number of differences that we never find out about.”
Graham smiled. “Can you imagine that, Kaya?” he asked. “It’s that band of superheroes we used to talk about. Maybe they are out there, just waiting for you to find them. Maybe it’s like all of those movies about mutants with special powers. Could you imagine what it would be like if you all banded together?”
Kaya laughed. “The Enigma and her Band of Merry Misfits!”
Everyone else laughed, and then there was a knock on the door. Assuming who it would be, Kaya ran to the door and threw it open, throwing herself into Grayson’s arms.
“I’ve missed you so much,” she said softly. She held him tight, and then pulled away. “I love you, too, and yes, I promise you don’t have to worry about me ever going away like that again. Okay?”
Grayson smiled and nodded. Then he embraced Kaya again.
Graham smiled, too. He figured that Grayson would never have to say another word to Kaya again if he chose not to. She would always know what he was thinking. If he had anything to hide, he would have to keep his distance from her touch.
Ten minutes later, Gina arrived, and Dr. Blake offered to take them all out to dinner, Kaya’s choice.
“I want a huge juicy steak,” she said, and then she grinned. “Mashed potatoes. Squash. And a huge hunk of chocolate cake for dessert.”
Dr. Blake nodded. “I know just the place.”
They sat around the table, talking, making jokes, and just enjoying being in each other’s company.
“So Kaya,” Gina said after swallowing a bite of seared salmon, “I guess you won’t be taking a leave of absence then.”
Kaya shook her head. “No reason to,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with me. The semester’s about halfway over now, and I can get through it. I’ll take some time to relax and think about things during Thanksgiving and winter break. I only missed a few days of school.” She turned to Dr. Blake. “Can you help me if any of my professors give me a hard time?”
Dr. Blake nodded. “Of course, Miss Graham,” he said. “I’d be happy to. They have to provide accommodations for students with medical issues, so you shouldn’t have any problem. And you don’t have to give them any specific information about what your medical condition was.”
“Thank you so much,” Mrs. Reed said. “And by the way, Dr. Blake, my daughter’s name is Miss Reed, not Miss Graham. My son’s first name is Graham.”
Graham laughed. “Mom, don’t worry about it. I have the feeling that Dr. Blake is quite aware of my name. I think this whole absentminded professor thing is just his persona, right, Professor?”
Dr. Blake looked at him, confused. “Persona? Like what, another personality? No, Reed, I honestly have no idea what you’re going on about.”
He sliced off a piece of his chicken breast, put it in his mouth to chew, and then turned to ask Grayson what he wanted to major in.
Graham looked at his sister, who was watching the interaction, looking amused. She appeared to feel his gaze upon her, and she turned to face him. She smiled. Graham smiled back. They continued to look at each other for some time, and then Kaya nodded at her brother. He nodded back. Kaya turned her attention back to Dr. Blake and Grayson, and she joined their conversation. Graham turned to Gina and his mother, and they talked about what costume the couple would be wearing for Halloween if they decided to go to a party. Gina suggested they dress as Jack Sparrow and Elizabeth from Pirates of the Caribbean, and how it would be a nice contrast to Kaya and Grayson’s SpongeBob and Patrick. Graham laughed. He was feeling happy. It was a good feeling. He was hoping it was a feeling he could hold on to for a long, long time.