“What’re you doing?” Isabel asks Kristen.
“Shh! Keep your voice down. Want one?” Kristen whispers over her shoulder while reaching into the vending machine for a Snapple.
“No.”
“No one’s going to find out,” Kristen says defensively as she shakes the bottle of iced tea and breaks the safety seal. “I do this every day and no one’s said a word yet. They don’t even know. Plus, the dollar-feeder thingy is broken. Score!”
“You don’t pay for it?”
“I watch the nurses doing it. How come they get to do it and I can’t?”
“Well, let’s see,” Isabel says in a purposely patronizing tone, “for one thing, it’s in the staff cafeteria. Emphasis on staff. You know. People who are actually paid to be here. Get it?”
“Little Miss Goody Two-Shoes,” Kristen laughs as she takes a swig of her drink. “I always finish it before it’s time to get back to the unit.”
“What an accomplishment,” Isabel mutters. “Who are they to say that we can’t have something good to drink?”
“You’re a regular Norma Rae.”
“Who?”
Isabel turns and walks away.
Larry’s right. I don’t belong here. I’ve got to get out of here.
Thirty minutes later she signs herself out for a walk.
Without planning on it she finds herself outside Peter’s unit. There she settles on a large rock and watches the door, wondering what Peter is doing on the other side of it.
Maybe he’s coloring something. Maybe he’s reading. Harry Potter? I hope so…I hope he has some way to escape his madness.
“I want to get out of here,” Isabel says as she sits down in her therapist’s office. “How do I go about doing that? Seriously. Tell me.”
Dr. Seidler smiles. “It’s about time.”
“How do I do it?”
“First things first,” Dr. Seidler begins. “Let’s talk about how you’ve come to this decision.”
“I had an epiphany…I woke up on the right side of the bed…I had a good dinner…I don’t know.” Isabel does not want to go into detail. Her mind is made up. “Just tell me what I’ve got to do.”
“Okay. Let’s do this. Your outside therapist, Mona, and I have talked—remember I’ve been telling you about our phone conversations—and we both think it might be a good idea for you to ease back into life by going to your session in the city this week. Then you can come back here.”
“Commute into Manhattan?”
“That’s right. A field trip. That way it might not be such a shock to your system.”
“Then you’ll sign the papers to let me out? For good, I mean. If I pass this test?”
“This is not a test. I think it would benefit you to go slowly, that’s all.”
“Okay, I’ll do it. Where can I get the train schedule?”
“There’s a schedule at the front desk—I’ll get it for you by tonight. It’s really easy. The nurses will call a taxi for you that will take you to the station and the train goes right in to Grand Central. You go to your appointment and then hop back on the train and come back here. You up for it?”
“Yes.”
They trust me? How do they know I won’t stop at Duane Reade and pick up razor blades?
“I think you’ll do just fine, Isabel,” Dr. Seidler smiles. “I think you’re ready. In the meantime, I wonder if we can talk about what that last day at work was like for you. The day before you came here. What happened after—” she cleared her throat “—ahem…”
“After I wigged out on live television?” Isabel snorted.
“Speak,” said John without looking up, so accustomed was he to multitasking that his colleagues knew not to wait for his full attention.
But Isabel was unable to obey his command. She fixed her stare on the crown of his head, which was bent over his laptop, which fought for space with a Chinese carryout container balanced on a heap of folders in the clutter of his desk.
“You snooze you lose,” he muttered, reaching for the phone while clicking on his keyboard.
Isabel simply stood there. After a moment, in an attempt at watering her incredibly dry mouth, she cleared her throat, hoping the phlegm would help cancel out the sick taste in her mouth.
After a curt phone call, John hung up. “What?” he glanced up at her, looked back down and then brought his head back up as though he couldn’t quite believe what he’d seen when he first saw her standing there. After that his head did not move.
“Talk to me.” For once, she had John’s full attention.
Still, she could not form the words.
Focus. Focus.
“Can we—ahem—sorry,” she coughed. “Can we close the door?” she whispered.
John went over to his office door and batted down the coats slung over the top of it. Wordlessly he clicked it shut and motioned for her to sit down.
Isabel perched on the edge of the chair and looked down at her knees.
“What’s going on, kiddo?”
Kiddo.
“Whatever it is, we can fix it,” he said kindly.
Isabel took a deep breath and then dove in. “It’s like this…” But the words stopped their outbound journey.
“You can do it,” John coaxed.
You can do it.
“I need a medical leave of absence and I need it to start now.”
“Now, as in…?”
“Now as in right away. Tomorrow.”
John did not bat an eye. “Whatever you need. Take whatever you need.”
Isabel had been unprepared for his unconditional support. “But…but I know this is leaving you in the lurch and I don’t want—”
“Isabel—” John’s voice a deep mix of gentle and gruff “—your health is more important. Can you still pull bulletin duty tonight? If you can’t just say, but it might be hard to get someone else in here since it’s Labor Day weekend.”
“Yeah, yes.”
“You sure?”
No.
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said. “Then your leave will start tomorrow.”
“You haven’t even asked why,” she said.
“If you’d thought it was important for me to know, you would have told me. Now, go. Do what you need to do.”
Her eyes filled up with tears and she looked away from him. Silently but with great effort she stood up and turned to the door. As she reached for the handle she straightened her shoulders, took another deep breath, cleared her cheeks of tears and, for one last time, put the mask back on.
“He didn’t ask you why you needed the leave?” Dr. Seidler asks.
“No,” Isabel answers. “He didn’t even look curious about it. It was like he sensed that I couldn’t talk about it—whatever ‘it’ is or was.”
“Interesting.”
“What?”
“I’m wondering how that made you feel. Sitting there in his office—you were obviously at a real low point. What did you think when he told you to take whatever time you needed?”
Isabel’s mind wandered back to the day that now seemed like it belonged to a parallel universe. “I remember thinking that if I let John down I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. I remember thinking I’d just go home and do it.”
“Do it?”
“Kill myself.”
“Because you disappointed John?”
“Well, let’s be honest here, I’d been planning it, anyway. But I thought that if John said I was leaving him in the lurch I would do it sooner rather than as I’d planned it.”
“You didn’t want to disappoint him.”
Isabel nods her head in agreement.
“Well. What I find interesting about this is that that is what one might feel about one’s father. A lot of people would try to keep from disappointing their fathers, not their bosses. It seems like you thought of John as a father figure—someone who looked out for you, cared about you. Yes?”
Isabel nods again.
“So when you went to him, obviously at the end of your rope, so to speak, and he stepped up to the plate, giving you unconditional support without even asking you what it was all about, that was healing for you. That was indeed something a father would do. And John did it. He came through.”
“Yeah. But then again, I did look pretty strung out. Maybe that’s why he didn’t ask me any questions.”
“See? Even now you’re hedging. It’s like you can’t believe someone could offer you their support when you most need it. It’s like you don’t trust it.”
Isabel thinks about the doctor’s words. She imagines Dr. Seidler as a gardener, an oversize trowel in her hand, digging into the soil of her soul. Peering into—what? Compost? The cynical part of Isabel wonders. And what would she plant in the space she’d created? What would grow—flourish, even?
“I want to trust it.” Isabel’s voice is one decibel higher than a whisper. “I want to.”
“Then why don’t you? What would it be like if you just felt the warmth of someone reaching out and throwing you a lifeline at a time when you’re gasping for air? You don’t have to answer. Just think about how wonderful that would feel. To have someone be there for you when you most need it.”
Isabel feels a tiny seed dropping into the hole deep inside her and knows it will flower. Someday.