Delirious (7 page)

The words had taken on an almost prophetic significance. What was happening to him? First a note that he didn’t recall writing, then a woman who didn’t exist, then a presentation he apparently authored without any recollection.

A sickening thought swept through him, like a wave of grief. Could Yardley be right? Perhaps the pressure was more than he could handle, and now his subconscious mind wanted a way out.

Charlie shook his head side to side.

“No. It can’t be,” he said aloud. “I know what I saw … don’t I?”

He looked back down at the sticky note on the inside flap of his BlackBerry holder, resting open on the passenger seat. His handwriting looked both familiar and alien.

“When did I write this?” he asked. “And why?”

He pulled the Post-it note from his BlackBerry holder and stuck it to the inside cover of a notebook he kept in the glove compartment. He didn’t want to give the note any more thought, but he wasn’t prepared
to crumple it up and toss it away, either. At least not until a few other mysteries were solved.

Charlie drove as if on autopilot into a hazy midafternoon sun as he replayed the events of the day. Assuming Anne Pedersen did exist, it still did not explain his authoring the PowerPoint presentation, the missing e-mails, or unfamiliar notes in his handwriting.

Is it the pressure, Charlie?

Yardley’s biting words came to him again.

It had been obvious from the man’s eyes that he had already embraced that conclusion. If Yardley was thinking that way, Charlie lamented, the others would soon follow.

I’m going to be branded a nutcase.

Step one, Charlie decided, was to prove that wasn’t even a possibility. It seemed inconceivable that work pressures could trigger his creating an elaborate fantasy world—the sort of altered reality he associated with Joe or his father. If it wasn’t the pressure, could it be some sort of mental illness? Charlie was knowledgeable enough about his brother’s disease to know that symptoms manifested themselves in the late teens, midtwenties on the outside, but almost never in someone as old as he was. But was it possible?

Jerking the steering wheel hard right, Charlie swerved the BMW in front of a fast-traveling Toyota 4Runner. The driver reciprocated with a customary Bostonian salute of his middle finger. Hitting the exit ramp at forty mph, the wheels of the BMW hugged the road with the advertised precision and control. Charlie shot over the overpass, got into the left lane, downshifted into second, then turned onto the entrance ramp heading in the opposite direction on Route 128, back toward Waltham.

If he could medically disprove the possibility of work pressures or some late-blooming brain disease as the cause, it would go a long way toward reestablishing trust within SoluCent’s leadership team. That would give Charlie access to the necessary corporate resources to find the real culprits.

“Please dial Mother,” Charlie said aloud.

“Dialing Mother,” responded InVision.

The phone rang six times before someone finally answered.

“Hello.” The voice on the other end was heavy, as though the person to whom it belonged had been roused from a deep slumber.

“Joe.”

“Charlie? That you?”

“I need a favor. I need you to look up a number for me.”

Joe said nothing for a moment. “You need a number?”

It seemed to Charlie an exceptionally long time to process information, only to repeat the request. “Yes. That’s what I said,” he said.

“What number do you want, Charlie?”

“Rachel Evans,” Charlie said.

Charlie could hear the surprise in Joe’s voice. “What? Why do you want to talk with Dr. Evans?”

“Why do you care?” Charlie said.

“She’s my psychologist, Charlie. There’s a reason to care.”

“It’s research, Joe. Nothing more.”

Charlie had heard Rachel’s name mentioned dozens of times over the years. Joe was besotted with her. He praised her with a sense of wonderment typically reserved for the divine. And admittedly, since joining her experimental cognitive therapy program, Joe had made remarkable progress.

All Charlie wanted was an expert ear. Hers was the only name he had.

Joe gave him the number and Charlie thanked him.

“Are you going to come visit Mom?” Joe asked. “I’m sure she would appreciate it.”

“I can’t today, Joe,” Charlie said, hanging up without another word.

Research,
Charlie thought.
Yeah. That’s what it is. Research.

He shifted the car over into the fast lane and dialed Rachel’s number. The receptionist patched him through.

“Dr. Evans,” a friendly voice said.

“Dr. Evans, this is Charlie Giles, Joe’s brother. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

T
he redbrick edifice of Walderman Mental Health rose from its perch atop a grassy knoll and cast an eerie, elongated shadow as the late-day sun settled in the west. Charlie drove his black BMW up the winding driveway. He noticed xenon headlights automatically turned on, as onboard sensors determined dusk was approaching. Charlie downshifted into first and glided his car to a gentle stop in the farthest corner space in a parking lot void of other vehicles.

He had been to this place only once before. It had been a few months after moving back east; Charlie had asked his mother if he could attend a group therapy session at Walderman Hospital. This had brought a look of surprise to her face, since she’d been asking him to participate in Joe’s therapy for years. In her mind, for Charlie to spring this on her out of the blue had been nothing short of a miracle. He had never admitted that the request was more selfish than selfless. He had found it embarrassing to live so close to Joe and still have the same uneasiness he remembered feeling as a boy.

Doctors had diagnosed Joe as epileptic just after Charlie’s eighth birthday. That disease hadn’t disturbed Charlie in the least. Perhaps because his brother’s seizures were internal events, more like an altered mental state. Joe didn’t convulse when he seized, the way a boy in Charlie’s school had who was also epileptic. Unlike that boy’s, Joe’s eyes didn’t roll back in his head; nobody had to stick something into his mouth to keep him from swallowing his tongue. The only clue Joe was even having a seizure was his trancelike detachment.

The schizophrenia, diagnosed years later, however, was far less discreet and had permeated every facet of Charlie’s relationship with Joe. Joe would hear voices, complain of strangers reading his thoughts, or express fear that he was being followed. Sometimes his brother would spontaneously burst out into song or converse bizarrely with a stranger, which always embarrassed Charlie. For a fifteen-year-old boy, Joe’s breakdown had been at first haunting, soon scary, and had ultimately driven a wedge between the once close siblings.

It had angered Charlie to feel so apprehensive, scared even, around Joe. He had interpreted those feelings as a sign of weakness in himself. He’d known his fear was irrational, but rather than try to overcome it, Charlie had taken another approach—avoidance. It was a passive solution, but an effective one as well.

Charlie had attended a group therapy session at Walderman Hospital in an effort to substitute his long-standing apathy with empathy. It was then that Charlie had found himself in a small, windowless basement room with about eight patients, two doctors, and a half dozen or so relatives.

Claustrophobia had overwhelmed him. Trying to rein in his anxiety, Charlie had stood while the others took their seats. He’d gone over to a small kitchenette and poured himself a cup of lukewarm coffee in a Styrofoam cup, added some Coffee-mate, and, when glances from the staff made it clear that his standing was a distraction, found a seat closest to the door.

Throughout the hour-and-a-half-long session, he hadn’t listened to a word. For the life of him, he wouldn’t be able to recall one story of hope, sadness, or survival. Instead he’d focused on how some of the patients fidgeted in their seats, and how one man stood up on his chair and shouted out his name to get everyone’s attention. Another just kept muttering to himself. They’d all looked so helpless, unclean, and lost.

And Joe, who would slap the back of the folding chair in front of him as if it were a drum, his way of applauding for each person after they spoke, had evoked a familiar sense of shame.

The experiment had failed miserably, and Charlie had taken nothing away from the session, except the decision that he’d never set foot in Walderman again.

That had been almost two years ago. It felt like a lifetime.

The crisp fall air caressed Charlie’s face as he stepped from the car. The leaves had just begun their retreat from green to orange and red. It was nature’s normal course of life, and he noticed the change with some sadness. Normality was something Charlie could no longer take for granted. He appreciated the simple beauty in a way he hadn’t since he was a boy.

An empty pit formed in his stomach as he started toward the entrance. Charlie breathed in a deep sigh and looked around the minimally landscaped grounds, wary of others who might be observing his approach. For many, the short walk across the parking lot and along the slate-and-gravel path to the large wooden double door entrance was a bridge back to a life lost, a way to recapture the essence of being alive, to learn to embrace the simple joys of living again. But for Charlie, it was a journey into the blackest unknown, a retreat from the reality he had once thought unshakable.

Charlie passed through the entrance into a large foyer identified by a black-and-gold-leaf plaque as Saunders Hall. Nothing about the main foyer was clinical. The regality of it made it difficult for Charlie to believe he was even inside a mental health hospital. He had never been to this building before. The group therapy session he’d attended a few years back had been held in a much smaller campus building, about a quarter mile away. This was a mansion. It had been donated to the state by a successful psychologist and his wife, under the condition that it be used solely for the purpose of mental health treatment. The interior of Walderman Mental Health echoed a bygone era of civility and grace, and Charlie could imagine that it had once been the epicenter for the social elite. It would have made an elegant home to entertain and showcase jewelry, evening gowns, and culinary extravaganzas.

He marched along the checkered marble floor, past leather sitting chairs and mahogany tables that seemed swallowed by the cavernous, high ceilings. On the far right wall, directly across from a wide winding staircase leading to the second floor, was a mahogany reception desk. Charlie crossed toward it, his footsteps echoing loudly as he approached. The receptionist kept a firm gaze on him
as he neared. What he would normally construe as flattery here seemed tainted with judgment. It would be better, he thought, if the place were bustling with patients and physicians. At least it would provide him some cover. He wouldn’t have to be the center of her attention.

She probably thinks I’m crazy,
Charlie thought.

The receptionist was a cheery-faced woman, no more than twenty-five. Her brown hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. Charlie found her large, expressive eyes to be unnecessarily sympathetic. She greeted him with a toothy smile and a slight conciliatory cocking of her head to the side.

“Hello. Can I help you?” she asked.

Charlie stammered for a moment, then pushed aside the unease. “I’m here to see Rachel. Rachel Evans.”

“You have an appointment?”

“I … I … I do. Yes.”

Charlie sensed movement behind him, turned, and saw a woman descending the staircase with quick steps and sharp clicks from her high-heeled shoes.

“Mr. Giles?” she said, hurrying down the stairs.

Charlie followed her approach as she reached the bottom step and moved to the reception desk to greet him.

“Yes,” Charlie said.

“I’m Rachel Evans,” she said, extending a hand. “It’s very nice to meet you. Joe has told me a lot about you.”

The first thing Charlie noticed was her eyes: warm, inviting green ovals that projected sensitivity without judgment. They helped to put him a bit more at ease. His hands, clenched in tight balls in his pockets, unfolded.

He shook her hand. Her grip was firm. Her eyes never looked away from his. She wore her auburn hair long, draped down her slender back. The smoothness of her skin suggested an age far younger than he assumed her to be, and he could not help but take in her willowy figure. For all her delicacy there was something rugged about her, even with her fine features and graceful manner. She exuded a quiet confidence that, he suspected, made her equally
comfortable camping in the mountains and dining in the city’s best restaurants.

“It’s nice to meet you, Dr. Evans. I appreciate you taking the time to see me on such short notice.”

“It’s Rachel, and it’s not a problem. Why don’t we go upstairs to my office to talk?”

Charlie signed in with the receptionist, anxious about leaving a permanent record of his visit. He followed Rachel upstairs, through a set of swinging double doors—these with red vinyl padding—and down a long corridor with what appeared to be offices on either side, spaced evenly about every fifteen feet.

“Not exactly what I expected from a mental hospital,” Charlie said, quickening his pace to walk beside Rachel.

“It surprises a lot of people,” Rachel said. “But this is just one of three buildings, and it’s mostly administrative and physician offices. Some research labs. Our other buildings may be a bit more what you’d expect.”

“What is it that I’d expect?” Charlie asked.

Rachel turned to him, letting out a slight knowing smile. Charlie put his hands in his pockets and retreated from her gaze. He ran his left thumb over the tops of his fingertips, feeling the calluses. At that moment he wanted nothing more than to lose himself in guitar, practicing the Jim Hall melodies still fresh in his mind.

“We both know exactly what you’d expect,” she replied, her tone insinuating that she and Joe had devoted several sessions to Charlie. “Anyway, we are a fully functioning mental health institution. State-sanctioned, partially funded. Patients at Walderman come for all different reasons. Some are inpatient, some outpatient, and some are on our secured floors.”