Gateway (The Gateway Trilogy, Book 1) (2 page)

“Callie? Everything OK?” Karen asked.

The girl, Callie, pulled her gaze away from me and whispered, “Yes, fine. Sorry.”

She quickly left the room. I stared after, disconcerted. I guessed I should learn to get used to that sort of thing if I was going to be spending time in a mental institution.

“Ember? The doctor will see you now.”

Karen gestured to the doorway Callie had just come from.

I tossed the magazine back onto the table and paused at the door. Here we go.

Dr. Herbert Shaw, MD sat behind a large mahogany desk. His balding head was bent over a file folder stuffed with papers. He looked up, his smile revealing tobacco-stained teeth, and perched his reading glasses atop his head.

“Hello, Ember. I'm glad to see you up and about. I'm Dr. Shaw.”

He rose from his desk and extended a hand. It was unnaturally soft for a man's hand. Not that I had felt the hands of many.

He gestured for me to sit in the chair across from him.

“So, how are you feeling?” He asked, retaking his seat in an overstuffed chair.

“I've been better.”

“I would think so,” he said, and flipped through the folder. He lowered his glasses and read aloud, “Lithium, clozapine, diazepam…That's quite a lot to ingest.”

I waited for something to respond to. He hadn't asked how I'd gotten access to such a mix of pills. My mother's condition must have been in the file. It wasn't something she acknowledged readily; she must have been terrified for me. I felt more than a twinge of guilt.

As if reading my thoughts, he said, “I have a full history on both you and your mother, but nothing on your father. Why is that?”

“Because I've never met him.” The admission had once pained me, now I said it by rote.

“I see,” he said, making a note. “Is he deceased?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “Isn't this in the file?”

Instead of answering he asked, “Does it bother you, the way you were conceived?”

So, it was in the file—he just wanted to see if I'd squirm. I looked him square in the eye.

“Would it bother you? To be conceived in a bathroom at The Roxy while a hair-metal band played?”

He didn't blink.

“Yes,” he said, “it would bother me very much. Although, I'm sure you know it was due to your mother's mania that she would participate in such risky behavior.”

I did know that, but knowing didn't change anything. I would never meet my father because my mother hadn't gotten his name.

Dr. Shaw folded his arms upon his desk. “There's no denying you've been dealt a difficult hand, Ember. I won't try to convince you otherwise. But I see that things have taken quite a turn for you this past year: lowered grades, repeated truancy, an inability to make friends. Can you tell me about that?”

“Nothing that isn't in the file,” I said.

I couldn't deny the charges; they were all true. Except that part about not being able to make friends. I was able, just no longer willing.

“And this?”

Dr. Shaw held up a sheet of college-ruled paper, frayed where it had been ripped from my notebook. There in ballpoint ink was the drawing that had put me on the radar of the school administration. It was crude, the spiraling black lines pressed deep into the paper, causing it to tear in the center.

“It’s just a doodle,” I said.

“Were you angry when you did it?”

And therein lay the problem. I hadn’t been angry—I’d felt fine. As fine as I ever did, anyway. What most people took as disturbing, I found comforting, even beautiful. When I’d started, I’d been drawing the inner rings of a tree, which is what I said when my teacher caught me drawing in class. But as often happened, the piece had taken on a life of its own, morphing into something darker and apparently more sinister looking. She held the paper up for the other students as a type of Rorschach test, people calling out what they saw in it.

“I don’t know what it is, but it’s creepy,” said a girl in the back.

“It’s like a tornado. If they had tornadoes in hell,” said another.

“I’ll tell you what I see,” said Todd McKey. “A lot of therapy in her future.” 

The entire class broke into laughter. My drawing was confiscated and I spent the rest of the period staring at a spot on my desk, willing myself not to run from the room.

After class that day, Clare Humphries, cheerleader and all around high school superstar, broke away from her group of friends to talk to me at my locker.

“Hey,” she said, “don’t listen to those jerks. I thought it was pretty.”

“Uh, thanks,” I said, suspicious.

Clare Humphries had never spoken to me before.

“No, I mean it, I could totally see your work in a gallery.”

I let myself smile. “Oh, well that’s nice of you—”

“Right next to paintings by Charles Manson,” she said in a singsong voice, and turned back to join her snickering cohorts.

I spun to face my locker, tears stinging my eyes.

The next day I was called in to meet with the school guidance counselor and Clare Humphries was elected to prom court.

“Well,” Dr. Shaw said, snapping me back to the present, “this file may tell me what you've been up to, but it doesn't tell me why, and that is what we'll be delving into in your sessions with me.”

I cut to the chase. “How long do I have to be here?” I asked.

“I can tell you aren't going to like this answer,” he replied, “but that will be entirely up to you.”

He was right. I didn't like it one bit.

I remained with Dr. Shaw only a short time longer. He could tell he wasn't going to get much from me, and Jo had mentioned his full calendar. When I left, there was a boy about fifteen with cropped black hair occupying the seat I had recently vacated in the waiting room.

“There's an orderly waiting outside to take you back to your wing,” Karen said as I made my way to the door.

“Thanks,” I mumbled.

“Josh, Dr. Shaw is ready for you now.”

“About time,” the dark haired boy muttered as I shut the door behind me.

As promised, the orderly accompanied me back to the nurses' station, and thankfully, he did it in silence. Jo was drinking coffee when I returned.

“I see you got the rules,” she said, nodding toward the rolled up papers in my hand.

“Yeah. No fighting, trading meds, hooking up… That's all I remember for now.”

“Those are the big ones,” she replied, “but make sure you follow all of them and you and I won't have a problem.”

“Got it.”

“Your roommate is back from class. I'll introduce you,” she said, coming out from behind the station and walking toward my new home away from home.

Jo opened the door to reveal a petite blonde sitting cross-legged on the bed. She looked up from her beauty magazine and gave me a perfectly dimpled smile. What was her problem? The world loved girls like her.

Eating Disorder.

Of course.

“Lauren, this is Ember. Play nice,” Jo said, giving Lauren a warning look before she walked back to the nurses' station.

“Don't listen to her, I'm harmless.” Her tone left room for doubt. “So, what do you think of our room?”

I looked around and shrugged. “Um, it’s fine, I guess. Hopefully I’m not here long enough to get too settled.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Aren't you here on a suicide?”

“So they tell me.”

She made a sound I couldn't distinguish between sympathy and mocking.
 

“Come on,” she said standing. “I’ll show you around.”

I had no choice but to be rude or follow. It didn’t make sense ticking off my new roommate, so I trailed after her. Plus, a lay of the land couldn't hurt. Just past the nurses' station was a set of double doors propped open with chairs.

“This is the rec room. Group meets here on Monday,” she said, “and you’ll have a one-on-one with Dr. Shaw once or twice a week.”

“Depending on how screwed up I am?” I asked.

“Basically. Your first real session with him takes like two
hours
, and after that he’ll decide how 'screwed up' you are and give you a schedule. Don't get your hopes up, on a suicide you're pretty much guaranteed two.”

In the corner, a small group of patients huddled around a nineteen-inch television set from the 90's.

“Strictly basic cable,” Lauren said, rolling her eyes.

Another corner housed art supplies. It was the first bit of good news I'd gotten about the place. A middle-aged woman was doing a small watercolor of the trees outside.

“Can we use these anytime?” I asked.

“Except when the room is being used for something else. And you can't take anything from here into your room.”

We'd see about that.

Before I’d completed my mental inventory, Lauren was already leading me down another hall.

“This is the dining area. Breakfast is at seven, lunch at noon and dinner at six. The food sucks. If it weren’t for the vending machine I’d have to become anorexic.”

My mouth twitched into a smile. Bulimic. The Voice was right. Not that that should have still been surprising. It was always right.

She stopped short and fixed me with an intense gaze. “The peanut butter cups are mine.”

My smile broadened, but then I realized she was serious. “Um, OK… sure. You got it.”

She let out a breath I didn’t know she’d been holding. “Good. My last roommate just could not keep that straight. It was a real problem.”

On the surface she was everything I hated, but I kind of liked her for her honesty. It was refreshing. How often in life does someone just lay out what they need from you, no BS attached?
 
I knew I wouldn’t be baring my secrets so easily, the least I could do was oblige hers.
 

We came to a window at the end of the hall. From the looks of it, I guessed we were on the third floor. Lauren pointed to a small building across the lawn.

“That’s where we go to class.”

“Yeah, Dr. Shaw told me about that. We’re in a nuthouse but we have to go to school? That is such crap.”

As if either weren't bad enough on their own.

“It’s not so bad,” she said. “We take our time walking there—it’s nice to get outside—and everybody is in a different grade so half the time you’re just doing your own thing. And Mr. Morehouse is OK, as long as you don’t get on his bad side.”

There wasn’t much else to show, so Lauren went to watch TV. I felt anything but social, so I shuffled back to our room and laid down. I wanted to read, but for all the bath products in different scents my mother had packed, she had, of course, neglected to pack a single book. Who needs mind expansion when you can smell nice?

Again, the thought of my mother brought up feelings of guilt.

Like she consults you on major life decisions…

It had a point. Three different high schools in three years. We moved whenever she had the whim, or whenever our neighbors complained too much. All in L.A., but still, back when I had had friends it had been nearly impossible to keep in touch once we'd left one zip code for another. In a city with traffic as bad as Los Angeles, five miles becomes a long-distance relationship.

Still, I wondered how she was, what she was doing. She'd been off her meds for months now, which is why there had been such a healthy supply for me to utilize. I imagined her pacing the floor of our apartment, chewing on her fingernails, muttering to herself—alternately worrying about me being under the care of doctors, and what might happen if I weren't under their care. My mother distrusted doctors. For a while that had worked to my advantage, helping me avoid having to see a shrink, but after my second suspension, the school had insisted.

Neither of us were prepared for me to be home-schooled, so she had relented six months ago and I'd begun seeing Dr. Borden, PhD., in Van Nuys. I hated everything about it. The bus ride was needlessly complicated, the office was cramped, and Dr. Borden was a self-important woman with yellow hair and fake breasts that protruded from necklines too plunging for her age. It didn't take long for me to realize that the only way to get through those sessions was to parrot back the psycho-babble she was spewing and act grateful for her insight.

Mom had been so relieved when Dr. Borden informed the school that I had made real progress and now had the tools to cope with the everyday pressures of being a teenager. In reality, Dr. Borden was clueless to the facts of what my every days were filled with.

Since waking up that afternoon I'd been on auto-pilot, numbly obliging to being led through the day, but as usual, being left to my own thoughts was an exercise in torture.

Only you could screw up a suicide. You're as crazy as your mother; they should just leave you here. How do I get out of here?

That was the most prominent question, and I waited for the Voice to answer, but It didn't. I was never able to summon It at will. It just popped in when It felt like it, giving me morsels of information. Still, I was grateful for It. For months It had been my only friend, if It could be called that. And if It was just a figment of my imagination and I truly was insane, then at least I wasn't completely alone.