In Love by Christmas: A Paranormal Romance (32 page)

“Cass, it’s for your own good. You need to adjust to the internal rhythms of our therapeutic environment, and to the season. You don’t need a calendar; you don’t need to be counting the days until you get out.”

Her psychiatrist worked with her feelings of anxiety about not knowing the snow outside meant it was a very cold September or a really mild December. “Let’s talk about your anxieties about time.”

“Let’s talk about my anxieties about where I am too. I was brought here in the middle of the night, drugged. I don’t know what state I’m in. Why doesn’t Havertin Institute let us know our fucking zip code?”

“No profanity, Cass. It’s part of the therapeutic plan. You’ve not achieved such a hot record out in the world, so Havertin is your new world. When you adjust to the Havertin way, you won’t question, you’ll just be with us, in our nurturing family.”

Like fuck. Why didn’t they have mail or phone privileges? All the other places she’d been in let you take calls and have mail. You could decorate your room with posters of rock stars with hot bods if you wanted. Everything in other places was geared toward being healthy when they got out.

This was more like a prison than a hospital.

Time began to slip. She had no idea how long she’d been there or what day it was. There was snow outside sometimes. But it melted. Had it really been there? Was it winter? She wanted to run, but they didn’t let them outside to run. There was a big lawn behind the place. Acres. Why couldn’t she run there? Jesus Christ! She had to get out of there.

She wanted cigarettes. She found out she could get them, but she’d have to put out to one of the counselors. Cass didn’t want to do that. She wanted to go straight. She wanted to get well. The pressure was all day, every day, in every way. They’d get you when you never expected it.

“Cass, you have to eat. You can’t be here if you have weight problems. Havertin does not deal with eating issues.” Ah. She’d thought that a bright spot. Maybe if she got anorexic again, they’d kick her back to the hospital.

The counselor leaned over her in the dining room and whispered. “If you don’t eat, they’ll take you to the other wing of the hospital where the real sickies are, shove a tube down your throat, and force-feed you.”

Every minute was planned; every minute was with other people. The other women didn’t like her. She couldn’t eat. They marked down everything that everyone did. Demerits for not eating. Eating too slowly. Taking too long to shit.

Tension was building up. She would
not
explode. No. Never again. She would not blow up and tear things up, take scissors or knives to the furniture. Pull paintings off of the walls and smash them. Throw china. Destroy her father’s priceless art the way she had at home. Cass was not going to do that.

“I can’t stand this,” she said to her counselor. “I want to call my dad. He wouldn’t allow this if he knew it was happening.”

“Phone privileges are earned, Cass.”

“What do I have to do to talk to my dad?”

“You have to have perfect behavior for two weeks.”

They wanted perfect behavior, they’d get it. She’d be perfect for two weeks just so she could yell at her fucking liar of a father. Her father had put her in this place, deliberately. She wouldn’t be released. She had just figured it out.

Perfect behavior meant cheerfully complying with the schedule, which she did. Dawn to late night, she did exactly what they wanted, stupid though it was.

She did pretty well for three days.

Her counselor demanded that she sit on his lap and relax against him as “bonding therapy.” He would become the good dad to her father’s terrible dad. It was boner therapy. He was so hard he could come in his pants.

He did. She wiggled her butt the tiniest bit and he was bucking like a bronco. He smiled afterward, saying, “We’ll have to figure out something to make you feel good.”

“The only thing that would make me happy is blowing your brains out, you two-bit con. I’m telling my psychiatrist.”

The counselor reported the incident as Cass coming on to him and threatening to kill him when he wouldn’t perform oral sex on her. They increased her meds and gave her twice as much time in therapy with him.

A few days later, somebody got to her in the trauma survivors group. A woman told the piteous story of her horse dying. Everyone wept.

Cass snapped. She was on her feet, screaming. “You fucking idiots! You don’t know what trauma is. Trauma is being locked in a dungeon and raped in the ass ten times a day. Trauma is having someone grab your nipples with red-hot tongs …”

Cass went on like that for a while, and then leapt toward the woman whose horse had died. The counselor got in front of her and grabbed her hands.

“Watch out, Cass, they’ll put you in the boxes.” He twisted her arm around behind her back. Cass spun, grabbed his straightened arm, and broke it at the elbow over her thigh. He screamed, groveling like a baby. She ran to the far side of the room with the entire group and the counselor clawing away from her in terror.

Cass tipped the sofa where the woman with the dead horse had been sitting on its back, and then frantically looked around the room. Spotting scissors on the desk, she grabbed them and attacked the sofa, ripping its fabric, screaming and swearing and stabbing.

When she woke up, Cass was in a part of the hospital she hadn’t seen. She was “in restraints”—a straitjacket—seated on a wheel chair. She felt drowsy. They’d drugged her and put her there.

“Are you ready, little miss?” The guard was burly and had an unmistakable air of sadism around him. “You really tossed it, didn’t you? We’ll see that you don’t do that again. Dr. Mantrell is waiting to see you. She’s the new principal psychiatrist at Havertin. You’re lucky to get to meet her.”

Dr. Mantrell had dyed black hair, pasty skin, and a slight mustache. “Flat affect,” Cass thought, drawing upon her store of psychiatric knowledge. You couldn’t tell a thing about what she was thinking or feeling from her face or posture. She wore a cheap department store suit.

“Well, Miss Duane, you’ve created quite an impact. But then, I knew you would, eventually. I’ve read your
vitae
. You need to understand a few things about the Havertin Institute. You’re committed for life, Miss Duane. Would you like to see your admission papers?” The goon pushing the wheelchair held them up so she could see them. “Your father admitted you as incorrigibly mentally ill, a danger to yourself and others. Read it.”

Her father’s signature was on the papers.

“My father put me here? Did he know what you’d do?” Cass couldn’t stop the tears running down her cheeks: the straitjacket wrapped her arms across her belly and behind her. She couldn’t wipe her eyes.

“Of course, he knew. He was sick of you, Miss Duane. “

Dr. Mantrell got up and marched around her desk, sticking her face in Cass’s. Her breath was dry and papery. “You are here for the rest of your life, Miss Duane. You’d better adapt. While Havertin can be a wonderful place of refuge for many people, for others it can be a misery—while they live.” Cass jolted backwards.

She smiled at Cass, the weirdest smile she’d seen. “You frightened your counselor and group members today, Cass. You broke a counselor’s arm. This is serious. You must learn the consequences. We have many ways of countering dangerous and out of control behavior like yours. The military is experimenting with new techniques to interrogate prisoners. They can also be used to discipline wayward individuals. They call it ‘waterboarding.’ We call it water therapy. It’s rather like drowning, but not quite. “

Cass’s eyes widened and widened more. Dr. Mantrell had changed as she spoke, hissing a bit, her breath becoming shorter and eyes brighter as she described torture. She liked inflicting pain. Her tongue darted out, sharp pointed. She was reptilian. The only people Cass had seen who grew excited causing pain belonged to Enzo Donatore. He was here. This woman was his.

“Oh, yes, you will find that we have friends in common. It’s impossible to really leave old friends, don’t you think? Do you think I should call Enzo and tell him where you are?”

“You know Enzo? How can you know Enzo?” Cass’s chest froze. She could barely breathe.

“
Everyone
knows
Enzo,
my dear. Everyone who is anyone.” Her chuckle said she would call him in a minute.

“No! Don’t tell him. I’ll do anything, please. Don’t tell Enzo.”

Her captor chuckled. “All right, I won’t, for as long as you’re
really
good. In addition to water therapy, we also have the box. You will find out about that tonight. Quiet darkness often calms patients who can’t be soothed any other way. Of course, they are often quite noisy before they settle down.”

She smiled with real glee. “But we haven’t forgotten anyone down there yet. Oh, maybe for a day or two. Not long. And it is cold now. It’s almost Christmas. You wanted to know the date, Ms. Duane. The back garden is covered with snow today. Don’t worry; we’ll give you a blanket.

“And now, Miss Duane, I will leave you in the hands of my able staff. When I see you next, I hope to see you in a much more amenable mood.”

“You should know that we have one other modality that we use often.”

Something struck her on her upper shoulder. She rocked back, stunned by the pain. Her muscles twitched. Cass shouted, “What are you doing? Tasers are illegal.”

The second and third zaps rendered her semi-conscious.

When she woke up, Cass in a pitch black place. It was cold. She figured it must be underground. A gag filled her mouth and a hood covered her head. The straitjacket wrapped her arms around her. The cold said she wasn’t wearing anything below the waist.

A flashlight’s beam lit the hood over her face. “Oh, there you are, you little bitch.” The guy who’d wheeled her chair. “Ready for some therapy?” He wrenched her legs open. She tried to fight, but couldn’t.

He hurt her. She pulled her legs up and together afterward, trembling. “Feeling more relaxed, bitch?”

She thought there were six the first night. No defense, not even a scream.

Cass knew she would die in that hole.

40

A Wake-up Call

W
ill received an
email from Havertin Institute. Reaching him was hard; every aspect of his life was screened. Whoever wanted to get the message to him had done his homework to get through. It was an untraceable @numonet.com address; everyone had two or three of those. But this message had the Havertin Institute logo embedded in it and was addressed to his private code. He couldn’t trace it to a specific sender, but a literate person wrote it; someone who worked there, no doubt.

Mr. Duane,

If you love your daughter, get her out. They’re killing her. She’s in the boxes in the back of the place.

Hurry. She’ll be dead in another day.

Will went to bed and slept restlessly, starting awake every few minutes. Sweating.

The room was pitch black. Will sat up in bed. Two words came to him: Enzo Donatore.

Donatore was on his way to get her.

He called the Institute and no one answered. How could an entire mental hospital go dark? Had Donatore gotten the whole place?

Once Will got it, he jumped. He called one of his attorneys at home in New York. After all his struggling to sleep, the time was only one a.m., four a.m. in New York. “I received an email that my daughter’s life is in danger at Havertin Institute. It’s from inside. I can’t trace it. Get a judge up and get a search warrant for that place. It’s not a prank, Lewis. I’ll send it to you.” A moment passed while Will forwarded the note.

“OK. My computer just booted up,” the attorney said. Silence as he read. “You’re sure this is real?”

“‘She’s in the boxes at the back of the place?’ What is that? Look, I think the Havertin Institute is abusing mental patients and not giving them their Constitutional rights.”

“What sort of abuse? Do you have more than this?”

“They haven’t allowed me to talk to my daughter. Whenever I asked to speak to her, they said she was in isolation. They didn’t say why or for how long or what that was. I haven’t spoken to her since she’s been there. They’ve changed psychiatrists—or people they say were psychiatrists—on her three times. The whole place smells to me. There’s no visiting. They have a song and dance about their culture. God, Lewis, they could be doing
anything.”
His hands started to shake. “I admitted her involuntarily, as a danger to herself and others—you know that, you drew up the papers. But this time, I think I really made a mistake. We have to get her out of there.”

“And the other patients.”

“Oh, yeah.” Will had forgotten about them. “There’s hundreds there. It’s big.”

“This looks like a ‘color of the law’ violation. Deliberately depriving anyone of rights or privileges protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States is a
very large
federal violation. This brings in the FBI and all the feds. A judge will jump on this. I’ll get moving.”

Oh, God. Cass. Cass. Cass.

Will expected Leroy to tell him to fuck off. He didn’t. He said, “If I save Cass, she’s coming with me this time. You have nothing to say about her anymore.”

“Fine, Leroy. You were right. Please save her.”