Nocturnal Part 26

A pale blue hospital gown stretched over his spread knees. The hair that hid his face was beautiful-wavy, shoulder-length locks of light-brown shot through with gold, so shiny you wanted to touch it to see if it was real. Well, someone might want to touch it. Not me, I was a professional. He balanced his arms on his thighs with the palms facing up, protecting the wounds on his wrists. Stark white cotton bandages contrasted with his tanned skin. A tattooed green snake seemed to be escaping out of the left-hand bandage.

He smelled of cigarettes overlaid with an acrid stench. In the acting profession they called it "flop sweat": the cold, drenching perspiration that came on when you went blank on stage or knew your performance was bad. Fielding's odor, which I'd smelled many times in patients having a psychotic break, was also produced by fear, but the patients weren't scared of forgetting lines. Their fear went much deeper than that.

"Mr. Fielding?" I said quietly.

He slowly lifted his head. He had Bambi eyes: chocolate brown, ringed with lashes so thick they looked like eyeliner. His features were delicate: dark, defined eyebrows; narrow, straight nose; a sharp jaw adorned with three days of dark stubble. Rashad was right on the money with the Johnny Depp comparison. On stage, in a bar or an intimate music hall, with a guitar on his lap, Derek Fielding would be irresistible. This of course was simply a clinical observation.

He stared at me for a minute as if he was deciding whether I was worth the effort of speech. Apparently I wasn't, because he stood up and walked away. Mostly to keep my gaze from drifting down to where his hospital gown gaped open at his hips, I focused on a Celtic cross tattoo on his bicep. Which made me wonder what other body parts were tattooed, which didn't help my focus at all.

He sat on the bed and propped up his pillow, wincing as his bandaged wrists brushed the stiff fabric. When he was situated he looked at me again. His expression was calm, but his eyes glinted with unshed tears. A muscle twitched in his jaw.

"Do you have a cigarette?" he asked.

"You can't smoke in here, I'm afraid."

"I don't smoke."

"Okay, then. I'm Dr. Dillon, the chief resident here." I didn't offer my hand, knowing that even light pressure might cause pain to his wounds. I imagined his wrists under the bandages-the guy had more st.i.tches than a patchwork quilt. He had lost two liters of blood, according to his chart. This was no "cry for help." Derek Fielding had meant business.

"You have a beautiful voice," I said.

He looked away.

"Can you tell me what happened last night?"

Fielding began singing again, this time very quietly. I looked at his hands, which were tapping the sheet in intricate rhythms. His fingers were slender and delicately tapered. The nails on his right hand were long, filed into neat ovals, while those on his left were short and square. Guitar-playing hands.

Some people say music transports them, but the only time it had happened to me was when my mother sang. I could feel it happening again as I listened to Derek Fielding. It was like an angel was singing just for me. The song contained everything I'd ever known and done, and all I could and would be in the future.

Even though one part of my mind screamed that it was completely against protocol, I sat down on the bed. I needed to be close to his mouth so that I could hear the words. Now I noticed his eyes had a golden ring around the pupil that glowed like fire.

Derek lifted a bandaged hand and stroked my cheek, still singing that siren song. When his lips were an inch from mine he stopped, but I didn't. In a moment we were kissing. It was the most pa.s.sionate kiss I'd ever had. I lost myself in the sensation of soft and hard-the firm, insistent pressure of his lips opening mine, the velvet texture of his tongue, the gra.s.sy odor of his breath...

When I opened my eyes I was still standing against the wall. Derek was three feet away from me in the bed. I heaved a deep sigh of relief. My job was still intact.

I often told my patients in therapy that any fantasy was fine, the only thing they needed to control were their actions in the real world. I told myself that now, but somehow it didn't help. My fantasy had been so vivid that it left me damp and trembling. My legs were shaking so hard I had to press my hands against the wall to keep from slipping to the floor.

This is not helping your patient.

I sat down and opened the chart, clicking my pen several times to remind myself what I was doing there.

"Mr. Fielding, do you know where you are right now?"

"h.e.l.l."

Hmm, not the answer I was looking for.

"Can you tell me what day it is?"

"I think it's Friday, but it doesn't matter." He turned to me, his eyes wide and gla.s.sy. "Who did you say you are?"

"I'm Dr. Dillon. I'm going to help you."

He smiled, but in an off-kilter way that set my nerves jangling. "You can't help me. He's trying to take over my body."

"Who's trying to take over your body?" I imagined the answer would be the devil, given that Fielding seemed to be having religious delusions.

"Edgar." The muscle in his jaw twitched faster as his fingers danced over the sheet. "When he does it, I'm still there, but I can't control my body. He wants to kill people; wants me me to kill people. But I won't do it." His head pulled away as if someone had grabbed his chin. to kill people. But I won't do it." His head pulled away as if someone had grabbed his chin.

"I'll kill myself first," he muttered. His head jerked back toward me.

"Was it, um, Edgar, Edgar, who tried to kill himself?" who tried to kill himself?"

He shook his head impatiently. "No, I was trying to kill Edgar."

"But Edgar was in your body?"

"Yes." The smell of sweat filled my nostrils. Moisture stippled his forehead. This conversation was making Derek Fielding very nervous.

"You've got to help me, Doctor. You're an expert in these things, right? You can make him go away."

"Well, first let's focus on making you comfortable and more secure. Then we'll see what we can do about making Edgar go away."

I looked at the file to check what medications Rashad had prescribed.

"Tell him the truth, Maggie. You can't make me go away."

There was a sudden chill in the air, as if someone had just opened a refrigerator door, but nothing had changed in the room, so the chill had to be coming from inside me. I kept my head down while I processed what was happening. Derek's voice had changed radically. Instead of his normal soft tenor voice, this new voice was low and raspy, originating deep inside his chest. But there was something else that was turning my skin clammy. He had called me Maggie, when he had no way of knowing my first name. My nametag had only my surname on it, not even a first initial.

Well, surely there was a reasonable explanation. He had overheard one of the other doctors or nurses talking about me. I arranged my face into a mask of calm and looked up.

"So they're letting broads be doctors now, are they?"

The new voice even had an accent that wasn't Derek's. It was nasal, with hard consonants, maybe from the East Coast. This wasn't an average case of schizophrenia, not if Derek was sharing his body with other personalities. This was looking more like dissociative ident.i.ty disorder. It was a rare and controversial diagnosis, even after the name was changed from multiple personality disorder to the more conciliatory DID, and I was going to catch flak from some of the more conservative doctors on staff for even suggesting it. But in the face of this kind of transformation, it seemed self-evident.

"Is that you, Derek?" I asked.

The smile he gave me made my stomach lurch. It was patently false, a twisted, angry leer.

"What do you you think, Maggie?" think, Maggie?"

"Okay, are you Edgar?"

The smile widened. "At your service."

Derek was doing a remarkable job of looking and moving like someone else, and I was both fascinated and repulsed. I'd never seen a real case of DID, and I was impressed by how thorough the transformation was. His fingers had stopped tapping. Instead they lay curled into loose fists in his lap. When he saw me looking at them he cracked a knuckle so loudly I winced.

"Are there others that you know of, Edgar, besides you and Derek?"

He made a noise I could only describe as a cackle. "You're on the wrong track, girly."

"Why don't you put me on the right track?" I smiled, although I knew my own attempt was as false as Edgar's.

The eyes grew even narrower, until they were barely slits. "I think you can figure it out, Maggie. You're a smart cookie, you understand these things. Even though you've tried to block it out with all this"-he waved a hand to take in the hospital room-"you know what's really going on here, don't you?"

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, lurched forward, and grabbed my hand. His fingers were freezing. Our eyes locked. I felt something so horrible that it froze every muscle in my body. I was deeply, truly frightened of this person, whoever he was.

Derek suddenly closed his eyes. His face twisted, contorted, and then relaxed. When he opened his eyes he was Derek again. He released my hand. The fear rushed out of me like air from a popped balloon, leaving my body p.r.i.c.kling with adrenaline.

"I'm sorry, Doctor, that you had to see that. I hope he didn't frighten you too much."

I blinked hard a couple of times. "No, it's fine. You don't have to apologize. And you, I mean he, didn't frighten me."

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair, the lie sitting between us like a big pink elephant.

"He knows everything. He can see into your soul."

Out of my peripheral vision I saw Derek's fingers begin anew their intricate dance across the sheets, and I felt immense relief.

I stood up, trying to control my shaky legs. "Well, I've got to go now, Mr. Fielding. I'll check in on you later."

Chapter 2.

The consultation room had a lovely view of the Golden Gate Bridge, but Derek's parents weren't seeing it, nor were they looking at me. Neil stared at the floor with a glazed expression on his narrow, sharp-featured face. Drina focused on the iPhone in her lap. She was close enough to me that I could see the screen. It held a photo of Derek in better days, standing with a guitar against a backdrop of trees and blue sky.

"He could have been rich by now," Drina was saying, "if he'd taken that recording contract with Atlantic."

Of the two of them, Drina looked the most like Derek. She had the same slender, feline grace, the golden undertone in her skin, and the doe eyes. He got his height from his father, however. Drina's head barely reached my shoulder.

"He wanted to stay independent. You know he's always been that way, Drina." Neil looked at me, seeking approval. "He refused to be a sellout, as he called it. He was going to do it his own way. And he did. He's got his own label, does his own distribution. He has his own recording studio, which he rents out to other musicians." He chewed his lip. "Or he did, until it burned down."

"That's when the symptoms started, when his studio burned down?" I asked, folding my empty hands. I never took notes during a therapy session, since I had an excellent memory.

"He barely got out alive. It was an old building and it went up like a box of matches," Neil said.

"Was he injured?"

"Smoke inhalation. He couldn't sing for three months." He winced at the memory. "He lived with us for a couple of months. He seemed okay. He was busy with the insurance, trying to replace everything, and finding a new place to live."

"Yes, it wasn't until he moved to that place, il castello. il castello." When Drina switched to Italian, her hands gestured expressively.

Neil sighed impatiently. "Let's not get melodramatic, Drina."

She snorted. "Always the scientist."

Time to redirect. "But you agree, Neil, his symptoms began when he moved to this new house?"

He nodded. "He found it on Craig's List; they were advertising for a caretaker. The place is a real castle, made of huge stones, with two towers, crenellations, the whole nine yards. It has a throne in the living room, I kid you not." He shook his head, causing his wispy, white-blond hair to flap like wings.

Drina twisted her engagement and wedding rings around her slender finger. "There's a malumore malumore there." She shivered. there." She shivered.

Neil clenched his jaw.

"What does malumore malumore mean, Drina?" I asked, mangling the p.r.o.nunciation. mean, Drina?" I asked, mangling the p.r.o.nunciation.

Her eyebrows knit. "It means a bad feeling. A bad spirit. You understand?"

As I looked into Drina's brown eyes, so similar to Derek's, I shivered, just as she was doing. I hadn't been able to get warm ever since I left Derek's room, even though I'd gone to the staff room and put on an extra sweater under my white coat. Much as I hated to admit it, I knew exactly what Drina was talking about.

After they left I placed a call to Dr. Frederick Kay, the chief of psychiatry. He didn't answer his phone, so I left a message. I was back in the nurses' station talking to a social worker about Mr. Slice, the homeless man, when he called me back. The social worker was used to these interruptions. She turned to her paperwork while I took the call.

"What's up, Mags?" He was driving his BMW convertible with the top down, judging from the sounds of wind and engine. I pictured him on the Golden Gate Bridge with his second wife, Trisha, her blond hair whipping around her face, as they headed to their waterfront estate on Belvedere Island. It was an enviable life, but not one I was destined for, although we shared the same profession. Dr. Kay had been on the cutting edge of research on serotonin uptake inhibitors, and when Prozac was approved by the FDA in 1987, Kay cashed in on a heavy investment in Eli Lilly stock.

"It's about a patient, Derek Fielding. Thirty-two-year-old white male, admitted last night after a suicide attempt."

"What's the differential diagnosis?"

"Rashad admitted him, diagnosed him as schizophrenic, but I think it's DID."

"Are you sure you want to go there?" Dr. Kay asked. "DID is quite a can of worms, diagnostically speaking. Did the patient display other personalities?"

"Yes, one other."

"That's very interesting. So, what are you recommending for treatment, Mags?"

I pulled my long brown hair out of its coated rubber band and twisted a lock around my finger. It was an old habit I indulged only when I was really stressed. "Actually, I'd like you to take his case, Dr. Kay. If you're not too busy."

Dr. Kay saw very few patients at this point in his career, and only those who presented with unusual symptoms or who might be good candidates for drug trials or studies that he was running. Derek Fielding was none of those things, so I needed a d.a.m.n good reason to turf him. The truth, that Derek Fielding had unsettled me, both as a woman and as a doctor, was not only a bad reason, it was a dangerous one.

"Why do I need to take this case? And talk fast, I'm heading into a tunnel."

Playing to a superior's vanity was a gambit that often met with success in the medical field. It probably worked in the rest of the world, as well.

"I have a feeling that his case is going to be particularly complex and delicate. I think the patient requires a doctor with your level of expertise."

His phone crackled.

"What did you say?" I asked. There was more crackling. I waited, tapping my foot and signing a couple of discharge reports the social worker slid under my pen.