When She Was Bad Part 6

But as Lilah tightens the towel under her armpits and steps out of the bathroom-another oddity, there's no bathroom door-the room door slides open to admit a powerful-looking woman in a white polo shirt, white duck trousers, and a mullet haircut. Lilah, who is nearsighted but too vain to wear eyegla.s.ses, squints at the plastic tag on the woman's breast. She can just make out the name-Patricia Benoit-but the letters below it are a blur.

Probably a maid, thinks Lilah. And if it's true what they say-the butcher they are, the sweeter the tongue-she probably gives some heavenly head. "Is that Ben-oyt or Ben-wa?" She lets a giggle escape.

"Ben-oyt-but you can call me Patty. What's so funny?"

"I was thinking about ben-wa b.a.l.l.s. You ever heard of them? They're these like, s.e.x toys, you stick 'em inside your-"

"Oh, right, right." Patty colors. "I've heard of them, I just didn't know that's what they were called."

"Ever use 'em?" asks Lilah, slyly, as she brushes past the much larger woman; her damp feet leave tidy little Robinson Crusoe footprints on the carpet as she crosses the room to examine the clothes folded and stacked in the waist-high blond dresser, which has recessed shelves instead of drawers.

Patty lets the question drop. She's worked with DID patients before, and some of them-not Lyssy, of course-she's suspected of feigning the disorder either knowingly or unknowingly. It was fun for them to impersonate different characters, they received lots of attention, and it was also a nifty way to deflect responsibility for their actions. Or at least, it was nifty until Dr. Corder got hold of them.

But this Lily DeVries is for real-after watching the alter switch in the shower on the security monitor at the nurses' station, Patty has no doubt of that. Not even Jody Foster, whom Patty idolizes, is that good an actress. Lily hasn't just changed her affect or adopted a set of mannerisms, like the fakers do-the very way she inhabits her body is strikingly different.

This alter, the towel-clad, gutter-mouthed tramp swearing quietly over the selection of clothes available to her, seems entirely comfortable with her physicality. She carries her shoulders low; her walk is liquid and balanced, her hips loose and swaying, and when she unwraps her long brown-black hair and hunkers down on her heels to examine the clothes on the bottom shelf, she reminds Patty of one of Gauguin's tantalizingly unself-conscious Polynesian girls.

Having been fully briefed by Dr. Corder this morning, and having reviewed the so-called "map" of alters drawn up by Lily's former psychiatrist, Patty now has a reasonably good idea who this one is. Name: Lilah; alter cla.s.s: promiscuous; age: actual; self-image: actual; affect: s.e.xually provocative.

"Are you here to make up the room?" asks Lilah, still hunkered down on her heels.

"No, I was here to escort you down to the dining hall," says Patty, with an emphasis on the past tense.

Escort, Lilah thinks. This must be one h.e.l.l of a ritzy place. "Want to help me work up an appet.i.te?" She rises, letting the towel fall. Stark naked, she holds her hands out at her side, as if to say, here I am, and I'm all yours if you want me.

"That is so not happening, young lady." Patty looks down at the carpet; she'd have turned down the offer even if she hadn't known about the hidden security cameras. Taking s.e.xual advantage of one of her charges, even one as extraordinarily desirable and apparently willing as Lilah, is simply unthinkable for Patty.

Nevertheless, she has the feeling that this latest acquisition, the searing image of the naked girl offering herself, has just acceded to the permanent collection in her private museum of erotic images; she also has the feeling that this was precisely Lilah's intention. "I'll be right back," she tells her charge.

Alone again, Lilah selects a sweatshirt and a pair of panties and jeans at random-while the place may be ritzy, judging from the selection of clothes it's also informal-but just as she finishes changing into them, the door slides open again and Patty announces a change in plans.

"Time to begin your therapy," she says, tossing Lilah a green hospital gown as the door slides closed behind her. "Take those off, put this on."

Therapy? thinks Lilah. Then she reads the fine print-PSYCH. TECH.-on Patty's name tag and suddenly fear floods her system. A desperate plan begins to take shape. "Could I have a little privacy to get dressed, please?"

"Now it's privacy you want?" Patty turns away and punches her security code into the keypad. As the door begins to slide open, Lilah dashes across the room, jukes right, then left, and ducks under Patty's flailing arm. She races down a long green corridor toward a door with a breaker bar and a sign reading Emergency Exit Only, unable to shake the eerie sensation that she's done this before-and not so long ago, either.

Heads turn as Lilah pa.s.ses the nurses' station; the faces are white and blank as night-blooming flowers. She hits the breaker bar, crashes through the door, and bolts barefoot down a flight of stairs.

But the door on the next landing is locked. And here's Patty lumbering down the stairs after her, red-faced and puffing, her arms mottled and meaty-looking as two legs of lamb, spread wide to block Lilah's retreat. "Come on now, oh come on," she's saying, in a voice less of anger than of schoolmarmish annoyance.

Joining Patty on the stairs is another ma.s.sive, white-clad figure who fills his polo shirt like the Mighty Hulk. If this is a dream, I'd really like to wake up now, thinks Lilah. It sure feels like a dream, the way she's rooted to the landing, frozen in place as the two close in on her, looking nightmarishly similar in their white uniforms, like Tweedledee and Tweedledum in a madhouse production of Alice in Wonderland.

They flank her, each taking an arm, and walk her back up the stairs and down the corridor; this time the nurses all turn away busily as they pa.s.s the desk. Patty accompanies Lilah into the peach-colored room while her male counterpart-his name tag reads simply, Wally-waits outside. "Let's try this again," says Patty, picking up the discarded hospital gown and shoving it firmly into Lilah's hands.

3.

Hotel dining room. White tablecloths, tinkle of gla.s.s and clatter of tableware, muted breakfast conversations. Striking vistas of Portland through tinted plate-gla.s.s windows. From the entrance alcove, Pender scanned the premises and spotted Irene Cogan, wearing a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar, sitting alone reading the Oregonian and picking desultorily at a grapefruit.

He crossed the room, his head pounding with every footfall, despite the double padding of his rubber-soled Hush Puppies on a thick gray carpet patterned with the hotel chain's interlocking initials in burgundy. "Mind if I join you?"

"I like your outfit," she said, gesturing graciously toward the empty chair across from her. He was wearing a white-on-white guayabera shirttails-out over not-yet-rumpled brown slacks. "Have we been invited to a Mexican wedding?"

"Har de har har," said Pender, whose interview at the TPP offices down by the warehouse district was to begin in less than an hour and was expected to take all day. He turned to the hovering, white-jacketed waiter. "Screwdriver. Light on the oj, heavy on the Stoli. If it takes, I may consider solid food."

"Hungover?" asked Irene, after the waiter left.

"Aaaargh! As Charlie Brown used to say."

"Serves you right."

"For what?"

"For all the booze you drank last night, what else?"

"Oh, that," replied Pender, then: "Look, about last night..."

She held up both hands; two silver bracelets jingled as they slid down her long slender wrist. "Please, let's not talk about it, okay?"

From that high point, the conversation flagged. Irene dissected her grapefruit and skimmed the newspaper; Pender sipped at his orange-tinted Stoli and gazed out the window at the cityscape below. "I'm sure glad this didn't turn out awkward," he said after a few minutes.

"Me too," said Irene over the top of the newspaper. Then she folded it and slipped it into her gigantic Coach bag. "I keep thinking I ought to give Lily a call just to see how she's doing. I know it's inappropriate, but-"

"Why inappropriate? I mean, think of that poor kid, waking up in a strange place, not knowing anybody. And it's probably just starting to sink in about her grandparents-of course you should call her, why shouldn't you?"

Because she's no longer my patient, thought Irene. Then she reminded herself that as far as her relationship with Lily was concerned, she'd crossed that line a long time ago. "You know, I think I will," she told Pender.

"Tell her Uncle Pen says hi."

4.

"Where are we going? Where are you taking me?"

No answer. Dressed in an open-backed green gown with strings in back that tie in front and paper slippers that keep threatening to slide off, Lilah shuffles down the long green corridor, flanked by a white-clad psych tech on either side. When they reach the elevator, Mullet Woman punches in the security code and steps inside first, while Hulk follows Lilah. Exiting one floor below, they reverse the process, then flank Lilah again and march her down another long green corridor, this one two-toned with a waist-high, olive-colored wainscoting, to a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

The door opens, revealing a large tiled room dominated by an enormous padded table in the shape of a cross; it looks more like a medieval torture device than a piece of furniture. Beside it, seated behind a gray metal desk, is a plumpish, bespectacled man in a white lab coat, his reddish-brown hair combed back in waves from a high round forehead. He gestures toward the empty wooden chair across the desk, politely asks her to take a seat. She shakes off the hands of her escorts, puts a little extra hip swivel into her walk as she crosses the room.

"Do you know who I am?" is his first question.

She draws the hospital gown tightly around her, shrugs noncommittally.

"Ever seen me before?"

"Not that I know of." A seductive smile. "You are kinda cute, though."

He's not biting. "What's your name?"

"Lilah."

"Last name?"

She frowns prettily. "Sorry-sometimes I have trouble remembering things."

"Do you know where you are?"

"Some kind of mental hospital?"

"Do you know what day it is?"

She shrugs, causing the hospital gown to fall open. His eyes flicker downward-only for a moment, but a quickening of his breath gives her a sense of power. She leans forward provocatively. "Look, whoever you are, could we talk in private for a couple minutes?"

"No, we can't." He breaks eye contact, types something onto a laptop computer on the desk, then looks up again. "Just a few more questions. You were right about this being a mental hospital-do you have any idea why you're here?"

Both the room and the man are too chilly for her to go around with her b.o.o.bs hanging out. Lilah pulls the lapels of her hospital gown closed again. "Because your goons over there wouldn't let me leave."

"I mean why you were brought here in the first place."

"I don't know. Amnesia, maybe?" She waits for him to finish typing another note into the laptop. "Well, am I right?"

"You're experiencing some loss of memory, then?"

"Yeah, I got CRS-can't remember s.h.i.t."

"Tell me the last memories you do have-before coming here, that is."

"Well there was this biker, he picked me up in Seaside, I was pretending to be a hooker-I do that sometimes, just for the fun of it.... "

She tells him the rest readily enough-Lilah feels no sense of shame where s.e.xual matters are concerned. When she finishes, he closes the notebook, then does something that takes her completely by surprise: he leans earnestly across the table and stares hard into her eyes, saying, "Lily? Lily, if you're there...if you can hear me...if you're in any way conscious...if you have any conscious control over any of this...if any of this alter switching is in any way voluntary to any extent, now's the time to speak up. Believe me, n.o.body here is going to think less of you."

Lilah draws back, tearing her eyes from his searching gaze. "He's the crazy one, not me," she tells Mullet Woman over her shoulder.

But Mullet Woman's not looking at Lilah, she's looking over Lilah's head at the crazy doctor, who sighs, blows the air out like a man who's just made a tough decision, then nods toward the cross-shaped table.

"No way," says Lilah. "No f.u.c.king way."

Yes f.u.c.king way. Hulk and Mullet Woman each take an arm and lift her onto the table as easily as if she were a scarecrow, then force her arms away from her sides and fasten her wrists to the crosspieces with fleece-lined clamps. "Help me," she screams, kicking futilely as strong arms yank her legs out straight and clamp her ankles to the table. "Please somebody, help-"

Something is forced between her teeth, cutting her off in mid-scream. She tastes rubber. Another fleece-lined clamp swings over her forehead, clicks into place to immobilize her head. Out of the corner of her eye she glimpses the man in the white coat fiddling with the k.n.o.bs of a machine about the size of a metal briefcase. Then he turns back from the machine and holds a syringe up to the light.

"You're going to be taking a little nap now," he tells Lilah, patting the inside of her elbow for a vein. "That's all, just a little nap."

She feels the needle sliding in, then a burning sensation in the crook of her arm. Please, somebody help me, she thinks. Somebody, anybody....

5.

Once the short-acting sedative had taken hold, Alan Corder injected his patient with an even shorter-acting neuromuscular blocker known as succinylcholine-brand name, Anectine-to prevent her from breaking any bones while her body was convulsing.

Then an oxygen mask was placed over her nose and mouth, a conducting jelly rubbed on her temples, and the electrodes attached. "Let's clear now," Corder said quietly. Patty and Wally stepped back from the table; Corder pushed the green b.u.t.ton on the front of the MECTA device, and silently, without drama, one hundred joules of electricity-about enough current to light a 110-watt bulb-pa.s.sed down the leads into the electrodes, and thence to the patient's brain, for a duration of one second.

The resulting grand mal lasted thirty endless seconds. Patty looked as though she wanted to throw herself across Lily's thrashing body to keep her from hurting herself. Corder put his hand on Patty's arm and smiled rea.s.suringly. "She doesn't feel a thing, she won't remember a thing."

"I know, it's just..."

"I know."

Then it was over-nothing to do but wait.

Most laymen, and many mental health professionals, think of electroshock therapy, formally known as ECT, or electroconvulsive therapy, as barbaric and archaic-One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and all that. But for some psychiatrists, ECT is a valuable tool for treating major depressive and bipolar disorders: it's estimated that despite the opposition of a well-organized, patient-led anti-ECT movement, one hundred thousand patients a year receive electroshock treatments in the United States alone.

Alan Corder had first discovered the efficacy of ECT in treating dissociative ident.i.ty disorder in the accidental fashion common to so many other scientific breakthroughs. Four years earlier, treating a severely depressed, medication-resistant female patient with several suicide attempts behind her, he decided to try electroshock as a last resort. The results were immediate and spectacular-the patient came out of the anesthetic feeling absolutely chipper.

But she was also an entirely different personality. At first Corder was afraid that what appeared to be a case of iatrogenic (therapist-induced) DID was an unwanted side effect of the electroshock. In a follow-up hypnotherapy session, however, he was able to determine that the depressive personality had been an alter all along-it wasn't depressive disorder the patient had been suffering from, but rather dissociative ident.i.ty disorder. And after the electroshock, that particular alter never appeared again.

That was the breakthrough Corder been hoping for. He didn't pretend to know exactly how or why it worked-but then, n.o.body knows exactly how ECT worked on those other disorders, either. So he continued to treat his patient for DID-every time another alter surfaced, it was back to the ECT table for her. And shortly after Patient One had been discharged as cured, Patient Two, Ulysses Maxwell, arrived at Reed-Chase.

In many ways, Maxwell was the perfect guinea pig for Corder. He arrived with a definitive diagnosis of DID from Irene Cogan, one of the country's leading experts in the field, and had no relatives to ask questions or raise a fuss. Nor was there much difficulty identifying Maxwell's alters-each was clearly defined and easily delineated, and one by one, as soon as they appeared, they were dispatched to the cross-shaped table in the ECT room to be shocked out of existence.

That's how it worked with the first several alters, anyway-the malevolent host alter who called himself Max proved strong enough to resist the initial treatments. But Corder, to whom alters were not people but symptoms, was pitiless, stepping up the voltage with every successive treatment, until finally, after a bilateral jolt of close to 150 joules (roughly the equivalent in foot-pound energy of a 110-pound weight being dropped on a person's head from a height of twelve inches), Max gave up the ghost-or whatever alters did when they ceased to manifest. Then there was only Lyssy.

Obviously, with such a complete remission, there was no point in treating him for DID. Corder could of course have attempted to treat Lyssy's amnesia, could have regressed him to foster recollection. But for what benefit, and at what risk? The only benefit, if one could even call it that, would have been to instill a sense of remorse in Lyssy; the risk would be inducing a recurrence of the DID.

So Corder made the decision to treat the developmental rather than the dissociative disorder, to progress Lyssy rather than regress him, and the results spoke for themselves. Over the course of the next two years, using a modified homeschooling Internet curriculum augmented with outside tutors, Corder brought Lyssy forward from kindergarten through high school, until by now he was operating at an adult level, intellectually if not emotionally or socially; it was in furtherance of Lyssy's social development that Corder had initiated the visits with his own family.

Following his success with Maxwell, Corder had treated two more DID patients with ECT, without asking permission, but with equally spectacular results, and eventually word began going around the DID community, via websites and chat rooms, that something important was going on at the Reed-Chase Inst.i.tute.

But secrecy was still of paramount importance. The anti-ECT lobby was not just vocal, it was loud and growing increasingly influential-the city of Berkeley, California, for instance, had officially (and illegally, as it proved) attempted to ban electroshock therapy within city limits. And by employing ECT for a disorder other than the ones for which its use had been approved by the American Psychiatric a.s.sociation, Corder knew he was risking not just his reputation, but possibly even his license.

Fortunately, neither Lyssy nor the other patients Corder had successfully treated with ECT had any idea how their cures had been accomplished-that knowledge had disappeared along with the alters who had undergone the procedure.

And that was the way Corder intended to keep it until he had compiled such a demonstrable record of successes that even the most virulent ECT critics would be unable to deny the efficacy of the treatment-and even then, he expected there would be a h.e.l.l of a battle when word finally did get out....