“Mom.”
“You dropped it. I’m sorry, Isabel, but someone has to help you see the truth here. Maybe it’s tough love….”
Isabel closed her eyes, her mother’s familiar lecture a sad lullaby for the rest of the ride up the interstate.
* * *
There is no sign for Three Breezes, just a discreet number expensively etched into the low stone pillars flanking the wooded driveway. Katherine slows as she makes the turn, anticipating the speed bump just inside the entrance. While they ease over it, Isabel catches sight of a groundskeeper raking a few errant leaves underneath a magnolia tree. As their car passes, he glances up and ever so slightly tips his head to Isabel. She looks away.
Everything is in slow motion.
Within forty-five minutes her belongings are spread out on the floor of the nurses’ station. Everything she has brought with her to Three Breezes is out of her suitcase and on display for all to see. Her underwear, her raincoat, her nail clippers, needlepoint, tweezers. Everything.
What the hell is going on?
“You don’t have to stay here while we do this, Isabel.” The nurse is sitting cross-legged on the floor among Isabel’s things, Isabel’s own hairdryer in the nurse’s lap. “We explained to you when you checked in that everyone’s suitcase has to be inspected. It’s nothing personal. Some people find it easier to let us do this and then we bring them the things they’re allowed.”
“What do you mean allowed?”
“It’s for your own protection,” the nurse answers. “We just go through here and take anything that might be dangerous and we set it aside. After the inspection, we take all the things we set aside and we put them into a bin marked with your very own name on it….”
Why the hell is she talking down to me as if I’m in kindergarten? Can’t she see I’m nothing like the people here?
“…that bin then goes into the sharps closet,” the nurse continues, “and any time you need to use something from your bin you just need to come find one of us and we’ll help you out. You might find it easier, though, to let us do this by ourselves.”
The hell I’m leaving when she’s going through my stuff. Why is my hairdryer going into that pile with my pack of Lady Bic razors? I understand the razors—I’m not a complete idiot—but what’m I going to do…blow-dry myself to death? My needlepoint, too?
“Why are you taking my needlepoint?” Isabel asks through gritted teeth. “I’m making a pillow for my niece.” She doesn’t care what the needlepoint is for…why did I say that?
“It has a needle?” the nurse answers in up-speak. “You can work on it only if you’re supervised.”
Even the Oil of Olay moisturizer is confiscated. “It’s in a glass jar?” Up-speak again. Before Katherine can regain her own composure, Isabel catches her mother’s mouth gaping open—mirroring the horror Isabel feels closing in on her, suffocating her.
Her Hammacher Schlemmer sound machine is set in the “no” pile.
“Okay, that’s it. This is ridiculous.” Isabel feels the fury beginning to unleash. “Give me back my sound machine. It’s not sharp. It’s not dangerous.”
“Um, well, we need to run a test on it.”
“My ass you’re going to run a test on it.” Isabel’s voice is an octave higher than usual. Katherine puts a hand on her shoulder.
“Get your hand off my shoulder, Mom.” Isabel whips around to face her mother. “I know what that’s code for. That’s code for Shut up, Isabel. Mind your manners, Isabel.”
Katherine withdraws her hand quickly and takes a step back.
Astonished, Isabel asks, “What, Mom? You think I’m going to hurt you?”
Katherine, with eyebrows stretched across her forehead in mock fear, addresses her reply more to the nurse than to her daughter. “I just don’t know you anymore, Isabel. How do I know what you’re going to do next?”
Oh, this is rich. This is just perfect. Now she’s making them think I’m dangerous.
“What I’m trying to say, Isabel—” the nurse goes from friendly to firm “—is that we simply run a quick electrical test on it and we’ll return it to you by tonight. Tomorrow at the latest.”
I can’t take this. I can’t take this…
Isabel steadies herself in the doorway.
“We’ll get it right back to you.”
It’s not just the sound machine, you idiot. It’s everything. It’s this whole place. It’s this whole snake pit.
Isabel slides down the door frame, collapsing into a heap at the base of the doorway.
“All right, that’s enough, young lady.” Katherine is standing over her crumpled daughter. “Let’s go outside for a minute.”
“Ma’am?” It’s the inspection nurse again. “Um, she can’t go outside the unit anymore? She doesn’t have her privileges? She has to stay inside at all times.”
Isabel is stunned. The tears that had just begun to flow stop immediately.
“What?” She stares directly at the nurse, the fog that had enveloped her briefly dissipating.
“Um, you have checked in so you cannot go outside. Your caseworker will be here any minute to explain all this to you,” the nurse says as she returns to her inspection.
“Mom?” Isabel’s breathing becomes shallow as she reaches for her mother and tries to stand up at the same time.
“Yes?”
“Let’s go,” Isabel says simply. “Let’s get out of here. Do you have the car keys?” Katherine looks from her daughter to the nurse, unsure of what to do.
Another nurse, who until then had been sorting through files, turns to Isabel.
“All right, hon.” Her voice is craggy but gentle. Her tone betrays a hint of resignation, as if she has seen a thousand Isabels come and go. “Let’s go sit down for a second.” She tries to lead Isabel into the single room she has been assigned. Isabel pulls her arm away and focuses on her mother.
“Mom? The car keys?” Her stare is intense. Her lips are pursed and her throat is trying to choke back vomit. She sees, for the first time, that she is here to stay. Her mother is not even reaching into her cavernous bag to hunt for the keys.
Oh, my God. Why isn’t Mom doing anything? Why is she looking at me like that?
“Mom? Mom? Please, Mom. Please take me home.” Isabel is crying again as the nurse helps Katherine lead Isabel to her stark room with an ominous stain on the industrial wall-to-wall carpeting. “No. No, Mom. I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to come here, Mom. Seriously, I’ve changed my mind. Mom, do you hear me? Mom?”
When she sees that yelling is not advancing her case, Isabel begins to beg.
“Mom! Please, Mom…”
Isabel sees the same mix of dread, shock and disgust on her mother’s face she had seen two nights before in Manhattan. On that night Isabel had announced to her parents that she had decided to follow her doctor’s advice and was checking into a psychiatric facility in upstate New York, “before they check me in involuntarily.”
“Just give it twenty-four hours, Isabel,” the nurse is saying as she guides Isabel to the bed by the elbow. “Just twenty-four hours.”
* * *
As she