I winced as if I’d been scolded.
She patted my forearm. “We don’t use first names on hospital grounds. This way it’s tougher for former patients to Google us and drop by our homes in the evening.”
Before I could respond, her phone buzzed. She read the screen and started typing with her thumbs. I went back to scanning the lecture hall.
Dr. Bishop had emailed me and told me she’d be there. I knew a few things about her. I knew what she looked like from the first time we had met a decade and a half earlier. I knew what her voice sounded like over the telephone and what it sounded like in my head without the telephone’s electrostatic buzz. I knew she used Verdana as her chosen email font and had email stationary with a George Burns quote that said, “The most important thing is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” None of these things helped me to pick her out among the nurses and medical doctors and psychiatrists and psychologists and administrative assistants populating this meeting. All I saw was a bunch of too-ordinary-looking employees: sweaters and slacks and big cups of coffee and worn down briefcases and hard shoes and falling socks.
In the room behind me, the chief of staff and a couple of IT guys worked furiously to get the computer and overhead projector to speak to each other. The screen at the front of the room flickered with their successes and failures. Most of the staff chatted with each other or talked on their phones or texted. At least three women knitted. Another woman read a paperback. She was brutal about it, folding it in half at the spine as if it were a magazine, really taxing the glue that bound the paper together.
Amidst this scene, The Professor appeared. Who could he be but a professor, with his bow tie, starched dress shirt, v-neck sweater vest that was maroon (of all colors), blue blazer, pleated tan slacks, argyle socks, and fuzzy bedroom slippers? He walked to the front of the lecture hall, stood in front of the podium, mimed the actions of opening a briefcase and placing his notes on the podium, and said, “Good morning, class.”
The staff quieted down somewhat. A low murmur buzzed through the hall. Everyone looked at everyone else, perhaps waiting for someone to do something. Glances ricocheted off one another. No one took action.
The Professor spread his arms as if to hug the entire hall and boomed, “Can I get a huzzah?”
One of the knitters paused mid-stitch to shout back, “Huzzah!”
“All right!” The Professor stepped away from the podium. “One student is awake this morning. And it’s okay if you’re half-asleep because we’re here to talk about that realm between sleeping and waking.” He put his arms behind his back and paced in front of the screen. The light of the overhead projector flickered on. It broadcast an error message, then faded away. The Professor drifted into a lecture about Chuang-tzu and his famous butterfly dream. The story was familiar to me and far less interesting than The Professor’s conviction. He seemed convinced that he was really in front of a classroom, really teaching a class at this moment.
I have to say I got a little excited. This was exactly the type of madness I was hoping to find with my new job at a psych hospital. Several of the staff were less amused. They pulled out cell phones and put their thumbs to work, either dialing or texting psych techs. Dr. Benengeli leaned over and whispered, “Well, this wasn’t on the agenda.”
“Should I go down and put a stop to this? Escort this guy somewhere?” I asked.
She shook her head and patted my knee. “Relax. Sometimes things don’t go as planned.”
I met her glance and smiled. How could I not? Look at those eyes. Such a deep, rich brown, like an old rosewood fretboard.
The Professor continued his lecture. He recited a Chuang-tzu poem:
“The one who dreams of drinking wine,
In the morning may be crying.
The one who dreams of crying,
In the morning may go hunting.”
I actually recognized this poem. I’d majored in Religion, with a focus on Eastern Studies way back in the college days. The final lines of the poem rang in my head. I raised my hand. The Professor pointed at me. “Yes? You in the back row.”
I recited the last two lines: “This kind of talk / Its name is ‘bizarre.’”
Dr. Benengeli whispered in my ear, “You said it.”
Several staff members shot me dirty looks.
The Professor smiled and said, “Someone did his homework.”
Before he could say more, the screen behind him reflected the image of a PowerPoint display: a fake notebook page with a pencil in the corner and a computerized script reading Happy New Year!
Another man emerged from a doorway in the front of the lecture hall, just to the left of the screen. He wore the uniform—boots, blue slacks, work shirt, and polyester jacket—of a Roads and Grounds employee. He walked up to The Professor, touched him gently on the elbow, and muttered in his ear. The Professor nodded. “I apologize,” he told us. “Today’s class will be cancelled. Be sure to consult the syllabus for Thursday’s reading.”
The Professor and the Roads and Grounds guy headed for the exit. A psych tech in his scrubs waited there. The three walked into the crisp January day.
The meeting ended at 10:30, which gave me more than six hours to figure out what to do on my first day of work. The staff ambled out of the lecture hall. I sat there searching for a bright idea and waiting for Dr. Bishop. When neither emerged, I moseyed out of the hall, too.
I wasn’t prepared for the winter day that greeted me outside. It was one of those coastal Southern California days that looks so beautiful when you see it through a window but when you step into it, it’s wet and cold. The wind cut through my skin. I wasn’t wearing the right clothes for this. Or more precisely, I did own the right clothes. I had jeans and hoodies and even a leather motorcycle jacket with a rusty X-Ray Spex pin on the lapel, but none of these were going to help on my first day of work in a professional setting. And though I’d been more or less a “professional” during my whole time working at the community space in Fresno, I was my own boss. I could dress however I wanted. This new job at an institution was different. I felt like I needed a uniform of sorts. So I dug out my tan Dickies slacks and a white dress shirt that someone had left at my house years ago. The shirt hung loose on me in that hand-me-down way. I probably didn’t look very professional. I probably looked like my dad was a professional and I raided his closet, dressing up as him for Halloween. My brown loafers had dust in the seams.
Dr. Benengeli looked professional. She came up to me, warm and confident on this January day, wearing a stylish wool pea coat she’d probably picked up in the juniors’ section of an upscale department store. She said to me, “You look lost.”
“I am, a little,” I said.
“A psych hospital is a bad place to look lost. Someone will find a room for you, sooner or later.”
And don’t you know that’s exactly what I was thinking.
Dr. Benengeli nodded vaguely in the direction of some buildings to the east of the hospital. “Come on, I’ll show you to your office.”
“I’m waiting for Dr. Bishop,” I said.
She nodded. “Dr. Bishop isn’t here today. She asked me to show you around.”
I paused a second to chew over this information. Dr. Benengeli started walking without me. I said, “Wait.” She stopped walking and turned to face me. “If you’re supposed to show me around, why’d you let me wander out here, lost?”
She smiled. “Just to mess with you,” she said. Those beautiful eyes of hers made her smile all the more sinister.
We walked together across the hospital campus. The grounds were a bit of an anomaly