Brock laid his hand softly on her shoulder. “I love you. I’ll always love you.” He tried to turn her to face him, but she wouldn’t move. “I can’t be married to you anymore.”
“Did something happen? Did I do something wrong?”
“It’s not you, it’s me.”
She wanted to smack him then. She deserved better than a cliché. “Then let’s work on you. Let’s make you better.”
“I have to go now.” He leaned in close and kissed her cheek from behind. His hand lingered on her shoulder for a moment before he turned away.
Erika remained in the closet for hours. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t speak. She was terrified of going back into their bedroom and finding Brock gone.
“Erika? Are you all right, Sugar?” Brock’s mom was waving a hand in front of her tear-stained face. “I’ve been calling you for ten minutes. I’ve been standing here for five. Are you all right?”
“Brock?” Erika screamed, running from the closet. She dashed next door to his walk-in closet, frantically flipping on the light and counting his suits. If he didn’t take his suits, he would be back.
“Erika?”
“Seven are missing.”
“Seven what are missing?”
She dropped to her knees in a heap and cried for what seemed like another hour. Brock’s mother held her, rocking her and trying to calm her enough to find out what was wrong.
“Mom, Brock left me.”
His mother laughed.
“He’s gone.”
“Now, that’s absurd.” Disbelieving, she climbed to her feet and limped out of the closet. A little while later she returned to where she’d left Erika. “He’s not answering his phone. We’ll wait until he gets home. He’ll clear this all up.”
“He packed his bags.”
“You must have misunderstood. You know he’s always going to some conference or another. You got your signals crossed is all.” She gathered Erika in her arms. “We’ll just wait a little while and call him back so he can explain.”
They waited hours, but Brock never answered his phone.
“We’ll talk to him about this over breakfast,” Mom said, sounding less sure as the hours rolled by.
They waited seven months of breakfasts, but Brock never cleared it up.
Brock’s announcement last night was as sudden as his leaving seven months ago. He wanted to move back in, but he never said he wanted to put their marriage back together. He was clear divorce wasn’t an option, but what was he offering? She reran the dinner scene over and over in her head, making it through the day on autopilot. It was no wonder she was distracted and made a mistake that could have caused her to be harmed.
It was a relief when the nurse announced her last patient of the day. Erika wanted to go home and take a hot bath before climbing into bed and hiding underneath the covers. She didn’t know if she would find Brock at the house, which was another source of anxiety. She didn’t think she could make it through another dinner with him. Her emotions were all over the place, hating him one moment, but still loving him all the others.
Danny had become her patient on his nineteenth birthday on referral from his pediatrician. A year later she suspected a new onset of schizophrenia and referred him for psychological testing. The last year had been hard for Danny, trying to weather the growing pains of being a teenager while finding a healthy balance of medications to control his behavior.
“He’s out of control again,” Danny’s mother said when Erika entered the exam room.
“Tell me what’s going on.”
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here!” Danny jumped down from the exam table and began pacing the room, mumbling under his breath. He was disheveled, his clothing soiled and wrinkled. He smelled as if he hadn’t washed in weeks. His overly long blond hair was stringy and matted. When Danny went into crisis mode, his appearance was always the first thing to go.
“Dr. Johnson is trying to help you, Danny.” His mother looked haggard and scared. His father left soon after Danny was diagnosed, and she’d been carrying the entire parenting burden. “He’s been seeing things again,” she said to Erika.
Danny continued to pace, mumbling rapidly.
“Are you taking your medications?” Erika asked him.
He whirled on her. “Those medicines make me feel sleepy all the time. And I can’t hear the warnings.”
“What warnings?”
“God tells me when the evil angels are coming,” he answered, his pacing becoming more rapid in the tiny exam room.
“We should talk about other things we can do to help you feel better,” Erika offered.
“You want to put me away again. I’m not going back to that hellhole.” He began yanking drawers open, disregarding his mother’s frantic pleas to calm down. Finding what he wanted, he grabbed a scalpel and turned on Erika and his mother. “I’ll kill you if you try to put me back in that place! There are too many evil angels there! The devil is waiting for me!”
The scene quickly became chaotic. Ginnifer overheard the disturbance from the exam room next door, astutely realizing she should call for help before she tried to intervene. Erika pulled Danny’s mother into the corner, huddling together while a scalpel-wielding Danny blocked the door.
She tried to console the mother because her wailing only seemed to upset Danny more. Her attention was divided between the two as she scolded herself for being so distracted she’d been careless. She’d witnessed Danny’s violent tendencies before—in the form of his mother’s broken arm. She’d seen the signs in Danny before, knew how violent he could get, yet she’d allowed herself to be placed in a vulnerable position. There were methods of verbal deescalation, of talking him down that had worked in the past, but Erika’s mind was so scattered, she couldn’t recall any of them now.
Bradley was the first security officer through the exam room door. He was a hawking man with an intimidating physique and a heart of gold. A retired police officer, he’d had to take early retirement because of a nasty excessive force lawsuit. He was older now, but still in good shape. A handsome man with a thick beard he used to hide his age lines, he was sweet on Ginnifer.
Bradley crashed into the room, striking Danny with the door and putting him off balance enough to wrestle the scalpel away. Once Bradley had the weapon, three more officers crashed in, subduing Danny. Danny fought with the strength of ten men while shouting curses at his mother for condemning him to the wrath of the evil angels. They handcuffed him because they had no other way to control him. He was wiry and strong, completely possessed by an irrational need to escape in order to save his life. As the three officers pinned him to the floor, Bradley called for another officer to bring a stretcher so Danny could be transported to the emergency room in the main building of the hospital.
“Everyone okay?” Bradley asked, his eyes trained on Ginnifer.
“We’re good. Thanks for getting here so fast.” Ginnifer joined Erika in picking Danny’s mother up from the floor.
“I’m so sorry, Dr. Johnson. He’s such a handful. I try to make sure he takes his medicine, but—”
“It’s okay,” Erika assured her. “You have a lot to deal with.”
“They’ll keep him?” she asked, referring to the inpatient psych unit.
“You’ll have to fill out the papers.”
Danny’s voice rose over every noise in the room, shouting colorful curse words at his mother,