“Joe.”
“Charlie? That you?”
“I need a favor. I need you to look up a number for me.”
Joe said nothing for a moment. “You need a number?”
It seemed to Charlie an exceptionally long time to process information, only to repeat the request. “Yes. That’s what I said,” he said.
“What number do you want, Charlie?”
“Rachel Evans,” Charlie said.
Charlie could hear the surprise in Joe’s voice. “What? Why do you want to talk with Dr. Evans?”
“Why do you care?” Charlie said.
“She’s my psychologist, Charlie. There’s a reason to care.”
“It’s research, Joe. Nothing more.”
Charlie had heard Rachel’s name mentioned dozens of times over the years. Joe was besotted with her. He praised her with a sense of wonderment typically reserved for the divine. And admittedly, since joining her experimental cognitive therapy program, Joe had made remarkable progress.
All Charlie wanted was an expert ear. Hers was the only name he had.
Joe gave him the number and Charlie thanked him.
“Are you going to come visit Mom?” Joe asked. “I’m sure she would appreciate it.”
“I can’t today, Joe,” Charlie said, hanging up without another word.
Research, Charlie thought. Yeah. That’s what it is. Research.
He shifted the car over into the fast lane and dialed Rachel’s number. The receptionist patched him through.
“Dr. Evans,” a friendly voice said.
“Dr. Evans, this is Charlie Giles, Joe’s brother. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
Chapter 8
The redbrick edifice of Walderman Mental Health rose from its perch atop a grassy knoll and cast an eerie, elongated shadow as the late-day sun settled in the west. Charlie drove his black BMW up the winding driveway. He noticed xenon headlights automatically turned on, as on-board sensors determined dusk was approaching. Charlie downshifted into first and glided his car to a gentle stop in the farthest corner space in a parking lot void of other vehicles.
He had been to this place only once before. It had been a few months after moving back east; Charlie had asked his mother if he could attend a group therapy session at Walderman Hospital. This had brought a look of surprise to her face, since she’d been asking him to participate in Joe’s therapy for years. In her mind, for Charlie to spring this on her out of the blue had been nothing short of a miracle. He had never admitted that the request was more selfish than selfless. He had found it embarrassing to live so close to Joe and still have the same uneasiness he remembered feeling as a boy.
Doctors had diagnosed Joe as epileptic just after Charlie’s eighth birthday. That disease hadn’t disturbed Charlie in the least. Perhaps because his brother’s seizures were internal events, more like an altered mental state. Joe didn’t convulse when he seized, the way a boy in Charlie’s school had who was also epileptic. Unlike that boy’s, Joe’s eyes didn’t roll back in his head; nobody had to stick something into his mouth to keep him from swallowing his tongue. The only clue Joe was even having a seizure was his trancelike detachment.
The schizophrenia, diagnosed years later, however, was far less discreet and had permeated every facet of Charlie’s relationship with Joe. Joe would hear voices, complain of strangers reading his thoughts, or express fear that he was being followed. Sometimes his brother would spontaneously burst out into song or converse bizarrely with a stranger, which always embarrassed Charlie. For a fifteen-year-old boy, Joe’s breakdown had been at first haunting, soon scary, and had ultimately driven a wedge between the once close siblings.
It had angered Charlie to feel so apprehensive, scared even, around Joe. He had interpreted those feelings as a sign of weakness in himself. He’d known his fear was irrational, but rather than try to overcome it, Charlie had taken another approach—avoidance. It was a passive solution, but an effective one as well.
Charlie had attended a group therapy session at Walderman Hospital in an effort to substitute his long-standing apathy with empathy. It was then that Charlie had found himself in a small, windowless basement room with about eight patients, two doctors, and a half dozen or so relatives.
Claustrophobia had overwhelmed him. Trying to rein in his anxiety, Charlie had stood while the others took their seats. He’d gone over to a small kitchenette and poured himself a cup of lukewarm coffee in a Styrofoam cup, added some Coffee-mate, and, when glances from the staff made it clear that his standing was a distraction, found a seat closest to the door.
Throughout the hour-and-a-half-long session, he hadn’t listened to a word. For the life of him, he wouldn’t be able to recall one story of hope, sadness, or survival. Instead he’d focused on how some of the patients fidgeted in their seats, and how one man stood up on his chair and shouted out his name to get everyone’s attention. Another just kept muttering to himself. They’d all looked so helpless, unclean, and lost.
And Joe, who would slap the back of the folding chair in front of him as if it were a drum, his way of applauding for each person after they spoke, had evoked a familiar sense of shame.
The experiment had failed miserably, and Charlie had taken nothing away from the session, except the decision that he’d never set foot in Walderman again.
That had been almost two years ago. It felt like a lifetime.
The crisp fall air caressed Charlie’s face as he stepped from the car. The leaves had just begun their retreat from green to orange and red. It was nature’s normal course of life, and he noticed the change with some sadness. Normality was something Charlie could no longer take for granted. He appreciated the simple beauty in a way he hadn’t since he was a boy.
An empty pit formed in his stomach as he started toward the entrance. Charlie breathed in a deep sigh and looked around the minimally landscaped grounds, wary of others who might be observing his approach. For many, the short walk across the parking lot and along the slate-and-gravel path to the large wooden double door entrance was a bridge back to a life lost, a way to recapture the essence of being alive, to learn to embrace the simple joys of living again. But for Charlie, it was a journey into the blackest unknown, a retreat from the reality he had once thought unshakable.
Charlie passed through the entrance into a large foyer identified by a black-and-gold-leaf plaque as Saunders Hall. Nothing about the main foyer was clinical. The regality of it made it difficult for Charlie to believe he was even inside a mental health hospital. He had never been to this building before. The group therapy session he’d attended a few years back had been held in a much smaller campus building, about a quarter mile away. This was a mansion. It had been donated to the state by a successful psychologist and his wife, under the condition that it be used solely for the purpose of mental health treatment. The interior of Walderman Mental Health echoed a bygone era of civility and grace, and Charlie could imagine that it had once been the epicenter for the social elite. It would have made an elegant home to entertain and showcase jewelry, evening gowns, and culinary extravaganzas.
He marched along the checkered marble floor, past leather sitting chairs and mahogany tables that seemed swallowed by the cavernous, high ceilings. On the far right wall, directly across from a wide winding staircase leading to the second floor, was a mahogany reception desk. Charlie crossed toward it, his footsteps echoing loudly as he approached. The receptionist kept a firm gaze on him as he neared. What he would normally construe as flattery here seemed tainted with judgment. It would be better, he thought, if the place were bustling with patients and physicians. At least it would provide him some cover. He wouldn’t have to be the center of her attention.
She