The Children on the Hill(30)

“So what did you tell her about B West?” Dr. Hutchins asked now.

Vi bit her lip. B West! Gran had written about it in her notebook.

There was a pause, while Gran inhaled, then blew out a slow, hissing breath. During important calls, or when she was trying to solve a difficult problem, she paced and smoked, said smoking helped her think. Vi listened hard, pressing her ear against the phone. “I told her we didn’t use B West for patients. Not anymore. That the basement is just for storage.”

This was followed by silence, another intake of breath, then an exhale. More pacing, the swooshing shuffle of Gran’s slippers across the wooden floor.

Eric moved toward Vi again, pulling at the phone, but Vi held tight.

“Then today she decided to try to see for herself. I caught her going down into the basement.”

Dr. Hutchins made a funny grunting sound.

Gran continued, her voice rising in exasperation. “I told her she needed to stick to her assigned area. She said she’d heard some of the patients talking. Telling stories about B West.”

“What kind of stories?” Dr. Hutchins asked.

“She wouldn’t say. But, Thad, I’m telling you right now, you need to put a leash on her, or we’ll have to let her go.”

Eric tugged at the phone again and Vi shoved him away. He tripped over one of the kitchen chairs, sending it crashing to the floor.

Vi kept the mouthpiece covered, held her breath.

Had Gran and Dr. Hutchins heard? Did they know Vi was listening?

Iris helped Eric up.

Vi kept her ear pressed against the phone, listening. It was quiet. Too quiet. Only a slight crackle in the line.

“I understand,” Dr. Hutchins said at last. “I’ll talk to Patty. She won’t ask anything about the basement again. You have my word.”

“Good,” Gran said, and hung up so hard Vi jumped.

Vi gently placed the handset back in the cradle of the kitchen phone.

“You idiot,” she said to her brother. “She could have heard us!”

“You could have let me listen,” Eric whined. “Who was she even talking to? Was it about Iris?”

“It was Dr. Hutchins. And I’m not sure exactly what they were talking about,” Vi said. “But I know what we have to do next.”

“What?” Eric asked.

“Get into the Inn and take a look around. Talk to the new nurse, Patty.”

Eric shook his head. “How are we going to get past Miss Evil?”

“We’ll find a way,” Vi said, looking at Iris. “We have to.”





The Helping Hand of God: The True Story of the Hillside Inn By Julia Tetreault, Dark Passages Press, 1980




Patty Sheridan was a twenty-two-year-old, hired right out of nursing school at the University of Vermont to come and work at the Hillside Inn.

She’s left nursing for good now, she says. She currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she waits tables and takes painting classes. She’s got a serious boyfriend, and they’ve just adopted a dog.

We met up in a café on the plaza in Santa Fe. Patty’s wearing denim overalls spattered with paint. Her hair is pulled back in a perky ponytail. She’s got bright blue eyes that seem to be watching everything at once. But I can see sorrow and regret there, just beneath the surface.

“No way would I go back to nursing,” she tells me, fiddling with a turquoise and silver bracelet she wears. “Or even back to Vermont. I had to get away, you know? Go somewhere where no one knew me, where no one had ever heard of the Hillside Inn.”

She explains that she should never have been hired there to begin with. Other than a two-week rotation during nursing school at the Vermont State Hospital, she had no experience in a psychiatric setting. “I had no business being there,” she says. “This was an elite institution, and I was totally green.”

Her uncle, Dr. Thadeus Hutchins, codirector of the Inn, got her the job.

“They offered me way more money than any of the entry-level positions I’d been thinking of taking,” she explains. “My friends, the gals I went to school with, they said I’d be crazy not to take the job. And the building… it’s beautiful, right? Did you know it’s on the National Register of Historic Places?”

I nod.

“It seemed like the dream job at first, you know? For the most part, our patients were pretty high functioning. And Dr. Hildreth was brilliant. Totally charismatic. When she walked into a room, everyone just stopped and focused on her. She was hot shit—a woman who wasn’t just a pioneering psychiatrist, but the director of a nationally recognized mental health center. She looked like a grandma—real tiny with this halo of gray hair, cat-eye glasses, always in a pantsuit with a pretty scarf—but when she spoke, everyone stopped to listen. The patients and staff all had so much respect for her. I felt so lucky to be there at first.”

She fiddles with her teacup, then explains that almost immediately she knew something wasn’t right at the Inn. As she speaks, she hunches over, shrinks down in her seat like she’s trying to disappear.

“I worked the overnights,” she says, voice low, confessional. “Patients would talk to me. Tell me stuff when the doctors and other staff weren’t around. I heard rumors.” She shakes her head, turns away. When she turns back, there are tears in her eyes. “Honestly, I blame myself. I could have stopped things much sooner. I should have gone to the police, or the board of nursing, someone—told them what I thought was going on. Then maybe things would have turned out differently. My role in it all keeps me up at night.”