A-Splendid-Ruin(58)

The bells rang again. Gould, who, besides her long face was skinny and pale, with ropy arms, took me to my examination. “Dr. Scopes for you today.”

“Who’s Dr. Scopes?”

“The assistant to the super.” Then she offered a helpful “He likes for you to be nice.”

My spirits rose at the thought of someone different. Someone who might understand. She took me to an office with only an examination table and sparsely filled bookshelves. Dr. Scopes was younger than Dr. Madison, bearded and handsome, with tired and compassionate blue eyes.

I sat on the edge of the table as he glanced over a folder. “May Kimble,” he read, and then said, as if he’d asked the question thousands of times, “Can you tell me why you’re here, Miss Kimble?”

How exactly did one sound sane? I drew myself up straight and answered him plainly. “The reason I was sent here are lies, Dr. Scopes.”

He inhaled deeply. “I see.”

The wrong thing, then. I tried again. “That is, my uncle believes I am mad, but I can assure you that is not the case. I have been wrongly accused of murder.”

He scrawled something.

“I have an inheritance. I believe my uncle had me committed so that he might take it for himself.”

“What has that to do with murder, Miss Kimble?”

“My aunt tried to warn me. I believe my uncle killed her for it.” I spoke urgently, taking his questions as interest, an opportunity.

But Dr. Scopes’s expression did not change; he only set the open folder on a nearby desk. His hands moved over my face, my jaw, brushed the bruises on my throat above my collar. When I flinched, he said, “Nurse Costa says that you got into a fight with another patient last night. Are these bruises from then?”

“I got into a—? It wasn’t like that. Josie attacked me.”

“For what reason?”

“She claimed I was in her bed.”

“Why were you in her bed?”

“I wasn’t in her bed. Or if I was, I didn’t know it. I took the bed Mrs. Donaghan gave me.”

“I also understand that you hit another patient earlier in the evening.”

I stared at him in bewilderment, and then I remembered the girl picking at the trim on my coat. “She was trying to pull my coat apart.”

“And the correct response was to hit her?”

“I—I wasn’t thinking. I was distraught.”

“As you were when you took the wrong bed?”

“I wasn’t in the wrong bed.”

“As distraught as you were when they had to forcibly remove you from your uncle’s home?”

“You don’t understand. They were . . . It was all a lie. All of it. I didn’t touch my aunt. My uncle is trying to steal my money. If you would just listen to me—”

“Miss Kimble, you know none of that is true. Your uncle cares very much for you. He brought you to San Francisco, when you had nowhere else to go. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, but—”

“Even when there were rumors of insanity in your family. Your aunt was so afflicted. Your mother too, I understand.”

“Mama was not afflicted,” I insisted. “I don’t know why everyone keeps saying that.”

“I believe there was some long-ago incident? A—” Dr. Scopes glanced briefly at the open folder. “A dispute of some kind, where your mother’s inappropriate behavior caused her fiancé to break their engagement? Your uncle says it was bad enough that her own family refused to have anything to do with her.”

I did not know what to say to that. I didn’t know the full story, only what was in my mother’s letter, but I did not believe for one moment that my uncle was telling the complete truth. “I never saw any evidence that my mother was insane.”

“But would you know it if you saw it?” Dr. Scopes asked. “Given your own tendencies toward inappropriate thoughts.”

“I don’t have inappropriate thoughts.” I couldn’t soften the edge of desperation in my voice. This was all going so wrong. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“No? Did you not just say to me that your uncle killed your aunt and accused you of murdering her so that he could steal your money? Your uncle, who wants only the best for you? Who has sent you to Blessington to guarantee you get the very best care?”

“He wants me out of the way,” I tried.

“And what of your inappropriate thoughts about”—again, a glance at the folder—“Mr. Farge?”

My stomach lurched.

“He claims you followed him and urged him to immoral behavior. He says you pursued him at all hours, that you even skipped church to bedevil him.”

“No.” I could not make my voice louder than a whisper.

Dr. Scopes’s expression softened. “You see, Miss Kimble? There are reasons you’re at Blessington. But we cannot help you unless you try to remove these absurd fancies from your head.”

How he turned everything. Even to my own ears I sounded a lunatic.

As I was led back to my bed, my panic grew with every step, as did the fear I had not yet truly let myself feel. But I was terrified now. Terrified of the doctors, of myself, of the way they made me question my thoughts. How long might it be before I began to believe them? How long before this mirage turned real? Once in the ward, I crept behind the curtains, pressing my face to the window so the chill might sear through my fogged brain. The only view was a hedge next to a brick wall. Numbly I stared at a bed of dead flowers between the hedge and the building.