After Hours (InterMix)(73)
“I just don’t trust people.”
My gaze shot reflexively to Kelly. His cold gray eyes settled on mine before I could look away. Which of us was accusing the other of distrust?
“And if I asked what your diagnosis is,” Dr. Morris said to Lee, “what would you say?”
“I’m bipolar. That’s what every shrink’s said about me since I was nineteen.”
“It was the hospital’s opinion that you may be what we call schizoaffective. And that’s a possibility I’d like to explore during your time here at Larkhaven.”
“Ain’t those the same thing?”
“Similar, but not the same.” Namely, not the same to the tune of psychosis. “You may also have a combination of the two.”
“Fuckin’ great. Lucky me.”
“In the last interview, you told your doctor you’ve heard voices. Is this a new phenomenon?”
He shook his head. “Nah. It’s just not something you want to advertise, you know? ’Less you’re looking to wind up in the nuthouse.” He cast his gaze around the room. “But it’s a little late for that, now ain’t it?”
“What do your voices say to you, Lee?”
He tensed for a moment, then slumped with a sigh, too worn down to bother resisting the conversation. “They don’t say things to me, exactly. But sometimes, if I’m talking to somebody and I don’t trust them . . . I’ll hear what they’re saying, with their mouth. Then I’ll hear like this echo of what they’re really thinking.”
“Okay.”
“I mean, I’m not stupid. I know it ain’t actual mind reading. But maybe some guy at a bar’ll say, ‘Did you catch the Lions game?’ But then I’ll get this echo, with his voice saying all f*cked-up shit, sex shit sometimes, stuff this stranger wants to do to me.”
“That must be upsetting.”
Lee leaned back in his chair and gave Dr. Morris a leveling stare, one that said, loud and clear, Is that shit the best shrink line you got for me, Doc? And in that moment, I decided I liked Lee. I hoped he’d find his time at Larkhaven useful, and that I might be able to make his stay a little more pleasant.
“And your voices never tell you to do things?”
“Not really. Only if the person I’m talking to is thinking that. But nothing like you hear about, about demons and aliens. Just made-up whatcha-call-it. Telepathy.”
“Have you heard people’s thoughts for a long time?”
“Since I was a teenager, maybe?” That was in line with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, for auditory hallucinations to begin manifesting in young adulthood.
“Did you believe you were hearing people’s real thoughts, all this time?”
“At first, yeah. I thought I was special. Like I had a superpower. Except it scared me, since nobody was ever thinking anything nice, nothing that ever made me feel anything but sick.”
As forthcoming as Lee was being, his affect was incredibly flat and dry, making it difficult to know if he was being open or just rattling off the same answers he’d given to a dozen doctors before. He also seemed tense, a bit jittery—but it felt like that was more physical than mental, a side effect of the antipsychotics.
“When did you first begin to suspect the voices might be coming from your own head?”
“I guess I was maybe twenty-one. I was visiting my grandma, and we watched this old movie. Black and white. I can’t remember what it was called, but it was about this chick that like, wakes up in a mental hospital.”
The Snake Pit, I thought. I’d watched it with my grandma, too, years before I wound up nursing her.
“The chick heard voices. Not like the way I did, but that was the first time I kinda got what people meant when they talked about ‘hearing stuff.’ I’d heard about crazy people having that, but for some reason, I never thought I was crazy. I thought I was special. That my brain was better than everybody else’s. Until I saw that movie. Then everything kind of went to shit, because back when I’d thought I was reading everybody’s thoughts . . . It sucked. I didn’t trust nobody, but I trusted myself. And my own brain. After I started thinking maybe I was crazy, then I didn’t trust anything. And I knew all that f*cked-up shit I was hearing, that must be stuff I’d come up with. In my subconscious or whatever.”
“When did you first start experimenting with drugs?”