A Danger to Herself and Others(71)
The day of my hearing, Agnes’s parents held hands while their attorney spoke. They were still holding hands while Lightfoot spoke. I thought I could see each of them tighten their grip when the judge cleared her throat before she announced that I wasn’t responsible for what happened. They only let go when Agnes’s mother dropped her face into her hands.
Would they have looked happy if the case had gone to trial instead of being dismissed? If I’d been found guilty and sentenced to a few years in prison? They still wouldn’t have gotten their daughter back the way she was before.
I open my eyes just a little. My father’s hand is resting on top of my mother’s on his leg. Do I seem like a stranger to them now, even though they made me?
Technically, I made Lucy. Does that make me like a parent?
No. I didn’t make Lucy, I invented her.
Like God invented Adam, if you believe in that sort of thing.
I let my eyes flutter shut. I think of our old inside joke: I was born mature. It always made us laugh, but now I don’t think it was ever all that funny.
I hear Mom whisper to Dad, “There are studies that suggest solitary confinement induces hallucinations. I know she was hardly kept in solitary, but you saw that tiny room they gave her—for all we know, that place exacerbated her hallucinations, made her even sicker. We should never have let her stay there.”
I imagine Dad nodding rather than reminding Mom that they hardly had a choice about where to send me, determined as he always is to stay on the same page with his wife.
“I’m going to look into it,” Mom continues, her voice a little louder, charged with righteousness. She sounds almost like she did when she used to talk about the nurse’s strike. “How can they claim to make objective observations when they keep their patients in such an abnormal environment?”
If I weren’t pretending to sleep, I might smile and tell Mom that I said almost the exact same thing to Lightfoot once.
My own voice: This is hardly a normal environment.
“It’ll be better when we get her home,” Mom continues. “The doctor we’ve lined up is the best in the business, highly recommended. Who knows? He might have a more promising diagnosis.”
I’m not surprised my parents have lined up a well-known doctor. My parents trust people and places with good reviews. When they host parties, they only hire acclaimed caterers, and when they travel, they only stay at five-star hotels. They believe in following expert advice, taking expert suggestions. It’s not as though the institute or Dr. Charan came highly recommended.
I think that’s the first time I’ve ever thought of Lightfoot by her real name.
Dr. Priya Charan.
forty-eight
It’s a long drive, but my father doesn’t offer to stop for a snack or a bathroom break. Finally we drop off the rental car at the airport Hertz and get on the elevated train to the terminal. I stare out the windows. From here, the airport looks enormous. Every time the train stops (at a parking lot, at the BART station, then at one or another terminal), an automated female voice directs us to hold on, to watch for rolling luggage. I tug at the waistband of my leggings. I think about asking to change my clothes, but it seems like too much trouble.
With my right hand, I hold one of the poles in the center of the car, but I still stumble every time the train stops and starts. I worry that my parents are taking this as evidence of my instability rather than proof of the forces of gravity and inertia and whatever other scientific law from last year’s physics class might apply.
My elbow throbs beneath the bandage. It’s less swollen than it was but still bigger than it’s supposed to be. Dr. Charan warned my parents to keep an eye on me since the antidepressants probably haven’t kicked in yet.
The sun streams in through the train’s windows. On one side of the San Francisco airport is the bay and on the other is Highway 101 and the foothills above it. For the first time in months, I’m not in a cage: Not inside the eight-foot-by-seven-foot room with its ugly green walls and plaster ceiling. Not in the three-story building built into the mountainside, not walking the grounds cloaked in fog. Not even in the car Stephen drove or the conference room where the hearing was held. I’m out from under Dr. Charan’s care. I finally understand that expression—to be under someone’s care.
I should feel free now.
“Terminal 2,” the automated voice announces, listing which airlines are located there. My parents step off the train. They didn’t tell me which airline we were flying, so I have to rush to make it off the train after them before the doors slide shut.
My parents and I have been to dozens of airports together. Even when I was three or four or five years old, with my small feet and short legs, I didn’t have this much trouble keeping up with them. And my legs are longer than my mother’s now.
I get in line behind my parents as they check their luggage. Mom hands me a tote bag that I recognize as my own. I had it with me when they brought me to the institution, but it was confiscated. I reach inside and there’s my wallet with my driver’s license so I can get through security. (Dad insisted I take driver’s ed and pass the test before coming to California for the summer. We spent hours, just the two of us, in my parents’ Range Rover practicing parallel parking and three-point-turns.) I find my cell phone, though of course the battery’s dead, and the charger must have been shipped home with the rest of my things back in August. There’s even a copy of the book I was reading before Agnes fell, a history of Tudor England. I was like that back then. It was only a few months ago, but it already feels like a distant back then, back when I read about history for fun. If anyone had asked me at the time, I would’ve said that the real lives of the Tudors were every bit as juicy as any romance novel. Of course, that was before I read any actual romance novels.