Emily's Seams

The hospital was a squat grey building. The windows were like small, suspicious eyes. There was no big announcement, no neon sign about who lived there and why. There was a completely unnoticeable sign that read Appletown Psychiatric Hospital. That was it.

I felt stuck to my chair. I couldn’t move. I don’t know how long Robert had been calling my name before he resorted to shaking me.

“Oh gees!” I jumped up and hit my head on the roof of Robert’s car.

“Em! Sorry! Are you okay?” Robert asked.

My hand instinctively went to my wounded noggin. “Yeah, sure. Sorry, I’m just...”

“It’s okay. You told your dad one o’clock, right?”

I nodded. He pointed to the dashboard clock. The glowing green numbers read 1:04.

“Okay.” I exhaled and reached for the car door. “I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

Robert took my hand and squeezed it. “I have some papers I have to read before the conference in L.A. next week. I’ve got lots to keep me busy.”

“You’re not going to wait here, are you?”

“Sure, why not?”

I started shaking my head. “No, Robert. Go back to the motel or get some food or something.”

“Well, that motel smells weird. I’ll wait for you here.”

I was going to argue but he was right. The motel did smell weird. And the truth was that I wanted him here. Just in case.

“Okay. I’ll see you in a bit.”

My legs were unsteady as I walked up to the hospital’s front doors. A stern looking nurse eyed me up and down. “Can I help you?” Yes, it really sounded like that’s what she wanted to do.

“Now, Peggy! Keep that sass to yourself. This here is Emily!”

I turned around. Coming up behind me was a man, probably in his fifties, with a head of thick, dark hair that was greying at his temples. He was slight but not thin. He wore a grey button down shirt and had the sleeves rolled up and the tails tucked into a pair of blue jeans.

“Stanley?” My voice was pathetically small.

He smiled and shook his head. “No. I work with Stanley though and he told me you were coming. Not too many new faces come around here, so it was easy to guess that the only twenty-something I’ve seen around here must be Stanley’s long awaited guest.”

“So, you’re his doctor?”

He nodded and stepped closer with an outstretched hand. I took it. “Dr. Mackeil. It is very nice to meet you. Stanley is just getting up and asked me to come meet you if you showed before he was ready.”

“Get up? It’s one o’clock in the afternoon.”

Dr. Mackeil just smiled. “Your father is undergoing something called electroconvulsive therapy. Basically, we use electricity to induce a seizure in his brain. We’re not sure exactly how but these mini seizures can have a big impact on certain psychiatric conditions. Mainly it’s used for depression, but there has been some research to suggest that it may work for persons suffering from schizophrenia as well.”

My palms began to sweat and my stomach twisted. I couldn’t look at him. We walked towards the hospital cafeteria.

“I’m sorry. He told me that you knew he had schizophrenia.”

I looked up suddenly and started nodding like an idiot. “Yeah, he mentioned it in his letter. I just didn’t...”

Dr. Mackeil just looked at me and smiled.

“Nothing. Is he taking any medications?” I didn’t actually care, nor would I understand what the names of the medications meant, but I felt like I had to say something.

“Yes but we’ve had to administer these medications fewer and fewer times since he began treatment three weeks ago.” He smiled again, that non-descript, let’s all just take a breather smile. Suddenly he turned to his left and waved.

I turned around and saw a man shuffling into the cafeteria. He was in brown pyjamas and he looked a bit worn. His dark hair, dark like mine, was pointing in all different directions. His big, brown eyes sagged and his olive skin looked weathered. Had he not looked so tired, it would have been easy to describe this man as handsome.

“Stanley. Emily and I have just been having a little chat. How about you two take a table by the window?” Dr. Mackeil suggested.

Stanley looked around the room anxiously. “Sure, sounds good doc.”

He didn’t look at me as he made his way over to the window. The doctor smiled again and left.

“I saw you in your car,” he said as we each took our seats. “I thought maybe you were going to run.”

I laughed a little. “Thought about it.”

“Because I’m crazy?” he said quickly. It was more of an accusation than a question.

I felt my stomach knot up and my heart start to thump. My throat threatened to close up that very minute but somehow I managed a pathetic No.

He seemed to calm down a little. “Sorry. I don’t get any visitors.”

I nodded. “I...uh. It’s just that we’ve never met. That’s why I was scared about coming in. Not because this is a mental hospital.”

It was bizarre watching him dissect each one of my words. There was no trust but he was trying.

“So, you said you work in a lab. What sorts of things do you do there?”

“Well, mainly cancer research. I’m an assistant, so I order lab supplies and help with the experiments.”

“You’re a helper?” He might as well have just said That’s it? That’s all you amounted to?

I swallowed hard before I answered him. My throat felt like it had been stuffed with paper towels. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Who’s that out in the car?”

For a second I had no idea what he was talking about. I turned and looked out the window and saw Robert sitting in his car.

“Oh, that’s Robert. He’s a researcher at the lab.”

“He’s your boss?”

“No, not at all.”

“But you do the leg work for him, right?”

My head was trying to stay two steps ahead of this man’s train of thought but I couldn’t. It was too sporadic, too mistrustful.

“I help him.”

“So he’s like your boss?”

“No.”

“But he tells you what he needs done, is that right?”

“Yeah.”

Stanley, my father, suddenly sat up straighter. “So you’re messing around with your boss.”

I felt like I had just been punched in the gut. “No. It’s not like that.”

“That’s just what your mother was like too. She messed around with her boss and got knocked up with your little sister. I’m still not sure about you. I want a DNA test.”

Now that was a knee to my stomach. “Why are you doing this?”

I was about to break. The old Emily could have handled this. The old Emily wouldn’t have even bothered in the first place to meet this man.

“You’d better go,” he said. He stood up and staggered out of the cafeteria.

I felt like my hurt was a living thing and it was eating me from the inside out. I started crying and then I was sobbing. I don’t think I was there for long before I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around suddenly.

It was Dr. Mackeil. “Emily? I’m sorry that didn’t go as well as we’d hoped. He really was looking forward to seeing you.”

I wiped my face dry with my sleeve and stood up. “Some progress you’ve made.”

I burst out the front doors of the hospital. The sunshine was blinding and I felt like I was going to fall over. My balance came back and I took a few deep breathes. But there was nothing.

My rage had come back. And there was only one person that deserved it.

I pulled open the passenger side door and grabbed my bag from the front seat. Robert, who had been sleeping while my father called me and my mother sluts, sat up suddenly.

“Em?” he said sleepily. “Em? How’d it go?”

I slid my bag over my shoulder and slammed the car door shut. I had seen a Greyhound bus depot on our way to the hospital. It wouldn’t take me long to get there.

“Em!” Robert shouted. I could hear him running up behind me. Part of me willed him to stay away but most of me wanted him to come closer so I could tear him to pieces.

He jumped in front of me and put his hands on my shoulders. “Em? What happened?”

I shrugged him off and kept walking. “I’m taking a bus home. Go on your own or stay in this shit hole for a night, I really don’t care.”

He caught up with me and this time held me still. “Em! Don’t do this! Don’t run away from me. What happened?”

I couldn’t hold it back. “This is all your fault! Why couldn’t you just mind your own business? Why’d you have to push me to do this? To write him?”

“Em, I...”

“Don’t call me that! Go run back to mommy and daddy for another month’s rent and leave me the fuck alone!”

He took a step back. That bite had drawn blood.

“What?”

“You heard me. Instead of sitting here, pointing out all the ways I’m a coward, why don’t you grow a pair and figure your own shit out. I don’t need him and I don’t need you!”

This time I ran away. The tears started coming again because I knew that this time, he wasn’t going to come after me.

I had booked a week off work to meet Stanley. I spent the rest of the week in my crappy apartment. There was no one to visit, no one to call. There was nothing again.

The Friday was particularly beautiful. The only reason I went out was because it was too hot to stay in.

I had no route in mind but somehow I ended up at the forest. My forest. My feet started going down the chewed out path to find the old hospital.

They’d want to know why I hadn’t come by in so long. Well, let’s see. I met my father for the first time and he basically told me that I was whore and my mother had been one too.

And then I dismissed Robert.

I had nothing to bring them this time. Hopefully they wouldn’t notice. Dolly would still be beside herself with glee that she had made it to a real casino and then died the very same day. Francine would say sarcastic snips that became less cruel and more endearing each day. Doug might be upset. I didn’t have a paper for him.

And Angus. He was the odd man out now and I couldn’t help but feel completely and utterly responsible for his loneliness. I was not prepared for what was actually waiting for me in the old hospital.