The Blessed Read online

  Eye for an eye.

  Lucy took a picture with her cell and looked it over. It was a perfect snap, capturing all Sadie’s tears and torment. But the distraught look on Sadie’s face, her vulnerability, reached Lucy in a way she hadn’t expected. Even more moving to Lucy was Sadie’s boyfriend, Tim, hand in hand with her, right by her side. There was no one there for Lucy. Not even the man who should have cared the most, her dad.

  She locked eyes with the couple, felt them pleading silently with her for media mercy, felt their pain, which was completely unlike her, and pressed send.

  “You’re discharged,” the nurse said curtly to Lucy on her way down the hall. “Your things are in that bag and the paperwork is at the front desk.”

  “That’s it?” Lucy asked, somewhat disappointed.

  “Ha! What did you expect?”

  Lucy frowned only slightly, but still just enough to give the night nurse a smirk of satisfaction.

  “What do you think?” Lucy inquired, brandishing her bejeweled wrist regally.

  “I think it suits you,” the nurse said. “Try not to pawn it too quickly.”

  Lucy bared her teeth and raised her perfectly manicured hands into claws like an angry cat and hissed away the nurse’s bad energy.

  She grabbed her weekender bag and headed out through the revolving doors. It was dawn, the time when people were getting up for work and, in her case, returning from going out. Her rush hour.

  She walked to a food cart and ordered some scrambled egg whites and street meat on a bagel and a hot cup of coffee. Still thinking about what she’d just done to Sadie. How low she’d sunk. She watched the vendor crack the eggs and separate the yolk, the core, the most substantial part, and discard it.

  “Scoop it,” she ordered, insisting he shell out the bagel, as she watched an obviously downtrodden couple order their toddler a Dr Pepper.

  Right on cue, she felt a spindly hand grab her arm. She didn’t need to look to know whose it was. Jesse’s black-sleeved jacket was a dead giveaway.

  “Get your hands off me, prick,” she barked, jerking free without even turning around to face him. Jesse was tall, slightly hunched over from all that time spent on the computer, and thin. He tried, to a fault, to be on trend, and looked as if he were uncomfortably dressed by a girlfriend—which he did not have.

  “Awwww,” he whined. “Wake up on the wrong side of the gurney?”

  Lucy was suddenly struck by the reflection of the sun bouncing off the double-eyed charm. She could have sworn it was staring back at her.

  “I’m done, Jesse. This time I mean it.”

  “Done with what? You’re living the dream.”

  “Whose dream?”

  “Yours, remember?”

  “All I know is I could have rotted away in there and nobody would give a rat’s ass.”

  “I’m here.”

  “Like I said.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Lucy. You’re all over the place.”

  He wiggled his phone in his hand, screen side up.

  “I don’t mean morbidly curious about me, Jesse,” she said. “I mean concerned.”

  “You just need some sleep.”

  “You have no idea what I need.”

  Jesse studied the disheveled girl in front of him. He was good at reading her, usually, but something was different this morning. She was more melancholy than he’d ever seen.

  “You couldn’t stop in the bathroom to fix your face?”

  Lucy lifted her hand to her cheek, and as she did, he saw the bracelet.

  “Nice,” he said, reaching for the dangling charm. “Where’d you get it?”

  “Don’t touch it!”

  “Damn. Well, at least somebody cares, right?”

  “You’re evil.”

  “Takes one to know one.”

  “I’ve gotta go.”

  “Don’t forget. We have a deal.”

  Lucy couldn’t help but notice that the shadow she cast completely engulfed him. “I don’t owe you anything.”

  “Loved the snap of Sad Sadie. Already ran it.”

  “Then we’re more than even.”

  “Did you catch something in that ER?” he ribbed, trying to keep up.

  “Yeah, a conscience.” Lucy rummaged through her purse for a cigarette and taxi fare. “Stay away from me, it might be contagious.”

  Jesse saw that she came up empty-handed. “Money for a cab?” He pulled a crisp bill from his jacket pocket and dangled a twenty from between his long, thin fingers.

  “Don’t tempt me like you do everyone else.”

  “Too late for that, isn’t it?”

  “It’s never too late.” Lucy spun around on her four-inch spikes, dropped her oversize rehab shades over her eyes, putting a proverbial period on the conversation, and walked away, blowing him off as only she could. She didn’t have a penny and he knew it. Every cent she had, or had borrowed, she was wearing. If she were lucky, Lucy thought, the Metrocard she was carrying might have one fare left.

  “Check your e-mail when you get home,” Jesse called after her, unconcerned.

  She stopped for just a second, pulled down her dress, which she could feel riding up her thigh, and continued down the block. Checking to make sure that no one was watching, she then jaywalked over to a bus stop just across the avenue, praying no one would see her in her outfit from last night. Or worse, at a bus stop. All the walk of shame boxes were checked.

  Hair—matted.

  Lipstick—smeared.

  Eyes—black from running mascara.

  Clothes—stained and wrinkled.

  Head—hung in shame.

  Dignity. Lost.

  3 The psychiatric floor of Perpetual Help also happened to be the highest floor. “The Penthouse,” as the ward staffers liked to euphemize it. At that moment, all Agnes could think was that it was a pretty good place to jump from, which might have been what the administrators had in mind when they moved the unit up there. The simplest cost-cutting measure of all.

  Agnes was wheeled into the waiting room flat on her back but forced herself upright and into a sitting position after she was “parked,” slowly rotating her torso toward the edge of her gurney until her legs fell over the side. She was dizzy and grabbed the edge of the gurney and squeezed down, which, it turned out, hurt like hell. She hadn’t realized how much the wrist and forearm muscles were used in steadying yourself like that. Agnes lifted her head to check out her surroundings.

  It was grim, barred up, quiet, dimly lit, with walls painted in neutral colors and furniture discretely bolted down, not a sharp edge to be found. Dull and drab, with one exception: an ornate stained glass window. Agnes bathed in the splintered moonlight that blazed through it. It was the only color to be found anywhere on the floor and the kaleidoscopic jewel-toned glow was soothing, maybe even a little mesmerizing. On the not-so-bright side, the place smelled like meat loaf, instant mashed potatoes, soggy canned green beans, and disinfectant. Nauseating. Lunchtime for the lunatics, she thought.

  The wait seemed endless, but it did give her time to reflect. She was by herself without anyone in her ear. Suddenly, the door opened and a young nurse escorted a little boy into the room and locked him in behind her without saying a word. He was very young, not older than ten. Far too young to be there, surely, and definitely didn’t fit the funny-farm profile she was expecting from the campfire stories her ER nurse was telling downstairs.

  Agnes smiled at him, but he wasn’t interested in gestures or even eye contact for that matter.

  They were alone.

  “What’s your name?” Agnes asked.

  The boy sat quietly for an uncomfortably long time. In his own little world and not interested at all in small talk with some stranger.

  “It’s okay if you don’t want to—”

  “Jude!” he shouted, as if the word had been building pressure inside of him and had now been launched like a rocket. “My. Name. Is. Jude.”

  With that labored int
roduction out of the way, Jude darted toward an old and weathered statue of Jesus, with its left hand pointed gently at its exposed heart. Time and indifference had taken its toll on it. Flecks of white where paint and plaster had chipped or broken off dotted the figure. Agnes guessed that it must have been moved up to the psych ward and out of the way, just like everything and everyone else up there. It reminded her of the statues that adorned her school lobby, Immaculate Heart Academy, but in worse condition, lending it, ironically, a kind of unforced sympathy, which was more than likely originally intended.

  Out of nowhere. Without warning. The boy jumped up on the statue’s pedestal and grabbed it with both arms, grunting and struggling with it as if it were fighting him back.

  Maybe this kid isn’t too young to be a mental patient after all, she thought.

  “Say ‘Uncle,’ Jesus!” he said, trying to catch his breath.

  Agnes tried not to look.

  The boy was getting increasingly agitated and maniacal . . . hanging from the neck of an almost life-size statue, driving his knuckles repeatedly into the Savior’s plaster of Paris head.

  “Say it!” the boy demanded as if the statue were resisting him.

  Agnes was astonished at what kind of kid would bully a statue, let alone one of . . . Jesus. She stared intently at the painted face as several drops of blood suddenly appeared, trickling down the forehead and off the brow.

  Her eyes incredulously followed the streams down as they fell to the floor, bright red spots peppering the white, waxed marble. Proving that one—a certain one perhaps—can indeed get blood from a stone.

  Startled for a second, she thought she might be seeing things, something miraculous even, until she noticed Jude’s knuckles, which were rubbed raw and bleeding. Undaunted, the boy examined his hand, shook it off, and returned quickly to his noogies, stopping only to feel around behind the statue’s head. As he pulled his hand away, and hopped off the pedestal and back toward her, Agnes noticed he was clutching something.

  “He left this for you,” Jude said, handing Agnes the most spectacular white bracelet that she’d ever laid eyes on. “He wanted me to make sure you got it.”

  Agnes was stunned. Without words. Her heart felt as if it were going to beat right out of her chest and she was sure, if someone looked close enough, they could see it through her smock. The chunky beads—maybe pearls, she gathered—were strung beside an unpolished gold charm embossed with a heart set aflame. She felt her incisions tingle and twitch as she gently fingered it.

  “Tell him that I gave it to you,” the boy said proudly, without the slightest hesitation or stammer. “Okay?”

  “Agnes Fremont,” the nurse called out.

  Jude heard the nurse and dutifully returned to his seat and his silence.

  “Who? Tell who?” Agnes queried the boy with sudden urgency, eyeing the statue suspiciously.

  The boy did not answer her.

  Agnes, meanwhile, was in a kind of shock. Whatever his problems, the trinket was extraordinary. Agnes hid the beads under her hospital gown and tucked the gold charm under her bandage to keep it safe and out of view. The flaming heart emblem that hung from it pressed uncomfortably into her wound. It hurt, but the pain it caused felt somewhat reassuring to her. She really was still alive.

  “Agnes Fremont,” the nurse called out again, this time with more impatience. “Are you coming?”

  Agnes jumped off of her gurney and waited anxiously by the door like a pet that hadn’t been out all day. She looked back at the boy who was now sitting like an angel in his seat, and followed the nurse down the hall.

  As she was taken through the patient corridor, she snuck peeks in the rooms. Having never been in a psych ward before, curiosity got the best of her, and she couldn’t help but rubberneck. Besides, all the girls in the tiny dormitory-style rooms were doing the same to her.

  Face after face, all hopeless-looking and lost. Some just staring into nothingness and others just . . . waiting. She felt she had nothing in common with them, except she did.

  The nurse gestured for her to enter an office until the doctor could see her. It wasn’t like the movie psychiatrist’s office she’d been expecting, with the heavy drapes, thick carpet, comfy couch, and box of tissues. A smoldering pipe burning cherry tobacco and wall-to-wall bookcases featuring Freud and Janov were nowhere to be found either. The room was tiny, sterile, painted beige, and harshly lit—a perfect match to the hallway, except for the noticeable lack of religious iconography that peppered the rest of the hospital. No statues, paintings, no Eyes-Follow-You-Jesus 3-D portraits. Against the wall stood a glass-doored, stainless-steel apothecary cabinet filled with old charts and replicas of brains, whole and cross-sectioned. She took a seat in the chair, a padded pea green job with metal armrests, across from an institutional desk and standard issue high-back office chair. There was a nameplate on the desk but all she could read from this angle was CHIEF OF PSYCHIATRY. She was seeing the boss.

  Agnes soon found herself mindlessly picking at the puscolored foam lurking just beneath the old, cracked leather seat covering, patience not being one of her virtues. If she wasn’t picking at that, it would have been her wounds, but they were tightly bandaged enough that she couldn’t do much more damage. The austerity of the surroundings made her more and more nervous and she found herself thinking about the boy in the hall. He was so young to be so whacked-out. Until now, she imagined her youth, her obviously defiant nature might help to put her recent behavior into perspective, to excuse it as a momentary lapse of judgment, and that she’d be let go with some kind of warning. Clearly, she wasn’t mentally ill.

  The door sprang open and a well-groomed middle-aged man in an old-fashioned white lab coat charged in. Agnes flicked away the last bits of foam from under her fingernails and sat at attention, hands clasped daintily over her abdomen. She noticed that her charm was peeking out from her bandage and quickly pulled her hair around and over her wrist to cover it.

  “Hello . . . ”

  He paused. Scanning her chart to find her name.

  “Agnes . . . I’m Dr. Frey. Chief of psychiatry.”

  “So I see,” she said, unimpressed, tossing her gaze toward his desk plate. “Working so late on Halloween night?” Agnes asked.

  “One of my busiest nights of the year,” Frey replied, smiling.

  One thing she hated about herself was her impulsivity. She tended to make quick judgments, and already she didn’t like him. There was something about the rote politeness and elitist formality in his manner that put her off, but then she wasn’t exactly planning to open up either. Or maybe it was simply that he hadn’t bothered to find out her name before the appointment. Whatever. The doctor wasn’t much for small talk, it appeared. Neither was she. Agnes decided to cooperate for as long as it was in her interest. She wanted out.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard this before but—” Agnes sputtered.

  “But you’re not crazy,” he interrupted, matter-of-factly finishing her sentence without even looking up at her.

  “I don’t belong here,” she almost pleaded, leaning in toward him with her hands outstretched, inadvertently revealing the bloodstains from her self-inflicted wounds.

  “Are those tattoos, Miss Fremont?” He looked over the top of his glasses. “No? Then you probably do belong here right now.”

  Agnes pulled her arms back and dropped her chin, unable to look him in the eye, but she could still hear him and he kept on talking.

  “It says in your file that you are a good student, very social, never been in trouble to mention, no history of depression.” He flipped back and forth between the stapled pages in a manila folder. “So what changed?”

  Agnes did not respond, shifting uncomfortably in her chair from both the pain of the question and the charm.

  “Do you want to tell me about him?”

  “Why does it always have to be about a guy?” Agnes blurted, trying to dam the tears that said otherwise.

  “Because i
t usually is,” said Frey.

  Agnes paused. She recalled in an instant almost every relationship she’d ever had, as far back as her first crush. There was definitely a pattern. They didn’t last. Even her friends were starting to joke that she couldn’t hold on to a guy. As far as she was concerned, her heart was just too big for those boys to handle. If she could just find one who could, everything would be okay.

  “My mom thinks I fall in love too easily.”

  “Do you?”

  “I just follow my heart. I always have.”

  “That is a virtuous quality. But it almost led you to a dead end, Agnes.”

  Agnes shrugged indifferently. “When relationships end, it’s like a death. There are always scars.”

  “It is easy to be disappointed when you feel so deeply, isn’t it?”

  Agnes wasn’t usually so cynical, but the doctor had hit a nerve.

  “Yes.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Sayer.”

  “Tell me about Sayer.”

  Agnes was a little weirded-out talking openly with a nurse standing behind her—placed there mostly for the doctor’s protection, legally and otherwise.

  A witness.

  “Well, according to my mom . . . ,” she began.

  He waved her off and leaned forward, his chair creaking. “What about according to you?” He paused. “According to Agnes?”

  “She wants to run my life because she hates hers,” Agnes exploded.

  “I get that you and your mother disagree about things, but I asked you about the guy.” He was intent. Intense. What started off as an evaluation was snowballing into an interrogation.

  It wasn’t until that moment that Agnes realized that she hadn’t given her temp boyfriend a thought since she’d been admitted, her interest in him draining out of her veins along with her blood the night before. “Oh, Sayer wasn’t really that important. Just the most recent.”

  “Not important?” Frey squinted her wraps into focus. “I can’t help you if you aren’t honest with me.”

  “I liked him. Okay, I liked him a lot. But my mom thought he was poison, just like every other guy I date. It put so much pressure on the . . . relationship. He couldn’t stand it anymore. Neither could I. Obviously.”