CHAPTER SEVEN
A multitude of screens covered the wall in front of me. The feed from Ward Z. A camera in every room. The hallway. And I could watch them all from inside my home. Christopher had looked at me strangely when I asked about the cameras, before explaining they could all be viewed from inside my house. I hadn't believed him. I'd looked around my new home – but he was right. A door just off the kitchen, one I'd assumed was a hot water heater, was in fact a small office with a wall of screens and a desk chair.
On the big screen, I watched Richard, the tall, bearded, nightshift orderly with kind eyes, walk down the hallway with the hothead day shift orderly Lewis – in full HD color, as if I was there. Due to Lewis' actions today in Aaron's room, Christopher and I had decided to switch him to night shift, where the point of contact between he and the patients would be rare.
Patricia Philips laid completely still in her bed on a smaller screen. Unmoving.
Z01, in his muzzle, sat on the floor, banging the back of his head rhythmically on the wall. Not hard. Just a soft tapping. My skin prickled, reminding me of the night before, with his head against the glass window of his door.
After clicking the mouse around, I figured out how to switch over to a different camera on the big screen. Aaron's room popped up. I had avoided looking at the little screen that displayed his room, but truthfully it was the one I wanted to look at the most.
I'd caught myself staring at the half-moon shape of his nails embedded in my skin this afternoon, while sitting in my office. There were three of them – three little slices. They hadn't bled much, but they held my attention. A certain flick of my hand and they would ache in the slightest. A tingle of pain I couldn't ignore.
Room Z15 took up the big screen and there he was. Aaron sat on the edge of his bed. All the beds in the rooms were simple, single, twin-sized beds. His knee bounced. His fingers tapped the rhythm of his song. His lips moved, but I heard nothing.
After a few moments of scrambling, I found the controls, and there it was. Sound. Aaron's voice. He hummed his song. It was familiar. The one he sang the two times I'd been in his room.
He stood suddenly and began pacing. Back and forth he went across his room.
I'd remembered to bring his file home today. I sat with it in my chair, a glass of red wine in hand, in front of the big screen where he paced. Surprise had raced through me when I found the bottle in the pantry. I couldn't remember seeing it there before.
But you also didn't realize you had a whole surveillance system in here either.
I rolled my eyes at myself and flipped open his folder. Previous psychiatrists had diagnosed Aaron as bipolar, with extreme manic symptoms and obsessive compulsive disorder.
Has a need to be in control of everything in his surroundings, especially his own body. He showers at least twice a day, and straightens the order of his books four times a day, even though they are never unorganized.
I glanced up to where Aaron paced on the screen. Two neat stacks of books sat in the corner of the room, next to the head of his bed. I hadn't noticed them before.
Mr. Whitman refuses to discuss his past, especially his mother. The mention of her often sends him into something I can only describe as a "manic low." I've truly never seen something like this. He reveals depressive symptoms – feelings of hopelessness, coupled with anger, rage and irritability. Sometimes shifting into short bouts of euphoria that last only minutes before plunging back down into his depressive symptoms. Sometimes within a minute, he bounces back to a euphoric state of mania, never settling entirely on one extreme or the other. He often
spends these "manic lows" speaking about death, pain, and violence, specifically on how he would inflict those things on me and other staff members. He often self harms himself during these periods, refuses to eat, and has to be restrained almost constantly. Medication does not seem to help and I am still unsure of how to pull him out of these episodes, however, Mr. Whitman, seems to find his way out on his own, though it is clear his mother is a trigger. I may be wrong to make this assumption, but it seems that he had been in a state of this "manic low" for sometime before brought to Silent River, which would explain his volatile actions during that time.
There were a slew of other entries from Dr. Smith outlining Aaron's anger at the mention of his mother.
August 17: Asked Mr. Whitman about his mother today during our regular session. Previous discussions about her had proved volatile leading to a "manic low" episode, with Aaron yelling and becoming violent. Today, instead, I asked him if he could tell me a positive memory of her. He did not become angry, instead, he sat quietly, staring at me, singing – as per usual. I waited for him to respond, since he didn't react angrily, automatically, this situation felt promising. A change in the status quo seemed reassuring. I asked the same question with different wording several times. There was no response outside of the singing. At the end of the hour, I got up to leave. Mr. Whitman stopped singing abruptly and I looked back at him. He only stopped singing if he was going to speak. He proceeded to tell me that she took him to Long John Silvers for dinner when he was nine. His favorite place to eat, and she let him choose what he would have. He hadn't been there in a long time, and this was a treat. He would get to choose. She usually chose for him. She looked at him different than normal. Like she was sorry, but he couldn't understand what she had to be sorry for, she was taking him to eat after all, at his favorite place. "Chicken or fish?" she asked him. But he couldn't decide.
The notes ended there, the rest of the page torn. I frowned, there appeared to be other pages of doctor notes missing as well. A selection of newspaper articles followed. The stories following Aaron and the Purgatory Brotherhood. The first few were a decade old and didn't read how I had expected:
Brotherhood gives money to local high school
Whitman and his Brotherhood provide shelter for the homeless
Purgatory Brotherhood founder outraged by destruction of local rescue home
The one that caught my eye was the cheesy title:
Behind the Brotherhood: Aaron Whitman
Aaron Whitman, 25, is the founder and leader of the prominent political and charitable organization known as the Purgatory Brotherhood in Detroit. The brotherhood is responsible for the creation of the Brotherhood Homes, which are homes for the homeless, especially children in Detroit. Currently seven homes are running, with the eighth under construction.
The Brotherhood's existence came about by accident, claims Whitman, whom I met with in his office on seventeenth floor of the Sigment building in downtown Detroit. Whitman founded the organization due to his own experience growing up homeless on the streets of Detroit. Against all odds, Whitman managed to overcome his dire circumstances. He attended college early, after testing out of high school at the age of fifteen and receiving his GED. At the age of twenty-five he holds two masters degrees and spends the majority of his time helping out children in the same predicament he used to be in.
The Purgatory Brotherhood aims to primarily help homeless children, but homeless adults as well, who are trapped in the in-between, "in their own purgatory" Whitman says. "There is a cycle of tragedy out there on our streets." He gestures out the window, overlooking the city, "and someone has to do something about it." Many of the men who work for Whitman in the Brotherhood are fellow friends he made while living life on the streets…
The article continued talking more about the specifics of the Brotherhood and the exact services they provided. I sat with my mouth open. Literally open. There was a picture of Aaron, right there at the bottom of the article. He stood smiling, wearing a business suit. His face bare of tattoos, his hair shorter, but still sticking up in the front, like it did now, like he had run his hand through it over and over. A business man of a charitable organization that helped homeless children.
"Violet." I jumped, nearly dropping the folder. I blinked up at the screen and sucked in breath. Aaron stared at me, his gray eyes twitchy. "I wonder if you're watching me now?" He chuckled, flashing his white teeth. "I bet you are, Violet. You're curious about me. Aren't you?" He stepped forward, toward the camera. "How much do you know? What do you want to know?" He ran a hand through his hair. "Have you thought about me? Will you stay awake thinking about me?" The camera hung above his head, so he was looking up at me. The script Purgatory across his forehead, so dark against his pale skin. Such a contrast compared the straight edge face in the paper I held. "Do you wonder how I got here? Do you think I'm too good for this place? Or do I fit right in with the rest of the crazies?"
He kept smiling. He was handsome. I couldn't deny it. I wanted to. I needed to deny it. He was my patient and his looks were supposed to be neither here nor there to me. But they were. I couldn't deny that he mesmerized me. "There's something you should know, Violet." His gaze seemed to pierce through the camera. "I'm not crazy, like I said the other day. I'm more than that." He paused. "I'm conscious – which is more than most people in the world, bustling from one moment to the next never really stopping to pay attention to what it all means, if it means anything at all." He glanced around his room. "What do you think it means, Violet? Do you think there is meaning here, in these white walls, or beyond?"
I considered his words, the tangle of where they led or didn't. Conversations like this were some of my favorite things. The complication of the very nature of our existence – what did it all mean? If life had meaning, then to what end? Whose end? "What makes you question life and its meaning?" I said the words aloud, immediately feeling stupid. He couldn't hear me.
"You, know," He started pacing again. "When you first walked into my room the other day you presented me with something I haven't had in such a long time."
I frowned at the monitor.
"You have shown me something I haven't given a shit about in forever."
I leaned closer. My heart hammered in my chest. It was foolish really. I knew this. I knew it was foolish to be so enraptured by a patient, to be excited about what he would say next. There were all sorts of protocols and rules, steps to follow – as in get the hell out of this situation that was potentially harmful to your career – find the person another doctor. There were psychiatrists bursting at the seams out of colleges these days. Remove oneself from the situation. That's what I should have done right then. I should have turned off the monitor and went to bed. Aaron Whitman was my patient. I was responsible for his well-being. Me. I shouldn't be listening to him have an imaginary conversation with me.
I'd had a patient show sexual interest in me before – a younger man who was in for gang and family violence when I was still in school doing clinicals. Every time I had counseling session with him, he would pull out his cock and masturbate. I quickly found him a new doctor.
Aaron Whitman, and our present situation was different though.
There's no one else to take my place. I can't just give up one patient. Giving up Aaron meant giving up Ward Z.
I wasn't willing to do that.
"You won't last a week down there, Adeline," Dr. Ranier's words flashed in my head.
"No, fuck you, Brian," I said to no one.
"You've made me think about the world outside of here, Violet." Aaron's voice brought my attention back to the screen. "It's only been two days. Two days. One letter away." He chuckled. "Why didn't I see it before?" As he paced he tapped his fingers against his white pant leg. "You've made me think about the cold." He stopped and stared up at me. I could have sworn his eyes saw right into the depths of my soul. Something within them called out to me. Like a voice from long ago, it reached inside me, twisting something sharp. "I've missed it so."
A booming knock had me almost toppling backward in the computer chair I sat in.
"What the hell?" I looked at my watch. It was nearly half past ten. I'd never had a visitor. Uneasiness settled over me. Who could it be?
I glanced through the peephole in the front door. Richard, the night shift orderly stood on the other side, holding a small basket.
"Richard?" I opened the door.
"I apologize for bothering you so late, Dr. Violet." He held out the basket in his hand.
I raised my eyebrows. "Muffins?"
He shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck, looking away from me. "Yeah, I know this job can be a challenge, and muffins always make me feel better."
"Oh, gosh, thank you." As I accepted the basket I realized why he was looking away. A glance down at myself revealed my Little Mermaid t-shirt nightgown, which barely covered my ass. I tugged it down awkwardly.
"Sorry, I, uh—"
"No need to be sorry. I bothered you in the middle of the night, right? I'm sorry." He smiled, revealing his slightly crooked teeth, they didn't detract from his looks, instead they seemed to be a part of his charm. I couldn't help but notice how his eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled.
I chuckled, any uneasiness from moments before, completely gone. "No worries. I thought you were supposed to be training Lewis tonight?"
"Ah, yeah, I did. We're done now and Henry let me go early so I could get some rest before work tomorrow."
"Okay." I nodded, tugging awkwardly at the hem of my nightgown.
"Well, I'll let you get some rest. Just wanted to stop in." He pointed to the path that led off to the left of my house. "My home is just down that pathway, not too far. If you ever need anything, just let me know."
"Does everyone in Ward Z live over here?" I asked before he could step off the porch.
"Yep. The orderlies all live in a triplex of sorts. The nurses have a duplex." He motioned down the path on the opposite side of the house.
I watched Richard leave. His shadow faded into the darkness, down the path. My skin prickled in the chilly night air as I slipped back inside.