Trigger Warning: violence, illness
A crash pulled me away from my work. Something sounding like glass had fallen. The noise came from the other side of the house, but Maria was not here. It was probably nothing, I tried to brush it off and return to my work when I heard another crash, followed by a whispered Jessica. Was somebody in my house? My wife, Maria, was not home, but who else would be calling my name?
I looked out of my office window and saw no one on the front porch. I hadn’t heard anybody come in, or heard footsteps in the house either. But somebody had called me, so I stood up to go investigate.
I was in my tiny office tower that was above my bathroom. The bedroom my wife and I shared was on the other side of the house. Far enough away that despite the small size of the house, I had some privacy. I needed it when I worked. And it was helpful for Maria to have her space to sleep, with the horrid hours the hospital had her work.
Speaking of which, the last week had been especially heinous. Two of the nurses she worked with had quit, so she had been forced to work doubles; coming home late and leaving early. I didn’t expect to see her tonight, which made the noise that I was moving towards that much more terrifying.
I tried to tell myself that it was likely innocuous as I made my way down the stairs and through the kitchen, looking for evidence of whatever had broken as I went. I even turned on the extra lights, but saw nothing. There was no sound except the hum of the refrigerator, not enough to stop me from tiptoeing and holding my breath to remain as quiet as possible while I searched.
“Hello?” I called out to the clearly empty space. No response. Obviously.
Maybe a glass had fallen in another room? I walked around the undisturbed sitting room. I even went into the practically unused guest/storage room, but there was nothing that could have fallen. Maria, despite her work schedule, always kept things fairly tidy. In the parts of the house that weren’t my office, I tried to do the same so she had less cleaning to do. She did so much for me; I reciprocated whenever I could. But that meant that there was nothing that could’ve fallen. No explanation for the crashing noise. There had been a noise, though! Hadn’t there?
After a full 20 minutes of looking with no explanation, the adrenaline wore off and I grew tired of looking. Maybe it was a mystery—the old house had plenty of secrets. Now that I was up from my desk and downstairs anyway, I figured it was time to stop work for the night and go to bed.
A knock on the door woke me up the next morning. I turned over, but Maria’s side of the bed was cold and empty. She must have had to work an early shift. A pang of guilt shot through me as I realized that I hadn’t seen her in days—hadn’t woken up when she came in or when she left. She probably slept on the couch so she didn’t disturb me, despite me telling her time and time again that her sleep was more important and I didn’t mind if she woke me up getting into bed.
Ding-dong!
Whoever was at the door was insistent. Rubbing my bleary eyes, I slowly made my way to my feet before continuing to put on my bathrobe.
“I’m coming!” I shouted, when the knocking began again. I hurried to the door and opened it to see my mother.
“You really should open the door faster,” was her greeting before she barged in.
“I was asleep! What time is it?”
“Nearly 10, there’s no reason for you to still be in bed. You knew I was coming!”
She had already put her bag down and begun rummaging through it.
“Mom, what are you doing?” I asked.
“Getting my clippers, it’s time to clip your toenails. And then you’ll need to take your meds.”
“I can and do take my own medicine, and—”
“You’ve missed doses,” Mother interrupted.
“AND,” I continued, “Maria can help me trim my nails.”
“You don’t want to get an infection, and I’m a nurse. I’m here. Can you just let me do this so I can be on my way?”
“My wife is a nurse,” I reminded her.
“You don’t have a wife,” was her response. Same as always. Anger flared up in me at the blatant disrespect, but Mother saw it and immediately came over to me.
“Just let me finish this and check your sugars so I can go,” she said quietly.
With a sigh, I plopped on the couch. It really would be easier to comply so she could finish and be on her way. Mother might be old-fashioned and we had never seen eye to eye, but she was still family. She still cared for me. I felt her take off my sock and then she gasped.
“What?” I asked.
“Your foot is bleeding!”
“No, it’s not. I would have felt it.”
“You haven’t felt anything in your feet for years. Look at it!” Mother twisted my foot up so I could see it and, sure enough, blood caked the bottom of my foot. How did that get there?
“It must have been from last night. I fell while getting out of the tub,” I said.
“And you didn’t call me?”
“Maria was here!” The anger was rising up again.
“Oh, and how much help was she? You’re still bleeding.” Mother grabbed more things out of her bag, including disinfectant and gauze. She was like Mary Poppins, if Mary Poppins only carried around medical supplies.
“Wait here, I’m going to get a rag to clean this up.”
I didn’t have much of a choice. She was right, I was still bleeding. I looked towards the stairs—blood trailed down, through the kitchen, and over to the bedroom. I had spent half an hour walking around looking for a crash last night, and had apparently dripped blood everywhere while doing so. How had I not noticed?
Mother came back with a wet cloth and began washing the blood from my foot.
“There’s still glass in here, I’m going to take some out and then we’ll need to get you in for stitches. This is more than I can do at home.”
I had known my mom for my entire life and if she said something was bad enough to see a doctor, it was definitely bad enough to go see a doctor. She was always one to treat things at home if she could take care of them; and even sometimes if she couldn’t. But she had been incredibly cautious with me the last few years, taking me in for seemingly more and more minor things. The diabetes scared her, I think.
“Fine,” I said with a sigh, “Let’s go.”
“Well, that oughta do it,” Dr. Thiel said as he snipped the stitches he was working on. I looked over at my foot, but couldn’t see anything he had done at this angle.
The doctor turned to my mother and asked, “Will you be taking care of Jessica at home?”
Before she could answer, I cut in with, “My wife is a nurse, I think she can handle this.”
“She doesn’t have a wife,” my mother said to the doctor, completely ignoring me. This was bad enough at home, but in public? At a doctor’s office? I felt my blood boil as the doctor looked back and forth between us.
“Just because my marriage is not legal, does not mean it’s not real! Gay marriage will be allowed someday!” My voice had risen enough that Dr. Thiel held up his hands placatingly.
“Ok, ok,” he said, “there’s no reason to get into politics here.”
That did nothing but make me even more upset. My love was not political. He must have seen my distress, because Dr. Thiel turned to my mother and asked if she could please wait outside.
She looked at me and then turned to him in a huff and said, “Fine, I’ll go. But as her caregiver, I’ll need discharge instructions.” The door was shut a little too forcefully on her way out.
Dr. Thiel looked at me and said, “I’ll just go and type up some instructions for you to take home and give to whoever will be taking care of you, ok?”
“My wife,” I reminded him in an icy tone.
“Sure, sure,” he responded. “Lynn will help you while I go finish up my notes.”
He stood up and as he walked out of the room, I could hear my mother’s voice say, “Things are getting worse. She’s—” but then the door closed and it cut off her voice.
Lynn, the nurse, was standing next to me.
“My brother is gay,” she said, filling the silence that had descended upon the room. I looked up at her, and she continued.
“LGBT relationships are totally valid, in my opinion.”
“Great,” I said, “I’m glad you were able to weigh in on the validity of my relationship.”
I knew I was being nasty, but I was too frustrated to care. My mother and my doctor were out there, likely talking about me, and some nurse was trying to distract me by sharing about her brother’s love life. Would she still think that I deserved to be married to the woman I loved if she didn’t have a gay brother?
“Well, here’s your crutches,” Lynn said with forced cheerfulness. There was a smile plastered on her face, but it didn’t touch the nervous tightness around her eyes. “You’ll have to keep weight off of that foot until the stitches come out.”
“Thanks,” I managed, taking the crutches from her.
Lynn helped me up and then held the door open for me. After taking a moment to mentally prepare myself, I stepped out to return to my mother.
Once home, I immediately went to my tower and started a bath for myself. Every time I went out with my mother, I had to do something to decompress when I returned home. Even as a child, my interests had not allowed me to have a positive relationship with her. A down-to-earth Christian woman, she frequently told me that I needed to get my head out of the clouds and settle down. I had spent a semester abroad in Edinburgh, which then turned into a year, before I made my way to London. I spent all of the money I had saved up for college in that time, and ended up dropping out before finishing my degree. Not that a degree in literature would do me much good, anyway. But that wasn’t why I didn’t finish. Graduating and going home seemed like the first step to a lifetime of tedium and compromises and giving in to the ever-present pressure to settle. My mother insisted that it was the only way to find happiness, which I struggled to believe.
She also insisted that it was the only way for me to find a man, which I did not want. She continually brought up that someday I would realize the error of my ways and “catch myself a husband.” Mother was sure there was a man out there who would take me still, despite my lifestyle. In her mind, marriage was the only way to find happiness and marriage could only be between a man and a woman.
I had spent years exploring the world in an effort to escape her, only to find that I missed having a mother. While travelling, I had met Maria and we had moved back home—in a serendipitous turn of events, we were both from the same town. But even my marriage and moving into a house nearby hadn’t appeased my mother.
But even that hadn’t worked. My mother was wholly incapable of understanding anything that I did. Not a Christian, moved around, always reading, no degree, no children, and spent all of my money on antiques. She called me eccentric, which I was in a way. Anybody with a more niche lifestyle was. But one of the least noteworthy things about me, my sexuality, was what she saw as one of my biggest eccentricities.
Despite my wedding ceremony, my mother insisted that my being a lesbian was nothing more than a phase that needed to be worked through, like every other decision in my life. The first time she had said that my marriage wasn’t real, I had grown so angry I had to stand up and leave before I made a scene. Now it was just another piece to our strained relationship.
I turned off the tap and sank into the tub, careful to keep my bandaged foot out of the water. It was time to stop thinking about my mother. The warm water lapped against my skin and soothed my body, and I opened a book to soothe my mind. Jane Eyre was among my favorites. As I sat in my old-fashioned bathtub with a glass of red wine and the well-weathered book, lit by candlelight, I imagined myself living in her era.
Jane was about to find out about Mr. Rochester’s wife. I was transported, able to put myself in the book with the characters enough that I was surprised when I looked up and was in my own home instead of with Mr. Rochester in his.
It was not unusual, then, when I heard sobbing coming from the other room. Of course Jane would cry, learning what she had about Mr. Rochester already having a wife. Although why would the sound be coming from the other room? Snapping out of my reverie, I looked around a moment and still heard crying. My first thought was of Maria.
I reached over for a towel and knocked over my glass of wine. The glass clinked as it hit the tiled floor. Cursing, I stood up and reached down to retrieve the oddly unbroken glass, dismayed by the wine spilling all over the floor. How was I to clean it up without staining one of the pristine white towels? I looked up at them, a little too quickly, and slipped.
There was a tremendous splash as I fell back into the tub, spraying water absolutely everywhere. The door opened up and Maria flew inside.
“Are you ok?” She asked, frantically running up to the bathtub to help me out. She completely ignored both the water and the wine soaking into the bottom of her pristine white linen pants. Maria was like that. It was part of what made her such an amazing nurse. When she saw someone in trouble, she was always the first person there to help, ignoring whatever state she was in if there was someone else who needed her attention. And all of that attention and desire to help was now turned to me.
“My love, are you ok?” she asked again.
Which reminded me of why I had gotten up in the first place.
“Are you ok?” I echoed. “I heard you crying in the other room, but in coming to help I seem to have made a mess of things.”
The look she gave me flitted quickly between confusion, shock, and worry, before finally settling on an indulgent understanding.
“You must have been caught up in your books again, dear.”
If anybody else had said that, I would’ve taken it as condescending. I did not allow anybody else to use pet names for me. The love of my life, however, got away with calling me whatever she wanted.
“That’s what I thought at first too! But then I looked up and the sobs were still there. Listen!”
We both went completely silent, Maria with a more thoughtful look on her face. I strained my ears, hoping for a small sound, but there was no trace of the crying that I had heard earlier. Looking at Maria, I knew she didn’t hear anything either.
“Maybe it was the neighbor? Maybe she stopped.”
That made sense and I knew she was right. I just wished there was proof of the reason I spilled my drink and made a mess of the bathroom.
“You read too much. Such an imagination, soon you’ll be seeing the ghosts of your characters!” she teased as she handed me a new towel. I learned long ago that playing along with her teasing was the best way to handle it.
“Oh I’d love if these characters were real. Can you imagine dancing in an old ball gown?”
“And using a chamber pot and being put in a looney bin for being gay. Sounds fantastic.” Maria rolled her eyes. We’d had this conversation a number of times. I romanticized while she criticized.
“You simply have no imagination,” I said, leaning over and giving her a kiss.
“But you have enough for both of us, my love.”
Maria looked down at the tub as she helped me out of it, careful of my foot.
“You really should put something textured on the floor of the tub,” she said, in a voice that belied the fact that we’d had this conversation before.
“You know I don’t want to mar it.” I didn’t want to have this conversation again.
“I can’t always be here to help you,” she replied. “It’s dangerous.”
“It’s antique!”
“Maybe it’s time to go to bed for the night,” Maria suggested, concern in her voice.
I sighed, deeply, before nodding. Maybe it was time for bed. She helped me down the stairs and I clung to her, still trying to calm myself after the cries that I knew I had heard.
Maria had left early in the morning, nothing but a scrawled note left on the nightstand next to my daily medications to let me know that she had been here. I had the intention of waking up and making her breakfast before she left, but that 5:00 alarm really tested the limits of my love. At least I had stashed granola bars in her car, so she had something to eat on her way to work. I always made sure that her stock was full so she wouldn’t be hungry. It sounded sweet and altruistic, but was actually self-serving. Maria got angry when she didn’t eat, and I never wanted to be the object of her frustration. Best to keep her fed.
I got up to make myself the breakfast that I had planned last night. Nothing fancy, just coffee, eggs, and toast. As I stood up, I heard crying coming from the kitchen. Had Maria not made it into work after all?
I put on my robe and hobbled out, but she wasn’t there. The crying had stopped as well. I felt the hair on my arms stand straight up as goosebumps covered my body. The crying was the same as the night before. What was going on?
Breakfast completely forgotten, I started wandering up the stairs to my office. Maybe if it was a neighbor, I could go to the top of the tower and see someone outside of the house?
“Mary, please!”
The voice was a woman’s, high-pitched and distorted, as though I were hearing it through broken speakers, coming from my office. I froze. Somebody was here. I needed a new plan of action.
Creeping as quietly as I could back downstairs, I went into the kitchen. I wished we had a baseball bat somewhere in the house—wasn’t that what people in the movies used on home intruders? I took a knife out of the block on the counter. It was a bit more dangerous than I cared for, but what choice did I have? Someone was inside of my home!
As quietly as I could, I walked back to the stairs. I carefully made my way up, trying to avoid each creak in the stairs, which was hard to do with a bandaged foot. About halfway up, I paused to catch my breath. My heart was pounding so hard that I was winded after just 7 stairs. After a few seconds of waiting, breathing, and listening, I didn’t hear anything, so I decided to continue.
And the eighth step creaked. I stopped again and held my breath, straining my ears to hear anything. There had been crying and a woman shouting earlier, and now nothing. Did that mean that the intruder had heard me and silenced themselves?
I made it to the top of the stairs and reached for the door, my hand shaking. I didn’t know what I’d find on the other side; what dangers awaited me. But I couldn’t wait any longer, I had to see what was going on. In one fluid motion, I opened the door and threw myself into the room, knife brandished in front of me, ready to defend myself should anybody attack.
Nobody was there. I looked for any signs of disturbances to the room, any papers amiss from where I had left them, but there was nothing. Even the cold cup of tea from the night before was in the same place on my desk.
I looked towards the safe, which probably should have been higher on my list of priorities, as surely a house burglar would try to find valuables in a safe, but it was still sealed close sitting on my shelf surrounded by books, just as it always was. Maybe they had broken in, closed it, and then gone out the window. The locked window. Of the second floor.
It didn’t matter how ridiculous it sounded, it was the only explanation for the noises. Glancing around to ensure that nobody was actually in the room with me, I put in the code to the safe and opened it. Everything was exactly the same, with my personal documents tucked away in the fireproof seal and the small amount of cash I kept in there untouched. Definitely not a house burglar, then. Or at least not a good one.
After putting everything I had rifled through back, I closed and locked the door to the safe. But before turning away, I saw an old, unfamiliar notebook. It wasn’t uncommon for me to buy books at antique stores and then never actually get around to reading them, but I at least knew what all of my books looked like. Or at least, I thought I did. This one was unfamiliar.
I gingerly picked it up. The musty pages were so brittle I worried they might tear if I turned them. This needed to be treated carefully. The voice temporarily forgotten, I carried the small book to my desk and delicately placed it down. The notebook was bound in unadorned cloth, fraying at the edges. When the front of the book was opened, something stuck and a page inside tore. I got a pair of tweezers and a magnifying glass (these tools did come in handy having antiques laying about) and carefully set about the work of separating pages.
As I worked, I saw the dates at the top of the pages, and started to become familiar with the scrawled cursive notes inside. It was a journal. How had it come to be in my office?
The journal seemed to detail nothing but the mundane accounts of a woman who was raising her children and taking care of a farm. I was going to put it back down when a name stuck out to me. Maria. Wait, no, it was Mary, not Maria. The author’s cursive was really difficult to make out.
As I read on, it became more and more obvious that the author did not like Mary. She was called Mary Pencil, because she always carried around a pencil. Original. I flipped to the next entry, two weeks after the initial complaint of Mary, and found that she was being accused of witchcraft and couldn’t help but scoff.
Mary used her pencil to cast spells of madness, turning your loved ones against you, and the author of the journal believed that she had been cursed. The writing here was smudged, the paper warped. I turned the page and read ‘please forgive my tears.’ It was the only thing written, with nothing but more splotches on the page. Running my fingers over them, I felt that they were still wet. That wasn’t possible. I touched my face and found that it, too, was wet. Was I crying?
“Mary, no!”
I turned towards the shout, but nobody was there. My breath caught and my pulse quickened. The pages of the book grew more and more damp until water spilled from them. My hands jerked and I slammed the book closed with a loud thud.
Sprays of water and dust flew up and into my face, filling my nose, my mouth. I gasped and felt them enter my lungs. Before I knew what I was doing, I had left my office and made my way downstairs. I suddenly didn’t feel well. Collapsing on the couch, I decided it would help to lay down for a bit.
Maria stood by the couch that had become my sick bed over the last two days, holding a thermometer. I had gotten up to check for the book, but no matter how much I searched, it wasn’t anywhere in my office. Maria had finally put her foot down and said that she didn’t care where I was, but I needed to stay put. The stitches in my foot were in danger of ripping open, not to mention the fact that I had a fever that she kept saying was “concerning.” I knew that she was really worried when she called off work this evening to stay with me.
“We really should take you in,” she said, handing me a cup of tea. “The fever’s not getting better.”
“No, no, I’m fine,” I rasped out.
Maria knelt down next to me, putting her face at level with mine.
“It’s getting serious, love. Why don’t we just take you in?” Her face was a mask of worry that I hated to see, especially when I was the one causing it.
“I don’t want to see Dr. Thiel.”
“Why not? I thought you liked him?”
I sighed, deeply, at the memory of the conversation with him and my mother in his office. It was already a struggle to want to return after that, but I especially did not want to go back with Maria. The bigotry would be worse if we were together.
“What’s wrong?” she asked again, and I realized I’d have to tell her.
“My mother took me to get the stitches in my foot.” She nodded, encouraging me to go on. Of course she had already known that I went to get stitches, since I had come home with stitches. Another deep sigh to brace myself, and I told her the entire thing between bouts of coughing. About what my mother had said, Dr. Thiel’s response, the nurse with the gay brother, all of it. I could see the anger building in her, but I didn’t stop until I was completely finished.
“And you know she insisted on having power of attorney when I got my diabetes, so I think she still does, despite me having you in my life now,” I finished.
“This is unacceptable,” she snapped. “You’re a grown woman! You can care for yourself! And your sexuality has nothing to do with a cut on your foot.”
“This is why I didn’t want to tell you,” I said. It was hard to tell if I felt so awful because of her reaction or the fever. Probably both.
“Your mother shouldn’t have ever gotten involved,” Maria said, working herself up as she went. I saw her pull out her phone and stare at it for a few seconds before she started dialing somebody.
“Who are you calling?” I asked, unable to keep the worried tone out of my voice. I hoped she was just calling a different doctor, and not Dr. Thiel’s office. Even if he hadn’t behaved professionally, his receptionist didn’t deserve to hear an earful from Maria, and I didn’t want to hear her yell at anybody over the phone. I was sick.
“Your mother,” Maria snapped.
I sat up and felt the blood drain from my face. This was much worse than merely calling Dr. Thiel.
“I don’t think now’s the time to get into this,” I said, but she just put up a finger to shush me and kept the phone against her ear. I needed to try a different approach.
“It’s late,” I reminded her.
She held the phone away from her ear and looked at the display. “It’s 8:30,” she replied, snapping the phone shut. “She’s not answering, anyway.”
I couldn’t help but feel relieved.
“I’m going over there.”
And the relief was gone.
“Maria, we are not going to my mother’s house.”
I tried to infuse as much authority into my voice as I could, but only succeeded in causing another coughing fit. My wife handed me the cup of tea.
“You’re right, we’re not. I am. See you later,” she said, grabbing her keys and stomping towards the door.
“No, stop!” I tried to say, but it was too late. She shut it behind her. I groaned, and dragged myself off of the couch, reeling a bit as I stood up. Somebody had to stop her.
Thirty minutes later found me sitting on the bus in my sweats with a coat thrown on, angrily typing on my phone. Maria had not answered any of my texts and had declined all of my phone calls. By now, she was definitely at my mother’s house. The display on the front of the bus showed that I’d have another 9 stops before I’d get there. I coughed into my elbow and the woman across the aisle from me scowled again.
She, along with everybody else on the bus, had stared at me as I had carefully made my way to my seat and I could only imagine what they were seeing—my unruly and knotted hair in a knot on top of my head, fever making my cheeks flushed and eyes glossy, a puffy coat over dirty sweats, bandages over one foot, a sock on the other, and slippers over them both. I should not be out of the house like this.
Despite the late hour, there were not many seats available. The woman across from me seemed to resent me for that fact. She had cringed and turned her nose away from me, as if I smelled bad. Which I might have, but I was too congested to notice. I probably smelled like menthol, cough drops, and sweat.
Maria would not pick up her phone, no matter how much I begged the phone out loud to get through to her. She was more angry than I had ever seen her. Thinking back, I realized that I had never actually told Maria about Mother saying that our marriage wasn’t real. This was the first she had heard of it, coupled with learning about Mother’s insistence on that power of attorney form. The anger was understandable, which made me worry even more about what it might lead to. Maria was not a violent person, but she did have a temper that made her see red at times. Something unforgivable could easily be said and the relationship between my mother and my spouse would be even more tense than it already was.
I called again. No answer. My battery was draining quickly and I hoped it would last until I got there. The bus drove past 2 of the stops, barely slowing as it was apparent that nobody was waiting and nobody desired to get off. I hoped my luck continued. I needed to get to that house. Something bad was going to happen, I could feel it.
My luck did not hold out, and the next few stops were held up with people getting on and off the bus. Someone had a bike and an entire contraption needed to be pulled out of the front of the bus to accommodate it, which took at least 5 minutes.
I continued blowing up Maria’s phone, but to no avail. I tried my mother’s phone as well, but she didn’t answer either. My heart had begun racing, both from the fear and from the effort of sitting on the bus—normally an easy enough activity, despite the lurching stop and start of the vehicle, but I was so sick that even laying in my bed would’ve felt tiring.
When the bus finally got to my stop, I stood up and shakily made my way down the steps to the sidewalk below. It was dark and cold out and I immediately began shivering. I was sure my foot wasn’t doing well, but for once I was grateful for the nerve damage that numbed the pain. Desperate to make up for the time I had lost on the bus, I attempted to run, but only managed a few steps before I had to double over, coughing, and attempt to catch my breath. Maybe Maria was right and I should’ve gone to see a doctor.
After I got my breathing back under control, I decided a brisk walk would have to do. It was all I’d be able to manage. The combination of the fever, headache, and stiffness made me feel woozy as I walked along, but worry about my mother and my wife gave me the energy I needed to continue.
After an eternity, I got to my mother’s house. I paused at the front door, leaning against the handle and struggling to catch my breath before I walked in. There was no way of knowing what I’d be walking into and it seemed prudent to be able to speak without gasping for air between words.
Then I heard a scream and all thoughts of composure left my mind as I opened the door and barged in. The scream had come from Maria, and as I walked into the house, I saw the two women in the kitchen, struggling and shouting. Mother had a knife in her hand, and Maria was holding on to her wrist, fighting to keep the blade from closing in on her. They continued to argue while they fought.
My mouth opened in horror and it felt like I was screaming, but my throat was so raw that no sound came out. I watched in disbelief, unable to do anything but continue to gulp in air and lean against the wall, as Maria forced the knife in my mother’s hand to be turned back towards her. Maria screamed in Mother’s face about never loving her own daughter and shoved forward until the knife made contact. This time it was Mother’s turn to scream as the skin of her abdomen was sliced open.
I didn’t know what to do. They were still fighting each other, but blood had begun to show through my mother’s sweater. I pulled out my phone, now down to only 4% battery, and dialed 9-1-1. An operator picked up immediately, asking what my emergency was.
“Ambulance,” I gasped, hoping I could be heard over the sound of the women fighting at the other side of the room. “2324 Marigold Lane. Hurry.”
I waited to hear a response, but there wasn’t one. Looking at my phone, I saw that it was dead. Hopefully she heard and would send help.
I looked back to the two women, still struggling and screaming. They were so intent on each other that they still had not noticed me. I tried to call out to them, but only ended up coughing again and falling against the wall with a thud.
Mother turned at the noise and finally saw me. She dropped the knife and Maria scrambled to gain control of it and step back, carefully out of reach. Maria turned to me and I held out my hand, a silent request to give me the knife. I could not believe that it had escalated this far, this quickly, but at least I was here now to stop it. She took cautious steps towards me, keeping Mother in her view.
“Get out of my house,” Mother said to her, between sobs.
“Let’s calm down,” I wheezed, and she looked at me with a silent command to be quiet before turning back to Maria.
“Out.”
Another command. Maria dropped the knife into my outstretched hand and ran out the door.
I sagged down to the floor, and watched my mother do the same. She disappeared behind the counter.
“Mom?” I called out, but there was no response. My voice was quiet, still hoarse, but I tried again, calling out for my mother, but she didn’t answer. How badly had she been cut?
Unable to stand, I made my way to all fours and began to crawl to her, knife still in hand. Every movement brought pain, but I continued on. Fear had made me go cold and when I made my way around the edge of the counter, I saw my fear realized in front of me. My mother was on the ground, with a small pool of blood escaping from the wound on her side.
“No. No no no,” was all I could say as I got closer. Somewhere in the distance, I heard sirens, but I didn’t care. I tore at mother’s sweater, revealing a gash along her side. It was deeper than I had first thought, and blood poured from it. Too much blood.
My entire world constricted into nothing but that wound. I still had the knife in my left hand, so I reached out with my right, trying to apply pressure, but it was no use. I didn’t have gauze. There were loud noises outside of the house, but I couldn’t process them. I needed to save my mother. I felt like I was going to pass out. I needed to save her before I did.
“Drop the knife!” a deep voice ordered, and some part of my consciousness held on to that. I slowly turned and saw a man holding a gun. No, a police officer. He could save her.
“My mother—”
“Ma’am, drop the knife and put your hands on the ground.”
Who was he talking to? Who had a knife? I looked around and remembered that I had the knife. Right. I dropped it.
“Good, now, hands on the ground,” the officer was talking to me slowly, like I was a child. I complied, and another man rushed forward, pushing me down. He grabbed my hands, roughly, and put handcuffs on them.
Why did I need handcuffs? We needed to help my mother! But when I tried to say so, one of the men just barked “quiet!” and I closed my mouth again.
They were talking, telling me something, but I could barely hear. I could feel my heartbeat pounding in my ears, the congestion making it difficult to think about anything else. I was dizzy with fever, my throat hurt too much to attempt to talk again. They stood me up and took me out to a car, attempting to put me in the back of it, when I fainted.
I woke up in a hospital bed.
Looking around, it was just as stark and bare as any other one that I had been in, although the room itself was unfamiliar. A terrible place to heal, but I was feeling better. Looking up, I saw tubes and monitors that were likely attached to me. I shifted my arm to sit up and was met with resistance. I pulled, hard, but something held me down. My other arm, too, was stuck. They had chained me to the bed! Never in my life had I been restrained like this! No, wait, that wasn’t true, I thought as I remembered what had happened the previous night. Had I been arrested? Clearly this was all a misunderstanding.
“Nurse!” I called, my voice still scratchy and rough. My throat hurt but I pushed through. “I need a nurse!”
It was a long time before anybody entered the room.
When someone finally did come, he did not look like a nurse. He was wearing a button-down shirt and slacks instead of scrubs and carried a clipboard with him. No stethoscope.
“Hello,” he said in greeting. I didn’t feel like responding.
“I’m Dr. Shelly. And you are?”
I merely glanced towards the restraints that were still around my wrists, hoping my point was coming through. Because I sure as hell was not interacting in a positive manner with someone who was intentionally keeping me prisoner.
He followed my gaze and then cleared his throat.
“Ah, well, those are there for everybody’s safety.” I merely continued to glare. “I’ll tell you what, if you promise not to hurt yourself, or hurt me, I will undo one of those restraints. That should make you feel more comfortable.”
One, not both. But one was better than nothing.
“I won’t hurt anybody,” I said.
He smiled and came over and peeled off the velcro that was holding down my right hand. I looked to the left, knowing that I’d be able to take off the other myself, but was dismayed to see that there was a handcuff around my wrist as well as the velcro restraint. Of course Dr. Shelly caught my distress.
“Jessica, do you remember what happened the night before last?”
I blinked. The night before last all I had done was lay in bed sick. Why would that matter? Unless he knew about the journal, I had gotten up at one point to search for it again.
I must have been quiet for too long, because the doctor prompted, “With your mother?”
That had been last night. Or maybe it hadn’t.
“Have I been asleep for two days?” I asked.
Dr. Shelly smiled wanly at me and then replied, “Well, you’ve been in and out of consciousness. But let’s not evade the question.”
I thought back and memories of Mother flooded dizzyingly back to me.
“Can I see my mother? Is she alright?”
“She is fine,” Dr. Shelly placated. “But you will not be able to see her.”
“What? Why?”
“She is pressing charges.” Dr. Shelly’s tone was gentle, but in that false way. Like somebody who was attempting to soothe a dangerous animal.
“Against Maria?” I asked.
Dr. Shelly’s eyebrows rose a bit and he scribbled something on his clipboard before responding.
“No, against you,” he said.
“Why me?”
“Because you assaulted her,” he responded in that gentle voice, completely at odds with the words he was saying.
“That was Maria,” I said, trying to straighten out the story. Then I instantly felt bad for throwing my wife under the bus like that.
“Your mother has stated that it was you who stabbed her, while yelling about a Maria. She’s let us know that there is no such woman.”
I could not believe the words that were coming out of his mouth. The words that must have come out of Mother’s mouth.
“Maria was there!”
“There was nobody else at the scene when the police arrived,” Dr. Shelly told me. Which of course I knew, but he wasn’t understanding. He hadn’t taken my statement, and was merely relying on what my mother had told him.
“I need to see my mother,” I said. I would get this all straightened out.
“As I’ve previously mentioned, you can’t. She will also no longer be able to care for you going forward. And, based on your level of care required, we will be moving you to a long-term care facility once you are feeling better.”
Anger rose up in me.
“She doesn’t need to care for me. I can care for myself. And if this is about my foot, as I told Dr. Thiel, Maria is perfectly capable of providing care for me. She’s a nurse.”
“Do you know where you are?”
The change in subject and tone gave me whiplash.
“I assume at the hospital,” I responded.
“You’ve been here before,” Dr. Shelly said. “Do you remember any of it?”
The room was unfamiliar. I told him as much.
“You’re at OHS Regional, in the Psychiatric Unit. Although I’ve not worked with you before, I have notes from Dr. Peterson. Savannah. Do you remember her?”
I had never met a Savannah Peterson in my life. But memories of a hospital stay were slowly coming back to me. It had been years ago, and I had stayed for a long time. What had it been for? Something was very, very wrong.
“I need to see my wife,” I told him. “Maria Sanchez.”
Dr. Shelly sighed before he responded.
“This might upset you, Jessica, but Maria is not here. She can’t be. The Maria you know is not real.”
“No,” I started to say, but he spoke over me.
“You are sick. Hopefully the change in medications that we’ve provided will help you to realize what is and is not real.”
“What medications are you giving me?” I asked, panic creeping into my voice.
“They’re not very different from the ones that you’ve been on for the past 3 years, just the dosage has changed.”
My breathing came heavier. I didn’t take medications, except to manage diabetes. That’s what all of the pills were for.
“I know Maria is real,” I said, trying to stay outwardly calm. I needed him to have a good impression of me if I was going to convince him to listen. There wouldn’t be any ammunition for them to use to label or diagnose me if I stayed calm. Who knew what these doctors resorted to for uncooperative patients?
As if he were privy to my thoughts, Dr. Shelly looked me over before he continued.
“Maria was a nurse that you met during your first inpatient psychiatric stay. My notes say that there was an infatuation there. But you are not married, I’ve checked the legal records. There is nobody in your life named Maria now.”
I felt Maria’s skin against mine in my memory. I heard her voice. I knew everything about her. She was my wife, which meant that she was much more than some figment of my imagination.
“You know nothing of my life,” I snarled. “I demand access to a phone. I need to call her. You’ll see that she’s real!”
“Let’s take a deep breath,” he said, and then a nurse did come and peer around the door.
“We need you down the hall,” she told him.
Dr. Shelly turned back to me.
“It looks like I have to go, but I’ll be back soon,” he said. “In the meantime, do try to get some rest. I’m glad that you’re feeling better. We’ll chat soon about getting you moved to a facility that will be a good fit.”
And with that, he was gone, leaving me alone with my thoughts. I looked around, but couldn’t see my phone anywhere. I was wearing nothing but a hospital gown, and was still handcuffed to the bed. Trapped, with nowhere to go, a tear slid down my face. I only wanted to see my wife. She was real. I knew she was real.
Maria stood at the front desk of OHS Regional Hospital, arguing with the staff.
“Please, I need to see my wife. Jessica Sanchez.”
“I’m sorry,” the attendant said, “there’s nobody here by that name.”
“Bullshit!” Maria said.
One of the security officers by the front door noticed her yelling and started walking up to them. “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” he told Maria.
“My wife is in there! I need to see her!”
The security officer looked at the attendant, who nodded at him, and he moved to stand in between her and Maria.
“You need to leave, or you will be escorted from the premises.”
“My wife,” Maria tried again, her voice cracking. She hated that she cried when she was frustrated. The guard’s eyes softened, obvious concern visible in them.
“Look,” he said, “this might be some mistake. Why don’t you step outside and see if she’s at a different facility?”
A sob racked Maria’s body. She knew her wife was in there, right upstairs. She worked at the only other hospital nearby, and she knew for damn sure that Jessica was not there. But she would get nowhere talking to the staff at the front desk, who had clearly been told for some reason that she was on a restricted list. It was probably Jessica’s mother, a homophobic bigot who had hated her from day one. She must have convinced someone to stop Maria from visiting, maybe by telling them she was dangerous after their argument and the accident with the knife. Maria had called, but the other woman must have blocked her number because each time it went straight to voicemail. She still struggled to believe that Jess’s mother had pulled a knife on her in the first place. The woman had become unhinged.
“I’ll be back,” Maria said to the staff members before storming out.
She couldn’t help but worry about her wife. Maria had been working so much lately and she had realized, when setting out Jessica’s meds, that she was missing some of her psych meds. Jessica had been acting disoriented and confused, even before cutting her foot and getting a fever, and she was worrying about how well the schizophrenia was being managed. It was why Maria had requested time off for this week, to watch and monitor the situation at home.
In the parking lot, her phone started ringing. Oh thank God, it was probably the hospital calling to let her know about their mistake.
She answered with a brief, “yes?”
“Maria?”
It was not the hospital, but her boss.
“I can’t come in right now, I already said I need the day off,” she said curtly.
There was a beat of silence on the other end before… “It’s actually not about that. You won’t need to come in for a few days, until we get this sorted.”
“Get what sorted?”
“There’s been a report made. Your license is currently under review.”
“Who made the report?” Maria asked as she opened the door to her car.
“You know I can’t tell you that,” her boss’s voice was gentle.
“Who made it?” Maria insisted.
“Look, I’m not going to say anything except that you likely know who. But this time, it’s serious enough that it’s gone above my head. There are allegations of patient abuse. You won’t be able to work until it gets sorted.”
Maria sat down in the driver’s seat and her hand fell down, letting the phone fall to the floor. She closed the car door as she heard “Maria? Maria?” coming from her phone, but she ignored it. She started to cry in earnest, and then she took in a deep breath and, with everything she had, she screamed until she ran out of air. Then she screamed again, and again, as tears streamed down her face.
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