Page 76 of Ward D
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Ramona grumbles. She throws the weight of her knee onto Will’s arm, then she grabs the syringe with her left hand. She pulls off the cap with her teeth, then plunges the needle into Will’s deltoid.
It doesn’t take effect instantly, so Ramona and Dr. Beck have to keep him restrained on the floor. But slowly, the fight leaves his body. He stops struggling and goes limp on the floor.
“Ramona,” Dr. Beck says, “please help Mr. Schoenfeld back into bed.”
Will’s eyelids are droopy at this point, and he needs her help just to crawl off the floor and climb back into his bed. If he were ever dangerous, he isn’t anymore. But I’m not sure if I believe he ever was.
“Amy.” Will’s voice is slurred now. “Don’t… don’t trust…”
Ramona lays a firm hand on my shoulder. “Come on, Amy. Let him sleep.”
She firmly guides me out of the room and shuts the door behind us. I can’t help but remember that this exact same thing happened to Mary. Ramona injected her with a sedative, then we left her alone in her room. And now she’s gone, and all that’s left is blood on her sheets.
I have doomed Will.
And the worst part is that now there is absolutely nobody left I can trust.
50
Dr. Beck is alone at the nurses’ station, writing in Will’s chart. When he sees me approaching, he frowns. “I’m so sorry you had to experience that, Amy,” he says.
“Yeah,” I mumble.
“It’s been an uncharacteristically difficult night.” His shoulders sag. “Please don’t think it’s always like this. I don’t want this to sour you on the field of psychiatry.”
I manage a halfhearted smile. “I wasn’t going to do psychiatry anyway, remember?”
Dr. Beck taps the pen against his page. “Yes, that’s right. It was your colleague, Cameron, who was the one feigning interest.”
“Dr. Beck.” I sit down beside him at the nurses’ station. “When Cameron left that message on your machine, how did he sound?”
“I told you. He sounded choked up. I certainly believed he had a family emergency.” He arches an eyebrow. “Why do you ask?”
“Did he sound scared?”
Dr. Beck considers my question for a moment. His eyes cloud over as he looks at Will’s closed door, then back at my face. “Amy,” he says quietly. “Have you ever heard of a psychiatric syndrome called folie à deux?”
“Um… no…”
“It’s also called a shared psychotic disorder,” he says. “Basically, it’s a delusional belief, sometimes even involving hallucinations, that are shared by two people. For example, if a married couple both believed that their dog could speak English.”
I blink at him. “Oh, I don’t think—”
“Will has unfortunately managed to convince you that certain delusions of his were true,” Dr. Beck says. “But if you think about it, you will realize that nothing he believed was rational. He was using these delusions to justify insignificant events, and ultimately, his own violent behavior.”
I look down at my hands. “Oh.”
“I’m afraid Will’s psychosis is much worse than what my colleague from the day shift reported to me,” he says. “He should really be transferred to a much more secure facility, possibly even a criminal facility given our suspicions about what he did to Mary Cummings.”
“I… I see.”
Dr. Beck reaches out and puts a hand on my shoulder. “The night is almost over. Please just try to get some sleep, and this will all get taken care of. Don’t worry about Will. He will get the psychiatric treatment he needs, whether he likes it or not.”
With those words of wisdom, he closes the chart labeled SCHOENFELD and sticks it back up on the rack. Then he goes back to his office.
I wonder how he would feel if I asked him if I could follow him and hide in the corner of his office for the rest of the night.
But instead, I am left alone at the nurses’ station. Jade has gone back to her room, Ramona is off somewhere, and Will is in a drugged slumber. Now it’s just me. And the crazy man who has quite possibly been wandering the halls ever since the power outage.
