The Safety Zone (a novella by Bob Racine) - Chapter 8

Chapter 8     A Frantic Search for Answers

As Cara is released from Recovery and returned to her own room, she develops the growing suspicion that people are not telling her everything about her “accident,” that something is being withheld from her.  She is aware that she is experiencing amnesia, but begins to recall details one at a time that build one on top of another.  This process leads her to the point where she is forced to relive the horrific ordeal that led to her collapse in front of Dagne’s bed.  

Cara was kept in the Recovery Room for what seemed to her like an endless day, but it was only 1:30 in the afternoon when she was returned to her own room.  She had expected her surgeon to discharge her that day, but he wanted her in the hospital for observation for another night.  Actually, she welcomed this development.  She was in no hurry to return to her drab house with her drab boarder.  There were things to complete with the hospital roommate. 

Besides, she had begun to feel considerably crowded in the Recovery Room by all the constant attention, all the watchful eyes and all the heavy traffic of medics passing in and out and all the long hours without any privacy.  She had even had to listen to more baseball chatter, even with Vernon not present.  Bets were being made over the outcome of the afternoon’s game between the Cardinals and the Red Sox. 

The staff did not wait until Vernon arrived; she was not sure when he would put in his appearance anyhow.  She felt safe having Chuck supervising her transfer.  With a firm hold upon her torso he helped her into a wheelchair and pushed her down the hall.  Since they were using this means of transportation and not a gurney, she figured that they considered her something other than a basket case.  That gave her a slight measure of consolation.    

She still had no recollection of the accident, but she was beginning to recall having gotten onto a first name basis with the woman who had been sharing her room.  Vernon had mentioned the preceding day that her name was Dagne, but he did not seem too willing to speak on the subject.  Cara

intuited that the doctors had instructed him to leave her otherwise in her fog for the present. 

She further deduced from this reticence of his and theirs that what she could not remember was unpleasant, maybe horrific, and that she had to be led back into it very gently and when the time was right.  No one had told her this in so many words, but the air all around her reeked of uncommunicated communication.  They were hiding something from her, and she reasoned that if it was that dreadful a tale, she would just as soon not know until she got settled in more secure surroundings. 

Perhaps they were waiting for her to remember things on her own.  She had asked if she still had a roommate and was told she did.  Surely when she got back to the place where it all had happened, the puzzle pieces would fit together. 

As she was wheeled down the corridor, she imagined that everybody was watching her, that everybody knew about the drastic thing she had done or the scandalous thing that had been done to her.  She knew she had been primed and ready for her surgery, and that something unexpected had set her back and shaken her up, maybe some foolish mistake on her part.  What protocol of medical practice had she violated?  She imagined that everybody in the building knew what it was and was eyeing her with morbid curiosity or tacit disapproval.

The trip seemed endless.  It was difficult for her to sit up.  She was very lightheaded, nauseous and weak.  Having to descend to another floor in an elevator did not make the journey any less irritating.  But the closer she got to her destination the more certain she was that seeing this woman, Dagne, again would trigger all her memories of what had gone wrong.  But when Chuck wheeled her at last into the room to which she was assigned, she knew at once it was not the same room she had originally occupied. 

It was the one in which she had awakened the afternoon before, the one with her bed right next to the window.  As she passed the first bed, she saw that the occupant was not at the moment present.  Chuck informed her that she was in the bathroom. 

Getting up from the wheelchair was slow going.  She felt as if she was stretching every nerve and muscle in her body, and her neck region  reminded her by its soreness that it was the strategic area of combat that she had not yet pacified.  She could not get her footing, so Chuck virtually lifted her into the bed with both his arms. 

Unlike the day he had visited Dagne, he had very little to say and did not strike up a conversation beyond asking her if she was comfortable and whether there was anything else he could do for her.  He looked at her as if he too like Vernon knew more about the accident than he wanted to let her know and had been cautioned by the doctors against telling her too much.  His face carried the look of deep concern, but he remained closed mouth.

Maybe he was resentful of her for causing so much commotion in the presence of his special friend Dagne and for upsetting her, if that’s what had happened.  She considered asking him if he would holler into the bathroom and let Dagne know that Cara had returned but thought better of it.  Cara would hear from her soon enough when she emerged.  All she requested was a glass of water from the table next to her, which he readily provided.  It was gratifying to notice that she was no longer connected to anything by wire or tubing, and even more gratifying to see that her migraine had for the most part receded.

After Chuck was gone, she waited with great anticipation for Dagne to come forth.  She hoped Dagne would be pleased to see her again and that they could clear up whatever needed clearing up between them.  She heard the toilet flush, followed in rapid succession by the opening of the bathroom door.  But the woman who emerged was somebody Cara did not recognize. 

She was much younger than she remembered Dagne to be, perhaps in her thirties.  The woman saw her and smiled a courteous smile before getting back into bed.  Cara was confused.  Did she have matters all mixed up?  Maybe Dagne was younger than she recalled.  Did she dare open her mouth and ask?

“Hi!” said Cara to the woman, certain that she wanted to make contact but not sure how inquisitive she wanted to be.  If the woman did not hear her or did not respond, she would leave it at that.  The woman did not act as if she knew Cara at all.  There was no look of recognition on her face.  She simply replied with “Hello!  Welcome aboard!” 

Now that is not what Cara would have expected an acquaintance to say under these circumstances.  Welcome aboard was a greeting extended to a new arrival.  Cara was not a new arrival in Dagne’s life.  And then another piece of her memory was activated: Dagne was having a breast removed.  A mastectomy! 

As if on automatic Cara asked without giving away her hidden agenda, “What brings you here?”  The stranger in the next bed replied, “I’m having knee surgery.”  Cara knew by that reply that this was not the same roommate.  Adding a bit of oil to the wound, the new roommate introduced herself.  “I’m Betty Woolsley.” 

Cara shuddered.  That introduction had the same ominous sound to it as did the last one she had heard – I’m Dagne.  You, Cara, are the one I’m about to put in danger of extinction.  I hope I’m not the last person on this earth you ever meet.  Cara realized that this Betty was waiting for her identity.  Languidly she replied, “Cara Hutchins.”  As if who I am now makes any difference to you or anyone, she thought. 

Cara felt fretful – all alone and unaided in her struggle to fine-tune her recent past.  They had tricked her.  They had put her in the wrong room.  They had told her she still had a roommate; they had led her to believe that she would be restored to Dagne’s company.  But they had stuck her in this strange and unfamiliar spot.  She wanted to scream, but she was far too weak to mount any kind of protest. 

Vernon’s arrival put an end for the moment to her morbidity.  She did not remember any time in her life when she was more pleased at the sudden appearance of her brother.  She knew he had spent a great amount of time with her since this alleged accident had occurred.  He had exceeded the number of hours he would have been expected to devote, if the accident had not taken place. 

Already she was beginning to feel strangely indebted to him.  He was the only family she had, and outside the family of one she had no friends to come to her aid.  She only hoped he would not start in with his wise cracks and puns at her expense.  She felt that she would keel over and die, if he did.  His first words were an expression of relief.

“Hi, Sis!  Glad to see you back here and out of that fish bowl.”

“Brother, please tell me what happened!”  She asked this of him in all earnestness.  He turned and pulled her curtain around her bed to shut out the new roommate, before he sat down.  Apparently, whatever he had to say was to him too personal and maybe delicate for other ears to hear.  He looked as if he was thinking hard, trying to find the right words.  “Have they got your tongue?”

“Got my tongue?” he queried.  “Has who got my tongue?”

“Have you been told not to tell me things?”  She aimed the question straight at him, eyeball to eyeball.

“Not exactly,” he replied.  “They just said I should let you rest as much as possible, not to require you to talk a lot, until you’re ready to.”       

“Well, I’m ready to.  I’ve been doing a lot of resting and wondering, and now I’m ready to.  So talk to me.  Her name was Dagne, right?  I forget her last name.  Tell me her last name and tell me about her, please.”  In spite of this last word, she knew her request sounded like a firm and dire ultimatum.  But Vernon did not seem rattled in the slightest by it.  He did not waste a breath responding.

“Her last name is Denison.  Dagne Denison.”  

“Where is she?  Is she still in the hospital?  Why didn’t they put us back together?”

“She’s-   hospitalized, but not here.  Not in this building.”

“Why did they take her away from me?”

“They took her away from the whole place and everybody in it. 

She-  ”  He was fishing for the right words.  Maybe she needed a physician to tell her.  But Vernon pressed on.  “She developed complications, ones they’re not equipped to handle around here.”

Complications!  Why did that word strike home for Cara?  Why was she so suddenly sure that she had heard it in connection with the woman?  She repeated the word quietly to herself several times.  Complications, etc!  The word had been spoken to her right in the room where she used to be.  There was Dagne letting the straps of her brassiere drop.  There was Dagne baring her breast in front of Cara.  So gross!  So ill-bred!  There was Dagne dangling it over Cara’s face.  Just before she turned back and spoke her own name! 

I’m Dagne Denison!  The big introduction!  Why big?  Not an introduction, but the introduction!  Followed by the fateful disclosure: that she had been admitted twice before, but the mastectomy had not been performed.  Why?  “Complications!”  They were supposed to do it, but there were “complications!”  It was the big pronouncement that was supposed to be a harbinger of Cara’s death. 

Cara realized that for a matter of minutes she had faded out on Vernon.  She had been searching her memory so intently about the origins of her contacts with Dagne that she had blanked out from any conversation they were trying to have.  In the meantime Chaplain Blanchard had walked in, and she had not even noticed.  He looked at Cara and, without pity or any judgmental assessment that she could read on his face, he said, “I’m glad you’re better.  I understand you’ve been through quite a crisis.  Thank God you’re back on track.” 

The chaplain must know all about me too, Cara thought.  Everybody knows what Cara Hutchins has done except Cara.  But why did she not know?  If she was guilty of some kind of small crime, she must know what it is.  If it is a chunk of her personal history that is under inspection, why would she not recall the history she had lived?

She said nothing in response to Vernon or the chaplain.  She started looking around.  The room and its particulars began to press themselves upon her.  They began to speak to her.  She perceived them to be the set pieces of a stage, waiting for human action, waiting for a drama to be played out. 

She saw the sheets on her own bed, felt the soft pillows at the back of her neck, took in the end table beside it, the tiles on the floor, and the unadorned windows emitting translucent sunlight.  The television set on the opposite wall glared at her, as if it were operating but were spying on her instead of transmitting images.  And there was the pleated curtain that now separated her from her present roommate.  It began to haunt her.  She could not remove her eyes from it. 

That curtain!  That colorless fence sealing somebody off!  That border defying anyone to cross it or to learn the secrets on the other side of it!  Why is she hiding herself?  Why is so much being withheld from me?  That curtain – the symbol of my life, people wrapping themselves up and shutting me out!  It was that Dagne, that woman I had counted on but who disappointed me.  That curtain – I want to tear it down, to leap from my own bed and snatch it off its track and rip it to shreds!  I have to make the woman on the other side hear me.  The silent treatment!  The cold shoulder!  Something given, then withheld!  But I’ve done nothing wrong.  Or have I?  Have I left something undone?  Could something undone give offense, even if I do it innocently?  What was Dagne’s gripe with me?  Why does she want to see her daughter?  That wretched, uncaring daughter!  Why the daughter and not me?  Death!  Oh my God, is this how it comes?  Your body gets broken along with your heart?  Your heart and your lungs fail at the same time?  How can she do this – soften me up, then lower the boom!  “Dagne!  Are you awake?  Can you hear me?”  What are you hiding over there?  A part of me is over there.  You’re hiding a part of me.  You’ve stolen a part of me.  You’re keeping a part of me for yourself.  Give it back, will you.  Give it back.  It isn’t yours to steal.  It’s my heart.  If I can’t have your heart in return, I’ll take mine back and write you off.  No more than a dozen or so steps at most.  Just a dozen or so steps!  Push through, Cara.  Push through.  First, my head off the pillow!  No sensation in my feet!  I can’t feel the floor.  Is the floor there?  “Dagne, please!  Just let me know you’re there and awake.  You don’t have to move a muscle.  If you speak, I won’t have to do it – I won’t have to take that dangerous walk.”  They want me to lie back.  All of them want me to lie back down, but I can’t.  I haven’t stood all the way up yet.  I won’t listen to those things.  I’ve got to give friendship a chance.  I’ll listen only to my feet, not my nerves, not my muscles, not my woozy head.  My feet will transport me.  At least I have to know.  Grip the pillow, Cara.  Take it with you.  No, I can’t.  Then push, push down, slide your rear end all the way to the edge, find the floor.  Oh, my God, is that pillow really gone – my security pillow, my childhood?  If I fall, what do I grab hold of?  The earth is all squooshy marsh under my feet.  Walk, feet!  Don’t let anything stop you.  I’m trying to breathe.  Where’s my breath?  Why can’t I breathe?  Oh, my head hurts! The pain is horrible!  Why pain on top of not being able to breathe?  They think I’m out of my mind.  Keep your eyes open, Cara.  You have to see in front of you and around you.  Don’t lose your balance or you’ll crash.  There in front is the wall.  To the right of that is the vestibule that takes you to the door and the bathroom.  So far, so good!  Mind over matter, they say!  Easier said than done, but it must be done.  Courage won’t find me; I must find it.  I have to move, to place one foot in front of the other.  That’s where my courage lies – in my feet.  Come on, feet!  You’re my courage.  If you fail, I fail.  I have to make my way.  My way where?  To find what?  Affection?  Trust? Reassurance?  Peace of mind?  Oh, God forbid I’m in store for a rude awakening! My brain in turmoil! Over there, beyond that curtain!  That’s where it is.  That’s where the answer must be found.  Yes, yes, here I am in motion, at the foot of my bed in Dagne’s direction.  I have to push; nobody is going to pull me.  Push – against the nausea that’s trying to sink me.  Push through the agony, the fear, the pain.  Oh, the pain grinds; it’s twistimg all through my skull.  But push!  Push!  Nobody is going to root for you or cheer you on.  Push!  Push through the heat.  Why is the room so much hotter?  Do I have a fever?  Push – against all resistance!  This resistance, this resistance is not going to go away.  It’s with me all the way across.  I can’t unload it.  My legs are shaky.  They’re wobbly.  But I’m almost there.  In front of me now is the window – oh, the window at last.  And here before me is her curtain – Dagne’s curtain!  Beyond that the truth that shall set me free!  Get past the curtain!  Get past that confounded, stubborn, silent curtain!  One more turn around one more corner of one more bed!  A few more steps!  Oh, great God, Dagne is being diminished!  Diminishing herself!  She mustn’t do that.  She mustn’t do that.  Scream it loud, Cara, louder, make them hear you.  Scream, scream!  Make somebody come and help.  She mustn’t diminish.  She isn’t the Wicked Witch of the West.  She doesn’t have to be turned to liquid.  She needs to stay solid.  I must make them hear me!  SOMBODY HEAR ME! ! !

Cara was screaming – as loud as she had screamed the day she reached Dagne on the other side of the barrier.  She was writhing in anguish and horror.  Though the passage of her thoughts and memories had been clear to her, to those listening her words were gibberish.  But she saw Dagne at last, and what she then yelled could be understood by all.  “Oh, Dagne, what are you doing?  Oh, my God, stop her.” 

Tears were streaming down Cara’s face.  She was hysterical, but unlike before she was not alone.  Vernon, Chaplain Blanchard and Chuck the nurse were with her trying to calm her down.  But she was seeing the nightmare in her mind’s eye, the only eye through which she was presently able to see anything.  She was seeing the hideous sight that felt once again like acid poison flung into her face.

Dagne was sitting up in bed, her mouth open and limp, her shoulders slumped forward, and with a knife she was making slits in her flesh.  There were two across her forehead and several running vertically down each cheek.  Her arms were almost covered in blood, and at the moment of Cara’s arrival she was working on her legs.  Not wild, wanton slashings, but slow, deliberate carvings!  She had even cut her IV tube.  Her eyes were large and glassy, as if she were engaged in a project that required intense concentration and had shut out the world.

Once again Cara thought she would vomit, that she would relive having the torrent spew from her mouth and wash over the floor and over everything in sight.  She thought once again that she would faint dead away, that the flames of hell would surge over her, that she was losing the ability to breathe. 

But slowly she regained her sense of where she actually was.  She saw once more her present room and the concerned threesome who sat before her, Chuck the nurse holding her as she sat up in bed, whimpering, Chuck  cradling her against any further onslaught of anguish.

“Oh, God, what did I do to her?  How did I make her do that, to-   ”

“You didn’t do anything to her, Cara.”  Chuck’s words sounded like musical lyrics in her ear.  “You didn’t do anything to her. You just found her doing it to herself.” 

“Why was she doing it?”

“She’s mentally ill – far more so than anyone had realized.  She takes on different personalities.  Her moods can change very fast, from one extreme to another.”

The chaplain added his assurances as well.  “You encountered not just one Dagne, but at least three.  No telling how many more there are.  You had a lot to deal with.  It would have shattered anyone momentarily.”

Yes, Cara remembered how drastically the intonation of Dagne’s voice had changed the night Dagne came to her bedside and asked for consolation, and then how even more drastically she had changed tone when the next day she was giving her ultimatum to her surgeon to produce her daughter.  And now here is a fourth personality – the suicidal one.

“I thought I had done something bad – to her,” Cara purred, clinging to Chuck.

“Done something to her!  Sister dear, you did something for her,” stated Vernon with a note of exalted congratulations in his voice.  “The greatest thing I can think of that one person does for another.  You saved her life.”   

Cara was dumbfounded.  The news, gladdening as it was, made her head reel.  She eased out of Chuck’s embrace and lowered herself back onto her pillow.  Could she even begin to allow herself to believe what she had just heard?  It was almost too incredible to take at face value.  But she looked at the other two faces before her, and she could tell that they concurred in what Vernon had said.  There was the hint of a smile on all three countenances.  Chuck took up the theme.

“If you had not found her and had not screamed the way you did, loud and long, chances are no one on duty would have known what was happening.  Your scream summoned help.  She would have kept on cutting and cutting and bleeding until she bled to death.  It might have been twenty minutes or more before any member of the hospital staff came by to check on her again.  That would have been more than enough time for her to have done the worst.” 

“But you intervened,” the chaplain intoned, leaning forward in her direction and voicing what was unmistakably a deep respect for her.  How long had it been since anyone had spoken to her like that?  How long had it been since she was singled out for any kind of honor or acknowledgement? “She’s a very sick woman,” the chaplain added, “but at least she’s alive; she has a chance for some healing.  And all because of you!” 

“No one knows where she got the sharp knife,” stated Chuck.

“Wh-  where is she?” Cara begged to be told.

“They’ve moved her to another hospital,” replied Chuck, “where they have a Psychiatric ward.  We don’t have one here.”

Cara sat speechless, just letting it all sink in.  She felt her breathing ease and her body relax a bit.  Oh, thank God!  She had not gone through her ordeal for nothing.  It had achieved a good purpose.  She never dreamed that anything like that was even possible.  She certainly had not set out to save a life or to do anything heroic, but if that was the upshot of it all, she was profoundly grateful.  She finally found her voice.

“I can see now why roommates have died on her.  She gets to you.  She forces herself upon you.  A double barrel shotgun, or maybe triple barrel!”

“No roommates of hers have ever died,” revealed Chuck. 

There was a pregnant pause, before the incredulous Cara responded. 

“How’s-   that?”   

“Cheryl Macy checked into the matter, after you told her what Dagne had said to you.  Neither of the roommates she had on her two previous visits died.  That was a false tale.”

“A delusional thing her deluded mind created,” said the chaplain.  “At the root of her psychosis, or whatever she’s got-   at the root of it there’s probably a primal fear that she’s going to cause somebody’s death, or the fear that somehow somewhere she’s already hurt somebody, maybe fatally.  Maybe she feels like a killer.  We should all be very prayerful over her.” 

Chuck filled in some more of the picture.  “That’s why her operation wasn’t done on her previous two visits.  She was in her antagonistic self both times, refusing the treatment, causing a furor. They finally had to send her home.  Fortunately this last time she was her lighthearted self and very cooperative – at least until after the surgery was completed.  No one expected that she would turn suicidal afterward.  Nothing like that had ever happened with her before.”  Cara now understood: That hostile behavior was the “complication” that had delayed Dagne’s surgery.

“So she’s one of these cases of, what do they call it?” asked Cara.

“Multiple personality,” replied Chuck.

“Is that what she’s got?”

“I guess so.  I don’t think anyone is that certain just yet.  The psychiatrists will have to dig deep.”  After this explanation, Chuck then shifted and asked Cara a rather confronting question.  “How did you come to be over there on the other side, next to her bed?  Did you smell blood?”

Cara took a deep breath, lowered her eyes so that she did not have to connect shame-faced with any of them, and told her partial truth.  “Yes.  Yes, I did.  Blood!  I-   I smelled it all right.”  Chuck, Rev. Blanchard and Vernon did not have to know the whole truth.  “I think I’d like to rest now,” she said.  “Thank you-   thank you for-   for helping me.” 

“You did it for yourself, Cara,” said Chuck.  “You got back into the scene, as we all knew you had to.  We just didn’t want to rush you.  That’s why your surgeon wanted you to stay another night, because you needed to finish this business before you went home to be by yourself.”

Vernon weighed in.  “I’m so glad nobody did rush her, and that you guys were here when she got back to it.”

They all got up to leave.  The chaplain patted her arm as he spoke softly into her ear.  “I’ll check on you again while you’re here.  Have a good rest.” 

Cara knew she would rest better than before, but she also knew that much more had taken place than hardly anyone would ever know.  The drama penetrated far deeper than the simple scenario that would be repeated, but she did not want to think about the rest of it right then.  She was too exhausted, at every level.