Hidden Leaves (DeBeers 5)

"Dr. De Beers!" we heard someone shouting. I turned and saw Nurse Gordon hurrying toward us. "Come quickly!" she cried. gesturing.

"Let's hurry back. Grace," I said.

"-What's happening? What's wrong?" I asked as we drew closer to Nadine Gordon.

"Sandy," she said. "She's jabbed a fork into her stomach! She's in the infirmary." She looked at Grace and then turned back to me. "She was supposed to be with you this hour."

"Dr. Price was going to see her," I said. "Didn't you get the new orders?"

"No. I was involved in another situation with the Masterson boy. He was having one of his tantrums in the recreation room and your young doctor Wheeler was overwhelmed," she shot back at me and started for the clinic.

I hurried after her and told Grace to try to relax, go to the arts and crafts room. perhaps. She nodded and went off while I hurried to the infirmary, where I found Ralston conferring with Thomas Wheeler, the young doctor,

"What happened?"

"Hallucinating again, She believed one of the dark figures got into her and she was digging it our

"How terrible," I said.

"An inch or so to the right and she might have bled to death." Ralston told me. "I thought Nadine Gordon was bringing her to my office, and I got distracted during a phone call and didn't notice the time."

"I did leave written instructions for Nurse Gordon to take her to see you," I said. "She's usually right on that, but she said she had some difficulties in the recreation room with Billy Masterson?"

"Yes, he was acting out." Dr. Wheeler said.

"But I was handling it just fine." he added defensively. "She could have attended to her own duties, especially if she had some orders from you to follow."

Ralston leaned toward me to whisper, "You should have given her the orders orally. Claude."'

"Yes." I said, now feeling terrible. This is not something I would have done before, I told myself. I'm too distracted.

"All right. Dr. Wheeler," Ralston told him. "Let's get back to our schedule. Things are under control."

He nodded and left us.

"Where were you anyway, Claude?" Ralston asked me.

"I took

Grace Montgomery for a walk. She was a great deal more at ease out there. I was making good progress with her."

"Ummm. Okay, let's check on Sandy and get back to our other patients," he added.

I didn't see your mother again until the end of the day. She had spent a good part of her afternoon in the arts and crafts room. We had a former art teacher working for us. Joan Richards. She was very good with the patients and often joked that she saw little difference between her working with mentally disabled people and teenagers. Grace took to her quickly and had already begun work on creating a doll.

It wasn't hard to analyze that. Willow. Your mother was recreating Linden, her own baby. Nothing underlined her need to be with her child as much. In subsequent sessions with her I would come to understand that Grace resented her mother's assuming her role. She was even bitter about it at times. I encouraged her to express that. From a psychiatric point of view, it's good to get the patient to let it all out, so to speak, to get her to bring her darkest, most troubling thoughts up from the depths of her turmoil and express it. Once she does, it's the beginning of her ability to deal with it and overcome the problems. (This sounds like it comes from a manual on psychiatry, I know, but I have a suspicion that by the time you read this, you will appreciate the occasional comments.)

"My mother tells me she did it and is doing it for my own good.' Grace revealed through clenched teeth one day when we began to talk in earnest about this problem.

"Don't you believe her?" I asked.

"No."

"Why not?"

"She knows I never cared about what those people thought of me." Then she looked up at me and said. "She and my father were going to have another child, you know."

It wasn't something she had told Dr. Anderson, so I considered it something of a breakthrough,