Twisted

nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Making you come all the way over here tonight.”
    “That’s what I’m here for. . . . Tell me: You don’t hear any voices now, do you?”
    “No.”
    “And the bird? Could it have been an accident?”
    She thought about this for a moment. “Well, Peter was asleep. . . . Maybe I was looking at it earlier and left it on the edge of the table.” She sounded perfectly reasonable. “Maybe the housekeeper did. I might’ve bumped it.”
    The policeman looked at his watch and then ambled over. He asked, “Can I talk to you, Doctor?”
    They stepped into a corner of the lobby.
    “I’m thinking I oughta take her downtown,” the cop said in a Queens drawl. “She was pretty outta control before. But it’s your call. You think she’s ED?”
    Emotionally disturbed—the trigger diagnosis for involuntary commitment. If he said, yes, Patsy would be taken off and hospitalized.
    This was the critical moment. Harry debated.
    I can help you and you can help me. . . .
    He said to the cop, “Give me a minute.”
    He returned to Patsy, sat down next to her. “We have a problem. The police want to take you to a hospital. And if you claim that Peter’s trying to drive you crazy or hurt you, the fact is the judge just isn’t going to believe you.”
    “Me? I’m not doing anything! It’s the voices! It’s them . . . I mean, it’s Peter.”
    “But they’re not going to believe you. That’s just the way it is. Now, you can go back upstairs and carry on with your life or they can take you downtown to the city hospital. And you don’t want that. Believe me. Can you stay in control?”
    She lowered her head to her hands. Finally she said, “Yes, Doctor, I can.”
    “Good . . . Patsy, I want to ask you something else. I want to see your husband alone. Can I call him, have him come in?”
    “Why?” she asked, her face dark with suspicion.
    “Because I’m your doctor and I want to get to the bottom of what’s bothering you.”
    She glanced at the cop. Gave him a dark look. Then she said to Harry, “Sure.”
    “Good.”
    After Patsy’d disappeared into the elevator car the cop said, “I don’t know, Doctor. She seems like a nut case to me. Things like this . . . they can get real ugly. I’ve seen it a million times.”
    “She’s got some problems but she’s not dangerous.”
    “You’re willing to take that chance?”
    After a moment he said, “Yes, I’m willing to take that chance.”

    “How was she last night, after I left?” Harry asked Peter Randolph the next morning. The two men sat in Harry’s office.
    “She seemed all right. Calmer.” Peter sipped the coffee that Miriam had brought him. “What exactly is going on with her?”
    “I’m sorry,” Harry said. “I can’t discuss the specifics of your wife’s condition with you. Confidentiality.”
    Peter’s eyes flared angrily for a moment.
    “Then why did you ask me here?”
    “Because I need you to help me treat her. You do want her to get better, don’t you?”
    “Of course I do. I love her very much.” He sat forward in the chair. “But I don’t understand what’s going on. She was fine until a couple of months ago—when she started seeing you, if you have to know the truth. Then things started to go bad.”
    “When people see therapists they sometimes confront issues they’ve never had to deal with. I think that was Patsy’s situation. She’s getting close to some important issues. And that can be very disorienting.”
    “She claims I’m pretending to be a ghost,” Petersaid sarcastically. “That seems a little worse than just disoriented.”
    “She’s in a downward spiral. I can pull her out of it . . . but it’ll be hard. And I’ll need your help.”
    Peter shrugged. “What can I do?”
    Harry explained, “First of all, you can be honest with me.”
    “Of course.”
    “For some reason she’s come to associate you with her father. She has a lot of resentment toward him and she’s projecting that onto you. Do you know why she’s mad at you?”
    There was silence for a moment.
    “Go on, tell me. Anything you say here is confidential—just between you and me.”
    “She might have this stupid idea that I’ve cheated on her.”
    “Have you?”
    “Where the hell do you get off, asking a question like that?”
    Harry said reasonably, “I’m just trying to get to the truth.”
    Randolph calmed down. “No, I haven’t cheated on her.