Room 906 is around the corner from the nurses’ station. Cameron has already disappeared to interview Spider-Dan, so it’s just me alone walking around the circle of the psychiatric unit. And as I walk, I
hear a sound:
Click click click.
It unnerves me for a moment, until I remember Mary and her knitting needles. As I pass by Room 912, she is still sitting in her chair, knitting away. She sees me and flaps her hand. “Hello!” she calls out.
I wave back. “Hello, Mary.”
She beams at me, excited that I know her name. “What’s your name, dear?”
I hesitate for a moment. “Amy,” I finally say.
“What a pretty name.” Her wrinkles deepen as she smiles. She’s got to be at least eighty years old. Maybe ninety. “You be careful tonight, Amy honey.”
“Uh, okay,” I say.
After that slightly ominous warning, I continue to room 906. The next room over is Jade’s room, but thankfully, she doesn’t peek her head out again. It occurs to me that I could have picked a patient in a room that wasn’t immediately next to hers. But I chose not to.
Maybe part of me is hoping to run into her. I can’t deny that Jade and I have a lot of unfinished business.
When I look inside room 906, I don’t know what I was expecting to see. The description in the emergency room note made it sound like William
Schoenfeld was a raving lunatic. So I’m surprised to find a man in his late twenties, wearing a clean T-shirt and jeans, his dark short hair neatly trimmed, his face with a couple of days’ growth of a dark beard, and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. And he’s not pacing the room, ranting and raving. He’s sitting in his bed, quietly reading a book.
I rap gently on his open door. “Hello? Mr. Schoenfeld?”
The man looks up. He picks up a bookmark that was lying on the bed and places it inside the book. He then rests the book on top of a stack of other books on the dresser next to his bed. “Yes?”
I wring my hands together. “My name is Amy. I’m a medical student.”
He has a disarmingly ordinary appearance, which is not at all what I expected. I expected him to look more like Spider-Dan, or that guy who thought his father was God. This guy looks… normal.
Except for the fact that he’s hearing voices telling him to kill people. “Can I help you, Amy?” he asks. He sounds pleasant enough, but there
is a wariness in his tone. He’s put up his guard and doesn’t trust me.
“Yes, I…” God, this is really awkward. But then I remind myself that Mrs. Pritchett said I was a good listener—I can do this. “I’m on-call here for the night, and I’m trying to get to know some of the patients.”
His thick dark eyebrows shoot up, and I quickly add, “Medically, that is. Or, you know, psychiatrically. Like, why you’re here in the hospital and all that. I’d like to hear your story.”
He looks at me for a very long minute, then finally says, “Sure. Have a seat.”
I grab the chair on the other side of the room and pull it closer to him. But not too close. I leave enough distance so that I could make a quick exit before he grabs me. “Thank you so much, Mr. Schoenfeld.”
His hazel eyes skim over my face. “Will. Please call me Will.”
“Sure. If you’d like.” I clear my throat, folding one leg over the other. “So I guess I was just wondering how it all got started. I mean, I heard that you were… you know…”
“Hearing voices?” “Well. Yes.”
“That’s right.” His eyes make contact with mine. “For a few months now.”
“And the voices were… saying things?”
One corner of his lips turns up. “Yes. As voices often do.”
“What were they saying?”
A muscle in Will Schoenfeld’s jaw twitches slightly. “They told me to kill people. Like, I would be standing with a friend, and a voice would whisper in my ear, ‘Push him into traffic.’”
“That must have been upsetting to you.”
A flash of irritation passes over his features. “You think?”
I cross and uncross my legs. I was proud of how good I’d become at talking to Dr. Sleepy’s insomniac patients—most of them were eager to open up and tell me all about their lives (and their pets). But Will is different. He doesn’t want to make this easy for me. “But you never… I mean, just because the voices were telling you to do that, you never…”
He arches an eyebrow. “If a voice were telling you to kill somebody, would you do it?”
I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I had hoped to come in here and see a raving, crazy man. But Will Schoenfeld looks completely normal. He could be absolutely anyone. Some guy you passed on the street. A friend. A neighbor.
He could be a medical student.
“Do you still hear the voices?” I ask. “Like, right now? Sitting here?”
“Well…”
He pushes his glasses up his nose. “Are you asking me if there’s a voice in my head telling me that I should kill you right now?”
I bite down on the inside of my cheek, unsure how to respond to that.
“No,” Will says. “I don’t hear the voices anymore. The medications got rid of them.”
According to the printed medication list Ramona showed me, Will Schoenfeld is on a cocktail of two antipsychotic medications. He’s only been on them for a short time, but they seem to be working.
Or so he says.
“Do you live with anyone?” I ask. “No. I live alone.”
“So you’re not married?” “No. Never.”
“Do you have a significant other?”
He squirms. “This isn’t exactly an ideal time in my life to be getting involved with a woman. I need to get myself together first.”
That’s the most logical thing I’ve heard anyone say since I’ve been here. I glance at the stack of books on his dresser. I hadn’t noticed it before but he was reading A Prayer for Owen Meany, which is one of my favorite books of all time. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone approximately my age reading that book before, and I’m not sure how to feel that the first
person I’ve seen reading it is in a psychiatric ward. “What?” Will says.
“That’s my favorite book,” I say. “Owen Meany.”
For the first time since I came into the room, I get what looks like a genuine smile out of him. “I love John Irving,” he says. “He’s been my favorite since I was ten years old.”
“Oh my God, me too!” I cry. “I’ve read everything by him.”
“So have I.” He gestures at the stack of books, which I now realize is all John Irving books. “I brought them with me to keep me company. I’ve been rereading them since I got here.” He picks up the thick paperback copy of Owen Meany. “This one, I’ve read about fifty times.”
“I’ve read it a hundred times.”
He laughs. “Competitive, are you?” “Well, like I said, it’s my favorite.”
“I love to read,” he says. “I try to read at least one or two books a week, and I try to re-read at least one Irving book a month.”
“That’s impressive,” I comment. “I don’t have time to read more than a few books a year. What do you do for work?”
In an instant, the walls go up again. When he answers, his tone is flat again. “I drive for Uber.”
Well, that does it—I’m never taking an Uber again. My mother will be thrilled. But the truth is, I’m surprised by this choice of occupation. He looks more like he would be a teacher or a writer. He doesn’t look like someone who would drive for a living. Then again, I’m sure it’s steady, flexible work if that’s what he’s looking for.
“So I guess you see a lot of people in the course of your job,” I say. He pushes his glasses up his nose again. “That’s right.”
“And did the voices ever tell you to…”
Will Schoenfeld tilts his head to the side. He’s quiet for a long time, then he finally says, “I already told you. I would never hurt anybody.”
He holds eye contact while he answers my question. Why wouldn’t he tell me the truth? What does he have to gain? We’re here to help him, and
as far as I can tell, he’s here voluntarily. Doesn’t he want to get better and stop hearing voices? Still, something in my gut is screaming one thing:
This man is lying to me.
