Dr. Hutchins seemed more nervous than the patients. He had a long thin neck, a small head, and thinning hair that sprang up in funny tufts. Vi thought he looked a little like an ostrich.
They’d talked about the weather, and then about flowers, and then they started discussing the patients. Vi got out her notebook.
“D.M. has had a rough week,” Dr. Hutchins said. “She lashed out at Sonny today during group. Took three men to restrain her.”
Sonny was one of the social workers. He did art therapy and helped in the clay studio. He was a nice man with a huge mustache and bushy sideburns. He sometimes let Vi and Eric make stuff in the ceramics studio: little pots, mugs, and ashtrays.
Gran rattled the ice in her glass. She poured another gin and tonic from the pitcher on the table between them.
“And there was the episode between her and H.G. on Wednesday,” he continued.
“She was provoked,” Gran responded, lighting a cigarette with her gold Zippo lighter with the butterfly etching on it. The other side had her initials engraved in flowing script: HEH. Vi heard the scratch of the flint, smelled the lighter fluid. Gran said smoking was a bad habit, one Vi should never start, but Vi loved the smell of cigarette smoke and lighter fluid, and most of all she loved Gran’s old butterfly lighter that needed to be filled with fluid and to have the flint changed periodically.
“She’s dangerous,” Dr. Hutchins said. “I know you feel she’s making progress, but the staff are starting to question whether the Inn is the best place for her.”
“The Inn is the only place for her,” Gran snapped. She took a drag of her cigarette, watched the smoke rise as she exhaled. “We’ll have to increase her Thorazine.”
“But if she continues to be a danger to others—”
“Isn’t that what we do, Thad? Help those no one else can?”
Yes, Vi thought. Yes! Gran was a miracle worker. A genius. She was famous for helping patients others couldn’t help.
Dr. Hutchins lit his own cigarette. They were quiet a moment.
“And what about Patient S?” Dr. Hutchins asked. “Things still progressing in a positive way?”
Vi finished up her notes on D.M. and started a new page for Patient S.
“Oh yes,” Gran said. “She’s doing very well indeed.”
“And the medications?” Dr. Hutchins asked.
“I’ve been drawing back on them a bit.”
“Any hallucinations?”
“I don’t believe so. None that she’ll admit to or is aware of.”
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Dr. Hutchins said. “The progress she’s made? You should be very proud of yourself. You’ve given her exactly what she needs. You’ve saved her.”
Gran laughed. “Saved? Perhaps. But I’m starting to think she may never lead a normal life. Not after all she’s been through. She’ll have to be watched. And if the authorities or the papers ever…”
“Do you think she remembers?” he asked. “What she did? Where she came from?”
The hairs on Vi’s arms stood up the way they did during a bad storm.
“No,” Gran said. “And honestly, I believe that’s for the best, don’t you?”
They both sipped their drinks, ice cubes rattling. Their cigarette smoke drifted up into the clouds.
Vi listened hard, wrote: WHAT DID PATIENT S DO? Murder someone???
She knew the Inn had violent patients, people who had done terrible things not because they were terrible people, but because they were sick. That’s what Gran said.