Grace endured yet another pat-down before clearing the metal detector and finally gaining entry to a long, windowless corridor that had the stale smell of a bus station. Two armed guards escorted her to a private visiting room that was no more than twelve feet from door to wall.
Normally lawyers used these sparsely furnished rooms to confer in private with their clients, but the overcrowding necessitated a creative use of space. Grace preferred these private quarters whenever she could reserve one. Her daughter didn’t behave as well in a crowd.
A powerful ammonia aroma hit Grace with force the moment she set foot inside. The miasma of harsh chemical clung to the air, stinging her eyes and making them water. What the heck happened in here? she wondered. A number of disgusting possibilities necessitating fumigation flittered in and out of her mind.
Resting on top of a table in the middle of the room was a pizza, steaming inside a corrugated box （the sort Grace could have assembled blindfolded）。 Opening the box, Grace observed tiny ovals of pepperoni spread out evenly across a molten landscape of bubbling cheese. Her daughter had grown up hating pepperoni, even disliked the word, but it wasn’t Penny who’d be eating this lunch. It was Eve, and that girl happened to love, simply love, meat on her cheese.
Even though Grace owned a pizzeria, she’d preordered this meal from a local establishment. The rules about food were clear and reinforced with ample signage:
All takeout food must come from an approved restaurant.
You cannot use a patient’s name on a food order.
You cannot order food with bones, beverages, chopsticks, glass, plastic or paper bags, or metal of any kind （including aluminum foil）。
Beverages may be purchased in the shared visitation room.
You must clean up the room after a visit.
Grace had her own set of rules for these visits:
Don’t talk about her father. It always upsets her.
Try to smile.
Don’t talk about the case.
Don’t give her any reason to become more hostile.
But how could her daughter not be angry in a place like this? Everywhere she went, every corridor she traveled, mournful wails and constant chatter ricocheted off the concrete walls, blending into one great squawking like an aviary out of a nightmare. This was no place for a young woman to be, but here she was.
The door soon opened. Grace took in a breath and held it. This was the moment when hope dies: first contact, those initial few seconds that always gave way to disappointment. Once a week Grace would make the hour-long drive to Edgewater, each time praying to see Penny’s guileless eyes beaming back at her, only to encounter the angry, cold stare of Eve.
Her daughter stomped into the room, took a whiff or two of the ammonia-heavy air, and paused. She wrapped her arms around her chest, suddenly looking unsure, and tottered on her feet. The change in her bearing happened in an instant, leaving Grace utterly perplexed. She considered the girl standing before her, so unsteady that she seemed drugged.
They’ve overmedicated her, Grace fumed.
From memory, Grace recalled the drugs her daughter was taking: 225 milligrams of venlafaxine for anxiety and depression along with some dosage of lurasidone, often given as a stabilizer or antipsychotic for teens with bipolar depression. In her daughter’s case, these were mood boosters, not treatments for psychosis. The grim fact remained that no medication on the market specifically treated dissociative identity disorder.
Physically, nothing appeared amiss. Her daughter was dressed in her usual attire, something akin to dark green hospital scrubs. She’d lost weight in here, and the uniform had become so loose it was as though she’d slipped on a garbage bag.
Her daughter shuffled forward in a daze. Up close, she looked even more hollowed out.
Damn medications. Damn doctors. Maybe this McHugh fellow will actually have a clue.
She hadn’t scheduled a meeting with McHugh for today, but seeing her daughter so off-kilter made her think she couldn’t delay.
Grace waved away the correctional officer, or CO for short, a man named Blackwood, according to the nameplate pinned to his shirt. Blackwood’s close-set eyes narrowed, and he smiled tightly, but made no protest. Except for Crane House, the rest of Edgewater was a medium-security facility, affording Grace some privacy during these visits. She closed the door.
“Are you okay, Eve? You don’t seem yourself.”
Thinking back to that night so long ago in the police station, aware how triggering it could be, Grace did not hesitate to call Penny by another’s name. Except this wasn’t Eve whom she’d helped guide into a seat at the table, and it wasn’t Penny either. This child was an empty slate, with dead eyes and the expressionless face of a mannequin, giving no clues as to who might occupy the consciousness within.