Hahaha full psycho, Maria wrote back, following that with four purple heart emojis.
You wrote: I’d want it to hurt and to last. What that bitch did to me is unforgivable.
Maria: What did she do?
Maria: Helllooo?
Maria: You still there???
You: Never mind.
CHAPTER 24
ON ITS BEST DAYS, Mitch found Edgewater to be a depressingly alien place. He felt a malignant energy here, one with its own life force, feeding off the patients and employees with equal voracity.
Many of the warnings Mitch had received from well-intentioned colleagues had proved prescient. But, to his great surprise, he found himself thinking he might not be quite so eager to depart when he reached the end of his one-year commitment. It seemed that battling dark energy—his depression, Adam’s addiction, even his divorce from Caitlyn—suited him well.
Forget about leaving. He was right where he belonged.
It was early afternoon, hours before the end of the workday. He had charting to do, reports to write, and prescriptions to evaluate. Of all his cases, it was Penny’s that occupied an outsized portion of his gray matter. What Penny had shared was helpful, but not enough to get a jury to rule in her favor. He needed more. Much more.
Mitch made his way along yet another bland hallway with deliberate steps. He was doing his best to walk without a limp from the pain in his lower back and knee, the result of yet another fight he had helped to break up only an hour ago. The aggressor was a mountain of a man who’d squared off with a slender fellow, surprisingly agile, who had been suffering from paranoid delusions when he shot his mother over a nonexistent inheritance. The cause of the scuffle between the two men was irrelevant. It was the frequency of these skirmishes that inspired Mitch to take his concerns to the highest authority he could access.
“The guards need to learn how to see patients, not threats,” Mitch explained to Ruth Whitmore, a thin, no-nonsense woman in her early sixties with an officious air—which, given her responsibilities as facility director, was quite understandable. She favored good suits and quality perfume, and her office, Mitch noted, was a great deal nicer than his own, with a leather armchair, ornate rug, and no bars on the windows.
“Are you hurt?” Whitmore inquired in a raspy voice, which did not exactly sound sympathetic. She was probably thinking paperwork—or worse, worker’s comp.
“I’m fine,” Mitch said, getting that feeling he was wasting his （and her） time. “But the guards put the guy in a suitcase hold, knees pressed against his chest, which could contribute to heart failure.”
Whitmore bit the end of her pen as she studied the incident report someone had placed on her desk prior to Mitch’s arrival. At least something got done efficiently around here, he thought.
“That’s John Grady you helped take down, all three hundred pounds of him.” She gazed up at Mitch, wide-eyed. “I’m impressed. So, Dr. McHugh, tell me, how would you suggest we go about subduing someone like Mr. Grady when he starts … acting up?”
Mitch found her tight-lipped smile rather chilling.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “But I think a dozen or so laws may have been broken during that mêlée.”
“Good thing there were no video cameras nearby.”
Mitch couldn’t tell if she was kidding or not, but he went with not.
“I’m just saying the whole incident could have been avoided if patients weren’t being overseen by people trained to be prison guards. If we had more doctors on staff, I think we could put an end to these fights that keep breaking out. We’re being reactive, not proactive.”
He recounted the incident with Darla in the hallway. “If I hadn’t been there to talk her down, that encounter would have ended with violence. Instead, we had a peaceful resolution and Darla went on her way. But I’m only one person.”
“Doctor,” Whitmore said, elongating the word. “I’m grateful you’re a member of our team. Really, I am. Your credentials are impeccable.”
She took a moment to access Mitch’s personnel file on her computer.
“Doctorate of medicine from Albany Medical College; associate medical director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Boston Medical Center for thirteen years. Five years with the North Shore Medical Center. Board certified in psychiatry and childhood adolescent psychiatry through the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Not to mention you’ve done a fellowship in forensic psychology, an expertise that has certainly come in handy around here. You’ve quite the diverse background and skill set, Mitch.”