Finding Ellen

By Dee Greenberg

Ellen Harper is running on empty and doesnt know it. She has dealt with a dysfunctional family, a failed marriage, and a medical profession which has humiliated her. She struggles against these forces with anger, fantasy, and escapist activities. She dreams of seducing her married teacher. Then, slowly, Ellen learns of a dark family secret that will test her to the utmost--at a point in her life when she will be the weakest. She must come to terms with all this. Time is fleeting. Unless she discovers the true depth of her situation and the causes of her self-abusing nature, she will hit bottom--and stay there.

From a short story writer who digs deep into the mind and soul of the older woman comes this first novel--a tale of emotion and psychological drama. A tale of escaping from demons.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 27, 2005
• ISBN: 9781463477219

Dee Greenberg

DEE GREENBERG is a co-author of the short story collection Getting a Life.  A retired attorney, Dee was born and raised in Chicago, where she lives with her husband Leon. 

Book preview

PART ONE

HIDING

Winter 1991-1992

CHAPTER ONE

A man in a white coat is standing at the foot of my bed.

No . . . not my bed. Very narrow. Has railings on the sides, too. Like a baby bed . . . Why am I here?

Blowy curtains, with netting at the top, swing from the ceiling, surround us. Is it a test? Some kind of scan? I try to sit up, boost up with my hands, but the right one hurts too much.

He’s coming closer. Big man. Like Uncle Sol. I tense, try to think. What am I doing here?

Do you remember what happened? he asks.

Now, loud voices and beeping sounds are flooding through the curtains from all sides. A fast memory of having been somewhere like this before comes over me. Of being on a little bed like this before.

His dark curly hair and large shoulders seem to block out everything. I start to say something but can’t.

How do you feel? he asks quietly.

I stare at the name Miller printed on a badge clipped to his pocket. I’m cold and feverish at the same time, like when I have the flu. Arms so stiff. My bad leg is rigid, feels twisted. I try to curl my fingers, make a fist: it’s like pinching pennies.

My room at Linda’s. Wasn’t I just?. . .

I shut my eyes, put myself in Linda’s guest room, try to figure it out. I picture the flowered ginger-jar lamp on the nightstand, the sky and water peeking through the lavender vertical blinds at the window. When I open my eyes and look around, nothing has changed. Everything is sterile-looking. Colorless. Hard.

It’s not a test. Too much pain…

How do you feel? he asks again.

I push my elbow against the railing. Weird. So weak.

Where do you live, Ellen?

Highland Park, comes obediently out of my mouth. North.

Which hospital is it? I’m not surprised now—even expecting it—but I can’t make the connection. Did I come here by myself? No . . . couldn’t have been alone.

What happened, Ellen? Do you remember?

I squeeze my eyelids together. Images of Linda’s apartment flashing through my mind again. Going up in the elevator—no, down to the lobby. The only scenes that are clear before this one.

Can you tell us?

The bathroom. The mirror. Oh, God!

My mind inches back further, to before I came home. I know I came home first. Slowly, cautiously, I pick up jumbled events: the mall too crowded, an early lunch, and later, no place to sit. So many people . . . The warm walk back . . . back to Linda’s house. And the Christmas tree in front of the Hancock building. Everybody off work, it seemed, and the traffic . . . Was that all today? Or is it the next day already?

What happened today? You said `today.’

I look up at him. I was just—everything just stopped.

Did you want to end things?

No! I . . . I couldn’t stand it, didn’t feel right. And then—it was an accident. I had an accident.

The mirror. My face in the mirror.

Suddenly, the curtains snap aside and another man walks in, and nods to Dr. Miller.

This is Dr. Sykes, Miller says, touching my fingers lightly. Do you remember Dr. Sykes? He was here earlier.

I think so, I lie. Something tells me now to be careful of what I say next.

Sykes has left the curtains parted. Through that vertical, maybe two-foot-wide space, I can see bodies in hospital coats rushing back and forth. And a high counter, with telephones on it, a computer terminal. Bright light out there—no shadows. A wavy-haired, blond woman is leaning on the counter, one foot resting on the rung of a stool behind her. Pens, note pads, and a rolled-up stethoscope bulge from the pockets of a white coat hung over the back of a tall chair next to her.

Someone opens the curtains a little more. Suddenly, two men in dark blue uniforms wheel a cart into view. They pause, then pull it back a little. A pale, drawn face sticking out of the blanketed body on the cart gazes vacantly at me. Unnaturally open eyes on this person. Then voices, and the face is whisked away.

The doctors are standing in the corner behind me now, whispering. Stage-whispers. Can’t make it all out, but they are words from before. Words like dissociation, and memory gaps.

A mild fear washes over me. When can I go?

They don’t answer, but come toward the bed. Instantly the fear is overridden by a wave of panic. I want to leave, I tell them. You just fix it and I’ll leave.

The white-hot glare of the rectangular ceiling light dances down, jumps in front of their faces, fades out their features. Then it jumps back up, has an extra line around it—like two lights that won’t come together.

Now I remember Sykes leaning over me, doing something to my stomach or chest . . .

I look down at my mid-section. Bandage-like stiffness is keeping the hospital gown from hugging my bare skin. My right hand is jiggling a tube that goes from my wrist up to a bag hanging from the ceiling—or a pole or something. How long have I been attached to it? Finally, I remember seeing them put it there, remember them trying two different places to stick me. Now those fingers, the whole hand, is really starting to hurt.

Didn’t hit any major blood vessels, Sykes says. But you lost a lot of blood.

Blood? What . . . Did I do that? I made such deep cuts? But they said no, not much . . . No, a lot of blood.

Shouldn’t be any infection, but we don’t know yet, he says. Are you a bleeder?

Sometimes. I don’t want to say too much more. Uh, well, it was worse…worse when I was younger.

They are talking to each other. I can’t quite hear it. Platelet disorder and infection is all I get this time.

If you fixed it up . . .

We’d like to wait for another opinion, Miller says.

If it’s not serious . . . I’m getting more scared now. And, sobering up. It’s not serious, right?

Mild nausea starts in my throat. What did I say to them before? They could keep me here, maybe lock me up.

Accident, I repeat, feeling for my hair, and touching short, sticky, unfamiliar wisps, but knowing my long hair is gone.

I go over it again. The mall, lunch, walking home. Warm weather, no snow . . . God, was that her? Was that his wife? What if they saw me?

Now a different kind of fear is taking over that I don’t understand, because suddenly I hope they will keep me. I feel very sick to my stomach, I tell them.

Yes, Sykes says. We’ll get you something.

Dr. Randall, he’s our family doctor. I swallow back the nausea. He’s in the suburbs now. Highland—

We’ve notified him. And your sister is still outside.

I don’t want to see her. . . Wait, is Barbara here?

Yes. She found you.

My sister’s friend. Instantly, I remember Barb running alongside the paramedics, remember the hallway ceiling rolling past us overhead and how we bumped into the elevator doors getting in. As if it happened only moments ago.

I don’t want to see anybody now. The . . . the other opinion? Is it a psychiatrist’s?

Yes, Sykes says softly. Let’s see what he says.

Do you have to—

Screams cut off my words. A hurry of footsteps rush to the sounds—to the left of me. The curtain swishes as bodies roll against it on the other side. More screams. Things bang, fall to the floor: men’s and women’s voices shout commands. And more screams. Not like a grown-up, not like a child. A neutral wail.

Miller excuses himself, goes out fast. A nurse comes in, pulls the curtain shut. The space is gone now and I can’t see out. Sykes is gone now, too.

The nausea is worse. It’s all I can concentrate on to swallow it down. I don’t want to get sick to my stomach, don’t want to do it with everyone watching, listening.

I look up at her. I feel so queasy.

She reaches for a curved yellow dish and cradles it next to my head.

Sorry, is all I can say because it’s too late to hold back, or even talk. I sit up, shaking, and she is holding my forehead, and steadying the dish as I throw up. With each exhausting wave of sickness, another part of the day comes back to me.

After I sink down flat in the bed, I start to realize, with less fear, it is okay if they keep me. I only want to hide now. Escape. Can’t go on the way it is. Can’t go back.

I pull the sheet and stiff white blanket up to my chin, and manage a weak smile for the nurse. My mouth tastes terrible, my chest feels tight.

It must have been them. But I couldn’t really see, wasn’t close enough. Couldn’t be sure.

Will they lock me up?. . . Maybe. Just doesn’t matter now. They’ll have to take care of me. Take care of me . . .

CHAPTER TWO

They say to be careful what you wish for, because it might come true.

Last summer I wanted to escape from my family: I wished to be free. The wish didn’t come true. Came close, though. But by mid-December I only wanted to escape from myself and the pain in my head. That wish did come true. In a way. After the emergency room, I ended up behind the locked doors of the Psychiatric Ward.

At first, being here was a welcome, cocoon-like existence. So safe, apart from the world, where they took care of me. What I’d wanted. Soon it became easy to mimic a normal routine. It was a mini-world, where you showered and slept and ate and watched television. You took drugs, talked to doctors. You talked to people in group therapy, too. Everything orderly, but scaled-down. Everything done in a mostly decisionless way.

At Christmas, not all the beds were filled. I didn’t even have a roommate. But there was enough of a group to celebrate the holidays. I was pretty much out of it until New Years, though.

Now there are more patients, more doctors. It’s getting claustrophobic. Even though a small part of me is afraid, I want to leave. They said, the doctor said, Not yet.

The injuries healed okay, because most of the cuts were shallow and didn’t hit any major organs or big blood vessels. Only two were lacerations needing stitches. But I did lose a lot of blood. That’s because I don’t clot right, sometimes.

I stopped calling it an accident, though. That was stupid. A patient here told me that if the cuts follow a pattern—close together, or the same size—it’s a good clue that you meant it. That you wanted to cut, not kill.

Self-mutilation, it’s called.

I’ve been labeled depressed and agitated—at the same time yet. There’s more, though, that I don’t remember right now. Bullshit buzzwords, all of it. My sister Linda suspects that the docs think I tend to exaggerate my physical symptoms, too.

But agitated depression isn’t that bad a rating here—compared to some of the others. Most of the women I’ve talked to have depressed as part of their label, and the older they are, the more depressed they seem to be.

#

Ten-thirty on a Monday morning and Dr. Stoner and I are about to start a private session. Our time, he likes to call it.

But our time feels about as special as having your number called at the bakery. Although this tiny room we use seems soundproof, it doesn’t feel private, or away enough from the rest of the hospital floor. With the door closed it’s even more tiny. I’m in here, about to talk to a psychiatrist while people mill around in the corridor. When it’s over, I’ll fall out into the hall, disoriented, wanting to rush past everyone and hide.

Not like the outside world. Not like when you choose the doctor.

It was confusing to talk to him at first, not focused at all. Still, I managed to say a lot. No serious stuff, though. I’ve been keeping it all over the board.

After all, I’m fifty. He’s too young to really understand.

He sits in his deep, high-backed chair, swivelled away from the oak desk that is pushed up against the wall. The window on his left is the backdrop. My place is a square, low-armed chair, kitty-cornered from him—a witness stand—where I can tell him about arguments with Linda, about my anger at how my mother Sophie mistreated me. He seems to like that, talking about Sophie. But it’s still general stuff.

We are settled now. I shift in my chair. The pale plum fabric on our chairs is deceptively innocent-looking—until you sit. Now its irritating roughness scratches the back of my knees because I’m wearing a jumper and no tights.

Today, I persist in making small talk, while I stare out through the blinds on the window and wonder why they are embedded between the double panes of glass.

After we waste ten minutes with this, he gives me one of his weak but mysterious smiles. My prompt to really start talking?

Michael, I say suddenly. You know, my ex? He hardly ever listened to me. No idea why I bring him up. Forget that. Linda never listens, either, unless she likes the subject matter, and then she’ll analyze it to death. My sister has all the answers, you know. Thinks she knows everything.

He sits quietly and looks me in the eye.

Yeah, she always does that. Everyone seems…

Stoner lifts an eyebrow and puts his hand to his mouth as if he is about to cough and doesn’t want me to see.

They don’t take you seriously?

Just like you. I try to raise my voice, not at all surprised that the muscle-twitching sensation I usually get when I challenge authority is missing. Well, like, you think everything I say means something else.

This time he lifts both brows, another one of his prompts.

No one . . . They twist my words. You can’t get anywhere. Mixed feelings now—a real desire to tell this man something, let it all go, and then a boredom with this empty talk.

Why do you think that, Ellen?

Think what?

Think people twist your words?

That reminds me of one of Michael’s disguised interrogations, the type of verbal ball games we’d play—ones I thought were cute back then.

But Dr. Stoner just smiles when I answer, Well, you certainly do. I’m sick and they—no, you don’t believe me.

Now it wasn’t coming out right at all. I used to be able to talk to people. I don’t know what I’m saying. Can’t think.

Look, I tell him, you’re supposed to say what they want to hear, answer only the questions they want to ask. Can’t say more.

Who’s `they’?

Oh, please, let’s stop this baloney.

He waits.

Okay, you want to know who `they’ are? Well, the other doctors. You don’t know. And my sister, and my mother was the worst . . .

Silence from him now. How cool he is. What kind of job is this? What kind of relationship is squeezed into a time boundary that one person gets to control?

I don’t like this, I tell him. Everyone out there must know. I feel like I’m on a stage or something.

We’re all here to help you. You know that. He pauses, takes a breath. They tell me about your progress, your interactions with staff, the other patients. General things. But what you and I talk about in here is confidential.

Same difference. I pout at him. Now I can’t get enough air in my lungs to make it last the whole sentence. The pills and crap they give me are making me worse, affecting my breathing, too.

I don’t like—I didn’t like this after my divorce, and I don’t like it now.

There are only ten minutes left. I decide that if we start on another subject, time will be up in the middle of it and I’ll be out in the hall, left hanging.

I have to stop, take deep breaths now. I told you. All of it happened because I wasn’t getting help. How many times do I have to say it?

Can’t stand him. I need a woman doctor.

Almost at the end. We are both looking at the time.

I slouch, push one bare leg out in front of me. No reaction from him. Then he moves forward ever so slightly in the chair.

I know, I know, it’s time to wrap up, I say.

I hate this time thing. And it feels like he’s talking down to me and doesn’t even know it.

#

Linda is here, in my room. She took an extra hour off work, came in after lunch.

I look in the direction of the door to make sure the nurse who just gave me my pills is gone and no one is listening.

As I tell Linda what I said to the doctor that morning, my lips begin to twitch. So sad that I have no one but her to tell it to right now.

I feel insulted, Linda. They act like I’m faking the physical problems. I can tell. Don’t know why I let them keep me here.

Her face turns softer, more sympathetic than usual, but her voice is weary. Why do you care?

I just do. So what’s wrong with them?

With them? What do you want them to say, for God sakes?

When they stick me with a pin, it doesn’t feel sharp anymore. I can’t grab a coffee mug without looking at my fingers, or it slips. And you know how I drag my—

Jesus Christ, they’ve examined you. Her face screws up. They know all that. She exhales sharply in that not-again, exasperated way—the one she uses with impossible people. That’s not why you’re in this place.

Yes, it is.

No, El.

It’s part of it. I didn’t know what I was doing that day.

Look, the whole world doesn’t have to believe you. That’s what’s wrong with you. Don’t spar with them. Do what they ask and get yourself out.

You wouldn’t do it. I want to know why they don’t under—

Those pishers? You want them to understand you?

Yes!

Those kids were spread out on a beach somewhere smoking joints when you were already an adult working woman.

I just—

Fuck them, she says quietly. Fuck them.

Our eyes lock uncomfortably. A flicker of hope dances in my head. She’s clawed her way up to get the law practice she has now. She might be ashamed of me, but not for being in such a place, just for not being stronger.

She starts to tap her fingers on the arm of the chair. Ellen, he called again.

Immediately I’m hurled back into the real world. I dig my knuckles into the sides of my chair.

Again, she says.

Okay, so he called.

So glad you finally let us know his name. Why does he keep calling?

In the corridor someone starts to laugh loudly, too loudly.

So does he have another name, El?

I feel caged in now. No, no last name, Linda. Let’s get out of here.

Sure, fine. I gave you the message.

We get up, pass the mirror above my dresser. I see how unlike sisters we look. Linda, a little chunky, with olive skin, dark hair and eyes; me, tall and lanky, with green eyes that sit in a soft-but-aging-fast face framed now by short dark-blond hair.

Okay, he called. I gaze straight ahead as we walk down the hall. I didn’t answer my messages, and then I asked Deb, she’s got the key, to turn off the machine. I guess he had your number.

As we go by the locked doors to the elevator vestibule, I think about how many times I’ve walked the entire length of this place. Up and down the corridors. One of the few freedoms besides eating and talking and television. Even with a limp, a slightly clubbed foot, I’m still free to walk. Even with medication, the legs still move.

Linda is quiet now, being the good sister again, the good visitor. She has her visitor face on: people are watching.

We pass the television room, hear the usual blare of the afternoon soaps. We peek in. Scattered about in a casual arrangement are leather recliners, hardbacked chairs, a wooden rocker, and two tweedy sofas.

The seating spaces are over half filled. A male staff member is in deep conversation with a young red-haired patient. Visitors chat across the width of the room, like they just met at a picnic or on a long ferry ride instead of a psychiatric ward. In the far corner, an older patient wearing a green velour robe burrows her head and shoulders into the back of the big leather recliner. Then she starts wriggling and shifting her body, and finally hugs her knees to her chest.

Let’s keep going, I say to Linda.

In the corridor again, we pass rooms with half-closed doors, hear hushed voices. Some patients still in bed—refusing to come out—or back in bed, hiding, as I did in the beginning.

Here. I point to the empty-looking dining room, and we walk through the open double doors.

Two men are playing cards at a scratched cherrywood table near the connecting door to our tiny kitchen. Otherwise, it’s deserted. Decks of cards are strewn around on a few of the other tables. Two huge puzzles, each with about a third of their pieces in place, sit on one of the longer tables. Monopoly and other games are stacked neatly in plastic boxes in the corner. Both men nod at us. We smile at them.

I walk over to the window. Linda follows and sits at the table just behind me.

What should I tell him? she whispers against my back.

I turn, drop into the nearest chair, face her. The small corner of wooden tabletop is all that separates us. What did you already tell him? I forgot.

That you were sick and you’re okay now, but he can’t call you here. What you told me to tell him.

Now I’m sorry I argued with her. I feel she’s going to touch me, try to comfort me. I make sure the tabletop stays between us. He can’t call me here.

Then he’ll guess, El. Patients on regular hospital floors have phones in their rooms.

We’re through. Saying that hurts so much. I don’t know why I let you tell him anything. I just didn’t want people to think I dropped out of— I panic slightly. She doesn’t know exactly how I met him. Or does she?

But Linda only frowns. Maybe she hasn’t made the connection, or doesn’t care anymore.

Should’ve just ended it, she says quietly.

I thought I did.

He doesn’t seem to think so.

Now I feel sad, very sad. Feel like Linda and I are the only ones left in the world. And all the pills in me aren’t enough to prevent a slow burning sensation from starting to creep up the back of my head.

Don’t talk about it, don’t tell her more.

I start to think about last August, when everything began to go wrong, speed up. When I didn’t know what was ahead.

I’ll try to straighten it out, Linda. I know where to call.

But I really don’t know what to do. Not yet. And last summer seems more like six years ago than only six months.

PART TWO

EMOTIONS

Summer into Autumn 1991

CHAPTER THREE

Hot and tired, I slouched in my seat, still hanging on because of the cool air on my bare legs and a familiar rising excitement in my chest.

Mark eased his tall body down onto the edge of the scratched wooden desk.

Remember folks, he said, I have to give you this final, to see if you understood the materials.

I turned to the others. A few heads were nodding agreeably.

But at the beginning of class that day—the last class of Ethics in the Professions—one girl had asked him why we needed a final at all. Professor Eisman,