The Wave by Kristen Crusoe (ebook reader online txt) 📗

the house to change or rest. And that was fine with him. He hoped they would decide to stay in town, rather than at his house, seeing as it was so far out. He might find a way to suggest this. For now, he just wanted get this visit over with, then go home and sleep.

The drive back to the coast gave him time to catch them up.

‘All I know is that she is under commitment,’ he said when Ben asked why she was being kept on the psych ward.

‘Why can’t she go home?’ he had asked.

Adam tried to explain the convoluted mental health laws in Oregon to these people who had spent the better part of the past twenty years living and working in countries under attack, or in refugee camps. The idea that a mathematics professor could be kept locked up for six months because she was grieving for her lost child was incomprehensible to them.

‘Crap!’ Ben exclaimed. ‘Did she have a lawyer? Anyone to argue for her?’

‘She refused to let me pay for one. She insisted on having the legal aid attorney who, like most of them, was fresh out of school and hated the ‘mentals’ as they are called. He was less than helpful. But Ben, it might be the best place for her now. She still perseverates on dying and being with Devon. She had a near-death experience and it has left her psychotic. She believes she saw Devon while she was in the ocean, and that he is out there waiting for her. You can’t reason with her. It just is this way.’

‘In my culture, we believe in the division of the body, and that the spiritual parts of the body and sometimes the physical body itself will survive death,’ Jodie said from her seat in the back. She leaned forward, placing a hand on Adam’s shoulder.

‘From an anthropological and theological perspective, it is understood that during the near-death experience, the mind or spirit leaves the body, and this idea is not a strange or new phenomenon to many people. I think Western thought and maybe the criminal justice system has some learning to do.’

‘That may be so Jodie, and I respect and honor your knowledge on this, but it isn’t helping her now. And she has this therapist, Jet, who I am afraid is feeding into her psychosis. I just want her out of there so I can find her some real help. She needs to be on medication but she refuses.’

‘I thought that was the purpose of commitment,’ Ben said. ‘To force people to take meds?’

‘Only if they are violent. She’s committed but still has her rights to refuse treatment. It’s a fucking wreck.’

‘What can we do Adam? How are you? We feel so out of touch,’ Jodie said.

‘I don’t know. Your being here might be good for her. To see, and know about the world outside. I just really don’t have a clue.’

They were quiet the rest of the ride. Both Ben and Jodie slept, exhausted after their eighteen-hour flight from Amsterdam. Following the river back, retracing earlier miles, evening settling in, his mind wandered back to the first time he had seen Clair. He had been at the annual Arts Showcase, a sort of final exam for students, and a chance for faculty to show off their own skills. Clair had been on stage, playing cello, while dancers performed a passage from The Rite of Spring.

‘Who is that?’ he had asked Claudia, his theater department chair and sometimes lover. They had both viewed their sex as recreational and avoided the romantic pitfalls so many faculty colleagues fell into, always with awkward and sometimes fatal consequences. Loss of tenure prospects, loss of job. Loss of family, reputation. With Claudia, it was mutually beneficial and superficial. At least he had believed.

‘Oh, that’s Clair Mercer, theoretical mathematics,’ she had replied, sipping her champagne.

‘So, that’s the beautiful and enigmatic Dr Clair Mercer,’ he had thought out loud. Stories had circulated among faculty, about this brilliant woman who kept to herself, didn’t engage in the usual social activities that seemed to infect college campuses, giving rise to a culture of sophomoric competition.

Claudia had given him a funny look, then turned and walked away. He had watched mesmerized as Clair played. She had been dressed in a full black skirt, tucked modestly in so that she could hold the cello between her knees. Her every stroke and caress of the strings had caused her to bend and sheer to the side, her hair, tied back in a bun at the nape of her neck, came loose, and feathered her face. He had wanted to reach out and tuck it back, reveal her. As she dipped and swayed, taken over by the music, occasionally throwing her head back in pure ecstasy, he had been captured, unable to take his eyes off her. After, he would watch her cross campus, long, confident strides making her seem to glide. Occasionally she would stop, chat with the groups of students, easy and natural with them. During a faculty meeting, he had overheard her talking to a math colleague about fractals. Patterns that expanded, but held onto their original seed pattern, a spiral dynamic that always contained its beginning. If only he could help her find that seed inside herself – that person before all of this, before him, before Devon. If he could help her remember, and let go of everything else, maybe she could find a way to live. Even if it meant living without him.

When they pulled up to the front of the emergency department lobby, Adam directed them to the Psychiatric Unit, on the third floor.

‘I’ll just park, and be there in a minute,’ he said, looking forward to a short power nap in the car. His eyes burned and he thought he might pass out.

He parked the car, let his seat down, pulled his jacket over him, locked all doors, closed his eyes and was gone