flee. When the nurse is out of sight, she sprints across the grass at full speed. Flashlight beams bop up and down around her, like costumed children searching for candy on Halloween night. Her dark jeans and dirty gray sweatshirt aren’t exactly camouflage, but they’ll have to do.
“Damned deer,” a voice growls from somewhere behind her. “Like rats. They’re everywhere.”
Danielle reaches a stand of trees and becomes one of them. The light bounces away, illuminating Fountainview. She clutches her chest and gasps. Even when it seems that the coast is clear, she clings to the tree and doesn’t move for a solid hour. Olly olly oxen free.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Danielle waits in Maitland’s main conference room—the one with the chalkboard and the large U-shaped table. The meeting can’t start soon enough to suit her. This time she’ll be the one calling the shots.
Her first impulse after the bizarre discoveries last night was to march into the Fountainview unit and yank Max the hell out of there, but deeper reflection convinced her that this might be shortsighted. Her nocturnal felonies, while illuminating, now compound her confusion. She has no idea how to assess observations of a Max she doesn’t know. When Reyes-Moreno left another message this morning asking her if she had made the decision to move Max to their long-term residential facility, an idea flashed through Danielle’s brain. She told Reyes-Moreno that before she could consider such a step, she required a face-to-face discussion with the entire team.
Danielle looks at her watch. In a few minutes, she will have the chance to confront the entire collective. She has already decided that whatever they say, she will have Max discharged immediately and take him back to New York. Once there, she will contact Dr. Leonard and obtain a referral for a second opinion. There is no way she’s leaving Max here indefinitely without external—and irrefutable—confirmation of Maitland’s findings.
But what if the entries and Reyes-Moreno’s diagnosis aretrue? Her superior ability to marshal the facts—which serves her so well as a lawyer—has completely deserted her. She tries again to order the conflicting scenarios that pummel her brain. If Max is truly psychotic, how is it possible that she never saw any of the signs? Surely Max would have said or done something of that ilk in her presence? Then she remembers the day she found Max’s diary and his intricate plan to commit suicide—of which she had been completely oblivious. She also recalls the chilling question he asked her at the beginning of this nightmare: “What do we do if they say I’m really crazy?” Maybe Max, as his condition worsened, did his level best to appear normal to her in the frantic hope that her answer would not be to condemn him to Maitland indefinitely. She flashes back to the entry that described Max’s psychotic behavior as exhibiting itself at night, which would explain their claim that by morning—when Danielle saw him—he had no recollection of those events at all. Danielle had attributed his utter exhaustion to the soporific effect of the medications, but it could have been the result of his nightly…episodes.
Equally perplexing is that, notwithstanding the devastating diagnosis and damning entries, Max does seems to be improving—at least during the few moments they have together each morning. Danielle can only attribute this to one variable: Fastow. As requested, he sent her the list of Max’s medications. They are all familiar to her, their side effects predictable. Maybe he is a psychopharmacological genius, as Marianne said.
She has picked up the telephone twenty times to tell Georgia about the diagnosis and to ask her to fly down again to give her moral support, but that would make it too real. She has an even stronger desire to talk to Marianne about everything, given the warmth of their growing friendship. But she is afraidthat Marianne’s medical
“Damned deer,” a voice growls from somewhere behind her. “Like rats. They’re everywhere.”
Danielle reaches a stand of trees and becomes one of them. The light bounces away, illuminating Fountainview. She clutches her chest and gasps. Even when it seems that the coast is clear, she clings to the tree and doesn’t move for a solid hour. Olly olly oxen free.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Danielle waits in Maitland’s main conference room—the one with the chalkboard and the large U-shaped table. The meeting can’t start soon enough to suit her. This time she’ll be the one calling the shots.
Her first impulse after the bizarre discoveries last night was to march into the Fountainview unit and yank Max the hell out of there, but deeper reflection convinced her that this might be shortsighted. Her nocturnal felonies, while illuminating, now compound her confusion. She has no idea how to assess observations of a Max she doesn’t know. When Reyes-Moreno left another message this morning asking her if she had made the decision to move Max to their long-term residential facility, an idea flashed through Danielle’s brain. She told Reyes-Moreno that before she could consider such a step, she required a face-to-face discussion with the entire team.
Danielle looks at her watch. In a few minutes, she will have the chance to confront the entire collective. She has already decided that whatever they say, she will have Max discharged immediately and take him back to New York. Once there, she will contact Dr. Leonard and obtain a referral for a second opinion. There is no way she’s leaving Max here indefinitely without external—and irrefutable—confirmation of Maitland’s findings.
But what if the entries and Reyes-Moreno’s diagnosis aretrue? Her superior ability to marshal the facts—which serves her so well as a lawyer—has completely deserted her. She tries again to order the conflicting scenarios that pummel her brain. If Max is truly psychotic, how is it possible that she never saw any of the signs? Surely Max would have said or done something of that ilk in her presence? Then she remembers the day she found Max’s diary and his intricate plan to commit suicide—of which she had been completely oblivious. She also recalls the chilling question he asked her at the beginning of this nightmare: “What do we do if they say I’m really crazy?” Maybe Max, as his condition worsened, did his level best to appear normal to her in the frantic hope that her answer would not be to condemn him to Maitland indefinitely. She flashes back to the entry that described Max’s psychotic behavior as exhibiting itself at night, which would explain their claim that by morning—when Danielle saw him—he had no recollection of those events at all. Danielle had attributed his utter exhaustion to the soporific effect of the medications, but it could have been the result of his nightly…episodes.
Equally perplexing is that, notwithstanding the devastating diagnosis and damning entries, Max does seems to be improving—at least during the few moments they have together each morning. Danielle can only attribute this to one variable: Fastow. As requested, he sent her the list of Max’s medications. They are all familiar to her, their side effects predictable. Maybe he is a psychopharmacological genius, as Marianne said.
She has picked up the telephone twenty times to tell Georgia about the diagnosis and to ask her to fly down again to give her moral support, but that would make it too real. She has an even stronger desire to talk to Marianne about everything, given the warmth of their growing friendship. But she is afraidthat Marianne’s medical
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