Impetuous (Victory Lap Book 1) Read online

“Thanks,” Tess said, releasing her mother’s hands to stand up and accept the tissue he pulled out and gave to her.

  “Allergies. I’ve always got to have them.”

  That explained the no-pets. Nothing sinister at all.

  “It’s ragweed for me,” Tess admitted. She had to start antihistamines a few weeks before the season to avoid a drippy nose. It was like having a cold from August to October, otherwise.

  Her mother gazed at them like a hungry child looking through the window of a bakery. Tess hurried back over to her and squatted, proffering the tissue. Her mother didn’t take it, and with a quiet sigh, Tess realized what she wanted.

  Holding the tissue to her mother’s nose, Tess told her to blow.

  It was loud, but her mother smiled after Tess pulled away her hand and the dirty tissue. “All better?” Tess said, falling in line with her mother’s desire to be babied up and given attention.

  It was better than waiting for her mother to ask for it in other, more destructive ways. If they were at home, it probably would have been a day in bed, watching old movies and eating junk food, falling asleep together and hoping to wake up to a better morning the next day.

  There’s always tomorrow, sunshine.

  “Can we go for a walk?” her mother asked.

  Tess glanced back at the PSW, not surprised to see her shake her head no in answer. It was too soon for ‘off floor’ privileges. Good thing her mother didn’t smoke because there were no exceptions and a lot of arrivals were jonesing with the worse nicotine withdrawals by this point.

  Her mother really wanted to stretch her legs. She was a runner, almost obsessive about it when she was home. No matter the weather, her mother got her runners on and was out the door at 6 am sharp. It had become a new hobby to replace waking up hungover and her mother clung to it like running was the only crutch keeping her from the bottle.

  “How about you take me to see your room?” Tess suggested. “And maybe we can get a cookie from the break room?”

  Chocolate in some form or another, as well as other sugary treats, were always available in a psychiatric ward. You locked up a bunch of strangers that knew exactly how to get on each other’s nerves and had to offer something to ease the tension.

  The nurse had given Tess some pretty common advice to feed Kade’s temper with candy. Everybody knew the stomach was the way to soothe the beast, even people that really thought they could transform into animals. Delusions had to be fed something. As long as that delusion didn’t include the paranoid thought that the Kool-Aid was laced with sedatives. Persecutory delusions of harm were all too regular in a group that had their freedoms stolen.

  “Bye Maddy,” the PSW said. She waved bye-bye in a cutesy manner, although Tess thought it was a bit much. Did the PSW really buy into her mother’s act? She was a grown woman, not a child.

  Fooling others was practically an art for her mother. Tess was out of practice figuring out if she was faking it or under the spell of the heavy sedatives they used here. Heck, even Tess would be seeing things if they shot her up with that cocktail of legally mind-altering substances.

  “That is a nice young lady.”

  “Yes,” Tess replied to her mother, a bit curt because the little-girl voice had dropped as soon as they turned the corner of the hallway. “Which way is the food?”

  “I already have cookies in my room. Keep going down this hall.”

  “Aren’t they feeding you?” Tess asked, not really that worried.

  Her mother was picky, but only in the order she ate her food. It was a minor compulsion that didn’t harm anyone. She wasn’t much of a hoarder either, and her sweet tooth was something she indulged only occasionally. All that running required healthy carbs for the slow burn.

  “I knew you were coming,” her mother replied, the no-nonsense tone more like her old self. “There are two from yesterday and one from breakfast this morning. I got oatmeal raisin and a snowball cookie. The gingerbread man I ate the head off because he was smiling.”

  Well, that answered whether her mother was in a high or a low. Depressions usually resulted in psych admissions, hopefully before her mother felt suicidal. Mania ended in arrests and a night at the slammer, which was the same loss of freedom but with none of the drugs or doctors to help. Police judged the legality of her behaviour, not the pathology.

  “You can keep the ginger man if you’ve already munched his head. Finish what you started,” Tess said.

  “Eat everything, or there will be no dessert,” her mother stated.

  Yeah, there was a reason Tess always thought about those little tidbits of advice and throwaway catch-phrases. Her mother lived for them. Each day, her mother would write something new on a magnetic board stuck on the fridge. Book quotes, the last answer to a crossword puzzle in the paper, something funny she heard on TV—anything her mother took inspiration from or had impacted her in some way the past day.

  “Eat your Wheaties,” Tess rejoined.

  They entered a worn down looking room, her mother taking the lead. The curtains around each bed were dilapidated with their bright yellow dulled to beige and some of the round hooks ripped through the fabric loops hanging the curtains up. There were three beds in the room total and a washroom. Not surprisingly, the only handle on the washroom door was a dummy lever made of plastic, with no ability to lock.

  At least there was a door.

  “I got a window bed,” her mother said, leading Tess to a neatly made bed. It was the only one without the blankets thrown on top messily. Even the pillow was tucked neatly into the sheets.

  “Do you want the bed or the window seat?” Tess asked.

  “Bed,” her mother answered, opening the drawer beside her bed first to grab the pilfered cookies, still wrapped in paper napkins. She placed Bridge to Terabithia reverently on the table top, centring the book so the space around it was equal on all sides.

  Tess already knew what seat her mother would pick, but manners had been hammered into her at a young age. “I’ll take the lovely window then,” she said, ignoring the ugly bars crossing the glass as she peered out to see her mother’s view.

  It was early spring, and the town was in the middle of the ugly remnants of a thaw that was threatening to refreeze for another month of teasing half-sunny days, not quite ready to turn into summer. The dirt from the plows and from all sorts of boots had left a heavy layer of dust on the cement sidewalk. White never stayed pure.

  “I think there’s a picnic table down there,” her mother said, handing Tess two cookies and a bunch of napkins.

  “Probably, although it’s hard to tell from here. You must have gotten a lot of snow this year?”

  Her mother sat on the bed, patting her hospital pants down as if they were the fancy tulle skirts of a ball gown. Those kinds of hospital pants were made to never wrinkle, but her mother had mannerisms that were difficult to override.

  “Tessa, do you want to go tobogganing?”

  She sighed and took a bite of the snowball cookie, deciding half-way through her nibble to stuff the whole thing in her mouth. It was covered in powdered sugar and she was starving. As much as Tess would like to think her mother had been putting on an act to get her to come home, she knew different. Her mother was truly sick again.

  “You aren’t allowed to go outside yet,” Tess said after a good chew and swallow. Mentioning that the snow was gone was pointless. She stuffed the other cookie, forcing herself to slow down and take it in bites. It was almost as big as her hand.

  Tess hadn’t eaten since last night and now her stomach was reminding her. The brain might be able to fuel on caffeine but better sustenance was needed to keep the rest of her running.

  “You made a mess,” her mother said, fussing over the crumbs from the oatmeal raisin cookie.

  Tess brushed off the crumbs from her lap to the floor. “Don’t start,” she warned her mother. “I’m tired. I haven’t had coffee—you don’t even have that two cup carafe I left at home—and I dropped
everything-”

  “Tessa,” her mother interrupted. “Coffee isn’t for kids. You won’t sleep, can’t sleep. They close the curtains at night.”

  Her mother wasn’t normally a rambler. It had to be the meds, combined with whatever stressor had sent her to the deep end.

  “Mom,” Tess said, standing up.

  “I’m so tired. Can you tell me a story?”

  Tess wanted to scream. She had come here with a purpose and was nowhere close to achieving it. “The twins miss you. They won’t tell me anything. Ashley thinks she’s too good to talk to me and Jason turns red and slams the door to his room in my face. You need to get well enough to come home. I’ll stay, help take care of you, and you can deal with the kids.”

  It was too late to salvage her school year. Tess could see that now she had laid eyes on her mother. This hadn’t been something she could decide over the phone—not that her mother had been capable of having a conversation and the teary explanation by Ashley with the odd explicative thrown in by Jason when she tried to figure it out long-distance had been doomed to failure. The caseworker had given Tess a mere twenty-four hours to make up her mind.

  Drop out. Pack up. Move back. Most eighteen-year-olds were doing the exact opposite.

  Her mother tugged at the blankets, humming a lullaby to herself. She should have kept to Maddy, not mom. It was too much, too soon. Tess needed to be patient.

  Hold your horses.

  Tess grabbed the blanket edge and tugged it for her mother, pulling the tightly tucked-in edge loose that she had been struggling to get out. The blanket yanked out of her mother’s grasp unintentionally and made her visibly wince.

  “I’ll be good, be good, Maddy girl,” her mother whispered, so soft and child-like again.

  “Just be you,” Tess whispered back, lifting the blanket up so her mother could scoot under it. The loose hospital top rode up her mother’s back as her mother wiggled down, revealing a row of nasty scratches.

  What the fuck?

  Tess grabbed the bottom of the top to pull it up higher. The scratches kept going, some crusted over with what looked like recent bleeding, reopened or still quite fresh. Her mother’s back had been raked with something.

  “What happened to your back?” Tess asked, horror pitching her voice higher.

  Her mother tried to shush her, frantically pulling her shirt down, like Tess had revealed a tramp stamp or something else equally mortifying. Embarrassed wasn’t even in her mother’s dictionary, or any of its thesaurus equivalents. Manic episodes resulted in behaviour that would raise a lot of eyebrows but her mother had a convenient memory when it suited her.

  “This needs to be treated. We’re at a hospital!” Tess exclaimed, letting her mother cover up the wounds but determined that she would find a nurse to put a dressing on them before she left. How could the hospital let her mother walk around this old place with those scratches festering?

  “I can’t reach them,” her mother said, finally winning the battle between them as she yanked her blanket over herself.

  Of course, she couldn’t treat them herself. That meant someone else had done them to her. Although her mother cut on occasion, it was always somewhere her mother could look at the damage, see the release she was providing herself. The upper thighs once that Tess remembered had been deeper and a few times more shallowly on the forearms. Her mother hadn’t done it for a while as far as Tess knew. It had been before the better mood stabilizers had been started, back when they thought her mother had simple depression.

  “I’m going to get a nurse,” Tess said, gently rubbing her mother’s closest shoulder, keeping away from where she had seen the scratches. “They gotta have some antiseptic and bandages in this place.”

  Her mother stopped her, reaching around to grab Tess’s hand and press it back against her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Tessa.”

  “You should have said something sooner,” Tess said, giving her mother’s shoulder a little squeeze. “You always wait until things are too much and the pain comes out in ways—well, normally, not actual wounds. Can’t you tell me what happened?”

  Her mother shook her head, making a distressed murmur. She was retreating further into herself. That wasn’t unexpected on the first few days of admission when the doctors were over-correcting for her crash with strong sedatives until her mother was ready to face the mental demons that had caused her relapse.

  Drink and drugs. Mrs. Watson hadn’t been that far off. Tess didn’t believe they were tools of the devil but they were demons that drove people away from their supports, the course they wanted to take their life. Her mother could add men to that list of demons.

  Promiscuous behaviour was one of the more difficult parts of her mother’s mania for Tess to acknowledge when she was younger—even now. Perhaps this was just the mark of a drunken hookup with another Friday night guy her mother found. Those assholes never cared if they hurt her mother, treating her as less than even a whore that charged for her services.

  Well, Tess wasn’t a shy girl anymore, hiding from her mother’s sins. There would be consequences and if she ever found out who hurt her mother, drove her over the edge this time, Tess would deliver a judgement that would make those demons run back to hell.

  “I have your back, Maddy,” Tess whispered, bending down to speak near her mother’s ear. “You aren’t alone.”

  “Lean on me,” her mother said, soft but sweet.

  “Let me get some help. Just rest. I’ll be back in a few days when the meds have stabilized things and you feel more like talking,” Tess said. “We have a lot to catch up on.”

  Her mother released Tess’s hand. She let go of her mother’s shoulder and pulled the blanket up further, keeping her mother covered up.

  The nursing station was a busy hive of activity. Tess lasered in on the nurse that had given her the sign-in log earlier, along with a dash of unasked for advice about Kade. At least Tess knew that nurse and better yet, the nurse knew she was Maddy’s daughter. It saved explanations.

  “I need someone to come see my mom’s back. She has some wounds that need treating,” Tess said as she caught the nurse’s eyes and came closer to the desk.

  “Maddy’s hurt?” another nurse said, overhearing. “She just came out of PCU this morning, and we’ve been keeping a close eye on her.”

  It sounded defensive. Tess would have to ease up on the anger slipping into her voice. The medical people here weren’t responsible. It had to be something that happened before her mother was admitted and her mom had rubbed or somehow reopened the scratches. Tess knew nurses were the frontline staff that bore the brunt of all the patient complaints and accusations of inferior care.

  “It’s just some scratches, but I’m worried they’ll get infected,” Tess said, raising her hands in the universal sign of surrender. She didn’t want to get into an oppositional relationship with the staff caring for her mother. Complaining about the prisoner earlier definitely hadn’t been a good start. “I was hoping you would have some antibiotic ointment and dressings?”

  “We have first aid basics,” the nurse she had first been talking to answered. She looked at her with deep brown eyes and Tess saw the kindness in them again. “We can send for a delivery from the main hospital for better wound care supplies if Maddy needs them, but we can’t take care of major wounds. We’re just not equipped.”

  “When the ER is full, they send people here without medically clearing them to get another bed, eh?” Tess said, trying to hit a commiserating tone. “They’re just scratches. I’m sure my mother wasn’t even aware of them. She’s still sleeping off the PCU meds.”

  That got her a sharper look. “You been to a lot of psych wards with your mom?” the first nurse asked.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen my share, but I also volunteered at our local hospital. Just candy-striper stuff, but I speak a few extra languages. It was handy when the ER sent psych patients up without understanding a word of their real complaints and the family couldn’t be re
ached.”

  Nurse two laughed. “You volunteered to work in a psych ward? I didn’t think they let kids do that kind of stuff.”

  “I’m eighteen,” Tess said, taking the nurse’s bewildered amusement in hand. “The psych ward where I’m from wasn’t really open to volunteers, but when translators aren’t easy to find at the last minute and the ER is shoving patients out as fast as they came in, some staff found ways to make do. Given what my mother’s been through and everything that’s been done for her, I don’t mind giving back.”

  “They’re always hoping the patients will cop up to a psych complaint so they can write it off and send ‘em our way. Just a whiff of depression and some trouble sleeping at night is enough. Heck, the emergency doctors circle depression on the consult and call everything else psychosomatic,” nurse one said, clearly warming up to the topic. “Ain’t right, especially here, ‘cause we’re a separate hospital from the main and a good ten-minute ride into town when we gotta send ‘em back for medical emergencies.”

  “I’m sorry about earlier,” Tess said. She leaned closer to the nurses, creating intimacy and more privacy. “I haven’t seen a forensic patient before or a straight-jacket. It scared me. Mom’s a bit antsy around cops and stuff; spent a few nights in jail when she should have been hospitalized instead.”

  It wasn’t entirely true. Tess had seen her mother in different restraints once and that was because she had been wrongly treated as a criminal due to false accusations from Tess’s father. The memory of it wouldn’t ever leave her, and that had made seeing the white-jacket harder.

  Owning up to it in her head, Tess had been unsettled by the sight, and she had tried to back away, distracting herself by looking elsewhere at the bell, and it had nearly gotten her hurt.

  “Kade already complained to Dr. Michaels about him and the forensic has been transferred back. Good riddance,” nurse two said. “Doc Mike can’t push back if the administration says the ward is full, but they can’t afford to cross Kade’s daddy again.”

  “Don’t you think Dr. Michaels knows that? The transfer happened right on schedule,” another nurse said.