But Inside I'm Screaming

“Lark!” Larry shouts.

Connie suddenly turns and runs down the hall in Isabel’s direction toward the nurses’ station. She looks right through Isabel.

When Isabel turns back to the scene down the hallway, Nick is gone.

“Isabel, please go back into the living room,” Connie calls out over her shoulder as she heads back into Lark’s room with the “tool kit,” a case the nurses always reach for in emergencies. Isabel does not budge. Connie has already disappeared into Lark’s room.

Two men run past Isabel from behind, startling her. On their way down the hall she hears a couple of unintelligible bursts of static-heavy commands coming from the radios fixed to their belts.

This doesn’t look good.

After a few moments Nick and his mother back out of the room and make way for the rest of the group. Larry emerges, his eyes, sad and preoccupied, focused on the floor as he walks down the hall toward Isabel. His forearm is wrapped in gauze.

Then Lark, an orderly on either side of her bandaged body, is carried out. Isabel watches as the threesome, with its white centerpiece slumping, head toward her. She knows she will have to move to make way for them but she is frozen. She is hypnotized by the jacket.

As the three pass, Isabel feels Lark staring at her but she cannot look. She goes back into the living room as Lark is shut into the padded room. The soft room.

“What is it? What’s going on out there?” Melanie looks panicked.

“Huh?”

“Earth to Isabel.” It is Ben. Smiling Ben. Psychotic Ben.

Isabel looks at everyone as if for the first time.

“Isabel? Melanie’s talking to you!”

“Oh, sorry.” Isabel is searching for words. “I didn’t see anything,” she lies.

“Nothing? You must’ve seen something. It had to have been Lark. She was the only one not here for group. Unless it was the new person in Keisha’s room.”

“I told you, I didn’t see anything.”

With everyone still gathered at the double doors, carefully following Larry’s directive, Isabel moves to the far side of the room and sits in the chair next to Sukanya. The two stare straight ahead into space.

We look like a sick version of that painting with the husband and wife farmers. What was the name of that, anyway? They had a pitchfork. American Gothic! That’s it.

Slowly and quietly Isabel slips a little closer to the depression always waiting for her just around the corner.

What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me?

Thirty-Four

“What’s old is new again at this year’s Grammys. On the list of nominees—the Beatles and Eric Clapton. The Rolling Stones are also up for an award. But littered among these familiar names are new ones, and the combination will no doubt make tonight a night to remember.”

Isabel Murphy, ANN News, New York.

“When’s our first live shot?” Isabel asked Tom. “Do I have time to run to the bathroom?”

“Affirmative,” he said, looking at his watch. “T-minus ten minutes and counting.”

“Okay. Smoke ’em if you got ’em, soldier. I’ll be right back.”

“Ten-four.”

Isabel went in search of the rest rooms, swimming upstream against the crush of music fans and studio executives hurrying to take their seats before the show began.

“Excuse me. Excuse me,” she said, trying to stay polite.

A guard pointed a few feet ahead and Isabel rushed into a stall, conscious of the time.

After washing and drying her hands she headed out of the bathroom while adjusting her dress and walked directly into the back of a man blocking the bathroom exit.

“Oh! Sorry, but can I get through?” she said as the air returned to her lungs. Her mouth dropped open when he turned around.

“Well, hello there!” Alex was theatrically cheerful. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Alex!” Isabel looked beyond him toward the camera stand and Tom, but she couldn’t see over the bobbing sea of heads. “What’re you doing here?”

He followed her glance and turned back to her, his mouth twisted up into a Grinch grin. “I don’t want to keep you,” he said. “You’re in a hurry. We can walk back if you want.”

“No,” Isabel said a little too quickly, wanting to avoid a scene between Tom and Alex. “How’d you end up here?”

“I have friends, musician friends, who got me a ticket. I thought you might be here.” The grin grew.

“What’re you…following me?” But Isabel didn’t need to ask. She knew he was.

“Naw,” Alex replied.

“I have to go now, Alex. Just leave me alone, okay?”

He didn’t move or break his stare.

“Did you hear me?” She was almost pleading. “Will you stop following me? You’re freaking me out, Alex.”

Without saying a word, he stepped aside and ushered her past with a mock chivalrous sweep of his capeless arm.

“There you are!” Tom looked relieved. “They want you early. Get plugged in and talk to the producer.”

Isabel passed the clip-on mike up under her dress to her collar and fastened it. She put her earpiece in and turned up the volume. “Hello? Check, check, check. This is Isabel Murphy. Mike check one, two, three.”

“Hi, Isabel?” the nervous producer came into her ear. “It’s Paula. Can we come to you in about two minutes? I know it’s way early but we’re crashing here and we need to fill.”

“That’s fine,” Isabel said. “Two minutes it is.”

“You’re a gem. Thanks so much.”

Jesus, what am I going to talk about?

She looked back over her shoulder, scanning the crowd for Alex. Her heart was pounding like a drum against her rib cage. She felt its pulse vibrate in her ears. She knew he was nearby. The prickly feeling on the back of her neck hadn’t gone away yet.

Where is he?

Down below the skybox where the reporters were stationed, Isabel saw the legendary rocker on a huge screen set up above the stage, accepting his Grammy.

“One minute, Isabel,” the voice in her ear announced.

She quickly leafed through the Grammy program but the words were blurring.

“Thirty seconds.”

Calm down. Calm down.

Isabel turned to search the crowd once more for Alex and froze. He was leaning up against the wall, only a few feet away from her. Her eye static mushroomed and she squinted through her anxiety to find the iris on the camera. Her temples were throbbing.

Focus.

She listened to the excited anchor in her ear. “Now we go live to Isabel Murphy at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Isabel? We hear there are some surprises tonight!”