When She Was Bad

“Monday.”

“Date, month, year?”

He got that right, too, adding shyly, “My birthday’s on Wednesday-I’ll be thirty-two.”

“Happy birthday in advance. Can you tell me where we are right now?”

“1-South-the conference room.” She waited. “Oh, you mean the hospital? It’s the Reed-Chase Institute.”

OX3, the psychiatrist noted on the pad-oriented times three. “Do you know why you’re here?”

Dial down the grin, ratchet up the earnest factor-it was very important to Lyssy that she understand. “When I was little, my parents abused me real bad-I mean, badly. And there are some people, I’m one of them, who when they’re little and bad things happen to them, their mind tries to protect itself by splitting up into all these different identities. And the different identities, they all think they’re separate people, and the real person doesn’t have any control over them. Sometimes he doesn’t even know what they’re doing.”

“I see.”

“And in my case, some of those alters were really psychologically disturbed because of what had happened, the abuse and all, and so they went on to abuse other people. Dr. Al says that happens a lot, that abuse gets passed along. And, and, and they-Well, they’re gone, now, the others-there’s just me. But lots of people, they don’t believe in such a thing as multiple personalities-they think I’m a bad person, and that if I get out, I’d do bad things. But I wouldn’t, I couldn’t-I don’t even like to think about bad things.”

“I see,” she said again, then jotted down another note and looked up. “Do you ever hear voices, Mr. Maxwell?”

“Sure, all the time,” he blurted cheerfully, and felt an immediate change in the atmosphere, as if the room had grown colder.

“What do they say, these voices?”

He furrowed his brow, bit his lower lip-he wanted to get this one exactly right. “The last one, it said…right, right: ‘What do they say, these voices?’”

Trotman looked as though she might be suppressing a grin. “What I meant was, do you ever hear voices other than your own inside your head, or voices outside your head that no one else can hear?”

Absolutely not, said a voice in Lyssy’s head.

“Absolutely not,” said Lyssy.

6

Lily DeVries was four years old when her parents were arrested for sexually abusing her, Dr. Cogan explained to Lilith. Really awful stuff that had begun when she was still an infant.

A strange, volatile child, Lily had been removed from her parents’ custody and placed with her grandparents. Withdrawn and depressed one moment, outgoing and flirtatious the next, now as winsome and girlish as Shirley Temple, now a tree-climbing tomboy or an autist devoid of affect, and plagued at intervals by fugue states and bouts of severe amnesia, she had already been misdiagnosed twice, once as bipolar and once as schizophrenic, by the time her grandparents brought her to Dr. Cogan.

A psychiatrist specializing in dissociative disorders, Dr. Cogan had no trouble diagnosing a near textbook case of dissociative identity (formerly multiple personality) disorder. In the face of the abuse she’d suffered, Lily’s psyche had splintered off into several alternate identities-alters, for short.

Over the next twelve years, Dr. Cogan continued, she had worked with Lily to help her face her traumatic past and reintegrate her psyche. They’d made some progress-extraordinary progress, given that DID was generally considered to be a treatment-resistant disorder. Sure, there were backward steps-puberty, for instance, had hit Lily like a ton of bricks, causing a new identity to split off, a sex-obsessed alter who called herself Lilah.

But most of her childhood alters had ceased to manifest by the time Lily graduated from the local charter high school that had supervised her home-schooling, and as she approached her eighteenth birthday, even Lilah’s appearances had grown fewer and further between.

All that had changed two weeks ago when Lily’s grandfather drove his SUV-and his wife-over a cliff on Highway 1. Unable to deal with the catastrophic turn of events, Lily had run away from home. “And from that point on,” Dr. Cogan concluded, “you certainly know more about what’s been happening to her than I do.”

“Because I’m her,” said Lilith flatly.

“Because you’re her.”

“And I’m rich.”

“By most standards.”

“I have a big house in Pebble Beach.”

Dr. Cogan nodded.

“Any wheels?”

“A Lexus, as I recall.”

Lilith mulled it all over for a good three or four seconds, then: “Cool-let’s go.”

“I’m afraid it’s not that easy,” said Dr. Cogan.

“Why the fuck not? I could use a little bling in my life-I’ve been living like a fucking pauper.”

“For one thing, you’re underage. For another, you’re still suffering from a serious psychiatric-”

“Oh, horseshit,” Lilith broke in. “I’m fine-I just forget stuff, that’s all.”

“A serious psychiatric disorder,” Dr. Cogan insisted softly as she went spelunking through the depths of her purse again and emerged with a slick-looking full-color brochure. “Here, I’d like you to take a look at this.” She slid the brochure across the table to Lilith, who held it up dubiously between her thumb and forefinger, as if she’d just seen it fished out of a slime-covered pond.

“The Reed-Chase Institute,” she read aloud from the cover, then slid the brochure back to the doctor. “That wouldn’t happen to be an insane asylum, would it? You know, as in nuthouse? Funny farm? Snake pit?”

Cogan’s thin lips tightened. “It’s a hospital. One of the finest psychiatric hospitals in the country. And most important of all, it’s the only facility in the country with any kind of a track record when it comes to dissociative identity disorder. Dr. Corder, the director, treats the DID patients personally, and he does seem to be coming up with some surprising results.”

“Results,” echoed Lilith doubtfully. “As in, cure?”

“In some cases, yes.”

“Then answer me this. Say, just for the sake of argument, the DID gets cured.”

“Yes?”

“What happens to me? — what happens to Lilith?” But the look on the doctor’s face was all the answer she needed. “Yeah, that’s what I figured.” She stood up, muttering something about having to use the ladies’ room.

“I think I’ll join you.” Cogan gathered up the tape recorder, the photographs, and the brochure, and slung her purse over her shoulder.

“I figured that, too,” said Lilith. She already knew from Mama Rose’s furtive exit that there had to be a back way out, and had decided she could easily overpower the older woman once the two were alone. It was Pender she was worried about. But he made no move to follow-just smiled up at them as they passed his table, then turned back to his newspaper.

Short corridor, cinder-block walls. Restroom doors on the left, a door marked Office on the right, and at the end of the hallway, a heavy-looking door with a push bar and a warning: Emergency Exit Only.

Lilith opened the ladies’ room door, peeked in. Toilet in the corner, sink against the wall. One customer at a time. “After you,” she said, backing away.

“No, you first,” Dr. Cogan said firmly.

Lilith closed the door behind her, sat on the toilet long enough to warm it, flushed, washed her hands, splashed cold water on her face. Lily, my ass, she thought, staring at her reflection in the dingy mirror over the sink, then dried her hands with a coarse brown paper towel, opened the door, and stepped out into the corridor, where