I’m picking yarn fuzz off my arms when Dr. Hancock comes to tell me that the doctors are here to do my psych evaluation.
“What about Ben Marcus?” I ask as Dr. Hancock leads me down the hall to the elevator.
“What about him?” Dr. Hancock asks without turning around.
“He—he was getting something for me. Something that I need to show the doctors.”
Dr. Hancock stops abruptly and turns on me. “Guards are not allowed to bring presents to patients,” he says. “Marcus’s behavior was completely inappropriate. He’s been fired.”
“Oh,” I say as Dr. Hancock gives me a slight push onto the elevator. I can feel tears welling in my eyes. Ben Marcus was my last hope. How will I convince these doctors I’m Daphne Marist without any proof? I catch a glimpse of myself in the convex mirror in the corner of the elevator, my face elongated like the figure of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. My hair is tangled with yarn, my face smudged with glue, my pajamas covered with fuzz. I look like I should be institutionalized.
The elevator lets us off on the floor of Dr. Hancock’s office. It’s strange being in this hall again after so long and I wonder why the evaluation is here. “Can I use the restroom?” I ask.
“I don’t have a female matron to supervise you,” he says. “You’d have to go back downstairs, and the doctors have been waiting already.”
I want to object that they can wait but Dr. Hancock strides on ahead. As I walk behind him I glance at the pictures on the wall. I notice that they’re signed “C.S.” They’re by the same artist who did the landscapes in the lounge. Here is where the body parts of the woman on the bench have ended up. It’s not a particularly cheerful thought to have as I make my way to Dr. Hancock’s office. It makes me feel as though parts of my own body are coming loose.
Inside Dr. Hancock’s office are a man and a woman. The woman is dressed in a smart knit suit that instantly makes me feel slovenly in my fuzzy pajamas. The man is wearing baggy corduroys and a plaid shirt. The lines of his shirt remind me of Edith’s perspective lines. He’s got a stray thread on his sleeve that I have to keep myself from plucking off.
They introduce themselves but I forget their names immediately and I’m afraid if I ask again they’ll think I’m scatterbrained. I sit in an upholstered chair that’s so soft I sink into it. They sit in hardback chairs lined up across from me. I imagine perspective lines stretching from me to them. I am clearly the focus. The vanishing point.
“Do you understand what the purpose of this meeting is?” the man asks in a voice that manages to be kindly and terrifying at the same time.
“To determine if I’m competent enough to refuse electroconvulsive treatment,” I say, proud that I’ve remembered the correct term for the procedure. “I am competent, and I do not want the ECT.”
“Why not?” the woman asks, opening a file. “I see here that you had ECT six months ago and that it lessened the symptoms of postpartum depression.”
“That’s not me,” I say. After days of indecision I’ve decided on the spur of the moment to tell them I’m Daphne Marist. It may be reckless, but I am beginning to see how easy it is here to fall into delusions, like Edith’s delusion that she is a college student in 1971. I am afraid that if I tell these doctors that I am Laurel Hobbes I will begin to believe it myself. If I’m going to fight for my life, I want to do it in my own name.
“You’re saying you don’t recall having the ECT?” the woman doctor says.
“No, I’m saying I didn’t have it. Laurel Hobbes had it and I’m not Laurel Hobbes. I’m Daphne Marist.”
There’s a moment of silence, followed by a quick whispered consultation. I hear “mirroring,” “dissociative break,” and “schizoaffective disorder.” I will myself to stay calm and wait for them to return their attention to me. When they turn back to me I begin talking before they can ask any questions. I need to get ahead of the story that I am Laurel Hobbes. “I’m asking that you consider for a moment that I am Daphne Marist and not a deluded Laurel Hobbes. Consider that you have no real proof that I’m Laurel. No DNA test, no fingerprints. You have only the word of two men, Stan Hobbes and Peter Marist, both of whom profit financially by my being Laurel. Stan because he’s Laurel’s conservator and has control of her money as long as Laurel is deemed incompetent, and Peter because I believe Stan is investing that money in his fund.”
I take a deep breath, pleased at how reasonable the argument sounds. The doctors’ faces are impassive, but at least they haven’t interrupted me. I go on.
“I don’t know whether Laurel killed herself or someone killed her or why she ended up in my house, but I think whatever happened, Stan and Peter realized they needed Laurel to be alive to use her money. Laurel said something to me a few days before she died about changing the terms of Chloë’s trust. I think that would have kept Stan from controlling her money after her death. But if Laurel was alive and incompetent, he could access her money. So they needed me to become Laurel.”
The woman doctor tilts her head and starts to say something, but I talk over her. I feel like I’m running a race and I have to get this all out before they trip me up. “Unwittingly, I played into their hands. I assumed Laurel’s identity to take the job with Schuyler Bennett.
