The Deadly Neighbors (The Zoe Hayes Mysteries) by Mery Jones Page A

stifled my anger about having been hypnotized unwittingly. In fact, I thanked him and told him I’d think about his offer. Then, already late for my session, I hurried to the art studio, wiping away tears I couldn’t remember shedding and didn’t understand.

F IFTEEN
    I N THE STUDIO, ON my own turf, I kept thinking of Bertram and what had just happened in his office, trying to remember what I’d said under hypnosis. At the same time I couldn’t stop worrying about the memo and my career, picturing what would happen to the patients I worked with if the art program was suddenly eliminated. One by one I saw them, their hands bound, their mouths gagged. Art, for some patients, was the most effective mode of expression, and without my program they’d be virtually cut off from communicating. I told myself to focus, to get to work. I couldn’t do anything about the Institute’s policies at the moment, and I set out materials for my first session, telling myself to keep my mind on my patients.
    In moments, orderlies arrived with group members, and before I knew it, the session was under way. The first group worked on collages made of a zillion small colored paper tiles I’d cut up the week before. Kimberly Gilbert, a thirty-two-year-old schizophrenic, had her usual difficulty with organization. With determination and focus, she glued paper bits in patternless, random positions without borders, both on and off her poster board. I worked with her, urging her to attach the pieces onto the board, but as soon as I left her she’d wander, gluing tiles onto the table, her clothing, her chair, and the back of Frank DiMarco, the person sitting beside her.
    Frankie was a muscled twenty-nine-year-old, the lone survivor of a gas explosion that had killed his co-workers. He suffered severe depression and chronic post-traumatic stress disorder. As usual, he didn’t react to Kimberly or the papers she’d glued to his body or clothing. He stared silently at his blank poster board for a long time before attaching a single black splotch to its middle. Meantime Hank Dennis, a handsome forty-year-old, recently readmitted for a setback in his compulsive disorder, looked on. A few weeks ago, he’d have been distracted, frantic about Kimberly’s disorganized behavior. Now, he repeatedly glanced her way, but without comment or disruption he managed to return to his own project, arranging pieces of paper into groups by color, gluing red ones side by side in an unbroken, perfectly even line. The pieces were unevenly cut, so his effort was tedious and frustrating. Still, Hank worked diligently, trying to fit incongruent edges seamlessly together.
    Samantha Glenn, twenty-three, arms coated with scars, wrists healing from her most recent suicide attempt, concentrated quietly on creating what seemed to be a pink oval cloud, occasionally gazing up at Frankie, eternally trying to catch his eye. Gloria Swenson, her features and body distorted by an addiction to plastic surgery, created a simple, puny flower—a skinny, disjointed stem with an asymmetrical red-and-purple blossom. And Jeremy Wallace, schizophrenic and new to the group, unable to focus for any length of time, alternately sat in his chair and marched around the table in circles, his body still adjusting to his medications.
    The session passed unremarkably, even calmly. I moved from person to person, observing their work, talking to them, jotting down case notes. But as I made the rounds, before my eyes Kimberly’s spatter of blotches transformed, became the clutter of a dark, neglected basement. Hank’s row of red began to run like the straight trail of Beatrice’s blood. The dark spot in the middle of Frank’s poster stared like an eyeball in shock, unblinking. And Samantha’s pink oval lay swollen like my belly, bursting with child.
    Knock it off, I told myself. You’re a professional. You’re supposed to look at patients’ work in the context of their lives and problems,