Shane and Carmen: The Novelization Ch. 13

Shane came back.

"We're putting a little pressure on the cuts to stop the bleeding," Carmen said. "It may take a few minutes."

"Okay," Shane said.

"Shane?" Jenny asked.

"Yes, Jen?"

"Am I going to be okay?"

"Yes," Shane said, "yes, you are."

"Okay, that's good," Jenny said. "Because I think I really fucked up."

***

Carmen taped paper towels to the fronts of Jenny's thighs because some of the cuts were still weeping, and then got her dressed in a blouse and a skirt and helped her put on a pair of tennies while Shane packed a bag with three changes of clothes from Jenny's closet and a few bathroom items like toothbrush, shampoo and deodorant, at Carmen's suggestion. Carmen had thought hard about calling for the rescue squad and an ambulance, but decided Jenny would only be traumatized further by all the embarrassment and attention, and also that she seemed calm enough to go by car. Carmen decided that since they were going to the hospital to visit Tina and the baby anyway, that it made sense to just drive Jenny there and take her to the ER after the visit to the maternity ward. She didn't think Jenny would do anything destructive any further, and that she was both scared and motivated to see Tina's baby. Shane got Jenny up and gingerly walking slowly, hoping not to disturb the makeshift bandages or get the cuts bleeding again. Shane put Jenny in the front passenger seat of Carmen's Jeep and then went around and climbed in the back before Carmen climbed into the driver's seat. It only took a few minutes to get to the hospital, and Carmen drove them to the ER door. She parked at the entrance and hopped out, and went in and came back out with a wheelchair she'd commandeered. Shane, meanwhile had helped Jenny get out, and when Carmen emerged with the wheelchair helped Jenny get into it.

Shane looked at Carmen questioningly.

"Take her up to maternity, not into the ER," Carmen said. "If anybody stops you, tell them Jenny's water broke." That made Jenny smile. "I'm gonna go park the car. I'll meet you guys up in maternity," Carmen said, hurrying back to her Jeep and jumping in before anybody chased her from the emergency zone where the ambulances arrived.

A few minutes later Carmen found them in the maternity ward waiting area, along with Kit and her son David, Alice and Dana.

"They're still getting the baby ready," Kit said. "Bette's in there with her."

A floor nurse came up to them. "You're the group who want to visit Tina Kennard, is that right?"

"Yes, that's us," Alice said, taking charge.

"Follow me, please," the nurse said.

"Sugar, what happened to you?" Kit asked, suddenly realizing Shane was pushing Jenny in a wheelchair.

"I had a little accident," Jenny said. "But I'm going to be okay."

Kit and Alice looked at Jenny funny, realizing something wasn't quite right, but they said nothing. It was just like Jenny to steal the attention away from somebody else.

The nurse led them to a room and held the door open for them all to enter. At the last second Jenny stood up from the wheelchair and walked in under her own steam. They found Bette holding a tiny baby in her arms, completely wrapped except for the tiny little brown face.

"They kept us outside until visiting hours," Kit began right away, and then she saw her new niece. "Oh ... my goodness," she breathed.

"Where's Tina?" Shane asked.

"She's still in recovery," Bette said.

"Is she okay?" Jenny asked.

"Yeah, she's going to be fine. I'm just waiting for them to bring her down here so she can see her baby. She hasn't even met her baby yet." Bette slowly stood up with the baby. "This is Angelica," she said, introducing her to all her friends. "She's only about one hour old." Angelica, her eyes closed, said nothing.

"Hi, Angelica," Kit whispered, her own eyes filling with happy tears as Bette handed the baby to her.

"Oh ... oh," Kit gasped. "Oh, hi, sweetie. Oh ... mm." She bent and gently kissed Angelica's forehead. Dana couldn't help but reach out to touch the baby's face.

"Oh, my goodness," Kit said. "You want to hold her?"

Angelica cooed softly as Kit handed her to Dana. Dana held her and grinned, then handed her to Alice.

"Thank you," Alice said and then spoke to Angelica. "Hi there." Then Alice seemed uncharacteristically speechless. "'Kay," she said, handing her next to Carmen.

"Aw, so cute," Carmen said, bending to kiss Angelica on the forehead. She turned and handed the baby to Jenny, who was crying silently.

"Hi, little one. You are so beautiful." She looked up and beamed at Bette. Angelica began to fuss as Jenny handed the baby to Shane.

"You have tiny feet," Shane said, as one of the baby's feet came free from the blanket. She handed the baby back to Kit. Bette wiped tears from her face as she watched her new daughter make the rounds.

"Oh, Angelica," Kit murmured. "Oh, sweetie, you are going to have a very, very interesting life, you know that? Because we are some very, very interesting people." As everyone smiled or laughed Kit put Angelica back into Bette's arms.

"This is your family," Bette told the baby, who just then decided to cry. "Shh. Shh, shh, shh, it's all right," she said.

***

Shane and Carmen wheeled Jenny down to the ER department, Carmen taking charge when they got there.

"My friend had an accident, and we need her to see a doctor as soon as possible," she said to the admissions clerk. Carmen had Jenny's purse and gave the clerk Jenny's driver's license for ID.

"Does she have medical insurance?" the clerk asked, bored.

"Gee, I don't know. See, we're her friends, and all, but we don't know her very well. We only work together down at the Rocking Horse Playhouse? We're, like, dancers, see, and we just work off of tips and stuff. We don't get bennies." Carmen smiled broadly at the clerk.

"Well, can't she come up here to the window and answer a few questions?"

"No, see that's the thing. She stopped talking. She won't say a word, and we don't know what happened to her." Carmen leaned in close to the clerk. "See, we think maybe she tried to commit suicide," she whispered. "She cut herself really bad, and we can't leave her alone until she sees somebody." Carmen made a throat-cutting motion with her index finger. The clerk stared at her a moment.

"Uh. Okay. Sure. Um, well, we'll need to figure out something about the insurance."

"Oh, I'm sure her daddy'll pay for it," Carmen said. "He's really rich. He owns, like, twenty car dealerships. We called him but they said he's out playing golf with George Clooney or something. But I'm sure he'll be here in a while. And I know he'll be really pissed if she doesn't see somebody."

The woman was suspicious, and regarded Carmen with a skeptical look. But there were protocols and procedures. Finally she said, "All right, we'll deal with that later." She turned to her computer monitor and typed in some information, and after a few minutes handed Carmen a plastic strip. "Here, put this on her wrist. Somebody will come call her name as soon as they can."

They waited an hour in the waiting room, watching a football game none of them cared the slightest about. Carmen told Shane and Jenny what she'd told the admissions woman, and they laughed. But they also made sure Jenny never talked whenever the admissions lady might see her. Finally a nurse came and got them and took them into the ER and into a cubicle.

"Which one's the patient?" she asked. Jenny raised her hand meekly.

"Okay, we'll get you some assistance getting out of the wheelchair and up onto the table."

"Oh, I can do that," Jenny said, standing up. The nurse looked at her, wondering what the game was. But Jenny moved slowly and Shane and Carmen jumped up and helped her move to the table and get up on it. Then Carmen pushed the wheelchair out into the ER common area. It was a Sunday afternoon in football season, and the ER wasn't very busy.

The nurse handed Jenny a hospital gown and said, "Here, put this on. Somebody will be right with you." She left, pulling the curtain across the entrance.

About ten minutes later the curtain was pulled back and young woman doctor came in. She was about twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, and had straight black hair parted in the middle of her forehead that hung to her shoulders. Shane decided the woman was attractive enough, but it was simply the wrong hair style for her. She wore surgical scrubs under a white lab coat, and her name tag identified her as Dr. Miranda Foster. She wore a stethoscope across the back of her neck and over her shoulders and had a pocket protector in her lab coat breast pocket full of pens and things. "Jenny Schecter?" she asked, reading the name off the chart in her hands. "I'm Dr. Foster. What's the problem today?"

"I had an accident," Jenny said quietly.

"What kind of accident?"

Jenny pulled the bottom hem of her hospital gown up to expose her knees and thighs. Dr. Foster turned and pulled the curtain closed behind her to give them some privacy. She looked at the folded makeshift paper towel bandages held to Jenny's legs by masking tape, and looked at Carmen's and Shane's worried faces. She pulled a pair of surgical gloves from a dispenser mounted on the wall and put them on.

"Can I look under these?" She lifted a corner and saw the cuts. "I think I should take these off," Dr. Foster said. "Is that all right?"

Jenny nodded.

Working carefully, Dr. Foster pulled a pair of scissors from her lab coat pocket and began to carefully cut away the tape holding the paper towels in place. Blood had soaked through them in a couple of places. Dr. Foster turned and stuck her head out of the room. "Maggie, I need a bottle of saline, please," they heard her call.

"Coming," came a reply. A few seconds later a nurse brought in a plastic bottle of saline solution.

"This may sting a little bit," Dr. Foster said, squirting some solution onto the paper towels, "but I don't want to pull these off and pull off a clot or a scab underneath."

"It's okay," Jenny said.

Dr. Foster worked carefully and methodically to remove the paper towels. "How long ago did this happen?" she asked.

Carmen glanced at a clock on the wall. "Maybe ... three hours."

Dr. Foster peeled away the paper towels from each leg and threw them in a medical waste container. She looked at the cuts, several of which had begun to bleed a little in spite of the care she'd taken. Dr. Foster had worked on cutters before. She knew without having to ask what it was she was looking at.

"I think I need some help," Jenny said. "I mean, more than the bandages."

Dr. Foster looked up, and looked in Jenny's eyes. Then she looked from Shane to Carmen and then back to Jenny. Shane and Carmen looked sad and unhappy and very worried, Dr. Foster realized.

"Well, your friends have brought you to the right place," she said. "We'll get you that help."

"Okay," Jenny said. "Thank you."

"No problem."

"I'm sorry to cause you all this trouble."

"It's what I'm here for," Dr. Foster said. "Let me ask you, has anything like this ever happened before?"

"No," Jenny said.

"Okay," Dr. Foster said. "Do you mind if I look at your arms?"

"Sure," Jenny said. She held her arms out and Dr. Foster took them and turned them this way and that, making sure there were no other cutter scars anywhere.

"Okay, good, good," she said. She went to a cabinet and got out a supply of bandages, gauze, tape and antiseptic. She cleaned Jenny's thighs carefully and then applied the antiseptic, and began bandaging the cuts. She talked while she worked.

"Here's what's going to happen," she said. "When I'm done bandaging you up, I'm going to have another doctor come and talk to you, okay? I'm not sure who's on duty today, but it'll be somebody from the psychological evaluation team. I know a few of them; they're good people. They are going to come talk to you about what happened."

"That's good," Jenny said. "That's good."

"Yes. And I think what they'll do is they'll probably want to keep you here for a little while, a few days, for observation."

"Yes," Jenny said. "That's a psych evaluation, right?"

"Yes, that's right," Dr. Foster said. "So you know about them?"

"Yes. I've never had one. But I think I ought to. I think I need some help."

"Well, you'll get it here, I'm sure." Dr. Foster finished her work. "I'll be right back," she said, and went to make the call to the psych department. She came right back.

"Okay, somebody will be here soon."

"Thank you," Jenny said. "Do you specialize in the emergency room?"

"Um, yes and no," Dr. Foster said. "I'm a third-year, and I'm doing a rotation here in the ER. But my eventual specialty is going to be surgery, and especially transplants. I've applied for a fellowship to a hospital in Pittsburgh that does a lot of transplants. Hearts and kidneys and that kind of thing."

"I hope that all goes really well for you," Jenny said.

"Introduce me to your friends."

"This is Shane McCutcheon," Jenny said, gesturing toward Shane.

"Nice to meet you, Shane," Dr. Foster said.

"Nice to meet you, too."

"I'm Carmen Morales," Carmen said.

"Hello. Nice to meet you," Dr. Foster said. "Thank you for bringing her in. We'll take good care of her."

Shane and Carmen sat with Jenny in the cubicle for half an hour, until a doctor named Stenowski came down from the psych ward to get Jenny. He was a short, round, tired-looking man in his early fifties. He wore glasses and had a kind face and a pleasant manner.

When he arrived he brought a chair with him and pulled it into the cubicle, and pulled the curtain across. He shook hands with all three women and then sat down in his chair. "If you don't mind, I need to speak to Jenny alone for a few minutes."

"Could you guys come with me for a minute?" Dr. Foster asked Shane and Carmen. They walked down the corridor a short way.

"Do you guys know what happened to her? Why she cut herself like that?"

Carmen and Shane looked at each other.

"Kinda," Carmen said. "But it's been building for a long time. I feel terrible, because I think I should have seen it coming. She's had a rough two years, and there's a lot of stuff in her background that's been coming out. Bad stuff that happened to her in her childhood. And ... well, a couple of rocky relationships. A quick marriage and divorce, then an abusive relationship ... and then another relationship that didn't work out."

"I see. Well, can you guys stick around a little while and fill in any background Dr. Stenowski might need?"

Shane and Carmen looked at each other, then said, "Sure" simultaneously.

***

"So, Jenny," Dr. Stenowski said. "Been a pretty tough day, huh?"

That broke the ice. Jenny nodded, smiling shyly. "I think I need some help."

"Yes, that's what I understand. Well, tell you what. How about we go up to my area and talk about things, okay? And with your permission, I think we ought to admit you for a few days."

"Okay."

"I don't know if you know, but California law says we need to keep you for a minimum of seventy-two hours, under what they call a 5150 ruling. During that time, we do an evaluation, and then after 72 hours we talk about what to do next. Fairly often we offer the patient the opportunity to commit themselves voluntarily for additional, longer treatment, and I'll be frank with you, that's what I think we may do with you. I'm not sure we can resolve everything with you in just seventy-two hours."

"No, I don't think so either," Jenny said.

"Okay, good," Dr. Stenowski said. "Well, if you're ready, we'll take you upstairs. There will be some paperwork to fill out, and your friends can come, at least for the first few minutes, so we can get some contact information. Then they'll say goodbye. They won't be able to visit or see you for seventy-two hours, but after that we'll see what happens, 'kay?"

An hour later Shane and Carmen drove home feeling depressed and very, very sad.

***

Shane and Carmen each got a telephone call on the morning of the third day, asking them if they could come to a meeting at the hospital with Jenny and Dr. Stenowski. Shane had a call-out to a studio but thought she could get somebody to cover for her and said she'd be there. Carmen was running around like a madwoman trying to organize a rock band's CD cover photo shoot for a photographer who hadn't shown up yet, but said, yes, she'd be there at 3 p.m. What the hell, she thought to herself. If these people can't get their shit together and get their freaking picture taken in the next five hours, they can all go to hell, and I'm outta here.

Carmen swung by Shane and Jenny's house and picked up Shane, and at five minutes to three they were being admitted to the psych ward at the hospital, which had a medium-security locked-ward set-up. After showing their driver IDs they were eventually escorted to a small waiting area, where after only a minute or two Dr. Stenowski came and got them and escorted them to his office amid pro forma thanks for coming and apologies for the security hoo-hah. His office was much larger than they'd expected, in part because half of it was devoted to a circle of eight or ten chairs where group sessions were held. Overall the room was dark with minimal lightning. There were bookshelves all over the place, crammed with books and journals in a not very orderly manner; Dr. Stenowski appeared not to have many anal-retentive issues and wasn't a control freak. His desk was mildly messy, and he had both two comfortable chairs next to it as well as a couch, so he retained all his options on dealing with patients. He offered Shane and Carmen the couch and said he'd be back in just a sec with Jenny.

A minute later Jenny came running in and ran to Shane and Carmen, who stood and wrapped her in an embrace. Dr. Stenowski came in behind her, smiling broadly at them, and closed the door.

Jenny looked tired and her hair, while washed, wasn't combed very neatly. She wore a track suit Shane had brought during her admission.

"Oh, it's so good to see you!" Jenny said, holding them both. The three of them swayed gently for a few minutes and Dr. Stenowski let them go until they were ready.

Jenny was a little teary, and Dr. Stenowski smiled and handed her a box of tissues. She took one and dabbed her eyes, and sat in one of the chairs as though she'd been in it before. She folded her feet up beneath her, and grinned at Shane and Carmen.

"Okay, wow. That was nice," Dr. Stenowski said. "I think she misses you guys," he said. Everyone laughed. "So. Here we are. A lot has been happening over the past couple of days, and Jenny and I felt we should bring you up to date, because we're going to ask you for a little bit of help."

"Absolutely," Shane said immediately. "Anything she needs." Jenny beamed at her.

"We've been in touch with Jenny's mother and her stepfather," Dr. Stenowski said. "There's been a couple of conference calls, and so forth, and what it comes down to is this. Jenny's going to need some long-term institutionalized care, and she's agreed to commit herself voluntarily. She has very little money and no health insurance, and curiously enough the state of Illinois still thinks she's a resident of Illinois, because she's still registered to vote there and still has an Illinois driver's license and the state still thinks she still lives at her parents' house there. Her parents have a few connections and a friend of theirs from synagogue works in a sanitarium there, and made some calls and we can get Jenny admitted there early next week. So she's going to fly back to Chicago on Monday and go to Skokie and voluntarily admit herself for treatment."

Shane and Jenny looked a bit shocked when they realized what this meant.

"It's for the best, guys," she said. "I really need this."