A CALL FOR HELP

Shelia gets lost twice looking for the Special Ward. The corridors leading off the hospital atrium, their switchbacks and intersections, multiply her doubts. Arrows point in opposite directions. Even as she breaks into a jog, she forces herself to slow down.  The Patient---if it is a patient---isn’t going anywhere.  That’s the problem. Or the best possible solution. Still the voice chafes her mind, the terror in it, its hiss of breath amplified by static.  They won’t let me out. Please. It’s a mistake. This is not what I came for. They won’t let me go home.

When she steps into the waiting room she’s out of breath.  

“Everything all right, hon?”

Behind her security grille, the nurse watches her approach. 

“Yeah.” Shelia brushes the hair out of her eyes. Her fingers come away sweat-damp.  “Just got lost. Getting here, you know. It’s a maze.”

“There are signs.”

“I know. They led me in circles. But I figured it out in the end.”

“We’re where we always are hon.”

“I guess so. I know that now.”

“So you made it. You know where you are now?”

“Right. I know.”

“And you know what you want?”

Shelia hesitates. Deserted by the sense of urgency that led her here, she doesn’t know how to begin.

“Look, can you help me?”

“Why I’m here, hon. ”

“I don’t know. This is so random.”

“Nothing I haven't heard before.”

“I got a call.”

“A call?”

“From one your patients here. At least I think so-”

“You think? Don’t you know?” 

“I didn’t get a chance find out. It came out of nowhere.”

The nurse smiles. “Always seems that way, doesn’t it?”

 “They only gave the name of this place.  They sounded upset. Agitated.”

“Like you.”

“I’m not agitated.”

“You were out of breath.”

“I told you. I got lost.”

“You didn’t know where you were.”

Shelia smiled against her clenched teeth. “And now I do.” 

“Good. That’s what we like to hear.”

“And what I’d like to hear is some clarity,” Shelia says.

“About what, hon?”

“I told you. The patient was upset. She---he---”

“‘She or he?’ You don’t know?”

“It was just a voice.  There was static.”

“Right. Static.” 

“I just want to find out if everything’s okay, with the patient I mean. If I can speak to them maybe----”

“Visitor’s hours are over today.” The nurse is typing. “I’ll page Dr Sylvester. He’ll explain the situation. You can wait for him here.”

“Thank you.”

The waiting room is empty. An aquarium reflects the TV mounted on the opposite wall. Shelia  takes a seat facing the aquarium. A lone guppie weaves figure-eights, pacing the screensaver that drifts from corner to corner of the TV. 

The door chimes. Shelia sits up, startled.  She’s been expecting a buzzer, a prison gate klaxon. 

“Ma’am?” An orderly in mint-green scrubs is standing over her.

“Yes?”

“Dr Sylvester is ready for you now.”  When she gets up, he reaches for her elbow. She flinches, and he takes an outsize step back, gesturing towards the open door.  “After you, ma’am.” 

The alarm chimes again, but the door makes no sound as it closes.  After the glare of the waiting room, the dim of the corridor comes as a surprise. Overhead fluorescents are buzzing, shedding sepia twilight.   Blinking, Sheila lingers by the payphone mounted on the wall. Next to the phone, gouged into the painted cinderblock, are numbers arrayed in drunken columns. There are four columns.  Sheila takes a step closer to the wall, squinting. She recognizes the topmost numbers: they belong to her cell. 

“Right through here.” The Orderly is holding open a door.

Dr Sylvester looks up when they enter, smiling at her through the Plexiglass partition that divides the room. On the steel countertop in front of him is a legal pad, across which a pencil lies on a precise diagonal.

“Come in. Make yourself comfortable. Comfortable as you can--ha ha.” With his pencil he motions to the fiberglass chair bolted to the floor opposite his. As she sits, she notices, smeared on the plexiglass, the imprint of a face.   

“Can we get you anything? Some water? Unless you prefer something else. If Young Master Fredrick here weren’t such an untrained orangutan, he would have offered you a choice.  Tea? Coffee? Hot chocolate? We have hot chocolate, don’t we, Fredrick?”

“Swiss Miss,” the Orderly  says. “I think so.”

“He thinks so.” Dr Sylvester rolls his eyes. “What oh why would he be sure? Not like it’s his job.”

“Water is fine. Really. Thank you.”
 Dr Sylvester looks at the Orderly, who rustles to attention. “Fredrick?”

“Yes Doctor?”

“Get this lady some water. At once!” 

“Right away, ma’am.” Frederick shuffles to the water cooler that stands in the corner. 

“Please forgive us.” Dr Sylvester’s snarl reverts to an apologetic grin. “Good help---you know what they say, ha-ha.” 

“Ma’am?” Frederick is holding out a waxed paper cone. The water is warm and tastes of chlorine. Dr Sylvester watches her sip.

“Good? All good?”

She nods. The cooler burbles. 

“You hear that, Fredrick? Compliments to the chef---ha-ha.”

He spreads his hands, his smile expectant.  “Please. Enjoy. Relax.”

She drains the cone, forcing the water down in a single swallow that cramps her throat. 

Frederick is hovering by her elbow, beaming  down at her.  “All set?”

Ducking his head,  he takes the cone and crosses back to  the water-cooler. 

“Stay there, Frederick,” Dr Sylvester says. “When we need you, we’ll call.”

“Yes Doctor.”

“So--” His smile relit,  Dr Sylvester flutters his fingers on the legal pad. “Tell me why you came here.” 

“Didn’t your nurse tell you?”

“In outline. But I’d like to hear it all from you. In your words. That’s all that matters here.” 

Through the buzz of the overhead fluorescents, Shelia hears voices: singing, whimpering, a spike of laughter. 

“I don’t know,” she says. “It was just a call.”

“On your cell phone?”

“That’s right. I was driving.”

“Where to?”

“Just around.”

“Unwinding after work? I can understand that---ha-ha.”

“I’m between jobs right now, actually.”

“I see.”
 
Dr Silvestrer jots on his pad. The oversharpened point of his pencil makes a staticky sound.  “Hope you don’t mind.” The apologetic grin flashes. “This is just to keep everything straight. To have a record of the Incident."

“I don’t know that you’ll have much to take down,” Shelia says.

“We’ll see.” Dr Sylvester underlines a phrase. “I think you may be surprised.” 
He looks up from the pad.

“How long have you been unemployed?”  

Startled, Sheila leans back in her chair.  “Sorry---I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“Like I said. We’re just getting all the details together. For the record, right?”

“Okay.”

“So: how long?”

“Four months. I got laid off in February. I was working at SunValle---the nursing home.”

“I see.” Dr Sylvester makes a check mark. 

“I’ve been looking.” She feels the blood rising in her neck, capillaries bristling.  “It’s just----you send out and call and don’t hear anything back.”

“Is that what you were doing today?” Dr Sylvester asks. “Looking for work?”

“I’m always looking.” Shelia pauses. “But today---- I was just driving. It’s soothing, you know? I like seeing the trees and the people on the sidewalks. The dogs. It relaxes me. I can let my mind drift.”

“How long?”

“What’s that?”

“For how long would you say your mind ‘drifts’?”

“It depends.” She shrugs. “It’s just once and a while when I feel like it I go driving-”  

“Right. Right.” Dr. Sylvester is nodding. “So you were driving going nowhere when you experienced this call.”

“Do you know who made it?”

“We’ll be getting around to that.”

“But that’s why I came. I just wanted to make sure everything’s okay.”

“Of course you did.” Dr. Sylvester smiles. “You came to the right place.” 

“They sounded agitated,” Shelia says. 

“You mentioned this,” Dr Sylvester is frowning at his notes. “It bothered you, didn’t it?”

“Confused me, I guess,” Shelia says. “I didn’t know what to think.”

Dr Sylvester nibbles the pencil eraser  as he writes. “Schedule 1 Psychosis," he murmurs, the tip of his tongue prodding his underlip. 

“Excuse me?” Shelia sits up, the heat in her neck charged now by anger.

“Sorry, just talking to myself.” Dr. Sylvester shakes his head, rueful.  “Bad habit I know, especially in my trade. Physician heal thyself---ha-ha.” 

“So, do you know who made the call?”

“I think so.”

“It’s one of your patients?”

“Not yet.” Dr. Sylvester is writing again. The pencil point crackles. “We haven't completed the admissions process. That’s what we’re doing now. ”

“I don’t understand.” 

“Shelia---you don’t mind if I use your first name?” Dr Sylvester leans forward, his face magnified by the Plexiglass, the smear the anonymous face has left.  “What you’ve described is a classic delusional scenario. The ‘call’ you received came for your own subconscious.”

Shelia stares. Anger recharges the blood in her neck. 

 “You’re saying I made it up?” 

“Not intentionally, of course. We must not get defensive, Shelia.  I don’t doubt you believe what you are telling me. But what I am telling you is that your mind needs help. It brought you here.”

“The call brought me here.” Shelia rummages in her pocket for her phone. “I’ll show you.”

“There’s no need for that,” Dr Sylvester says. “I think we know already what we’ll find.”

“This is crazy.”

“We don’t use words like that here.” Dr Sylvester wags his pencil, chiding. “We’re all about treatment here. You’ve made the first step already---the hardest step---even if you didn’t know it. Now it’s our turn. Let us help you.”

From the edge of her vision, Shelia sees Fredrick approaching, but does not move. Anger has given way to an inevitability that holds her in place. Struggling will change nothing. The wrong turnings her day has taken add up: they can only have led her here.  

“This won’t hurt,” Fredrick holds up the syringe. “Promise.” It doesn’t. Shelia sees her blood filling the barrel of the syringe but doesn’t feel the needle in her arm. She has already gone numb.


----------------------

 
She wakes walking. Awareness finds her in the corridor that led her here. It is night she knows. There are no windows in the ward and the fluorescents are still buzzing, still giving off their brown half-light, but she can sense the shift in air pressure, a depth and resonance to the hum the walls emit.  
Her fugue carries her. She knows where she has to go, and what she has to do. Leaning against the wall by the phone, she gathers strength. There is a penny in the coin tray, already scabbed by paint. Above her own number, she scratches another. 

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Will Hodgkinson has had his fiction published in Northwest Review and in 2025 issues of Killer Nashville, Wordpeace, Portland Monthly magazine, Ponder Review and Fjords Review. His work has also been published multiple times in Off the Coast and in the anthology Below the Poverty Line. Will’s nonfiction was published in Breakwater Review. He has recently earned an MA in World History at Northeastern University.