Mary, Mary

Chapter 110

VERMONT STATE HOSPITAL was a sprawling, mostly red- brick building, unassuming from the outside except for its size. I had been told that almost half of it was unused space. The women's locked ward on the fourth floor held forensic patients, like Mary Constantine, but also civilly committed patients. “Not a perfect system,” the director told me, but one borne of small population size and shrinking budgets for mental health care.

It was also part of the reason Mary had been able to escape.

Dr. Rodney Blaisdale, the director, gave me a quick tour of the ward. It was well kept, with curtains in the dayroom and a fresh coat of paint on the concrete-block walls. Newspapers and magazines were spread on most end tables and couches: Burlington Free Press, The Chronicle, American Woodworker It was quiet - so quiet. I'd been on locked wards many times before, and usually the general noise level was like a constant buzz. I had no idea until now how oddly comforting that buzz could be.

It occurred to me that Vermont State had the still, slow- moving quality of an aquarium.

Patients seemed to come and go in response to the quiet itself, barely speaking, even to themselves.

The television was on a low volume, with a few women watching the soaps through what looked like Haldol-glazed eyes.

As Dr. Blaisdale took me around, I kept thinking about how vivid a scream would be in here.

“This is it,” he said as we came to one of many closed doors in the main hallway I realized I had stopped listening to him, and tuned back in. “This was Mary's room.”

Looking through the small observation window in that steel door, I found no clue that she had ever been there, of course. The platform bed held a bare mattress, and the only other features were a built-in desk and bench, and a stainless- steel blunt-edged shelf mounted to the wall.

“Of course, it didn't look like this then. Mary was with us for nineteen years, and she could do a lot with very little. Our ow-n Martha Stewart.” He chuckled.

“She was my friend.”

I turned to see a tiny middle-aged woman standing with one shoulder pressed against the wall opposite us. Her standard-issue scrubs indicated she was forensic, though it was hard to imagine what she might have done to get here.

“Hello,” I said. The woman raised her chin, trying to see past us into Mary's room. Now I saw that she had ragged burn scars up and down her neck. “Is she back? Is Mary here? I need to see Mary if she's here. It's important. It's very important to me.”

“No, Lucy I'm sorry she's not back,” Dr. Blaisdale told her.

Lucy looked crestfallen. She quickly turned and walked away from us, disconsolately trailing one hand along the concrete-block wall as she went.

“Lucy's one of our few really long-term patients here, as was Mary It was hard for her when Mary disappeared.”

“About that,” I said. “What happened that day?”

Dr. Blaisdale nodded slowly and bit into his lower lip.

“Why don't we finish this in my office.”