THE OUTSIDE BUBBLE

Recap of Chapter 57

Dr. Jerry has another talk with Michoel. During the conversation, Michoel suddenly gets some memory back about the accident he was in right before coming here. He'd had a lot of money on him, and is pretty sure that the accident had been staged so that he could be robbed.

Dr. Jerry makes a vaguely threatening remark about Michoel needing to pay for his stay before being allowed to leave the place.

Michoel asks Mike if he could use his cell phone. Mike leaves the phone for him, but whispers that he doesn't want any of the staff catching Michoel using it.

Chapter Fifty Eight

“Hello, Hinda?”

“Michoel, how are you?”

“I’m…good, baruch Hashem. He should continue to help me. Tell me, what’s with Yosef?”

Hinda swallowed. “It’s not simple,” she said carefully. “Like I've told you, he hasn’t been feeling so well lately.”

“Do you remember that I suggested that you send him here, to me?”

She sighed. “It’s certainly not noge'a now, Michoel.” He ignored what she said, as if he was trying to utilize every moment of the conversation. “And remember that I asked you, jokingly, if you think they kidnapped me and that I want Yosef to help me escape?”

“Yes, you said something like that.”

“Well…it wasn’t quite a joke.”

“What?!” Hinda sat down on the nearest chair. “You were kidnapped?! That sounds…”

“Not exactly kidnapped.” He was speaking very cautiously. “But this place…it’s not so clear what exactly it is, Hinda. What is clear is that I am not being allowed to go and come as I please, right? So, I need Yosef to help me get out of here. I have a few plans, none of which are complicated or dangerous. After all, on the outside, these people try to present themselves as law-abiding citizens.”

“But…” Hinda tried to collect her thoughts. “Maybe I should come instead of him, Michoel. He’s in the hospital right now. He can’t exactly fly in.”

“You won’t be able to help me, Hinda,” her uncle explained. He suddenly sounded very despondent. “I need him. They might agree to accept him, ostensibly to treat him. But they’ll never let you step foot in this place.”

“Wait a minute, Michoel. Can you explain to me where you are?”

The door to the house opened behind her. Dov and Martin walked in, apparently back from their meeting with the lawyer. Martin’s Hebrew was much better than Dov’s English, but English was the language they usually spoke. Sometimes she needed to translate a word or two for her husband, but for the most part, they seemed to manage well. She really admired Dov for his dedication to this project. When she had made inquiries about Dov, before she’d gone out with him, she had heard that he was a ba’al chessed, but now she was seeing this aspect of him quite strikingly.

Only now, Dov's talking with Martin was making it hard for her to hear Michoel. As it was, Michoel sounded different; the conversations with him were not clear, and the reception did not seem to be very good.

“I don’t really know where I am,” he answered slowly.

“I’m in some type of hospital or clinic, and it’s all natural or something like that, but it’s hard for me to clearly define it. It's not like I know all the other patients and what they're doing here.”

“Do they have a specific method that they employ? A treatment protocol?” Hinda turned her back to the kitchen, and the voices coming from inside it, as she tried to focus.

“It’s mostly healing through conversations, and through medicines that they concoct themselves. I think that their specialty is mainly mental health, but not only. For example, I feel perfectly normal, baruch Hashem.” He studied his legs, splayed out in front of him as he sat on the bench. “Mentally, at least.”

“And physically?”

“I’m also fine. A bit weaker than I remember being, but after such a bad accident, that makes sense.”

“Of course,” Hinda agreed. “So…what’s the problem there?”

He took a deep breath. “That they insist that the only way I’m supposed to heal is their way.”

“What do you mean?”

He was quiet. She heard some noise in the background; perhaps he had stood up and started walking, moving away from a certain spot. Or someone was passing by and he preferred to stop talking for a few seconds.

“Hinda?” he suddenly said.

“Yes, I’m here.”

“Something here…is just not completely normal. This conversation, for example, is different from our other ones, because I'm using someone’s personal cell phone and I’m talking to you without a staff member present. Because until today, besides my first call to you, they are always around when I call. I can’t say a single word without their supervision.”

“Why?”

“Supposedly so that you shouldn’t talk about details that might awaken my memory in an artificial way, not naturally, which is harmful, in their view.”

“I think that’s a well-known method,” she said cautiously.

“Yes,” he agreed. “But it’s not only that. This whole thing of me not being able to come and go at my own will—again, supposedly for the same reason. And I have no idea where exactly I am…” He suddenly stopped. “Do you think that I’m just being paranoid? That my suspicions are foolish? Does it seem normal that I sometimes feel like I’m being held captive?”

“I don’t know,” she said, in the same cautious tone. “I agree with you that there’s something suspicious about this behavior. I don’t understand how it is that they don’t ask to speak to us, your family. How come they did not look for us and try to be in touch with us during that time that you didn’t remember anything? On the other hand, maybe this is their treatment method… What do I know!”

“Tell me, how old am I?” he suddenly asked. She was caught off guard. “I’m not sure I know your exact age.”

“I see that you don’t want to awaken my memory in an artificial way…” There was half a smile in Michoel’s words. “In any case, this is a point that really confuses me. At first I thought I was about thirty or forty, but now I think I’m a bit older than that. I’m more than fifty, right?”

“Um, yes,” she said. “Look in the mirror.”

“That’s the problem. There are no mirrors here.”

“No mirrors? Why not?”

“No mirrors or pictures. That’s part of their treatment method,” he said scornfully. “But in the meantime, if Yosef can’t come to me right now, try to find out where there is a natural healing clinic in America—I have a feeling it’s in the southern part of the country—that opposes mirrors and pictures for all kinds of reasons, and mostly treats mental health and brain problems.

Oh, and it’s named for someone Skulholt.”

“Wait a minute, I want to write this down,” Hinda said. She stood up and opened the drawer in the bookcase. “We’ll look into it.”

“We? I prefer that you don’t share this with your children yet.”

“I meant Dov, not the children.”

“Dov….?” He was quiet. “Oy, I’m sorry, Hinda. I totally forgot that you got remarried. Now that I remember, I think there are days when I do recall these things…” It was her turn to be quiet, as she took out a small, green memo pad and a pen. Behind her, the voices had died down, but she didn’t notice.

“Maybe all of these problems are my own personal ones, and these people are just fine?” His voice sounded weak, frustrated, defeated even.

“We’ll check it out, b’ezras Hashem."

“And if my suspicions are correct? An—” He stopped in the middle of the word, and for the first time, she noticed the silence coming from the kitchen and hallway. Had Dov and Martin gone out somewhere? And why was Michoel suddenly quiet?

“I have to hang up,” he suddenly whispered. “I’ll try to be in touch in the next few days. In the meantime, try to find out some information, okay?”

“Was that Yosef, Hinda?” Dov suddenly appeared behind her. “I’m sorry to have overheard your conversation, but usually you speak to him in Hebrew, not English.”

“It was Michoel,” Hinda replied, her gaze fixed on the green memo pad.

“What about him? Is everything alright?” Dov’s voice sounded a bit distant now.

“I’m not sure.”

“What does that mean?”

“Either there are problems in this place where he is hospitalized, or he thinks there are problems.”

“Both options sound bad. Which of the two sounds more likely to you?”

“This facility where he is really does sound a bit strange,” she said slowly. “But between that and the feeling that he needs help to get out of there…”

“It’s usually not very easy to get out of mental health facilities.”

“True, but sometimes, he has a feeling that he is in the hands of…” She looked for a word that would be less harsh, but couldn’t find one. Finally, she decided that if she was already telling Dov, it was best to give him the murky picture, harsh as it sounded. “In the hands of kidnappers,” she concluded.

“Kidnappers,” he echoed.

“Even if it’s a bit exaggerated, what do you say about a hospital that doesn’t let patients look in the mirror? And that has no pictures? It sounds like some kind of closed facility that really is not a good place for Michoel.”

Someone on the side suddenly cleared his throat. She’d almost forgotten that Martin existed. “Excuse me for interfering,” he said in English. “And I’m also sorry that I heard some of your phone conversation… but I once read about a group like this. I don’t know what they are called, but they are against mirrors, and sometimes break them in public places. Maybe they have some facilities.”

“There are all kinds of crazy people in the world,” Dov said. “But who says Michoel landed up with any of them? Maybe his caregivers don’t let him look in the mirror because they prefer that he remembers how he looks with his own memory? You explained to me that they don’t give him any information because they want his brain to remember by itself…”

“Right,” she agreed.

“And based on the impressions I have of him from the past, he’s the suspicious type, your uncle.” As he spoke, Dov sorted some sefarim and put them in their place on the shelf. He lined them up carefully, and then started moving them around from one shelf to the next. “And I’m saying this for a reason, so that you shouldn’t get too nervous, and also because maybe you can try to reassure him. The fact is…it’s a little hard for him with new people. He doesn’t easily accept others' good intentions.”

Hinda nodded quietly. The encounter between Dov and Michoel at her engagement had not gone swimmingly at all.