A Cross to Bear: A Jack Sheridan Mystery by Vogel Vince

Author:Vogel, Vince [Vogel, Vince]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2017-09-19T22:00:00+00:00

35

Jack and Lange were seated in front of Dr. Kline’s messy desk at Rampton Psychiatric Facility. In fact, the whole of the closet-sized office was a picture of mess, boxes of files appearing to grow out of everything like mold, the shelves and filing cabinets overflowing with folders and paperwork. In many respects, it reminded Jack of the detectives’ office back at base. As for the doctor, he was a little neater in appearance, though the purple bags under each eye attested to an overworked mind. In general appearance, he was middle-aged, tall, and wiry, with short red hair that had gone bald at the crown. His head was long and coned at the top, and earlier, when Jack had followed him down the corridor to the office, the back of it had given the detective the overwhelming impression of a pink eagle’s egg poking out of a nest of dry grass. On his face, the doctor wore a narrow nose that reached down to a pair of almost imperceptible thin lips.

“I’d like to say firstly,” Dr. Kline began solemnly, settling himself behind the desk, “that it’s terrible news what happened to Becky. She was a real triumph for this place. Someone I felt confident had really turned a corner in her life and gotten to grips with her mental illness. She’s very much the rare case these days.”

“Why’d you say that, Doc?”

“Since all these closures in the last ten years, it’s been real hard. Hard for everyone in the health service. We’ve had very little time to give real one-on-one care to our patients. What with the financial crisis hurting people out there, there’s been a genuine increase in the mentally ill. One leaves, another enters. A swinging door. There’s never any rest for us. Then you’ve got the cuts. We used to cover an area the size of the outer edge of northeast London. Now we take in people from all over London and parts of Essex too. So, you can imagine, we’re under immense pressure to return people onto the streets, often before we’re really confident that they can cope in the world on their own. With Becky it was different. When she was first admitted, she wouldn’t speak and had a habit of self-harming, so was heavily medicated for some time. She took no part in the day to day of Rampton and merely sat in the exercise room all the time. But then she started to open up more. Started to partake in things. Dug her way up out of hell, you could say. Nine months later, she was doing brilliantly. A real triumph. She left Rampton and the last we checked up, she was taking her A-Levels and looking into universities. On her way to being a fully fledged member of society. Now… very sad.”

“Can you tell me anything about the form of illness Becky was suffering from?” Jack asked. “Why she was here.”

“Becky Dorring was suffering from severe bipolar disorder. From speaking with

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