She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [59]
Meanwhile, Celeste displayed no such qualms about her own health. Within days of her arrival she acted as if she’d forgotten the suicide attempt that had brought her there. Instead, she spent much of her day avoiding therapy and complaining. Along with the quality of the food, she disdained the housekeeping service. “I ought to bring in my maid,” she told a nurse. “The place is a fucking pigsty.”
Tracey and the other patients laughed as Celeste ridiculed the staff. At times she imitated the way they walked or talked. “She just honed right in on people,” says Tracey.
As always, Celeste flaunted Steve’s money, bragging that instead of insurance, like the other patients, she was paying cash. Somehow, she convinced the nurses and orderlies to look the other way as she disregarded the rules. Visitors weren’t allowed in patient rooms and treatment areas, but when Justin and the other teens arrived, they were waved through the electric security doors. “I heard one of the nurses say, ‘Those are the special kids,’” says Justin. “Celeste said she’d made arrangements.”
Suspicious of the way she was acting, one day Justin asked Celeste why she was there. She didn’t mince words, replying, “I spent so much money, I don’t know where it went, and I’m worried about Steve leaving me.”
At St. David’s, patients’ days were devoted to therapy, working through the crises that brought them to the brink of suicide. An acute care facility, it emphasized stabilization. “They tried to maintain us until they could get us into another facility,” says one patient. “It was emergency care, not long-term therapy.”
In between sessions, patients who smoked congregated outside in a fenced yard near construction for a new medical office. It was there that Tracey and Celeste talked for the first time. Tracey noticed Celeste’s little girl voice, with its soft lisp and the way she clipped off each word. Later, Tracey would say that even during that initial conversation, Celeste flirted openly with her. “She came on strong,” she says. “We were both on heavy meds, but even then the attraction was there.”
Curious, Tracey asked why Celeste was there, and Celeste told her about her suicide threat, then blamed her depression on Steve. She described him as overbearing and abusive. When Tracey asked why she stayed with him, Celeste said she was afraid to leave: He had power and money, and—despite the fact that he was the one threatening divorce—she insisted that he told her that he’d never let her go. “I never thought he’d live this long,” Celeste complained. “I despise him.”
Celeste went on to tell her that she had first married Steve after he helped her get custody of the twins. “I thought that was noble, that she’d given up her life for her daughters,” says Tracey.
While Celeste was a distraction at St. David’s, Tracey continued to wrestle with her own demons. A week after arriving she wrote in her journal: “I’m being treated now with antipsychotic drugs and tranquilizers to try to quiet the voices in my head. They are very insistent about suicide …I am afraid what I would do if left to my own devices.”
While Tracey fought to reclaim her sanity, Pat talked with the owners at BookPeople, making sure they’d keep Tracey’s job open for her. They agreed, and then Jane searched for a long-term facility for Tracey, one where she could finally unburden herself of her past. For her part, Tracey had heard of Hazelden, a Minnesota facility that specialized in treating patients with addictions. She was distraught when it turned her down, judging her too great a suicide risk. “I am in the depths of sorrow and despair,” she wrote.
In group sessions, Tracey talked of her childhood, including the sexual abuse, and listened sympathetically as Celeste recounted her past. “We seemed to have a lot of shared experience,” says Tracey. “I never questioned those things had happened to her.”
In St.