Ed Makbejn - Snow White and Rose Red

Visiting hours at Knotts Retreat were from three to five every Saturday afternoon. Thats what Sarah Whittaker had told me on the telephone. Sarah Whittaker knew when visiting hours were; shed been a patient at Knotts Retreat for the past six months now.

In the state of Florida, the mental health statutes are definitive as concerns a patients rights, even in a private hospital. Section 394.459 forcefully states that each patient in a mental facility has the right to communicate freely and privately with persons outside the facility, and goes on to say that each patient shall be allowed to receive, send, and mail sealed, unopened correspondence, and no patients incoming or outgoing correspondence shall be opened, delayed, held, or censored by the facility. Moreover, the statutes make it clear that the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services is obliged to establish reasonable rules governing visitors, visiting hours, and the use of telephones by patients in the least restrictive possible manner.

Thanks to the statutes, Sarah Whittaker had first been allowed to write to me and to receive my answering letter, and next had been allowed to talk to me on the telephone.

Sarah Whittaker was nuttier than a fruitcake.

Or so Id been told by an attorney named Mark Ritter, whod handled the involuntary commitment on behalf of Sarahs mother.

Sarahs letter had been crisp and lucid, stating her case in clear, straightforward English.

Sarah on the telephone had sounded as sane as anyone I knew in the city of Calusa, Florida.

Sarah in person

I think I fell in love with her the moment I met her.

Perhaps as a carryover from the days of Englands Bedlam, there are still people in the world who find mental facilities a source of amusement. That may account for why Knotts Retreat was familiarly known to the citizens of Calusa as Nuts Retreat. Situated rather closer to Sarasota than that city would have preferred, the facility was nonetheless within the boundaries of Calusa County, a good half-hour drive north on US 41 and then west on Xavier Road. At first glance, the facility much resembled the neighboring cattle ranches that bordered it on three sides. Split-rail fences defined the property, which seemed to consist solely of acres of improved pastureland on either side of a somewhat rutted dirt road until one came to the end of the dirt road. It was here that the wall began.

Even so, the wall did not look too terribly forbidding. It was neither high nor stout, and the two plaques each announcing that this was indeed Knotts Retreat affixed to either side of the entrance gates were fashioned of burnished brass, which gave the impression, when combined with the ornate wrought iron of the gates, that one was approaching a stately castle somewhere in England or France. The gates were wide open, further encouraging the idea that no sane person was being kept here against his or her will.

Sarah Whittaker claimed that she was a sane person being kept here against her will, despite the fact that she had been declared mentally incompetent at a hearing last October.

The terrain in Calusa, except where developers have bulldozed the earth in an attempt to simulate rolling hills, is almost uniformly flat. Beyond the entrance gates, the dirt road became a paved one, flanked on either side by neatly landscaped lawns. Patients, I assumed, and visitors it was difficult to tell them apart roamed freely over these lawns, chatting, occasionally laughing in the bright April sunshine. Here and there a whitecoated attendant was in evidence, looking more like a servant than anyone expected to keep peace and order. It all appeared very civilized. I expected someone perhaps a woman wearing a long summer dress and a wide-brimmed straw hat to emerge from one of the stone buildings at any moment, announcing in an impeccably crisp English voice that tea would presently be served on the terrace. I drove my Karmann Ghia to a well-defined parking area, and then walked up a gravel path to the centermost of the stone buildings, following the directions Sarah had given me on the telephone.

It was cool inside the building.

A woman in starched white sat behind a desk just inside the entrance door. She looked up as I came in.

Yes, sir, she said. May I help you?

Im here to see Miss Sarah Whittaker, I said.

Yes, sir. And your name, please?

Matthew Hope.

Are you a relative of the patient, sir?

No, Im an attorney.

Is Miss Whittaker expecting you?

Yes, she is.

Just a moment, please, sir, she said, and lifted a telephone receiver.

She dialed three numbers.

She waited.

Freddie, she said into the telephone, this is Karen at the reception desk. I have a visitor for Sarah Whittaker. His name...

She looked up.

Matthew Hope, I said. I called yesterday to say Id be here. I spoke to a Dr. Carmichael.

Matthew Hope, she said into the phone. He spoke to Dr. Carmichael.

She listened a moment and then said, No, hes an attorney.

She listened some more.

Fine, then, she said. Will you have someone bring her up? She put the receiver back on the cradle, smiled, and said, If youll have a seat, sir, Miss Whittaker will be up in a moment.

I wondered where down was.

I took a seat on a bench facing the reception desk. The entrance area was perhaps twelve feet square, the desk set into a nook just inside the door. The walls were of stone. There were oil paintings on the walls. The feeling of a baronial manor persisted. The receptionist picked up a copy of Ms. magazine.

Do you know Miss Whittaker? I asked her.

Sir? she said, looking across at me.

Sarah Whittaker. Do you know her personally?

Well, yes, sir, she said, Im familiar with most of the patients here, yes, sir.

How many patients are there? I asked.

We have beds for three hundred, she said. Were running a bit under capacity at the moment.

How many would that be?

Two ninety-five, something like that. Weve got ten buildings in all. Miss Whittaker is in North Three.

When you said, bring her up, what did you mean?

Sir?

Up from where?

Up from oh. Thats just an expression we use. This is Administration and Reception. Anyone coming from the wards to here we say is coming up. I dont know why, there arent any hills here or anything. She shrugged. Its just an expression.

Are there any patients in this building?

No, sir. This is just Administration and Reception. The offices are in this building. The administration offices.

The wards are in the other nine buildings, then, is that it?

Yes, sir.

About thirty, thirty-five patients in each building, is that it?

Approximately, sir, yes.

Is there any significance to the way the buildings are

Sarah Whittaker walked into the room.

An attendant in white was with her.

I dont know why I expected her to be wearing a uniform, one of those gray, striped things that look like mattress ticking. That was what was in my mind, even though Id already seen patients Id assumed they were patients on the lawn outside, wearing clothing they might have worn to any cocktail party in Calusa. Fantasies die hard; in a mental hospital or in a prison, the patients or the inmates are supposed to wear uniforms. Or were the patients here at Knotts Retreat only dressed up for visiting day?

She was wearing a linen suit.

Jacket and skirt the color of wheat.

Saffron silk blouse open at the throat.

Beige French-heeled pumps.

She had eyes as deeply green as an Amazonian jungle.

Her blonde hair was clipped short I wondered if theyd cut it here at the hospital framing in abbreviation a pale, exquisitely shaped face.