Cassandra´s Delicatessen ((Story Thirteen to: "Voices out of Saigon")

Cassandra’s Delicatessen
((Story Thirteen) (Prescott Wisconsin, 1983))



Cassandra Hightower walked right through the hallway to Dr. Whitman’s room, stopping in front of his door. The secretary said, just inside the door, “He’s in conference now, Cassandra, I’ll tell him you wish to talk to him when he is finished.”
She, Cassandra could see through the crack of the door, him talking to Counselor Thymou, whom was assigned to her, this past year or so. Dr. Whitman must have heard his secretary talking to Cassandra, he looked through the crack of the door, even smiled at Cassandra.
“How much notice do you want from me, write me off and out, I’m going home, I spent over $400,000-dollars here these past few years. I’m as good as I’m going to get.”
“Write you out and off…such a term,” said the secretary.
“Yes, you’re fired, and I’m quitting,” she remarked, “will one day or one hour be noticed enough?”
She looked at Cassandra frog-eyed. “It sounds like you don’t like our care here…?”
“I had over three million dollars, it cost me $400,000 here, five-hundred a day, more or less. I have 2.6 million left, and interest of perhaps $250,000. You folks of course know all this, and want to spend it before I leave.”
“You’ve been with us a long while, Ms Hightower, and I think perhaps not long enough, but that is between you and Dr. Whitman, and Senior Counselor Thymou.”
“Well it happens to be, Mr. Thymou, feels the way I feel, enough is enough.”
“The trouble is, I have never learned to deal with your kind properly, you take command and try to hogtie your clients. If I was broke, I’d be out of her in the next five minutes, probably out that window. So if you do not release me, I’ll give the money away to the first bum I see.”

Dr. Whitman came out, said, “Counselor Thymou, has indicated there is really not much more he can do with you, but I sense losing you having you go back to your home in New Orleans, is not the right thing to do, but Thymou insists it is, and if you are like your father was, then I do not want to be battling with you everyday, but assure me, Ms Hightower, if you have a relapse, you will call us, and come back?”
“What is the big concern,” asked Cassandra, “other than my right side of my face, and that has healed as best it can, with multiple stitches, in and outside my face and the plastic surgery, and I’m still ugly as can be on that side of the face, but I suppose I could be uglier?”
Said Dr. Whitman with a drifting for the right words, “All your recent blood pressure tests have come up 50% higher than they should be, and all the medications we’ve given you seems not to do the trick of leveling it off at a safe count. Let me explain Cassandra, Hypertension, commonly is referred to as High blood pressure, when it is elevated, it can cause a stroke or heart attacks, sometimes we cannot pin point it to the kidney’s or perhaps even a tumor in the brain, we are lost in the cause of it, medications help, and this is your situation, but let me go further.
I cannot find, or your system does not indicate any specific medical cause for your high blood pressure, or hypertension, I fear if there is a bubble in the making of a blood vessel, let’s say in the heart, a balloon like bubble, I fear it will bust, and if it does, let’s say an artery, let’s also say the aortic, an aneurysm, it will lead to death. And yes, you are in an expensive freestanding hospital, private, and it is expensive, but we take care of our clients, and we do our jobs well.
“We are not going to keep you here, but I will have you sign a release form, that I have talked to you about not leaving, and the possible consequences. If not with the possible aneurysm, then with the unresolved emotional setbacks you’ve had, the suicide you tried is still not completely dealt with, and neither is your anger. Although you have come a long way in a short time, which seems like a long time to you. The finances, I know little about, and that how I like to keep it, it can fog the mind of the helper if indeed one gets too involved with finances, when he is trained in abnormal behavior.”
“No more medications and I’ll be ready in an hour to leave this place.” That was Cassandra’s last words to the Doctor.


The Next Day

The next day she was back in New Orleans, in her house, counting her interest of $250,000 dollars, and her 2.6 million dollars. Her mind was still drifting around—Linda, her friend came to mind, the one that was trying to rob her father of his money, the one who took his time, so she’d have to sit those long days in isolation in her room. She knew she wasn’t all there, but she, Linda McCauley didn’t have to steal him away. And that was how she thought of the old friendship. What a rotten friend she said.
She went down to the nearby delicatessen for a sandwich, a cheese and tomato sandwich, and coke. There she sat and watched the people walk by, without apologizing for her ugly side of her face, which was smoothed out, but discolored, and pretty dull looking yet.
“Too bad I didn’t do a better job in trying to kill myself, instead of shooting the side of my faced off…” she whispered to some character inside her head, or was it inside her chest, wherever he or it seemed to move inside her body back and forth.
What she was thinking, was not what she felt she was going to enjoy, just something she had to do. Perhaps, she told herself, it is because I am a Hightower, like my father, and mother, and we are this kind of person. To the few folks that waked by, she looked like a poor innocent girl, who had some kind of tragedy, who came down to get a bite to eat. But she wanted to kill Linda, or harm her, or somehow maker her pay for her evilness.
She didn’t see anyone she knew, evidently time had changed things, she felt as if she was a visitor, yet she had been in this delicatessen many times years ago. She noticed new owners behind the counter, a new waitress, two young men, strangers, in their early twenties.

For the next two weeks she was in there eating ham and cheese sandwiches every day.

“One minute will be enough,” she told herself in the delicatessen, sitting at the same table she always sat at. She wanted to harm, if not kill Linda, and the pressure grew and grew inside of her.
“She was a good friend, a good kid, was, but isn’t anymore.” She said out loud.
The owners, a man and woman, watched her from the side of their eyes, thinking she was either mentally disturbed, or simply blowing off some steam, she had heard worse from other customers, so they did not give it all that much attention.
“I just can’t seem to shut the voices up,” said Cassandra, then she heard another voice, it said, “Don’t bother,” and a blood vessel bust inside her head, sending her face flat onto her plate, her sandwich, she had just finished.