Mud Vein(74)

A few days later I am driven to the police station in the back of a police car. It stinks of mold and sweat. I am wearing clothes that the hospital gave me: jeans, an ugly brown sweater and green chucks. The nurses tried to comb through my hair, but eventually they gave up. I asked for scissors and hacked through the rope of it. Now it barely touches my neck. I look stupid, but who cares? I’ve been locked in a house for over a year eating coffee grounds and trying not to die of hypothermia.

When we reach the police station, they put me in a room with a cup of coffee and a bagel. Two detectives come in and try to take my statement.

“Not until I can speak to Saphira,” I say. I don’t know why it’s so important for me to speak to her first. Maybe I think that they won’t hold true to the bargain, and they’ll keep me away from her. Finally, one of the detectives, a tall man who smells like cigarette smoke and says his s’s too softly leads me by the arm to the room where they are holding her. He tells me his name is Detective Garrison. He’s in charge of this case. I wonder if he’s ever seen action like this before.

“Ten minutes,” he says. I nod. I wait until he closes the door before I look at her. She’s ruffled. Her lips are bare of their usual deep red, and her hair is pulling out of a low ponytail. She’s leaning her elbows on the table, her hands clasped in front of her. It’s her typical shrink pose.

“What’s wrong, Saphira? You look like an experiment gone wrong.”

She doesn’t look surprised to see me. In fact, she looks downright peaceful. She knew she’d get caught. She wanted to. Planned it, probably. The realization throws me off. I momentarily forget what I came here to do. I make my way over to the chair opposite her. It screeches against the floor as I pull it out.

My heart is racing. This isn’t how I imagined this going. Her face blurs in and out of my vision. I hear screaming. No. It’s my imagination. We are in a quiet room, painted white, sitting at a metal table. The only sound is silence as we sit contemplating one another, so why do I want to reach up and cover my ears?

“Saphira,” I breathe. She smiles at me. A dragon’s smile. “Why did you do this?”

“Senna Richards. The great fiction writerrr,” she purrs, leaning forward on her elbows. “You don’t rememberrr Westwick.”

Westwick.

“What are you talking about?”

“You were institutionalized, my dear. Three years ago. At Westwick Psychiatric Facility.”

My skin prickles. “That’s a lie.”

“Is it?”

My mouth is dry. My tongue is sticking to the inside of my mouth. I try to shift it around—to the roof of my mouth, the inside of my cheeks, but it sticks, sticks, sticks.

“You had a psychotic break. You tried to kill yourself.”

“I would never,” I say. I love death. I think about it all the time, but to actually act out a suicide is unlike me.

“You called me from yourrr home at three o’clock in the morrrning. You were delusional. You werrre starving yourself. Keeping yourrrself awake with pills. When they took you in you hadn’t slept in nine days. You were experiencing hallucinations, paranoia and memory lapses.”

That’s not suicide, I think. But then I’m not so sure. I lift my hands off the top of the table where they are resting and hide them between my thighs.

“You were saying one thing overrr and overrr when they brought you in. Do you rememberrr?”

I make a noise in the back of my throat.

If I ask her what I was saying I’m acknowledging that I believe her. And I don’t believe her. Except that I can hear screaming in my head.

“Pink hippo,” she says.

My throat constricts. The screaming gets louder. I want to reach up and put my hands over my ears to quell the sound.

“No,” I say.

“Yes, Senna. You were.”

“No!” I slam my fist on the table. Saphira’s eyes grow large.

“I was saying Zippo.”

There is silence. All consuming, chilling, silence. I realize I was baited.

The corners of her mouth curl up. “Ah, yes,” she says. “Z, for Zippo. My mistake.”

It’s like I’ve just woken up from a dream—not a good one—just a dream that concealed a reality I’d somehow forgotten. I’m not freaking out, I’m not panicking. It feels as if I’m waking up from a long sleep. I’m compelled to stand and stretch my muscles. I hear the screaming again, but now it’s connected to a memory. I’m in a locked room. I’m not trying to get out. I don’t care about getting out. I’m just curled up on a metal cot, screaming. They can’t get me to stop. I’ve been like that for hours. I only stop when they sedate me, but as soon as the drugs wear off, I’m screaming again.

“What made me stop screaming?” I ask her. My voice is so calm. I can’t remember everything. It’s all in pieces; smells and sounds and overwhelming emotions that were there at once, making me feel like I was about to implode.

“Isaac.”

I jar at the sound of his name. “What are you talking about?”

“I called Isaac,” she says. “He came.”

“Ohgodohgodohgod.” I bend over at the waist, hugging myself. I remember. I’ve been falling, and now I’ve finally hit the ground.