A Danger to Herself and Others(24)

Dr. Lightfoot smiles as if to clarify: I’m granting you one shower.

Behave yourself and maybe I’ll grant you another.

“You’re doing good work, Hannah. I appreciate the way you opened up to me today.” About being dirty? “Keep this up, and there might be more privileges in your future.”

Some of the other girls have all their meals in the cafeteria: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. (I’ve learned this from Beside-Me-Annie at lunch.) Like Lucy, they have art therapy, where they weave potholders and baskets, though they aren’t allowed to take their crafts back to their rooms. Some of the girls—like Queen Bee—have grounds privileges, supervised walks around the hospital property.

And now, Dr. Lightfoot is dangling these privileges out in front of me.

My plan is working: She’s seen what a good friend I am to Lucy. She’s heard how nice I am to the other girls in the cafeteria.

It’s only a matter of time before she sends me home.

I wait until Dr. Lightfoot stands and turns her back to me so she can refold her chair before I roll my eyes.

Didn’t they teach her not to turn her back on her patients in medical school?





seventeen


The water is lukewarm and comes out in a trickle, but I don’t care. I close my eyes and imagine that it’s hot, hot, hot, and the showerhead is the kind you can adjust to feel like a massage between your shoulders.

I open my eyes. I’m standing in a stall without a door or a curtain, one of eight stalls in this room. (Four on one side, four on the other. Lucy must have been exaggerating when she said there were no stalls.) A female attendant sits on a bench that’s bolted to the floor in the center of the room. She’s wearing scrubs, but she took off her shoes when she led me inside, so now water drains beneath her bare toes. The tile on the floor and the walls are light brown, as though whoever designed this place knew it would be better to pick a color that already looked dirty. The dividers between the stalls are yellow and nailed into the walls. The stall is so narrow that I bump my elbows into the dividers when I lift my arms.

When I hold out my hand, the attendant gives me shampoo, then soap. (No conditioner.) I shampoo my hair twice to make sure I get all the grease out.

What kind of person applies for a job supervising teen girls in the shower? Maybe she’s just desperate for work. I honestly don’t care. I’m just glad to be clean again.

Though it does make me wonder why anyone would work here. What made Stephen take his job, protecting a therapist from girls who’ve been labeled a danger to themselves and others? Maybe he applied to work someplace else—at a prison, perhaps, or a mental institution for adults. Maybe he only took this job after those other places turned him down. Or maybe those other places were farther from wherever it is that he lives, so he chose this place because the commute is better. Or maybe his girlfriend works in the kitchen, and he took the job to be close to her.

I decide he must have taken this job because he couldn’t find work anyplace else. It’s too hard to imagine anyone coming to this place by choice.

I wish I could shave my legs, but I don’t think the attendant would give me a razor. I practically had to beg for that second helping of shampoo.

Lucy must hate this, being naked while an attendant stares at her. Though when Lucy showers, there are other girls here too, so maybe the attendant can’t focus her gaze on my roommate like she can on me.

“Where are the other girls?” I speak loudly to be heard over the sound of running water.

“What?”

“How come I have the whole place to myself?” I gesture to the other stalls. “Seems like an awful waste of space.”

“You haven’t earned group shower privileges yet.”

I turn my back and close my eyes, letting the water trickle over my face. What makes them think I’d prefer it if there were other girls here to steam up the room and squeal that the water is too hot or too cold?

I open my eyes. The metal showerhead is covered in rust. This water isn’t nearly warm enough. My skin is covered with goose bumps.

If this room were full of other girls, I might be able to soap myself all over without thinking about being stared at.

It might mean my plans are working and Lightfoot thinks I’m improving.

Less a danger to myself and others.

Water drips into my right ear. I shake my head hard to get it out.

I lift my arms—careful not to bump into the sides of the stall this time—and let the not-hot water trickle down my sides. At home, I take showers so hot that I emerge from the bathroom bright pink. At home, I have fluffy towels and a fluffy robe, and the tile beneath my feet is bright white and scrubbed clean by our housekeeper twice a week.

At home, it doesn’t smell like a janitor came in overnight and overturned a bucket of bleach and left it to soak into the floor instead of actually cleaning.

At home, I have three different shampoos with three corresponding conditioners to choose from: mint, coconut, and lemon. Sometimes I mix and match the scents to see what smells best.

At home, after my shower, I rub moisturizer all over myself until I’m as slick and slippery as a dolphin.

At home, I shower in a shower, not in a stall so narrow that I can’t hold my arms straight in any direction but up and down.

At home, it doesn’t feel strange and lonely to shower alone.