A Danger to Herself and Others(27)

“Lunch!” I interrupt gleefully.

“Lunch?”

“Lunch,” I repeat. “I can’t believe it took me this long to come up with it.”

“This long? It’s been, like, three minutes.”

“Three minutes too long.” Being stuck in this place must be slowing me down.

“How is lunch going to help? I have to sit with the E.D. girls. They keep a really close eye on us. Every meal is a chance for them to keep the bulimics from bingeing and the anorexics from starving.”

“Anorectics,” I correct.

“Huh?”

“I read that it’s anorexic when it’s an adjective—you know, an anorexic girl—but anorectic when it’s a noun—a person is an anorectic.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Just making sure my brain hasn’t totally atrophied.”

“Your brain isn’t a muscle. It doesn’t atrophy.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way. The notion is vaguely comforting.

“Anyway,” Lucy prompts, “what’s your great lunch plan?”

“They keep a close eye on you while you’re eating. And when they pick us up and lead us downstairs, right?”

“Right.”

“But afterward, they kind of just…herd us back upstairs. I mean, they tell us to get in line, but they don’t take attendance or anything.”

“They’re probably hungry for their own lunch by then.”

I shrug. I don’t feel sorry for the people who work here. Okay, yes, I know nurses and hospital workers are overworked and underpaid, and it’s probably not exactly fun dealing with ungrateful, unstable girls day after day after day. Back home, my mother volunteers at New York Presbyterian (planning fundraisers and recruiting donors; she doesn’t actually interact with patients), and she sided with the nurses when they went on strike to get higher pay and shorter hours. My mother passionately defended the nurses over dinner in our dining room (not home-cooked—delivered, of course, because Mom’s too busy to cook) while my dad and I nodded along.

When Dad had the gall to play devil’s advocate—“But aren’t they putting the patients at risk by striking, patients who have no control over how much the nurses get paid?”—Mom got up and walked away.

Dad apologized and within five minutes, we were nodding along again. My parents always said that the recipe for a healthy marriage was staying on the same page. (I hear those words in my dad’s voice.) Even if staying on the same page sometimes means simply nodding along in agreement.

I didn’t know then what I know now. Nurses and orderlies hold the keys (or magnetic key fobs) that open and close doors. They can eat and drink when they please, rather than at a predetermined assigned time, and they get to choose their meals (sushi? pizza?) and use knives (steak! a whole chicken breast!), instead of having nothing but a flimsy spoon to scoop up bitesize noodles and tiny meatballs. So no, I don’t feel sorry for them, no matter how long their hours or how low their pay.

I haven’t had a cup of coffee since they brought me here. Not that I was a big coffee drinker before. I didn’t rely on caffeine to keep me functioning after a sleepless night or rush to the coffee shop around the corner after school to order a skim latte extra foam or anything like that.

But I could have, if I wanted to. Whether I ate or drank, and what I ate or drank, and when I ate or drank was entirely up to me. I could have gotten a milk moustache or burned my tongue by taking a sip of cappuccino without giving it a chance to cool off.

Here, they serve us soup and hot chocolate at room temperature, so there’s no chance we might hurt ourselves or anyone else (danger to herself and others) with it.

When I get out of here, I’m heating all my soups to boiling and burning my tongue every chance I get. I’m drinking hot coffee out of a heavy ceramic mug, not a plastic cup like this is some sort of ongoing frat party.

“Hannah?” Lucy sounds concerned. She thinks I’ve gone silent because I’ve realized my plan isn’t going to work after all.

I shake my head and my father’s voice (stay on the same page) disappears, along with the phantom scent of coffee and the weight of the hot ceramic mug in my hands. Back to Step Two of our plan.

“After lunch, some of the girls don’t go back upstairs. The ones with grounds privileges head down, right?” Like elementary school children heading outside for recess after a meal.

“Right,” Lucy agrees. The single syllable sounds different than when she said it before. She’s getting excited. She knows this could work.

“They trust us to know which direction we’re supposed to go.”

“They don’t trust us as far as they can throw us.”

“Okay, bad choice of words, but you see what I’m getting at, right?”

Lucy’s long hair rustles as she nods. “There’s only one problem.”

“What’s that?”

“Once I get outside, how the hell am I going to get to San Francisco?”

I hope Lucy can see my teeth in the darkness so she knows I’m grinning. “That’s Step Three. I have a plan for that too.”





twenty


When I wake up the next morning, I say out loud: “Today is September ninth.” I can’t lose track of the days again, at least not until the sixteenth. Not if this plan is going to work.