A Danger to Herself and Others(45)

“Annie told me, I think. I don’t remember for sure.” I’m not lying.

“Cassidy says you used it before.”

“She’s lying.” Good thing I deleted the text I sent to Joaquin.

“Somebody’s lying,” Lightfoot replies. I bet they taught her that in medical school too. Don’t outright accuse your patient of lying. But let her know when you think she might be. That may be true.

“Well, it’s her word against mine then, isn’t it?”

Lightfoot nods. “I guess it is.” She tucks her dark hair behind her ears, adjusts the invisible glasses over her brown eyes. “She was very upset.”

Of course she was, I think with sarcasm. QBs are usually good at getting authority figures to feel sorry for them.

“You’re not the only one who was impacted by your actions. An incident like this could influence Cassidy’s recovery as well.” Lightfoot sits on her chair beside the bed. I turn my head so I can see her.

“Cassidy doesn’t care about recovering.”

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“She doesn’t want to go home.” She likes it better here.

Lightfoot shakes her head. “I can’t go into details, but let me assure you that Cassidy and I have been working very hard together so that she can go home.”

I shrug. “That’s just what she wants you to think.”

Lightfoot pauses. “Perhaps,” she concedes. “Or it could be the exact opposite.”

Now it’s my turn to ask, “What do you mean?”

“Perhaps she wants you to think she doesn’t care about her recovery, that she doesn’t care about going home.”

“Why would she care what I think of her?”

“Do you care what she thinks of you?”

I shrug again, though the answer is yes.

“Maybe she doesn’t want you to see her vulnerabilities any more than you would want her to see yours.”

Lightfoot’s plastic chair sways a little when she stands, but it doesn’t topple over. I turn to face the ceiling instead of my doctor.

“I know this is an enormous adjustment for you.” Lightfoot’s voice is gentle, like I’m a wild animal she doesn’t want to startle. “I want you to know that I haven’t lost faith in you because of this incident.”

I didn’t know she had faith in me to begin with. She’s the one who thinks I’m crazy.

“You’ll still be permitted to shower this afternoon, though not with the other girls.”

I never got to shower with the other girls, but Lightfoot says it like it’s a privilege I lost.

“And, if you keep up the good work,” (Good? I got into a fight this afternoon. I guess taking the pills willingly overrides that. And apparently sitting around waiting for the antipsychotics to take effect qualifies as work), “I’ll grant you walks on the grounds,” she says. “Won’t that be nice?” she adds when I don’t respond.

I think Lightfoot and I have different definitions of the word nice.

This place is a prison no matter how many privileges you earn. It gets bigger when you’re allowed to leave the room, leave the building—but a cage is a cage is a cage. Anyway, if I’m as sick as Lightfoot thinks I am, maybe the grounds will look different once the antipsychotics take effect. Maybe the leaves on the trees aren’t turning brown after all. Maybe there aren’t any leaves at all. Maybe it’s not even September. Maybe it’s the dead of winter. December, January, February.

If I could hallucinate a person like Dr. Lightfoot says, then surely I could hallucinate the season.

“What’s today’s date?” I ask, feeling desperate.

“September nineteenth.” The last time I asked Lightfoot to tell me the date, she refused. I guess that’s another privilege taking the meds earned me.

September nineteenth. I knew that. September fifteenth was Lucy’s audition. That was four days ago.

After dinner but before lights out, the nurse with the long braid comes back with another pill. This one is yellow, even smaller than the antipsychotics.

“What’s this?”

“It’ll help you sleep.”

A sleeping pill shouldn’t be yellow. It should be blue or green or purple. Yellow is the color of the daytime. “They never gave me anything to help me sleep before.”

“The medication you’re taking can affect your sleeping patterns.”

“I’ve been sleeping fine.”

The nurse’s expression shifts. She narrows her eyes. “Are we going to have a problem here?”

“Because I’m asking questions?”

“It seems to me you’re trying to avoid taking your medication.”

“I just don’t think I need this medication.”

“Having a consistent sleep schedule is important for someone with your condition.”

What condition does she think I have exactly? I don’t ask because apparently this woman considers questions problems, and Nurse Ratched looks like she’s one problem away from calling someone like Stephen to force the medicine down my throat.

Nurse Ratched is a character in a movie from the seventies that my dad loves called One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It was a book too. I never saw the movie or read the book, but my dad used to refer to someone as a Nurse Ratched whenever he thought that someone was being needlessly rude—when a chef refused his request for a substitution at a nice restaurant, when a concierge wouldn’t grant him an upgrade from a deluxe-suite to a supreme. The movie was about being trapped in a mental institution; I wonder if my dad has rewatched it since I got sent here. I wonder if he still loves it. I wonder if he’ll still refer to it the next time a chef refuses to substitute brussels sprouts for broccoli.