A Danger to Herself and Others(50)

I only know that what I’m experiencing is incoherence because Lightfoot tells me so. She says I’ll be in this room for just a little while—just until I calm down, just until I adjust.

“This is temporary,” Lightfoot assures me. “We’ll have you out of here and back in your own room in no time.”

Your own room. My room is in Manhattan, three thousand miles away from here on East 78th Street, one of three bedrooms in our classic Upper East Side apartment with views of Park Avenue. My room is two, three, four times the size of my room on the third floor of this place. I don’t know exactly because I never bothered counting my steps back home.

“I’m not crazy,” I tell Lightfoot when I’m finally able to make my words match my thoughts. She stands right inside the door. Stephen stands behind her.

Lightfoot shakes her head. “I don’t use that word. But you are sick. Your brain works differently than other people’s.”

I shake my head, pressing my palms into my temples. Sick is her euphemism for crazy; she practically admitted it. They probably taught her to say that in medical school. “Stop trying to trick me.”

“I’m not tricking you,” Lightfoot says, her voice saccharine-calm. “Think about it.”

“Think about what?”

Lightfoot pauses. “Tell me about Jonah. Did Agnes ever talk to you about him?”

“Of course she did,” I answer irritably. “I’ve told you a thousand times, we were best friends. Best friends tell each other about their boyfriends.”

“Yes, they do,” Lightfoot agrees, and I hate how calm and steady she keeps her voice. “I’ll be back later.”

When she’s gone, I try to remember if I ever heard Agnes actually talk about Jonah. I remember him sleeping in her bed, his hand on her hip while she whispered to me. I remember seeing them holding hands, but did Agnes ever actually speak to him, ever actually reach out and touch him?

No. My brain wouldn’t invent a pseudo-boyfriend who didn’t put me first any more than it would’ve invented a roommate who irritated me at times.

If I was going to invent someone, I’d make them perfect.

I tell Lightfoot as much when she comes to talk to me again later. I fold my arms across my chest. How can she argue with logic like that?

How can she call me sick (which really means crazy) when I’m so logical?

“The human brain is very complicated,” she says. “I don’t know why yours didn’t give you the perfect boyfriend. And as for your imperfect roommate…” She pauses. “Hannah, I’ve never lied to you. The day we met, you asked to see your file, and I showed it to you. Do you remember what it said?”

I shrug. “That I was here for observation.”

“What else? Do you remember?”

I shake my head and turn away so she won’t see the tears forming in my eyes.

Of course I remember. I never forgot. I thought of it the minute Lucy showed up.

Patient may pose a danger to herself and others.

“Maybe you made that up to trick me.” I don’t sound desperate anymore. I sound weak. I sound sad.

Lightfoot shakes her head. “I’m not trying to trick you,” she promises. “I can show you the court order. I can put you on the phone with the judge.” She pauses and smiles one of her medical-school smiles. “I assure you, I’m not powerful enough to make a judge forge a court order.”

I don’t smile back.

“So, Hannah, knowing what you know is true—do you really think we would’ve given you a roommate when the court order that brought you here specifically told us not to?”

I bite my lip, but I can’t stop the tears from overflowing. I turn all the way around so Lightfoot won’t see, but my shoulders are shaking. She can tell I’m crying.

I should’ve figured this out sooner.

They never would’ve given me a roommate. They wouldn’t have let me spend unsupervised time with another girl.

Lightfoot said: I’ve suspected this for some time.

I should have asked, How long? Did she guess before she even met me, when she was reading over the police file, reviewing my answers about what happened that night?

There’s one more piece of evidence, something even Lightfoot doesn’t know: It was Lucy’s voice I heard the night Agnes fell, Lucy’s voice saying, just a little tap, before we ever met.

Not that we ever really met.





thirty-six


I don’t know how long they keep me in the room without walls. It feels like it’s been days, weeks, months, hours.

I don’t know how long it takes for Lightfoot to find the right combination of medication, the right dose so the madness wanes and sanity takes hold.

But can you really call it sanity when it isn’t real, it isn’t natural, it’s chemically induced? When it doesn’t technically belong to me because I wouldn’t have it without the pills they keep giving me?

Maybe I’ll never know for certain what’s real, what’s madness, what’s the medication.

I ask Lightfoot for a sedative.

“Why?” she asks.

I want my muscles to go heavy. I want to fall into a dreamless sleep. I want to be numb.

After a moment, I answer, “Because I can’t stop crying.”