A Danger to Herself and Others(51)

Lightfoot nods sympathetically, but refuses to sedate me. “The antipsychotics are doing their job,” she says. “We’re only keeping you in this room so that you’re safe while we adjust your medication. I don’t want a sedative to interfere with our work.”

Our work. Doing their job. When I take the blue pills, I imagine businessmen dressed in suits, carrying briefcases as they make their way down my throat and into my belly and from there up into my brain. Then I picture them dressed like construction workers, doing heavy lifting and rewiring to get my brain cells into proper working order. I imagine a sedative as a traffic jam keeping the workers from getting to all the right places, from making it to their corner offices in time for their all-important meetings.

How will Lightfoot know when things normalize? What does normalize even mean? How can there be a normal when—left to its own devices—my brain invented people and furniture and scents and language? Is normal for me different than it is for other people?

I can’t remember having doubted myself like this before. My mother used to say I had a healthy ego. She sounded pleased about it, proud that she’d raised a daughter who was so sure of herself in a world where society tells little girls to question themselves, to think before speaking, to let the boys speak first. Not me. My mother thought it was proof she and my father had done such a good job raising me.

Now all I have is doubt.



They bring me back to the room. My room. On the third floor. (The padded room is on the first floor.) Someone has made my bed. The bed. The only bed in the otherwise empty space.

The pile of romance novels on the floor is gone. “Where are our books?” I ask. “My books,” I correct.

“I’ll bring you some new ones from the library,” the nurse promises. It’s the kind nurse in the yellow scrubs. Though she makes me stick out my tongue after I take my pills now too.

She leaves me alone in the room. In my room.

It looks exactly like it did my first day here. Except for the absence of a second bed. (Was my brain planning to create Lucy from the day I arrived, or did I hallucinate the bed later without realizing it?) Did the room feel this empty on day one? I mean, it’s not as though I wasn’t alone in here plenty of the time, even after Lucy came. Every time Lucy had group therapy, art therapy. Or when she had shower privileges that I hadn’t yet been granted. And of course, when Lucy went on her audition.

I walk to the window, stand on my tiptoes. If they were trying to gaslight me, they’d have known to take Lucy, to take the extra bed, even to dust the floor for any remnants of her long hair. But they wouldn’t have known about the hairpin on the windowsill.

It’s gone.

I should’ve known she wasn’t real the instant she came back after her audition. Nobody would’ve come back here if they didn’t have to.

Stupid, broken brain.

I should’ve known that Jonah wasn’t real the instant I realized he never gave me his phone number. Agnes and I exchanged numbers almost as soon as we met. I wouldn’t have spent a month hooking up with Jonah without sending and receiving a few text messages.

Stupid, broken girl.

I kissed him for the first time behind the athletic center. Did I stand there all alone kissing the air, or did I hallucinate the entire exchange alone in my dorm room, while Agnes was in class?

Dr. Lightfoot comes to see me after lunch.

“Where’s Stephen?” I ask. He isn’t guarding the door. Lightfoot doesn’t try to stop me when I step into the hallway to see if he’s waiting outside.

Lightfoot smiles. “I don’t think we need Stephen here anymore.”

I wonder if she remembers that she told me Stephen was a student, here observing her work. Does she assume I knew she was lying?

“I asked them to bring me some books.”

Lightfoot nods. “I’ll make sure you get some after I leave.” She doesn’t say that reading might distract me from the work we’re doing. Apparently, she’s not worried about my getting distracted anymore. She smiles again. This smile doesn’t look like the kind they taught her in medical school. In fact, this smile is probably the type they tried to train her not to use. This is a real smile, a human reflex, an involuntary reaction. It’s full of pity and sadness. It’s sticky with sweetness. The doctor feels sorry for me. She doesn’t think I’m a danger to myself and others anymore, not now that I’m medicated. She sees me not as a threat, but as a sad, sick girl who’s confronting an illness she can no longer deny.

Lightfoot gestures to my uneaten lunch, the tray on the floor beside my bed. “You can have lunch in the cafeteria from now on.”

“Okay.”

“I know this is an enormous adjustment for you.”

Getting to have lunch in the cafeteria after the padded room?

Oh, she means my new status as a capital-C Crazy Person. Though she would probably say capital-S Sick Person.

“I have some good news for you,” the doctor continues, still smiling.

I wonder what she thinks qualifies as good news. Shower privileges? Grounds privileges? The word privileges has lost all meaning.

The word good has lost all meaning.

“Your hearing has been set for next week.”

I blink dumbly. “What?”

“I know you’ve been frustrated with the wait, but I really do think it’s for the best. The time we’ve had allowed us to really dig into your troubles.”