A Danger to Herself and Others(57)



I remember that day. I wasn’t talking to myself. I was talking to Jonah, telling him all the reasons he should choose me. So yes, Agnes’s name came up. And yes, I might have been listing her shortcomings. But I wasn’t talking to myself.

Jonah said, I know it’s hard on you. It’s hard on me too.

We were sitting close, our foreheads nearly touching, so it took us a second to realize that Agnes was standing in the doorway. Jonah jumped up, made an excuse about having to study and left the room so quickly that Agnes never even had a chance to acknowledge him.

Not that she would have acknowledged him, even if he’d stuck around.

Like Lucy, he wasn’t there to begin with.

Mr. Clark puts the phone down. They could’ve played some other message. One of the many messages I heard her leave—the one about going to Barnard with me, maybe. Or about how sleepy she was because we stayed up late talking again. But I guess those messages wouldn’t help their case.

Mr. Clark holds up a medical file. “The night Agnes arrived at the hospital, Hannah Gold caused a disruption that nearly interfered with Agnes’s care, further endangering her.”

I open my mouth to contradict him—I would never have done that!—but Lightfoot places her hand on my wrist. “We’ll have our turn soon,” she whispers.

“Hannah insisted on being allowed into the ICU even though she’s not family. She caused a scene that disturbed other patients and their visitors. Finally, the staff relented. At the time, they assumed she was simply a good friend—but they kept a close watch on her nonetheless.”

Lightfoot keeps her hand on my wrist. Apparently, she isn’t surprised by what Mr. Clark is saying. She would have seen a copy of the file Mr. Clark is holding. I glance at my parents. They don’t look surprised either. Unlike me, they’ve heard this story before.

Did I really cause a disruption? Mr. Clark makes it sound like they have plenty of witnesses—doctors, nurses, other patients and their loved ones. But I don’t remember any of that. And even if I did what he’s describing, wasn’t it the right thing to do? Shouldn’t I have stayed with Agnes instead of leaving her alone? It’s exactly what my father would have done, insisting on special treatment, to be permitted to go where others can’t.

“When Agnes’s parents arrived at the hospital, they insisted that Hannah be moved. Security was assigned to watch over Agnes’s bed to make sure Hannah couldn’t get close to her again. You can imagine how relieved the Smiths were when the court ordered Hannah be placed under psychological observation. They wanted to focus all their energy on Agnes’s recovery, not on keeping her safe from the girl who’d endangered her.”

Lightfoot gives my wrist a squeeze, then lets go. Had she been trying to comfort me or to restrain me while Mr. Clark spoke?

When it’s our side’s turn to speak, my attorney makes a brief statement, then Lightfoot stands. “When Hannah came under my care, she couldn’t distinguish reality from hallucination,” she explains. I stare at my hands, folded neatly in my lap as though I’m waiting for a waiter to serve my meal at a fancy restaurant. (My father trained me never to put my elbows on the table.) I don’t want to know if the people in this room—the judge, the lawyers, the Smiths, my parents, Stephen—are looking at the doctor or at me while Lightfoot speaks.

She continues, “Hannah doesn’t remember these events the way they really happened. She can’t. She was in the throes of a psychotic episode.”

I realize that I’m not going to do any of the talking today. The judge isn’t going to ask for my version of the story: not what led up to Agnes’s fall and not the night of the fall itself. It doesn’t matter if I insist that Agnes slipped and fell. It wouldn’t even matter if I said I pushed her. The judge wouldn’t believe me.

Lightfoot describes the psychosis that I couldn’t control. Lightfoot explains that symptoms of my disease normally begin between ages sixteen and thirty, though signs have appeared in younger patients. “Men tend to experience symptoms a little earlier than women.”

I risk a quick glance at my mother. Will there be a tiny hint of pride on her face because I’m keeping up with the boys, because I’m ahead of the average girl? But my mother is stone-faced, her gaze trained directly at the doctor. She’s not looking at me, and she certainly doesn’t look proud.

“No one is to blame for not having noticed Hannah’s symptoms sooner. Without a family history, she had a mere one percent chance of having this disease.” She makes the disease sound contagious, as if I could have caught it from my father or my grandfather. “One percent,” Lightfoot repeats for emphasis.

Lucky me. I beat the odds.

“At the institute, we had a chance to observe Hannah carefully, and—despite the odds—we suspected her diagnosis early on. Interestingly, Hannah’s disease manifested in a very functional form. Unlike some patients, Hannah wasn’t experiencing an entirely alternate reality. Rather, she integrated characters into her actual reality.”

Characters. I don’t think that’s a medical term. That makes them sound like people from a book, a movie, a play. A private performance for my personal entertainment. I suppose Lightfoot is trying to explain what happened in words that normal people can understand.

I don’t mean normal as in people who aren’t sick like I am. I mean normal as in people without medical or psychological expertise, normal as in laypeople, normal as in attorneys and parents.

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