A Danger to Herself and Others(64)

When they brought me here, they said I might pose a danger to herself and others. I can still picture the words written on the first page of my file.

At the courthouse today, Lightfoot said, People with this disease are more likely to hurt themselves than others.

Her voice practically sounded like a prescription. I stop walking and slide my pants down my legs. Tie them around my neck even though it means being naked from the waist down. I pull as hard as I can, willing the world to go dark, but the pants rip. I let them drop to the floor.

I cross the room and stand on my tiptoes beneath the window. There are no bars on the other side of it, but in the moonlight I can see that the glass is laced with safety wire. The wire will make it hurt more when the glass shatters.

Hurt themselves.

Hurt yourself.

I don’t hear anyone’s voice but my own.

I use my elbow. It hurts, but not enough.

Enough will be when the glass breaks.

Enough will be when I hear it shatter.

Enough will be when I’m bleeding, and the wire is wrapped around my wrist like a bracelet.

And maybe then it still won’t be enough.





forty-three


It hurts.

Bang.

Could I break my own elbow?

Bang.

Hurt themselves.

Bang.

Hurt yourself.

Bang.

I’m out of breath, sweating. My hair sticks to my forehead.

Bang.

Why am I doing this? I wanted to go home, and now they’re sending me home.

Bang.

I wanted to get my life back on track.

Bang.

My life will never be on the same track it was on before.

Bang.

Louder this time.

Bang.

I’m standing on my tiptoes. Half the time I hit the wall beneath the window instead of the glass because I can barely reach it and my aim isn’t that accurate. It doesn’t matter. It hurts either way.

Bang.

An orderly bursts through the door. I shout for him to wait.

Bang.

He can drag me back to the padded room, just let me break the glass first.

Bang.

Or my elbow. Whichever breaks first. As long as something breaks.

Bang.

Shoot me up with sedatives, just wait long enough for me finish what I started.

Bang.

He doesn’t wait.

The last time someone burst into my room after lights-out, it was Lightfoot and Stephen when my meds kicked in and Lucy disappeared. Tonight, it’s an orderly I’ve never seen before. Lightfoot and Stephen must have gone home for the day. Maybe it’s later than it was that night. Or maybe Lightfoot didn’t stay tonight because she thought she didn’t have to worry that I might act up.

I don’t fight when the orderly puts his arms around me. I go limp as he drags me from the room, into an elevator and down to the first floor. (I didn’t even know this place had an elevator. Did they use it when they carried me to the padded room? I don’t remember.) He brings me to a room I’ve never seen before. Two rows of beds are lined up along the walls. The beds are separated by curtains, like the beds in the ICU where they put Agnes, but this room doesn’t have nearly as many tubes and machines.

The orderly puts me on a bed and holds me down. (He doesn’t seem to notice that I’m not struggling.) A nurse comes over and tucks a blanket around me, covering my bottom half. She lifts my elbow to examine it.

“What did you do to yourself, sweetheart?” she murmurs. I’ve never met this nurse before. I used to hate when strangers used terms of endearment to address me.

“Is it broken?” the orderly asks.

The nurse holds up my left arm. Gently, she straightens and bends the joint. She looks at my face, trying to gauge how much pain she’s causing me. “Doesn’t seem to be,” she says. “But she’s going to have a hell of a bruise in the morning.”

She wraps my elbow with an Ace bandage. I wonder if she knows that I’ve never broken a bone, never so much as sprained an ankle.

The orderly is standing over me with tan leather straps. For a half a second, I think he’s going to beat me with them, to punish me for acting out.

“Is that really necessary?” the nurse asks. “If she struggles, it could aggravate her injury.”

“It’s protocol after an event like this,” the orderly says. “The doc can remove them in the morning.”

He leans over and buckles the strap to the metal bar on the right side of the bed, my uninjured side. He sticks my hand through a loop on the other side of the strap, then tightens the loop around my wrist. It’s soft on the inside, not leather but something fuzzy and soft. Like the world’s strangest part of shearling gloves.

He moves to the other side of the bed, forcing the nurse to step out of the way. He’s careful as he slides my battered arm into the restraint. “She’s not struggling,” he adds. “Guess she wore herself out.”

“I’m going to administer a sedative nonetheless. I don’t want to risk her flailing about and doing more damage to that elbow.”

I’ve never actually minded when people talked about me like I wasn’t there. My parents used to do it at restaurants: to waiters, ma?tre d’s, to their friends sitting across the hall. Sometimes, I’d pretend to nap just to hear them praising my good behavior, how precocious I was, how sophisticated.