A Danger to Herself and Others(65)

I feel the prick of a needle, and the sedative enters my veins. The familiar heaviness settles over me.

“At least we can keep an eye on her down here,” the nurse says, clucking her tongue. Click. She tosses the needle into the designated medical-waste trash can.

The first time they sedated me, I felt so powerless that I worried they’d used too much, that my heart would beat too slowly and my lungs would stop absorbing oxygen.

I certainly never thought that being tied up would feel as secure and cozy as being wrapped in my favorite blanket back home. But right now, I like how it feels to be sedated and restrained.

The nurse reaches out and brushes my hair off my forehead with her fingers.

“You’re safe here.”

They can’t possibly send me home now.

I’m a danger to myself.

I hurt myself.

Maybe they’ll keep me here forever.

Maybe they should.

Maybe this is the only place where I can be safe.

Where people like her can keep an eye on me.





forty-four


Something cold wakes me.

The nurse must notice my eyes fluttering because she says, “I’m sorry, sweetie.”

I shake my head, still not fully awake. I don’t remember where I am at first. I’m used to sleeping alone in my room in the dark, not with a nurse hovering above me in a room with the lights on. I usually sleep lying on my left side, but now I’m flat on my back. I try to roll over, but a tug on my wrist stops me.

Oh, I remember. They tied me up.

I blink and turn my head. There are empty beds on either side of me. Apparently I’m the only patient who had an incident overnight.

“I hate to wake you, but I didn’t think we should put off icing this elbow any longer.”

This elbow. My elbow. My left elbow.

In the old days, people thought being left-handed was a curse. My mother’s mother’s mother was left-handed back in Poland before Word War II, and they tied her left hand behind her back, forcing her to use her right hand instead.

Of course, in the old days, people believed that seeing things that weren’t there was a sign of possession, rather than a symptom of a medical condition.

I look down at my elbow. It’s twice the size it used to be. When the nurse adjusts my bandage, I see that my elbow is pink, and I imagine the blood pooling beneath the surface of the skin, waiting to turn into a dark-purple bruise. I lift my arm (the little I can with the restraints around my wrist), but the nurse stops me.

“Best not to move it,” she says, placing it back on the ice pack lying at my side. I shiver when my skin comes in contact with the cold. The nurse puts another ice pack over my elbow. “We’ll see if we can’t get the swelling down.”

Fat chance, I think but do not say.

“The doctor will be here soon.” She pats my shoulder gently before walking away. She isn’t the same nurse who was here last night, but she might as well be. She has the same sympathetic look on her face that the other nurse did.

I’m surprised when Dr. Lightfoot shows up a few minutes later. When the nurse said the doctor will be here soon, I thought she meant a medical doctor, someone to examine my arm, wrap it in a bandage, prescribe painkillers. Instead, Lightfoot stands at the foot of my bed, her dark hair pulled into a messy ponytail at the nape of her neck.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” she asks unnecessarily. Of course, the nurse already told her what I did. Maybe they called her in the middle of the night, woke her up. Maybe Lightfoot had to get out of bed so she could answer the phone without waking the man (woman?) sleeping beside her. It occurs to me that I don’t know if she’s married (she doesn’t wear a ring), and I don’t know whether she has children. I don’t know where she grew up or where she lives now.

They’re definitely going to put me back in the padded room so I can’t hurt myself again. Stephen is probably waiting beyond the curtain to escort me. Maybe they’ll even cover the window in the door. Lightfoot will explain that after what happened last night, I can hardly be trusted around windows.

“Let me know how many days go by,” I say finally. I hated how confusing it was last time.

“How many days go by?” Lightfoot echoes.

“Before you let me go back to my room.” My room. My elbow. My diagnosis.

Will they let me have ice in the padded room? My elbow is so swollen I can’t bend or straighten it; it’s trapped somewhere in between.

“Hannah, we’re sending you back up to your room this afternoon. You haven’t broken any bones, so there’s no reason for you to stay down here.”

No reason?

“Aren’t you worried I’ll hurt myself again?” I press my elbow into the ice pack beneath it. The pressure hurts.

Lightfoot sits on the edge of the bed. “Are you planning to hurt yourself again?”

I shake my head. Not because I don’t think I might hurt myself again, but because I don’t have any actual plans. I didn’t plan any of this.

I’ve never had fewer plans in my whole life.

“We’ll adjust your meds,” Lightfoot continues. I wait for her to tell me about the mood stabilizer they’re adding to my regime, that she’ll never let me skip a sleeping pill again, or their plans to keep me at least mildly sedated from now on, but instead she says: “I’m going to add an antidepressant to the mix.”