A Danger to Herself and Others(73)
Would they make me feel better? They were so imperfect. Lucy might go on and on about Joaquin, and Jonah would probably refuse to hold my hand in public. Why didn’t I invent better people?
It was Jonah who made the first move when we hooked up. It was Jonah who planted the idea of playing Truth or Dare with Agnes in my head. And Lucy pushed another girl for being effortlessly thin.
Was my brain just trying to give me some company? Did it invent Lucy to make me feel better about myself? After all, Lucy knew she pushed Rhiannon, she wanted to hurt her competitor. (How unoriginal, by the way: a dancer pushing her competitor to get ahead. For a second, I wish my brain had invented something more unexpected, but then I remember I should be wishing that my brain hadn’t invented something at all.) Maybe it was Lucy who made me bad since it was Lucy’s voice I heard telling me to push Agnes. But no. That’s making Lucy too real, giving her too much credit. My brain made her, so the badness must have come from inside of me. It must have been there already. Lucy gave me a place to put it.
I’m not just crying anymore—I’m sobbing. I bend my legs and rest my forehead on my knees. The tears drip down my face and mingle with snot and spit. My entire body is shaking. I can’t remember the last time I wept like this. I’m crying so hard I can barely breathe.
I’ve never been this scared before, never felt so panicked. (Is this a panic attack? Something new to add to my growing list of problems?) Not when I called the ambulance for Agnes and saw the blood beneath her head, not when the police questioned me and sent me to the institute, not when they replaced my real clothes with paper ones and locked me in.
Someone knocks on the stall door. “You all right in there, honey?”
This total stranger can’t even see me, but she knows something’s wrong. Can she tell I’m sick? Maybe everyone in this bathroom has guessed that I need medicine in order to see what’s real. Maybe they all think I’m a freak.
I shake my head. All they know is that I’m crying, gasping for breath. And being sick doesn’t make me I’m a freak. At least, that’s what Dr. Charan would say.
A loudspeaker announces that a flight to New York is boarding.
A few minutes later, there’s another announcement: “Hannah Gold, please report to gate 8A.”
Someone knocks on the door again. I wait for another stranger to ask me if I’m okay, but instead my mother’s voice says, “Hannah, open the door.”
I get up slowly, open the door, and immediately wish I hadn’t. Mom looks mortified. She steps inside the tiny stall and grabs a handful of toilet paper, roughly wiping my face. I can feel her nails through the thin material.
She leads me out of the stall. She doesn’t stop to pick up my discarded bandage, whether because she doesn’t want to touch something that’s been on the dirty floor or because she can’t be bothered, I don’t know.
“I’m so sorry,” she says to the women waiting in line. “My daughter is sick.” She pauses, then adds, “Food poisoning. Can’t trust anything you eat at the airport.”
The strangers look unconvinced. People with food poisoning don’t usually sob.
My mother has her fingers wrapped around my left arm. She’s pressing on the edges of my bruise. “Mommy, you’re hurting me.”
She stops and faces me. I don’t think either of us remembers the last time I called her Mommy. She stares at me like I’m a stranger.
fifty
We’re sitting in business class: Mom and Dad are next to each other, and I’m one row behind them in a window seat. Even though the bandage and sling are gone, I keep my left arm folded across my chest. My elbow is tender. I’m still crying. My shoulders are shaking, my breaths ragged. The man sitting in the aisle seat next to me pretends not to notice, keeping his gaze focused on an article in the Wall Street Journal. I reach into my bag and take out my book on the Tudors (I never had a chance to buy something less dense), open it to the chapter I flagged with my bookmark months ago. The words swim on the page in front of me, but at least I look more normal like this. After a few minutes, I turn the page even though I haven’t read anything. And again a few minutes after that. And again.
I saw my reflection in the bathroom mirror before my mother dragged me to the gate. My hair had fallen out of the barrette. Strands stuck to my face, and my skin was red and blotchy and wet. My eyes were open wide, too wide. It must have been a panic attack. I remember the quiet girls in the institution’s cafeteria. I didn’t want to be like them, but at least their glazed eyes weren’t so frightened.
The plane begins speeding down the runway. I hold my breath when we leave the earth behind. I look out the window and watch California fade beneath the clouds. The farther we get from this ridiculous state, the more easily my breaths come, the more relaxed my pulse. The lump in my throat is shrinking.
I lean my head back against my seat. Maybe none of this would’ve happened if I’d stayed home this summer.
Mom twists around in her seat to face me. “Here,” she says, reaching out. She’s holding a plastic water bottle in one hand and a blue pill in the other.
Lightfoot—no, Dr. Charan—told us about the possible side effects of my medication: weight gain or loss; lethargy or trouble sleeping; increased or decreased appetite; mood swings. (I wondered if anyone else noticed that my medication could cause the same potential side effects as a severe traumatic brain injury.) Dr. Charan also said over time the medication might become less effective, and my new doctor would have to adjust my dose, try different medications, different treatments. (Different side effects.)