television played in the corner, tuned to the local news,
but no one watched it. As far as I knew, the other
patients weren’t up yet. Neither was the sun.
Lydia watched me just like she had the day before,
in mild interest, no surprise and almost total
detachment. Our gazes met for a long minute, neither
of us blinking. It was an odd sort of a challenge, as I
silently dared her to speak. She had something to say. I
was sure of it.
But she stayed silent.
“You don’t sleep much, do you?” Normally I
wouldn’t have pried—after all, I didn’t want anyone
else poking into my alleged mental instability—but
she’d stared at me for hours the day before. Like she
wanted to tell me something.
Rachel Vincent / 45
Lydia shook her head, and a strand of lank black
hair fell in front of her face. She pushed it back, her
lips firmly sealed.
“Why not?”
She only blinked at me, staring into my eyes as if
they fascinated her. As if she saw something there no
one else could see.
I started to ask what she was looking at, but
stopped when a purple blur caught my attention on the
other side of the room. A tall aide in eggplant-colored
scrubs checking in on us, clipboard in hand. Had it
been fifteen minutes already? But before she could
continue with the rest of her list, Paul appeared in the
doorway.
“Hey, they’re sending one over from the E.R.”
“Now?” The female aide glanced at her watch.
“Yeah. She’s stable, and they need the space.” Both
staff members disappeared down the hall, and I turned
to see that Lydia’s face had gone even paler than
normal.
Several minutes later, the main entrance buzzed,
then the door swung open. The female aide hurried
from the nurses’ station as a man in plain green scrubs
stepped into the unit, pushing a thin, tired-looking girl
in a wheelchair. She wore jeans and a purple scrubs
top, and her long pale hair hung over most of her face.
Her arms lay limp in her lap, both bandaged from her
wrists to halfway up her forearms.
“Here’s her shirt.” The man in green handed the
aide a thick plastic bag with the Arlington Memorial
46 / My Soul to Lose
logo on it. “If I were you, I’d throw it out. I don’t think
all the bleach in the world could get rid of that much
blood.
On my right, Lydia flinched, and I looked up to see
her eyes closed, her forehead furrowed in obvious
pain. As the aide wheeled the new girl past the
common area, Lydia went stiff beside me and clenched
the arms of her chair so tightly the tendons in her
hands stood out.
“You okay?” I whispered, as the wheelchair
squeaked toward the girls’ hall.
Lydia shook her head, but her eyes didn’t open.
“What hurts?”
She shook her head again, and I realized she was
younger than I’d first guessed. Fourteen, at the most.
Too young to be stuck at Lakeside, no matter what was
wrong with her.
“You want me to get someone?” I started to stand,
but she grabbed my arm so suddenly I actually jerked
in surprise. She was a lot stronger than she looked.
And faster.
Lydia shook her head, meeting my gaze with green
eyes brightly glazed with pain. Then she stood and
walked stiffly down the hall, one hand pressed to her
stomach. A minute later, her door closed softly.
***
The rest of the day was a blur of half-eaten meals,
unfocused stares, and too many jigsaw puzzle pieces to
Rachel Vincent / 47
count. After breakfast, Nurse Nancy was back on duty,
standing in my doorway to ask a series of pointless,
invasive questions. But by then I was annoyed with the
fifteen-minute checkups, and beyond frustrated by the
lack of privacy.
Nurse Nancy: “Have you had a bowel movement
today?”
Me: “No comment.”
Nurse Nancy: “Do you still feel like hurting
yourself?”
Me: “I never did. I’m really more of a selfpamperer.”
Next, a therapist named Charity Stevens escorted
me into a room with a long window overlooking the
nurses’ station to ask me why I’d tried to claw open
my own throat, and why I screamed loud enough to
wake the dead.
I was virtually certain my screaming would not, in
fact, wake the dead, but she seemed unamused when I
said so. And unconvinced when I insisted that I hadn’t
been trying to hurt myself.
Stevens settled her thin frame into a chair across
from me. “Kaylee, do you know why you’re here?”
“Yeah. Because the doors are locked.”
No smile. “Why were you screaming?”
I folded my feet beneath me in the chair, exercising
my right to remain silent. There was no way to answer
that question without sounding crazy.
48 / My Soul to Lose
“Kaylee…?” Stevens sat with her hands folded in
her lap, waiting. I had her undivided attention, whether
I wanted it or not.
“I…I thought I saw something. But it was nothing.
Just normal shadows.”
“You saw shadows.” But her statement sounded
more like a question.
“Yeah. You know, places where light doesn’t
shine?”
Much like a psychiatric hospital itself…
“What was it about the shadows that made you
scream?” Stevens stared into my eyes, and I stared at
her crooked part line.
They shouldn’t have been there. They were
wrapped around a kid in a wheelchair, but didn’t
touch anyone else. They were
moving.
Take your
pick…
But too much of the truth would only earn me
more time behind locked doors.
I was supposed to be learning how to handle my
panic attacks, not spilling my guts about what caused
them.
“They were…scary.” There. Vague, but true.
“Hmmm.” She crossed her legs beneath a navy
pencil skirt and nodded like I’d said something right.
“I see…”
But she didn’t see at all. And I couldn’t explain
myself to save my life. Or my sanity, apparently.
***
Rachel Vincent / 49
After lunch, the doctor came to poke and prod me with
an entire checklist of questions about my medical
history. According to my aunt and uncle, he was the
one who could really help me. But after my session
with the therapist, I was skeptical, and the doc’s
opening lines did little to help that.
Dr. Nelson: “Are you currently taking any
medications?”
Me: “Just whatever you guys shot me full of
yesterday.”
Dr. Nelson: “Do you have a family history of
diabetes, cancer, or cataracts?”
Me: “I have no idea. My dad isn’t available for
questioning. But I can ask my uncle when he gets here
tonight.”
Dr. Nelson: “Do you have a medical history of
obesity, asthma, seizures, cirrhosis, hepatitis, HIV,
migraines, chronic pain, arthritis, or spinal problems?”
Me: “Are you serious?”
Dr. Nelson: “Do you have any family history of
mental instability?”
Me: “Yes. My cousin thinks she’s twenty-one. My
aunt thinks she’s eighteen. I’d call them both mentally
unstable.”
Dr. Nelson: “Do you now, or have you ever, used
or abused caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, cocaine,
amphetamines, or opiates?”
Me: “Oh, yeah. All of it. What else am I supposed
to do in study hall? In fact, I better get my stash back
from your rent-a-cop when I check out of here.”
50 / My Soul to Lose
Finally, he looked up from the file in his lap and
met my gaze. “You know, you’re not helping yourself.
The fastest way for you to get out of here is to
cooperate. To help me help you.”
I sighed, staring at the reflection shining on his
sizable bald spot. “I know. But you’re supposed to
help me stop having panic attacks, right? But none of
that stuff—” I glanced at the file I was secretly
desperate to read “—has anything to do with why I’m
here.”
The doctor frowned, pressing thin lips even thinner.
“Unfortunately, there are always preliminaries.
Sometimes recreational drug use can cause symptoms
like yours, and I need to rule that out before we
continue. So could you please answer the question?”
“Fine.” If he could really help me, I was ready to
get cured, then get out. Short and sweet. “I drink Coke,
just like every other teenager on the planet.” I
hesitated, wondering how much of this he’d tell my
aunt and uncle. “And I had half a beer once. Over the
summer.” We’d only had one, so Em and I had split it.
“That’s it?”
“Yeah.” I wasn’t sure whether he was happy with
my answer, or secretly making fun of my seriously
deficient social life.
“Okay…” Dr. Nelson scribbled in the file again,
then flipped up the top page, too fast for me to read.
“These next questions are more specifically geared
toward your problems. If you don’t answer honestly,
you’ll be crippling us both. Got it?”
Rachel Vincent / 51
“Sure.” Whatever.
“Have you ever believed you had special powers?
Like the ability to control the weather?”
I laughed out loud. I couldn’t help it. If that was a
symptom of crazy, maybe I was sane, after all. “No, I
don’t think I can control the weather. Or fly, or adjust
the earth’s orbit around the sun. No superpowers
here.”
Dr. Nelson just nodded, then glanced at the file
again. “Was there ever a time when people were out to
get you?”
Growing more relieved by the second, I shifted
onto one hip, leaning with my elbow on the arm of the
chair. “Um…I’m pretty sure my chemistry teacher
hates me, but she hates everyone, so I don’t think it’s
personal.”
More scribbling. “Have you ever heard voices that
others could not hear?”
“Nope.” That was an easy one.
Dr. Nelson scratched his bald spot with short, neat
fingernails. “Have your family or friends ever
suggested that your statements were unusual?”
“You mean, do I say things that don’t make sense?”
I asked, and he nodded, nowhere near as amused as I
was by his questions. “Only in French class.”
“Have you ever seen things other people couldn't
see?”
My heart dropped into my stomach, and my smile
melted like a Popsicle in August.
“Kaylee?”
52 / My Soul to Lose
I crossed my arms over my chest and tried to ignore
the dread swirling through me, like the memory of that
dark fog. “Okay, look, if I answer this honestly, I’m
going to sound crazy. But the very fact that I know that
means I’m not really crazy, right?”
Dr. Nelson’s wiry gray eyebrows both rose. “
Crazy
isn’t a diagnosis, nor is it a term we use around here.”
“But you know what I mean, right?”
Instead of answering, he crossed his legs at the
knee and leaned back in his chair. “Let’s talk about
your panic attacks. What triggered the one you had in
the mall?”
I closed my eyes.
He can’t help you if you lie.
But
there was no guarantee he could help me if I told the
truth, either.
Here goes nothin’…
“I saw a kid in a wheelchair, and I got this horrible
feeling that…that he was going to die.”
Dr. Nelson frowned, his pencil poised over my file.
“Why did you think he was going to die?”
I shrugged and stared miserably at my hands in my
lap. “I don’t know. It’s just this really strong feeling.
Like sometimes you can tell when someone’s looking
at you? Or standing over your shoulder?”
He was quiet for several seconds, but for the
scratching of pen against paper. Then he looked up.
“So what did you see that no one else saw?”
Ah, yes. The original question. “Shadows.”
“You saw shadows? How do you know no one else
could see them?”
Rachel Vincent / 53
“Because if anyone else had seen what I saw, I
wouldn’t have been the center of attention.” Even with
my brain-scrambling screech. “I saw shadows
wrapping around the kid in the wheelchair, but not
touching anyone else.” I started to tell him the rest of
it. About the fog, and the things twisting and writhing
inside it.
But then Dr. Nelson’s frown dissolved into a look
of patient patronization—an indulgent expression I’d
seen plenty of in my two days at Lakeside. He thought
I was crazy.
“Kaylee, you’re describing delusions and
hallucinations. Now, if you’re really not on any
drugs—and your blood work will confirm that—there
are several other possible causes for the symptoms
you’re experiencing—”
“Like what?” I demanded. My pulse pounded
thickly in my throat, and my teeth ground together so
hard my jaws ached.
“Well, it’s premature to start guessing, but after—”
“Tell me. Please. If you’re going to tell me I’m
crazy, at least tell me what kind of crazy I am.”
Dr. Nelson sighed and flipped my file closed.
“Your symptoms could be secondary to depression, or