Authors: Meg Haston
“LET me go,” I beg Shrink, without knocking on her office door. “Please.” I stand in the threshold of her office, hands clasped, begging. I'm wearing a pair of god-awful ugly jeans that Shrink made me take from a closet in her office since I can't fit in mine anymore. A kind of skinny-jean cemetery, where girls are supposed to leave their thin clothes to wither and die, until another girl can use them. I wonder about the girl who wore these before, and the girl before her. I wonder if they are alive. If they're happy. If they think about food and numbers or remember the name of their horse.
Three days have passed since Ashley tried to die. For three days, I've been asking Shrink to take me to her. I'm close: I can feel it in the heavy pauses, in the pursing of her lips. She wants to give in.
Today, she stops writing and looks up from the chart in her lap and says: “I'm working on it, Stevie. It isn't as simple as all that, okay?”
I slump in the doorway. “Come on. You could do it if you wanted to.”
She motions me inside, and I take a few steps and collapse onto the love seat. I hold one of the pillows in my lap. Pick at the metallic beads until we both hear one ping against the tile.
“Oops,” I say. “Sorry.”
She flips the chart over so I can't see the name and slides it onto the chessboard side table. “I've put in a request for us to see Ashley during visiting hours this morning. I'm waiting to hear back from our clinical director.”
I bob my head. “That's good, right?”
“Ultimately, she'll be the one to make the final decision. I've pled your case because I'd like for you to be able to see your roommate, but I have to tell you, Stevie, the fact that you tried to run away less than a week ago . . .”
“I know.” I cut her off, irritated. God, I hate these ugly jeans.
“If she says no, it's no.”
I nod my understanding.
She reaches for the closest paper crane, then decides against it and clasps her hands in her lap. “How is everything in Cottage Six?”
“Well, nobody's tried to kill themselves yet, so . . .” Instantly I wish I could slurp the words from the air, swallow them like they never happened, but it doesn't work that way. “Sorry,” I mumble.
She nods, a quick, gracious
let's move on
. “I've been . . . concerned about you, Stevie, I have to say.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just mean that I was starting to feel like you were on the verge of a major shift, thinking about committing to your treatment plan.” She looks at me, questioningly.
“What do you want me to say?” I pinch the flimsy red bracelet.
“Am I correct on that, or did I misread you?”
I shrug. “I don't know. I guess I was starting to feel . . . different or something.”
“I saw you moving,” she says. “Contributing in group, accessing your emotion, processing in our sessions together. And all of these things are incredibly significant.”
“Okay.” I'm uncomfortable, and not just in these ridiculous jeans. How am I
supposed
to feel when she says these things? Ashamed that it's taken so little time for me to abandon the goals I've had for nearly a year?
She wants me to feel proud, I can tell, but that's not right. If anything, I'm more confused. I could still kill myself on the Anniversary, only five days away. But what I said to Shrink was real: I'm tired. I'm too tired. I don't want to do this anymore, the planning, the readying myself for death. It's exhausting, fighting my body this way. I want to lie down. Pull the covers up.
“I wonder about the impact of Ashley's attempt. I wonder where that's left you. How you're feeling about treatment.”
I think about it for a while, but then my head starts to throb, so I say, “Mixed.”
“Mixed.”
“The Anniversary's coming up, you know. Of Josh's . . . the accident. It's Thursday.”
“Yes. I do know.”
I slide down the love seat a little and prop the pillow on the arm of the love seat. Try to rest my head there, but it's an awkward angle and it doesn't feel right. But it was my choice to sit there, so I stay there for a while before I sit up again. “I keep thinking, like, it's going to be this big event. Like it should be, you know?”
“What do you mean, event?”
“Like something big should happen on that day.”
“Something . . . like what?”
“I don't know.”
She shifts in her chair. “Well, it's an incredibly significant day. And you can make it what you need it to be. But what if that day feels, in some ways, likeâ”
“Any other day?” I finish. I don't want to hear her say the words. “That's what I'm scared of.”
“What would that mean, if Thursday felt like . . . a Thursday?”
“It would be fucked up.” I rest my hand on my throat. I can feel my pulse. “It would feel like I didn't care or something. Like I wasn't sorry. But I do care and I am sorry. I just don't knowâ”
“It won't feel like any other day, Stevie. I can promise you that.” She takes a long, slow breath. “I don't know what it will feel like. You'll know when you get there. But it won't feel like any other day.”
It's bizarre, thinking about the day as anything other than the day of my death.
On the desk behind her, the phone rings. She lifts her eyebrows at me and I think she says
fingers crossed
on her way to answer.
“Anna Fredricks,” she says into the phone.
Oh
, I think.
Fredricks.
“Thanks, Linda. Appreciate it. I'll check in when we get back.”
I'm grinning by the time she turns around.
We sit side by side in the middle seat of a white minivan, behind a male driver who barely grunts when Shrink tells him our destination. I tuck the one-eared bunny under my seat belt. I think maybe this van is the same one Cotton Candy drove, but I can't be sure from the backseat. I wonder about the lady who drove me here on the first day. I would ask about her, but I don't know her name.
Shrink talks for a while as the van pulls onto the road. She tells me Ashley will be weak, that it will be difficult to see her, that our time together will be short. She asks what I think it will be like.
“I don't know.” It's still and hot in the van, and the vents in the ceiling are blowing lukewarm air.
“How are you feeling about seeing her?”
I consider that. “Mixed,” I say again, staring out the window. “Like relieved but also . . . upset.”
“Upset angry? Upset . . .”
“Upset fucking pissed,” I tell the window. My cheeks look puffy in the glass. I look past my reflection. Outside, the desert looks the same as it did on the first day. Like somebody pressed Pause and the whole world's been waiting for me to get my shit together. “I mean, I know it's not about me, but still.”
It is about me. It's about me and what I did and if I had just told Cate no, thank you, no razor for me, none of this would have happened.
“Pissed,” she says. “That's . . . yes. I can understand that. Betrayed?”
“It's not her fault,” I say. “Did you know she has a brother?”
“I didn't.”
“Yeah. But not a brother like Josh.”
“Hm,” she says.
“It would have been better for her to have a woman therapist, I think. Like you, maybe.”
She smiles. “I've been really proud of you, Stevie,” she says in a way that tells me she means it. “I think you're starting to work, and the relationship you've developed with Ashley is . . . admirable.”
Don't say nice things
, I beg her silently.
I'm not ready for that yet.
“I want to let you know something, Stevie. Moving back into the outside world after spending any amount of time in a treatment center can be difficult. Overwhelming in some ways. I want to make sure that you know I'm right here. And if the hospital starts to feel like too muchâ”
“It was mine.” I widen my eyes at my reflection.
“What was yours?”
“The razor.” I swallow the excuses:
It wasn't mine to begin with; I was only using it to shave my legs; I never told her about it, I don't know how she . . .
Noise. Irrelevant. I hold my breath, half expecting her to morph into an angry momâ
I will turn this van around, young lady, so help meâ
but she doesn't.
“I appreciate your telling me, Stevie.”
Shit. She's disappointed. Angry would have been so much easier.
“I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, obviously.”
“You realize that we will have to address this when we get back to the center.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“It will mean suspension of several privileges, and you'll likely have to meet with our clinical team.”
“I'll do whatever.” My voice is small. I don't tell her about the pills I buried next to the riding ring. Maybe she already knows. I flushed the rest down Cottage Six's toilet. I watched them circle around and around. I watched them disappear. I didn't feel some sweeping, magnificent sense of relief. But I could breathe just a little easier, and that was enough.
The first thing I notice about the hospital is that it's the loudest place I have ever been in my life. Shrink and I walk quickly down the hall, toward room 346. I repeat the number again and againâ
346, 346, 346â
to have something to focus on. It's too much, all of it: the whiter-than-white halls and the lights overhead and all the noiseâmy
god
, doesn't anybody else hear that? The blare of the loudspeaker coming from nowhere:
Paging Doctor Kildair, Doctor Kildair to the . . .
The screech of the broken wheel on a gurney, someone's laugh, untethered and bouncing through the halls. I ball my fists at my side.
“Doing okay?” Shrink slides a glance at me.
“Yeah.” I stare straight ahead. My body is vibrating with all the noise. Seriously, doesn't anybody hear that?
“It will take a while to get used to,” she says. “Just breathe. It's a lot, I know.”
When we get to the end of the hall, she holds up one finger and leans over the counter at the nurses' station. She shows a woman her ID and says something in a voice so low, I can't hear.
Then she's next to me again. She squeezes my shoulder and nods at the door.
“Can I go in by myself?” I ask, knowing the answer is no. Grateful for it, even.
She shakes her head.
“Okay.” I grip the handle and pump it slowly. The door is heavier than I imagined. Inside, Ashley is propped up in bed. Her blond curls are matted to the side of her head, clear tubes snake around her, and her hospital gown looks almost exactly like the one we put on every morning for weight and vitals. The side of her face is bruised. Finally, I look at her arm. It's bandaged with pure white. The other is fine, unsuspecting. As if nothing bad ever happened to its mirror image.
“Hey,” she murmurs. “You came. Hi, Anna.”
“Hi, Ashley.”
I stay by the door. The room is tiny, with a window into the hall but no real windows that let in light. In the corner next to a beeping machine are three balloons. One of them says Get Well Soon, which seems like the most awful thing, but I guess they don't make suicide balloons. There are also a couple greeting cards with sweeping cursive and pastel backgrounds propped open on the table next to her.
“Where are your parents?” I demand.
“They went out, to get something to eat. They've been here, though. Like, most of the time.” I think she tries to smile. Her lips are chapped. She's pale. I wonder if her skin feels clammy. I wonder if this is what I would look like, if I actually tried to go through with it. The thought makes my stomach turn. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.
“Can you, like, come a little closer? It feels weird, you all the way over there,” Ashley says.
“Okay.” I take a few small steps until I'm standing at her feet. Shrink sits in the chair by the door. I hear her bag hit the floor.
“I'm sorry,” I say. I force myself to look at her.
“Yeah. Me too,” she says. She moves her legs a little and pats the edge of the bed. I sit.
“Did you mean it?” I ask.
She glances over my shoulder at Shrink, then back at me. She nods. “Yeah, and then no. I did at first, like I really thought maybe it would be better than going home because I hate the idea of going home. I
hate
it. And then things started to get fuzzy and I got really panicky, but I couldn't move. And then I just felt really warm and that's the last thing I remember.”
“Oh.” I lower my voice. “How did you find the, umâ”
“Girls,” Shrink says gently.
“Sorry.” I give a forced, twisted smile, and she smiles back. “Cate found you,” I tell her.
“
Stevie.
”
“I know,” I say, without turning around. “Sorry.” I wasn't going to tell her the rest. She doesn't need to know the rest.
“You're lucky, you know,” she says quietly.
I frown at her.
“Having a dad who made you come to treatment. It means he wants you to get better. It means you're worth getting better.” Her eyes get red and glassy. “You have somebody to go home to. Some
worth
going home to.”
I look at my lap. “Well, I'm glad you're okay.”
“Me, too, I think.”
“I brought you this.” I wiggle the bunny around, make it dance in the air.
“Cool.” She smiles with cracked lips. “Thanks.”
I tuck it in next to her.
“I'm going to be here for a while,” she says. “Probably.”
“Probably.”
“Do you think I could still come visit, after?” she asks.
“For sure. After.” Then I hold my breath and pat her arm, above the bandage. It's warm and pulsing. Alive. Nothing like what I expected.