Toadie thinks he’s won. But he hasn’t. He reminded me that group means I need to talk. The only thing I want to do less than eating is to talk about not eating. Now it’s a question of how slowly I can eat between now and the end of group. I bet half an apple.
Every time Toadie begins to shake, I rest my teeth on the skin of the fruit and draw them down until they harvest another thin bite. Vanet’s right. Chewing a hundred times does suck the flavor from it. I swallow goo.
After a quarter of an apple, the nurse drags me into the rec room. More for Toadie’s sake than mine, as his shift appears to be over. Two doorways, another five minutes. I count down slowly. And ask to go to the washroom even though I know the rule about no washroom for an hour after dinner.
By the time I enter, Vanet’s really going strong, lips smacking as he chomps the nicotine gum. I’m surprised to see Red slumped in a chair, holding her head.
Tink interrupts Vanet as I enter. “Welcome! Sit, Milly. We’re discussing favorite foods.”
I turn back for the door, but Stenson steers me to a chair.
“Everyone has a favorite food,” Tink says. “We’re going around clockwise. Vanet, continue.”
“I was just saying . . . imagine you’re a pig and your favorite food is pork,” Vanet replies. “You could eat yourself. Maybe my favorite food is human and I don’t even know it.” His gaze comes to rest on Pig.
“Don’t even think about it,” Pig replies.
“Wesley?” Tink asks.
Rottengoth sighs. Darkness still hangs from him, but more like a tattered cloak than a funereal shroud. “Apples.”
“That’s not real dark and moody,” Pig says.
Rottengoth looks at me. He, too, understands that apples can be poisoned.
“Babies,” Vanet replies. “Now that’s gothic.”
After Wes, it’s me. My stomach clenches as I count. I feel as though I can’t breathe deeply enough. . . . “Pizza,” I manage to gasp out, and everyone turns. I surprise even myself. “My favorite food is pizza with pineapple and chicken on top.”
“Chicken?” Pig shakes her head. “So our new friend here is richie, rich, rich. Not ham—chicken!” This from a girl who tells people she’s a member of the McDonald’s family. I’m not rich. Not poor, but not rich either.
Tink lit up, however, and she ignores Pig. “How do you eat it? Is there a special way?”
She wants to know if I have a weird ritual for pizza. I do. Everyone waits in silence except Rottengoth, who starts humming the Jeopardy waiting song.
“What are we doing?” Red asks when I’m halfway finished my count. “I mean, I’m not waiting for her to speak. Life’s too short.”
“How else is she gonna talk?” Pig replies.
“That’s not my problem. She doesn’t have to count, and she’s not the boss of everyone.”
“Okay,” Tink says. “Why don’t we create a rule for when we’ll wait for Milly.”
. . . , ninety-nine, one hundred. “Hello, you asked me a question, you have to wait. It’s not fair—”
“You’re not the boss of us,” Red says.
I flush at the interruption.
“See, you cut in, and she has to start again,” Pig says. “If we cut her off, we have to wait because that’s already a group rule, not to interrupt.”
Tink’s nodding. “Okay, so if we address her directly, or if she is interrupted mid-thought, we’ll all wait for her to count. Let’s wait. Milly, how do you feel about that? And then let’s move on with how you eat pizza.”
“Yeah, I’m riveted,” Red says, and then adds to Tink’s raised eyebrow, “What? That wasn’t sarcasm.”
Vanet’s rubbing his crotch.
. . . “Fine, whatever you want,” I say. “As for pizza, first I have to line it up so that the point is square with my chest. Then I count to a hundred. If I stumble or skip a number, I have to start again. Then I take a bite, chew a hundred times, then swallow and wait another hundred before I can take a second bite. On pineapple bites, I count to one hundred twice.”
“What if you don’t count to a hundred?” Pig asks. “You explode or something?”
All eyes burn into me and my chest tightens. I don’t even like talking about what would happen. That makes it more real. What happens?
“The wolf comes, isn’t that right, Milly?” Vanet asks.
I shake my head.
Tink asks, “Does anyone else have a little ritual when they eat?”
“I’m guessing Sleeping Beauty prays,” Pig says.
“Or maybe her ritual is having a feeding tube shoved into her stomach,” Red replies.
They move on, going around talking about their stupid favorite foods, even though the whole discussion was really only for me. No one is waiting to hear what I have to say anyway.
Chapter 10
Before lights out, I read from my book of tales and feel stronger. I fall asleep listening to Pig’s snores. Every half an hour or so, Red calls out, shouting words I can’t understand. I don’t hold it against Red; my dreams have always been vivid too. I toss and turn, and finally slide out of bed and into the cold hall.
I grip my book at my hip as the wolf slips a paw beneath the acute room door. Claws imbedded in callused lumps of black, brown, and gray fur scratch beneath the doorframe, gouging the linoleum, leaving curls of it behind. I have to count before I can even scream.
An entire leg flails under the door now, and I have no doubt that the animal can somehow fit its whole body through the thin crack at the door’s base. As if freed by my thought—my acknowledgement that such a thing is possible—the forelimb disjoints with a snapping of bones and tendons and a mass of fur worms beneath to pulse in the hall. Like a battery of fireworks, the rib cage billows out, legs clack straight, a head snaps up, and the teeth of the grotesque, hanging jaw clap home.
“Wolfgang?” I ask it. “Are . . . did you—?”
The lift of its black lip silences me.
I open my book to page one hundred and start counting. The wolf growls. Yellow eyes stare at me without blinking and give the green corridor a fixed-from-under stare. I force myself to move and race backward to the nursing station, where the night nurse flips through a magazine between rounds. My count isn’t working. I scream at the nurse, but she ignores my waving arms. When I turn back, I have reinforcements.
“Mom?” I scream and stumble from her.
She’s putrid. Flesh hangs from her bones. Her fingers grip a barbed vine that cuts into the wolf’s throat as it lunges. She hauls back, keeping me safe. But her eyes blister with cool disappointment. The vine snaps, and my mother leaps but only catches a fist of tail fur. The wolf lopes at me, head low between rolling shoulders. I drop the book and count to flee.
Backpedaling, I slap up against the door to my room. The wolf snarls as it passes the nurse, but she turns another page, unaware of the creature or the cursing reanimated corpse on the ground. The bedroom door slides open. I finish my count. I climb into bed and pull the blanket over my head. The cover rasps over my skin, rough from the heavy detergents used to clean it. Through a hole in the blanket, I watch the door reopen.
The wolf pushes into the room; drool hangs from slavering jaws and the snout sniffs the air. Then it snuffles Red’s sheets, and she lashes out in her sleep. The wolf dances away from Red, over to Sleeping Beauty. It tests fangs across her neck, but doesn’t bite down, only hooks canines on the slow pump of her veins. I wonder if it can sense whatever’s wrong with her. Whether she’s inedible. Rotting. Pig’s bed is empty.
I’m the only one left. Where’s my mother?
The wolf swings to me. It tenses, crouches, and springs. A roar tears from its throat as it pounces. I haven’t counted; I cannot cry. Red screams. And I’m wrestling with my blanket, but nothing’s there except a nurse shushing me.
“You’ve had a bad dream,” she says.
I glance around. Light spills through the open doorway. My book digs into my side. The wolf�
�s gone, except I know that it’s not. Not really.
“Do you want me to stay? Get you a drink of water?” the nurse asks. I shake my head. “Okay, honey, take some deep breaths. Everything’s going to be okay.”
I don’t want to fall back to sleep again, but I suppose I do, because I don’t remember the nurse leaving.
The next morning, Nurse Stenson takes my heart rate and blood pressure.
“Vitals,” Stenson says as the air hisses out of the blood pressure cuff. “Then washroom and breakfast. After that you’ll have group, school—once your coursework arrives—free time, lunch, school again, after which visitors are allowed, dinner and group before evening free time.”
. . . “When do I see the doctor again?” I ask.
“A nurse will come and get you.” She moves to check Sleeping Beauty’s vitals.
On my way to breakfast I shimmy over to the edge of the nursing station and peer down the hall to the acute rooms, hoping to inspect the floor for scratches. I jump back when the door opens. I hear squeaking and peek. An orderly is pushing the unshaven patient Pig called Wolfgang. With the orderly present, I feel as though we’re on sacred ground. I’m on the safe path. Wolfgang’s shaggy cheeks are brown flecked with red, and the haunted stare sees nothing. Despite my dream, my counting spells must still be working. Perhaps it’s my mother, still here, still holding things together. As the doors to the outside world buzz open for them, I shudder and hurry my count to enter the cafeteria.
In the dining area, I collect all the food on offer. When I sit, I pick up the banana. Toadie’s face lights when I peel it in five seconds flat, but his delight sours as I stare at the fruit for a hundred count and take a tiny nibble from the top.
“You’re kidding, right?” he says and I know it’s a rhetorical question, but I answer anyway after a hundred to chew and a hundred to speak.
. . . “No.”
Two bites later his face is in his hands. Toadie’s vacillating expressions are beginning to make me wonder if they count as interruptions.
He shakes his head, but after another half an hour of nibbles, I think I’ve broken him. What’s weird though is his eyes are bulgier this morning. It’s as if he’s grown even more toady overnight.
Finally, Stenson strides over when Toadie appears close to tears and places another can of Ensure on the table.
She snaps the tab on top of the can. “One every meal,” she says and pushes the can to me. “Plus whatever you can manage during regular mealtime. If the can isn’t empty, you’ll be back to eating alone to reduce distractions.”
I count under her and Toadie’s supervision and down a good third of the can in a single go. I don’t want to eat in the acute room alone with the sitter. I don’t want to eat anywhere near Wolfgang. Satisfied, Stenson walks away.
Vanet asks for a tea but doesn’t drink any. Instead he snaps the string from the tea bag and begins to floss with it. “What?” he says when he catches my stare. “They won’t let us have dental floss. And the water’s never hot enough for tea anyway.”
With my platter cleared, Stenson returns. “Milly, I’d like to introduce you to the thought board now that you’re done.” Stenson drags me back toward the recreation room. Once inside, she waves her hand at a large whiteboard. Tink’s doing yoga with Peter and Vanet, who scooted ahead of me while I counted. Vanet’s following Tink’s sun salutation into a downward dog, but Peter seems to prefer the happy baby pose. I hate yoga.
“You can leave any thought here you want,” Stenson says, holding up a marker. “It can be about your experience on the ward, or something you’re having trouble with that day. Anything and everything as long as it follows the rules of the feedback group: no hate, no comments on the comments of others.” She frowns before erasing a thought written in tight capitals. How many patients have had sex with the staff? I’ve been here a little less than forty-eight hours and I can already identify Vanet’s contributions.
“Is there anything you’d like to write?” Stenson asks. “I understand that you don’t need to count before you write.”
I take up the marker and write: When can I leave?
Which she promptly erases. “It’s not for questions about your treatment.”
Someone else has written: What happens to me if Milly stops counting?
When I reach to smudge it out, Stenson stops me.
“It’s a fair question,” she says and so I write something I need to know.
Who is in the other acute room? I write. What’s wrong with him?
Stenson smiles. “Sometimes people just need some quiet. You can go back there too, if the beds are not already in use. Just ask.”
I shake my head.
“Okay, Milly, group in fifteen, why don’t you wait in here so you’re not late.”
I hear Red in the hall, complaining about her headache again. She wants to skip group.
“Breathe in the good Karma and breathe out the liver toxins,” Tink says as she lifts her hands to the ceiling. “Feel the poisons flow out of your toes and gather the sun’s energy with your hands.” The fluorescent ceiling light flickers. Liver toxins? This is why I hate yoga.
“I saved you a spot,” Vanet says after Stenson’s gone. “All kinds of good Karma right there.” A mat lies flat in front of him. He’s as far to the back as he can get.
. . . “There’s no way I’d risk letting you stare at my butt,” I say.
“What? What are you talking about? You think I want to . . . shocking!”
I don’t look at him or bother responding. After a minute Vanet rolls up his mat and disappears. Tink, seeing her only true participant leave, smiles at me and then packs it in. Peter sighs on the ground.
With Stenson out of sight, I write in weird letters that shouldn’t be traceable back to me: Have you seen the wolf?
And then I hustle away from the board. Peter’s now watching from the couch.
“I’m a fairy,” he says. His lips are thick all the way around, and his forehead slopes backward more than it should.
. . . “No you’re not,” I reply and then glance down at his cast. So what if he wants to be a fairy? Maybe he wouldn’t have tried to prove it, if people had only accepted that he was a fairy.
“I don’t like you,” he says.
. . . “Okay, you’re a fairy,” I say and it’s weird because it’s almost like his brain needs a hundred count to process his response. For once, I can keep up with someone else.
“How do you know?” he asks, and I catch the plaintive note in his tone, as if he’s begun to doubt himself. I wonder if he thinks he’s a Disney fairy or a Grimm fairy. There’s a big difference.
. . . “Well, some fairies like bread and butter. Do you?” I say, racking my brain for everything I know about them from the book of tales.
He nods tentatively.
. . . “And they don’t like iron. Do you wear anything iron? Maybe a sword?”
He shakes his head.
. . . “There you go,” I say. “And you know how sometimes people ignore you?” The smile that has begun to expand on his face drops. “That’s because they can’t see you. Not everyone can see fairies.”
The grin returns. “I like you.”
I smile back at him. Stenson starts pulling chairs into a circle, spoiling our fractured rhythm. She’s hauled Red into the room with her.
. . . “You coming?” I ask Peter, and his eyes widen in fear. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”
“Peter can stay on the couch if he’s more comfortable there,” Nurse Stenson says without even looking over.
Peter’s face dips.
. . . “You sure?” I whisper to him, and he gives the tiniest of nods.
Vanet walks in, smiling like he knows something I don’t. He takes a chair in the middle, and Red sits on the edge of hers, nearest to the door. I didn’t even notice Rottengoth sitting in the corner of the room reading, but now he stands and sighs into a seat. When everyone’s sitting, Stenson folds her hands o
n her clipboard.
“Vanet, would you explain the rules of group for everyone?”
Red groans. “Really? Every time.”
“Yes,” Stenson says. “Every time, so don’t be moaning every time.”
“The first rule of group is . . .” Vanet drops to a secretive hush, “. . . that there are no rules.”
“That must be a different group, Vanet. How about group therapy?” Stenson asks.
“Right, sorry.” He winks at me. “That other one’s clandestine. The first rule of group therapy is . . . don’t tell anyone about group therapy. Contraindicated.”
“Correct, in a way,” Stenson says. “Everything said here is confidential and must stay within the group. Does anyone else have a rule?”
There’s silence. I’m new so I’m not even counting to speak, but clearly no one else is going to help Nurse Stenson voluntarily. She turns to Rottengoth. “Wesley, is it okay to interrupt someone, or to tell someone that they’re stupid?”
Rottengoth shakes his head and breathes noisily out his nostrils.
“No,” she agrees. “Respect each other. This is an open group where you can say anything without judgement.” Stenson stares at us each in turn until we nod. “Most of our meetings have themes—yesterday we discussed anger, and today we’ll be talking about fear. What do you think fear is?”
“Fear is the mind-killer,” Vanet says.
“I’m sensing a book reference,” Stenson replies. “But what do you think that means, Vanet. What is a mind-killer?”
“That it takes over like a parasite that eats ants’ brains and turns them into zombie ants, then bursts out of their skulls.”
“So it can take over our thoughts,” Stenson agrees. “And it can make us do things we wouldn’t normally do, and it can spread. Very good.” My mouth is open in amazement at how neatly she fit Vanet’s crazy comment into what she wanted to hear. “Do you agree with Vanet, Red? Is this always true?”
Red’s shaking a little and looking beyond Stenson. Through her, like Red’s somewhere else, seeing something else.
“I don’t agree. Fear can make sense,” Pig says. “You know, if a guy points a gun at you, fear can help you to run. On the street, there’s lots of crap you should fear. Why else do you think I’ve made myself look so pretty?”
Counting Wolves Page 6
