Marrow

by Tarryn Fisher

  God, I think. I should have just killed him when I had the chance. He watches me pull my pants down, his eyes on my crotch as I lower myself to the seat. I keep my hands on the top of my pants and lean forward to skew his view. My thumb grazes the band-aid on my thigh. I work at lifting it, swiping my thumbnail back and forth until a piece of the corner raises.

  “What are you going to do to me?” I ask. He looks at me with hard hatred, and my toes curl in my boots. It’s in that moment that I want my mother. I jar at the thought. How strange that, in this moment, taken and tied in a serial rapist’s kitchen, I want the woman who abandoned me. I sniff and look out the window. Leroy looks as if he’s deciding whether or not he wants to say something.

  “Well?” I say.

  He moves quickly, retying the ropes around my wrists and grabbing my arm. He half picks me up as he drags me back toward the basement. I struggle against him. I don’t want to go back down there into the cold, but, with my hands tied, I have little to use against his bulk. I don’t fall this time. Leroy failed to retie my ankles, and I’m able to catch myself as he throws me down the stairs. I twist my ankle before I can grab onto the railing.

  Hours later, shivering in what I’ve discovered is the warmest corner of the basement, Leroy brings me food. A sandwich, water, and a few potato chips on a styrofoam plate. I wait until he’s back up the stairs before I lift the water to my lips. It’s a good sign that he’s bringing me food. Surely you don’t feed the person you are planning to kill. He is thinking, deciding what to do with me.

  I stick my tongue in the water to taste it … no bitterness. I am so thirsty, I chug the glass and am out of breath by the time I set it down. I sniff the sandwich, run my fingernail across the bread. There is no butter—only a slice of bologna. I eat it. That is my first mistake—eating his food. Trusting. Leroy is smart that way. He blends in, wears you down. It is in a sandwich that he hid the pills. I should have known when I tasted butter on the bread.

  WHEN I WAKE UP, I am in a white, white room. My arms are restrained. I lift my head to get a look around. There is an IV snaking into my arm, machines gently beeping. My mouth is dry, my throat swollen. A hospital. A hospital. I look for a call button, but can’t reach it with my wrists in the restraints.

  “Hello?”

  The minute I speak, a pain shoots through my head. I flinch back onto the pillow and try again.

  “Hello?”

  There is the sound of footsteps in the hall. Flat, boring shoes. A nurse is coming. I let my head fall back and stare up at the ceiling. Leroy. His basement. Was it the sandwich or the water? Stupid mistake. The door opens, and a young nurse walks in. She looks unsure of herself. New.

  “Where am I?” I croak. She looks over her shoulder before closing the door behind her and walking over to my chart.

  “The Evergreen University Hospital,” she says in a clipped voice.

  “How did I get here?”

  She won’t look at me. “You should talk to the doctor. He’ll be in soon.” She walks around the room, humming, and I wish that my arms were free so I could strangle her.

  “You have to tell me what’s wrong with me at least! Why am I here?”

  She walks to the window and closes the blinds. The room is suddenly in twilight.

  “You overdosed,” she says. “Then slit your wrists.”

  “Where?” I ask.

  She pauses. “In the hospital parking lot.” I feel a flicker of admiration. Leroy is a lot smarter than I gave him credit for.

  “Why are you restraining me?”

  “The doctor will be in shortly,” she says.

  And then, before I can ask any more questions, she walks briskly from the room. I let my head sink back into the pillow and chew on my lip. What has he done? What has he done?

  The doctor doesn’t come right away. They feed me lunch, releasing me from my restraints long enough to allow me to spoon a brown broth into my mouth. I ask the new nurse if she can leave them off, but she shakes her head sympathetically. No one will answer my questions. The doctor’s name is Fellows; he comes to see me a few hours later, walking cautiously into my hospital room like he’s lost. He is an older man, balding, with crooked yellow teeth that remind me of Chiclets.

  “Hello, Margo,” he says, staring down at me. I feel sudden panic. I can’t move; they have me here against my will and won’t tell me anything. Something bad has happened. I yank on my restraints, and I must look crazy because he takes a step away from the bed.

  “Do you have any idea what happened to you?” I shake my head.

  “An orderly found you in the parking lot when he came in for his shift. You were behind the wheel of your car—a Jeep?” He looks at me for affirmation, and I nod my head. How had Leroy found my car? How had he known where to look?

  I close my eyes so my anger doesn’t betray me.

  “There was more,” he says. “A note…”

  My eyes snap open. I want to speak, but I can’t.

  “Do you remember writing a suicide note, Margo?”

  I shake my head. Dr. Fellows folds his lips in, like he doesn’t believe me.

  “You’ll talk more about that with a doctor over at Westwick.”

  “Westwick?” I say. What is that?”

  “Sleep,” he says, patting my feet. “We’ll talk more later.”

  A nurse comes in and puts something in my IV, and then my head is spinning. I drift.

  When I wake up, Judah is sitting in his wheelchair next to my bed. I struggle to sit up.

  “Judah?” I say. “What are you doing here?”

  It’s then that I notice the two people standing in the corner of the room. One is a woman—overweight and pink-faced, holding a file in her hands and staring at me like she expects me to jump up and attack her. The man beside her is black, wearing simple blue scrubs. He glances at his watch twice while I watch him.

  Judah looks over his shoulder at them and lowers his voice. “Margo, they’re here to take you somewhere safe.”

  “Somewhere safe?” I repeat. There is something wrong with this moment. Something strangely off about the back and forth glances, the shifting of bodies from one foot to the other. I feel as if we are all perched on the edge of a moment, about to fall off.

  “What’s happening? Why are you here? Why are they here?”

  “You tried to kill yourself,” Judah says. “The police found my number in your phone after they found you passed out behind your car, covered in blood.” My phone? Had Leroy found that, too? I’d left it in the trunk of my Jeep, parked in the garage of the abandoned house.

  I shake my head. I’d never take drugs. It wasn’t my style.

  “You carved the word ‘Icarus’ into your arm with a knife, then swallowed a bottle of sedatives. They had to pump your stomach when they brought you in.”

  I am shaking my head, eyeing the bandage on my arm, but he keeps talking. Icarus? Leroy. Suddenly my chest feels tight.

  “You had other drugs in your system too…”

  Sedatives? Drugs? Something I would never do. I do not wish to die, only to live with purpose. I tell him this as I sit slumped in the scratchy white sheets of the hospital bed, two strangers looking on. Leroy did this. As what? A punishment? A warning? Why wouldn’t he just kill me, like I was planning to do to him?

  I lower my voice. “Suicide? I don’t do that shit, Judah. You know that.”

  “I don’t know anything anymore, Margo. You’re not the same…” He won’t meet my eyes. I feel something curl and flare inside of me. Anger? Resentment?

  He steps back, as the two people in the corner step forward.

  “Miss Moon, my name is Charlotte Kimperling, John and I are here to escort you to Westwick Hospital.”

  “Westwick? Isn’t that…?”

  “Miss Moon, you were found to be a danger to yourself. At Westwick, you will be able to get the help you need. It’s one of the best—”

  “I’m not crazy!” But, even as my words echo a
round the room, I know I sound every bit like a woman tethered to denial. How many movies have I watched where a woman at the edge of her acumen screams out I’M NOT CRAZY to a group of frightened observers?

  I can’t believe Judah. That he’d connive with these people to lock me away in a nut house. I look from one face to another, all of them grim, determined. I don’t have a choice in this. They are going to take me, and the best chance I have is to be limber … compliant. I can fight, or I can demonstrate my sanity. For that reason, I press my lips together and study the wall to my right with the intensity of a woman trying to prove something. They wheel me to the ambulance, and when I glance back, I see Judah in his chair. It looks like he’s crying, except this time I don’t care.

  I AM TO BEGIN MY SESSIONS WITH THE DOCTOR in just about a week. I want to speak to someone sooner, explain to them that I do not belong here, but one of the nurses, who has braces and is named Papchi, says that they have to go through the right channels first—get me acclimated to my surroundings, process me in the computer.

  I stare at the computer, which sits like a sentry at the nurses’ station. It is white and flat, and there is always someone clacking on its keys. I hate it because it’s keeping me here longer than I should be. Listen to yourself. Turning your rage onto a computer. Maybe if it pisses you off too much, you can try to kill it.

  I stay in my room unless they herd me out, which is three times a day for meals and recreation. I have a roommate; her name is Sally. I laugh when she tells me, because who the hell is named Sally anymore? After that she won’t speak to me anymore. At night she turns her back to me and sleeps facing the wall.

  I spend most of my hours being angry with Judah. Traitor. And where is he now? Why hasn’t he come to see me? The wound on my arm itches under the bandage. I pull it off to see what Leroy carved into my flesh. Icarus. So neat and precise, like he used a … razor blade. My razor blade. My God. It’s badly scabbing; the skin around it looks swollen and red. I’ve never wanted a tattoo, but I suppose I have one now. I ask Papchi if she knows what Icarus is, and she shakes her head. We are given computer time on Thursdays if we behave. Just thirty minutes to send out e-mails. I write an e-mail to Judah, asking him where he is and end the message signed ‘m.’ Then I type Icarus into the search bar and find an explanation of Greek mythology.

  Daedalus, imprisoned with his son, Icarus, by King Minos built two pairs of wings fashioned from feathers and wax. Before Daedalus and Icarus made their escape, Daedalus warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, nor too close to the sea, but to carefully follow his path of flight across the ocean. Icarus, overcome by the giddiness of flying, soared into the sky, but, in the process, he came too close to the sun, which melted the wax. Icarus fell to his death into the Icarian sea—named for him. A tragic theme of failure, the website called it.

  I touch the bandage on my arm, wondering if that is what Leroy meant to convey when he etched the words into my flesh. Failure. Nice try, little girl, but I’ve been a criminal a lot longer than you. My anger flares, flamboyant in its color. I bite it back. I have to get out of here before I can think about Leroy.

  The next time I get computer time I check my e-mail and find that the message I sent to Judah has bounced back. Return to sender: E-mail address unknown. I wonder why he would close out the account, but there is no one for me to ask. I think about e-mailing Sandy, but in the end choose not to. No need to drag the Bone into things.

  Finally, it is time to see the doctor. I comb my hair, though it is limp and greasy. I try to look normal, arranging my face in a neutral, bored expression. Papchi tells me that I will be seeing Dr. Saphira Elgin. “Everyone likes her,” she says. “She’s our most popular doctor. Some of the patients call her Doctor Queen!” Her voice is so cheerful.

  I am given directions to her office, and I set off, shuffling down the linoleum-streaked halls in my paper slippers. I arrive outside her office, which is in the west corner of the building and the most modern. The nurses here are more cheerful, and I’ve heard each patient room has a sink. Her name sits regally on a plaque outside her door. I knock.

  “Come in,” a voice calls. I push open the door, expecting someone older, more motherly and plain. Dr. Elgin is not plain. She is exotic in her beauty. Someone you see, and then quickly spin your head around to see again—a portico of otherworldliness.

  “Hello,” she says. She does not extend her hand to me, but rather motions to the seat she wants me to occupy. Her voice is deep and warm; it rattles in her throat before it pours out like a smooth cognac. She’s different from the others. I realize this almost at once. She looks at me as if I’m a person she’s deeply interested in, rather than a file assigned to her by the state. If she looks at everyone like this, it’s no wonder they call her Doctor Queen. Papchi told me that she does not work at the institution full-time, but that she gives fifteen hours a week here and the rest of the time she spends at her private practice.

  I wonder what compels Doctor Queen to donate her time with the truly sick people, instead of the depressed housewives and cheating husbands who no doubt visit her office. It’s probably just that, I think, smiling at her. She wants to feel like she’s actually fixing something broken.

  “Hello, Dr. Elgin.”

  She is unmoved by my politeness. Perhaps I can move her with my story, and, if she’s as good as they say, she can help me get out of here. I put my reservations high up on a shelf and prepare myself to like her.

  “Tell me, Margo, all about yourself.”

  She leans back in her chair, and I am reminded of Destiny when she stretched out, readying herself to watch a movie. I think about where to start. When I arrived here? Why I arrived here? The Bone? Judah?

  “My mother was a prostitute…” I begin. I am surprised by my willingness to talk. The ease at which I verbally claim the ugliness of my life. Perhaps this is the first time someone has asked me about myself so openly. Or perhaps I have no choice but to speak, locked in this sterile place, filled with people who don’t belong in the regular world.

  I tell her about the eating house, and about the men—my father, in particular, with his chunky Rolex. Then our time is up, and we both look disappointed. My confessions have made me breathless. I feel alive; my fingertips are tingling. It’s empowering, I think. To allow a stranger to know you.

  “The state requires you to have four sessions a week, Margo,” she says. “I have little room for new patients, but I will move things around for you, yes?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I would like that very much.”

  Dr. Elgin sees me on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday each week. Tuesdays are her day off, as she even sees patients on the weekend, she tells me. I look forward to our time together. She wants to know about Judah; she is more interested in him than she is in my mother. I ask her about her life, but she is hesitant, always switching back to me, which is expected, and also why we are both here.

  But one day she tells me that she used to be married. He died, widowing her before they had the chance to have children. I don’t ask her how he died, or how she feels about it. I don’t want to think that Dr. Elgin is as messed up and sad as I am. It’s better to believe that she became this purring, beautiful person, so beloved by the criminally insane that they announced her Queen of Doctors. I imagine her deceased husband being ridiculously handsome—dark, foreign skin and hazel eyes. He was tall, and he was her first love. It is why she is still single, because no one can compare to the man she had vowed to love for all her moral life. So she wears her beautiful clothes, and eats at fancy restaurants with colleagues who wear black-rimmed glasses and discuss the theories of Gestalt and Freud.

  I make up stories like these for the nurses and orderlies at the hospital too. None quite as glamorous as Dr. Elgin’s, and, if you piss me off, I’ll give you a terribly lonely life with a tray table and Cup o’ Noodles.

  I did all of this to survive, my soul a beaten and trembling dog. My mind a million compart
ments filled with holes and questions and drug-induced thoughts that were furry around the edges. Caterpillar thoughts, as Dr. Elgin would later call them. She changes my medication so that I no longer feel so thick and moody, and she brings me a little potted cactus that I keep on the windowsill of my room. I am wholly hers, intent on proving myself, fixing myself. And I should feel manipulated, because that’s what she’s doing, but I don’t care. I kind of like it here.

  DR. ELGIN TELLS ME LATER, that in the letter the police found in my car, I outlined the psychotic episodes I’d been having, begging whoever found me—if they found me in time—to put me somewhere I could get help.

  “So you see,” she says, “you are here of your own accord. This is something you wanted.” I nod, though I have no memory of writing the letter. I wonder if Leroy somehow coerced me into it, or if he wrote it himself. Either way, none of it is true. What I was going to do to Leroy was just. Something he deserved.

  I grow suddenly depressed while contained in my new prison. One that is clumsier than the eating house and far less experienced at torture. Its white walls and the ever-present smell of bleach make me miss the brown stains and moldy character of my former prison. I speak to Dr. Elgin about my depression, hoping she can help me understand.

  “Some people,” begins Dr. Elgin, “believe that it’s people like you and me who are the problem.” She pauses long enough to allow me to wonder after her words. I picture her without the many adornments on her arms and fingers, without her thick, black eyeliner and deep red lipstick, and see her imprisoned in her own eating house. Depression is a deep, black wave—so powerful, building from a swell and rising … rising. Could Dr. Elgin personally know its force?

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “Our society believes that if you suffer from depression of any kind, there is something innately broken inside of you. Especially if there is nothing personal to trigger the depression, like a death in the family or a loss of some sort. If you’re just depressed for no reason, they judge you.”