by Luanne Rice
“Is the medication working?” he asked.
“If by ‘working’ you mean is it making me gain weight, feel like I’m locked in a coffin, completely numb and dead, with my emotions floating around on the outside, then yes.”
He smiled. “Yet you have a stomachache and you can’t stop crying and you have that slipping feeling.”
“Well, yeah.”
“So maybe you’re breaking through the meds. Why don’t I raise the dose on the Zoloft?”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“You know how badly I want to quit them all,” I said. “I’ve been on them over a year. I’m ready.”
“You will be, Maia, but not yet. Okay? Remember how sick you got when you went off them too fast?”
How could I forget? Dr. Hendricks, my doctor from Turner, had stuck me on Ativan a few days before my father’s wedding to Astrid. I’d started having panic attacks, horrible spells, a feeling of falling through space. Dr. Hendricks told me the prescription would be temporary, just a few weeks, until I stabilized.
I took it for a month but was sick of my jeans feeling too tight. All I wanted to do was eat cereal and peanut butter crackers. The medications gave me a huge appetite and slowed my metabolism. I decided to cut the pills out and stopped the Zoloft and Ativan cold turkey without telling anyone. The first day was okay, but then I started feeling crazy, wanting to claw the walls, manic, in chaos, and generally thinking I might be dying. I wound up in the ER, on IV fluids and some kind of detox medication.
“You were in withdrawal. You could have had seizures,” Dr. Bouley said now. “And you were lucky you didn’t. You got too far up.”
“I’d like to feel up for a change.”
“I mean out-of-control up. That’s why the crash was so bad. No matter what, the medication is a safety net. I worry that without it you’ll feel unsupported.”
“I have you. You support me.”
“When I’m not there,” he said, his eyes kind. “Can we take our time figuring out the right time for you to go off?”
“I hate them,” I said. “I feel fat.”
He tilted his head and smiled in that sweetly indulgent you’re-the-only-one-who-thinks-you-are way he had.
“Maia?” he prompted.
“I guess,” I said, feeling massively unconvinced. I thought of Billy. For a long time I had wanted to really feel, with everything I had, not just the surface stuff that was left after taking meds. I wanted my old happy personality to come through, so he’d notice. But it didn’t matter anyway, now that I was leaving.
“Good. Now, this might seem like we’re going in the wrong direction, but increasing your dose of Zoloft will keep you home, for now,” he said. “Instead of going to Turner. We can add more appointments, too.”
“Hmm,” I said. “For now?”
“If things get worse, Turner is a possibility.”
“They’d just medicate me to within an inch of my life. You know hospitals just want us to be zombies so they can control us.”
He smiled, waiting for me to relent and come around. I swallowed hard, asking the big question. “Do you think I’m crazy for talking to my mom?”
He shook his head. “I sometimes talk to my dad, and he died five years ago.”
“Why are you so reasonable when they’re not?”
“They’re worried. It’s natural.”
“My father—or should I say Astrid—wants to ship me off as soon as possible. They’re just so sure all I want to do is sit in the car and off myself.”
“I believe you’d tell me if that’s what you wanted,” he said. “I’ve always trusted you to let me know if you weren’t safe.”
Safe was one of those psychiatric hospital words. It meant you were not thinking about suicide or actively planning to commit it. And Dr. Bouley was right: I would tell him. Even if Astrid believed I wouldn’t.
When the session was over, he gave me a hug. Maybe that wasn’t what most psychiatrists would do, but Dr. Bouley is not just any psychiatrist. Again, a wave of guilt smashed into me. I hugged him extra hard and said a silent good-bye as I left the office.
“I don’t have to go,” I said to my dad in the waiting room, handing him the prescription. “To Turner.”
“Okay, then,” my dad said. “I’m glad.”
“Astrid won’t be.”
“Maia,” he said, sighing. “You’re wrong about her. You couldn’t have a better stepmother. She knows I will always put you first, and that’s how she wants it to be.”
I didn’t want to argue with him. How could she have fooled him so completely? How could he have let her?
As soon as I turned my phone back on, it buzzed with texts from Gen and Clarissa, worried about me for leaving school.
I’m fine, I wrote back to both of them. Just a minor meltdown.
How can I help? Gen texted back.
I’m seriously definitely okay, but thanks, I wrote back.
Just tell me you’re finer than fine, Clarissa texted, a private joke the three of us shared.
LOL, I wrote back to her.
Stay that way! That’s an order! Clarissa wrote. She meant well, but she could be bossy.
On the way to the pharmacy, I looked up at the sky—bright blue, filled with big white clouds. One of them was whale-shaped. I felt my heart flip over, knowing it was a sign. The car windows were open, to let in the spring air, and when we stopped at a traffic light I heard an oriole call.
Soon, soon, soon, the bird seemed to say. You’re leaving soon.
I couldn’t get to sleep, so I grabbed my binoculars. Instead of kneeling, my regular ritual, I wrapped myself in a blanket and climbed out the window and onto the roof. I shivered in the night air, making it hard to hold the glasses steady.
There he was, in the window on the far right. He was doing what he always did: looking into the distance. I sometimes imagined that Billy was watching over me the way I did over him. That fantasy made me feel a hundred times better than medication.
But then he raised his hand, pressed it against the windowpane. For a second I thought, Oh my God, he’s waving at me. Maybe … could he see my house? I started to wave back, then stopped myself. He didn’t have binoculars; he couldn’t see me. He was touching something else—maybe a ghost.
My heart fell again. Where was the hope? Billy would never like me—I was just lying to myself to think he ever could. I climbed back into my room. I knew I’d better be in my bed when Astrid, inevitably, tiptoed in to make sure I was still breathing.
The way she did that reminded me of checks. At Turner, they checked you constantly, every two, five, fifteen, or twenty minutes, depending on how at-risk they thought you were. Checks were when they looked in on you to make sure you hadn’t hurt yourself.
At Turner there was no privacy.
They even read my mother’s letters before giving them to me. They’d removed the crimson sealing wax on the envelope fold because it was hard and sharp and if I broke it off I could use it to cut myself. Or I could swallow it.
I was hospitalized for six weeks, so my room situation changed a few times. I started out in a double with Megan, a high school senior from Georgia. She counted the rhythms of her words and made sure every sentence ended on an odd syllable.
“Why do you do that?” I asked.
“It keeps things in good balance,” she said.
I counted: seven.
“But wouldn’t even numbers be more balanced?” I asked.
“You might think that, but you would be wrong,” she said.
“Megan, even numbers are more balanced than odd.”
“It can be confusing to people who don’t do it themselves.”
I counted—ten syllables! “Hey, that was even!” I said.
“Not true, because ‘don’t’ is a contraction and contractions count as two entirely separate words.”
She had me.
She was enormously overweight but never ate in front of anyone.
I knew she snuck food because I’d hear her chomping away after dark. One night I woke up and smelled something terrible.
“Checks,” Allie, my favorite night nurse, said, opening our door, glancing in, closing the door just enough so the hall light didn’t keep us awake.
Hadn’t Allie smelled that horrible odor? I climbed out of bed and followed the stench to Megan’s bureau. I opened the top drawer, and at first all I saw were her T-shirts and sweatpants. Then I lifted them up: Beneath her clothes the drawer was filled with decaying meat she had hoarded from the dining room. There were maggots.
I threw up and started crying. Well, screaming.
The staff came running. One nurse pulled me away from the drawer, and the other roused Megan from sleep.
“Megan, what is this?” Allie asked. She was young but had silver hair in a near–crew cut and always wore a Red Sox shirt under her white coat.
“How dare she look in my drawer?” Megan asked.
“There’s rotten food in there!” I said.
“What I do with my food is my business.”
I counted—even at a time like this she was sticking to odd syllables. That made me cry harder. I was in a room with a truly crazy person. And the smell was making me gag.
The staff began disinfecting the dresser and I packed because they were moving me that night. As I left, Megan said good-bye.
“I wish you well, but you should never have looked in my drawer,” she said.
“It stunk.”
“Maia, you’ve made quite a dangerous mistake,” Megan said.
“Megan, there’s no threatening other patients,” Allie said.
My about-to-be-ex-roommate stepped closer to me. Her eyes glittered, not with tears, but with fury.
“Don’t tell me, it can’t be possible, you haven’t heard the story of Pandora opening the forbidden box?”
I left the room, counted on my fingers, and stepped back in.
“Hey,” I said. “That was even. I think you had too many contractions, and you just ended on thirty.”
At that Megan began to tremble. A warble came from her mouth that became a shriek. The staff had to restrain her—literally. I’m talking about a straitjacket and the quiet room—the chamber at the end of the hall with soundproofing and a mattress on the floor, no real bed. It wasn’t to punish someone, just to protect them—and me, because her words could be considered a threat. A staff member was assigned to sit on a chair in the room with her, to soothe and keep an eye on her.
Megan hadn’t said a word after getting out of the quiet room—not to me, not to anyone at the hospital. I worried that she would never speak again, that I had caused it. My doctors at Turner, and Dr. Bouley, after I returned home, said no, her decision not to speak wasn’t my fault, that everyone is responsible for their own wellness.
But I didn’t believe it. Being so upset at me had caused her to miss—or add—a syllable. I was pretty sure she counted them to keep from really thinking, or from remembering whatever had caused her pain.
Recalling what she’d said about Pandora’s box, I wondered what disastrous thing had befallen her, to bring on the monsters.
I wondered if she was still silent.
It made me sad to think about it. And it was weird, but sometimes when I thought of her I found myself counting syllables.
I went to school. I had to go through the motions before reinstating The Plan.
“Good morning, Maia!” Mrs. Berenson, the vice principal, said with a smile so bright you’d swear she’d just won the lottery.
“Hi,” I said.
“You know you can come to me with any problems, don’t you?” she asked.
“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Berenson,” I said, and forced a smile. She stood there in her maroon print dress and black ankle boots, her upswept chestnut-brown hair, huge round horn-rimmed glasses, and coral-pink lipstick, her gaze making me think two things: that half of her felt sorry for me and half of her was judging me for being a mental case.
My father must have spoken to her, because I wasn’t in trouble for ducking out of French yesterday. Maybe she knew it was almost the one-year anniversary of my suicide attempt. My nerves were on edge.
“Hey,” Gen said, meeting me at my locker. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” I said.
“Finer than fine?” she asked.
“Finer than finest,” I said.
She gave me a skeptical look, as if not really believing me. But we laughed anyway—we always did when we said that. It had started when Gen, Clarissa, and I were thirteen, with a TV ad for Valentine’s presents from a local jewelry store. When you really love her, don’t stop at finer than fine. Come to Acton Jewelers and give her finer than finest.
It had cracked us up: the serious announcer, this couple mooning and gazing into each other’s eyes, the man putting a gold heart necklace around the woman’s throat.
Clarissa hurried over to us.
“Maia, you’re killing me,” she said, her face red and her eyes angry. “Disappearing and skipping class, barely texting—what were you thinking?”
“Nothing,” I said, stunned.
“No kidding! I thought we were your best friends.”
“Of course you are, I was just …”
“You’re always ‘just,’ ” Clarissa said. “Just getting depressed, just going to a hospital, just ignoring us—as if we don’t worry about you! You never even tell us what brings you down.”
The way she said it sounded so critical, a slap in the face. I felt myself turning red.
“She’s right,” Gen said, more quietly. “We want you to open up. Why don’t you?”
“I hate talking about it, you guys,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.
“Well, being so mysterious makes you seem like a drama queen,” Clarissa said. “And I’m only saying that because I care.”
“Drama queen?” I repeated.
“Maia, skipping last period is a little dramatic,” Gen said. “You could have told us, and we’d have helped you get through the end of the day.”
I couldn’t even say anything. These were my best friends, and after all this time they didn’t understand. Sometimes I felt more fluent in French than in friendship.
Gen had English class, and Clarissa had history. We hugged, fake and forced. We had uncovered a rift between us, and it hurt. I couldn’t get away from them fast enough. At that moment I believed I would be totally cool with not seeing them again.
* * *
The day dragged. I thought I’d never make it to study hall, last period. Our class schedule rotated every day.
I knew I had to stay till the bitter end of class; if I ditched out again, Mrs. Berenson would be on the phone so fast.
I walked toward my favorite seat in study hall, in back by the window. I had brought a graphic novel I was dying to read—I love graphic novels, and this one, The Secret Igloo, was about two kids who build a house of ice above the Arctic Circle in Norway. They sleep all summer when the sun shines twenty-four hours a day, and stay awake all winter so they can play under the northern lights. But in spite of how much I wanted to read it, I knew I had to study dialogues from my French book. I’d need more proficiency, where I was going.
But I stopped short.
Billy was sitting at the desk next to mine. He wasn’t supposed to be here—I knew his schedule. He had history class. His eyes were cast down, but was he watching me as I approached? It felt that way.
Taking my seat, I felt nervous.
“You don’t have study hall now,” I said.
“I know,” he said.
“You’re skipping history?”
“You skipped French class yesterday.”
“True.”
He shrugged, a dark expression in his eyes. “I can’t concentrate on history. It’s too nice out. I want to be on the water.”
The water? I wanted to tell him there was plenty where I was going, but his scowl warned me not to.
I stared at him, remembering last night, how he had touched the window glass. His eyes were green like a creek with glints of gold and gray stones; right now they were shadowed, and made me think of danger. I got lost, trying to think of something to say, the right question to ask. But he looked away, dismissing me.
I wanted to tell him about my plan.
I wanted him to say he’d miss me.
I wanted to tell him I knew what it was like to be in an institution—Turner, my home away from home.
The hospital was in a rambling old mansion, kind of like the Stansfield Home, but made of fieldstone, with a silvery slate roof and bars on the windows. There was a big garden and acres of hilly land covered with sycamores, maples, and an entire pine forest, scored with trails, for when the patients were well enough to go on walks with staff.
Staff. That’s what we called the nurses and aides, social workers and art therapists. The psychiatrists were called doctors. I liked Dr. Hendricks. She was about my mother’s age, and she didn’t just listen—she gave feedback, like Dr. Bouley. I hated going to the other Turner psychiatrists, like Dr. Grant, who just sat there taking notes, never saying a word. I pictured him with an imaginary pipe, just like Freud.
The patients there were mostly teenaged girls, with the occasional boy. I thought of us all as tigers with thorns in our paws. We were beautiful beasts who’d gotten injured by life, by loss or trauma or shock, and if we could just get the splinters out of our paws, we’d be fine.
My thorn was the fact that my mother had left me.
Megan’s was Pandora’s box.
Turner Institute was full of tears.
I didn’t want them anymore.
The bell rang, and Billy walked out. My eyes filled, looking at his back. I hated good-byes more than anything. And he didn’t even know this was one. He would get on his bus and I would get on mine.
Au revoir, love of my life …
The whole bus ride, wheels turned in my brain. The biggest one: Don’t forget the key. Not like yesterday.
