Low

by Anna Quon

  Adriana lunged for the door. She was afraid her brains would begin to leak from her ears. Fiona was coming down the hall toward Adriana and smiled when she saw her. The nurse stopped at the door to an interview room and called out, “Adriana, my love, won’t you come talk to me for a minute?”

  Adriana nodded and hurried toward Fiona, who stepped aside, surprised. Adriana sat down near the window where a red geranium bloomed, vigorous and robust. She couldn’t stop staring at it—it was a symbol of health and happiness, oblivious to her suffering.

  Fiona flopped into one of the old vinyl chairs. “Whew, nice to get off my feet,” she said. Adriana noticed for the first time that Fiona looked pregnant. She wasn’t a tiny woman by any means but the thickening around her middle was more than the result of a few too many donairs.

  Adriana looked at her hands. Fiona got down to business. “You didn’t eat much breakfast today,” she began. “You must be starving. Would you like a cookie?” Fiona pulled a chocolate chip cookie from her pocket. It was a cafeteria cookie, in a wax paper bag. Could be okay, or could be poison. Adriana shook her head.

  Fiona leaned forward, a serious look in her eyes. “Are you worried about how safe the food is here?” she asked. Adriana looked at her, considering. “I mean the food is terrible, it’s hospital food,” Fiona said with a wave of her hand, “but have you had any thoughts that it might be contaminated?” Adriana opened her eyes widely. She could trust Fiona. She nodded.

  Fiona nodded back. “We can make sure the food you get on your tray is pre-wrapped if you want. It means you’ll get sandwiches when other people are eating hot meals but at least you’ll know it’s safe.”

  Adriana felt tears start to spill over her cheeks. It surprised her, how thankful she felt. Fiona patted her hand. “Don’t worry, darlin’, you’re going to be just fine.” They stood up to go. Adriana took one last look at the geranium and slipped past Fiona, who was holding the door open for her. She couldn’t help brushing Fiona’s belly. The nurse laughed, saying, “Sorry, love, I don’t know my own size.”

  Adriana went to her room. She had meant to ask Fiona about Jeff, when she got waylaid by her questions about the food. How did Fiona know she was worried about that? she wondered. Then it struck her that maybe Jeff was right, about the lead lined room. Someone was monitoring her brainwaves and had told Fiona about her thoughts that the food was poisoned. Adriana had a painful jolt of realization that Fiona was in on the whole thing. She would have to be careful what she said around Fiona from now on. It was devastating, Adriana thought, to have no one to confide in.

  Dr. Chen sat across from Adriana with Fiona by her side. Adriana thought she looked curious. The doctor asked Adriana the same questions that had been asked of her already, three or four times. Did she see anything that no one else could see, hear anything that other people couldn’t hear? Did she experience any strange smells that no one else could smell? Did she have any thoughts that she had special powers? Did she believe the radio and television were sending her messages? Did she think anyone could read her thoughts or that she could put her own thoughts into other people’s heads? All these questions, which she had answered “no” to in the past, and answered “no” to now, suddenly caused her to stop and think. It was true that she believed someone was monitoring her brain waves, but that wasn’t quite the same thing as thinking they could read her thoughts. But what if she answered yes to that question, or to all of them, what would happen then?

  Dr. Chen and Fiona were sitting looking at her. Adriana decided in a moment to tell them the truth. If she told them, they wouldn’t know she knew they were in on the scheme. Her heart beat fast at this small act of manipulation. “There are hidden cameras in my room, and someone is trying to control my thoughts,” she said. Her hands started to shake. Dr. Chen nodded, either in agreement or simply to indicate she should continue. “Someone is trying to poison my food.” Adriana looked down, tears starting to spill down her cheeks. “They think I know something, but I’m just depressed.”

  Fiona handed Adriana the box of tissues on the table, her eyes sympathetic. Dr. Chen nodded, her short bob bouncing, and scribbled some notes on a yellow legal pad. She cleared her throat and seemed to be deliberating. Adriana felt her whole body was made of tears, that they would flow until there was nothing left of her.

  Dr. Chen finally said, in a warmer voice that was still prim and now, pitying, “It’s going to take a little time for you to get better, Adriana. You’ll need other medications. We’ll send you up to Mayflower, which is a unit where you can stay until you’re well,” she said.

  Adriana knew about Mayflower. Redgie and Marlene had some visitors from that unit one day. When they left Marlene had said to Redgie in a low voice, “We’ll be out before they are.”

  Adriana shook her head. Dr. Chen asked, “Does that mean you don’t want to go to Mayflower?” Adriana shook her head again. She wasn’t protesting, just shaking her head, unable to believe the dread she felt. She’d been feeling better and somehow hoped they were going to discharge her and now they were telling her she was going upstairs. Suddenly, a nameless panic seized Adriana and she felt the need to flee. She stood up abruptly and left the room, running out the door of Short Stay in her slippers. They came off her feet in the hall of the assessment unit and she ran in her socks, up the hall to the front doors and then out into the parking lot and across the street, where there were several empty lots covered in weeds. She was headed up the highway toward home, where her father’s worry and her sister’s trauma were more than she could face. But where else was there to go?

  Suddenly there were shouts and sirens behind her. She ducked among some cars in the parking lot, flattening herself to the ground. The police cars stopped, one ahead of her and one behind, hemming her in.

  Four policemen got out of their cars and stood watching Adriana. She lay as heavily as she could, her body sinking into the ground. If they wanted to move her, they’d have to contend with a dead weight. It felt to her that this was the end of something. If only they’d shoot her, she thought. Death was preferable to whatever came next—a long stay in hospital, and then what? An existence without any shape she could imagine, a fuzzy, faded, formless life.

  One of the policemen had radioed for an ambulance, which pulled up on the gravel behind the police cars. Adriana looked at her hands—the palms were raw and bloody, as though she’d braked with them when she slid down between the cars. She rolled on to her back and put her hands in the air, surrendering. Two of the policemen picked her up and put her on a stretcher the paramedics pulled out of the back of the ambulance.

  A young officer sat in front of the ambulance with one of the paramedics, while the other and a stocky, middle-aged policeman, rode with her in the back for the short return trip to the hospital. “Why’d you run?” the older man asked. He was chewing a piece of gum and monitoring his radio. Adriana stared up at the ceiling of the ambulance, then closed her eyes. There was no law that said she had to talk to him.

  At the hospital, the two paramedics carried Adriana onto Short Stay on the stretcher, while the police men walked beside them. Adriana wished they would disappear. When they stopped at the nursing station. Adriana saw Fiona walking toward her, a worried look on her face. The paramedics put the stretcher on the floor and Adriana noticed they too had radios. There were intermittent bursts of sound, a dispatcher talking in some sort of code. Adriana’s brain sloshed as though on rinse cycle. The policeman turned away from her to answer his radio, while the paramedics spoke to Fiona.

  Redgie and Marlene were sitting in the common room, staring at her. Marlene shook her head and clucked. Melvin, from his chair in the corner, chuckled, his teeth brilliant against the black of his face. Since Jeff had been taken away, Melvin had been acting strangely—voluble, muttering as he paced the halls, laughing at nothing.

  Fiona noticed Adriana’s hands. “Oh my, love,” she said. “We’re
going to have to clean up those hands before anything else.” Fiona took her hand and examined it gently. “You’ve got enough gravel in there to cover my driveway back home,” she said. Adriana felt tears seeping down her face, dampening the neck of her johnny shirt. Fiona smoothed the hair from her forehead. “Don’t cry, hon,” she soothed. “You’re going to be just fine.”

  Adriana couldn’t imagine it. She wasn’t sure she knew what fine was anymore. Even while running, ostensibly toward home, she had felt she was sinking into something—an oil spill, something that sucked her under and made it impossible to breathe. She knew that, like her mother, she was between worlds, and didn’t really have a home.

  Chapter 20

  One of the paramedics helped Adriana off the stretcher. He was a well-fed young man, dressed in a dark blue, wearing white gloves, and he smiled at her sympathetically. Adriana looked down. Her Johnny shirt was covered with streaks of dirt and her white sports socks were brown. She knew her hair was a tangled mess. Her father would weep to see her like this. It made her stomach ache to think about explaining herself to him.

  Fiona took Adriana to a room with an examination table and helped her to sit on it. With tweezers, she picked pebbles from Adriana’s hands. The palms were raw and burned, but Adriana hardly felt them.

  Colin, the student doctor appeared in the doorway. Tentatively, he asked, “Mind if I come in?” Adriana shrugged, and closed her eyes. It was easier to imagine she was alone.

  As Fiona picked the last of the gravel out of her hands, Colin leaned over to examine them. Adriana held her hands toward him, as though she were presenting him with a precious object. He turned her wrists with such gentleness that she began to shake. He was barely out of childhood himself, she thought, the bright film of idealism still clinging to his eyes. If she had met him in normal life, she wondered, would he smile at her this way?

  Fiona looked worried. “She’s fine, isn’t she?” he asked. Fiona, relieved, nodded.

  “You’re fine,” he told Adriana, and to Fiona said, “You can just clean them up and bandage them I guess.”

  Colin sat down in a chair and Adriana closed her eyes. She wished he would leave so she could just face her sadness by herself. His curiosity reminded her of Jazz, except that he wasn’t cool, but warm with concern. “Does it hurt?” he asked quietly. Adriana nodded, then shook her head. She felt numb. Colin stood up and squeezed her shoulder, while Fiona glared at him with mock irritation. “Shoo,” She said and Colin, ducking his head and shrinking his tall thin frame in an elaborate apology, left the room.

  Fiona took rubbing alcohol and cotton balls from a cabinet on the wall above the sink. Adriana cringed. “It’s going to sting, my love,” Fiona warned. Adriana closed her eyes. It occurred to her that even her desire to die had not been able to supersede her fear of pain. She had too much imagination, and too keen a memory not to be filled with dread. But strangely, the sting felt dampened, filled with melancholy, not the burning she’d feared.

  Fiona squinted at her. “Adriana, Dr. Chen is going to want to ask you why you ran today. Do you want to tell me about it now?” She sat down in the orange plastic chair across from the examining table. Adriana looked down at Fiona’s sneakers, which were clean and white, as though she’d never worn them outside.

  Fiona repressed a sigh. “Listen, you. You gave us a big scare running out like that, in your sock feet and all. You could have been hit by a car or wouldn’t have made it far down the highway anyway… Not many decent folk would pick up a hitchhiker in a Johnny shirt.”

  Fiona peered into Adriana’s face. It was clear from her downcast eyes that she was barely listening.

  Adriana was thinking about the road with the oily slick of water on its surface. If only she could lie down on it and disappear, blending into the asphalt like a puddle.

  Fiona stood up. “Adriana,” she said in a low voice. Adriana looked up at Fiona shaking her head, the angry red spots on her cheeks. “You have a father that loves you. Many people here are not so fortunate. For the love of God, girl, you’ve got to start thinking about that. Think about all the positive things in your life and where you want to go from here.” Adriana looked down at her knees. Fiona got up and opened the door.

  “Go on now” she said more gently. “I’ll let you know when Dr. Chen wants see you.”

  When Adriana reached the door of her room, she saw Marlene coming out of the washroom. Marlene stopped and waved, and Adriana, not knowing what else to do, waved back. “You’ll be alright, hon,” Marlene said in a loud, almost operatic voice. For some reason it reassured Adriana. Marlene ambled around the corner of the nurses’ station into the common room. Adriana could hear the blast of a television commercial but couldn’t make out the words.

  Her room was as she’d left it. The window was slightly open, and there were drops of water on the window sill. Jeff’s storm had come and gone as a shower. She pushed the window shut with her forearm and got into bed. The holes in her ceiling tiles gazed down at her. Was it really a glint of a camera she’d seen before? Adriana squinted her eyes at the tiles above her. She could see nothing, but thought she heard a soft whirring sound. Perhaps it was an audio recorder?

  Adriana fell asleep, her bandaged hands on either side of her head. When Mr. Song entered her room, he thought she looked like she was surrendering. He’d left Beth home alone, watching cartoons on TV, precisely because he didn’t want her to see Adriana like this. Beth never smiled, but sat twisting her hands together—she didn’t need another worry. Mr. Song was a little nervous about leaving her alone, but he’d told her not to answer the door, and that he’d be back in an hour. She had nodded, her eyes glued to the black cat who always tried and failed to catch the little yellow bird. Mr. Song didn’t know what the cartoon was called but he’d watched it himself after his wife died. He’d spent hours in front of the TV the month after her passing, his head full of clouds of grief.

  Adriana stirred a little but didn’t wake up. Mr. Song stretched out his legs, and looked down at his shoes. These were the same shoes he’d worn to his wife’s funeral; when had he started wearing them every day? He couldn’t remember, but he wondered whether they were an advertisement of mourning. They were a little worn, but still serviceable and he polished them every Sunday.

  Adriana was staring at him when he looked up. Her eyes were dark slits and her cheeks looked slightly swollen, whether from crying he couldn’t tell. He got up from his chair to give her an awkward shoulder hug. Adriana didn’t hug back but didn’t resist either. Encouraged, he took her bandaged hands in his own. They were like two big white lobster claws, he thought, and smiled. He pulled his chair close to the head of the bed so he could hear Adriana, who spoke in a whisper. “I don’t want to go to Mayflower,” she said.

  Fiona had briefed Mr. Song. Adriana would probably be made an involuntary patient now, which meant she would have to stay in hospital, even if it were against her will. He knew if it were him, he’d feel claustrophobic, and the thought of freedom would gnaw at him like a rodent, but at least she’d be safe.

  “Darling, Mayflower is just another place to get better,” Mr. Song said. Adriana looked down at her hands. Boxing gloves, she thought. Her father leaned over and touched her head with his hand. “You will get better.” She could tell he believed it—he radiated a kind of calm benevolence, which told Adriana that he was at peace with the idea.

  Fiona knocked on the door. Dr. Chen was with her, and they both smiled at Mr. Song. Adriana felt something momentous was about to happen. “Dr. Chen will see you now Adriana. Mr. Song, we’d like you to come too.” Mr. Song stood up and, looking slightly unsure of himself, waited for Adriana to get out of bed. It took her a little while, since she couldn’t use her hands, and the sheets were tangled. Mr. Song held her elbow until she was finally able to stand, free of bedding.

  Adriana felt she and her father were like survivors of an airplane wre
ck, holding on to one another as they climbed out of the ashes. Fiona and Dr. Chen parted for them at the door. Mr. Song put his arm around Adriana’s shoulders. She felt so thin, he thought. Her shoulder blades stuck out like antlers.

  Fiona led the way to the interview room. It was a different one than Adriana had been in before—bigger, with windows on to the hallway. Redgie walked past, limping slightly. He saluted Adriana with a serious face and continued on his way.

  Dr. Chen shook hands with Mr. Song. “Thanks for coming in,” she said and Mr. Song looked slightly confused. Fiona cleared her throat. “Dr. Chen asked me to phone you about meeting with her, but I couldn’t reach you—you must already have been on your way.”

  Dr. Chen got down to business. “Mr. Song, as you know, Adriana ran from the hospital today in her sock feet. “Mr. Song nodded. “She has also been concerned about the safety of the food served here.” Adriana looked down. Mr. Song appeared confused. Fiona explained, eyelashes fluttering nervously. “She’s worried that someone has contaminated the food in order to harm her.” Adriana noticed she didn’t use the word “poisoned”. Mr. Song looked as though he’d been struck by lightning.

  “We think she needs a longer stay in hospital and so we’d like to move her to Mayflower, upstairs.” Dr. Chen continued. “We are in the process of adding another medication to her antidepressant which we think will help with the paranoia.”

  Adriana looked at Dr. Chen, and at her father. “I’m not paranoid,” she said quietly. Dr. Chen, smiling briefly, wrote something on her clipboard. Fiona looked like she was aching to say something, but thought the better of it.