She smirks. “Okay. Well, Gwenna, you know what I do here. You know who I work with.”
I do. The other girls, here at Renfrew. Girls who are skeletally thin, who leave clumps of hair behind when they shower, who purge into their pillowcases and sleep on the vomit all night. Girls who scream and snap and claw, railing against orderlies three times their size. Girls wrapped wrist to elbow in white bandages. Girls who simply stare into space.
Girls in pain. Real pain. Girls that it hurts my heart just to see and see and be able to do nothing about.
“This isn’t your high-school guidance counselor’s office,” Jessie goes on. “This isn’t some cute little wellness retreat. This is the last stop people make before they succumb, Gwenna. Before theydie.It is my professional obligation to call it like I see it. Okay? If I pull my punches, girls die. So if I see that something is wrong with someone—whenI see something is wrong with them—I tell them. That’s where we’re at, here. Do you understand?”
I nod. Slowly.
Jessie takes a deep breath.
“You’ve been here…what, six weeks?”
“Seven.”
“Seven,” Jessie agrees. “And I’ve seen a lot of you. We’ve seen a lot of each other.”
It’s true. I’ve seen more of Jessie the therapist than I’ve seen of my mother.
Which would be sad, if it weren’t preferable.
“And I just…don’t see someone psychotic. Don’t see any hints of personality disorder, no Cluster B, no mania or paranoia or delusions.”
I swallow hard. “But?—”
Jessie puts up a hand. “I know. I know. I’ve read your previous doctor’s file on you back to back. I’ve read”—she hesitates only a second—“the incident reports from the accident. And we’ve been over it how often?”
Twice a week for the past four weeks, I think. “A lot.”
“I see you trying, Gwenna,” she says. “I see you trying really, really hard. I see you wanting to—as you put it—get to the bottom of this. But I just don’t…” She gives her head a little shake. “I’m not saying you’re not in pain, Gwenna. I’m not saying that at all. I think you are genuinely unhappy and I think you genuinely don’t want to be. But…psychotic?” She shakes her head. “I can’t agree with that.”
“So how do you explain it, then?” I spit out. “I was there, flames went up, church went down.How”—I make my words long, venomous, slow—“do you explain that?”
I suck in a breath so deep it almost hurts. Then I sink in on myself, falling back between the cushions of the couch like they could swallow me up.
“I don’t,” Jessie says simply.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t explain it.”
Now it’s my turn to give my head a little shake. “What?”
“Empirically? It doesn’t add up. From what I know, anyway.” She bites her lip. “But I don’t know everything.Youdon’t know everything.
“So, what, it was like…magic?”
I say the words before I even fully consider them.
To her credit, Jessie doesn’t laugh. Or press the panic button and have me dragged off to Protective Care—PC, as the regulars call it.
She just…shrugs. “‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’”
“Hamlet,” I say.
Jessie gives a small smile that’s almost guilty. “I was an English lit major in undergrad.” She exhales, spreading her palms over her notepad. “My point is, I don’t have all the evidence there, and even if I did, I’m really not…qualified to weigh in on what happened and why. What I’m qualified to weigh in on isyou.And do you know what Idosee when I look at you, Gwenna?”
I shake my head.
