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Indy hadn’t told anyone else that he was leaving. “I’m just gonna French exit the psych ward,” he’d said. But everyone found out anyway, because Indy had been at Belman for a month, and suddenly he was packing up his stuff. He was getting out. That kind of thing was big news.
Of course, some people didn’t really care—Andy, for one, and a scared-looking new girl who was muttering to herself on the couch—but Beatrix stopped Indy in the hallway and asked if he could smuggle her out. Another newish guy whose name was Stan or Sam wanted Indy to get a message to his dealer. “Tell him ten bars, ten oxys, and an eight ball—I’ll be out in forty-eight.” Indy nodded at him, like,Sure, okay, no problem. He knew not to question someone’s delusion.
I moved through the morning in a daze. Whenever someone asked me a question, it took a long time for me to answer. Michaela said that this was probably just a fun new medication side effect, but I knew it was just because I was thinking so much about Indy. He’d helped tether me to this world, and now he was leaving.
What would become of me without him? What would become ofhimwithout all of us?
“He’ll be back,” Michaela said flatly. She was watching him packing and repacking his orange JanSport backpack.
“You don’t think he’s better?” I asked.
“Sure, he’s better. But he’s not good.”
I didn’t want to say it out loud, but I felt the same way.
Please take care of yourself, Indy, I prayed.Please be okay.
That afternoon, Indy and Michaela and I met in the group therapy room. We pulled up three chairs in such a small, tight circle that our knees were touching.
“No physical contact,” Michaela drawled, imitating Mitch (good riddance). Indy gave a halfway laugh.
Indy held out his hands, and we took them. “Okay, girls,” he said. “This is it.”
Then we sat there quietly. Just being there together for what maybe was the last time.
After a while Indy said, “I just hope that when I’m out, I don’t feel like an alien this time. I want to be able to look at people walking down the street and say to myself, ‘I’m not so goddamn different from them.’”
He started blinking really rapidly, and I wondered if he was about to cry.
“Is that so much to ask?” he said quietly. “Just to be okay?”
Michaela said, “Keep taking your medications. Make sure you talk to your therapist. And you need to see friends and be social. Don’t live on the internet, Adam. Touch grass.”
Indy wiped his eyes even as he was rolling them. “I cannotbelievethat you called me my real name, and that you used a prehistoric internet meme as part of your inspirational speech.”
Michaela smiled. “Adam’s a really nice name.”
“Remember when I first got here and you told me I smelled like freedom? Now it’s your turn,” I said.
Indy nodded. “Okay. Right.” He started to look a little happier. “My brother said there’s a foot of powder back in Rhinebeck. My freedom’s going to smell like snow.” Then he let go of our hands and stood up. “I gotta bounce,” he said.
I wanted so much to be happy for him, but my heart was as heavy as a stone in my chest. “I’m going to miss you,” I said.
“I’ll see you again—on the outside,” he said.
I nodded. My throat hurt too much to speak.
Michaela walked him to the nurses’ station, where I guess his parents were waiting for him. I didn’t watch Indy get signed out. Didn’t try to furtively hug him good-bye. I just lay on my bed and cried.
Of course we all wanted our friends to get better. To get out. But I didn’t think Indy was ready, no matter what anyone else said.
CHAPTER 79
2-15-23 Indy—Adam R.—was released after lunch today. Hannah didn’t come out of her room to see him off. Later, when she got her meds, she wouldn’t say a word, to me or to anyone else. If I had to pick a word to describe her, I’d say she looked scared.
Jordan closes his notebook as the train pulls into Times Square. Coming out of the subway, he takes the steps two at a time and emerges into neon-lit midtown. Wind howls through the canyon of the buildings. He takes a second to orient himself and then jaywalks across the street, nearly getting clipped by a taxi.
He shoulders his way past tourists—New Yorkers never walk that slowly—and heads west and north toward the sand-colored stone building that houses the Midtown North Police Precinct headquarters.
