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I swiveled around in my chair and I saw him. He was very tall, wearing jeans, a wrinkled button-down, and a slightly nervous expression. He had dark hair and olive skin, and his nose was on the large side, and maybe just a tiny bit crooked, but even in my tranqed-out state, I could see that he was unquestionably and uncommonly hot.
“His name,” Michaela said, “is Jordan.” She fluttered long eyelashes in his direction as she put her arm loosely around my shoulders to whisper in my ear. “He’s, like, an intern or something, he goes to Columbia, and everyone’s already in love with him.”
Lulu called, “No physical contact, Michaela!”
Michaela shot Lulu an evil look as she let her arm fall back to her side. Then Jordan nodded at me, almost like he knew me, and his eyes were the startling green-gold of agates. I quickly turned away.
“He was working when you got here,” Michaela whispered. “You came in strapped down. But then I heard you tried to make a break for it.”
Blink. Breathe. Try to remain calm.
“You were screaming about a castle when they brought you up here. You thought people were dying.”
I don’t feel good. I wish she would stop talking. Everyone’s staring at me.
“You seem okay now, though,” Michaela went on. “You probably got more meds this morning.”
My hands twisted in my lap as Lulu moved on to the next patient.
I seem lucid, right? Do I belong in the psych ward? You can be the judge of that. Just as long as you know that your opinion doesn’t matter.
But don’t feel bad, because neither does mine.
CHAPTER 9
“Oh, my god, you’re back.” A grinning, skinny, black-haired guy came running up to me, waving his arms around his head like he was trying to hail a taxi in a downpour. “Don’t ask me to pretend I’m not glad. It’s awful here without you. It’s awful here with you, too, but it’s just a little bit better. Who brought you in? Was this your idea or someone else’s? How long are you staying? Do you have a roommate?”
“Indy,” I said, overwhelmed. “Give me a minute.”
“Sure, of course,” he said. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants. “Commencing backing off.” He took a couple tiny steps away from me. “Is this better?”
Indy—called that because he wore an Indianapolis 500 T-shirt most days of the week (“ironically,” he insisted)—was loud and funny and irreverent. When I hung out with him and Michaela, I could sometimes forget we were on a psych ward.
“What happened to your eyebrows?” I asked.
He put his hand up to where little patches of hair were starting to grow back. “I thought they were snakes and so I shaved them off.” He shrugged. “That was right before my parents brought me back. You know, paranoid delusions, suicidal ideation, NBD.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Thanks,” he said.
I noticed his fingers were ink-stained. Last time we were here together, Indy spent most of his time drawing labyrinthine M. C. Escher–like rooms on paper scraps, then filling in the margins with microscopic writing that Michaela swore contained the secrets of the universe. Once, when one of the aides made like he was trying to decipher it, Indy punched him.
“Walk with me?” Indy said. “Tell me everything about the other side.” He leaned in and sniffed my hair. “You smell like freedom.”
“I smell bad is more like it. I need a shower.”
“Well, you’ll have to wait,” he said, tapping an invisible watch on his wrist. “Because right now it’s slop time.”
Of course. That was another thing I hadn’t forgotten. If there was a higher power in a mental health unit, it wasn’t God: it was the Almighty Schedule.
At Belman Psych, you ate your meals when it told you to. You went to group therapy when it told you to, and to individual therapy when it told you to. You took your medicine when it told you to, got your vitals checked when it told you to, and turned your lights out when it told you to.
And you did all those things again and again, day after day, until some doctor decided that you were better.
Or that you couldn’t be helped.
Together Indy and I walked down the long, white hallway. There were a bunch of double rooms for patients on the right-hand side. On the other side was the nursing station, a few therapists’ offices, and a small lounge with a kitchenette. We used to be able to use it to make popcorn, but then two patients got into a fistfight over the microwave and the nurses declared it off-limits.
