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She forced herself awake in her hospital bed whenever she saw daylight. She tried her best to pretend she was comfortable with the constant stream of masked strangers coming in and out of her room, giving them cheerful “Hellos!” and stretching painful smiles. Tried not to startle so visibly each time they woke her. She strained every bit of herself to prove to the vast, interchangeable mass of white coats and scrubs and masks that she was better, better, better—time to go!
Time to get the kids away from that man.
Someone changed the dressing on her eye, and she saw light through its swollen lid.
“A good sign,” a doctor told her.
“You better believe it!” this happy-and-feeling-better self said.
On Christmas, nine days into her stay, a nurse helped her hobble through the halls on socks with sticky bottoms.
“You’re doing great!”
“Damn right,” she agreed, nearly convincing herself she was the kind of person who would lightly swear in front of others, grin at them, fun and plucky.
“Do you think you’ll be discharging me soon?” she asked the psychiatrist.
“That’s not up to me,” he said. “But I’ll sign off on it. And we’ll be seeing you regularly, as long as you’re still amenable to that?”
She nodded.
“Last time we talked, you gave me your consent to speak with the police about your mental state. You remember that? Because they’d asked about if it was safe for you to go home?”
“Yes. So I could get a kind of…psychiatric sign-off.”
“Exactly. Given your low weight and that you told them your injuries weren’t caused by the intruder, they were concerned about your safety. Concerned about self-harm.”
Her heart beat hard with worry. “What did you tell them?”
“I told them you were making immense progress and were agreeable to, even excited about, following a treatment path. I told them you have the struggles anyone would who went through what you did. That mentally you’re ready to go home.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” she said, trying not to cry. “The police…I don’t think they believe me. It’s like you said, I can’t tell the story well? It’s…mixed up. Did they give you the—I don’t know—impression that they thought I might be imagining it?”
The psychiatrist tipped his head. “Do you think you imagined it?”
The baby monitor turned off, the broken swing, the deer braying into the forest.
“No,” she said as firmly as she could. “I know what I saw.”
“Well, then. There you are. They asked if I’d observed any signs of delusion or psychosis. I told them I hadn’t. I told them, just as I told you, that you’ve experienced a major trauma, so it’s normal that it may take time to recall things cohesively, if you’re able to at all.”
She nodded, tears finally leaking out to sting her damaged face.
He believes you. And he must know, because he’s a psychiatrist. And he says you’re normal, normal, normal. Even if you don’t feel normal, if nothing feels normal, it is. And you are.
She asked the doctors, nurses, everyone, “Can I use your phone real quick? Do you mind if I call my kids?”
Her father-in-law never answered.
The pain was a constant throb, but she found ways to function despite it. Fearful of dependence, of gaps in memory, of not being able to move her limbs enough to strengthen them, she’d stopped pressing the little red button. Took far smaller doses in pills.
“When do you think I’ll be able to drive?” she asked the doctor who told her to look up, down, left, right, her hurt eye following his commands from between its puffed lids, from under its stitches.
“Once your surgeon signs off, I think you’re ready to be discharged,” the doctor said. “You should be able to drive just fine as long as you’re not still taking meds.”
Given she could see only dim shadows out of her broken eye, she assumed he was joking, and gave a mirthless laugh. He looked back at her, puzzled, and she realized they all had a common goal.
They want you out of here, too. You’re just one more person to look after. The whole place is overwhelmed, has been overwhelmed for almost a year. Of course they want you out.
