by Tom Lally
“I’ve been here awhile,” Harlan said.
Silence followed Harlan’s words and I looked down at my food.
“Where’s Leighton?” I asked.
I turned my head and scanned the cafeteria, but I couldn’t find her.
“I don’t know. She might not be feeling well or something,” Harlan said. “When’s your appointment?”
I looked at the clock and then turned my attention back to him.
“A few minutes, I better go,” I said.
“See you after,” he said.
I walked up the stairs and reached Dr. Phillips’s room at 8:16. Upon knocking on the door, she quickly opened it.
“Drew, please come in,” she said.
Dr. Phillips sounded excited though her outward demeanor remained calm. The sapphire ring on her middle finger dazzled on her dark hand. Her white overcoat hid a blue suit while her heels clicked against the floor on the way to her desk.
“I finished reading your piece,” she said.
“I know it’s not great, but it’s something. A start at least,” I defended myself immediately.
“I beg to differ. I think it’s good,” she said. “Why do you think the opposite?”
“I don’t know. It seems clunky and silly,” I said.
“It is silly. It’s a very funny story. It’s well-written and I know you haven’t written anything in months. This is good, Drew,” she said.
“I guess,” I said.
“Why don’t you believe this is progress?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I guess since I wanted to make a career out of it, but it always seemed like a fantasy,” I said.
“Does this have something to do with your father?” she asked.
“Probably. He never liked it much. My mom was a writer, but she passed away when I was twelve. After that, he didn’t like the sound of me wanting to become a writer. Well, even before she died he probably didn’t like it,” I said.
“Why do you think your father felt that way?” she asked.
“My mom was a great woman with horrible taste in men. My dad thought, well, thinks that men need to provide and women need to uphold the home front. My mom was a great mother. She never made much money writing though she devoted a lot of time to it. I think my dad thought her hobby was a waste of time since there were no fruits of her labor and he thought she should be doing other things around the house,” I said.
“Drew, who cares what your dad thinks?” she asked me.
“I know I shouldn’t be as bothered by it as I am. I mean, I know he’s an asshole, but he’s still my dad. I’m from his seed. His opinion always affected me,” I said.
“You know, my dad wasn’t in the picture when I was a kid. He left me and my mom before I was born and I always felt guilty. I thought he left because of me, but my mother would always tell me I should never feel that way. She told me to chase what I wanted. I learned later on that my dad couldn’t control my life because it was mine. If I didn’t try to do what I’m doing now, I wouldn’t be here. This life would’ve been a ‘could’ve been’,” she said.
“I think about becoming a writer all the time, but I always feel like I’ll never be able to accomplish it,” I said.
“Don’t say that,” Dr. Phillips said. “Because you’ll never accomplish anything if you don’t try. You don’t want to look back at your life and wonder what could’ve happened.”
“But if it doesn’t work and reality kicks in, I don’t think I can cope with that,” I said.
“How do you mean?” she asked.
“If writing doesn’t work, I can’t work a nine to five job sitting at some desk all day. I can’t have a douchebag boss. I’ll lose my mind, but I’m stuck in this hole of having no confidence in my writing yet I don’t know what the hell I am gonna do without it,” I said.
“The only thing I can say, Drew, is you have potential. You are talented and while I cannot promise you accolades or success in your future, I do know that if you never try, I can promise you will never have a chance of succeeding,” she said, repeating her wisdom from the day before.
“I know, I just don’t know what to do,” I said.
“Write about you, about this, about anything you want. Just write every day,” she said.
I nodded at her and a desperate grin spread across her face.
“Every single day,” she said.
***
Afterward, I walked to the bathroom. I felt my stomach tremble with a combination of excitement and a full bladder. Touching base while being in a psychiatric hospital was something I found to be contradictory. Being surrounded by walls with others who were deemed mentally ill or unfit to survive in the outside world was an other-worldly experience, but it did give me perspective.
I learned my reality was unlike most and I had a feeling that after this place was over, it would be a highlight in my life, if not the most memorable thing I ever encountered. It gave me a ravenous desire to write.
As I reached the men’s bathroom, I heard a faint sound from the women’s bathroom on the other side of the hall. The sound grew louder once I stopped walking. It sounded like someone was crying, but I couldn’t fully tell. I walked over to the door and leaned my ear against the wood frame. The screams were muffled behind cupped hands, but I could hear the pain. I thought for a moment about opening the door. Knowing my luck, I’d look like a peeping Tom. Someone would turn the corner and demand to know what the fuck I was doing peeking my head into the women’s bathroom. The wails got worse though and I felt I couldn’t stand still much longer. The common room was slightly busy with patients returning from breakfast and so I calculated the right moment before nudging open the door and walking in.
Leighton sat with her legs extended outward on the bathroom floor. Her hands covered her face while she sobbed into them.
“Leighton?” I asked.
“What’re you doing in here, Drew?” she asked.
Her voice sounded frightened.
“I’m not trying to barge in, I just heard you from outside. I wanted to make sure you were okay,” I said.
She didn’t respond. She just cried harder into her hands. Her eyes filled with water and her dirty blonde hair covered most of her face. She covered her nose to inhale the loose snot.
“You can come to my room and talk about if you want,” I said.
I didn’t know what to say. It sounded right in my head, but the second the words spilled out of my mouth, I immediately regretted them. I thought she was going to jump down my throat for thinking I could comfort her.
Instead, she sniffled and started to get off of the floor. Her flip-flops landed on their soles and her body rose without my help.
“Would you mind?” she asked.
“No, not at all,” I said.
My nerves started to quiver in my stomach and I wished they’d disappear. I wasn’t great at consoling. I’d often wallowed in my own misguided hole of self-pity and hatred. I’d never attempted to have real conversations outside of my small circle where trustworthiness did not need to be earned, it was simply a given. Breakdowns in psychiatric wards can be over things as small as missing buttons, but with Leighton, I knew it was something larger than that. It was deeply personal and that scared the shit out of me.
We reached my room quickly, avoiding the orderlies and nurses standing in the common room. Leighton ran in first and I quietly shut the door behind her. She walked over to my bed and sat on the edge.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
I didn’t even know how to start the conversation. I saw Leighton lean to her left. Her right hand rolled up the sleeve of her black hoodie. As she pulled it up, I could see small blood stains on her skin from skinny cuts. Band-Aids were placed in some places while others were left bare. It looked painful, her arm boasting multiple cuts that looked like a tick-tack-toe board.
“What happened?” I asked though I knew her answer.
I didn’t want to jump to any conclusion
s though.
“I cut myself,” she said.
Her voice was hidden behind wheezes and gulps that were working hard to hide her pleading cries for help.
“Why?” I asked.
“I hear them sometimes,” she said.
“Who? Your foster parents?” I asked.
She’d talked about them before in group therapy. I never wanted to ask her about them. She didn’t ask about why I was there either. Although she’d heard me mention my anxiety and depression, I never dove into my familial problems. I hid those facts for when I was alone with Dr. Phillips. I believed Leighton did the same.
“Yeah,” she said.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I had a dream about them last night,” she said, but her desperate attempts to catch her breath interrupted the words.
“You wanna talk about what happened?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“I’m not gonna tell anybody if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ll listen if you want me to,” I said.
Leighton didn’t speak, but instead pulled up her shirt, exposing her tan stomach. I walked over with my head slightly tilted to examine what she was showing me. A scar ran down the left side of her torso. The skin boiled over like a burn, but the jaded scrapes of stabbed flesh told me it was from something sharp. Tears dropped down to the floor from Leighton’s face. Some tears were caught by her sweatshirt, but others plummeted down and landed on the cold tile below.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
My voice cracked slightly. I cupped my mouth, sure that my eyes reflected the feeling of shell-shocked bewilderment. Leighton let her shirt fall down so it hovered above her shorts. She started to cry harder. She muffled her sobs with her hands, but I could still hear the wrenching gulps of breath. I took a second to breathe and stopped thinking about reacting. Instead, I bent down in front of her and let her eyes meet mine. Her hands left her mouth and wrapped themselves under my arms. She leaned her face into my chest and cried. I hugged her back tightly and just stood while she poured out her agony. I felt the coldness of her tears through my shirt and my lips started to tremble. All I could do was let her weep.
She started to regain her composure after a few minutes though spliced in between every few breaths were short gasps of despair. I let her go once her grip lessened and it felt acceptable to do so. I grabbed the pack of tissues on my desk that Helen had given me earlier and handed it to her. She blew her nose into one tissue and looked at me through teary eyes, the hazel in each shining brightly.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah. Must seem pretty weird right now, huh?” she said as she sat on the edge of the bed again.
“Not at all. Sometimes people need a shoulder,” I said.
“I don’t want to bug you,” she said.
“I’m here if you want to,” I said. “It’s fine. Really, I swear.”
My mind wore fragile. Words would only do so much, but when everything comes crashing down, sometimes you need an escape. I worried that I’d taken her alone time. The bathroom, though a public space, was a good place to go when you wanted to get away, especially when everyone was at breakfast and the orderlies were searching everyone’s rooms. The women’s bathroom wouldn’t have been populated, but the moment I heard her, I couldn’t avoid it. It would have nagged at me like my father’s voice.
“Sorry I barged in on you,” I said, “I heard you and didn’t know what to do.”
“No, don’t apologize,” she said, “I was actually worried about one of the nurses walking in.”
“Why?” I asked, “They would try to comfort you too.”
“I’m not crazy,” she said. “I don’t want to be seen that way. Sometimes crying just helps. I get tired of talking to people in lab coats.”
“I know what you mean,” I said.
I thought of something that could make her feel better as she sniffled into a tissue. Before I said anything, though, she looked down at my hands from across the room.
“How do your wrists feel?” she asked.
I was baffled by the sorrow she felt for me, even though she was the one who seemed more distressed that anyone in the wing.
“Good. Battle wounds I can lie about later on,” I said.
Leighton laughed, but mucus in her throat caused her to snort accidentally. She stopped and looked at me with embarrassment before we both burst into laughter.
I looked at her, her white teeth gleaming while the tears evaporated. Her hair swung freely and beautifully as her head rolled from side to side. We finally collected ourselves, and she gave one last gasp before rubbing her eyes. She had a great complexion and her face revealed a certain beauty that I’d never truly seen before.
Leighton was her own person, not mangled by others, but well kept within her own consciousness. Her desires were true and her personality was sincere.
“Uh,” Leighton moaned before she took a few deep breaths.
“A good cry helps sometimes,” I said.
“Yeah, that it does,” she said.
She stood up from the edge of my bed and walked towards me.
“What’s up?” I asked.
Leighton extended her arms and wrapped them around my body.
“Thank you,” she said.
I hugged her back. We embraced each other since, in that moment, we were all we had. When we mutually released each other, Leighton looked me.
“Quick question,” she asked. “Is that it?”
I followed her pointed finger to the notebook sitting on top of my desk.
“Yes,” I said glumly.
“Wait here,” she said and then trotted out of the room.
I sat back down and looked at the desk. I was stupid to leave it out, but I’d forgotten to hide it in the face of Leighton’s predicament. I waited a mere thirty seconds before my door swung open again. Leighton came in holding a piece of paper which she handed me and then shut the door.
I scanned it voraciously. It was a picture of a girl sleeping, but it was an illusion. The covers were formed through small curvatures in pencil drawn, horizontal lines that made it look like loose leaf. The shape of her body under the covers formed a girl who was lying with her hands in between her knees. She laid on her side so her hair fell onto her pillow. The long, flowing locks were beautifully sculpted, every fiber looked tangible, but when I ran my finger across the paper, it remained flat. The girl’s face looked like Leighton, but I knew it wasn’t her. Only half of the face was exposed, but it didn’t have her high cheekbones or button nose. I noticed her lonesome eye was wide open.
“Who is she?” I asked.
“She was a girl I lived with for a while when I was younger,” she said. “She used to lay like that for hours.”
“Is that why her eye is open?” I asked.
“Yeah, she laid in bed all day, but she was always awake. We used to bring her food in bed, but she wouldn’t eat unless she was alone. I never knew why,” she said.
“It’s incredible,” I said.
“Thanks,” she said. “Keep it.”
“No, thank you, but I can’t do that,” I said.
“Sure you can,” she said, “I have so many drawings anyway.”
“Thank you,” I said.
She then extended her hand so it stood palms up near my face.
“I haven’t picked one yet,” I said, “I don’t know if I want to anymore.”
“How about this?” Leighton proposed. “You open to a random page and give that one to me. If you really don’t like it, just go again.”
I took a deep breath and turned my back to her so I was staring at my book.
“Drew, it’s going to be fine,” she said.
I felt her hand on my shoulder and her voice eased the tense muscles in my neck. I reached with my hand and pried my fingernail into the loose-leaf. I lifted up the cover and let it open slowly. I watched as one single piece of paper swayed back and forth before collapsing
onto the left side of the notebook. I looked at the two pieces in front of me.
One was a note sheet I used when coming up with a short story in high school for my creative writing class. The other was fashioned in the center of the page. I immediately remembered the lines. It was a poem I’d also written in high school for the same class. I remembered my sister saying it was good, but I thought she was full of shit. Poetry was confusing for me. I didn’t know how to read it nor did I know how to write it. I grew frustrated parsing through the different meanings I found in the words and then pretending like I knew what Rimbaud or Pessoa or Sylvia Plath were talking about. I read through the lines and worried that if I went again, I might land on something worse, so I folded the notebook and gave it to her. My finger showed her where to start and she turned away from me.
“Do you mind if I read it out loud?” she asked.
“I guess not,” I said with an embarrassed tone.
“I’m not putting you on the spot. It just helps me read poetry,” she said.
“I know, I do the same,” I said sincerely, but I wished she would just read it in her head. She cleared her throat as her eyes met the first word at the top of the page.
When should one know
How to do
What others are able to?
Remaining silent through and through
While others let their voices do
What he would like to do
Until darkness falls
And the familiar hue
Of blue walls corners you
Doing to you
What you dislike the most.
When you can’t do for you
Silence fills you.
And you hope tomorrow
You can do for whom
Matters the most,
Is that you?
“You wrote that?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Drew, that’s beautiful,” she said.
“Thanks for being nice,” I said.
“No, I’m serious,” she said.
I didn’t know whether or not I believed her. I smiled at her compliments, but internally, my senses leaned towards the fantasy that she would walk out of my room and laugh herself to sleep that night by how cheesy my writing sounded.