by C. B. Wiant
I nod chewing on my lower lip.
Nelson scans his keycard, opens the door, and leads me into the narrow hallway.
I’m being treated as if I’ve had a mental break. I had a definite lapse in reality. My days are like those I spent in the Arena—but without the Ipsumroot powder, my thoughts constantly churn, chug, and spiral like The Snyder tornado. I’m Oklahoma when I want to be Alaska. Alaska may have their share of predators, but tornados are not one.
I stop at the door leading to my assigned room. Nelson continues to walk. Two female nurses walk through the accumulating space between us.
Nelson turns back to me, “You have a visitor. Didn’t Dr. Morgan tell you?”
I shake my head and edge forward.
“Your brother Hudson is here.”
I charge him then like a bull in a china shop. My head jabs into his ribs and pushes him against the wall. Nelson could have been a twin to Michael Clarke Duncan. When I first met him I felt like I was walking the Green Mile with him. Now I attack the gentle giant. I want to take his imposing figure down.
Our bodies slam into the wall. We’re not the only ones against this surface. A stock photo of the ocean falls off the wall during my rampage. The waves smash against linoleum, glass splinters and shatters off the frame.
There’s a war in my heart that unleashes onto Nelson. My arms windmill into him. I kick and kick.
At first, Nelson doesn’t know what to do with me. My abruptness caught him off guard. He howls and attempts to set me aside. I’m mid kick when he displaces me. I fall and roll into glass shards. I rise, gripping glass shanks.
“No! Don’t!” Nelson shouts as one female nurse lunges at me. All I see is pink scrubs and blonde hair. Then I feel it. The pinprick that turns into a dagger. The nurse presses the plunger down.
22
Blank Sheet
When you try to harm someone, they do not allow you visitors. When you rage and act disrespectfully, they do not provide you freedoms. When you’re reactive like me, you can’t be anything but accountable. And as I sit recounting my sins, I hate myself. I hate my brain and societies need to see it rewired. I hate how what I say makes no sense to those around me. I can’t provide evidence. All I have is my word. The word of a presumed liar. The word of someone who has a pattern of letting others down and being combative. Who would trust me? I wouldn’t. I can’t stand myself. It feels like a crime to stay within my skin. If I could unzip myself down my sternum, and step out of my flesh, I would. My skin is crawling with guilt. But how do I explain myself? How?
I’ve learned when one keeps secrets long enough, one becomes acutely aware when others are doing the same. Wherefore art thou, brother.
Nelson, the only nurse who would handle me, is reassigned to another unit.
The other nurses treat me as if I’m a snarling wolf. And I am. At least that’s who I’m feeding. Within everyone I believe they’re two spirit animals in perpetual war, an unending tug-of-war between light and darkness. I feed my darkness, and the scraps go to my inner demons.
I’m not in this for recovery.
“Who is my brother?”
Ramona squints in irritation, “I don’t know. I was only told it was your brother, I didn’t know they identified with the name Hudson. Your visitor wasn’t Hudson.”
“But how do you know?” I lean forward to enunciate you.
“Nelson told me.”
My voice rises in irritation. “How would Nelson know?”
“Because…” Ramona searches her mind’s landscape for words and settles for a parenting favorite. “Because… just because. Trust me, ok?”
I sigh and deflate like a popped balloon. “No, no, not ok. I don’t have a brother.” We cannot simply put a pin in the conversation, I’ll re-inflate with more hot air. It’s only a matter of time.
“I see you’re frustrated. And I’m receiving that. But please remember that you introduced yourself as Misty Jones. I know you as Aviana Whitaker. Yet your legal identity is Lily Williams. You can’t be too harsh on me for believing you may have a brother.”
I say nothing because I am being harsh and I don’t feel any empathy or plan on becoming any less ruthless.
Ramona folds her hands onto her lap. “When you’re fearful, you run and lash out.”
We’ve been trying to find the better version of me—my lightness. But Ramona doesn’t know the current feeding schedule. She doesn’t understand how easy it is for me to burn our bridge, to burn any sort of recovery.
“Remember, there are two options for encountering FEAR. Fear Everything And Run or Face Everything And Rise. Do you want to rise or run?”
I clap my medical restraint gloves. It sounds like two ping-pong paddles slapping faces. Minutes pass and I watch them tick. Having a clock in here was poor planning. I’m only here for a few more minutes. I can count the seconds.
Do I want to rise or run?
I want to stop assimilating the word rise with my dad and the perception of a phoenix in the Arena. I would like to run but am not afforded the luxury of exiting a room without an escort. They lock my hands in medical restraint gloves; I can’t scratch my ass, I can only clap and slap.
I clap my medical restraint gloves every ten seconds.
“You aren’t going to be released until I feel you aren’t at risk to yourself.”
I raise my eyebrow. It’s the only part of me that wishes to rise to the assessment.
Ramona releases her clasped hands and flares them out like she’s giving me an ultimatum. “Alright, if you don’t want to participate in these sessions, perhaps you’ll do better in group.”
It’s unlikely. I turn my medical restraint glove palms to the ceiling and shrug.
I’m dosed before I’m allowed to interact with the group. There are only four of us. I bring my hand up to wipe the drool sliming out from the right side of my lips. Instead of lightly blotting, the medical restraint glove slaps my jaw, hard.
Dr. Tillery shuffles through papers. She gathers them up as if the pages are cards from a deck and taps them on her lap to even them out. “Julie, how do you describe your overall mood?”
“I’m oh-kay,” Julie says. Her round face and squirrel cheeks flush with the attention.
Dr. Tillery fumbles her pen and it dances momentarily on the linoleum, “Ok, Ok, good.”
The door to the group counseling room opens. The group counseling room is also the arts and crafts room. Which is also the recreational room with puzzles and a small television for those on good behavior. I’m only admitted into this room for group sessions.
Dr. Tillery leans over and stretches down to retrieve her pen. “Now remember, moods are like the weather.”
She stops her small chat about the weather when she registers the nurse and new patient enter the room. “Hello Onyx, please join us.” She says with her face awkwardly lifted at crotch height.
Onyx takes a seat. Dr. Tillery gathers her escaped pen and rights herself in her seat.
I try to stand from mine, but slip out and fall to my knees. My medical restraint gloves provide zero traction and I end up on my face.
“Oh, Aviana. Now, please help Aviana.” Dr. Tillery instructs the nurse that just deposited Onyx in the seat next to me.
The dark-haired nurse shuffles hesitantly in my direction. I flop over on my back like a pancake flipped on a griddle. I rise like an omelet, folding over.
I bat away any attempt the dark-haired nurse makes at touching me. I bend my knee like an agitated donkey. I will shamelessly be an ass.
I stay on the floor. The seat of my plastic chair digs into my shoulder blades. Dr. Tillery resumes her moody-weather report, “Some of us catch moods like a cold. Has anyone ever felt that way?”
Julie and all her chins nod. I can’t steer my eyes away from Onyx. How did he get here? My synapses clog like the 405.
“Good, good.” Dr. Tillery passes around blank pieces of paper. I’m the last one in the circle. The remaining pile of wh
ite paper drops beside me. I can’t clutch or pick up a single sheet.
“Now, I’d like you to think about the weather. How would you express how you’re feeling today?”
Dr. Tillery dispatches the others to illustrate their moods. Julie races no one to the crayons.
“Now, Aviana.” Dr. Tillery picks up the blank pages around me. “You won’t be able to take part physically. But try to imagine what your emotions are like as the weather.” Dr. Tillery has an over-attachment to the word now, and it irks me.
“Now, close your eyes.”
I do and subsequently fall over and hit my head on the corner of the neighboring plastic chair.
“Meeeoooooooooow why’d you make me do that?” I shake my head, then smear and whirl my hair with my medical restraint gloves attempting to check on my noggin.
“Ok, maybe don’t close your eyes. Sit and think.” Dr. Tillery says like I’m the dunce in class and she can’t quite kick me out, yet she doesn’t know what to do with me either.
Onyx comes bouncing back with his blank sheet colored in various blues and grays. He sits beside me and shows his artwork.
“Alright, everyone, now, let’s only take a few more minutes.” Dr. Tillery says with a sing-song voice.
Ken, another group participant, looks up from his drawing in panic. Julie couldn’t press harder down on the yellow crayon if she tried. She’s grinding the pigment into the table. Jeremiah, the last group participant outside of Onyx and I, ambles back to his seat. His sheet of paper holds a night sky.
“You think I should’ve added purple?” Onyx asks beside me.
I look down at the tornado of gray and blue.
“I just didn’t want to appear too unorthodox.”
23
How’s the weather?
Julie and Ken come back under duress. Dr. Tillery has to now them a few times.
“Please hold your image up so that everyone may see.”
Even though its only four sheets of paper being turned around, it sounds like the fluttering of pages in a book. I salivate.
“Was this easy or challenging-”
“Challenging. You didn’t give us enough time. I don’t know what you want us to do.” Julie exclaims cutting off Dr. Tillery’s art therapy reflective inquiry.
“Okay, thank you, Julie. Now, I see a few structures in Jeremiah’s drawing.”
Jeremiah looks over his sheet of paper at his drawing as if he forgot what he illustrated and he needed to consult his former self.
“I see little weather. What I see are trees.”
“Yeah,” Jeremiah says solemnly.
“And Onyx, your illustration appears chaotic.”
Onyx wholeheartedly agrees, “I’m going through a difficult time with my Queen.” The word Queen is still passing through his lips when I launch my bodyweight sideways and smack his illustration with my medical restraint glove. My trajectory carries my face into his crotch. My padded hand sandwiches his drawing against his chest. I harrumph, bristling about Onyx. How is he accepted so casually? How did he get here?
Dr. Tillery shrieks, “Aviana, my goodness.”
My disproving words swell and dissipate into Onyx’s lap.
He shudders with laughter, then gently pulls my shoulders away and leans me against his knees. “My Queen escaped. It pains me to have to search for her.” He combs my hair back and out of my face.
The gray and blue tornado flattens on the floor.
Dr. Tillery’s hand empathetically covers her heart, “Thank you for sharing Onyx. Ken, would you like to share?”
Ken sucks in a tight breath, as if through a straw.
Dr. Tillery’s eyes bounce back to Onyx’s hand. He’s touching me, and that’s not allowed. Though she’ll permit it since Onyx is keeping me presentable—it’s ultimately her prerogative.
Ken adamantly shakes his head no. His sheet of paper has one black teardrop drawn in the lower right quadrant. He crumbles up his image and throws it at Dr. Tillery, who, to my surprise, catches it before it reaches the intended target of her nose.
“Expressing emotion is challenging. Drawing how you are feeling may provide a reflective distance to explore and understand your emotions.”
Onyx picks back up his paper to inspect his image. He smirks and says, “I am in turmoil. Maybe I should have added more black instead of contemplating purple.”
“But mine’s sunshine. What does that mean? What am I supposed to understand?” Julie exclaims, cutting short any further color diatribe Onyx envisioned to commit. Onyx gives her the stink-eye because colors are important to him.
“Good question Julie, now let’s go over your drawing. Tell me what you see.”
“The sun.” Undeniably, her illustration depicts a giant, dense sun.
“Good, what else? Is your emotional weather warm or happy? It looks like the color is a very intense yellow, pressured even. It’s a powerful, possessive sun, is it not?”
Julie sobs a body-rocking, full-throttle, ugly cry.
Dr. Tillery passes a tissue to mop off her face and says, “Julie, drawing is a safe place to release and accept your emotions. Seeing how you're feeling gives you validation. We witness your feelings. I see you.”
Julie’s chin trembles.
“Now just as you can’t change the weather, you cannot change your emotional weather. Here is where we can learn safe strategies to cope and hope for better, clearer days.”
Behind the curtain of Onyx’s drawing, he whispers for only me to hear, “I see you too Nix, I see you.”
24
Don’t cry over spilled paint
Dr Tillery tasks Onyx and I with cleaning after a painting exercise. I collect all the dirty, sloppy paint cups. Onyx throws away the paper towels and stores the paint bottles in the cabinet. He walks over to me with a handful of paintbrushes. A rainbow of acrylic colors coats the tips.
“I think we’re done.” Onyx drops the paintbrushes, brush side down, into a dirty paint cup. Blue paint splashes out and dribbles off the rim. The commotion from the weight of the brush shafts shifting and tipping and ultimately upending the cup. The blue paint cup hits a cup with red paint, which promptly falls over into a cup with green paint. At the end of the domino effect, the countertop is an acrylic pour painting.
Onyx’s mouth pops open like a howler monkey about to holler. His eyes tell me I’m the most ignorant human on land. In a guttural voice, he says, “You need to dump the paint cups Nix.”
I stare at him, too many words spiral, wind up and choke behind my tongue. Onyx shakes his head and walks away, back to group. I clean up the mess and think, wouldn’t it have been just as easy for him to check the cups before dropping the paintbrushes? How is it automatically my error? Why do I have to slip into his mode of operations when ours differ?
When I’m back with the group, Dr. Tillery reprimands me for being careless and spilling paint. I’m wasting everyone’s time and resources. I need to be more aware. I need to empty the paint in the sink before placing them on the counter. Why would I riddle the countertops with a potential mess? It should be common sense. I should be common. Everyone else understands.
“Ok, now, let’s discuss our paintings. Aviana, would you like to start us off?” Dr. Tillery asks my watering, overwhelmed eyes. I hold up my sheet of paper. I painted a small, red, perfectly circular dot.
Drawing a perfect circle is incredibly complicated. Brains are hardwired to detect imperfect circles. Humans love symmetry. Our brains are quick to decry fuck ups.
Human hands are inadequate. One needs to keep their elbows in check to complete a beautiful circle. Drawing a circle is a skill of patience.
Julie snickers, “Are you on your period?” Jeremiah turns a shade matching my dot.
“Why? Are you interested in some shed uterus lining?” I ask.
“Now, Aviana, there is no need to speak like that of your cycle, it’s uncouth. And you don’t need to answer Julie’s question. Julie, this is one of those moment
s where you could have made better choices. Your question is invasive. Please, Aviana, continue, tell me about the color choice. Why red?”
I turn my sheet around, and look at the small red dot caught in the crossfire. The red swallowed by white—a drop of blood in the snow. The white landscape of the sheet of paper is impure by my mark. By me.
I stare at the pinprick red dot and feel inundated—red turns into Red, and now I’m crying over Tracy and the red brick house I once turned her into in the barn. I miss the perils of the barn and how gargantuan they felt at the time.
“I killed her with a pen,” I blubber inarticulately.
I think all that is understandable is ‘a pen’ because Ken clarifies, “We used paints.” He turns to Dr. Tillery for praise and she treats him with a soft pat on the leg, well done. Ken is making positive behavioral changes.
Dr. Tillery shushes me in a calming voice. Julie cries because she thinks she’s the reason I’m crying. Dr. Tillery has to split her shushing between the both of us.
Ken crushes his painting in agitation and throws his ball of art behind his left shoulder. He can’t handle his art for longer than ten minutes. He can’t handle himself.
Jeremiah is in the room, but he’s not with us mentally, only physically. I don’t think he’s blinked. I’m blinking enough for both of us. My eyelids are shutters to my ocular camera and the mechanism activates every three seconds. I need to lengthen the exposure to avoid blurriness.
Onyx is the only one holding it together. He’s the tripod to be bipedal shaking woes.
All it takes is a heartbreaking, “Nix,” and I’m crawling onto his lap for comfort. Onyx was in the Arena. Onyx knew Tracy. She was real. The Arena was real. I cling to Onyx because he is real.
Dr. Tillery has switched between consoling to strongly suggesting I get off of Onyx’s lap. She’s regretting her earlier leniency. Her eyes are bouncing between us and her decisions again.