The Ruining

by Anna Collomore

  I sort of liked therapy. It made me feel like I was taking steps toward getting better. It also pushed me outside my brain a little. I was spending too much time in there, Dr. Clarkson said, and he said the migraines were like an invisible wall in my brain blocking me from seeing the memories I didn’t want.

  Sometimes I thought about leaving—checking myself out, just like that. But the thought of having nowhere to go was crippling. So I just kept taking one more day to rest, until all the days began to add up. All I wanted to do was see Owen again, or at least see Libby and ask her if she thought I was well enough to come back. But Libby never came to see me. Sometimes I wondered if I dreamed her and Zoe and Walker up. Sometimes I thought maybe Owen was just my fantasy. It was so hard to tell. It was like the world was condensed to this one long corridor, so anything that existed outside that corridor was probably fake, or at least couldn’t be proven.

  I could tick off the things I knew were real.

  Dr. Clarkson was real. My ugly cotton drawstring pants and matching cotton tunic were real. Millie was real, and the way that creeper came in to see her at night was real, even if Dr. Clarkson said it wasn’t. The mashed potatoes and fruit cup from lunch every day were real. The pills I placed on my tongue might have been magical because they were there, and then they weren’t. They disappeared down inside me every day.

  But everything else . . . I could no longer be sure. And I was starting to wonder why it mattered. The only one that mattered anymore was Owen. And there was Zoe. If something strange was going on at the Cohens’, was Zoe safe? I couldn’t think and I couldn’t do anything about it without Owen, but he never came.

  • • •

  “THERE, THERE,” said Miranda, the weekend nurse. Miranda liked me, I could tell. She wiped a bit of something off the corner of my mouth with her napkin. “We’ll braid your hair after lunch, won’t that be nice?” I nodded, even though it hurt sometimes when she pulled the braids too tight. But it was nice to feel her fingers through my hair. No one touched me anymore. Only Miranda. She was nice. It was funny how nice it was to feel her hands in my hair. It made me think maybe human touch was really important.

  Millie finally left last weekend. She told me she was going to go. She went out through the shower, with a razorblade. I didn’t see it, but Miranda told me, and then my room was empty, which was a thing Miranda said should be celebrated. Miranda told me a lot of things she probably shouldn’t have. She was like my undercover spy. That was why she offered to braid my hair that day—because she knew from the guest register that I was going to have a visitor. She didn’t know who, but I thought maybe Owen. I thought Owen, but I secretly hoped for Libby.

  I’d always wanted to be like Libby. I wanted her to come back and tell me she admired me, that I did something good. That I did a good job when I was her children’s nanny. If she did that, I could be happy. Sometimes at night I got really, really worried. I worried that since I no longer took care of Zoe, I wasn’t Nanny anymore. If I wasn’t Nanny, who was I? My thoughts were confused all the time. I thought it was mostly the medicine, but lots of times I couldn’t be so sure.

  Two hours were left until visiting time. There were so many things I wanted to do when I got out of the hospital. I wanted to finish school and marry Owen and have a huge beautiful corner office and five children just like Lissa and Zoe. I would take excellent care of them and they would love me and weave my hair into plaits.

  Miranda helped me finish lunch and then sponged my face and body and helped me into a new set of ward scrubs. My muscles were weak because I was getting so much ECT and they gave me muscle relaxants almost every day. It got so I could barely walk around without leaning on the wall or a nurse. On weekends we got Nutella and pita chips for dessert after dinner. I loved that.

  “Will she love me?” I asked Miranda. “Once she called me her sister. Do you think she’ll want me to come back?”

  “Maybe,” said Miranda. “She’d be crazy not to.” I could tell she was being nice, mostly. I laughed when she said “crazy.”

  Besides group therapy, I mostly slept. I slept a lot more than ever before. Maybe fifteen hours every day. Now that I didn’t have a roommate, I could sleep without thinking someone was going to come bother my privacy.

  There was a knock on my door. Miranda said, “Come in.” It was Dr. Clarkson and he said, “Your visitor is waiting.”

  “You look pretty, love,” Miranda said. “I hope it’s your Owen.” I smiled and walked out after Dr. Clarkson, but he told me to quit smiling, I looked like an idiot, so I turned the corners of my mouth back down. I was crossing every finger I could that it was Libby come to take me home.

  I was very surprised to find that it wasn’t Libby and it wasn’t Owen. It was Walker. Dr. Clarkson told me to sit down, and he told one of the other nurses, Caitlin, to bring me a blanket so I wouldn’t shiver so much. It was very considerate. Walker was looking surprised to see me, even though he knew he would—after all, he was the one visiting me. But there was shock all over his face. It made him look like a puffer fish, and so I laughed. He smiled back, but it was only his lips, not his eyes. Miranda was showing me how to tell when a smile was real or not.

  “Annie,” he said. “Good god. But you’ve only been here six weeks.” I laughed again, mostly because I didn’t know what to say. Now I knew how long it had been, and I could start keeping track of time again! “What are they doing to you?” he whispered. Instead of answering, I reached out and touched his face. He jerked away. But I’d only wanted to touch his beard. He didn’t have a beard when I saw him last. Now he had prickly hairs in all different colors all over his cheeks and chin and neck and upper lip. There were gray and brown and black hairs. He waved over the nurse, and he leaned toward her.

  “How long has she been like this?” he asked her.

  “About ten days. Some days are better,” she said.

  “Isn’t there anything you can do so I can . . . get through to her?”

  The nurse said she’d be right back. She came back with water and told Walker it was all she could give me.

  “Annie,” Walker said. “Can you hear me?”

  I nodded. I could hear him fine, but I was getting really sleepy.

  “Just try to focus. I need to tell you something.”

  “Okay,” I said, nodding.

  “I know this hasn’t been easy for you,” he said, running his hands over his face. “I just didn’t realize when you called . . .” He trailed off, as if choosing his words carefully. “I didn’t know how bad Libby had gotten. See, Annie, Libby’s had it hard. She puts up a good front, but she’s more fragile than you’d think. The thing is . . .” He took a deep breath, working up the courage to say this thing that was obviously a burden of some sort. “Libby used to work for me.”

  “Okay,” I said again.

  “She worked for me and Adele, my first wife. You might have noticed that Zoe and Libby have a somewhat strained relationship. That’s because Zoe is Libby’s adopted child. Adele was her mother. Zoe doesn’t remember her mother—Libby and I have been raising her as if she is Libby’s, for Zoe’s own good. Later, of course, we’ll explain everything. But there’s always been a lot of tension between them.”

  “Tension,” I repeated. “But Zoe’s only a little girl.”

  “Zoe looks just like Adele did,” he told me. “Adele was beautiful.” He paused, sniffing hard and wiping at his eyes roughly with the back of his hand. “But I had an affair with Libby, who was our nanny at the time. Zoe’s nanny. I’m not proud of it, but Adele and I had hit a rough spot and . . . don’t get me wrong, I shouldn’t have done it. But I wasn’t thinking clearly. Then Adele passed away—she never knew about the affair—and Libby stayed on to help with Zoe, and, well . . . we fell in love. We got married, had Jackson, and moved to San Francisco to start fresh. But Libby was very affected by the accident. She still feels very guilty about the affair. She thinks Adele suspected. She loved Adele; Adele was her mentor. I
t wasn’t Libby’s fault our marriage was crumbling. . . .”

  “I didn’t know Libby was your nanny.”

  “How could you know?”

  I winced as a sharp ribbon of pain wound its way through my skull.

  “In any case,” Walker continued, “it all may have happened too quickly. I think Libby never quite got over Adele’s death, or her part in our failing marriage. And she’s paranoid. That’s what happens when you have an affair. You stop trusting anyone. And she’s very young. She has a lot of responsibility for someone so young—running a home and a business, raising two children, one of whom is a constant reminder of her old mentor.

  “I thought if she chose you, if she managed you herself and I had no involvement, that it might restore some of her faith. But I can see that it hasn’t done anything at all. She was pushing you hard, preying on your weaknesses. And I think she started to see you as some sort of threat.” Walker looked down at his hands awkwardly. “But the fact is, Annie, you wouldn’t be here if there weren’t something to push. And you signed those papers yourself. Now that you’re here, what happens next is up to you.”

  “Why are you telling me all of this?” I felt curiously empty. The story made sense, and really it wasn’t much different from what I already suspected. But my mind was so unreliable now from all the medication that even as I comprehended what he was telling me, I realized I would probably forget again by the end of the day.

  “I guess part of me wants you to know the truth,” he said, “so you can realize that all of this hasn’t been your fault. And the other part of me doesn’t want to carry around the guilt of lying anymore.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay.” He stood up to leave. “Take care of yourself, Annie.”

  “Walker?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you think I’ll ever come back? To be your nanny, I mean?”

  “I don’t think so, Annie.” I nodded, my eyes filling with tears. I couldn’t be angry as I watched Walker walk out of the hospital and out of my life. That was the way things worked. But Libby had told me to trust her. I still wanted to, somehow. I felt bad for her. It would have been awful, what she’d gone through. Walker, too. Falling in love. Seeing everything crumble apart. Feeling they were to blame.

  After Walker left, it was time for medicine and dinner. After dinner, we were allowed to watch a half hour of TV in the community rec room. I Love Lucy was on, and we all laughed and laughed when Lucy stomped around in the tub full of grapes. It made me think I wanted to feel grapes squish beneath my toes. I liked these good times at the hospital. Sometimes I felt close to other people here. Sometimes it got harder and harder to figure out if I didn’t belong here with all the rest.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SIX

  THE PROBLEM WAS, at the hospital we all spent too much time in our heads. I had a new roommate for two days before she would talk. She was fifteen, committed by her parents. I thought it would be a relief from Millie, but it was worse. She stared with wide, silent eyes. Then when she finally said something—to ask for my hairbrush—she looked afraid. And she chewed on the handle of my hairbrush. She said she didn’t, but when she gave it back the handle had bite marks. She was a nervous type, so I didn’t press the issue.

  I worried about this. I thought about that time a few months ago when I was a college student and thought I could have it all. But now I thought maybe this was who I was, and I shouldn’t fight it.

  The phone rang in the hallway, and it was Owen. All the girls hooted like it was some big deal that a guy called our communal phone. I said I didn’t think it was any big deal, but then my palms got sweaty like they do, so maybe it really was.

  “Hey,” I said, waving away the women who clustered around me. Some of them didn’t care, they were smoking cigarettes out the window and watching the TV. They didn’t care about my love life.

  “Hey,” Owen said back. “How are you?”

  “Okay,” I said. “Tired mostly.”

  “I’m going to come by today to see you.”

  “Oh yeah?” I fingered my oily strands and wondered if I wanted him to see me. “I don’t know,” I told him. “I’m not sure I want you here.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t have you see me like this.”

  “I saw you already, Annie. And it’s not you. It’s that place. As soon as you leave there—”

  “But what happens then? I’ll be alone. What will I do?”

  “I found something out. Something that I need to tell you right away. And Annie, why would you be alone?”

  “You’re moving,” I told him. It was so obvious. I was surprised he wasn’t gone already.

  “Oh god,” he said, sounding tired. “You don’t know yet.”

  “Don’t know what?”

  “I went to Durham,” Owen told me. “And it was great, and they’re willing to invest. But then I got back to San Francisco and had a call from another guy, someone who’d seen my work and heard about the Durham investment from my dad. He offered to top it. As long as he can hold stock in the company. I’m staying in San Francisco, Annie.”

  “Staying . . .” It took me several moments to process what he was saying.

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s perfect, don’t you see? We can be together. I can be here for you, I can help you get better. But I thought you knew already. I texted you the second I found out.”

  “Oh god,” I said, starting to weep from shock and happiness. “They took my cell phone. I don’t have it anymore. Owen, I thought we were done. I thought I’d lost you.” Owen burst into laughter. But it wasn’t mocking. Instead, it was happy, relieved.

  “Wow,” he breathed. “Just . . . wow. No, Annie, I’m staying right here in San Francisco. You can come stay with me until you get things figured out. If you want to, that is,” he said, suddenly shy.

  “Want to?” I breathed. “Are you kidding? Owen, it’s my dream. But maybe I do need help. They take care of me here. Do you really want to take responsibility for me? Until I can do it myself?”

  “Annie, don’t you realize what Libby wants? She wants you to become dependent on that place. She’d like you to stay there forever so you don’t find out and expose the truth. So even if you do suspect, you won’t be believed.”

  “What truth? Just tell me.” I wound the cord around my wrist nervously. I wasn’t sure what to expect from him. What he’d found out.

  “I’m coming over there,” he said. “It’ll be easier in person. I’ll see you soon.”

  I started worrying that he wouldn’t come. I worried that his car would find a tree, or he would find another girl. I sat on my bed and tried to wait patiently, but it was too hard. I could tell that Aurora—that was my roommate’s name, a name as fragile as she was—was getting scared. That was one thing I was learning about the hospital. I always had to worry about people’s feelings. I had to worry about people noticing and reacting to the things I did.

  “He’ll come,” Aurora said. “I know he will.”

  “What do you know?” I asked.

  “You’re telling me. You keep whispering, Please let him come. He’ll be here, I feel it.”

  “Maybe.” But I felt something else. I felt something very close to hope again, and that was something that reminded me of the life I’d had before I’d come to the hospital. And I felt everything balancing tenuously on a tightrope. If Owen didn’t get here to tell me what he needed to tell me before someone stopped him, I’d fall. And there would be no more hope. Was it so crazy to think something might happen to him? The word crazy meant nothing to me anymore. Anything could happen, no one could be trusted, except maybe Owen. That’s what I’d learned. When your definition of reality is fluid, the world expands in front of you. Was it crazy to think that if one thing fell in Owen’s path on the way to the hospital, my future would be sealed? Maybe it was. That’s why I was so afraid.

  • • •

  “WHERE IS HE?” I asked. “It’s vis
iting hours and he was supposed to be here.”

  “I think Dr. Clarkson got him,” Miranda said. “He pulled him into his office.”

  I strode out of my room and down the hallway. Miranda chased after me, making feeble overtures as if to stop me. I reached Dr. Clarkson’s ever-locked office and pounded on the door. I knocked five, six times before he poked his head out. “Annie,” he said. “You shouldn’t be here. You know that.”

  “Where’s Owen?”

  “I’m not sure who you mean,” he said. “I have a patient inside, filling out an intake form.”

  “I know he’s in there,” I said. “I know it’s him.”

  “You know I don’t entertain visitors,” Dr. Clarkson said, his irritation palpable. “If you’re expecting a visitor, I suggest you go to the recreation area.” He shut the door in my face, and I heard it lock behind him with a click.

  “Miranda,” I said, “are you sure it was Owen?”

  “Positive,” she told me. “I saw him the last time he visited. I wouldn’t mistake anyone for him.”

  “Why, Miranda?” I looked at her shrewdly, and she blushed in response.

  My senses were on high alert. I hadn’t gotten a good look into Dr. Clarkson’s office, so I didn’t know for sure whether he’d been telling the truth. I jogged the last few steps to the recreation area. There was Owen. Waiting for me, like he’d promised.

  “Miranda, go away,” I yelled. “Just go away. You’re no help. You’re making me insane. You made my heart stop just now.” Miranda looked confused, even wounded, but she turned and left the room.

  “Owen,” I said. “I’m so thankful. I thought you wouldn’t make it.”

  “Of course I’m here,” he told me. “Now stay strong, Annie. I’m going to tell you what I found out very quickly, because it’s awful. I need you to commit it to memory no matter what. I need you to focus very carefully on everything I’m about to say.”