Low

by Anna Quon

Late in the afternoon, Adriana awoke to a knock at her door. It was Fiona. “It’s time to get up my, pretty,” she said cheerily. “Dr. Chen would like to speak to you, and I have to get your vitals first.”

  Adriana was mildly surprised to hear the doctor had a Chinese name. She folded the blankets aside and stood up shakily, then trailed Fiona to a room down the hall. Melvin was coming toward them but gave them a wide berth, crossing the hall to close Adriana’s door, firmly and quietly.

  Fiona patted the examination table. “Right up here, my love,” she said. She took the blood pressure cuff from the cart and Adriana gave her her arm with the sleeve rolled up. As Fiona pumped up the cuff, Adriana felt her heart beating on her ears.

  “Blood pressure’s up,” said Fiona. “Are you nervous about talking to the doctor?” she asked, confidential and friendly. Adriana shook her head slowly. “No need,” said Fiona, smiling as she peeled the cuff from Adriana’s arm. “She’s just a little bit of a thing, wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  Fiona left Adriana in a long narrow interview room while she went to find Dr. Chen. Adriana looked around her at the vinyl covered chairs—institutional, like everything else about the place. She didn’t understand how someone thought it could be healing, to be surrounded by impersonal ugliness. Instead it left her with a stark hungover feeling, made worse by the florescent lights. And Fiona, she was like a cheerleader for this place. She was sunny and warm but Adriana would bet anything she had a golden life—a well-off husband, beautiful children—and that she shook the dust of this place off her shoes at the end of the day without a second thought.

  There was a knock on the door, and Fiona entered, followed by a petite Chinese woman with a polite and fleeting smile. Dr. Chen shook her hand and sat in the chair closest to the door, which Adriana thought she likely chose in order to be close to an escape route. When Dr. Chen smiled again, her face wrinkled in an alarming way, as though it was not accustomed to the expression. She scratched something at the top of a yellow legal pad. Adriana slumped over her hollow stomach. “So?” Dr. Chen asked. “What brought you here to hospital?”

  Adriana gaped slightly. Surely it was on her chart that she had taken an overdose. “I swallowed sleeping pills,” she said, her voice quavery and hoarse. Fiona smiled, sympathetic and encouraging.

  Dr. Chen nodded. “And… what was your intention when you swallowed those pills?” she asked, in a conversational tone. Adriana felt confused. “I wanted to die,” she said. It seemed to be the expected answer. Dr. Chen nodded and scratched something on her legal pad. “And why did you want to die?” she asked. Adriana gaped.

  “Surely there must have been something that made you want to end your life,” Dr. Chen asked, with a small tight smile. Her pen, in her small brown hand, was poised to write. Adriana tried to think. She’d quit going to classes and it had felt like a wall had crumbled from beneath her. And then there was nothing, days and days filled with nothing, her mother’s eyes always on her, reproachful and accusatory. Adriana had tried to escape Viera’s gaze—but then when Bartholomew Banks conjured her mother from the dead, it was as though she was a different person than the one Adriana had clung to for all these years. She didn’t think the doctor would understand, how this discrepancy had swept the earth from under her.

  Dr. Chen shifted in her seat, leaning toward Adriana. “Was there a trigger? Did something happen that pushed you over the edge?” Adriana shook her head, giving up. Then said weakly, “My mother.”

  Fiona looked concerned. Dr. Chen looked at her notes. “Your chart says your mother died when you were 11 years old,” she said. Adriana nodded. Dr. Chen pushed on. “So what was it about your mother that made you feel like killing yourself?”

  The words seemed too harsh, to Adriana. She let her hair fall in front of her face, and refused to speak. Fiona cleared her throat, a small, apologetic sound. Adriana looked up at her, saw her eyes shining with concern.

  Dr. Chen sat back and waited, but Adriana was not prepared to offer her anything. Dr. Chen made a point of sighing. “Okay Adriana, I understand that you have been depressed for some time.”

  Adriana nodded, but didn’t look up. She closed her eyes, and tried to hear the sound of the waves breaking against the shore, down the hill below the railway track. Dr. Chen seemed to soften. “How would you feel about my asking your father for some information about you? It would help me understand you and your situation better.” Adriana nodded. “Alright?” said Dr. Chen. “I think we’re done for today.” She stood up and bowed slightly, ushering Fiona and Adriana out of the room.

  When Adriana finally emerged from her room again, in the same rumpled johnny shirt they’d given her to wear at the ER, Fiona ran Adriana a bath and gave her some shampoo to wash the charcoal out of her hair. “It’s good you’re getting cleaned up now, my duck” Fiona had said in her warm Newfoundlandese, handing her a towel and a couple fresh johnny shirts.

  Adriana lay in the bathtub in the little room off the women’s washroom. Like the toilet stalls, the door had no lock, but a little knob to turn the sign under the handle from “vacant” to “occupied.” Adriana was miserable enough that it barely mattered. Her middle, sunken below the level of her jutting hip bones, allowed water to pool between them. Having her stomach pumped had given her a raw throat and a feeling of being scoured internally. Then she’d thrown up the charcoal drink they’d insisted she finish to coat her stomach, leaving her as empty as she’d ever been. Adriana covered her face with her hands and sank lower into the water. She had stopped doing her face exercises , and every other routine that had given form to her days, to concentrate on the wound that had opened inside her, like a split seam.

  Chapter 12

  Someone rapped on the tub room door and Adriana sat up slowly, hugging herself with her arms. The bathwater had grown tepid around her. She could almost pretend she wasn’t a patient in the mental hospital, except for the smell—a flat, industrial-chemical scent. “Ma’am?” the person at the door said in a loud, but garbled voice. “You almost done? I wanna shower.”

  Adriana, her voice croaky from disuse, said “I’ll be out soon.” Whoever was at the door mumbled something and turned on the tap at the sink and began brushing her teeth.

  Adriana had no idea how long she’d been sitting there. Her fingers had wrinkled and there were goose bumps all over her arms. She felt weak enough that she turned to face the side of the bathtub and used her arms to push herself up to standing.

  After putting on the fresh johnny shirt Fiona had given her, and another one to cover her back, Adriana opened the door. The woman in the red parka was standing at the row of sinks, her mouth full of foam. She made room for Adriana to get past her, but Adriana indicated she was headed for the toilet stalls. “Good lunch today, hon.” The woman in red said. “Shepherd’s pie. The Lord is my shepherd.” Adriana nodded, awkwardly. “Everyone wants to know why I wear this coat. It’s my coat and I don’t want anyone to steal it. God damn thieves,” she said with vehemence. “I don’t mean you, hon. Don’t worry, I don’t mean you. I can tell you’re honest. I’m Marlene by the way. You have a good pee,” she said, spitting the last of the toothpaste in the sink and disappearing into tub room.

  Adriana sat in the stall and let her bladder relax. She was mortified, but somehow her eyes were dry. What was she doing here, in the mental hospital, with people like Marlene in the red parka? Bizarre people, people who were stragglers on the edges of humanity. She was afraid of them, and most of all, she didn’t want to be one of them.

  Someone came into the washroom, weeping. Adriana could see fluctuations in the light on the bathroom floor, indicating the woman outside was moving around. Adriana waited for a few moments, wondering whether she could stay in the bathroom stall unnoticed. But the woman began to sing, in a tearful voice, “We Shall Overcome” and Adriana felt she couldn’t just sit there. She opened the door of the stall and walked to the sink beside
the weeping woman, who was combing her wispy brown hair as she sang. The woman took no notice of her. Adriana looked at her own face in the mirror—it was pale with dark rings under her eyes, like a drowned woman.

  She opened the bathroom door to the hallway, not sure what she’d find. In the common room, the television was blaring an ad for some medication or other. Redgie was sitting in a rocker, rocking away. He was wearing a Russian fur hat, a johnny shirt, faded track pants and army boots. Adriana stood in the middle of the hall, unsure of what to do. The man pointed at the TV without looking at her. “You see that? That’s the drug the CIA gave me when they were trying to get me to talk about what I knew about 9/11.” He shook his fist in the air and began to rock with fierce purpose.

  The man glanced over at her during the next commercial. “Hey you’re the Chinese girl,” he said, smiling. “I like the Chinese. You’re going to take over the world.” He continued rocking and nodded toward the television, as though to acknowledge he was still listening. Suddenly, he stood up, his face expressionless and walked out of the common room. Adriana heard him tell Joanne, the middle aged nurse with the blonde perm who had first greeted her in short stay, “I need a dose.”

  Joanne clucked her tongue sympathetically, and unlocked the door to the med room. “TV getting to you, Redgie?” she asked. He nodded, his face pale and sweating. “Why don’t you go lie down for awhile and let this Ativan get to work? In the meantime,” she said winking an exaggerated wink in the direction of the nursing station, “We’ll change the channel.” Redgie swallowed the small white pill and with the strange slow motion gait of a drugged man he walked toward his room.

  Adriana felt suddenly, drastically alone. The TV blared on, but the common room was empty except for her. She got up, clutching her johnny shirt around her. Her stomach was empty but the thought of eating made her feel sick. She went back to her room to lie down, under the white blanket that made her think of a shroud.

  Adriana was asleep when her father came to visit that evening. It was her first full day on Short Stay, he noted. Thankfully, he’d had his own doctor’s appointment and had been able to take the time off work, which seemed to him, at this particular time in his life, an irrelevance. He’d told his GP of 20 years that Adriana was in hospital and that he felt a kind of vertigo, as though he stood on the edge of a cliff. The doctor nodded his head and asked him about his sleep. Mr. Song realized he’d spent half the night awake, thinking, but the last thing he wanted was a prescription for sleeping pills. He didn’t want them anywhere in his house.

  Mr. Song sat quietly in a chair at the end of her bed, reading the paper. He always folded the paper up to show only the article he was reading, never spread out the pages like Jazz liked to do, which is part of what drove them crazy about each other.

  When Adriana awoke, her father was immersed in the news of the world. He shook his head, squinted, and whistled under his breath. Adriana blinked at him and shifted to a sitting position. She felt angular, every bone aching.

  Her father looked up, and his face was strange to Adriana. She noticed the wrinkles around his mouth, the pain in his eyes. She turned her face away. Mr. Song tried to erase his sad expression. “Hi, honey,” he said. Adriana raised her fingers and let them fall back on the bed. Mr. Song took her hand, noticing how cold it was.

  “Last night I brought you some clothes and things from the bathroom at home,” he said helplessly. Adriana looked away from her father at the locker in the corner of the room, as there was no where else to put her eyes. The locker was brown, with a fake wood grain pattern, and a latch for a lock. It was, she noted, for a very thin person, big enough for a coffin.

  Mr. Song looked at his hands and cleared his throat. “Have you talked to the doctor today?” he asked.

  Adriana responded hoarsely, “Yes.” She let her chin fall to her chest and closed her eyes. She hadn’t called him to let him know, Mr. Song thought, a small hurt, but a significant one. She didn’t want to talk to him about what was happening to her.

  Mr. Song stood up, saying, in a trembling voice, “I just have to go to the bathroom.” Adriana did not acknowledge him. As he left the room she lay down again, hugging one of the pillows to her chest.

  When he returned to her room, after splashing water in his face in an attempt to dissolve his worry, there was no one around, only the television blaring in the common room. He opened Adriana’s door slightly, saw she was asleep and stood looking at her. Her lips relaxed and slightly parted, her face finally smoothed of the ravages of her depression. She looked much like she had as a child, on an early summer evening, when his wife made her go to bed, despite the fact that neighbourhood children were still playing outdoors in the sunshine. He would check on her 15 minutes later and find her with her eyes closed, breathing quietly and rhythmically, her face golden in the setting sun. His wife had been right that she was tired, right that is was time for bed. It always reassured him that she knew what was best, that there was safety in this world after all.

  As Mr. Song turned to leave, Fiona stopped by with her clipboard. She cocked her head to one side. “Still sleeping?” she asked in a low voice. Mr. Song nodded. “Would you have time to talk to the doctor?” He eagerly agreed.

  Fiona led him to an interview room, and Mr. Song was surprised to see an Asian-looking woman sitting in one of chairs. She smiled primly and nodded, out of a sense of kinship, Mr. Song thought. “Sit down please,” she said.

  The chat with the doctor lasted 20 minutes, at the end of which Mr. Song exited the interview room, looking anguished. The doctor had quizzed him on Adriana’s early life, her relationship to both her parents and her sister, her school years and his own role in her upbringing. It was painful to remember his wife’s death, her sometimes stormy relationship with Adriana and harsh approach to raising her. Many a time he had stood between them, shielding Adriana from the wooden spoon that her mother brandished over her for some perceived misdeed. She never mocked his gentleness, but she also never paid attention to his soft remonstrations, though he stood in front of his daughter and received the blows meant for her.

  He had never thought his wife abusive—merely volatile and overly passionate—but it seemed that was not the conclusion the doctor had drawn from talking to him. “Does Adriana have any scars?” Dr. Chen asked. Mr. Song was taken aback. He didn’t know. It hadn’t occurred to him that she might. The thought that his wife would have damaged Adriana in a physical way horrified him. Somehow it seemed more real than the depression, easier to point to as evidence that something really was wrong with his wife’s behaviour.

  “Adriana needs medication,” the doctor said, “but she also needs psychotherapy. We don’t do much of that here but I will refer her to a psychiatrist with a private practice before discharge.”

  Mr. Song nodded, miserably. “That could be in a couple weeks, depending on how she does.” Mr. Song wondered what that meant, but the doctor had already put away the file and was standing up to leave. She shook Mr. Song’s hand and held the door open for him. Mr. Song had the distinct feeling that he was peripheral to all that happened to Adriana in this place, that he wasn’t needed or wanted except for the information he could provide.

  Mr. Song walked out to his car, out of the depressing dimness of the hospital. He wondered if mental illness was contagious after all, because he felt shaken, oppressed, and weary. It could just be the barometric pressure, he thought. He drove past the gates where Redgie and the woman in the red parka stood smoking. Both of them waved at him, with the friendliness of those with nothing more to lose. These were Adriana’s compatriots, he realized, with a strange mingling of hope and hopelessness. Mr. Song raised his hand to acknowledge them and Redgie, standing tall, saluted him.

  Chapter 13

  The next day, Adriana got out of bed long after lunch hour to go to the washroom. The sound of regular, muffled banging came through the wall. But when she stepped
into the hallway, she no longer heard it. There was no one around, either at the nursing station or the common room. She could see the backs of a couple nurses as they worked on their computers, oblivious to the absence of people on the unit. The TV blared as usual, like a mad person talking to itself, Adriana thought anxiously, her hands curled in tight fists. She escaped into the washroom which was empty, splashed water on her face and felt some semblance of normalcy,

  On her way back to her room, she swayed slightly, her stomach drawn and empty. When she reached her door, she heard an urgent tapping coming from the door next to hers. She hadn’t noticed before but there was a window in the door, covered with a small curtain, and the door was bolted on the outside.

  Adriana hesitated for a moment, knowing she was about to break some kind of rule. She opened the curtain and, startled, jerked away from the face pressed against the Plexiglass.

  “Hey,” he said through the door “Don’t worry, I won’t tell. Can you just open the door for me?”

  Adriana stood still. “Please,” he said. “I need to get out of TQ.”

  So this was TQ. Adriana froze. The man’s face contorted. “I need a cigarette. I need to pee.” He started to cry. “Get me outta here.” He said to no one in particular, turning away from the door. Adriana heard him unzip his pants and she turned away from his sobbing as he emptied his bladder into the corner of the room.

  A surge of anxiety engulfed Adriana. She went to knock on the door of the nursing station. Joanne was talking on the phone and seeing it was Adriana said, “Just a minute.” She turned her back to Adriana and continued speaking in a low voice, doodling on a message pad.

  Fiona was walking down the hall toward her. “What can I do for you, love?” she asked Adriana. It was hard to get the words out, for some reason.

  “The guy in TQ,” she said. “He needs to get out. He…he peed himself,” Adriana said, bitterly. The whole world was narrow and dark.