Off in the other corner, Gregg the OCD patient is having a hard time too. He’s distracted by the outdoors. He focuses on a bird perched on a branch in the garden outside the hospital. I imagine what he’s thinking. Maybe he yearns to be outside like I do. Maybe he wants to fly like the bird, be free. He did mention in one of our groups earlier that he used to be a pilot and that when he was little he’d collect model airplanes.
Most of us are tearing out pictures, but a few are not. As I sift through all my photos, looking at the garden scene I found in Better Homes and Gardens, the gravestone comes to mind. I must find out why my grandmother is buried in Aunt Rachel’s garden.
I think of my grandfather again. Finally one of the nurses told me he’s being treated for a heart attack. I’m eager to get out and see him again.
Vague memories of him sitting all secluded in his bedroom come to mind. Maybe he was mourning my grandmother. Or perhaps my mother. There’s been so much death in our family, how could it not weigh heavily on his mind? I never really knew what it was he was thinking about. He never talked about it.
My thoughts shift to the dreams about my parents, and the man with the covered face. They felt so real, like it wasn’t a dream.
I turn the pages of the magazine and see an old man, like my grandfather. Images of him breaking down in the library the night before his heart attack cloud my mind. He was sobbing over me. It’s almost like he knew something was wrong with me. Was that possible? I’d never thought about that before. Perhaps Aunt Rachel knew too. Is that why they were at odds with each other? Was it all because of me? Maybe my mental illness was the thing Grandpa George didn’t want to talk about. He never really did scold me or talk to me heart-to-heart about anything. He was just always distant.
Eleven-fifteen a.m. and already the class is almost over. I wonder what kind of meeting or session we’ll have next. From the schedule posted up on the wall by the nurses’ station, all I remember is the meal times; breakfast at eight, lunch at noon, and dinner at five. All of which I dread. Another fifteen minutes to go and then limbo for a half an hour till we eat crap again.
The therapist wraps it up and now wants everyone to say something about their collage. To my surprise the young girl stands up and says something first.
“I couldn’t do it. This was a stupid idea to begin with and a big waste of time.” She gives the teacher stone-cold looks like she could zap her with her eyes. I wonder what made her so bitter in the first place. Maybe she hasn’t gotten anyone to come up and visit her. She just seems like she gave up completely and is now being held against her will.
“It’s okay that you didn’t do the project. It was just nice of you to join us,” the therapist says. I wish they’d say that in school. Man, every time I didn’t want to do something, I did it anyway, for fear of not getting a passing grade. Being here is somewhat like that. I mean, if you don’t do what you’re supposed to do, your hospital stay will just be longer. Maybe even worse; maybe they would move you to somewhere more permanent. At least that’s what Heather told me.
Class now over, everyone heads for the door and lines up like little children ready to go out for recess. My mind is free and clear of Amelia. She’s been silent for a while and it’s refreshing not to hear her negative speech about this and that.
I have thirty minutes to lie down before we scarf our faces down with that mystery food, so I go to my room.
I head to the bed, wiped out already and it’s not even noon. The sheets are stiff and bleached clean but the rays of sunlight spreading across the room make the blankets comfortable and warm. And after crawling in, I fall asleep easily.
***
It smells like sulfur from a lit match. I can tell something’s burning somewhere. Everything is dark but I am not afraid, though I am curious. I walk around, trying not to bump into anything. When I raise my hands up to the wall, I feel the heat bubbling underneath the paint. Where am I?
I get to the door, but the knob is so hot it almost feels frozen—a freezing type of burn—so I leave it alone. When I turn around, I see a window in the wall. But what’s strange about it is when I look through the glass, I’m looking from the outside in. Everything’s turned around.
As I peek inside, I notice drawings on the wall. The pictures are all the same—two little girls colored in blue and yellow with dark wavy hair. They’re standing under a pink tree. It’s a magnolia tree. More flashes go through my mind and I can feel something in my hand. When I look down, I see that it’s a purple crayon. I look back at the pictures again and see there’s something written underneath one of them. I focus my eyes and, strangely enough, I’m back in the room again, looking at the pictures up close. Goose bumps sweep over my body at what I see. Under the girl on the left, it says Milly and the girl on the right, it says…Amelia. I realize this was my room at one point in my life. I am starting to vaguely remember.
I hear laughter coming from outside. From the looks of it, people are out there—two men and a woman. I can clearly see that the woman is my mother. She is looking down at the ground but it’s too dark to see what she’s staring at. The two men are standing with their backs turned to the window. They are all standing there with their heads down. What are they looking at?
I move in for a closer look and suddenly my nose touches glass. I’m back behind the window again. It’s the only thing that’s not hot to the touch. But once I open it, a plume of smoke waterfalls over the windowsill and gathers at my feet. Quickly everything turns to gray. I’m trapped inside again. I can no longer see and can barely breathe as the smoke fills my lungs. But there’s something else. Someone is walking toward me.
He takes my hand and begins to drag me away.
I resist, afraid I will drown in the smoke, but he is too strong for me. Then all of a sudden the smoke clears and everything and everyone is gone. All is white and I am alone floating in the light. Am I dying?
Things start to come into focus again. I’m above a house, yet it isn’t the house I’ve always been dreaming about. I see a familiar oak tree and I realize that it is my grandfather’s old home—the one that recently burned down. I am flying above it like a cloud and as I drift I see someone in the window. It’s my old bedroom window.
Peering inside, I see that it’s my grandfather. He’s sitting there reading the newspaper and smoking a cigar. He looks quite relaxed. He crinkles the paper away from his face and looks right at me. At first I am startled, but then we smile at each other. He lifts his hand up as I drift passed the window. He is waving…waving good-bye.
That’s when I wake up.
Chapter Twenty-four
She’s sitting in the dayroom, the young girl with pasty hair. She’s there all alone, just staring at the dizzy-patterned carpet. It’s the only room with a TV. The huge windows again have the thick metal netting just outside the glass. She’s sitting there all curled up in one of the chairs off in the corner. I try to look like I’m busy, sifting through the board games and puzzles on the other side of the room. But I am compelled to talk to her. She’s young like I am; can’t be any older then nineteen or twenty.
Amelia suddenly reappears in my mind. Don’t do it, Milly. Don’t even bother with her. She couldn’t care less about you. She couldn’t care less about herself.
Amelia continues to bark away with all the doubts I would ever have at approaching someone. Don’t do this, don’t do that. I swear that all Amelia’s good for is telling me all the things I don’t want to hear.
I pull out one of the puzzle boxes and sit at the table. After I open the box and lay out all the pieces, I walk up to her and ask, “Would you like to help me with a puzzle?”
I realize this sounds totally lame, but I can’t think of anything else to say to her.
“No thank you,” she mumbles, curling back into a ball and wrapping her arms around her legs.
“Yeah, I know it’s pretty dumb anyway, sorry to bother you.”
And as I start to walk away she says, “I
t’s not dumb, I just can’t.”
Don’t do this, Milly. She’s crazier than you. Jesus Christ, she can’t even do a puzzle.
I stare at her stealthily for a few minutes while I try to shift my thoughts away from Amelia’s. I am interested in finding out why she feels as though she can’t, so I take a seat alongside her and simply ask. What do I have to lose?
“It’s not that I don’t know how. I just can’t concentrate on anything these days,” she says.
I look at her a little closer and realize if she just took a shower, combed her hair, and changed into decent clothes, she would actually be quite beautiful. Her soulful green eyes are soothing to look at and her skin is near flawless. I envy that kind of skin. If it wasn’t for this acne and Amelia threatening me to pick, scrape, and cut it, maybe I would have beautiful skin too.
“I understand,” I tell her.
“Do you? Do you really?” She looks at me like it’s a challenge—like what she’s going through is worse than my situation.
“Well, I mean, I guess. I’m in here too, like you.”
“Ha, you have a point there,” she says with a smile. It’s the first time she’s sounded positive. And in a way it’s infectious. I smile back.
“So what’s your name again?” she turns to me and asks.
“It’s Milly. Well Amelia Norris if you wanna get technical.”
She smiles again and clearly shows an interest.
“I’m Miranda, but they call me Randy for short.”
“Pretty name. You don’t hear that too often.”
“Neither do you with Amelia. Reminds me of Amelia Earhart,” she says, loosening her arms around her legs and sitting up straight.
“Yeah, isn’t she like that chick that flew around the world or something?”
“Something like that.”
We kid around about names for a while, saying names we like and names we don’t. She tells me of a girl she knew that was named Emily—a name that sounded something close to Milly and Amelia. She mentions how she was bullied by her in high school. Which leads me to ask her how old she is.
“Nineteen, and you?”
“Eighteen last week.”
After I tell her how old I am, she tells me of her son, Christopher. I’m surprised she got pregnant at such a young age, which spurs on more conversation.
We talk for a good twenty minutes or so till the nurse interrupts us, saying that I’ve got a phone call waiting for me. At first I wonder who it is, but I quickly realize it’s gotta be the one and only person that knows I’m in here.
The nurse says, “I’ll transfer your call to one of the pay phones in the hall. Please take it there.”
Finally, after a week of being in the hospital, she calls.
***
“How are they treating you?” she says matter-of-factly.
“Okay. How’s Grandpa George?” I cup the phone closer to my ear, trying to hear her every word, but it’s hard with everyone walking through the halls.
Something, something “…so, don’t worry about it,” she says. I couldn’t hear the first part because the black older lady was screaming about her medication to one of the nurses. It doesn’t help that Aunt Rachel is speaking so softly through the phone.
“What was that?” I ask. “Is he okay, then?”
“He’s fine. I don’t want you to worry, Milly,” she says again. “I just want you to concentrate on taking care of yourself. I’m really sorry I haven’t come up to see you. But I’ll try to visit you soon. And I’ll call again tomorrow. I promise.” She sounds remorseful, but it occurs to me that her history in keeping promises isn’t so good.
The nurse interrupts me again, telling me my time is up. I want desperately to say more. I want to know when the hell I am going to get out of here. I want to see my grandfather. But instead, I tell Aunt Rachel I have to get off the phone with her. She reassures me that everything’s going to be better from now on, and for a moment I am relieved. Maybe she knows something I don’t. Maybe things will be all right.
We say our good-byes and quickly hang up.
I take a seat at one of the tables in the kitchen area and think of how much I really know Aunt Rachel. Who is she really? The person who is so cold to me most of the time is so different from the person writing in her diary.
If I dig down deep enough, I can remember what my mother used to say about her.
After my Grandmother Adeline died, the family mostly split up. Rachel left, moving to some far-off place, I’m not sure exactly where. My mother left, too, having married my father, Frank, at a young age, and with me to take care of. I’m grateful they were so eager to raise me. But I always thought it was so cruel that both of them just up and left my grandfather all alone like that, when his wife had just died. How could they do that to him?
My mother always spoke with love and pride of her sister Rachel. She’d tell me how Aunt Rachel practically raised her because their mother was ill and how she loved to comb her long hair. But as adults they hardly ever talked.
I remember how my mother loved to buy the newest novel by talented writer and author Rachel Livingstone. Sometimes she tried to communicate with her, but Rachel was always distant—never attending family functions or anything like that. My mom said that was because Aunt Rachel and Grandpa George never got along, but she wouldn’t tell me why. “You’re just making excuses for her,” I remember my father saying. There was always something there that I could never understand.
My own memories are equally confusing. Every time Aunt Rachel was around Grandpa George, she’d look at him with disdain in her eyes. She never seemed to care about him at all. But he gave her the house and all its belongings. I just don’t understand it. What had he ever done to her?
As I sit here, delving into the abyss of scattered memories, the lunch lady cuts into my thoughts, yelling to everyone that the food is here—like we’re all just some kind of cattle waiting to be fed.
Again I am suddenly feeling sick to my stomach, not wanting to eat any of that slop they call food. I wonder if they serve better in jail. And then I think, in a way, I am in jail. Still trapped. I’m still not sure when I will get out. I just have to trust that Aunt Rachel will get me out of here soon. But there’s something in the pit of my stomach, along with the sick feeling—a feeling of doubt. And that feeling of doubt I have is about what Aunt Rachel is hiding.
Chapter Twenty-five
After the five-thirty meeting, people all scurry into the dayroom and wait for their loved ones to come. Six o’clock is when we can have visitors, eighteen and older. As the time draws near, the door starts buzzing as they let in the visitors. It’s really pathetic when your life comes down to waiting in a locked area for people who love you and then they have to leave shortly thereafter. You really don’t appreciate things until it all comes crashing down on you like this.
Poor, Milly, expecting visitors. God, please, you’re the one that’s pathetic. You think anyone’s gonna wanna see you? The pathetic lost being that has nothing in her life? No one? Not a soul. Let’s face it, Milly, you’re lost for good.
Amelia talks up a storm to me about how we are not going to get anyone to come and see us. And I suppose she is right. There really is no one else except Aunt Rachel. But she did say she would come up and see me. So why can’t I expect that?
I watch Gregg huddle up to the door as they buzz in the woman waiting for him on the other side. The nurses pat her down like cops, making sure she doesn’t have anything that will harm anyone. First she empties out her pockets, putting her cell phone and keys in the basket and they ask her a few questions as she signs in.
The same type of procedure goes for the rest of the people waiting to come in. Naturally, after an hour or so, with little time left for visitation, I go back into my room and lie down. I start to nod off, when one of the nurses comes up to my door and tells me someone’s here for me.
My heart races and I am nervous. Nervous to see her. I really don�
�t know what to expect at this point so I try to settle my assumptions down.
This isn’t going to go well. I can feel it, Milly. Just you wait and see, she’s come here to tell you Grandpa George’s dead. And she’s going to tell you she can no longer help you. You’re on your own, Milly. Even I can’t help you now.
Over and over again, Amelia rags at me about how this visit is going to hurt me in some way—kill my thoughts so they will turn to dust. But I have a feeling she’s wrong. Well, hoping is more like it.
When I get back to the dayroom, I am surprised I don’t see Aunt Rachel. Maybe the one nurse has got the wrong patient. Maybe she meant to tell someone else they have a visitor and not me.
It isn’t until I see a scraggly haired young man with his back turned to the windows that I realize who my visitor is. I can’t believe my eyes. Is it? Could it possibly be? And then he turns around.
“Hey, Milly, these are for you.” He hands me a bouquet of flowers. “Yeah, wasn’t sure if I could bring them or not. Some of them got a little crushed when the nurses were sifting through them, so I hope you don’t mind that.”
Blake looks amazing. I want nothing more than to run up and hug him, but something inside me tells me to hold back, well someone, that is—Amelia, to be exact.
But I don’t listen. I don’t care to listen to her right now. She was wrong. Like she’s always wrong. And in this moment I am so overjoyed I can hardly contain myself.
“But how? I mean…” I say, stumbling over my words.
“Yeah, guess I got some explaining to do,” he says with a smile. “Is there somewhere we could talk?”
“Umm…my room. We could go there if you want.” Suddenly the rushing feeling hits my face beyond containment. I can no longer hold in my excitement and I feel the urge to talk. And so I do.
I babble on and on about what’s been going on. I can’t believe I am speaking so freely to him. There’s just something about him that puts me at ease—as if there was a green light that says go. So I go on and on some more.
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