17 & Gone (33 page)

told him you were here.”

My real mom would have called

Jamie. That’s something she actually

would
do. This is her, isn’t it? This
is

my mother, and this crazy girl is me.

“He picked up your van from that

party for you. He said he found your

keys.”

“Please tell him thanks for me,” I say.

“He might visit. I hope that’s okay.”

I don’t want Jamie to see me like this;

it’s bad enough he knows, and I don’t

know how much my mom told him, so I

can’t be sure how much he knows. It

could be all; it could be every awful

thing. He’s probably so relieved right

now that we broke up; he’s probably

eternally grateful to be able to stay out of

this. Away from me.

— — —

Soon it’s time for good-byes. There’s

the hug, never-ending so I feel like I

can’t

breathe,

and

there’s

the

remembered scent of my mother’s hair,

which brings me back to childhood, and

I’m thinking randomly about the wasp

sting and the frozen peas, and I feel

worse again for doubting her. I don’t

know what’s happened to me. To my

head.

I let her go without standing up, as my

legs weigh twice as much as they did

just minutes before and my left arm feels

too weak to lift. Only my right arm can

be made to move, and I wave that at her

until she disappears down the hall.

It isn’t until she’s gone that I think to

raise my right hand to my throat. I feel

the exposed skin at my collarbone,

tracing my fingers around the base of my

neck like I’m aiming a guillotine. I let

my hand go lower, feeling for it. The

pendant isn’t there.

I don’t remember seeing it here, in the

hospital. I don’t remember feeling it,

against my skin, all those days I spent in

bed. Was it on me when they brought me

in? It should have been around my neck,

but what if something happened when

they carried me out on the stretcher?

What if it fell off? What if it got caught

on something and it broke? I have to go

after my mom and get her to look for it at

home.

I stand up.

I try to remember which direction my

mom went down the hall.

It takes me a moment and then I see

the exit—of course, that’s the only

direction she could have gone; that’s the

one exit. There isn’t another one on this

whole ward.

I walk toward it, but the walking is a

difficult thing to manage. I feel sure I’m

being faster than I am, except the tiles

under my feet are changing too slowly

and the window in the wall is the same

window that was there before.

It takes me a long time to make it even

a quarter of the way down, and it’s here

that I come upon the sounds of them

talking. There’s an open, unguarded door

and two voices thrown out into the

hallway. The first voice, the one I

recognize, belongs to my mom, and the

other voice, the voice that sounds only

barely familiar, must be one of the

doctors. They’re talking about something

that confounds me at first: They’re

talking about my dad. The last time I saw

the guy, I was three years old, which for

all intents and purposes means I have no

memory of ever seeing him at all. And

yet here’s my mom telling some random

doctor all about him.

“And he wouldn’t come to the phone,”

she says. “And I’ve called around, but I

haven’t been able to find where he’s

staying since. I mean, I have no idea. He

could be out on the streets again. He

could be sleeping under a bridge. He

probably is. I don’t know. It’s not like

anyone would tell me.”

“So was there ever any diagnosis?

Did he tell you?”

“He didn’t.” She sighs and stays silent

for a long while.

I’m hovering just outside the door and

I wonder if she can sense I’m here. Then

she starts talking again, starts saying

these things she never bothered to tell

me. Her own daughter. About my own

dad.

“He never said anything to me about

it. But there was the medication he was

taking when I knew him. He left an old

prescription bottle in the house when he

took off, and I found it after. I remember

seeing the label. Thinking,
What are

these for?
So I looked them up.

Antipsychotics. I mean, schizophrenia,

could that have been it? How could he

not tell me? I know it can be hereditary.

Doctor, with Lauren, I mean she’s too

young yet, but do you think—”

I lose track of the rest of it when an

orderly takes my elbow and says, “Are

you confused? Do you need to go sit

down?”

The orderly spoke loudly enough to

bring my mom to the door, and the

doctor, and there’s a nurse, and there’s a

shuffling patient coming this way, and

some other hospital person in hospital

clothes, and they all see me and they all

know I heard.

My mom looks stricken.

“Lauren, do you need something?” the

doctor says. I don’t know her name, but

she knows mine.

“Mom, I was going to ask . . .” I settle

my eyes on my mom. Apparently she

thinks my absent, supposedly homeless

dad is a certified lunatic and she’s been

keeping this little detail from me for my

whole life. “My necklace. My gray one.

Could you bring that for me from home,

too?”

She glances at the doctor. The doctor

nods. So she turns back to me and she

says sure, she’ll look for it at home and

bring it with everything else tomorrow.

“Lauren, did you—” my mom starts to

say, but the doctor there beside her is

shaking her head. “I’ll see you

tomorrow, Lauren, honey,” my mom says

instead.

I nod and make my way slowly back

down the hallway to stare at the wall

while sitting in an uncomfortable,

antisocial vinyl chair.

—
52
—

A
new day, but I haven’t been staring at

the wall. I’ve been staring at the girl.

She hasn’t noticed because she notices

nothing. She hasn’t moved since the

nurse led her in and sat her down, not

just not moving from this chair to another

chair, but at all. Not even to fidget or

scratch an itch. Not to blink her eyes or

adjust the piece of fire-red hair that’s

fallen in front of her nose.

Maybe she is sitting very, very still in

the hopes that I notice her. There are

other patients who are louder, and flail

more, and in the midst of all that she

stands out. Or there could be another

reason. She must think we’re being

watched here—she must know for sure if

she’s keeping herself that still.

Her voice won’t reach me through the

drugged confines of my head, so she’s

come here in the flesh. It’s the only way.

“Fiona?” I prompt her.

She doesn’t stir.

I try her name again, louder. “Fiona. I

see
you, okay? I see you there.”

Her body betrays no movement. She’s

catatonic, if you can be in that state with

your eyes still open. There she sits, as if

formed into the vinyl chair by a mold of

wax.

I move chairs so I’m right beside her.

Then I reach out and shake her knee, but

it’s like playing with the CPR dummy in

health class. Deadweight.

“Can’t you talk?”
I whisper.
“It’s

me.”

Her eyes are still open, and I wedge

my face in front of them, so she
has
to

look at me. Even then, the brown irises

seem to cast straight through me, as if my

body has lost all its skin and bones and

bloody, bubbling organs so the blank

wall behind me holds more space in this

world than I do.

“Blink if you can hear me,” I say.

She blinks.

Then I get an idea.

“Write it down if you can’t talk,” I tell

her. I pass her my gray notebook, which

is the only thing besides the socks that

made it through to me on the inside. The

nurses’ station acts like the TSA at an

airport. Everything must be checked, and

since they have no scanners, that means

by hand. They’ve only given me two

things from the bags my mom brought me

for now, and say they have to go through

checking the toiletries and all the rest.

I place the open notebook on her

knees. She doesn’t flinch. The lock of

hair in front of her nose doesn’t shift, so

I’m not positive she’s even breathing.

But she blinked. I did see that.

I take the pencil in my hand and place

it into hers. The nurses wouldn’t let me

have a pen, but they let me use one of

their own dull-sharpened pencils. It

barely writes, but I tighten her fingers

around it so it doesn’t fall. I position the

hand holding the pencil on the paper.

Then I step away and wait to see what

she’ll do with it.

Which is nothing. The pencil drops

and rolls across the floor.

The screams that come next aren’t

from her mouth, or mine. A wailing can

be made out down the hall, and it’s

getting closer. When the new patient—

some girl I don’t recognize—is walked

through, struggling with two male nurses

as she’s led past the common room, I

cover my ears and watch her go. She

flails and lets her hair fly. I uncover one

ear for a second to see if she’s stopped

and quickly plug it closed again; it

sounds like she’s yodeling.
That’s

someone with problems.

When I look back to Fiona, I see she’s

moved. She isn’t catatonic, as she wants

everyone to believe; she’s lightning-

quick and on alert. She’s the girl I

remember from the house next door, who

pitched her bags down the stairs and

locked me in the closet. She’s the girl

who always thought of running, one eye

on the road. Even now, escape plans

hatch in her mind, but I’m not sure

they’re for her to follow—I think this

time they’re meant for me.

Somehow she’s gotten herself to the

wall behind the nurses’ station. She’s

pulled the fire alarm. And she’s returned

to her statue pose on the vinyl seat, her

mouth slightly open now so a nice,

telltale line of drool can emerge. Her

eyes focus on nothing but the dust motes

floating around her face in beautiful

snowflake patterns, mimicking what’s

coming down outside. All within an

instant, before the nurses react to the

alarm and come to line us up and check

with the fire marshal to see if we need to

evacuate. That’s how fast Fiona Burke

moved.

—
53
—

I
don’t run.

I can picture what Fiona wants from

me: a daring escape while the hospital

staff is distracted. She longs for the sight

of me leaping over the half door that

divides the patients from the so-called

healthy people on the other side, making

it out to the elevator, and riding it down

to freedom. But she’s forgotten how

slow I am.

There is the moment in which I could

make my escape.

And then that moment passes.

I do make it downstairs, and outside,

but only with the nurses and the

orderlies and the other patients. A group

of us takes the back stairs, the emergency

exit I didn’t even know was so close to

the common room, and we are made to

do so without getting our coats, though

it’s still only January.

It had been snowing before, I think,

but now the bleached-out sky spits up

only a few damp flurries. So we stand

there shivering in our cotton shirts, with

a lucky few in sweatshirts. We watch the

parking lot in a daze.

Fiona is at the end of the row we’ve

formed against the hospital’s back brick

wall, near the shadows and out of reach

of the sun. No one’s guarding her, and

someone should be. Her spine is