Low (5 page)

Her mother, grey faced and swathed in white, stared at her reproachfully. Adriana wondered why her mother watched her, after all these years. Surely there was something better to do, in the afterlife. She wondered if her mother would graduate to the next phase, whatever that was. Or retire.

The mother that she knew was not the one the spiritualist had contacted. Her mother was not one to tell her that she had everything she needed. She was more likely to cast a withering eye upon her for not making her bed or for dropping out of school. Yelling didn't seem to be possible in the afterlife, at least, not for Adriana's mother. Maybe that was why it has such a reputation for quiet.

Adriana lay back in her bed, aching. She felt so weak, so helpless—so damaged. Was it possible she was mentally ill, that she needed a psychiatrist and drugs, simply in order to limp from one day to the next? And she had refused them. It was the end, then, she thought. She couldn't muster the strength to get up, to wash or eat. Her mother's stony silence beat in her ears like a pulse, accusing her of something—she didn't know what, but she felt guilty all the same.

Chapter 7

Adriana's father called the ambulance. She'd swallowed the bottle of sleeping pills that she'd been keeping inside the drawer of her bedside table. Weakly, Adriana had sat up in the dark of the early morning, after a dream in which she'd watched her mother fall down a long flight of stairs, while she stood at the top and watched. Just before she woke up, she had gazed out of her mother's eyes at the young Adriana above her on the landing, a wave of pain and regret washing through her.

Adriana woke in the dark, shivering from the cold. There were birds outside in the dead maple, beginning to sing the songs of late summer. Things were coming to an end, and the crickets which she loved, had found their voice. That's the sound of angels, her mother had told her when she was very young. As her mother braided her hair before she went to school for the first time, Adriana felt the tug of her mother's hands, the too-tight pull of the braids, and the chirping of the angels, which sounded plaintive and mournful to her young ears.

Adriana swallowed each tablet separately with a gulp from a glass of water. Then she lay back, listening to the creaking of the crickets, and reading from a Bible that she remembered her mother stealing from a hotel. Adriana felt her mind darkening, and the text falling apart, as though the words were written with ink on water. Then she was opening her eyes as a tube was pushed through her nose into her stomach to pump it. She saw the light above her and masked faces bending over her, and it seemed to her she might be in a coffin in the ground, her parents, Jazz, and her sister Beth hovering above her. She wanted to reach out for them but her arms wouldn't move.

Adriana woke up again in the emergency room. Her father was sitting in the chair next to her, pale and dishevelled, having fallen asleep while reading a book. Adriana looked at his hands which were long-fingered and brown. They looked tired. She didn't move but tears trickled down her cheeks.

A nurse came by and pushed back the curtain surrounding the bed. Mr. Song jerked awake and Adriana closed her eyes, not wanting to look at his worried face. The nurse, in a loud business-like voice said, “Adriana, open your eyes.” Adriana refused. “She's awake,” said the nurse with irritation. Mr. Song took one of Adriana's hands in his and squeezed it. “Adriana, we have to give you some charcoal to drink now,” the nurse said in a loud voice. “It's to coat your stomach.”

Adriana stared up at the light. If only she could disappear into one of the little holes in the ceiling tiles. Mr. Song was squeezing her hand too tightly. Adriana put on a shaky, terrible smile and looked at no one.

The nurse raised the head of Adriana's bed so that she was in a sitting position. Adriana felt totally exposed. “Here,” the nurse said, more gently this time. “You're not going to like this but you need to drink it. All of it.” She thrust a plastic bottle with a straw sticking out of it into Adriana's hand.

Adriana took a sip. It was sweet, with the texture of ice crystals, and the flavour of charcoal. Horrible. She turned her head away. Mr. Song took the bottle from her and mixed the charcoal around with the straw. “Here,” he said in a voice she had never heard before, as though he were so angry he had trouble forming the words. “You are going to drink this, Adriana.” His hand was shaking. “You are lucky I found you. Now drink this.”

Adriana looked at her father. “Drink,” he said.

Adriana drank the whole bottle of charcoal, and near the end, she threw up on the floor. Black vomit splattered everywhere. The nurse sighed irritably on her way past and soon returned with an orderly with a mop. “Can you get up?” she asked Adriana, who nodded. “Then maybe you can go to the washroom to clean yourself up.” Mr. Song held her by the arm as she put her legs over the side of the bed. She was wearing a johnny shirt, and the nurse thrust another clean one into her hands. She felt weak and hollow, her stomach aching from the retching. Her father's eyes were on her. She closed the bathroom door and caught sight of herself in the mirror. Her mouth was a ragged, blackened “O”, her johnny shirt spattered with black. She looked pale as a ghoul.

Adriana cried as she wiped the charcoal from her mouth and chin. She took off the johnny shirt and bundled it up. There was charcoal at the ends of her hair and on her fingers. She cleaned herself up as best she could, averting her eyes. When she glanced in the mirror, she imagined a horrified audience behind her. Head down, she made her way back to where her father sat.

Ms. Song helped her back into bed. She turned on her side, away from her father's eyes, and felt her own eyes burn, as another nurse quietly addressed him. “Dr. H is on his way,” she said and tapped Adriana's arm lightly. “You'll be alright, sweetie,” she said.

Adriana knew this to be a lie designed to pacify her and her father. In fact, nothing would ever be alright again. She closed her eyes against the harsh fluorescents, the colourless floor tiles, the green curtains between her bed and the next, where someone's laboured breathing rattled into an oxygen mask. She had never had a nightmare as hellish as this.

After a minute, Adriana heard the curtain being pulled aside. It was a man in hospital greens and a hair net. “Mr. Song? And this must be Adriana,” he said. Dr. H had a British accent and looked soft in the middle with a slight stoop. “Can you turn over, Adriana?” he asked rather loudly. “I'm going to need to talk to you as well as your father.” Adriana hesitated for a split second. What if she simply refused to acknowledge the doctor's request? But she was meek and despite the terrible darkness that grew like a tree inside her, her desire to please was stronger. She turned over slowly.

The doctor smiled briskly and sat down in the chair next to Mr. Song. “Adriana, you gave your father a scare. I hope you'll think twice before you do something like that again.” Mr. Song gently rubbed her arm. The doctor continued, “Your father tells me he has been concerned about you for several months. Do you know how long you've felt depressed?” Adriana had no idea—it seemed like forever. “Can you tell how long you've felt suicidal?” Adriana remembered the first time she thought about taking pills. Could it have been just a week ago?

Dr. H gazed down at her. She squinted, wishing he couldn't see her. “Are you still feeling like harming yourself or someone else?” he asked. Harming someone else? The thought made her panic. Did they really think she wanted to harm anyone besides herself?

Dr. H waited a moment, but Adriana didn't know how to answer. Mr. Song's face was agonized. Adriana could see he was trying not to display any particular emotion and was struggling not to cry. Such a terrible thing she had put her father through. She covered her face with her hands.

Dr. H adjusted himself in his seat, sighed in a slightly exasperated tone, and turned to her father. “Well, Mr. Song, it is my opinion that Adriana would be safest in the hospital. If you are willing, Adriana, I will refer you to the Nova Scotia Hospital where you will be assessed and hopefully admitted.

Mr. Song was incredulous. “The mental hospital?” he asked. Dr. H nodded. “As I said, it is probably the safest place for her at the moment. If Adriana will agree to go, there will be no need for her to be admitted involuntarily. That would be preferable for all concerned.”

Adriana looked up at Dr. H. He nodded at her and said in a loud, falsely jovial tone, “What do you think Adriana?” She looked at her father. If she didn't go, he would have to worry about her, when he went to work, or when he fell asleep. Adriana knew it was right for him to worry, but she could save him from the worst of it if she agreed to go to hospital. There was nowhere else for her to go, anyway.

A vision of a wall with a window covered in wire mesh rose before her.

Chapter 8

Mr. Song drove Adriana from the ER to the mental hospital. Her head against the window, she stared at the rain puddles, at cars rushing by on the wet asphalt and a few people dressed in T-shirts, enjoying the late summer shower. It was the most precious sight she had ever seen. In a moment she would go from being one of those people, free and unfettered, to a mental patient.

At the gates to the Nova Scotia Hospital, there were a few people hanging around smoking. Adriana tried not to look at them as the car passed between them. There was nothing more depressing than watching mental patients smoke. Adriana thought the gates of Hell must look like this—the stark stone face of the hospital in the distance, the wretched looking souls loitering at the edges. As her father drove around the loop in front of the hospital, looking for a parking spot, Adriana felt the familiar tug of dread, like an undertow.

She had felt it at her mother's funeral, so many years ago. Adriana's father steered her past the audience of mourners, to the front of the room where her mother lay in a casket, under a spotlight that lit her up like a window display. Adriana didn't want to look at her, but her father, pushed her gently forward to lay a single flower at her side. Adriana was not so much afraid of death as she was afraid of her mother's unpredictability. What if she opened her eyes, and snatched the flower from Adriana's hands? Then everyone would stare at her, her mother's parents, weeping quietly in the front row, and Aunt Penny, with Beth squirming in her arms. Adriana quickly dropped the flower on her mother's shoulder, where the wig of long curls, so like her mother's own hair before the chemo, fanned out around her like the Lady of Shalott. And when she turned to look for her place in the front row, it was like a dark wave had flooded the room and was receding, pulling with it all the people who had formed the stuff of her mother's life. Only her father and herself remained, in a pool of light, with her mother's corpse.

On their second trip around the loop, a car pulled out of a parking spot very near the front of the hospital. Mr. Song whistled, perhaps forgetting for a moment the bleakness of his mission. It occurred to Adriana, huddled under the blanket, that her father was protected from the worst of life by a kind of cheerful resilience that she had not inherited. As far as she knew, neither had her sister Beth.

When Mr. Song got out of the car, Adriana felt terrified. He opened her car door and took her hand. “Adriana honey, come on,” he said. He gently pulled her from the car. She felt like a heap of broken shells.

Mr. Song seemed strangely upbeat, and Adriana couldn't help but think how quickly his mood had changed. Maybe he was doing his best to put on a brave face, or more likely, he was simply relieved. Adriana looked at the pavement as they walked toward the hospital. At the front door, there was a rainbow of oil on the pavement, left by a car that must have sat there idling some time ago. It fanned out like the feathers of a peacock. For Adriana it was a portent of some kind, as a rainbow always is, even such a rainbow as appeared in the oil leaked in a mental hospital parking lot. She would be admitted and stay there, with the promise that something would resolve out of the oily blackness. She held on to that thought as her father pushed open the hospital doors.

Coming toward her down the hall was a middle-aged woman dressed in a red parka and men's boots, heading outside to smoke, Adriana thought. “Hi, dearie!” the woman said in a loud, shrill voice that sounded like a caricature of herself. Mr. Song smiled at her, but she didn't acknowledge him, continuing toward the doors with a strange, ambling gait. Adriana put her head down and held her father's arm.

After checking in with the assessment unit's nurse, Adriana and her father sat in the waiting room for two hours, waiting for a doctor to see them. Adriana felt the darkness inside her spreading like a swarm of ants, creeping from her body into her head. She held her head with both hands, and covered her eyes. She didn't want to see her father's sad smile, or his tears, if there were any.

Adriana thought about Jazz, and how she would hate Adriana for trying to kill herself. Jazz had just learned to let go of her father's suicide and wasn't likely ready to cope with Adriana's feelings of utter despair. She didn't want to see Jazz at all. She couldn't bear to see her eyes.

 

After half an hour Adriana gave into exhaustion, and leaning her head against her father's shoulder as he sat reading a magazine. She did what she had always done when faced with overwhelming dread—she slept.

She dreamed of Peter and the pale girl with auburn hair. His face was painted white with black circles around his eyes, and he gripped the girl's wrist with his white hand. She seemed terrified of him. Adriana looked at her face and saw it was her sister Beth's, and that she was fading, blending into her surroundings. Adriana jerked awake, and blinked up at the ceiling. Her heart beat fast inside her chest and ears.

Beth. In the dream, she looked as her mother had, in photos from many years ago, when she was a girl sun bathing on the beach in Croatia. At 14 or 15, she wore a striped bathing suit and showed off her long legs for the camera. Beth would not be so bold—she was still a little girl in Adriana's books—but she had the same angular face that her mother had, the same long curls. Where her mother had been given to anger and screeching, Beth was timid and hysterical.