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Adriana wondered wearily what TQ was. She sat on the bed, looking at her hands which were white and cold and useless. She got under the covers and curled in on herself. Her eyes were wide open, the clicking of the abacus of her thoughts, deafening. She lay that way for ten minutes until her eyes closed and the muffled sounds from the hallway blended into one another.

Chapter 11

Adriana woke the next morning, hollow. On the chair next to her bed was a bag with a few things in it. Some T-shirts and underthings, a pair of jeans, a tooth brush. Also a bag of chocolate covered peanuts, but the thought of eating made her nauseous.

She looked at her watch. It was 10 a.m. and she'd slept since yesterday afternoon. Even though she'd just woken, the day seemed old and stale as a crust of bread. Maybe that was how things were here—dry and endless.

Adriana doubted that the nurses would let her stay in bed all day. As if on cue, there was a knock at the door and Adriana expected to see Joanne's blonde perm. But instead, it was a younger woman, a strikingly attractive one, who stuck her head in. “Feeling like getting up?” She asked, kindly from the foot of Adriana's mattress, her honey-streaked hair still neatly pinned behind her head. Adriana felt a sudden pang. Her mother had never taught her how to take care of her hair. She looked away toward the dark scuff mark on the wall.

“Someone's been moving furniture,” the nurse said leaning forward to try to catch Adriana's eye. “I'm Fiona. I'll be your main nurse,” she said, smiling and twinkling. “We'll get to know each other a lot better soon,” she said. “In fact I'm going to have to be completely impolite and get your weight and your blood pressure, my dear, before we've even been properly introduced. The doctor wants to see you this afternoon, so we need to get them before lunch.”

Adriana closed her eyes and didn't bother to answer. It didn't matter to her whether they drained every last drop of blood from her body, really. Fiona was quiet for a moment then patted the bed. “You rest for now,” she said. “I'll be back later.”

Adriana lay there, but couldn't close her eyes. She stared up at the ceiling tiles, which were full of little air holes, and she imagined snakes falling from them. If only she could sleep. The sunlight glittered on the surface of the harbour. To Adriana it was like a man cheerfully leering at her; the sun was so unreachable from the cave she inhabited, that its very existence seemed questionable. She closed her eyes and let the darkness of her own mind, a familiar darkness, shelter her.

She woke to the sound of a telephone ringing in an empty room. Fiona stood at the foot of her bed. “I bet you'd sleep through an earthquake, what?” she said, smiling. Adriana blinked. The fire alarm was ringing. “It's just a drill,” she said, “but we have to go outside.”

Adriana got up and made sure her johnny shirt was tied in back. Fiona handed her another one to wear as a bathrobe, covering the gap in the back and took Adriana's coat and boots, from the locker. “You're going to need these,” she said. Adriana put them on. They were about all she had, until her father brought her things from home.

The hallway was full of people. They gathered at the end of the hall near the fire exit. A nurse with a clipboard hurriedly checked to make sure all were present. “Okay, everybody, follow the dude with the red hat.” A male nurse wearing a red toque put his hand up and waved.

Redgie, silent and stoned-looking, walked past Adriana without saying a word. The woman in the red parka clutching her purse, muttered something about the stupidity of the drill, and how she couldn't even have a smoke, which was the only reason she'd even go outside. They were a motley bunch, Adriana thought, watching their strange, shuffling gaits in boots too big or two small, jackets open over their johnny shirts.

They made their way downstairs and outside onto the back lawn. There were other groups of patients and nurses. Adriana could tell who the nurses were, sticking together in little groups, talking animatedly and laughing. The patients were the ones that seemed adrift, barely hanging on to the group. At the far end of the lawn was a swing set, where patients sat on the swings without swinging, their feet dangling on the ground.

Redgie kicked at a tuft of grass. “Whatcha doing, Redgie,” a tall male nurse asked, his voice tinged with accusation. Redgie muttered something and walked away. “Stick with the group Redgie,” the nurse called, then started walking after him. Redgie broke into an awkward run, tripping and sliding down the grassy hill. At the bottom he stumbled, and ran again, as the nurse called for help. A couple security guards joined the chase and tackled Redgie when he got to the sewage pond.

Adriana could hear the male nurse asking Redgie why he ran, and Redgie, sputtering with angry tears, shouting, “I hate it here. Why won't you let me go?” A nurse nearby chuckled and said something in a low voice to Fiona, whose smile tightened. She didn't say anything but moved away from the nurse to talk to the woman in the red parka.

“Marlene,” she said. “Are you going to bake some more of those yummy oatcakes you made last week in Occupational Therapy?”

Marlene thought about it for a moment. “Well, I was thinking of making brownies,” she said seriously, then smiled. “You liked my oatcakes, huh?” She puffed out her chest.

Fiona nodded, her eyes big. “But I'd take a brownie!” she said and gave Marlene's arm a squeeze.

Adriana felt mildly uncomfortable. Something about the way Fiona gazed at her, as if to make her complicit in this exchange. Adriana was alert to condescension even in its most seemingly benign forms.

Someone shouted “All clear!” and people began to filter back inside. Adriana noticed her little group was much smaller than the two other units' crowds of patients. Redgie went straight to stand in front of the med room door, but the nurses ignored him. Marlene sagged into the rocker in front of the television. Adriana stood in front of the nursing station, looking around her. The patients all seemed tired, while the nurses were energetic and chatty. Even Fiona, wisps of hair coming loose from her bun, was laughing as she worked.

Adriana stood in front of the nursing station, looking around her. She felt like she wanted to talk to someone—well, Fiona actually—but she was almost embarrassed to admit it. Fiona was rushing around as usual. With an armful of bed linens, she called, “Upstairs, downstairs,” over her shoulder to another nurse who gave her an exaggerated grin and a wink. Adriana wondered who the upstairs people were. Not the patients surely? But who else's bed linens would Fiona be dealing with?

Adriana went to her room and got into bed, pulling the blankets up around her chin. The room reminded her of a shoe box, with the lid on tight. She was gripped by a wild fear that she'd never get out. But she continued to lie there, her heart beating against the ceiling, as though it would burst the lid off the place. Eventually she closed her eyes and after awhile, she fell asleep, as if it were the only solace and protection available to her in that place.

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.