“Like what?” I demanded. My pulse pounded thickly in my throat, and my teeth ground together so hard my jaws ached.
“Well, it’s premature to start guessing, but after—”
“Tell me. Please. If you’re going to tell me I’m crazy, at least tell me what kind of crazy I am.”
Dr. Nelson sighed and flipped my file closed. “Your symptoms could be secondary to depression, or even severe anxiety…”
But there was something he wasn’t saying. I could see it in his eyes, and my stomach started pitching. “What else?”
“It could be some form of schizophrenia, but that’s really jumping the gun. We need to run more tests and—”
But I didn’t hear anything after that. He’d brought my life to a grinding halt with that one word, and hurtled my entire future into a bleak storm of uncertainty. Of impossibility. If I was crazy, how could I possibly be anything else? Ever.
“When can I go home?” That dark, sick feeling in my stomach was churning out of control, and all I wanted in that moment was to curl up in my own bed and go to sleep. For a very long time.
“Once we get a definite diagnosis and get your meds balanced…”
“How long?”
“Two weeks, at least.”
I stood and was almost bowled over by the hopelessness crashing over me. Would I have any friends left, if this got out? Would I be that crazy girl at school now? The one everyone whispered about? Would I even go back to school?
If I was really crazy, did it even matter?
My next four days at Lakeside made the phrase bored to death seem like a distinct possibility. If not for the note from Emma that Uncle Brendon brought, I might have given up entirely. But hearing from her, knowing that she hadn’t forgotten about me—or told anyone else where I was—brought relevance back to my life outside Lakeside. Made things matter again.
Em was still planning to humiliate Toby that weekend, and crossing her fingers that I’d be back at school in time to see it happen. And in case I wasn’t, she’d made plans to broadcast his downfall on YouTube, just for me.
That became my new goal. Doing and saying whatever it took to get out. To get back to school, and back to my life.
Nurse Nancy started each morning with the same two questions and faithfully recorded my responses on a clipboard. I saw Dr. Nelson for a few minutes every day, but he seemed more concerned with the side effects of the medication he’d prescribed than with whether or not it was actually working. In my opinion, the fact that I hadn’t had any more screaming fits was total coincidence, and not the result of any of the pills they made me take.
And the pills…
I decided early on not to ask what they were. I didn’t want to know. But I couldn’t ignore the side effects. I was groggy all the time, and spent half of the first two days sleeping.
The next time my aunt and uncle came, they brought two pairs of my own jeans and Brave New World, and I spent the next day reading it between naps. That night, Paul gave me a ballpoint pen and a legal pad, and I started writing my paper longhand, desperately missing the laptop my father had sent for my last birthday.
On my fifth night in La La Land, my aunt, uncle, and I sat on a couch in the common area. Aunt Val prattled endlessly about Sophie’s dance-team routine, and the many rounds of debate with the team’s faculty sponsor over the new uniforms: unitards or separate tops with hot pants.
I personally didn’t care if Sophie danced in the nude. In fact, the life experience might open up some interesting career opportunities for her some day. But I listened because as dull as Aunt Val’s story was, it had happened out in the real world, and I missed the real world more than I’d ever missed anything in my life.
Then, in the middle of a detailed description of the unitard in question, several simultaneous bursts of static caught my attention from the nurses’ station. I couldn’t make out the actual words coming over the two-way radios, but something unusual was obviously going down.
Moments later, shouting shattered the overmedicated hush from somewhere beyond the nurses’ station, and the main entrance buzzed. Then the door to the unit flew open, and two large men in scrubs came in carrying a guy about my age, with a firm grip on each of his arms. He refused to walk, so his bare feet trailed on the floor behind him.
The new boy was thin and lanky, and yelling his head off, though I couldn’t understand a word he said.
He was also completely nude, and trying to toss off the blanket someone had draped over his shoulders.
Aunt Val leaped to her high-heeled feet, predictably shocked. Her mouth hung open, her arms limp at her sides. Uncle Brendon’s scowl could have paralyzed anyone who saw it. And all over the unit, patients poured from their rooms to investigate the commotion.
I stayed on the couch, paralyzed with horror not only for what I saw, but for what I remembered. Had I looked like that when the aides had buckled me to the restraint bed? Had my eyes been so bright and distant-looking? My limbs so out of control?
I’d been dressed, of course, but I wouldn’t be if my next panic attack struck while I was in the shower. Would they haul me out naked and dripping to strap me to another bed?
While I watched, spellbound and horrified as the aides half pulled the newcomer through the unit, Uncle Brendon tugged Aunt Val to one corner of the now nearly empty common room. He glanced at me once, but I pretended not to notice, knowing he wouldn’t want me to hear whatever he was about to say.
“We’re handling this all wrong, Val. She shouldn’t be here,” he whispered fiercely, and inside I cheered. Schizophrenic or not—and no diagnosis had been confirmed yet—I didn’t belong at Lakeside. I had no doubt of that.
On the edge of my vision, my aunt crossed her arms over her narrow chest. “Dr. Nelson won’t let her out until…”
“I can change his mind.”
If anyone could, it would be Uncle Brendon. He could sell water to a fish.
One of the aides let go of his charge’s arm to reposition the blanket, and the new guy shoved him backward, then tried to pull free of the other aide, now shouting a random stream of curses.
“He’s not on call tonight,” Aunt Val whispered, still staring nervously at the scuffle. “You won’t be able to reach him until tomorrow.”
My uncle’s scowl deepened. “I’ll call first thing in the morning. This will be her last night here, if I have to break her out myself.”
If I weren’t afraid of drawing attention to my eavesdropping, I would have jumped up and cheered.
“Assuming she doesn’t have another…episode between now and then,” Aunt Val said, effectively raining all over my parade.
And that’s when I noticed Lydia curled up in a chair at the back of the room, face scrunched up in pain, watching all three of us rather than the scuffle up front. She made no effort to hide her eavesdropping, and even gave me a thin, sad little smile when she saw that I’d noticed her.
When the staff had the new guy under control and safely sedated in the closed restraint room, my aunt and uncle said a quick goodbye. And this time, when the unit door closed behind them, my usual bitter wash of loneliness and despair was flavored with a thin, sweet ribbon of hope.
Freedom was eight hours and a phone call away. I would celebrate with a designer jogging suit bonfire.
The next morning marked my seventh day at Lakeside, and my first waking thought was that I’d officially missed the homecoming dance. But it was hard to be too upset about that, because my second thought was that I would sleep in my own bed that night. Just knowing I was getting out made everything else look a little brighter.
Maybe I wasn’t crazy, after all. Maybe I was just prone to anxiety attacks, and the pills the doc prescribed could keep that under control. Maybe I could have a normal life—once I’d put Lakeside behind me.