I don’t trust my own voice, so I shake my head.
“Do you need help sitting up? Here, let me—”
The panic rises again, a flame that should have been extinguished by a helpful breath flaring instead. “Don’t touch me, please!”
Felicity stops, then leans backward, placing her hands deliberately on her knees where I can see them. I close my eyes. I haven’t looked at Monty all this while. He’s likely asleep for all he cares about me.
“What is it about the water?” Felicity asks, and I’m surprised by how gentle her voice is. It reminds me of my mother—our mother—and I have to press a hand against my eyes.
How the hell am I supposed to explain the universe I concocted in my own head somewhere between her house and town? Or perhaps somewhere between London and here? Or maybe everything since I was born has been feeding into this insanity, stacking itself like a pond icing over and over and over again until it’s strong enough to hold weight, but never truly stable. It feels like a disease, a festering gangrene or spreading infection, but in my mind, and how do you explain a disease with symptoms but no treatable source? Nothing to point at and say, Ah yes, look there, you’ve a knife in your gut, that’s your problem.
Everything would be so much easier if I had a knife in my gut.
“Have you been feeling poorly?” she asks.
“No, but . . . you said . . . you said I shouldn’t and now I can’t . . .” I’ve been crying for so long my chest is starting to convulse in painful hiccups. “Stop thinking about that.” I stare at the white wraps around both my arms, and imagine holding a knife at the peak of my wrist, Titus tricked by Aaron. All the tragedies end like this—first madness, then death. An inevitable slip down a snowy hillside. A crack in that ice you thought was strong enough to hold you.
“And if I tell you that I’m sorry I misspoke and should have explained myself better?” she asks.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Why?”
“Because . . .” I struggle to swallow. Is any part of my body working properly? “I don’t believe it. I know it’s true but it doesn’t matter . . .”
What am I saying? It doesn’t make sense even to me. It’s like trying to explain the color blue to someone who’s only seen black and white. How do you explain blue without finally giving up and saying, It’s just blue!
“My mind doesn’t work like other people’s,” I say.
“You think you have some sort of psychological ailment,” Felicity replies, and when I nod, she adds, “like our mother did.”
“I didn’t know,” I say. “I thought she was . . . we were . . . I thought we were just us. But all that time, there was something wrong with her.”
Felicity purses her lips, then holds out a hand to me. “Here, let me help you sit up. You don’t have to drink the water,” she adds. “But it would be good if we could find a way to get something in you soon.”
My head is still spinning, and I have to lean backward against the wall to stay upright. Felicity offers to help me into a chair, but I choose instead to stay on the floor, amid the ashes that have dropped from the stove, wrapped in a blanket and wishing no one was looking at me. And still crying for no reason. I swipe a hand across my face, furious. Furious I’m always crying and always angry at myself.
Felicity sits beside me on the floor, her legs crossed under her skirt. She balances the uneaten scones on the rim of the mug, then sets it on the floor between us. “Have you ever seen a doctor about your psychosis?” she asks. “Or spoken to anyone about it? Besides our mother.”
“My fiancée—Louisa.”
“A doctor, I mean. Caroline should have taken you to a doctor. Or offered you the option, at least.”
But she wouldn’t have thought of that, if her own sickness was tied to the spyglass. Why would she have considered that it might be infecting me too?
“Were you this way when you were young?” Felicity asks.
I don’t know. I can’t remember. I had had no barometer with which to measure how anxious I was compared to other children. I couldn’t remember anyone telling me I had been, or telling me I was too sensitive or worried too much or needed to calm down. I had been told all of those constantly when I was older, but I’m not sure if they were absent from my childhood because my anxiety was, or because these things look different in children, when there’s still a chance they may shed undesirable traits like winter clothes when spring arrives. “I don’t know.”
“How often do you get spells like this?” Felicity asks.
“There usually aren’t leeches.”
“Leeches aside, then,” she says.
“It’s not always this bad.”
She purses her lips, then says directly and with no room for misinterpretation, “How often is your daily living impeded by your mental illness?”
And maybe it’s not always this bad. And maybe I’m not always convinced I’ve been poisoned and my body needs to be drained of blood. And maybe it’s not always like this, but that doesn’t mean it never is, nor that what it is instead is any easier to bear.
So I tell the truth. “Every day.”
She lets out a long breath, her cheeks puffed out. “God. I’m sorry.”
I shrug. I think of Mother again, how it must have been that way for her too. Every day a new battlefield, each terrifying and confusing, but defined by the same carnage. Every day ended with a body count. “It’s not your fault I’m insane.”
“You’re not insane,” Monty says suddenly, and I jump. I’d almost forgotten he was there. I look up, and find he is not only sitting up, but on the edge of the bed. He looks like he’s ready to leap to his feet, were both his legs capable of being leaped upon, and I realize that when Felicity gave the instruction not to move, she wasn’t talking to me.
“You’re not insane,” he says again.
“Then what’s wrong with me?” I ask. “Why do I have these . . . these thoughts?” The word doesn’t feel like enough; it’s too airy, and implies I am capable of telling them apart from reality.
“Is it fear?” Felicity asks. “Though I suppose fear is elicited by an immediate threat, and it sounds as though often there isn’t one. Except those created inside your mind. So it’s fear looking for a source? Does that sound right?”
I press my fists against my forehead. “It feels like someone is shouting at me all the time, all these lies that I know are lies but I’m so terrified of what will happen if I don’t listen, and then it just gets louder and louder so that I can’t hear anything else over it all and I can’t make them stop.” I look up at Monty. “Does everyone feel this way?”
A pause, then Felicity says quietly, “Not to that extent. And not constantly. I think most people experience some degree of intrusive thoughts, but most aren’t so debilitated by it like . . .”
“Like I am,” I finish for her. “And like Mum was.”
Felicity glances at Monty. “Yes, I’d wager she lived with something similar.”
We are all three silent for a moment. I stare down at my bandaged arms, scarlet pinpricks starting to rise through the gauze. I think again of blooming fields.