Hurrying Halliday through the door, I follow after her, marshalling my expression into a mask of calm. If anyone was really paying attention, they might have asked why two teenaged girls wearing cheerleading uniforms were letting themselves into a restricted area, but no one makes a goddamn peep.
The psych ward’s different to other wards I’ve been on in the hospital. For starters, there are no bays with curtains around them, drawn closed for privacy. We find ourselves in a long, broad corridor with pale blue walls. Doors line the corridor on either side, with small white boards tacked to the walls, detailing patient information and stats, plus any relevant medication information.
The bleach smell, overpowering everywhere else, is absent here. The plush, thick cream carpet underfoot makes it feel as though we’re walking down the hallway of a five-star hotel, not the mental health ward of a public hospital.
“I have to admit, this is way, way nicer than I imagined when I saw where we were heading,” I mutter under my breath. “God, are they piping in elevator music?”
Halliday squeaks, almost walking into the back of me in her attempt to stay close. “Dad used to say that elevator music was designed to make people crazy,” she says.
I have to agree. The bland tinkling piano notes are little too condescending for my liking. I’d probably torch the place and burn it to the ground if I had to listen to this bullshit all day long.
“Come on. She’s down here,” Halliday says, rushing down the hallway.
“I thought they wouldn’t let you back here?”
“I was allowed to sit with her for half an hour last week. Zen got really agitated when I started talking about school and they kicked me out. That’s when her mom told me not to come back for a while.”
We reach the very end of the hall, and Hal stops in front of the last door on the right. Sure enough, Zen’s name has been drawn onto the whiteboard beside the door, along with a handful of stars and smiley faces that are probably supposed to make this whole experience somehow seem less terrifying.
Self-harm risk.
Intermittent hysteria.
Catatonic intervals.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapist: Dr. Ramda-Patel (on-call)
100mg Zoloft every 6 hours.
Nembutal as needed.
Next of kin: Angela MacReady 360 545 1865 (MOTHER)
They tried to put me on antidepressants after my last encounter with Jake. The first few nights in the hospital, I woke up screaming every few hours, gulping like my airways were being closed off all over again, and Dr. Killington recommended Zoloft. I’d agreed without really thinking about it, willing to try anything if it meant that Jake’s face would be banished from my mind. The meds made me sluggish and foggy, though. They made me sweat like crazy. They also gave me insomnia instead of helping me sleep.I refused to take them after only a few days. They’d made Mom explain to me that the meds needed time to settle in my system and that usually those side effects dissipated as time went on, but I’d stood my ground. Feeling that way, so detached from the world, wouldn’t have been worth it, even if the meds had helped me sleep.
“D’you think they locked her in?” Halliday asks, staring down at the door handle like it’s a venomous snake.
“Doubt it. This isn’t prison.” I’m hesitant, though. Maybe they have locked her in. If the doctors consider her a self-harm risk—which she definitely is, if she tried to kill herself—then why wouldn’t they keep her under lock and key? It’d be bad press for the hospital if she managed to find her way up to the roof and throw herself off it. When I try the handle, however, the door opens easily and swings open. There, on the bed beneath the window, Zen, with her hair cropped unbelievably close to her skull, lies fast asleep under a dusky violet comforter, propped up on thick, fluffy pillows that I know from first-hand experience are not hospital issue. Her mom must have brought stuff from home for her. The posters on the walls; the stylized family photos in the silver frames on the windowsill; the cute stuffed elephants on the nightstand; the stack of books on the desk against the wall: all of these little touches make the room feel less sterile, but also make it seem like Zen might have moved in for the foreseeable future.
The television, mounted to the wall, is turned to some soapy teen drama, the volume down low. Halliday stands by Zen’s bedside, her eyes roaming up and down her still, almost lifeless figure, and a stab of jealousy knifes through me.
Hal never visited me in the hospital. She and Zen were friends obviously, but they were never as close and she was with me. The look of pure misery on her face now makes me want to scream at her for being absent when I needed her.
“She looks so tired,” Halliday whispers. “Maybe we shouldn’t wake her.”
It’s true that the delicate purple shadows beneath Zen’s closed eyes make her look exhausted, even in rest. I remember the weeks that followed that night in Mr. Wickman’s bathroom. All I did was sleep. I locked myself away in my room as often as I could, refusing to interact with the world. I sank into the oblivion that unconsciousness offered me, and I did everything in my power to stay that way. Sleeping eighteen hours a day, checking out of reality, was far easier than facing it. Depression affects people differently, though. Zen might struggle to pass out at all; without the drugs to keep her under, she might be plagued by insomnia.
“We’ll sit and wait a while,” I say, moving to stand by the window. I’m on edge. No way I’m going to be able to relax. My own time here aside, I’m dreading the moment when Zen stirs and wakes up. The last time I saw her, she was fighting with Rosa Jimenez, who was sawing hanks of her gorgeous afro off by the handful—settling an account between them that was long overdue. I’d felt sorry for Zen, but I’d also felt vindicated. I’d decided that she deserved the punishment, served up to her in front of the whole school, because of the way she’d treated me at Kacey’s behest. Her dogged pursuit of Alex had made me despise her even more than I already had, and it had seemed about time for karma to leap up and bite Zen in the ass. I hadn’t known then that she’d suffered the same violence at Jake’s hands that I had. When I’d found out what he and his asshole buddies had done to her, my initial response to that information still brings me a deep and harrowing shame. For one awful moment, again, I’d thought…serves her right.
She knew what he’d done to me, and she’d shunned me for it.
She’d mocked and harassed me along with the rest of the school and done nothing about the pain they’d inflicted upon me.
She’d stood by while Jake and his friends got off scott-free for assaulting me, leaving them free to do it again to someone else.
For one awful microsecond, when my anger and my hurt had gotten the better of me, it seemed only fair that they had ended up hurting someone else, and that someone else had been her.
The moment had been so fleeting that it barely even registered as a complete thought, but I knew my mind had gone there. The rank taste of such a vile, unkind thought left a sourness in my mouth that’s never really disappeared, and standing here in Zen’s room this afternoon, understanding exactly what she went through and how badly it must have scarred her, it feels like she’s going to take one look at me and know that I wished this misery upon her in a moment of weakness. No one, not even the lowest, shittiest person in the world, should have to cope with the horrors that haunt her whenever she hears the names Jacob, Cillian, Sam.