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I crumpled the juice cup in my hands.

“She killed herself on Christmas Eve,” Michaela said.

I put my forehead down on the cool table and let all the feelings—sadness, resignation, and an awful, unexplainable relief—come over me in a rush.

Julia was dead and I was alive. This place was terrible. This place was home.

DELIA F. BELMAN MEMORIAL PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL PATIENT LOG

Date:1/18/23, 8:35 p.m.

Name:Hannah Doe

PROGRESS REPORT: Pt fully lucid and cooperative but convinced she does not need to be hospitalized. Informal exchange in lounge prior to bedtime went approximately as follows:

HD:I don’t belong here, you know. I’m fine. Perfectly fine.

RN:They found you screaming on a street corner. You didn’t know where you were. You couldn’t tell us your name.

HD:Maybe that’s true, but I’m great now. Today is January 18th, we’re in New York City, and you can get 70% off sale items at the Gap.

RN:You were barely dressed.

HD:It was a nice day.

RN:It was 29 degrees. Where did the scratches come from?

HD:Who cares? Put a Band-Aid on them and discharge me.

RN:If you’re released and you have another episode, there might not be anyone around to help you.

HD:I’m willing to try my luck.

RN:You were screaming about the castle. People were dying.

HD:Sounds to me like a good reason to be screaming.

Pt angry at not being “let go.” Stormed off with other pt, Adam “Indy” Rivera.

CHAPTER 10

Jordan Hassan is being followed.

Not by one of Belman’s actual patients—that was Day 1—but by the unit’s supervising psychiatrist, Dr. Francine Klein.

It doesn’t take him long to decide that he’d rather be trailed by someone who thinks demons have put microchips under his skin than by someone with multiple advanced degrees and the ability to dismiss him from his brand-new duties with a single word.

Does it matter that these brand-new duties are, in effect, being a glorified volunteer? That’s what his professor had called him.You’re there to learn whatever you can, but mostly to help the patients feel like they can interact with the outside world, she’d said.

She’d also said that Jordan could learn a lot from Dr. Klein, who’s one of New York’s top psychiatrists. But right now Dr. Klein isn’t saying anything to him. She’s just …walking right behindhim, silently, which is utterly nerve-racking.

But Jordan knows he’ll never pass his Abnormal Psych class, let alone get into med school, if he can’t last a week in his hospital internship, so he straightens his shoulders and walks into the patient lounge with his bag of tricks, a.k.a. the puzzles, card decks, and simple board games he’s brought to make free time with the patients pass a little faster.

A young man comes lurching toward him, dragging one of his feet behind him.

“Good morning, Andy,” Dr. Klein says amiably. “How are you feeling today?”

Andy is maybe nineteen years old, with greasy blond hair and watery blue eyes. “I’m dead,” he says. “I can feel the damn bugs inside my skin. They’re eating my liver.”