Page 52

I looked at Lulu’s shoe again, and I thought about the blood on the lounge floor—and the blood that poured from Mary’s side.

Suddenly, anger surged through me. It wasn’t fair that someone like Sophie could try to take her own life when someone like my sister had had hers taken from her.

“Do you know how easy it was to die in the Middle Ages?” I heard myself yell. “Starvation, fever, torture, the bloody flux.” I took a deep breath. “You can cut your leg on something and die of an infection. Then there’s war, childbirth—”

“Hannah,” Lulu said, “if I could ask you to calm down a little—”

“—poisoning, burns, plague, pox—”

“Be quiet, Hannah!” Michaela hissed.

“You can be hanged for stealing bread!” I shouted.

“Enough!” Lulu said sharply.

But I didn’t care. My voice rose to a scream and I was still calling out all the ways to die when Lulu pressed the button on her lanyard for support, and Mitch came and escorted me from the room.

CHAPTER 52

I took my pills that night, just like I was supposed to, and I saw my appointed therapist Monday. Dr. Nicholas’s office was very small and windowless, and filled with the chemically sweet scent of air freshener.

“Tell me what’s new with you, Hannah,” he said. He steepled his fingers under his chin while he gazed at me thoughtfully through smudged bifocals.

Sometimes I wondered if Dr. Nicholas had studied how psychologists were supposed to look by watching movies. That didn’t mean I didn’t like him, I did. I just didn’t always like talking to him. Like today, when I had to work so hard to keep my worries about Sophie in check.

“I’ve noticed they started serving curry in the cafeteria,” I said. “That’s new.” I paused. “It’s not disgusting, either, if you can believe it.”

Dr. Nicholas nodded. He’d let me stall for a little while before he started to force the issue. I wondered how many inanities I could come up with before he cut me off with a pointed question.

“I think they painted the visitors’ bathroom, too,” I said.

I’d thought that was a meaningless observation, but Dr.Nicholas pounced on it. “What do visiting hours make you feel like?” he asked.

Shit, I walked right into that one.

The unavoidable fact was that pretty much everyone else on Ward 6 had regular visitors. Michaela’s parents came every week, bearing bags from Shake Shack or Sweetgreen. They always brought extra food, too, which Michaela handed out to people like candy canes at Christmas.

Indy’s parents lived upstate, so they only came every other week, but they called him on the ward phone every other day.

People’s boyfriends and girlfriends came, and sometimes shuffling old grandparents, and once in a blue moon you even saw someone’s kid sister with her thumb in her mouth and her eyes wide at the epic levels of dysfunction surrounding her.

Even the patients who weren’t here for long, who came in, got stuffed full of pills, and left three days later, good as new (maybe)—they had visitors, too.

I never did.

Not once.

Dr. Nicholas was waiting for me to answer.

I shrugged. “I like it fine. After the nurses check through all the bags, there’s some pretty good loot.”

“Do you ever wish you had visitors, Hannah?”

“No,” I said. The only people I really wanted to see didn’t live here. Or maybe I should say they didn’t livenow.

Dr. Nicholas took a deep breath—he was doing an excellent job of maintaining his patience—and tried his first question again, this time with slightly different phrasing. “Tell me how you think you’re doing these days.”

“I’m doing fine,” I said.I’m not thinking about Sophie. I’m not thinking about Jordan. I’m not thinking about Mary. I’m not thinking about Otto. I’m not thinking about anything anything anything ….