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But Jordan could practically start clapping. Hannah has just admitted that she might have a problem. That the issue isn’t that no one believes her, but that she actually needs help.

In other words, she might be beginning to acknowledge that she’s not a time traveler. That she’s a person with a mental illness.

“Maybe there are things about myself that I just don’t want to know,” she practically yells. “Don’t you ever feel that way?”

“No,” he says quietly. “I want to know everything.”

“Well I guess that’s why you’re in college and I’m in a psychiatric institution,” she says bitterly. “I can’t talk anymore. I have to go.”

But she doesn’t move from where she’s sitting. She wraps her arms around her legs and puts her head down.

Because she doesn’t mean she has to leave. She means that she has to go to the castle.

CHAPTER 82

My name is Hannah Dory, and I have saved us.

Everyone is so happy. Everyone loves me.

I am the one who brought the food. Eight full carts of it, and more whenever there is need.

Mother forgives me for Mary’s death. Erik Rast forgives me for Otto’s.

Conn laughs and grows fat.

Ryia is pregnant again.

When the baron looks at me, his eyes seem to glow.

CHAPTER 83

Jordan’s been staring at his computer for so long that he can barely read the letters on the screen anymore. The cursor blinks steadily, endlessly. He feels like time could stop, and the cursor would still keep disappearing, reappearing, and then disappearing again forever.

I GO TO THE CASTLE: A CASE STUDY IN SCHIZOPHRENIA

by Jordan Hassan CC’25

“The barriers to combating schizophrenia include lack of research funding, public disinterest in (or aversion to) the problem, and the nearly infinite complexities of the human brain itself ….”

—Dr. Ximena Jones,The Many Voices of Schizophrenia

“Go, go, go, said the bird.

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”

—T. S. Eliot,The Four Quartets

The first time I saw Hannah D., a patient at Delia F. Belman Memorial Psychiatric Hospital, she was strapped to a gurney in the back of an ambulance.

When hospital staff released her restraints, she made a break for it. And I was the one who caught her.

What follows is her story. And mine.

Jordan rubs his eyes and takes a sip of the instant coffee that he made with warm water from the bathroom tap. If Hannah thinks that Belman coffee’s terrible, she should try this brew. It’s practically poisonous.

After impulsively deciding to take a break from writing his thesis, Jordan walks down the hall into the common room of his dormitory. A few students are flopped here and there on the overstuffed couches. Jordan can’t help but notice the room’s sharp-edged tables, breakable glass windows, and regular doorknobs. None of these things would be allowed on the Belman ward. Hell, even a hardcover book or a spiral-bound notebook is considered a potential weapon at Belman.

The girl who reminded him of Hannah is studying at her usual table, her hair twisted into a knot on the top of her head and held in place with a chopstick. Jordan makes another sudden decision and sits down across from her. Her attention doesn’t stray from the papers in front of her.