They say it was good my mom showed up when she did.
As strange as it sounds, I like being here. It’s busy, which means plenty of distractions. And unless I have a visitor, there are no reminders of what has put me here in the first place.
Like any other floor on the hospital, the linoleum tiles carry black scuff marks; the beeps and bells work tirelessly to disturb even the deepest, most pharmaceutically induced sleep; and the smells of rubbing alcohol and cafeteria food permeate the air. The only difference on this floor is how one gets in, or out of, the unit: through windowless doors, with high security locks. While some might feel captive here, I feel safe.
Welcome to the psychiatric ward.
It has been just over a week since I swallowed the pills. I wasn’t really trying to kill myself, despite what it says on my chart. I was simply searching for a moment of peace from the grief. I wanted to sleep without having nightmares. I was tired of the pain that lives in my chest. That’s all it was. But when you end up in the ER, rushed by ambulance and barely breathing because of a bellyful of painkillers and sleeping pills, you get a good old-fashioned stomach pumping, a charcoal chaser and two weeks in the psych ward.
Also, you get to talk a lot about how you’re feeling to perfect strangers.
“How are things today?” Dr. Rakesh, an extremely tall and thin man, midfifties I figure, with a musical accent, asks. His kind, chocolate-brown eyes are unblinking behind his wire-rimmed glasses, which are too small for his features. He takes a sip from the mug of tea beside him and waits. The tea’s peppermint notes clog my nose, reminding me of candy canes. I don’t want to think about candy canes.
Dr. Rakesh asks me this question every morning, at the beginning of our hour-long sessions. Then I hear it again, by whichever on-call doctor has the luck to be on the ward that day. Then by the nurse drawing blood to check my medication levels, by the food services delivery person and by any visitors I have. “Better” has become my response of choice. It seems positive enough, without being completely dishonest.
“Good, good,” Dr. Rakesh says. “Better is what we hope for.” I nod, and he smiles, displaying two rows of quite straight but yellowing teeth. Along with the tea’s mint, his breath carries the sour smell of a not-long-ago-smoked cigarette.
“Do you think I can get my necklace and rings back today?” The ER staff removed all my jewelry when I was admitted. And although it seems highly unlikely I’ll be able to strangle myself with my necklace, and certainly my rings pose no threat, the staff here are firm. I’ll get it all back in a week when they let me out.
As I expect, he shakes his head. “Sorry, Tegan, but we can’t give them to you until you’re released.” He sips his tea again.
I run my right thumb around the base of my left ring finger, the skin still holding a slight indentation from my engagement and wedding bands. Which makes me think of Gabe.
As if sensing the mental shift to my husband, Dr. Rakesh jumps right in. “I’d like to talk about Gabe today, if that’s okay with you?”
“Okay,” I say, pressing my thumb more deeply into the skin of my ring finger. My heart batters my chest wall with sudden fury. I don’t want to talk about Gabe. I don’t want to think about Gabe.
“Tell me your favorite story about your husband,” Dr. Rakesh says. I stare at him, and he offers a warm smile, but this time without teeth. It’s a better look for him. “I’d like you to tell me something about Gabe that makes you happy.”
I close my eyes, letting the anger dissipate before speaking. I know exactly which story to tell.
“We went to Maui after Gabe passed the bar exam. It was a gift from his parents,” I say, eyes still closed to soak up the memory without distraction. “We had surf lessons planned for the end of the trip, but then the pig thing happened.”
“The pig thing?” Dr. Rakesh asks. “I’m intrigued.”
I open my eyes. Dr. Rakesh sits forward, notepad resting on one thigh. Aside from the date at the top of the page, he has only scrawled two words. Gabe-accident. I pull my gaze away and float back to Hawaii.
“It was the day before our first surf lesson and we decided to do the drive to Hana. Have you been to Maui?”
Dr. Rakesh shakes his head. “It’s on my bucket list, though,” he says.
“You really should go,” I say. “It’s beautiful.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Anyway, Hana is a town in Maui that is completely isolated from the rest of the island. To get there you drive this superwindy highway, which is really only a narrow two-lane road,” I say. “It takes about four hours but it’s worth it. Unless you get carsick.”
Dr. Rakesh raises an eyebrow. “Noted,” he says.
“There are so many cool stops along the way, and one is this general store that’s been there since the early nineteen hundreds.” I spell the store’s Hawaiian name out when he asks so he can write it down. He’s good at feigning interest, no question.
“It’s a family business and carries everything you could ever imagine. They also have this amazing banana bread. Like, the best banana bread I’ve ever had.”
“Oh, I do love banana bread,” Dr. Rakesh says, writing the two words underneath the store’s name, and underlining them twice for good measure.
“Me, too.” I swallow against the sadness creeping up. It was such a happy time. Stuffed full of buttery banana bread and boundless love. “We were getting back into the car when we heard this high-pitched squeal. But we had no clue what it was.”
Dr. Rakesh shifts and crosses one leg over the other, leaning back in his chair. He rests the notepad against his knee and waits for me to go on.
“There was this tiny potbellied pig, no bigger than a kitten. A bunch of motorcycles were driving into the parking lot and the pig was freaking out because of the noise,” I say. “It ran in circles, squealing, and for a second it looked like it was going to become bacon.”
Dr. Rakesh grimaces slightly. “I’m a vegetarian,” he says, by way of explanation.
“Oh, sorry,” I say, but he waves the apology away.
“Did they stop?” he asks, leaning forward now.
I nod. “Just, and Gabe managed to catch the pig. Turns out it was the family pet. We got five loaves of banana bread as a thank-you,” I say, smiling.
“Do you blame Gabe for the accident?” Dr. Rakesh asks, and I’m irritated by the way he suddenly shifts gears in what I assume is an attempt to throw off my guard.
“Yes,” I respond without pause. “He was going too fast.”
He writes something down, but I can’t see what because he’s shifted the notepad up. “There was black ice that night, wasn’t there?”
I nod. He must have seen the accident report. Also, he didn’t have both hands on the wheel because one of them was up my skirt—which I was happy about.
“If he’d been driving the speed limit and the accident had happened, would you still feel it was his fault?”
Pause. “I don’t know, but that isn’t what happened.”
More writing, more nodding from the sneaky Dr. Rakesh.
“I told him to slow down,” I say, noting how weak my voice