I stand up.
I try to remember which direction my mom went down the hall.
It takes me a moment and then I see the exit—of course, that’s the only direction she could have gone; that’s the one exit. There isn’t another one on this whole ward.
I walk toward it, but the walking is a difficult thing to manage. I feel sure I’m being faster than I am, except the tiles under my feet are changing too slowly and the window in the wall is the same window that was there before.
It takes me a long time to make it even a quarter of the way down, and it’s here that I come upon the sounds of them talking. There’s an open, unguarded door and two voices thrown out into the hallway. The first voice, the one I recognize, belongs to my mom, and the other voice, the voice that sounds only barely familiar, must be one of the doctors. They’re talking about something that confounds me at first: They’re talking about my dad. The last time I saw the guy, I was three years old, which for all intents and purposes means I have no memory of ever seeing him at all. And yet here’s my mom telling some random doctor all about him.
“And he wouldn’t come to the phone,”
she says. “And I’ve called around, but I haven’t been able to find where he’s staying since. I mean, I have no idea. He could be out on the streets again. He could be sleeping under a bridge. He probably is. I don’t know. It’s not like anyone would tell me.”
“So was there ever any diagnosis?
Did he tell you?”
“He didn’t.” She sighs and stays silent for a long while.
I’m hovering just outside the door and I wonder if she can sense I’m here. Then she starts talking again, starts saying these things she never bothered to tell me. Her own daughter. About my own dad.
“He never said anything to me about it. But there was the medication he was taking when I knew him. He left an old prescription bottle in the house when he took off, and I found it after. I remember seeing the label. Thinking, What are these for? So I looked them up.
Antipsychotics. I mean, schizophrenia, could that have been it? How could he not tell me? I know it can be hereditary.
Doctor, with Lauren, I mean she’s too young yet, but do you think—”
I lose track of the rest of it when an orderly takes my elbow and says, “Are you confused? Do you need to go sit down?”
The orderly spoke loudly enough to bring my mom to the door, and the doctor, and there’s a nurse, and there’s a shuffling patient coming this way, and some other hospital person in hospital clothes, and they all see me and they all know I heard.
My mom looks stricken.
“Lauren, do you need something?” the doctor says. I don’t know her name, but she knows mine.
“Mom, I was going to ask . . .” I settle my eyes on my mom. Apparently she thinks my absent, supposedly homeless dad is a certified lunatic and she’s been keeping this little detail from me for my whole life. “My necklace. My gray one.
Could you bring that for me from home, too?”
She glances at the doctor. The doctor nods. So she turns back to me and she says sure, she’ll look for it at home and bring it with everything else tomorrow.
“Lauren, did you—” my mom starts to say, but the doctor there beside her is shaking her head. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Lauren, honey,” my mom says instead.
I nod and make my way slowly back down the hallway to stare at the wall while sitting in an uncomfortable, antisocial vinyl chair.
— 52 —
A new day, but I haven’t been staring at the wall. I’ve been staring at the girl.