Song had Teo bring up my stuff, as well as a folding chair, a card table, and a box containing an air mattress twice the size of anything I’d slept on in the past two years. While Song inflated the mattress with an electric pump, her offspring sat with his chubby legs sticking out of a round rubber chair, gnawing a slimy fist and trying to figure out what exactly I was. I found myself profoundly disinterested in him.
“Someone gave me a baby monitor I don’t use,” said Song, looking at my legs with concern. “Do you want me to set it up so that you can call for me if you have any problems?”
I swallowed down a sudden rush of indignation and -managed to keep my tone polite. “I’ll be fine,” I said. She took the hint and left as soon as the mattress was inflated.
? ? ?
It hadn’t occurred to me until the sun started going down that the same windows that let in light could let in a lot of darkness, too. It was a cloudy night without moon or stars, just a velvety blackness that seemed to press in at the windows. By the time I was finished rolling down all the shades, my back and hips were aching fiercely. I allowed myself the luxury of a single Vicodin just to get to sleep. I took off my legs and went through the routine—checking the sockets for cracks and scratches, checking the stumps of my left thigh and right shin—and then went to bed.
Even drugged, I didn’t sleep well. The old house was full of strange sounds, not the least of which was the susurration of leaves outside my windows. I imagined them whispering to one another: That’s her—that’s the thoughtless girl who broke a dozen perfectly good branches on her way to the pavement.
I didn’t remember the fall; I didn’t even remember the roof. The last thing I remembered was the smoky iodine smell of whiskey dripping down the wall of my room. I’d been trying to finish off the Laphroaig Professor Scott had given me, since I knew we’d never share it again. But I got too sick to finish. I shattered the bottle against the wall and stood there staring, wishing I could shatter all of it: the truths Scott had told me to reel me in, the lies he’d told the whole department to shut me out.
I couldn’t think of it, not if I wanted to go forward. I tried the mindfulness exercise Dr. Davis had been teaching me, following my breath in and out. Eventually I slipped down into fitful dreams of snakes and broken glass, only to wake from a shockingly vivid nightmare that a vortex of null space had appeared where the ceiling used to be. Like an idiot, I woke calling for a nurse; it was a good thing I had refused the baby monitor.
Even awake, I found I couldn’t shake my terror of the high ceiling; I was afraid to even look up at it, afraid of seeing a mind-numbing, gut-curdling nothingness. I did some more mindfulness work and reminded myself that if I couldn’t -handle this, I’d have to check back into the hospital.
At the rate I was burning through my dad’s inheritance, I had maybe six months left of that fallback. Eventually I was going to have to enter the workforce again, unless I planned on living under a bridge or jumping off one. The latter wasn’t really an option for me anymore now that I’d lived to see strangers coping with the aftermath of my last attempt. Suicide is not a way of ending pain; it’s just a way of redistributing it.
By about two in the morning, I dropped off pretty solidly. Even with the shades rolled down, morning crept in the way I’d hoped: a soft rosy kiss to wake me. The house was silent now, the night wind having died down and those other layabouts still in bed.
I’d been too freaked out to take a shower the night before, and morning showers don’t allow enough drying time to don my prosthetics. So I just put on my legs and my bathrobe, made my slow, careful way down to the kitchen, and bullied the vintage coffeemaker into doing my bidding. The tortoiseshell cat was there, but it kept its distance, lone ear flicking nervously back and forth. Under the kitchen lights I could see the graying of its fur and the crimp in its tail; it was a decrepit wreck, just like the rest of the house. I felt right at home.
“Well, look who sneaked down to the kitchen!” chirped Gloria as she came in fully dressed, pink foam rollers in her hair. At the sound of her voice, the cat darted away. I briefly considered doing the same.
“I, uh, didn’t want to wake anyone,” I said.
“Bless your heart. Minnie, right, like the mouse?”
“Millie, actually,” I corrected her, feeling freakishly tall as she went by.
“And just where are you off to so early?”
“Nowhere, really; just couldn’t sleep.” I watched her rummage through the pantry for a box of cereal. Aside from the rollers and a lack of lipstick, she looked ready to green-light a three-picture deal. “How about you?” I ventured.