“You’re going to be very comfortable here,” Karen says, and I wonder if that’s the highest thing I can aspire to now. Dying in comfort. “Your room is right down this wing with the other girls your age.”
She motions toward a corridor painted sky blue, and we all head that direction, a funeral procession missing the coffin. I glance into the other rooms as we pass, but I only see a patient in one of them, lying on her side, back to the hallway, arms curled protectively around herself.
My room is 211 and I pause in front of it, noticing the scratch marks where the name placard underneath has been changed many, many times. Did this room open up for me because someone got better, or worse?
“This is nice, isn’t it?” Mom waltzes past me to push open the curtains, the outside light flooding what I have to admit is, in fact, a pretty nice room. They’ve gone out of their way to make it look more like a hotel and less like a hospital. I have a sofa and a dresser to put clothes in. The sheets on the bed are extra long so that they touch the floor on both sides of the mattress, which makes it look luxurious but will also hide all the cords attached to me. Finally, the TV isn’t mounted on the ceiling, which instantly makes any room feel institutionalized.
“Yeah, not bad,” I have to agree.
Dad plops onto the sofa. “Better than at home,” he declares. And he would know, since Mom put him on it the night after I threw dinner at the wall.
I find the most important thing first—an electrical outlet—and get my laptop hooked in immediately. Mom busies herself putting away my clothes, and I take my little bag of toiletries into the bathroom, where the decorator didn’t try as hard. I guess there’s no real way to dress up handicap rails, but there’s something stark about the frank admission in this room that I might not be able to stand up and sit down without assistance.
There’s also a phone right beside the toilet.
I think I’d rather die than call for help with my pants around my ankles.
I go back out to the bedroom to find Mom and Dad looking helpless. All my things are put away, a framed picture of them from the last time they really seemed to like each other—about ten years ago—is sitting next to the TV. With my clothes out of evidence and my laptop tucked under the pillow, there’s nothing in here that says this is my room.
Until I hear the sound of the name placard being changed outside.
Now this is where Sasha Stone lives.
And probably where she’ll die.
twenty-one
I decide ten minutes into our first session at the cardiac center that I’m going to buy Amanda a T-shirt that reads, And How Does That Make You Feel? That’s been her response to everything so far, from my reaction to a very permanent-looking plastic nameplate being inserted into the Room 211 slot, to the fact that the password to the WiFi is hearthealthy.
“So yesterday was your first day here,” she says, her ankle tapping against one leg of the rolling chair she’s wheeled into my room for what she calls a sit-down even though I’m lying on the couch. “Have you met the other residents?”
I shake my head, not wanting to go into detail. Mom and Dad left after getting me settled, like this was fourth-grade camp and it would be easier for everyone if they cut the cord fast. Except at camp we were all lost and bewildered, forming groups for safety right away. Here the packs are already in place, and I’m wandering among them with half my face sewn back on, which automatically made them close ranks. I ate my dinner in a corner while pretending to read the menu that informed me how everything I eat here is perfectly calibrated to not make me spontaneously die.
“This must all be coming as quite a shock,” Amanda goes on, after making some sort of note on her pad, probably about my antisocial behavior.
“No,” I deadpan. “I’ve been expecting it.”
Amanda uncrosses her legs, and I notice that her socks don’t match. “Look,” she says, “you asked me to be here. The therapist who usually covers ER on-call would have taken one look at you and dished you off to a four-letter without thinking twice.”
“Four-letter?”
“Someone with a lot more credentials than me,” she explains.
“You’re turning into a complicated case, Sasha Stone,” Amanda goes on, chewing on the end of her eraser while she looks over her notes. “The night of the accident you told me you jumped out your bedroom window. But I’m seeing in the notes from your cardiac team now you claim it was a fall?”
“It was a fall,” I repeat the end of her question as a statement.
She looks up. Her face would be cool and collected if it wasn’t for the bit of eraser hanging off her lip. “You sure about that?”
“Yes,” I say.
“You wouldn’t just be changing your story because a suicide attempt would automatically bar you from receiving a new heart?”
“No.”
“Okay,” Amanda says agreeably. She looks back down at her notes, which I’m sure is a ploy since there are only a few lines written there.
“So . . .” She turns a page. It’s covered in writing; I spot the names Jones and Faber.
“You talked to the medics?” I blurt. Shanna’s sudden charging inside me forces the words out before my brain pulls the plug.
“Yes,” Amanda says. “How do you feel about that?”
“Fine,” I lie. I’m very good at keeping a straight face under all circumstances, but since my face’s new default is definitely un-straight I have no idea if I look confident or not.
“How would you feel if I told you that as an advocate for mental health, I’m not in agreement with the concept of those with mental issues being denied working organs?” Amanda asks.
I shrug. But I’m listening.
“Sasha,” Amanda leans forward, drops her voice. “You need a new heart; that’s the cardiac center’s job. My job is to help you, and judging by what you said to the medics, you could use it.”
“And whose job is it to monitor you?” I ask. “Someone who wouldn’t be cool with you withholding such information, I bet.”
“That’s true,” Amanda says casually. “But to be honest, I’m not terribly happy with my boss right now. Apparently your dad made a sizable donation to the ad campaign for our next tax levy. I get to rearrange my schedule—and my other patients—to fit yours.”
Amanda says get to in a tone that informs me she’s not thrilled about it, and I get the feeling Dad probably made that donation out of my college savings once he realized hospitals were my better bet in the short term.
“So I was reassigned from a court hearing today for someone I’ve been working with closely for six months to be with Sasha Stone, who answers my questions with monosyllables and sarcasm.”
“Also, I requested you,” I say quietly, eyes on the floor. I’m guessing Amanda hasn’t been requested for anything since eighth-grade lab partners, and I’m right. Her anger deflates like one of my welcome balloons, now hanging limply around knee height.
“I know,” she says, but her voice has a key change, the sharps removed. “Which I would assume means you’d rather talk to me than someone else. So let’s do the actual talking part, and skip the bullshit.”
I like the way she swears; it reminds me of Brooke.