The door opens and Dad pulls Mom away from the bed as I grab for her hands, her fingers still cool and wet from the washcloth.
“Stop it, stop,” Dad is yelling, and I think it’s at me. “This was not a good idea. You shouldn’t be alone with her.”
I’ve got a good grip on Mom’s wrist, and I’m not giving her up so easily. I yank her back toward me, and she knocks into my IV tree. It crashes to the ground, tearing the needle out of the soft inner flesh of my elbow and sending a spray of cold fluid and warm blood across all of us.
“You’ll get sick, you’ll get sick, you’ll get sick,” I’m screaming now, up on my knees on the bed, swiping at Mom’s face with the washcloth, trying to get her clean so that she’s not infected by me, by Shanna.
“Goddamn it, nurse! Nurse!” Dad is yelling as he pulls Mom, who has become a bag of flesh and bones that drags at his feet, out into the hallway.
Amanda pins my wrists above me on the bed as Karen rushes in, slamming the door behind her. I glimpse faces in the hallway, Brandy and Layla have their arms around each other, Jo’s mouth is hanging open, and Nadine is standing on her tiptoes to get a better view.
“What the fuck?” Karen says, which goes so far against everything I know about her that I start laughing.
“Sasha,” Amanda puts her face down to mine, her voice calm and steady. “You need to listen to me. If you want me to let go of you, you’ll have to calm down. I cannot let go of you until you’re safe and everyone around you is safe.”
She readjusts her grip on my wrists and leans in closer. I can tell she had a cheeseburger with onions for lunch, and I can’t even be disgusted by her breath because I’m so jealous of the fact that she got to eat it in the first place.
“Got her?” Karen asks, and Amanda nods, not looking away from me.
There’s a brush of coolness against my bicep as Karen swipes me with an antiseptic pad, and I get a glimpse of her frown as she stabs a needle in. I close my eyes as the sedative takes hold, not wanting to see how she’s gone from a zero to a five on the pain scale, and I’m the cause. Usually I get a warning before the poke, but I must have really messed up this time because she didn’t say a word, just jabbed me.
“It’s not my fault,” I tell Amanda, but her grip on me doesn’t let up.
“She’s causing a scene and—” Karen begins, and I squeeze my eyes shut even tighter.
“Stop,” Amanda cuts her off, and the bones in my wrist are ground together a little bit but I don’t complain. She’s the only person on my side now.
“She’s upsetting my other patients—”
“Stop,” Amanda says again, leaving no room for argument. Karen makes a noise in her throat, and I wish I could close my ears too. I hear the door open, the sound of Mom’s muted crying from down the hallway, and then it clicks closed again.
“Sasha, can I let go of you now?”
I lick my lips and nod. The pressure is gone, and the feeling of warmth emanating from her over me disappears.
“You can open your eyes,” she says, and I do, peeling them open to see her sitting in the chair at the foot of my bed, her head in her hands.
“Oops,” I say.
She looks up at me, spreading her fingers apart so that I can see her eyes. “Jesus, Sasha. What am I supposed to do with you?”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I say, and her head goes back down.
“Seriously,” I tell her. “The other girls got in a fight and I . . . I . . .”
“You held your breath until you passed out because you didn’t want to hear what was being said to you,” Amanda says into her hands.
“No,” I correct her. “That is not what happened.”
She sighs and her arms flop into her lap, like they’re too heavy for her to hold up anymore. “Look, I don’t know if I can make a convincing argument to keep you here, not after what just happened.”
“And what just happened, exactly?” I ask.
“You created a disturbance that upset other patients.”
“Technically my dad created the disturbance. All I was trying to do was talk to my mom after having a medical issue.”
Amanda nods slightly, and I feel myself nodding along with her to encourage the movement. “Okay,” she says. “I might be able to work with that. But you’re going to have to do something for me.”
I’m still nodding so she thinks I’m agreeable.
“Remember the mirror therapy they used with Brandy’s foot, the one you told me about?”
“Yeah,” I say, ignoring the feeling of my phone vibrating under my pillow.
“Do you remember what you said you thought you’d see if you looked into one?”
“Yeah.” The phone gives a last, insistent pulse and falls silent. “I said I’d see Shanna.”
Amanda picks her keys up from the floor, where apparently she’d dropped them at some point in the tussle. “I made a mirror box for you,” she says. “It’s out in my car.”
My throat goes hollow, my neck muscles stiff. I cannot agree or dissent.
“I want you to look into it, okay? If I’m going to put myself out on the line to keep you here I need you to do this for me.”
“Okay,” I say, the word coming from nowhere, an automatic muscle response of agreement.
Amanda stands up slowly, eyes on me. “I’m going to check on your parents and send Karen in here to sit with you.”
“I’m fine,” I say, another gut reaction. There is nothing wrong with me.
“I don’t know if that’s—”
“I said I’m fine, and I said I’ll do it,” I snap.
“I’ll be right back,” she says, and the utter silence of the hallway as she slips away reminds me of kindergarten after the teacher bawled somebody out and everyone else is trying to be really, really good to make up for it.
It’s shock and I know it. Other people’s shock gathers together and quiets them, a comfort of sorts, making it easier for everyone to process what happened, what I did, the cause and effect that probably sent the Civil War reenactors home early and canceled the woolies entirely.
There’s a jingle of keys and Amanda is back, a cardboard box in her arms with a picture of a cheap microwave on it.
“Seriously?” I say.
“I’m working with available materials around my apartment,” she says, and places it on my side table.
“You need to ask for a raise then,” I tell her. “That’s a crap microwave.”
Amanda shakes her head. “Sasha Stone, you have no idea.”
She smiles at me and I take a deep breath, my chest shaky. “Are my parents still here?”
“They’re not far,” she says. “Are you ready?”
I’m not, but it doesn’t matter. I wasn’t ready to fall for Isaac Harver or have my face smashed open or a tree branch in my lung or have my friends tell me I’m a bitch or Heath say he doesn’t care if I die. I’m not ready, but I know what I’m supposed to do. I know what Amanda wants Sasha Stone to do. And Sasha Stone is a good girl, and I am going to be exactly that, again. I run my bed controls so that I’m sitting up as Amanda pulls the side table over next to me, swinging the tabletop so that the box is across my lap.