“Stop, okay?” My tone turns sharp, but she should know better by now. I know Jonah is so darling, and that is why thinking about him makes me feel like I could sweat through my hospital gown. Because he is just so goddamn nice to me, and I want him to react like a normal person and stay away from me. I’m the riptide, and he’s a moon-eyed fool. Honestly, that kid has no sense of self-preservation. “Can you just help me get dressed? I’m not going to my appointment in hospital garb.”
My mom brought me a few of her dresses. They’re loose caftans that go easily over the cast and don’t touch the bandages on my leg, and she helps me into my favorite one, pain shooting down my collarbone where the stitches are. There’s no mirror in my room, but the dress feels good, at least.
It swishes against my legs as a nurse walks me down the hallway. I hate that I hobble a little, but my left leg is so stiff and scabbed.
The therapist is older than I expected—dark skin and a white beard and a sweater. He looks pleasant but no-nonsense, like an aging fisherman.
“Hi, Vivi,” he says, shaking my hand. “I’m Dr. Brooks.”
“Hello.” I glance around for biographical information. The degree on the wall says his name is Malone Christopher Brooks.
He smiles as we sit down, but I’m still looking for—I don’t know. Pictures of kids or even a dog. I hate that he has a file on me and I know nothing about him.
“So. Tell me how you’re feeling.”
Trapped, guilty, embarrassed, foggy from painkillers. “I’m fine.”
“Good,” he says, not buying it. “So, let’s get to it. Your doctor in Seattle diagnosed you with bipolar II disorder last March. Do you accept that?”
What the heck kind of question is that? I wonder for a moment if he’s going to officially change my diagnosis to bipolar I. “I don’t really want to.”
“Accept the diagnosis? Or have bipolar disorder?”
“Both. But before you say it, I know. Depression, hypomanic episode in March, depression after the hypomanic episode, then new medicine and manic again the past”—I almost say week. Two weeks? I don’t even know—“time. So I know I have it, okay? Classic symptoms.”
“Well,” he says, setting his file down. “There are baseline symptoms, but it varies so much from person to person, and I’d like to know what it means for you. So can you talk about what your hypomanic episode in March was like?”
I take in his kind, open face, and something slithery in me wants to shock him.
“Oh, can I. Well, let’s see! I went to a concert where I felt high even though I actually wasn’t, until I was, and I went home with a girl I met there—a tattoo artist. I dreamed up a watercolor lotus the next morning, and she inked it onto my side. My mom was working all hours at her studio, but we got into a throw-down screaming match when she realized I hadn’t come home.” He’s still nodding solemnly, jotting this down. Just wait, doctor. I’m only getting started. “I somehow managed to get myself to my friend Ruby’s birthday party after buying her a three-hundred-dollar purse on a whim. I did shots and smoked with near-strangers. And then I slept with my friend Amala’s ex-boyfriend in her bedroom. There was another guy, too, that night.”
He isn’t nodding anymore. His hand stops writing.
“Everyone just figured I got really drunk. And, well . . . you went to high school.” I give him what I hope is a sardonic smile. “You can imagine what people called me after that. The next day, I told my mom that I needed to turn myself into the police, raving that I was a terrible person who didn’t deserve to be free. And surprise! My mom took me straight to Dr. Douglas after that.”
It takes him a few seconds to recover. “That must have been horrible for you. How did you feel?”
Mortified. Violated. Which doesn’t necessarily make sense because I wanted to do all the things I did at the time—more than wanted. Needed. That’s what it felt like.
“Dr. Brooks, I would wear a potato sack for the rest of my life if I could erase the hurt I caused people while . . . hypomanic.” Is that the right word, even? I apparently have this thing, and I don’t even know the language for it. “You don’t know me, so you don’t understand how much it would pain me to wear the same thing every day—let alone burlap.”
“What about the hurt this has caused you, Vivi?”
After the first day back in therapy, Dr. Douglas sent me for an emergency contraceptive and an STD screening. And I was so depressed—so fucking depressed—that I didn’t even feel relieved when the tests came back negative.
I got medical leave from school. If I want to finish high school on time, I’ll have to do summer classes next year.
When I don’t respond, the doctor inclines his head toward me. “Did you tell people? That you were experiencing hypomania? That your actions were affected by bipolar disorder?”
“No. I . . .” I didn’t really believe, at the time, that I had bipolar disorder? That saying I did would have felt like an excuse that even I didn’t believe? Amala was so humiliated, and I ruined Ruby’s birthday party, and I have this perfect mental image of Amala sobbing, screaming at me on the front lawn, while Ruby had one arm wrapped around her shoulder. I walked miles and miles away from Ruby’s house, all the way back to my house. “I didn’t.”