Opening the medicine cabinet, I scan the bottles until I find what I’m looking for. The sleeping pills. I am one of those people who will suffer through a blinding migraine rather than take a pill, so the bottle is still full.
Wrapping my fingers around the small narrow bottle, I use the other hand to fill a glass with water from the bathroom sink. Staring into the mirror, I see a woman who used to care about how she looked, who others might have called pretty, whose stringy hair now hangs in front of vacant eyes, her face full of dark shadows and hollows. I don’t want to be this woman anymore.
I open the cabinet again and take out another bottle, then make my way back to bed with the glass of water in one hand and two pill bottles clutched in the other.
First, I swallow the morphine left over from my surgery. The bottle is nearly half-full, so it takes a while to get them all down. I don’t rush, because I don’t want to throw up again. Then I put the empty morphine bottle in my nightstand drawer, tucked deeply into a box of tissues, and pop the lid of the other bottle. The label says to take one pill at bedtime, and not if pregnant or breastfeeding. No problem there. I shake out two little white pills, which I swallow easily with a sip of water. Then I take out two more, and do the same. And then, just to be sure they work, shake out the last one and down it goes. Sleep will not elude me today.
They say it was good my mom showed up when she did.
As strange as it sounds, I like being here. It’s busy, which means plenty of distractions. And unless I have a visitor, there are no reminders of what has put me here in the first place.
Like any other floor on the hospital, the linoleum tiles carry black scuff marks; the beeps and bells work tirelessly to disturb even the deepest, most pharmaceutically induced sleep; and the smells of rubbing alcohol and cafeteria food permeate the air. The only difference on this floor is how one gets in, or out of, the unit: through windowless doors, with high security locks. While some might feel captive here, I feel safe.
Welcome to the psychiatric ward.
It has been just over a week since I swallowed the pills. I wasn’t really trying to kill myself, despite what it says on my chart. I was simply searching for a moment of peace from the grief. I wanted to sleep without having nightmares. I was tired of the pain that lives in my chest. That’s all it was. But when you end up in the ER, rushed by ambulance and barely breathing because of a bellyful of painkillers and sleeping pills, you get a good old-fashioned stomach pumping, a charcoal chaser and two weeks in the psych ward.
Also, you get to talk a lot about how you’re feeling to perfect strangers.
“How are things today?” Dr. Rakesh, an extremely tall and thin man, midfifties I figure, with a musical accent, asks. His kind, chocolate-brown eyes are unblinking behind his wire-rimmed glasses, which are too small for his features. He takes a sip from the mug of tea beside him and waits. The tea’s peppermint notes clog my nose, reminding me of candy canes. I don’t want to think about candy canes.
Dr. Rakesh asks me this question every morning, at the beginning of our hour-long sessions. Then I hear it again, by whichever on-call doctor has the luck to be on the ward that day. Then by the nurse drawing blood to check my medication levels, by the food services delivery person and by any visitors I have. “Better” has become my response of choice. It seems positive enough, without being completely dishonest.
“Good, good,” Dr. Rakesh says. “Better is what we hope for.” I nod, and he smiles, displaying two rows of quite straight but yellowing teeth. Along with the tea’s mint, his breath carries the sour smell of a not-long-ago-smoked cigarette.
“Do you think I can get my necklace and rings back today?” The ER staff removed all my jewelry when I was admitted. And although it seems highly unlikely I’ll be able to strangle myself with my necklace, and certainly my rings pose no threat, the staff here are firm. I’ll get it all back in a week when they let me out.
As I expect, he shakes his head. “Sorry, Tegan, but we can’t give them to you until you’re released.” He sips his tea again.
I run my right thumb around the base of my left ring finger, the skin still holding a slight indentation from my engagement and wedding bands. Which makes me think of Gabe.
As if sensing the mental shift to my husband, Dr. Rakesh jumps right in. “I’d like to talk about Gabe today, if that’s okay with you?”
“Okay,” I say, pressing my thumb more deeply into the skin of my ring finger. My heart batters my chest wall with sudden fury. I don’t want to talk about Gabe. I don’t want to think about Gabe.
“Tell me your favorite story about your husband,” Dr. Rakesh says. I stare at him, and he offers a warm smile, but this time without teeth. It’s a better look for him. “I’d like you to tell me something about Gabe that makes you happy.”
I close my eyes, letting the anger dissipate before speaking. I know exactly which story to tell.
“We went to Maui after Gabe passed the bar exam. It was a gift from his parents,” I say, eyes still closed to soak up the memory without distraction. “We had surf lessons planned for the end of the trip, but then the pig thing happened.”
“The pig thing?” Dr. Rakesh asks. “I’m intrigued.”
I open my eyes. Dr. Rakesh sits forward, notepad resting on one thigh. Aside from the date at the top of the page, he has only scrawled two words. Gabe-accident. I pull my gaze away and float back to Hawaii.
“It was the day before our first surf lesson and we decided to do the drive to Hana. Have you been to Maui?”
Dr. Rakesh shakes his head. “It’s on my bucket list, though,” he says.
“You really should go,” I say. “It’s beautiful.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Anyway, Hana is a town in Maui that is completely isolated from the rest of the island. To get there you drive this superwindy highway, which is really only a narrow two-lane road,” I say. “It takes about four hours but it’s worth it. Unless you get carsick.”
Dr. Rakesh raises an eyebrow. “Noted,” he says.
“There are so many cool stops along the way, and one is this general store that’s been there since the early nineteen hundreds.” I spell the store’s Hawaiian name out when he asks so he can write it down. He’s good at feigning interest, no question.
“It’s a family business and carries everything you could ever imagine. They also have this amazing banana bread. Like, the best banana bread I’ve ever had.”
“Oh, I do love banana bread,” Dr. Rakesh says, writing the two words underneath the store’s name, and underlining them twice for good measure.
“Me, too.” I swallow against the sadness creeping up. It was such a happy time. Stuffed full of buttery banana bread and boundless love. “We were getting back into the car when we heard this high-pitched squeal. But we had no clue what it was.”
Dr. Rakesh shifts and crosses one leg over the other, leaning back in his chair. He rests the notepad against his knee and waits for me to go on.
“There
