I AM TO BEGIN MY SESSIONS WITH THE DOCTOR in just about a week. I want to speak to someone sooner, explain to them that I do not belong here, but one of the nurses, who has braces and is named Papchi, says that they have to go through the right channels first—get me acclimated to my surroundings, process me in the computer.
I stare at the computer, which sits like a sentry at the nurses’ station. It is white and flat, and there is always someone clacking on its keys. I hate it because it’s keeping me here longer than I should be. Listen to yourself. Turning your rage onto a computer. Maybe if it pisses you off too much, you can try to kill it.
I stay in my room unless they herd me out, which is three times a day for meals and recreation. I have a roommate; her name is Sally. I laugh when she tells me, because who the hell is named Sally anymore? After that she won’t speak to me anymore. At night she turns her back to me and sleeps facing the wall.
I spend most of my hours being angry with Judah. Traitor. And where is he now? Why hasn’t he come to see me? The wound on my arm itches under the bandage. I pull it off to see what Leroy carved into my flesh. Icarus. So neat and precise, like he used a … razor blade. My razor blade. My God. It’s badly scabbing; the skin around it looks swollen and red. I’ve never wanted a tattoo, but I suppose I have one now. I ask Papchi if she knows what Icarus is, and she shakes her head. We are given computer time on Thursdays if we behave. Just thirty minutes to send out e-mails. I write an e-mail to Judah, asking him where he is and end the message signed ‘m.’ Then I type Icarus into the search bar and find an explanation of Greek mythology.
Daedalus, imprisoned with his son, Icarus, by King Minos built two pairs of wings fashioned from feathers and wax. Before Daedalus and Icarus made their escape, Daedalus warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, nor too close to the sea, but to carefully follow his path of flight across the ocean. Icarus, overcome by the giddiness of flying, soared into the sky, but, in the process, he came too close to the sun, which melted the wax. Icarus fell to his death into the Icarian sea—named for him. A tragic theme of failure, the website called it.
I touch the bandage on my arm, wondering if that is what Leroy meant to convey when he etched the words into my flesh. Failure. Nice try, little girl, but I’ve been a criminal a lot longer than you. My anger flares, flamboyant in its color. I bite it back. I have to get out of here before I can think about Leroy.
The next time I get computer time I check my e-mail and find that the message I sent to Judah has bounced back. Return to sender: E-mail address unknown. I wonder why he would close out the account, but there is no one for me to ask. I think about e-mailing Sandy, but in the end choose not to. No need to drag the Bone into things.
Finally, it is time to see the doctor. I comb my hair, though it is limp and greasy. I try to look normal, arranging my face in a neutral, bored expression. Papchi tells me that I will be seeing Dr. Saphira Elgin. “Everyone likes her,” she says. “She’s our most popular doctor. Some of the patients call her Doctor Queen!” Her voice is so cheerful.
I am given directions to her office, and I set off, shuffling down the linoleum-streaked halls in my paper slippers. I arrive outside her office, which is in the west corner of the building and the most modern. The nurses here are more cheerful, and I’ve heard each patient room has a sink. Her name sits regally on a plaque outside her door. I knock.
“Come in,” a voice calls. I push open the door, expecting someone older, more motherly and plain. Dr. Elgin is not plain. She is exotic in her beauty. Someone you see, and then quickly spin your head around to see again—a portico of otherworldliness.
“Hello,” she says. She does not extend her hand to me, but rather motions to the seat she wants me to occupy. Her voice is deep and warm; it rattles in her throat before it pours out like a smooth cognac. She’s different from the others. I realize this almost at once. She looks at me as if I’m a person she’s deeply interested in, rather than a file assigned to her by the state. If she looks at everyone like this, it’s no wonder they call her Doctor Queen. Papchi told me that she does not work at the institution full-time, but that she gives fifteen hours a week here and the rest of the time she spends at her private practice.
I wonder what compels Doctor Queen to donate her time with the truly sick people, instead of the depressed housewives and cheating husbands who no doubt visit her office. It’s probably just that, I think, smiling at her. She wants to feel like she’s actually fixing something broken.
“Hello, Dr. Elgin.”
She is unmoved by my politeness. Perhaps I can move her with my story, and, if she’s as good as they say, she can help me get out of here. I put my reservations high up on a shelf and prepare myself to like her.
“Tell me, Margo, all about yourself.”
She leans back in her chair, and I am reminded of Destiny when she stretched out, readying herself to watch a movie. I think about where to start. When I arrived here? Why I arrived here? The Bone? Judah?
“My mother was a prostitute…” I begin. I am surprised by my willingness to talk. The ease at which I verbally claim the ugliness of my life. Perhaps this is the first time someone has asked me about myself so openly. Or perhaps I have no choice but to speak, locked in this sterile place, filled with people who don’t belong in the regular world.
I tell her about the eating house, and about the men—my father, in particular, with his chunky Rolex. Then our time is up, and we both look disappointed. My confessions have made me breathless. I feel alive; my fingertips are tingling. It’s empowering, I think. To allow a stranger to know you.
“The state requires you to have four sessions a week, Margo,” she says. “I have little room for new patients, but I will move things around for you, yes?”
“Yes,” I say. “I would like that very much.”
Dr. Elgin sees me on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday each week. Tuesdays are her day off, as she even sees patients on the weekend, she tells me. I look forward to our time together. She wants to know about Judah; she is more interested in him than she is in my mother. I ask her about her life, but she is hesitant, always switching back to me, which is expected, and also why we are both here.
But one day she tells me that she used to be married. He died, widowing her before they had the chance to have children. I don’t ask her how he died, or how she feels about it. I don’t want to think that Dr. Elgin is as messed up and sad as I am. It’s better to believe that she became this purring, beautiful person, so beloved by the criminally insane that they announced her Queen of Doctors. I imagine her deceased husband being ridiculously handsome—dark, foreign skin and hazel eyes. He was tall, and he was her first love. It is why she is still single, because no one can compare to the man she had vowed to love for all her moral life. So she wears her beautiful clothes, and eats at fancy restaurants with colleagues who wear black-rimmed glasses and discuss the theories of Gestalt and Freud.
I make up stories like these for the nurses and orderlies at the hospital too. None quite as glamorous as Dr. Elgin’s, and, if you piss me off, I’ll give you a terribly lonely life with a tray table and Cup o’ Noodles.
I did all of this to survive, my soul a beaten and trembling dog. My mind a million compartments filled with holes and questions and drug-induced thoughts that were furry around the edges. Caterpillar thoughts, as Dr. Elgin would later call them. She changes my medication so that I no longer feel so thick and moody, and she brings me a little potted cactus that I keep on the windowsill of my room. I am wholly hers, intent on proving myself, fixing myself. And I should feel manipulated, because that’s what she’s doing, but I don’t care. I kind of like it here.