Last night’s events trail behind me like a ghost.
I didn’t get a wink of sleep and now I’m paying for it. My eyes feel heavy. They keep opening and closing, over and over again. Evelyn didn’t sleep much either, but that’s my fault. I held her in my arms all night, paranoid that Kate or the night shift doctor would stop by my room for an impromptu visit and either knock me out with medicine or steal my daughter.
The phone rings loudly. Everyone stops talking and glances at it. Reagan, who’s been pacing in front of it for the past thirty minutes, pounces.
There are two forms of outside contact: visiting hours and the phone.
Everyone, and I mean everyone, vies for the phone. Besides board games and television this is the most coveted piece of entertainment here. It’s a beige wall phone with a cord that has been stretched so much over the years it practically skims the floor.
Reagan cradles the receiver between her shoulder and cheek and leans against the wall looking like a teenage girl talking to her crush. In a sugary-sweet voice she says, “Thank you for calling Fairfax Behavioral Health Unit, where we don’t condone murder, or thoughts of murder, but the doctors will shove enough pills down your throat to choke a horse. How may I help you?”
She stares down at the floor for a second and then rolls her eyes. She holds the phone away from her, not bothering to cover the speaker, and points to Alice. “It’s for you.”
Alice stands up. She turns pale. “Who is it?”
“Satan. He wants to know why you’re not manning the portal to hell,” Reagan replies deadpan.
Alice rolls her eyes and Reagan cracks up laughing until tears are streaming down her face. “Oh, that was good. I needed that….I needed that.” Then she glances at the new girl. “Stella!” she screams dramatically. “STELLLA, it’s for you!”
A new girl jumps out from her chair and snatches the phone. “God. I’m right here,” she hisses before she places the phone next to her ear and faces the wall.
Reagan shrugs and starts to make laps around the room. She’s always mischievous, with a gleam in her eyes. But today she’s edgy, staring everyone down, looking for a fight.
“I’m so fucking bored!” she announces dramatically as she weaves around the tables.
A few patients look up, but no one really pays attention to her.
She spins a chair backward and straddles it, sitting directly across from me, and points to the wall. “There’s something wrong with that clock.”
The nurse doesn’t even bother to look in the clock’s direction. “No, there isn’t.”
“There is! It was twelve fifteen when I walked in. I’m pretty sure hours have gone by and look. It says only twelve twenty!”
I have to agree with Reagan. If anything it feels like the clock is moving backward just to taunt us.
“I repeat, there’s nothing wrong with the clock,” replies the nurse. “And if you’re really that bored why don’t you go to art class. It starts in fifteen.”
“Art class?” Reagan claps her hands and gives the nurse a mocking smile. “Enough with all the choices! I’m so excited I’m about to queef out a unicorn riding on a rainbow.”
The nurse spins on her heels and walks away.
I keep my eyes glued to the page in front of me. I’ve been rereading the same page over and over for the past forty minutes, just waiting for the words to string themselves together and for me to slip into the beautiful world of the story. But it’s not working; there’s a black cloud over my head, leaving me in the foulest mood. I want to lash out at anyone who looks my way. It would probably be in my best interest—and that of everyone around me—if I stayed in my room today, but I can’t sit still even if I try.
Normally when I’m this nervous, I have Evelyn to comfort me. To hold and to hug. But for the first time she’s with one of the nurses and now I’m starting to regret my decision. It sounded great this morning. Evelyn had spent the entire night wailing in my ear. It didn’t matter how many times I comforted her. It was as though she too understood Wes’s parting words to me, and now doesn’t trust me.
Susan, one of the kind nurses here, offered to watch Evelyn. She said that sometimes moms need a moment to themselves. So I agreed. Her shock was visible. Normally, I would never let anyone take care of Evelyn. But Susan held her arms out, and very gently I placed Evelyn in them. Almost instantly the tears stopped.
The silence was deafening and since then all I can hear are Wes’s words echoing around me: “Maybe you’re the villain in the story of us….Maybe you’re the villain in the story of us….Maybe you’re the villain in the story of us….”
Reagan leans back until her chair taps against Xander’s. His reason for being at Fairfax is unknown. I just know that he talks to pretty much everyone and he’s been here longer than I have. Reagan says none too quietly, “What are you doing?”
“Quietly reading!” Xander shouts back. “You should try it sometime.”
“You guys,” a nurse warns. “Keep it down.”
Reagan catches me staring. Her chair lands on all four legs loudly, making me flinch. She rests her chin on the back of the chair and stares at me. “Whatcha doin’?”
“Watching you talk to Xander.”
“How long have you been here?” she asks out of nowhere.
“A long time,” I reply tersely.
“How long?” she repeats. “Four years? Five? Two? Gimme a ballpark figure.”
If this is her way of striking up a conversation she needs to do better. Anger simmers inside me, just begging to rise to the surface. I try my hardest to push it down. “Does it really matter?”
“Of course it does. One month in this place is the equivalent of a decade in prison.”
I bite down on my tongue to keep from saying something I know I’ll regret later. It’s obvious I don’t want to talk to Reagan. Yet she stays put, and stares at me.
“How’s your daughter?”
“Fine.”
“Where is she?”
I sit up straight and glare at her. “With the nurse.”
“So not only is Fairfax a loony bin, it’s also a fucking daycare center. How quaint.”
I don’t respond.
“We should have a sign made for outside. I can see it now.” She spreads her hands in the air, as if a rainbow will appear between them. “ ‘Fairfax: Making your kids crazy one day at a time.’ ”
Reagan’s words run alongside Alice’s perfectly: “Fairfax is no place for a baby.”
The very thought makes my anger grow.
I should take deep breaths. Smile and pretend she’s not there. But my world is in a downward spiral and I’d love to wrap my hands around Reagan’s neck just to get her to shut up.
“I’m dying to know why you’re here,” she says.
Before I go, I place my hands on the table and lean in. “The cardinal rule at Fairfax is to never ask someone how they got here, why they’re here, and how long they’ve been here. And something tells me this isn’t the first time you’ve been to a place like Fairfax. Surely you know the rules of the game by now.”
I know my words touch a nerve. Her eyes slightly widen before she smiles slowly. “That’s a fucked-up thing to say.”
I shrug. There’s a good chance I might be sorry later, but not right now.
“Here’s why I think you’re here. You wanna know?”
I walk away and say over my shoulder, “No.”
“I think you’re here because you’re weak!” she shouts. I stop walking. The blood drains from my face. I don’t turn around but I can feel Reagan’s smile on my back.
“Yes, that’s right, you’re weak. You walk around like you own this fucking place, thinking your facsimile life is perfect, but the truth is you’re weak and spineless. You’re a victim.”
Victim. Reagan spits the word out like it’s poison.
I can’t take it anymore and whip my body around. “Shut up.”
Reagan smiles and jumps out of her chair. She stands behind another patient. “Talks to her hand. Doesn’t know the days. Crazy.”
She runs to the next table, slides into an open seat, and points to a woman staring at the clock. “She thinks the year is 1993. Kurt Cobain is still singing and Clinton is president. She’s a goner.”
Then she slowly stands and looks me in the eyes. “But you? You see you. You speak. You are here. Yet you cower to everyone around you. A single challenge becomes a roadblock and you give up. All you do is carry that stupid baby around—”
Reagan is crazy. Reagan is loud, always making jokes and pointing out the problems with everyone else just so no one will look at her and take notice of her issues. I know all this and yet I rush back over to where she stands. I’ve taken the bait.
“Shut up!”
“You can change her stupid fucking diaper. You can feed her and sing her all the nursery rhymes you want. But it won’t change a thing. You want to know why?” She leans in close. “Because you’re a bad mom.”
Xander swears under his breath. He’s not laughing. Susan is in the nurses’ station but she stands slowly from her chair, watching Reagan with a critical eye. Alice smiles.
Do not take the bait, I tell myself. It’s a trap.
But I can’t. Two words keep echoing in my head: Bad mom. Bad mom. Bad mom. They become louder until it feels like they’re being shouted into my ear with a megaphone.
Reagan sees my turmoil. She laughs, slowly at first, and soon she’s clutching her gut, tears streaming down her face she’s laughing so hard.
The color red leaks into my vision. It’s all I can see. The anger inside me, which has been simmering for days, finally comes to the surface. It bursts so abruptly that I have no time to think about my actions.
I climb over the table and tackle Reagan to the floor. I’ve taken her off guard and knock the wind out of her. I use it to my advantage.
Shouts and screams echo around me. Chairs scrape against the floor. There’s the shuffle of people moving. Yet I don’t stop. My hands wrap around her throat and I squeeze as hard as I can.
“What about you, Reagan?” I pant. “Tell me your fucked-up story.”
Her face is turning blue. I keep squeezing, even when I see the fear in her eyes. I press my thumbs deeper into her skin.
“Tell me what you’re running from,” I demand.
I’m going to let go. I swear. I just want to show her that she’s gone too far. But someone’s hands land on my shoulders. “Victoria!” Sinclair shouts behind me. Where did he come from? “Let go.”
He tries to pry my hands away from her, but I have the strength of twenty men.
“Tell me!” I scream at her. Reagan weakly slaps at my hands. Her legs kick beneath me.
It takes him two more tries before Sinclair finally pulls me back. He holds my wrists together, behind my back, like I’m a criminal.
My heart is pounding against my ribs. I can’t catch my breath, and you know what? It feels good.
“You know nothing about me, you stupid bitch!” I yell.
Reagan sits up with the help of two nurses. Color slowly comes back into her face. She greedily sucks up all the air she can and then starts laughing uncontrollably. “Bravo! You’ve come alive, Victoria.”
“You are a fucking psychopath.”
Reagan looks wounded by my words. I smile breathlessly and open my mouth to say more. I have hundreds of insults lined up, just waiting to be said. Who knew I have so much pent-up anger?
I’m ripped out of Sinclair’s grasp. Two nurses drag me farther away from Reagan. I kick my legs, trying to fight them. Sinclair stares at me with pain in his eyes and I know it’s because of me. I brought that pain to him. I start to panic. He’s seen me snap. He’ll never come back. I’ll be alone when I’m just now seeing what we were.
“Sinclair,” I say. He says nothing. “Sinclair. I’m sorry.”
The nurses push me down the hall, toward the women’s ward.
“Sinclair, I’m sorry!” I scream.
The doors open, and with all my strength I turn to escape the nurses’ grasp. But they have a firm hold on me. The doors slam shut and Sinclair’s face is gone.
I go limp and let the nurses drag me into my room. They put me on the bed and I stare up at the ceiling. I feel numb.
Before the door shuts, one of the nurses tentatively asks, “Do you want Evelyn?”
I turn my head.
There should be a desperate urge inside me to see my child, there should, but there isn’t. I picture holding her and every time I look down at her face, there’s nothing there. What if she was there during the fight? In my dark haze of anger would I have still protected her? I want to say yes. But something holds me back. I’ve never had anger that strong and powerful that I become a completely different person.
Maybe I did the right thing by handing her over to the nurse. That’s the only silver lining in this entire ordeal.
“No.”
The door shuts behind the nurse and I curl into a ball.
I feel myself coming apart at the seams.