Everything is dark and rattled. My brain is an empty cavern, dank and full of nothing but echoes. I scream inside my head, and it goes from the back of my skull to the front, then bounces side to side until I’m exhausted from hearing it over and over, and I sleep.
My eyes are gummy. I want to rub at them, but my body is too heavy to move. Hmm. IV in my arm and a monitor clamped to my index finger. Left arm casted and in a sling. I want to examine the rest of myself, but it’s too much.
I should hurt. But I don’t. I feel smeary.
My mom is asleep in a hospital chair, limbs bent in an uncomfortable-looking way. There are flowers lined up by the window. I want to crawl to the windowsill and sleep there. Or arrange the plants around me. The muted colors of the medical equipment, the unpainted walls, the beeping, I can’t. I can’t.
What have I done?
I feel my eyelids sag, shades dropping against my will. But it’s not against my will. Sleep, sleep, let me wake up in a different life or not at all.
I am bleak, and the sky is incongruously blue. If the weather walked into my hospital room, I’d slap her face and demand, How dare you?
I don’t know what day of the week it is. Maybe Saturday. Maybe it is someone’s wedding day and every person there is remarking: We couldn’t have asked for better weather! and How about this gorgeous day, eh? How nice for them.
But I feel betrayed. The universe usually understands me better. I need drippy rain; I need hurricane wind to rattle the windowpanes. I need gray skies and white snow, mucked over and melty from car exhaust.
Outside, it’s hot, hazy, eye-shielding summer. Inside me, it is parched earth and desolation, and nothing will ever rebloom.
Sleep now. Gone. My short-circuiting brain and me.
My mom is looking right into my eyes. It’s dark in the room now.
“Hey, chickie,” she says, squeezing my hand.
“Hey.”
A tear drops down her cheek. “I’m so happy to see you. We’re so lucky you’re okay.”
“How long have I been here?” My voice sounds like a scratched-up record.
“A little more than forty-eight hours. You had surgery, and you’ve been heavily sedated since then. The doctors eased up on that a few hours ago to see how you do.”
I press my palm against my face. I’m not sure why that’s my first instinct—I had a helmet on, right? There’s a splintering pain in my shoulder. A sling cradles the cast on my arm. “What did I have surgery on?”
“Your humerus. You also have two broken ribs and a lot of wounds up your left side, and they had to be irrigated. You’re on a lot of pain medicine, but it might still hurt.”
“It does,” I whisper. I look down at my hospital gown and wonder what my skin looks like under there, mottled and forming scabs. I tug at the hospital sheet to see my legs. I want to know that they’re okay. The side of my left leg is covered in gauzy bandages. Only a few little spots are uncovered, little pellets of wounds like someone shot me with a gun full of gravel. “God.”
Craning my head down, I can see more gauze peeking out, over my collarbone. “And here?”
“Stitches, baby. Probably from a piece of rock on the road that you landed on. I’m sorry.” She tightens her grip on my hand. “I’m so sorry. Do you remember what happened?”
I remember everything that happened, but not as if it was me in those memories. I remember everything like it’s a movie—something I watched as an outsider. I remember what I did and what I thought, but the logic behind it all? I could never even begin to explain, so I just nod.
“Are you mad at me?” I whisper to my mom.
“No, baby. No, of course I’m not mad at you.”
“But I lied to you. I lied to your face. I stopped taking my pills.” The dull ache in my shoulder and the fuzzed-over feeling in my brain . . . I deserve them. I lied to my own mother, who tries so hard to trust me.
“It’s okay, chickie. It’s all right.”
“Am I . . .” I glance at the IV. “Am I on medicine?”
“Painkillers and a few things to hopefully make you . . . steadier.”
That explains why I can be still—like, I have to be still. Even in pain, even sluggish, it’s a bit of a relief.
“Mom.” My voice creaks, but the tears won’t come out. The medicine in my veins has dried them up. Still, my breathing sounds like sobbing as I get out the words, a desperate whisper. “What . . . if this . . . ruins . . . my life?”
“No,” she whispers back. Her tone is fierce, eyes unblinking. “This is going to ruin a few days. It might make some weeks harder. A few hard weeks in a great, big life. You can do that. We can do that. Look at Uncle Mitch. He has really tough days, but his life is so great that we’re jealous of it!”
My little sob noise almost becomes a laugh. My uncle has severe anxiety. And a sweet little apartment in San Francisco and my cousin Pip and these great friends whose laughs sound like a big, cacophonous symphony together. My mom and I lived with Mitch for a short while when I was little. I used to fight to stay awake so I could hear the group of adults laughing around the kitchen table. Mitch has his work at the museum; he has Golden Gate Park runs and wonderful food. He has medication and therapy. He’s had some hard weeks in a great, big life.
“How much longer do I have to be in here?”
She presses down on her lips, so I know this isn’t going to be good news. “Not too much longer. They want to keep you under observation.”
“Oh my God.” My eyes flick all over the place. “Could I die?”
“No, no, no,” she says, shushing me. “It’s just . . . it wasn’t clear if you crashed your scooter or if you . . . jumped off, trying to . . . hurt yourself.”
Now it’s my turn to flood my eyes with tears. I can barely get the words out. “I wasn’t. Mom, I swear.”
“I believe you, baby. It’s just that you have a . . . history.”
That scar is now covered by a cast, the scar that runs down my left wrist like a scarlet S. But I was not trying to kill myself—I really hadn’t thought that far ahead—and I don’t know how many goddamn times I have to explain this. I didn’t want to die. I was just trying to feel something. It turns out feeling a cold blade slice into your flesh and then warm blood slopping onto the floor is actually infinitely worse than feeling nothing.
I clear my throat. “I know it doesn’t make sense, but I jumped off the Vespa thinking that I wouldn’t get hurt. I wasn’t even really thinking about it. I thought . . . I was thinking about flying.”
My mom nods, processing this. Her eyes are lined in tiredness. She looks older and younger at the same time.
“As long as you’re doing okay tomorrow, the doctors need to move you to another hospital in Santa Rosa. It’s partially an insurance thing, you know, because—”
“It’s a psychiatric hospital. Right?”
“It has a psychiatry department, yes. But mostly you’ll be there to recuperate physically. They want you to have access to the psychiatric staff while you do. It’s only for a few days.” Her tears start in earnest again. “Viv, I would do anything for you—you know that, right? You’re my whole world, and I know I am not a . . . conventional mother, but I . . .”
“A conventional mother?” I give a weak laugh. “What does that mean?”
She looks embarrassed, something my mother has never been in her life—at least, not in front of me. “You know. I don’t bake chocolate chip cookies from scratch or care how late you stay up. I don’t keep tabs on you at all times or think you need lectures every day to make good choices.”
We look at each other for a few moments before I know what I want to say.
“Do you remember when I was little, when it was our turn to bring cookies to school? You bought sugar-cookie dough and let me put anything in them that I wanted.” My mind drifts back to pink sprinkles and mini marshmallows and those silver sugar balls that seem too pretty to be edible. I was always so proud that I made the cookies, that they weren’t like anyone else’s.
My mom frowns. “I remember.”
“Mom, I loved that.” More tears stream down my mom’s cheeks, and I’m unbearably sad that she feels this way. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that you have to deal with—”
“You never apologize to me about this, chickie.” She’s gripping my hands so hard now, like she can press these words right into my skin. “I’m so sorry. You’re so strong, and we’re going to figure it out. We just have to work better together. That’s what Dr. Douglas says.”
“You’ve been talking to Dr. Douglas recently?” She’s my therapist from Seattle, the one they made me see after the “suicide attempt.” At the time, I resented every moment spent in that chair. Now—I can’t explain it—I want her here. Because she already knows the worst of it, knows every hideous weed in my garden.
“Yes.” My mom doesn’t elaborate.
“Can she come here? Or can we go there?”
“Yes, we can figure that out,” she says. There’s yet another look on her face that I’ve never seen before. She looks steeled. Sure of herself. “I obviously can’t help you on my own. I should have known you weren’t taking your pills. I’m your mother. I should know how to help you better. I have to learn more, and I need to talk to her, too.”
I’m feeling so tired again, like the air above me is pushing me down so that the bed will swallow me whole. “Will we go back to Seattle?”
“We’ll talk about it, baby. When you’re feeling better, okay?”
That means yes. Good. For some reason, going back feels like the right thing. We stare at each other, and I don’t know how much time passes before I whisper, “Okay.”
But it doesn’t feel okay. I feel like I went to sleep, and my whole world changed. My summer nosedived right into the ground. I’m too tired to keep up with all this new information. I’m too tired for anything.