Chapter 27 #2
“Morning,” I say back, and give him the look that convinces men they’re clever. “You’ll watch me nap?”
“Read,” he corrects, nodding at the book. “No sleeping in the solarium.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll get a crick in your neck.” He pulls a face like he’s been human before. “Hurts like hell.”
I make a sound that could be sympathy. He relaxes infinitesimally and shifts his weight. The keys jangle once. He doesn’t hear them. I do. I learn their song.
Doctor Callaway arrives halfway through reading time. She sits opposite me and pretends she’s not checking the angles of the cameras. She pretends a lot of things.
“How are we?” she asks.
“I’m a delight,” I say, “but you’re better after coffee.”
“Your resting heart rate was up this morning.”
“I was thinking of boats.”
She does not react. “Any nightmares?”
“Only the good ones,” I say cheerfully, and turn a page.
We talk about the weather. We talk about the garden. I talk, which is not the same as telling. She watches, which is not the same as seeing. But she hears me say Ark again and does that little throat-flinch and I know enough.
When they take me back to my room, I count the steps.
I count the cameras. I count the badges on the staff at the main station: two blues, one white, one red.
The red is a supervisor. The red is the one who can open most of the doors.
His hair is immaculate. His shoes are sensible.
He keeps his keys on his belt loop. The white is Ralph the blushing newbie.
By the second afternoon on the new schedule, I am very, very good.
I thank everyone. I knit squares. I return the yarn neatly wrapped around the ball.
I drink the tea. I pee on schedule. I hold eye contact for precisely the right number of seconds and never longer.
I do not mention blood in the garden or men who make hands a problem.
I do not ask for the wood chipper. I ask for the citrus fertiliser with aluminium sulphate because the hydrangeas are sulking and will turn the wrong colour without it, and when Doctor Callaway brings it to me herself I make the right kind of delighted sound and tell her she’s saved the day.
She smiles. Not because the hydrangeas will be blue but because she has saved a day. Whose day, she hasn’t asked.
On the third morning, she brings a notebook and a pencil and says, “If you have dreams I want you to write them down.”
“Even if they’re wet?”
She pinches the bridge of her nose, then nods, because she will not be flustered by me in front of herself. “Even if they’re…wet.”
“I don’t dream,” I say, arranging my face into something resembling honesty.
“Not often. Not since…” I let the sentence trail.
I lower my eyes. I make my mouth small. For half a second the room tilts and I am a little girl in a place that smelled of wax and hymnals, and it is not a performance. Then it is again. “Not since before.”
She watches the shadow pass and does not pounce on it. Another point. She sets the notebook on the bedside table. “Then write what you think about,” she says. “That can be more useful.”
“What I think about is not useful,” I say. “It’s expensive.”
“We have a budget,” she says. It’s almost a joke. It lands between us and we both look at it until it skitters away under the bed.
At therapy, she tries a different tack. “We’re going to practise naming,” she says. “Feelings.”
I look at her. “Pass.”
“Kayla.”
“Doctor.”
She sighs. “When you did what you did in the garden, what did you feel?”
“Blood splatter on my face.”
“I mean, how did you feel?”
“Efficient.”
“Before.”
“Annoyed.”
“After.”
“Hungry,” I say, and when she glares I add, “For tea,” and she relents because she does not want to write the word glee on her form and have to look at it all afternoon.
She asks me to draw. I draw the hydrangea and the chipper and a man with no face. I draw a small boat with a roof and two doors, floating on an ocean that is just lines and negative space. I label it with block capitals: ARK. She looks at it for too long.
“Where did you hear that word?” she asks.
“Nursery school,” I say. “Rainbow, animals, drowning as a moral lesson. You know. Children’s stories.”
She puts the drawing in her folder very carefully. It’s the careful that gives it away. She should have tucked it in like the rest; she should have made it disappear. She treats it like evidence. I treat it like a window to the truth.
By the fourth night I’ve stolen three things: a paperclip, a hairpin, and a slice of time between the end of rounds and the start of the guard’s midnight cup of courage.
The paperclip becomes a keycard shim. The hairpin becomes a spine for my little paper flower of permission.
The slice of time becomes a shape I can step into and wear.
I don’t use any of it.
Not yet.
If you break a place too fast, it remembers. If you bend it slowly, it forgets what shape it was before.
I am patient because I am busy. There is so much to know.
Which cameras flash a red LED when they’re recording and which don’t.
Which orderlies like to talk in the corridor, and which whisper in dark doorways.
Which cupboard holds the sedatives that work quickly and which holds the ones that only look like they do.
Which doors have magnets that hum audibly and which have silent attracts that will bite my fingers if I slide a card without buying a few milliseconds with a grounded touch.
Which blind corners hold the ghosts of others who were not as good at waiting.
They bring me a new book. Not from the approved list. Someone made a mistake or a choice.
It’s a thin volume on post-war medical architecture – hideous and fascinating.
Diagrams of airflow in containment wards.
A photo of an observation room with a mirror that is not a mirror.
A chapter heading that disobeys the margins: A.R.K.
The acronym is something dead: Acute Rehabilitation Kernel.
A lie you can belief-check. But the caption under the photo has the wrong font, as if a hand changed it after printing and the ghost of the first word is still sitting beneath.
It said ARK before it said anything else.
The picture is old, the gloss scratched, the corner folded by someone who needed to find it twice.
I look at the ceiling until the camera pans away. I tuck the book under the mattress.
When Doctor Callaway comes for check-in, I am prim. I am solvable. I sit with my hands folded and my smile arranged like a weapon. She asks me if I want to add anything to my schedule.
“Yes,” I say.
“What?”
“Garden,” I say, simply.
She holds my gaze. She does not blink. “Soon,” she says.
“Tomorrow,” I counter.
“Soon,” she repeats.
We sit in that word until it becomes a room. We sit in that room until I know exactly where the windows should be.
“Fine,” I say. “Then one concession.”
She waits.
“I want to help,” I say, earnest as a sermon. “I want to be good. I want to learn.” I lower my lashes just so. “Let me in the kitchen.”
She actually laughs. It’s small, incredulous, out before she can reel it back. “Absolutely not.”
“I bake,” I say. “It soothes me.”
“You turned a man into mulch,” she says blandly. “You don’t get to make muffins.”
“You’re very judgemental for a woman who told me to finish him,” I say brightly.
She flinches. It’s tiny. It’s enough.
“I will consider supervised preparation of tea,” she says stiffly.
“Baby steps,” I say. “Toddlers. Crawling infants. Whatever gets me near the cutlery drawer.”
“No cutlery.”
“I’ll use my hands,” I say, and let the thought hang there until she has to push it away or acknowledge it.
She stands. “We’re done.”
“Doctor,” I say, as she reaches the door.
“Yes?”
“Check the hydrangeas for me,” I say. “They’re happier.”
She leaves without answering. Her shoes make reasonable sounds down the corridor.
If I close my eyes, I can see the exact place she’ll stop to write another note.
I can see the place she’ll lift her head and look at the ceiling like the answer would be printed there if only she loved order hard enough.
At lights-out, the corridor glows with quiet decisions.
A machine breathes somewhere like a patient practising.
An orderly laughs softly at a joke that will not survive scrutiny.
I put the hairpin back, and the paperclip, and the slice of time.
I tuck the acronym into the soft place behind my teeth and let it sit there, metal and promise.
“Soon,” I whisper to the room, and for once I mean it in exactly the way she did.
I lie on my side and watch the camera blink. I think about boats that aren’t boats, and gardens that aren’t innocent, and men who carry knives like prayers. I think about the hydrangeas, and the way they change colour depending on what you feed them.
I think about the day they will come for me and find the doors already open.
I think about the way I will say thank you and mean too late.