Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
AUGUST
The medication they gave me has turned the room soft around the edges.
Not soft in a good way.
Soft like rot.
Like I could press my thumb into the painted cinder-block wall and leave an indentation. Like the fluorescent lights are floating several inches below the ceiling instead of being bolted into it. Every time I blink, they drag long white tails across my vision.
They gave me something after breakfast.
Then something else when I asked what the first thing was. It’s one of the terrible things about med holds like this—they fuck up your normal meds routines and your routine in general and call it helping you.
I remember the nurse saying the name of what it was, but the word slid apart before it reached me. Too many syllables. Too much saliva gathering under my tongue.
Now my arms weigh a thousand pounds, but there’s an electrical current running beneath my skin. My body is exhausted. My mind is zappy and sprinting.
I’ve been pacing anyway.
Seven steps from the bed to the door.
Seven steps back.
Sometimes six, because the room tilts.
There’s a knock, and the door opens before I answer.
A tech stands in the gap. Marcus. He’s one of the better ones. He doesn’t talk to me like I’m five or like he’s trying to coax a rabid dog out from under a porch.
“August?”
I stop pacing. The floor takes another half second to stop moving.
“What?”
“Someone’s here to see you.”
My heart punches hard against my ribs.
Lennon.
It has to be Lennon.
She found me. She figured out where they took me. Maybe she got someone to listen. Maybe she brought a lawyer, or proof, or Owen, though no, she wouldn’t bring Owen here. She’d never let him see me like this.
Still, the thought comes bright and huge.
Lennon. Bright angel in the darkness.
“Am I leaving?”
Marcus hesitates.
That hesitation should tell me everything.
Instead, hope floods through the medicated sludge in my veins.
“There are some things that need to be discussed,” he says. “Your discharge plan. Transportation. Where you’d be staying.”
“I can stay with her.”
“We’ll talk about it out there.”
I look down at myself. Hospital pants. Rubber-soled socks. No belt. No shoelaces. My shirt hangs crooked because I missed one of the buttons.
I’m immediately flushed with embarrassment and feel like half a man.
“Can I have my clothes?”
“Not yet.”
“But I’m leaving.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You said discharge.”
“I said your discharge plan.”
The distinction scratches at something in my brain, but I can’t catch it. My thoughts keep multiplying before I can finish any of them.
Maybe this is the step before leaving.
Maybe Lennon is outside filling out paperwork.
Maybe all I have to do is stay calm.
I can stay calm.
I tell myself that as Marcus walks me down the hall.
Stay calm.
Stay calm.
Stay calm.
The phrase matches my footsteps until it doesn’t.
The consultation room door is open.
A woman sits inside with her back to me, one ankle crossed neatly over the other. Cream blouse. Dark slacks. A leather purse resting beside her chair.
Wrong wrong wrong wrong—
My feet stop.
She turns.
For one impossible second, her face doesn’t assemble correctly.
Her eyes are too far apart. Her mouth stretches wider than it should. The overhead light smears across her cheeks, and the medication makes her features swim beneath her skin.
Then they lock into place.
My mother smiles.
“There my baby is.”
The room goes cold.
No.
She stands, pressing one hand to her chest as though the sight of me hurts her.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
“No.”
My voice barely comes out.
She takes a step toward me.
I take one back.
Marcus’s hand lifts, not touching me yet.
My mother’s expression changes. Not enough for anyone else to see. Just a tiny hardening around her mouth.
A warning.
Behave.
The same look she gave me at fifteen when I cried too loudly. At nineteen when I tried to tell a doctor the medication made me feel like I was crawling out of my own body. At twenty-one when she told everyone I was confused and took my phone from my hand.
“I’ve been so worried,” she says.
There’s a social worker sitting at the table. A nurse beside her. Both watching me carefully.
My mother turns toward them with wet eyes.
“This isn’t him. You have to understand. He’s never like this when he’s stable.”
“You can’t take me.”
The social worker straightens. “August, your mother has offered to provide transportation and a safe place for you to stay once the doctor determines you’re ready for discharge.”
“No.”
“No one is discharging you today,” the nurse says quickly. “We wanted to discuss options.”
“I told them you can come home with me,” Mom says. “Just until you’re feeling more like yourself.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Her face blurs again.
The medication drags her features sideways, then snaps them back.
She looks almost pleased.
“You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I know exactly what I’m saying.”
“You’ve been very sick.”
“You helped Jake.”
The social worker glances at her.
Mom lowers her voice, gentle and mortified. “Jake called me because he was frightened. Everyone was frightened.”
“You lied.”
“August—”
“You always lie to put me back in a cage.”
Marcus says my name behind me.
I can’t look away from her.
She moves closer.
I smell her perfume. White flowers and powder. The same smell that filled the car when she drove me to the hospital the first time and promised we were only going to talk to someone.
My lungs lock.
“No.”
“I’m trying to help you.”
“Don’t touch me!”
“I’m your mother.”
Her hand reaches for my face.
The room fractures.
I lift my arms to brace my face and hide so she can’t touch me.
She cries out as though I hit her.
Chairs scrape. Marcus grabs my wrist.
“Don’t let her touch me!” I shout.
“August, lower your voice.”
“She can’t take me. She can’t take me. She can’t—”
Two more staff members appear in the doorway.
My mother backs away, one hand clutched to her chest, but I see her now. Really see her.
Not scared.
Satisfied.
She wanted this.
She knew exactly what would happen when they put her in front of me.
“She did this on purpose!”
“August, we need you to calm down.”
“She’s working with him!”
Someone takes my other arm.
I twist hard, terror burning through the fog.
“Get off me!”
“Stop resisting.”
“I’m not going with her!”
“No one is taking you anywhere.”
They’re lying.
They’re all lying because she’s standing there with that wounded-mother face, and I’m screaming, and this is the only version of us anyone ever believes.
Her calm.
My madness.
A hand presses between my shoulder blades.
My knees hit the floor.
Pain flashes white.
“August,” Marcus says near my ear. “Stop fighting us.”
“She’s not safe.”
“We’re going to take you back to your room.”
“Ask Lennon.” My cheek scrapes the tile as they force my arms behind me. “Call Lennon. She knows. She knows what they did.”
My mother says something soft behind us.
I only catch the end.
“—exactly what I was afraid of.”
A strap closes around one wrist.
Then the other.
Something inside me tears loose.
I scream.
Not words anymore. Just sound.
They lift me beneath the arms and drag me backward into the hall, my rubber socks skidding uselessly against the floor.
My mother remains framed in the doorway.
Smaller and smaller as they pull me away.
Her face is blurry again.
But her smile isn’t.