And circling in the background, like a wolf padding in the shadows just beyond the range of light, is Marisa’s claim that she knows who killed my parents.
Somewhere in the middle of the night, eventually, I fall asleep, because my own phone rings and wakes me up late the next morning. It’s Monday. I should be at school right now, teaching sonnets. When I answer my phone, it’s Susannah.
“I’m at Birchwood,” she says.
“You’re not at Northside?”
“They transferred me. Bed opened up this morning. My shrink works here.”
“Okay,” I say, sitting up in my bed. I know Birchwood—it’s where Susannah has her group therapy. And she’s been admitted there before.
“Are you okay?” I ask. “Do you need anything?”
“A brand-new central nervous system and a box of Marlboros,” she says. “But I’ll settle for some clean clothes.”
THE WAITING ROOM in Birchwood is tastefully decorated with light, muted colors on the walls and carpeted floors. Glossy magazines that are only a couple of months old lie on slim wooden tables. The tables look plastic, but maybe they’re made out of actual birch wood, I don’t know.
Susannah has voluntarily committed herself. Right now she’s in Birchwood’s acute inpatient unit. This is the second time she’s been here. Birchwood is quiet and clean and the staff are very kind. I hate it. Each time I come in here, I feel like the hospital will absorb my sister somehow, suck her into a back room with strapped gurneys and soulless, smiling doctors who will keep her from ever leaving.
A nurse walks out through a secured door, Susannah trailing him. She looks pale and drawn, but steady. I stand up. “Hey,” I say, putting my hands into the back pockets of my jeans.
“You always do that,” she says.
“What?”
“Put your hands in your pockets like that.”
The nurse stands off to the side like a warder. Which is exactly what he is—making sure Susannah won’t make a break for it.
I take my hands out of my pockets and pick up a small duffel. “Got your clothes.”
The nurse steps forward, his hand out. “I’ll take that, sir,” he says. He takes the duffel bag, slings it over his shoulder, and steps back again. That gesture seems to confirm that my sister is, in fact, committed to a mental hospital, and my eyes prick and sting. I blink, determined not to cry.
“Hey,” Susannah says. She steps up to me, and the nurse tenses a bit but doesn’t move. Susannah wraps me in a hug. I can feel her collarbones press into my chest. “I’ll be okay,” she says, her voice muffled against my shoulder. I squeeze her and stroke her hair twice, not trusting my voice. She pulls away, gives me a sad smile, and then walks back to the secured door with the nurse, who punches in a code, lets my sister in, and walks in himself, the door closing behind them with an electronic chime.
I know the nurse will look through the bag and remove anything in it that she could use to harm herself, just as they did earlier with her belt. They will place those items carefully into a ziplock bag, which they will mark with her name and file in the appropriate drawer. I wish they could do the same thing with the part of her that drives her to consider jumping from bridges and sleep with fellow group-therapy members. I know they can’t, that they will never be able to pluck that out of her like a tumor or a swollen appendix and then discard it tidily, problem solved. Which may be one reason I hate this place, because I feel it’s a kind of mental health theater, like removing our shoes in airport security is supposed to make us feel safer when we get on a plane.
I stay in the waiting room for a few more moments, hating to stay and reluctant to leave. The woman at the intake desk told me Susannah has insurance, which I know is supplied by my uncle. But I don’t know how much it will cover, or what the limit is for the number of days Susannah can stay, or at what point Susannah will be responsible for costs. All questions that good citizens should be able to answer, and I don’t know a clear, definitive answer for any of them when it comes to my sister. I am afraid to ask the intake nurse anything else, to share any information, in case whatever I say conflicts with what Susannah told them. I don’t know what, if anything, would happen if I did that. Would her insurance be denied? Would she be thrown out of Birchwood? Or would she remain locked inside, a prisoner of her brother’s ignorance and inability to take care of her?
And then there’s Marisa, out there somewhere, stalking me through her phone, which is still in a drawer at my house. At what point will she stop terrorizing me via tweets and return to my house to try to get her phone? And what will I do if she does? And how in the name of all the saints and archangels and all the devils in hell does she know who killed my parents?
I take one last look around the waiting room, the soft lighting and the plastic-looking tables and the one couple sitting in a far corner, looking stunned and exhausted, the only other people on this side of the secured door.
