Nurse Nancy started each morning with the same two questions and faithfully recorded my responses on a clipboard. I saw Dr. Nelson for a few minutes every day, but he seemed more concerned with the side effects of the medication he’d prescribed than with whether or not it was actually working. In my opinion, the fact that I hadn’t had any more screaming fits was total coincidence, and not the result of any of the pills they made me take.
And the pills…
I decided early on not to ask what they were. I didn’t want to know. But I couldn’t ignore the side effects. I was groggy all the time, and spent half of the first two days sleeping.
The next time my aunt and uncle came, they brought two pairs of my own jeans and Brave New World, and I spent the next day reading it between naps. That night, Paul gave me a ballpoint pen and a legal pad, and I started writing my paper longhand, desperately missing the laptop my father had sent for my last birthday.
On my fifth night in La La Land, my aunt, uncle, and I sat on a couch in the common area. Aunt Val prattled endlessly about Sophie’s dance-team routine, and the many rounds of debate with the team’s faculty sponsor over the new uniforms: unitards or separate tops with hot pants.
I personally didn’t care if Sophie danced in the nude. In fact, the life experience might open up some interesting career opportunities for her some day. But I listened because as dull as Aunt Val’s story was, it had happened out in the real world, and I missed the real world more than I’d ever missed anything in my life.
Then, in the middle of a detailed description of the unitard in question, several simultaneous bursts of static caught my attention from the nurses’ station. I couldn’t make out the actual words coming over the two-way radios, but something unusual was obviously going down.
Moments later, shouting shattered the overmedicated hush from somewhere beyond the nurses’ station, and the main entrance buzzed. Then the door to the unit flew open, and two large men in scrubs came in carrying a guy about my age, with a firm grip on each of his arms. He refused to walk, so his bare feet trailed on the floor behind him.
The new boy was thin and lanky, and yelling his head off, though I couldn’t understand a word he said. He was also completely nude, and trying to toss off the blanket someone had draped over his shoulders.
Aunt Val leaped to her high-heeled feet, predictably shocked. Her mouth hung open, her arms limp at her sides. Uncle Brendon’s scowl could have paralyzed anyone who saw it. And all over the unit, patients poured from their rooms to investigate the commotion.
I stayed on the couch, paralyzed with horror not only for what I saw, but for what I remembered. Had I looked like that when the aides had buckled me to the restraint bed? Had my eyes been so bright and distant-looking? My limbs so out of control?
I’d been dressed, of course, but I wouldn’t be if my next panic attack struck while I was in the shower. Would they haul me out naked and dripping to strap me to another bed?
While I watched, spellbound and horrified as the aides half pulled the newcomer through the unit, Uncle Brendon tugged Aunt Val to one corner of the now nearly empty common room. He glanced at me once, but I pretended not to notice, knowing he wouldn’t want me to hear whatever he was about to say.
“We’re handling this all wrong, Val. She shouldn’t be here,” he whispered fiercely, and inside I cheered. Schizophrenic or not—and no diagnosis had been confirmed yet—I didn’t belong at Lakeside. I had no doubt of that.
On the edge of my vision, my aunt crossed her arms over her narrow chest. “Dr. Nelson won’t let her out until…”
“I can change his mind.”
If anyone could, it would be Uncle Brendon. He could sell water to a fish.
One of the aides let go of his charge’s arm to reposition the blanket, and the new guy shoved him backward, then tried to pull free of the other aide, now shouting a random stream of curses.
“He’s not on call tonight,” Aunt Val whispered, still staring nervously at the scuffle. “You won’t be able to reach him until tomorrow.”
My uncle’s scowl deepened. “I’ll call first thing in the morning. This will be her last night here, if I have to break her out myself.”
If I weren’t afraid of drawing attention to my eavesdropping, I would have jumped up and cheered.
“Assuming she doesn’t have another…episode between now and then,” Aunt Val said, effectively raining all over my parade.
And that’s when I noticed Lydia curled up in a chair at the back of the room, face scrunched up in pain, watching all three of us rather than the scuffle up front. She made no effort to hide her eavesdropping, and even gave me a thin, sad little smile when she saw that I’d noticed her.
When the staff had the new guy under control and safely sedated in the closed restraint room, my aunt and uncle said a quick goodbye. And this time, when the unit door closed behind them, my usual bitter wash of loneliness and despair was flavored with a thin, sweet ribbon of hope.
Freedom was eight hours and a phone call away. I would celebrate with a designer jogging suit bonfire.
The next morning marked my seventh day at Lakeside, and my first waking thought was that I’d officially missed the homecoming dance. But it was hard to be too upset about that, because my second thought was that I would sleep in my own bed that night. Just knowing I was getting out made everything else look a little brighter.
Maybe I wasn’t crazy, after all. Maybe I was just prone to anxiety attacks, and the pills the doc prescribed could keep that under control. Maybe I could have a normal life—once I’d put Lakeside behind me.
I woke up before dawn and had half finished a five-hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle by the time Nurse Nancy came into the common room to ask about my gastrointestinal health and my suicidal impulses. I even smiled while I bit back a suggestion about where she could shove her clipboard.
The rest of the staff seemed to find my sudden good cheer alarming, and I swear they checked on me more often than usual. Which was pointless, because all I did was work on puzzles and stare out the window, aching for fresh air. And a doughnut. I had the worst craving for doughnuts, just because I couldn’t get one.
After breakfast, I packed all my stuff. Every stupid sparkly jogging suit and every fluffy pair of socks. My copy of Brave New World, and my handwritten, fifteen-hundred-and-twenty-two-word essay, each word counted, just to make sure. Three times.
I was ready to go.
Nurse Nancy noted my packed bag and my neatly made bed with a single raised eyebrow, but said nothing as she checked me off on her clipboard.
By lunchtime, I was fidgeting uncontrollably. I tapped my fork on the table and stared out the window, watching the visible portion of the parking lot for my uncle’s car. Or my aunt’s. Every time I glanced up, I found Lydia watching me, a silent frown painted on her face, along with a now constant grimace of pain. Whatever was wrong with her was getting worse; she had my sympathy. And I couldn’t help wondering why they didn’t give her stronger pain pills. Or if they were giving her any at all.
I’d been working on the puzzle for nearly an hour after lunch when a loud crash echoed from the boys’ hall, and startled aides took off in that direction. As they ran, that familiar grim panic grabbed me like a fist around my chest, squeezing so hard I couldn’t breathe.
Despair settled through me, bitter and sobering. No! Not again! I’m getting out today…
But not if I started screaming again. Not if they had to strap me to another bed. Not if they had to shoot me so full of drugs I slept through the next fifteen hours.
My heart pumped blood through me so fast my head spun. I stayed in my seat while the other patients stood, edging eagerly to the broad doorway. The screaming hadn’t started yet. Maybe if I stayed completely still, it wouldn’t. Maybe I could control it this time. Maybe the pills would work.
Down the hall, something heavy thudded against the walls, and dark panic bloomed inside me, leaving my heart swollen and heavy with a gri
ef I didn’t understand.
Lydia rose from her chair with her back to the boys’ hall. Her eyes closed, and she flinched. As I watched, frozen, she fell forward, bent at the waist. Her knees slammed into the vinyl tile. She held herself off the floor with one hand—the other pressed to her gut in obvious pain—and cried out softly. But no one heard her over the splinter of wood from down the hall. No one but me.
I wanted to help her but I was afraid to move. The shriek was building inside me now, fighting its way up. My throat tightened. I gripped the arms of my chair, my knuckles white with tension. The pills weren’t working. Did that mean my panic attacks were neither schizophrenia nor anxiety?
Wide-eyed, I watched as Lydia hauled herself up, using an end table for balance. One arm wrapped around her stomach, she held her free hand out to me, tears standing in her eyes. “Come on,” she whispered, then swallowed thickly. “If you want out, come with me now.”
If I weren’t busy holding back my scream, I might have choked on surprise. She could talk?
I sucked in a deep breath through my nose, then let go of the chair and slid my hand into hers. Lydia pulled me up with surprising strength, and I followed her across the room, through a gap in the cluster of patients, and down the girls’ hall, while everyone else stared in the opposite direction. She stopped once, halfway down, bent over in pain again as a horrifying screech ripped through the air from the other side of the unit.
“It’s Tyler,” she gasped as I pulled her up and pressed my free fist against my sealed lips, physically holding back my screams. “The new guy. He hurts so bad, but I can only take so much…”
I had no idea what she was talking about, and I couldn’t ask. I could only pull her forward, moving as much for her benefit now as for mine. Whatever was wrong with her was somehow connected to Tyler, so surely distance from the commotion would be as good for her as it was for me.
At the end of the hall, we stumbled into my room as the shouting grew louder. Lydia kicked the door shut. My eyes watered. A deep keening had started at the back of my throat, and I couldn’t make it stop. All I could do was hold my mouth closed and hope for the best.
Lydia dropped onto my bed and held her hands out to me, her face pale now, and damp with sweat in spite of the over-air-conditioned room. “Hurry,” she said, but as I stepped forward, that terrible grayness swept into the room from nowhere. From everywhere. It was just suddenly there, leaching color from everything, thickening with each second that high-pitched squeal leaked from my throat.
I scrambled onto the bed with her and used my shirt to wipe tears from my face. It was real! The fog was real! But that realization brought with it a bolt of true terror. If I wasn’t hallucinating, what the hell was going on?
“Give me your hands.” Lydia gasped and doubled over in pain. When she looked up again, I took her hand in my empty one, but kept my mouth covered with the other. “Normally I try to block it,” she whispered, pushing limp brown hair from her face. “But I don’t have the strength for that right now. This place is so full of pain…”
Block what? What the hell was going on? Uncertainty pitched in my stomach, almost strong enough to rival the dark fear fueling my uncontrollable keening. What was she talking about? No wonder she’d quit speaking.
Lydia closed her eyes, riding a wave of pain, then she opened them and her voice was so soft I had to strain to hear it. “I can let the pain flow naturally—that’s easiest on both of us. Or I can take it from you. That way’s faster, but sometimes I take too much. More than just pain.” She flinched again, and her gaze shifted to something over my shoulder, as if she could see through all the walls separating us from Tyler. “And I can’t give it back. But either way, it’s easier if I touch you.”
She waited expectantly, but I could only shrug and shake my head to demonstrate confusion, my lips still sealed firmly against the scream battering me from the inside.
“Close your eyes and let the pain flow,” she said, and I obeyed, because I didn’t know what else to do.
Suddenly my hand felt both hot and cold, like I had a fever and chills at the same time. Lydia’s fingers shook in mine, and I opened my eyes to find her shuddering all over. I tried to pull my hand away, but she slapped her other palm over it, holding me tight even as her teeth began to chatter. “K-keep your eyes cl-closed,” she stuttered. “No m-matter what.”
Terrified now, I closed my eyes and concentrated on holding my jaw shut. On not seeing the fog things in the back of my mind. On not feeling the thick current of agony and despair stirring through me.
And slowly, very slowly, the panic began to ebb. It was gradual at first, but then the discordant ribbon of sound leaking from me thinned into a strand as fragile as a human hair. Though the panic still built inside me, it was weaker now, and blessedly manageable thanks to whatever she was doing.
I dared a peek at Lydia to find her eyes closed, her face scrunched in pain, her forehead again shiny with sweat. Her free hand clutched a handful of her baggy T-shirt, pressing it into her stomach like she was hurt. But there was no blood, or any other sign of a wound; I looked closely to make sure.
She was funneling the panic from me somehow, and it was making her sick. And as badly as I wanted out of Lakeside, I would not take my freedom at her expense.
I still couldn’t talk, so I tried to pull my hand away, but Lydia’s eyes popped open at the first tug. “No!” She clung to my fingers, tears standing in her eyes. “I can’t stop it, and fighting only makes it hurt worse.”
The pain wouldn’t kill me, but from the looks of it, whatever she was doing might kill her. I tugged again and she swallowed thickly, then shook her head sharply.
“It hurts me, Kaylee. If you let go, I hurt worse.”
She was lying. I could see it in her eyes. She’d heard my aunt and uncle and knew that if I had another screaming fit, Uncle Brendon wouldn’t be able to get me out. Lydia was lying so I wouldn’t pull away, even though she was hurting herself worse—maybe killing herself—with every bit of panic she took from me.
At first I let her, because she seemed determined to do it. She obviously had her reasons, even if I didn’t understand them. But when the guilt became too much and I tried to pull away again, she squeezed my hand so hard it hurt.
“He’s cresting…” she whispered, and I searched her eyes in vain for a translation. I still had no idea what she was talking about. “It’s going to shift. Tyler’s pain will end, and yours will begin.”
Begin? Because it’s all been fun and games so far…
But before I could finish that thought, Lydia’s hands went limp around mine, and she relaxed so suddenly and thoroughly she almost seemed to deflate. For a precious half second, she smiled, obviously painfree, and I started to think it was over.
“He’s gone,” Lydia said softly.
Then the panic truly hit me.
What I’d felt before had only been a preview. This was the main event. The real deal. Like at the mall.
Anguish exploded inside me, a shock to my entire system. My lungs ached. My throat burned. Tears poured from my eyes. The scream bounced around in my head so fast and hard I couldn’t think.
I couldn’t hold it in. The keening started up again, more urgent than ever, and my jaws—already sore from being clenched—were no match for the renewed pressure.
“Give it to me…” Lydia said, and I opened my eyes to see her staring at me earnestly. She looked a little better. A little stronger. Not quite so pale. But if she took any more of my pain, she’d backslide. Fast and hard.
Unfortunately, I was beyond the ability to focus by then. I didn’t know whether or not to give her what she wanted, much less how to do it. I could only ride the scream jolting through me like a bolt of electricity and hope it stayed contained.
But it wouldn’t. The keening grew stronger. It thickened, until I thought I’d choke on it. My teeth vibrated beneath the relentless power of it, and I chattered like I was cold. I couldn’t hold i
t back.
Yet I couldn’t afford to let it go.
“There’s too much. It’s too slow,” Lydia moaned. She was tense, like every little movement hurt. Her hands shook again, and her face had become one continuous grimace. “I’m sorry. I have to take it.”
What? What does that mean? Her pain was obvious, and she wanted more? I pulled my hand away, but she snatched it back just as my mouth flew open. I couldn’t fight it anymore.
The scream exploded from my throat with an agonizing burst of pain, like I was vomiting nails. Yet there was no sound.
An instant after the scream began—before the sound had a chance to be heard—it was sucked back inside me by a vicious pull from deep in my gut. My mouth snapped shut. Those nails shredded my throat again on the way down. It whipped around inside me, my unheard screech, being steadily pulled out of me and into…
Lydia.
She began to convulse, but I couldn’t pry her fingers from my hand. Her eyes rolled up so high only the lower arc of her green irises showed, yet still she clung to me, pulling the last of the scream from me and into her. Pulling my pain with it.
Gone was the agony of my bruised lungs, my raw throat and my pounding head. Gone was that awful grief, that despair so encompassing I couldn’t think about anything else. Gone was the gray fog; it faded all around us while I tried to free my hand.
Then, suddenly, it was over. Her fingers fell away from mine. Her eyes closed. She fell over backward—still convulsing—before I could catch her. She hit her head on the footboard, and when I fumbled for a pillow to put under her, I realized her nose was bleeding. Dripping steadily on the blanket.
“Help!” I shouted, the first sound I’d made since the whole thing started, several endless minutes earlier. “Somebody help me!” My voice sounded funny. Slurred. Why was it so hard to talk? Why did I feel so weird? Like everything was moving in slow motion? Like my brain was packed with cotton.
Footsteps pounded down the hall toward me, then the door flew open. “What happened?” Nurse Nancy demanded, two taller female aides peering over her shoulder.