“Just some dumb joke.”
“What?” she asks.
“Oh, I was talking about his escape attempts, and I said…a joke about how he knocked Donny’s head into a wall…”
She stops and turns to me. “Do you think it’s appropriate to joke about violence toward the staff?”
I suppose I could say that he’s supposedly on so many drugs that it shouldn’t matter what I say to him, but seeing as how I’ve been saying all along that I think he’s alert, I decide to go for a simple answer—“No.”
She leads the way into his room. Patient 34 has his perfect flat affect. She checks his pupils, his pulse, his blood pressure. She runs through a few low-tech tests, poking his foot and so forth. Patient 34 passes with flying colors…if your goal is to appear barely conscious.
“Do you need me to have one of the other staff members take him over?” she asks.
Fuck.
“Of course not.” I’m on probation here. Why couldn’t I keep my big mouth shut? And it’s not like he’s going to ever get out of his huge amounts of restraints. “It must have been a twitch,” I say obediently.
She turns on her heel and heads out. Angrily. The guys in the hall return to their social media empires. I go back in and sit down on the side of 34’s bed with my back to the hall window so they can’t see my face—not that they’re watching. Still. I fight back the tears.
Maybe I really am losing it. What if the whole world is right about me and I’m wrong? That I really am messed up?
“Happy now?” I ask him.
He stares vacantly at the ceiling.
“Oh, fuck you, you fucking faker.” I take a deep breath, trying to center myself. I have to collect myself. I can’t go back out into the hall like this.
It’s my lack of sleep, that’s all.
Patient 34 just stares on and on, eyes fixed on a point on the ceiling, godlike features perfectly fucking arranged. I decide it’s the contrast that makes his golden eyes pop, because his lashes are so dark and inky.
“Fuck you for that, too,” I say. “For those lashes. Oh my God, I’ve officially sunk to a new low. A guy in a loony bin has gotten the best of me without saying a word. Oh, I’m sorry, mentally ill and dangerous ward. Is that better? Do you prefer that?”
I’m feeling all emotional, like I did with the kitten.
“Fucking kitten, I should’ve left it trapped.” I rub my eyes. “What was I doing?”
Still he stares vacantly. His lips are lush and full for a man’s. They don’t shave a lot of these guys; they just clip their beards and hair, and not really well, but somehow the slightly choppy look is awesome on 34. Like a hot post-apocalyptic warrior youth. On goes the stare. The somewhat mechanical blinking.
“Don’t even,” I say. “I know you’re there. You don’t have to playact anymore. Just don’t even.”
Nothing.
I need to get myself under control.
“If I wasn’t sleeping so shittily, maybe I wouldn’t be obsessing about the kitten,” I whisper. “Or do you think it’s the other way around? If I wasn’t obsessing about the kitten, maybe I wouldn’t be sleeping so poorly. What do you think? Or is this just like that movie.One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,right? Will I end up in here? Damn.”
I focus down on the tablet.
“It was so tiny.” I bite back the tears. I will not cry. “I never talk about the kitten, and now I’m telling you. That’s not messed up.” I take a deep breath here. “Except you don’t talk back. That would really make me look crazy! Wouldn’t Nurse Zara love me then? You should try to squeeze out a few words. That would really be some badass gaslighting.”
I feel that awareness from him, and when I look, I think I catch a flick of his eyes. Or do I?B-52 with zyzitol. It’s not improbable, it’s impossible.
I suck in a breath. “I remember once in driver’s ed, they showed this movie where it simulated if you tried to drive while on drugs. They showed this windshield, and everything was blurry except a bug that splattered there. They said, ‘If you are on drugs, you might focus on something like a bug instead of the road.’ Maybe that’s what I did back in Kabul. But it’s not like I endangered anybody.” I look at the time. I need to get to my rounds. “I couldn’t pass it by. Its little screams. I couldn’t not hear them.”
He says nothing, of course.
Myself, I laugh-cry a little. “It cost me everything. So yeah, I guess there’s that. No, that’s a good point. But I had to save it, you know? It was like I hit a wall, and I couldn’t let my fixer drive on by any more than I could’ve swallowed my own tongue. It was a physical impossibility.”