Read Online Low by Anna Quon - Free Book Online Page B

television. Adriana stood in front of the nursing station, looking around her. The patients all seemed tired, while the nurses were energetic and chatty. Even Fiona, wisps of hair coming loose from her bun, was laughing as she worked.
    Adriana stood in front of the nursing station, looking around her. She felt like she wanted to talk to someone—well, Fiona actually—but she was almost embarrassed to admit it. Fiona was rushing around as usual. With an armful of bed linens, she called, “Upstairs, downstairs,” over her shoulder to another nurse who gave her an exaggerated grin and a wink. Adriana wondered who the upstairs people were. Not the patients surely? But who else’s bed linens would Fiona be dealing with?
    Adriana went to her room and got into bed, pulling the blankets up around her chin. The room reminded her of a shoe box, with the lid on tight. She was gripped by a wild fear that she’d never get out. But she continued to lie there, her heart beating against the ceiling, as though it would burst the lid off the place. Eventually she closed her eyes and after awhile, she fell asleep, as if it were the only solace and protection available to her in that place.
    Late in the afternoon, Adriana awoke to a knock at her door. It was Fiona. “It’s time to get up my, pretty,” she said cheerily. “Dr. Chen would like to speak to you, and I have to get your vitals first.”
    Adriana was mildly surprised to hear the doctor had a Chinese name. She folded the blankets aside and stood up shakily, then trailed Fiona to a room down the hall. Melvin was coming toward them but gave them a wide berth, crossing the hall to close Adriana’s door, firmly and quietly.
    Fiona patted the examination table. “Right up here, my love,” she said. She took the blood pressure cuff from the cart and Adriana gave her her arm with the sleeve rolled up. As Fiona pumped up the cuff, Adriana felt her heart beating on her ears.
    â€œBlood pressure’s up,” said Fiona. “Are you nervous about talking to the doctor?” she asked, confidential and friendly. Adriana shook her head slowly. “No need,” said Fiona, smiling as she peeled the cuff from Adriana’s arm. “She’s just a little bit of a thing, wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
    Fiona left Adriana in a long narrow interview room while she went to find Dr. Chen. Adriana looked around her at the vinyl covered chairs—institutional, like everything else about the place. She didn’t understand how someone thought it could be healing, to be surrounded by impersonal ugliness. Instead it left her with a stark hungover feeling, made worse by the florescent lights. And Fiona, she was like a cheerleader for this place. She was sunny and warm but Adriana would bet anything she had a golden life—a well-off husband, beautiful children—and that she shook the dust of this place off her shoes at the end of the day without a second thought.
    There was a knock on the door, and Fiona entered, followed by a petite Chinese woman with a polite and fleeting smile. Dr. Chen shook her hand and sat in the chair closest to the door, which Adriana thought she likely chose in order to be close to an escape route. When Dr. Chen smiled again, her face wrinkled in an alarming way, as though it was not accustomed to the expression. She scratched something at the top of a yellow legal pad. Adriana slumped over her hollow stomach. “So?” Dr. Chen asked. “What brought you here to hospital?”
    Adriana gaped slightly. Surely it was on her chart that she had taken an overdose. “I swallowed sleeping pills,” she said, her voice quavery and hoarse. Fiona smiled, sympathetic and encouraging.
    Dr. Chen nodded. “And… what was your intention when you swallowed those pills?” she asked, in a conversational tone. Adriana felt confused. “I wanted to die,” she said. It seemed to be the