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Authors: Scott Stambach
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my reality and reflect it back to me. She was someone who could make me feel like I was not just a ghost haunting hallways. I was used to playing with chimeras, not equals. And whatâs worse, she wasnât an equal, she was a greater . She didnât belong here. She was the true Interloper. She was perfect, and perfectly awry. She was supposed to be the queen of somebodyâs two-person kingdom. And I knew nothing of fairy tales. I only knew about Gogol and the side effects of benzodiazepines.
After a few moments of mounting anxiety, I returned to reality and wheeled myself back to the Main Room to take another look, careful to check my proximity and exposure in order to see if I was at any risk of getting caught. I shifted slightly away, wheeled myself a few meters toward the north wall to make it look like I was watching TV, and looked back at her again, but only from the corner of my eyes, which now left her hands and moved down to where her legs grew out of her hospital gown. They were soft and foreign and prohibited, and I found it adorable the way her calves were swallowed by her pink socks. Then I returned to her face, which didnât betray any of the fear that I was sure she was feeling or the nausea that was building as the chemo started marching on the cells that lined her stomach. She only read intently and calmly, like someone might read a book on a Tahitian beach, free from worldly concerns. Her face was so calm that I got lost in it for a minute, like getting lost in Mona Lisaâs smile, and I forgot that I was staring at her at all and probably had a dollop of drool gathering at the corner of my mouth. She must have felt the infrared heat of my eyeballs, because she lifted her head away from the book and toward my face. I, quite predictably, panicked, unlocked my chair, turned myself around, and wheeled myself away as fast I could, which, of course, is not that fast because I only have one arm.
I saw Polina once more that day. Usually when I need to hide away, I go to my room and shut the door. But occasionally, I cannot sit still, in which case I roam the halls of the hospital until Iâve used up enough energy to pass out somewhere. Sometimes, I wheel myself into stairwells only to hum and chant gibberish because I like the sound of reverb. On that morning, I tried to go back to my room but was too muddled to stay put. So I spent the next few hours wandering the lesser-used halls. After four hours, I ran out of hallways and decided to move into stairwells. I love the second-floor stairwell most because, owing to whatever laws of physics, the reverb there is most like a nineteenth-century Russian Orthodox cathedral. This time when I opened the door, I detected the reverbic sounds of suppressed crying coming from the floor below. Of course, I knew who it was. Not many people here had enough function in their tear ducts to cry like that, and by now I knew the lachrymal fingerprints of most of the nurses. Which meant it had to be Polina. I listened for a few minutes, thinking about what I might say to her. Then I turned around and went to my room.
That night, Polina stopped being an Interloper. True Interloper status is reserved for robots and psychopaths. She had inadvertently arrived in a new unnamed category, which was far scarier than the others.
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VIII
The Three-Monthers
In my seventeen years at the asylum, the most important piece of information Iâve gathered from faking comas is that the children here fall into two categories: six-monthers and three-monthers. This is because medications are prescribed in either six- or three-month supplies. For the vast majority of us, six-month supplies are prescribed, since they are cheaper and require fewer prescriptions. We are, of course, the six-monthers. However, when a doctor deems that there is little chance that a child will make it more than a couple of months, one final three-month supply is ordered to cut down on costs. In the
After a few moments of mounting anxiety, I returned to reality and wheeled myself back to the Main Room to take another look, careful to check my proximity and exposure in order to see if I was at any risk of getting caught. I shifted slightly away, wheeled myself a few meters toward the north wall to make it look like I was watching TV, and looked back at her again, but only from the corner of my eyes, which now left her hands and moved down to where her legs grew out of her hospital gown. They were soft and foreign and prohibited, and I found it adorable the way her calves were swallowed by her pink socks. Then I returned to her face, which didnât betray any of the fear that I was sure she was feeling or the nausea that was building as the chemo started marching on the cells that lined her stomach. She only read intently and calmly, like someone might read a book on a Tahitian beach, free from worldly concerns. Her face was so calm that I got lost in it for a minute, like getting lost in Mona Lisaâs smile, and I forgot that I was staring at her at all and probably had a dollop of drool gathering at the corner of my mouth. She must have felt the infrared heat of my eyeballs, because she lifted her head away from the book and toward my face. I, quite predictably, panicked, unlocked my chair, turned myself around, and wheeled myself away as fast I could, which, of course, is not that fast because I only have one arm.
I saw Polina once more that day. Usually when I need to hide away, I go to my room and shut the door. But occasionally, I cannot sit still, in which case I roam the halls of the hospital until Iâve used up enough energy to pass out somewhere. Sometimes, I wheel myself into stairwells only to hum and chant gibberish because I like the sound of reverb. On that morning, I tried to go back to my room but was too muddled to stay put. So I spent the next few hours wandering the lesser-used halls. After four hours, I ran out of hallways and decided to move into stairwells. I love the second-floor stairwell most because, owing to whatever laws of physics, the reverb there is most like a nineteenth-century Russian Orthodox cathedral. This time when I opened the door, I detected the reverbic sounds of suppressed crying coming from the floor below. Of course, I knew who it was. Not many people here had enough function in their tear ducts to cry like that, and by now I knew the lachrymal fingerprints of most of the nurses. Which meant it had to be Polina. I listened for a few minutes, thinking about what I might say to her. Then I turned around and went to my room.
That night, Polina stopped being an Interloper. True Interloper status is reserved for robots and psychopaths. She had inadvertently arrived in a new unnamed category, which was far scarier than the others.
Â
VIII
The Three-Monthers
In my seventeen years at the asylum, the most important piece of information Iâve gathered from faking comas is that the children here fall into two categories: six-monthers and three-monthers. This is because medications are prescribed in either six- or three-month supplies. For the vast majority of us, six-month supplies are prescribed, since they are cheaper and require fewer prescriptions. We are, of course, the six-monthers. However, when a doctor deems that there is little chance that a child will make it more than a couple of months, one final three-month supply is ordered to cut down on costs. In the
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