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Authors: Amanda Davis
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listening to the sound of my blood and my breath and the cars that sped past. It all kept time. I didnât turnaround or even look over my shoulder to see if she was following. I didnât care. I was going to push through the double doors of Gleryton Hospital and find my way to Andrea Duttonâs room.
After a while I took my hands from my ears and stuffed them in the pockets of my coat. And I kept going.
It took almost forty minutes to reach the main entrance and the closer I got the more I doubted my plan. I didnât want anyone to see me visiting Andrea Dutton, most of all Andrea Dutton herself. What if she pointed that accusatory finger again, I know what you did.
What if I ran into folks from schoolâcheerleaders, football players, all those people who Andrea knew, who she talked to and whispered with in the hall? Or what if her church group or her parents were there? What would I say to her parents?
All at once I wanted the fat girl. I stopped and turned around, but she wasnât trailing behind me as Iâd thought. I couldnât even see her big blue form off in the distance. It was just me and the empty day, sky clear, sun sinking. Afternoon fading away.
And I was there. I was at the hospital. The world was made of a million tiny choices and I held one of them in my palm.
Â
When they pumped my stomach it was in Gleryton Hospital, though I didnât remember it. The coma vigil was there and my first few days in a psych ward. Those few days I remembered, though only vaguely, in sudden shadowy images that it took a while to place. But when I pushed through those doors the smell brought it all back, fiercer and more immediate than I could ever have imagined. Gleryton Hospital smelled of ammonia and stale air and illness. It smelled of fluorescent light and color-coded pathways through the buildingâs bowels, and it smelled of hope and desperation, of midnight anxiety and catnaps and pain.
I stood in the entrance and inhaled. Things washed over me faster than I could track them. I floated and plummeted all at once. And then I turned and saw the fat girl behind me, a blue flash beyond the glass, watching me from the other side.
I went to the front desk. There were flyers under the glass on the countertop. Winstonâs Grief Counseling , one read, Helping Time Do Its Job, Helping You Move On.
âRoom twelve sixteen,â the nurse said, and pointed towards a bank of elevators.
Â
The twelfth floor had the wide hallways and cold bright lights I remembered. My stint at Gleryton swept up on me, but I shook it off. That was over, I told myself. All that had happened long ago, nearly a year ago, no one would recognize me. It was a closed chapter, a done deal. Still the speckled linoleum floors and the ceiling tiles and the rounded gray Formica nursesâ station were uncomfortably familiar.
A calm disembodied voice flooded the corridor at regular intervals. Kchshhskksh. Dr. Samuels to Radiology. Dr. Samuels to Radiology. Even this was like a newly remembered dream.
I found 1216 easily but instead of going in, I walked around the floor trying to appear inconspicuous and peeking in other rooms. There were lots of legs and feet and ends of beds. Lots of IV stands and the clattering sound of curtains being pulled back, skittering along their metal tracks. There were a few people: the occasional bored or distracted patient in a pale, flapping gown walking slowly or being pushed in a wheelchair down the hall, or just sitting there, not even taking it in anymore, their faces all the same, blank and tired. I kept going, strolling as though I knew where I was headed, my face warm, my head pounding. I wasnât quite ready to face Andrea Dutton.
I found a rest room and went in, leaning into the mirror to study my face. I looked more like me now. Which is not to say that I looked so different from the girl my mother had brought home from Berrybrook those months ago, only that now I
After a while I took my hands from my ears and stuffed them in the pockets of my coat. And I kept going.
It took almost forty minutes to reach the main entrance and the closer I got the more I doubted my plan. I didnât want anyone to see me visiting Andrea Dutton, most of all Andrea Dutton herself. What if she pointed that accusatory finger again, I know what you did.
What if I ran into folks from schoolâcheerleaders, football players, all those people who Andrea knew, who she talked to and whispered with in the hall? Or what if her church group or her parents were there? What would I say to her parents?
All at once I wanted the fat girl. I stopped and turned around, but she wasnât trailing behind me as Iâd thought. I couldnât even see her big blue form off in the distance. It was just me and the empty day, sky clear, sun sinking. Afternoon fading away.
And I was there. I was at the hospital. The world was made of a million tiny choices and I held one of them in my palm.
Â
When they pumped my stomach it was in Gleryton Hospital, though I didnât remember it. The coma vigil was there and my first few days in a psych ward. Those few days I remembered, though only vaguely, in sudden shadowy images that it took a while to place. But when I pushed through those doors the smell brought it all back, fiercer and more immediate than I could ever have imagined. Gleryton Hospital smelled of ammonia and stale air and illness. It smelled of fluorescent light and color-coded pathways through the buildingâs bowels, and it smelled of hope and desperation, of midnight anxiety and catnaps and pain.
I stood in the entrance and inhaled. Things washed over me faster than I could track them. I floated and plummeted all at once. And then I turned and saw the fat girl behind me, a blue flash beyond the glass, watching me from the other side.
I went to the front desk. There were flyers under the glass on the countertop. Winstonâs Grief Counseling , one read, Helping Time Do Its Job, Helping You Move On.
âRoom twelve sixteen,â the nurse said, and pointed towards a bank of elevators.
Â
The twelfth floor had the wide hallways and cold bright lights I remembered. My stint at Gleryton swept up on me, but I shook it off. That was over, I told myself. All that had happened long ago, nearly a year ago, no one would recognize me. It was a closed chapter, a done deal. Still the speckled linoleum floors and the ceiling tiles and the rounded gray Formica nursesâ station were uncomfortably familiar.
A calm disembodied voice flooded the corridor at regular intervals. Kchshhskksh. Dr. Samuels to Radiology. Dr. Samuels to Radiology. Even this was like a newly remembered dream.
I found 1216 easily but instead of going in, I walked around the floor trying to appear inconspicuous and peeking in other rooms. There were lots of legs and feet and ends of beds. Lots of IV stands and the clattering sound of curtains being pulled back, skittering along their metal tracks. There were a few people: the occasional bored or distracted patient in a pale, flapping gown walking slowly or being pushed in a wheelchair down the hall, or just sitting there, not even taking it in anymore, their faces all the same, blank and tired. I kept going, strolling as though I knew where I was headed, my face warm, my head pounding. I wasnât quite ready to face Andrea Dutton.
I found a rest room and went in, leaning into the mirror to study my face. I looked more like me now. Which is not to say that I looked so different from the girl my mother had brought home from Berrybrook those months ago, only that now I
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