Chapter Ten

I'd never been an inpatient at a psychiatric hospital before, but something about that place didn't feel right. The food was hospital food, but the staff was too intimately aware of our cases. The loudspeaker in the hall rang out with announcements and pages just like in any other hospital, but the kids wandered with a freedom I couldn't imagine was normal. And perhaps most perplexing was that all the other patients seemed to know we were part of Dr. Crimm's group, and therefore they moved around us the way water repelled oil in a dish. We didn't fit in and it seemed like no amount of smiling or trying was going to make us blend. Then again, I never did see any of us trying.

We sat together again at breakfast, most of us pushing our food around on our plates, Aideen not attempting to eat a thing from hers. Her hand trembled so badly she could barely hold her Spork. I took the time to look around the crowded room, not just glance, but really study the people here like I hadn't had the wherewithal to do the day before. I was expecting to see severely disturbed individuals—after all, this was a cutting-edge medical facility that focused on saving people from suicide.

But there was no one rocking in the corner, no one yelling to themselves or lashing out at someone nobody else could see like the man from my neighborhood who walked miles each day, shaking his fist and shouting as if having a heated argument with an invisible adversary beside him. There wasn't anyone who required restraints, or anyone slumped over in their chairs, heavily sedated from their need to be medicated to an extreme level. No, this was a room full of teenagers that could have been any lunchroom in any cafeteria across the United States. My eyes raced around each table, trying to read something that would convince me they were unwell.

"What do you think is wrong with the others?" I whispered to Shima as she stabbed at a cubed potato on her plate, dragging it through the ketchup and lifting her eyes to look around.

"I don't know." She paused her movement, looking at a group of girls at a table not far from us. They were laughing about something we couldn't hear. Her eyes moved from them to Aideen, who had her arms folded over her chest and was rocking slightly back and forth, biting her lip as if in pain. "We don't always show our scars on the outside, I guess."

She was right. I had been the picture of perfect before my world fell apart. Didn't I know peers who had scars on the inside? I had friends who lied, said vile, untrue things about a person they once were close to, people who stood together as a group to shred apart any dignity they could get ahold of just to get a laugh, or maybe out of fear or misunderstanding . . . I even knew a boy who hated his sister. I tucked my chin and let my eyes drop back down to my food, never more disgusted with the idea of eating than at that moment.

The worst part of my anxiety those last few months had been the depersonalization. I didn't mind the fear of heart attack. I welcomed that. Let me die. Let my heart explode inside my chest, or my lungs burn up and rob me of my ability to take in oxygen, but don't let my mind disconnect from my body. Don't let me lose control. I felt it just then; I could see my hands gripping the edge of the table, but I couldn't feel the way the rough plastic edge should have been biting into them. It was like watching the whole thing from the back row of a movie theater. I simply wasn't there.

Damien was tapping the end of his Spork on the tabletop in a fast-paced Morse code rhythm. Tap-tap-tap-tap. Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh. The soundtrack grew louder as Damien's tapping blended with the ever-present whoosh of my blood pumping insistently through my too-narrow veins. I was trapped. I couldn't get out. I couldn't get away or move or . . .

"Koralee." My name was a command. I heard it like an echo from my left, but the male who had said it was outside the field of my tunnel vision. He tried again. "Koralee."

"Stop." I managed to say. I pushed myself back from the table, noticing the way a few milks sloshed over and the trays wobbled and slid from their spots. That's the thing about depersonalization: you lose your ability to sense the world around you. I couldn't tell how hard I was pushing against anything or what the weight of it was going to be as it pushed back against me. My chair screeched as the metal grabbed the floor, raking it violently as I moved back. "Stop. Stop. Stop."

I put my hands up. I watched a stream of pure white milk fall from the table and onto the floor. Damien, who had been sitting across from me, stilled his movement, frozen as if just realizing he'd been making any noise at all. I truly believe he was unaware of the little things he did. The head tapping, the Spork code drilling, the rocking, and the information giving. It was just who he was, as much as Shima was shy and Marco was proud. It hadn't been his fault. I didn't even know what had triggered it that time. Maybe it was the uncertainty of where I was.

"Sorry," Damien said anyway, which only made me feel worse. I shook my head, or at least I was hoping my head was shaking. I stood and turned so I could leave and get away from that room, where the walls were starting to close in. I knew I was being followed, but at the time the only thing I cared about was getting away. I just needed to get to where the oxygen wasn't in such short supply so the fear would stop crawling inside my chest and slipping down my spine. And the eyes—all the eyes were on me and could see me.

I found my room and practically ran inside, closing the door behind me and sliding down against it so that my body would work as a doorstop. Screw the rules; I needed to have a minute to pull myself together. I heard a knock.

"Koralee? Marco asked tentatively. "Are you all right?" His voice was muffled but I could still understand him. I drew my legs up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. I hated that I wasn't normal anymore. I hated that I always had to run and hide instead of being able to be with kids my age and not flip out. I guess more than anything, I hated that he knew I was broken.

"I'm fine," I assured him, feeling at war with myself over whether or not I wanted to have him stay or go away.

"I'm fine, too," he answered. His voice moved closer as he sat down and rested his own back against the door. "Nothing's wrong," he added, pulling my attention out of my room and into the hallway with him. "I don't know what you're talking about." He wasn't talking to me anymore. Instead, he seemed to be stating every response I'd been giving people over the last six months, as if he'd been there. "Don't worry about me. I'm okay."

I bit my bottom lip until it hurt, feeing the warmth of tears as they slid down my flushed face. I let my head fall forward so I could rest my forehead on my knees. My chest was already shaking with my cries and I wrapped my arms tighter, wanting to be all of those things, but having no hope that I ever could be again.

"You know, Koralee, the last thing I told my dad before he died was that everything was fine." His words made my spine straighten. I wanted to hear more. I sat quietly and waited for him to go on. "At the time I thought I was lying to him. I was trying to blow him off. He hadn't been around for a while because he'd been deployed. I was angry . . . stupid, right?" His questions were spoken low and with a vulnerability that made my heart ache.

"No. What happened?" I listened for his voice, trying to distinguish it from the sounds of other kids walking by in the hallway, talking, or the squeak of a cart being moved between rooms.

"He left me home with my mom." It was a very heavily weighted sentence—I could tell from the way he delivered it. It was spoken as if it were explanation enough. He cleared his throat and I swallowed past the dryness in mine. At least my breathing was calming down. "My mom married my dad when she was just sixteen."

"Sixteen." I repeated in disbelief.

"Yeah. They were from a small town and her family didn't have a lot of money. My dad's didn't, either. The military was going to provide a better life for them." He chuckled a little and my stomach flipped at how innocent and easy it sounded even though I knew somewhere in this sweet fairytale was a fire-breathing dragon. I just wasn't sure who or what it was. "It's funny, really. Depending on who I tell the story to, they either think my father is a villain or a hero. It's the same story either way, but which role he plays is determined by the audience's projected feelings and opinions."

"Tell me the story, then, so I can choose for myself." I felt my lips curl into a smile.

"All right. So they were both poor children born to first-generation immigrants to this country. Their parents didn't speak any English, but they worked in the same town, so their children walked to school together during the day while they worked. My dad was almost two years older than my mother. He fell in love with her. He wanted more for her than what a job laboring at the factory could provide, so he found the military."

"What did your grandparents think?" I asked. "To have their son want to fight for a country they had only just moved to?"

"They were proud, actually. They wanted him to have a better life, too. He enlisted at seventeen with their consent, and as soon as he was back from boot camp, he asked for my mom's hand in marriage."

"I didn't even know that kind of thing happened anymore. Her parents said yes?"

"They did," he answered proudly. "It was a steady job with housing and benefits. Their daughter didn't have to work in the factories and could get medical care on base. It was a better life for her."

"So then why did you say it like it was a bad thing?"

He took a minute to answer and I worried that maybe he'd left. No one could see me leaning against my door talking to him, but he would look nuts sitting out there talking to himself.

"There was a lot he did for her that she never learned how to do on her own. She never cared for her car or paid a bill. She never went any further than high school so she'd never have marketable skills when we were out of the house and she had her days free. He took care of her because he loved her, but in a way he clipped her wings."

I imagined a tiny bird in a big cage, beautiful but alone. I understood why some would see Marco's father as a villain. He never invested in a future for his wife that might not have him in it. Now he was gone. "It sounds romantic and tragic all at once," I said through the door that separated us.

"That might be the best way I've ever heard it described." Marco fell silent for a moment. "He left us and I can't take care of her like he did. I love her—don't doubt that—but I'm hurting, too. I'm not as strong as he was. I'm not as forgiving or as resourceful. As much as he and I fought, I respect the lessons he taught me and the guidance he gave. We didn't agree about many things, but I never doubted that everything he did, he did because he believed it would make my life better. Well, everything except dying before I knew all there was to know from him."

"You're learning to take care of yourself," I offered quietly. "Maybe she's learning, too."

"My dad being deployed—those were the hardest times in our lives, but my mom got up every day and took care of my sister and me. She made us breakfast and took us to school. She was there when we got home and we would watch a show together after dinner and homework, or just lie around and play on our phones or virtual reality. The day we were notified that my dad was never coming home, her world stopped spinning. It froze in that horrible moment and she hasn't started moving again." He sounded wounded, like his heart was aching so intensely it made his voice hoarse.

"I'm sorry," I said, my own throat pinching tight with emotion.

"I make killer French toast. I can program the vacuum to have the entire house clean in under an hour. I know where everything is on the commissary website, and how much hamburger meat we need to have spaghetti and Sloppy Joes. I can tell you my sister's shoe size—" Marco's big intake of breath was audible through the door. I squeezed my eyes shut as a warm trail of tears dripped down my cheeks. He cleared his throat and continued, "I buy her tampons, I met with her math teacher when she started to fail, and I get mad when she doesn't turn her clothes the right way before she throws them in the laundry hamper because it makes my job of doing the laundry take more of my time. She is my sister. I want to be her brother." I felt the door wiggle behind my back as he readjusted his weight against it. "I can't be her parent."

Was his struggle much different than mine? My brother and I had our parents, but since I was the older sibling I felt responsible for him in a way. He wasn't depending on me for the things Marco' sister depended on him for, but at the very least he needed me not to make his path more difficult to navigate. If I couldn't help him along, then I wanted to get out of his way. I sniffed, wiping my tears with my shirt.

That moment with Marco was the closest I'd come to sharing my secret. The words were on my tongue, but I swallowed them down and held my demons inside with an iron fist. I couldn't give him my story, even though he'd shared his. But I could let him know he wasn't alone in the feeling of being completely fucked up. I blew out a slow breath so he wouldn't hear the evidence of my tears. "I'm not okay," I admitted. It felt good. "We're not okay."

"No, Koralee. We're not."

***Please remember to vote, comment, and share! You can also find me on Instagram