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I went to “breakfast” wearing my scrubs, hair completely dry already. I kept touching it like I forgot what I did. I wasn’t hungry but they placed a giant tray in front of me so I moved the grits around with a fork.

“You’re new?” a woman asked me.

“Yes.”

She yelled out into the hallway like it was only the two of us in there.

“Is Morris doing consults today?”

“Yes,” another woman walked in the room. White. Overweight. “He will be starting about 9:30.”

The black woman who had first asked me if I was new eyed my bracelet. Still red.

“Until Dr. Morris gets here, you gotta hang out where I can see you.”
“No problem.”
I moved some grits around with my spoon.
“And you gotta eat,” she tossed over her shoulder.

The clock read 7:45. What would I do until 11:30? I examined my hard boiled egg, my carton of milk, my dietary restrictions (I’ll choke) being completely ignored again. What shall I do with all this tiiiime? I sat and stared. There was a couple syrupy peaches I ate. I drank the water. I noticed nothing and sat alone facing a wall. Every once in a while, I noticed the male attendant out of the corner of my eye checking me out. It wasn’t just the red bracelet. It was everything.

At 8:15, Shaina came back over. I know her name because she said I’m Shaina and stared at me.
“You’re not hungry?”
“I’m vegan.”
Shaina kind of lifted her eyebrows and paused.
“You may have a hard time in here.”

Maybe it’s the doe eyes or the white privilege or the red bracelet or the fact that there was still some faint permanent marker on the back of my shaved head; some child’s scrawl of desperation, a love not that made the applesauce keep appearing but when I blinked she had returned with it.
“I’ll see what I can do about lunch,” she set it down. “And don’t go anywhere,” she added as she took the rest of my tray leaving only the half drank apple juice box.

Being delivered in a tiny medicine cup, I drank the water in one gulp. I slurped the juice box in two sips. Liquids didn’t give me as much pause. No mistake day. Shaina bussed the tables which gave me something to watch for the next twenty minutes. No one talked that morning and I immediately took the blame. I felt like I was the cause of some rift between the two staff: male and female and that they weren’t saying anything because I was in the room. The news was on in the background. A forecast of doom; something about Israel, something about Sudan, something about Trump. An endless propaganda trough that I couldn’t turn off and I wanted to politely ask Shaina if she though it was better to have nothing but then maybe she was the one who wanted it.

“Excuse me,” I meekly began.
With women it was different. It’s about acqueiscence.
“Do you think you can turn off the TV or change the channel?”
“Yeah,” she reached into her pocket for the remote. “This is garbage anyway.”
No mistake day.

By 9:45, I was deep in contemplation. No mistake days put a lot of external pressure on me to perform correctly. When Dr. Morris called me in, and he hadn’t arrived yet,  I had been watching the door, I would have to choose one path and stick to it. One story, one story told in linear order would have to flow effortlessly from my mouth. I lean towards desultory. It’s not that I don’t want passion, it’s that I am completely apathetic to any consequence or windfall that hits me. I once told a girlfriend of mine that I was worried people didn’t like me sometimes, and she responded by saying, really? I could never tell if you even liked me. your apathy is chilling. Don’t start there.

“Sadia.”

This is the problem with magical thinking. One of the resident doctors appeared out of nowhere in the doorway of the cafeteria. I had been sitting here for almost an hour quietly thinking and trying not to mumble. The attendant had been on his phone most of the time and no one had bothered me. Was I muttering?

“Dr. Morris is on his way and wants me to start the interview,” the man approached me slightly. “My name is Aarav.”

He stuck his hand out and I reached but realized I had the juice box straw still clasped in my palm.

“Excuse me,” I looked at my hands. “I’d like to wash my hands first.”
“Of course,” and he gestured to the doorway.

I said nothing as he led me down the hall to the bathroom. I am always careful about what I say even though I will go into long tangents at a time. I choose each word deliberately. I choose each story carefully. I pick where I go with vocabulary and inflection even if I wander through life carelessly.

“You’re perfunctory,” a gentleman once told me.

Do not start there. Indifference is a sociopath. Start with feeling. Aarav waited outside of my room while I washed my hands. Taking my time, I scrubbed in between my fingers today, longer than usual. It felt good to have the water pour over them like that. Sensation. A returning hunger for touch. Apathy. I’m cool to the touch. No, she said really? I never thought  you cared. Your complete indifference to everyone is so strong sometimes it hurts. That’s what my friend said. Sometimes it hurts.

“I will do anything to avoid getting carried away
sleep nightly with coins over my eyes
set fire to an entire zodiac.”

-kaveh akbar

God keep me tethered to this earth.

I remember a particular harrowing incident. perhaps it wasn’t clear to anyone involved in my life at the moment but it was my head that was doing it. this was years before the second DUI, before the ankle bracelet, before the mandatory breaths. my partner and I, my now ex that just bailed me out, used to steal liquor from the hotel we worked at and sit on the beach and drink. tonight, it was everclear and slurpee. my choice.I had been explaining to him again, inexplicably, how death is following me everywhere I go and that I need some answers.

“What do you mean answers?” he asked.
“Answers,” I repeated, looking over at him. “About this.”

I was sloshing my slurpee and waving it around, emphasizing how great this all was before I just began charging into the ocean with my clothes on. I was always so sudden like that it was hard to keep a grip on me. My poor mother. I never forgave her for being so smothering of me but at the time, it made sense. She had to watch me every second or I would be off in the deep end at the pool with no water wings, climbing the high dive, climbing the giant slide, hobbling to the lake with my sprained ankle.

“We cannot keep you away from water,” she said dragging me into the house after I had jumped head first into a mud puddle after a bath. “How did you sneak out?”

I was up to my thighs hearing my partner call for me, worried tone, anxious and alone on the blanket. I kept walking until it hit my waist and then my chest and heard him screaming. I didn’t want to come back that night. The waves were quiet and the tide was relatively low. I walked up to my neck and then let my head go under, my partner screaming in the background. No, the first time I asked nature to take me was not the night I totaled my car. When I went to get it from the impound lot thinking it was still driveable, they all looked aghast by my question.

“Can I drive it out of here?”
“Ma’am, you’re gonna have to tow it out of here. The entire front end is demolished, shot. There is battery acid all over the car.”
“But will it start?”
He took me to look at it and I cried. It had been a nice car.
“The airbags didn’t deploy though,” he said as if it had a meaning I understood.
Gritted I was and trying to hold back temper, “Well that means I just fucking hit my head harder.”
“You’re gonna have to tow it,” he walked away, uncomfortable.
But to where?

“How to forget everything day 64”

grace is the bruise the ankle bracelet leaves so you can work your regular job as a caregiver for those with intellectual disabilities, and the time they give you, the “grace period,” to get from your job to the grocery store in case you need to get dinner. I always needed something. I went to the grocery store everyday to get vegan hot dogs and buns and ketchup even if I had food at home. just needed to leave the blue room, the blue wall, the cracks I watched as I charged my leg. I always needed something from the store.

“At least I am not drinking.”

I microwaved my dinner and it was still kind of cold. the tv was all commercials.

“But why.”

“How to forget everything day 63”

It was hard not to react. If I learned anything from life, it’s that hedging your bets and bluffing will get you further than confession but that didn’t stop me from sometimes blurting out the things that hurt me.

“Patricia, chill,” Aaron said.

Her name was Patricia Carbloni and I knew her well. In AP statistics I learned that you can guess the dice are going to land a certain way each time but it’s best to assume you won’t get snake eyes, and it’s best to assume you won’t get doubles. If you get doubles, it’s best to assume you won’t get double doubles and it’s best to assume you won’t always win.

“You can’t always win,” Mrs. Shepherd said to me in class.

I was losing. I was making the wrong guesses. We were guessing which pairs would come up next; an impossible game that now looking back, I realize Mrs. Shepherd had set up simply to teach us that probability isn’t fortune telling.

“I know, of course,” I smiled at her.

I passed AP statistics with a 92 and the AP placement test at the end of the year for college credit.  Despite my eighth grade teachers thinking I was not up for the challenge to continue some of my advanced placement, I was one of the highest scores in government and psychology, and went on to become Summa Cum Laude in college, enrolled in three honor societies, and received one of the highest scores on the psychology placement test. You can’t always win but you can memorize, read faces, bluff. My parents taught me at a young age how to do two things: survive and lie.

“Here, Sadia, here,” Aaron motioned towards my bed.

Patricia scoffed.

“Saaaadddddieeeeeaaaa,” she sung and stood up walking over to us.

My parents taught me how to play spades when I was seven years old. That’s a young age to learn such a complex card game; a game that requires silent communication with a partner and an ability to predict the moves of your opponent each round like clockwork.
This game also requires fortunetelling. You have to bid on how many tricks you will win at the beginning of the game after looking at only your hand, not your partners. This requires intution. Depending on where your seated depends on when you make your bid. In this way, I felt like being last was an advantage. We didn’t always bid. When they were first teaching me they left that part out, but my mom and I won a lot. They taught me how to bid on tricks.

I always wanted to help count the books to help keep score with my mom. It was an extra task that I enjoyed, coveted, felt special taking on like I was useful even if I lost. I hated losing and I rarely did. I was a studious observer when it was game time. You have to pay attention to the cards, the mannerisms of your partner and the mannerisms of your opponents. If my brother threw a ten pretty early, he had a bad hand and soon he would throw a trump to show my Dad he absolutely had a bad hand. He would start sometimes with a high card to bluff but nothing above a seven. If my mom started with high cards, I was expected to match them so we could make our books last. If my mom threw a low card we had time. There was no talking or any kind of obvious movement. Little nods to affirm me. I had to learn to count cards and if you’re watching the books, sometimes you can peek if you’ve forgotten but everyone agrees that is cheating. If you’re dad gets drunk enough, the hand doesn’t matter and your brother will storm off anyway.

Patricia was enjoying this and I had about five seconds to decide what story I wanted to go with. I turned to my bed and sat down and looked at aaron. Demured.

“I’m good,” I said ignoring her. “I’m going to rest.”

Aaron looked at me and then her and then walked out. I expected that. Sometimes I like to group things in themes to help me keep track of my life so I will call this.

                            1. The story of Patricia Carbloni

I knew that Patricia would not be in the hospital long. She frequently called the police on the facility she was living in, walked off the premises and was always found quickly and returned. She liked to get away and complain to new people. She also liked making new enemies. Pointing out all of your flaws immediately was her forte.  The pro here is that she also told long and winding stories that had no ending and made no sense so people stopped listening even if she was right about someone’s incompetence or insolence. The con is I am her incompetent, insolent, insane social worker.  I could not pretend I was someone else in front of her. As scared of revealing my life to this institution as I was, ethics trumped this round.

“So Sadia,” she began and sat on the bed with me. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

She laughed deeply like she always did. She coughed right after and got back up to walk back over to her bed.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t tell a soul.”

She was facing the window.

“IF you give me fifty million dollars and the socks off your feet.”

She brayed and I laid down and remembered how usual this really was. Patricia’s threats and cackle. Bidding tricks. Being uncomfortable in a bed too small for me. She went on for a while but said nothing about my identity when staff came back to check on us before lights out. I ended up falling asleep somehow. Pure exhaustion eventually empties the brain and I woke up only because I felt something tickle my face. It was Patricia. She was standing over me grazing me the corner of the pillowcase and holding the pillow like she was going to smother me. When I looked at her, she dropped it on my face.

“See you tomorrow, Saddddeeeeea.”

I waited until she went back into her bed and knocked her pillow on the floor.

“Tomorrow will be a no mistake day,” I whispered.

“Hey shut the fuck up or I’ll eat your fingers like chicken nuggets.”

For the first time in days, I laughed but quietly as not to disturb my roommate.

The ankle bracelet was clunky and you had to charge it so sometimes I had to sit near a wall for about fifteen to twenty minutes. That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. 

Sit. 

“How to forget everything day 62”