The Graceview Patient By Caitlin Starling - 32

Louise found me like that, the infusion pump alarming as I sobbed and retched. She addressed each piece in its turn. First the pump, which she silenced, inspected, and then shut off. Then me, easing me back onto the mattress. She hit the CALL button while bent over me, ensuring I couldn’t get up, and when somebody answered, she rattled off a quick, clipped list of what she needed.

“You’re going to be okay,” she said as we waited for reinforcements. Her gaze was on the monitors, watching my vitals. “Do you think you’re going to be sick again?”

There was nothing left in me. I shook my head, then regretted it.

Another nurse arrived, along with the security officer from the other night in Isobel’s room. He stood sentinel as Louise pushed a few syringes’ worth of medication into my line and the other nurse hung a fresh bag of saline. They drew more blood for labs, speaking softly over me. And I let it all happen, waiting for the soft rush of a sedative to carry me off, the way it had so many times before.

But it didn’t come. The second nurse left, and the officer made to sit in the chair by the window.

“I think we’re okay,” Louise said, and he stopped, all but hovering. “Margaret, how do you feel about a shower?”

I didn’t want to move. But I felt stained. Fouled. Like I’d been the one having contagion-rich blood forced into my mouth. I hadn’t done it, of course I hadn’t done it, but I still had the memory of it.

I nodded. “Sounds … good.” My mouth ached. My cheek was bitten open, that much was true.

“Wonderful. Mark, can you have environmental services swing by while we’re taking care of that?”

After a long, wordless conversation between their gazes that I didn’t even try to untangle, Mark left, and Louise paused the saline drip and detached me from the bag. She helped me from the bed and into the bathroom. There was a small seat built into the wall across from the sink that folded up and out of the way. She dropped it down and sat me there.

“Is it true?” I mumbled with my swollen lips. But if Louise heard me, she didn’t acknowledge it.

Is it true? That I was infected with some mystery super organism? That everybody knew what I had, and was hiding it from me? That I was being used as a culturing medium? I stared at my reflection. At how gaunt I’d become, how beaten down. The whites of my eyes were a ruddy pink now, courtesy of the damage I’d done to myself, flooding my veins with SWAIL. My hair, shaggy and uneven, was clumped with sweat. I looked monstrous.

I felt monstrous.

And then, in the mirror, for just a moment, I saw Isobel in place of Louise. Isobel checking the water temperature. Isobel coming back to me and easing the gown off my shoulders. “Not monstrous,” she said. “Just desperate.”

I let out a weak, helpless sob. When I blinked, it was just Louise again.

“In we go,” she said, guiding me into the spray and onto the seat in the shower.

She took her time. There were still some of my toiletries from home, which I hadn’t used in weeks out of fear of some skin reaction. Louise didn’t share that fear, I guess. Or maybe she judged the importance of using those familiar scents as worth the risk. And if I closed my eyes, I could imagine it was Isobel taking care of me, healthy and whole, not hurt by me. Not contaminated.

I was used to having help in the shower by that point, but this was different. It was kind in a way I didn’t understand. Not just dutiful, not just thoughtful, but genuinely caring. Even once the water was off, Louise clipped my brittle nails as gently as possible. Dressed me with the softest of touches.

Concierge service, I thought, not understanding why she was doing it.

“There we are,” Louise said when I was back in bed. They’d finished cleaning while we’d been in the bathroom; the floor was spotless, and they’d remade my bed, too. Fresh over-laundered sheets rasped over my bare legs, and I whimpered a little, then swallowed the noise. “How are you feeling?”

“Bad,” I mumbled.

“Understandably,” she agreed. She produced a comb from her scrubs pocket and untangled the unruly, patchy clumps of my hair. Just like with the shower, I was afraid to lean into it, but I was so desperate for comfort that I didn’t resist. “You did a number on yourself, messing with the pump.”

The pump, which was now encased within a lockbox, I saw. It extended up high enough to close over whatever bags were hung, too. No access.

I grimaced, then tried to wipe the expression off my face. “What?” I asked.

She continued as if I hadn’t protested. “You’re a very clever girl,” she said, carefully teasing apart a knot with only the slightest tug on my scalp. “Which can either make you a wonderful patient, or a terrible one. No—don’t act as if you don’t understand me. I already know you’re listening. And if you aren’t, I’ll say it again when you’re lucid.”

I’d made a poor attempt at feigning the drifting away I’d been forced into these last days. Clearly, there were elements of the experience I wasn’t aware of.

Still, I didn’t have to acknowledge her.

“Your brain is not your ally right now,” Louise said, when it became clear I wasn’t going to say anything. “The medications you’re on can cause paranoia, confusion, erratic thoughts. And it’s easy enough for me to list them, but experiencing them must be terrifying. I understand that. What our brain says is real is what is real, at least right this second. But you need to trust us. You need to let it wash over you. You can’t let it make you hurt yourself like this.”

I shut my eyes tight.

Louise stopped combing my hair and instead took my hand in hers. “I know everything in you wants to be doing ,” she said. “We talk about fighting illness. Beating cancer, that sort of thing. But this is what that actually looks like: you having the strength to trust your care team. You enduring. I want to see you on the other side of this, Margaret. And right now that’s not where you’re heading.”

Was that meant to be a threat?

“This stunt of yours, whatever you meant it to do, it could have killed you. Do you understand me?”

I didn’t move.

“Is that what you wanted?”

I cringed. “Of course not,” I said. I hadn’t wanted to die, no. It had been so much more complicated than that. And yet I couldn’t articulate it. No matter how much I wanted to beg for answers, for the truth, I just couldn’t do it. And unlike in my nightmare, I couldn’t frighten the answers out of Louise, either.

I didn’t want to frighten her. Or hurt her. Or hurt anybody. I just wanted this all to be over.

Louise squeezed my hand again. “This is your last chance, Margaret. The next time you do something like that—leaving your room without help, messing with your medication, any of that—we’re going to take more serious steps to ensure your safety. That might mean restraints. A sitter. It’s going to make the rest of your time here a lot more difficult. I don’t want that, and I don’t think you do, either.”

“Just send me home,” I said, finally, miserably. “I don’t want to be here. Send me home.”

“You know we can’t do that. You don’t have a living situation set up. You don’t have a support network.”

I think that was the first time I truly believed it. That I couldn’t go home. That it wasn’t safe for them to let me go. Maybe because I knew, at least in theory, what I was capable of. Maybe one day it wouldn’t be a nightmare, and I’d infect somebody else just because I could.

Or maybe there’d just be another accident. Another Isobel.

I didn’t know how it had gotten that bad. How I’d passed the point of no return, clearly so long ago that the idea of stopping now was laughable. But I had, and now Louise was right: If I wanted to come out the other side, I had to let go of control. Not give up, no, but go along.

That was the fight, wasn’t it?

“I know,” I said, finally. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Louise said, and stood. “Just be here, with us. And get some rest. Do you want something to help you sleep?”

“No,” I said. “I’m tired enough.”

“I’m sure.” She patted my hand. “Think about what I said. Remember it. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said. I managed a weak smile for her.

And saw, just over Louise’s shoulder, Isobel.

Another hallucination, of course, but a vivid one. She watched Louise tuck me in, then unlock the box and set my pump back at work. Click, click, and the box was closed, the key tucked into Louise’s pocket along with that comb. Isobel’s arms crossed over her chest as she looked on, evaluating. Weighing, judging. She stayed there, unmoving, until Louise had gone, leaving my lights dim. If I was having another seizure, either she didn’t notice, or my mind constructed a separate narrative, playing out a different reality than the one Louise was handling.

“Isobel?” I whispered when we were alone.

She moved, finally, unfolding and coming to my bedside. She looked exactly as she always had and wore full PPE. There were a few small differences, as if time had passed, a slight change to the set of her hair, but she wasn’t flushed and visibly ill like she had been.

It was good to see her like that.

“She’s right,” Isobel said after a moment. “About this being your last chance.”

When Veronica had haunted me, there had been a … a staged quality to it. A performative bent, the pause and rhythm of it. Isobel, by contrast, sounded so very real. And so very like herself.

“I’m surprised I’m not already strapped down,” I said. And I would have been, if I’d really attacked that technician.

“They will, the next time they give you your infusion,” she said. “Guaranteed. They’re not going to risk it.”

“Risk it,” I repeated.

“You’re so close to the inflection point,” she said. “Where they switch to regrowing. They need you there, safely. No detours.”

“So that I get better.”

Isobel said nothing.

Ah.

My brain was playing tricks on me again.

I turned my face to the pillow. “Go away,” I said. “I’m sorry, go away.” Tears welled in my eyes. They burned more than usual. Everything was irritated, raw. Maybe my tears had become caustic, too.

“Meg,” Isobel said, firmly. “You can’t let this go any further. You’re going to die if it goes any further. Do you understand me?”

I clapped my hands over my ears and curled up tight. “Go away!” I couldn’t take this, couldn’t handle the push-pull of reality, of hallucination, of my fears and desperation and hope all acted out like it was some shadow play. “Please, please, I can’t do this.”

“You have to,” Isobel said. “For your own sake. For mine .”

“There’s nothing I can do!” I shouted.

“Oh yes, there is. Just one little thing, and then I’m going to get you out,” Isobel said, and smiled.