The Graceview Patient By Caitlin Starling - 33

Please believe me: I never meant to hurt her.

“Is it going to be painful?” I asked. Isobel’s hand, gloved like it should have been, rested lightly on my chest, her fingertips against the soft rise of my port.

“Yes. Probably very.” She eyed it a moment longer, then nodded to herself and went to the supply cabinet beneath the computer station. She keyed in a code, one I didn’t think I’d caught in all my weeks in that room. The nurses were very good at entering it swiftly and discreetly.

The drawer opened.

I know the drawer opened. Whether the Isobel I saw was real (impossible) or not (the only actual option), the drawer still opened. Louise wouldn’t have left it open, and I don’t think I could have opened it myself. But I know it opened, because that’s where the scalpel came from.

Isobel set it on my tray table, the sterile packaging whispering against the plastic.

I was too frightened to touch it.

“Your hands are the only other option,” she said. “I don’t recommend it.”

I looked down at them. My nails were clipped short, thanks to Louise, and they were weak. My fingertips were an unsettling purple-gray, not quite black, but getting there. I couldn’t feel anything past the last knuckle.

“There’s still time to fix that,” Isobel said, gently.

“But I have to take out my port first.”

“Yes.”

I took the scalpel. I peeled it out of its packaging, hands shaking furiously. I could hear Louise, telling me to just endure. That what I was seeing, hearing, feeling—it wasn’t helping. That I couldn’t trust myself, shouldn’t.

And maybe that was true for the average person courting death; maybe even for me. But that scalpel was real and solid in my hands, and I hadn’t left my bed. I hadn’t known the code. I looked up at Isobel, shivering.

“What are you?” I asked.

Isobel considered. “I’m your nurse,” she said, after a moment. “I’m your friend.”

“You’re a hallucination.”

“To some extent.” She didn’t look at the scalpel. “I’m also dying in room seven-seven-two. We’re connected. You’ve heard it now, too, right?”

I nodded, slowly. The roar. The roar that was just an overdose of SWAIL, but maybe not. I could hear it now, if I focused. It pulsed beneath us. Around us.

“And we can hear each other. Just like you’ve heard Veronica.”

“Veronica is dead.” Dead and long gone by now.

“She is,” Isobel agreed. “Which means there isn’t much she can do. But I can.”

I looked down at the scalpel. “If we take my port out,” I said, “they’ll come in and sedate me.”

“Yes. Then they’ll take you to place a new one. And I’ll wake you up when there’s a chance. You just have to be ready to run.” Wake me up, like Veronica had, in order for me to go and find Isobel. In order for me to start to understand.

It made sense, or was starting to. Maybe, in her own room, Isobel was staring into the distance, mid-seizure. Maybe her mind had gone walking. Maybe … maybe …

Maybe this was real.

“And then?” I asked, thumb pressing into the molding of the scalpel’s grip, trying to feel the furrows and instead only feeling the blunt resistance. “Where do I go?”

“Home.”

I winced. “Isobel…” There was no home to return to. Had she forgotten? Or had she not known? I couldn’t remember now if we’d talked about my options again after that night we shared dinner. And that night, I’d been confident.

“Or somewhere safe, if not home. But you can’t let them give you that next dose. You can’t take that risk.” She folded her hand around mine, around the scalpel. “Don’t let them,” she murmured.

You’ll die if they go any farther.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay, tell me what to do.”

She didn’t smile. I think if she’d smiled, I might not have trusted her so much. But she was solemn, focused. She took her hand away and traced one finger along the bottom edge of the port. “Take the dressing off, then cut here. The port is just under the skin and fat, above the muscle. Easy to insert, easy to remove. If you go in through the old incision, it’ll be a fast job to patch you back up. A new cut buys you time.”

The scalpel felt too light in my hand. I tried to imagine cutting myself open, and my muscles contracted, as if trying to pull me away from the threat. This wasn’t like messing with the pump. That had been abstracted. Removed. This was … not.

“Can you do it?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No, Meg.”

“You opened the drawer,” I said. “You got the scalpel.”

She didn’t reply.

“I’m sick,” I said. “I’m sick, and I’m alone, and you’re not real.”

“But I opened the drawer,” she countered. “I got the scalpel. You’re holding it right now.”

I was trapped somewhere in between the learned helplessness of sickness and the desperate need of the human mind to fight, to do . Superstitious outbursts, any tiny way of making a mark, of pantomiming influence. And the exhausted certainty that none of it really mattered.

But then again, I had nothing to lose. If Isobel was actually there, if she was real, this would work. She would know what to do, she’d save me, and I’d be free. Or, more likely, I was hallucinating again—and cutting my port out would force them to restrain me, and I wouldn’t have the choice to fight anymore.

Louise had been wrong to give me one last chance. If she was right, I couldn’t be reasoned with.

I peeled up the dressing. My skin beneath it was tender but intact, and the needle came out easily enough.

“I’m sorry,” I said, to her, to myself, and swept the edge of the scalpel along the bottom curve of the port before I could talk myself out of it again.

At first, there was no pain. I was certain I hadn’t pressed hard enough. But then I felt the hot wash of blood down my breast, and the bright line of agony where I’d parted the flesh.

“Again,” Isobel said. “Carefully, you haven’t exposed it yet but you’re close. Quickly, or they’ll be able to fix it in room.”

But I’d dropped the scalpel. It was somewhere in the sheets, and I was hyperventilating, panicking over what I’d done.

“Quickly!” she said. “They’re coming!”

Had I screamed? I didn’t think I had. But the pump was alarming, not working properly now that it wasn’t pushing fluids into my chest.

My hands were the only other option.

I hooked my numb fingertips into the wound.

Then I screamed.

I could feel the port through a thin sheet of tissue. I hunched over, digging my fingers in deeper, clawing and scratching. A little more, a little more—there were voices in the antechamber now, and Isobel was gone, but it didn’t matter, I could feel it, I could—

The flesh gave way, and I touched silicone. I tugged. I howled as it ripped free of where it had settled into my body, and the catheter threaded into my vein slithered and caught. There was so much blood. I closed my eyes against it, because if I couldn’t see it, it wasn’t happening.

But it hurt. It hurt. It hurt so fucking much. What was I doing?

What had I done?

My certainty faltered. I clutched at my flesh, not to keep it together but to keep myself together, to keep a hold on reality. The reality that my body was weak. That my mind was weaker. That Isobel was gone, and I had pulled my port half out of my chest, and Louise was rushing in with that same security officer from before.

This time, she didn’t need to sedate me.

I passed out all on my own.