The Graceview Patient By Caitlin Starling - 38

I can still hear the roar.

Most of the time, it’s distant. Just another sound of the hospital, almost lost behind the beeping monitors, the movement of equipment, the voices of the living. Everything is louder now, and I cling to it all. Try to anchor myself to what is real.

I’m no longer in the room I started in. The room with the growth in the floor, the room that Adam decorated with flowers, the room where Isobel gave me the scalpel—it houses somebody else now. After a stint in the ICU to treat the sepsis I gave myself, ripping out my port and wandering through the bowels of the hospital, I’m back on the seventh floor, back in an isolation room, but it isn’t as large. The computer cart is gone, along with the easy-access supplies. And the door opens directly to the nurses’ station.

I only go through that door in a wheelchair or on a gurney. They walk me to the bathroom on occasion, but generally I stick to the commode. Most of the time, I’m not aware enough to care.

When I am, or when the roar grows loud, sometimes I still want to fight. I want to dig my nails and teeth into my nurse, or the sitter that now watches me day in, day out. I want to bite and claw and hit Adam, when he comes to see me. I am desperate, desperate to know if Isobel is doing better—if she is still alive. If I was right. If what I did was worth it.

But I don’t ask. I’ve lost the right to ask. And they would only lie, anyway.

Sometimes I can’t control myself, and they fasten soft restraints around my wrists and ankles. My skin is red and raw. They don’t let me fight for long, though. It’s not safe—for me. I’m so weak, after the fever, after the quiet hell that was the ICU. I spend a lot of time sedated.

It’s for my health, they tell me. And perhaps they’re right, because I’m not dead yet. Isobel was wrong. The carousel of multihued IV bags continues, and after each one, I am still alive.

They even brought in a psychiatrist, finally. They added an antipsychotic to the mix. I couldn’t tell you yet if it’s helping; it blunts everything, which is probably for the best anyway.

Today, the new nurse is on shift again. I still don’t know her name. I don’t care. She isn’t Isobel. She will do her job, and she will be kind or she will be remote, she will be competent or she’ll hurt me, and I don’t care. I can’t care, not anymore. The only thing I have left is what Louise told me, before Isobel gave me the scalpel: to let it wash over me.

Today, Adam comes, too. They both stand by my bedside. They talk to me, slow and steady, and none of it pierces through the miserable fog I float in, trying to organize what has happened to me, trying to form it into some kind of narrative so that I can chase absolution in it.

I don’t like listening to him. I don’t like when he touches my hand. I am only grateful that he no longer brings me flowers or food, no longer tries to win me over. He doesn’t have to. He’s won.

Except then he says her name.

Isobel.

He tells me that she will make a full recovery. He tells me that it’s thanks to me, to what I did, to what I risked. That I was right: there’s something in my blood that can fix her. Can fix me, too. That they have some of my blood in storage from when I was first admitted, and they’re using my tissue to engineer a cure, and I can’t listen. I turn away, because lies are worse than absence. And he is lying, isn’t he? I can hear the whispering. The roar is building. It will crash over me soon. In it is Isobel’s voice, begging, pleading.

And Veronica, saying, Can you hear it?

Either he is lying, or my brain is lying. Saying what I so desperately want to hear. But if I still had my phone, if I looked her up, what would I find?

She hasn’t come to see me. That is the only truth I have. I haven’t seen her since that last day in her room, I haven’t seen her since she was carted away screaming, and all I have left is the sound of her shrieks, deep in the roar.

A part of me is inside her. Will be buried with her.

Crying hurts in new ways. My tears scour me, my throat closes up. The new nurse takes my other hand, and I can’t tell if she means to offer comfort, or only to make sure I don’t flail around.

Adam says my name, and I look at him at last. I do not trust him, with his perfect suit, his beautiful eyes. I can still see him changing my whiteboard, taking samples of my body, leaving food for me to eat. He’d cared for me, too, kept me company, listened to me, sympathized—but that means nothing if he’s also the reason I’m here.

He brings you flowers, too , Veronica had said. And I was so focused on the flowers that I invited Isobel to eat his other gift.

He gazes back at me, steady, sure. I can’t tell if my brain is my enemy, or he is. I’ve never been able to tell. Louise told me it’s my brain. That what I think is real is real, but not true, not necessarily true. Strength, if I believe her, is inaction. Choosing to endure. Endure, not fight. I can’t fight anymore. Fighting killed Isobel. Or, maybe, fighting saved Isobel. But fighting now does nothing.

There are no choices left.

Today , Adam says, we begin to rebuild you. Today we start making you better. Today we start cultivating your recovery.

But I’d like your permission to use what we’ve learned to try something new.

And he places paperwork on my tray.

A pen.

Eventually, I sign.

X—Margaret Culpepper