XXII | Somewhere Familiar
❦
How many days has it been?
My bedroom
is curtained
on three walls,
blank
on the fourth
so I can’t tell the time.
They stop bringing food
after the third day
so I’ve lost track
of how long
it’s been.
Tammie doesn’t seem to leave
at regular intervals,
and I sleep a lot
because of the injections
so I can’t tell
the time at all.
We don’t talk much—
Tammie and I—
when I’m awake and she’s here.
After that first conversation,
there doesn’t seem to be
anything else
worth discussing.
One day
(or night),
I open my eyes.
Tammie’s not in her chair.
The movement
that made me open my eyes
was not hers.
A nurse,
familiar to me,
short bob hair,
plain passive face,
bends over the bed
and loosens
my leather straps.
Like a bird
caged for too long,
I’m…
not sure
what to do
with myself.
❦
The door opens
just as I’m trussing up my blanket
in the shape of an elephant
to entertain myself.
When you lose interest
in even death,
there is really
nothing left
to occupy yourself with.
‘Tammie,’
I begin, about to explain my elephant
but I come
face to face
with a familiar woman
in a familiar white lab coat
holding familiar papers
in one hand.
The doctor
smiles at me.
That non-patronising, no-nonsense, relaxed and trustworthy
smile.
I wait
for a surge of rage
to rise up in me.
I wait
for my hands to reach out
to strangle her.
I wait
but I feel
nothing.
Usually we don’t talk to patients
until we’ve observed them
for at least a month.
She stands by the door,
motionless.
With one hand,
she pulls the door wide open
and holds it like that.
But we’ll make an exception
since the price has been paid.
‘Who died?’ I demand,
digging my heels into the bed,
mind whirling again
with the possibilities.
I’ll give you a hint, Fiona.
Her face remains expressionless.
How did you try to escape?
The space where the memory should be
is black,
and I’m about to say so
but then I
remember
a card,
the corridors,
blurry faces.
A cockroach.
Was there a cockroach?
No.
There wasn’t.
Mason.
Walking with two nurses.
My hands
start trembling like they did then,
when I reached into the hidden pocket
and retrieved the card.
‘Which one of them?’ I whisper.
The doctor
gestures at the door
with the papers.
Answers. They’re luring you
with the promise of
answers.
You know they’ll never
give it to you.
I get up
and follow her,
my eyes fixed on her clear ones,
just like I did
the first day I came to Wonderland.
❦
When I step into the corridor,
I realise it’s not my bedroom
after all.
The upper corridor.
The one
with a row of doors on one side,
all labeled the same.
The doctor
opens the door
next to the room we were just in.
Sit, she commands.
I sit.
This must be her office.
White desk,
white computer,
white picture frames.
She picks up
a white pen and starts to write
on the papers she was holding.
I watch,
holding my breath
because my breath
isn’t white.
She looks up at me eventually,
puts down her pen.
‘Fiona,’ she begins,
two hands meeting by the fingertips,
balanced on the table with her elbows.
How many people were there
in your family?
❦
