Page 12 of In a Haze

I stand back up and take the DSM, hoping that maybe I can at least learn more about myself.

After dinner, Joe’s walking me back to my room and tells me that it’s lights out in about an hour. I have no concept of time in this place, but I do have a vague recollection of that notion. Not that it matters here.

I sit on the floor, cross-legged, and Joe joins me here. He’s really cute and he doesn’t seem crazy at all. Which makes me think about that whole dilemma again.

“Why are you here, Joe?”

He frowns and looks up at the wall behind me. Already, I know he’s not going to give me all the details. Not yet. Maybe later. And I have nothing to give in return. “Bottom line—bipolar disorder.”

Maybe I can look that up later in that old DSM book I snuck in my room. It’s not like I couldreallysneak it in. There’s no place I can hide it. Maybe I could get away with hiding it under my bed for a day or so, but I don’t see that happening. So I have it out in the open and they can do with it what they will—but not after I dig through it a little bit.

“What’s that like?”

He frowns a little. “Some days I’m really depressed but then I have days where I have high energy—like what I figure meth makes a person feel like, and I can go for days on end. But when I crash, I crash hard.”

“And the medication makes you feel bad?”

“It’s supposed to keep me stable, but it makes me feel sick and I can’t concentrate. I hate feeling like I’m going to vomit all the time.”

“Yeah.” I know what he means, even though I can’t remember feeling that way. “What about me, Joe? Do you know why I’m here? What I’ve been diagnosed with?”

“Nope. You never told me and you were so drugged up, I couldn’t even guess.”

I lean over and pull the big green book off the bed. “Maybe we should go through this and pick something for me to be.”

“See, that’s the thing, Anna. What if they’re wrong? What if they’re just labeling us because we don’t conform to whatever their expectations for us are? So they dig through a stupid book to find something that maybe describes part of our personality and call it good. Seriously. Have you ever looked at the description for schizophrenia?” He touches the cover of the book, tapping it with his index finger. “Besides, this thing’s as old as Moses. I know, ‘cause I looked at it a while back when they first brought it out.” Before I can crack the book open, he says, “May I?”

“Sure.”

The way he leafs through the pages, I know he’s familiar with this book. “Before today, Anna, you had good days and bad days. On the good days, you said a few words and your eyes told me a story. On your bad days, it was like your soul had been ripped out of your body, like you were just an empty husk. Sometimes the cure’s worse than the disease. I know it is for me. When I feel lifeless, like I don’t want to do anything, I know the meds can’t be good for me. But let me read you some stuff about schizophrenia.Incoherenceandcatatonic behavior. And you know what? When you were heavily medicated, that could have described you to a T. If you’d talk, I couldn’t understand you, but most of the time, you were like a vegetable, just staring off into space for hours.”

“On the medicine?”

“Yeah. I don’t know if they gave you too much or what, but you’d be like that some days.Mostdays. Maybe that’s how they keep their funding is by keeping us all locked up here—and if they can give us medicine that makes us mentally ill, then they keep their jobs.”

I like Joe, but that seems pretty farfetched. I don’t know that I want to say that out loud, though, because he really is my only friend here—and he seems so sincere.

“But what if, Joe, what if instead I’m like that all the time and the medicine makes me better?”

He tilts his head, almost looking at me like I’m a naïve little kid who doesn’t understand the ways of the world. “Except I’m pretty fuckin’ sure you listened to me and haven’t been taking your meds. And, if that’s true, then you’re comin’ out of a drug-induced haze and waking up to the world. There’s only one sure way to find out.”

“How’s that?”

“You keep not taking your medicine. You stay clear and sharp like this, then we’ll know.”

There are other possibilities, though, and they scare me. They scare me so much, I have to say it out loud. “But what if I get bad? What if I really do start, uh, displaying symptoms of schizophrenia or something else?”

Cocking his eyebrow, he shakes his head back and forth. “Don’t you worry about that. They’ll know—and they’ll start making sure you swallow your medicine.”

That actually provides me a sensation of relief. Because I have no earthly clue why I’m here, anything is a possibility.

“Lights out in ten. Might want to head to your room, Joseph.”

I can see by the way my friend’s jaw ripples that he doesn’t much like being called that—but he nods just the same, refusing to make eye contact with the tech. I wasn’t able to help myself when his voice came through the room, and I glanced at my doorway, but he was someone I haven’t seen before. Well, if I have, I don’t remember.

After he leaves, Joe strokes the side of my cheek with a finger. “We’re gonna get you better, Anna.”

I smile and say thanks. After he leaves, I slide theDSMunder my bed and get up on the mattress and under the covers. I like Joe a lot, but I wonder why he so desperately wants me better. There seem to be dozens of people here, so what makes me so damn special?

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