Page 3 of Ward D
But that’s not the real reason I am dreading my night on Ward D. I can’t tell Dr. Sleepy the real reason I was tossing and turning last night. I can’t tell anyone the real reason I’m desperately terrified of Ward D.
“Listen.” Dr. Sleepy glances down at the gold watch on his wrist. “Why don’t you let me finish up with Mrs. Pritchett, and you can take off early? Take a little Amy Time before you head over to Ward D.”
A little Amy Time sounds fantastic. I don’t get much of that anymore.
“Thank you so much,” I say.
He winks at me. “No problem. And don’t worry. Once you get to Ward D, you’ll see it’s not so bad. I promise.”
I hold my tongue to keep from telling him the truth. The truth is, I’ve already seen Ward D. I visited it once before, nearly a decade ago.
Back when my best friend was a patient there.
I still remember her matted hair and wild eyes when I came to visit. She didn’t look like my best friend anymore—more like a wild animal closed up in a cage. But the thing that sticks with me most—the thing I will never forget—are the words she spit out at me just seconds before I ran out of the unit, swearing to myself I would never return ever again:
You should be the one locked up here, Amy.
2
Iam going to be spending the next thirteen hours of my life in a locked psychiatric ward.
I try not to think about that fact as I sit in the passenger seat of my roommate Gabby’s third hand gray Toyota. (It was her dad’s, then her brother’s, and now it’s hers—any day now, it will be the junkyard’s.) She has kindly offered to give me a ride to the hospital for my night shift, which is starting in exactly twenty minutes. It feels like a countdown to my execution.
“Stop freaking out, Amy,” Gabby tells me. She’s been working on Ward D during the days for the past two weeks, and she doesn’t understand my concerns. She’s even rotated with Dr. Beck the first week and absolutely adores him. “It will be fine.”
Of course, at this moment I am freaking out a bit more about the fact that Gabby just zipped through a stop sign without so much as pausing. Gabby is probably the second-worst driver on Long Island (the first being me, of course). Then again, if Gabby wraps the car around a tree, I will have a free pass to get out of this shift. For once, I’m hoping we get in a terrible crash.
Well, maybe notterrible. But something just bad enough to require a visit to the hospital. Maybe a broken bone—an unimportant one like my pinky finger.
“Who are you on-call with tonight?” Gabby asks me.
“Stephanie.”
“Oh!” She brightens. “Stephanie is awesome. That’s so perfect.”
I have to agree with her about that. Stephanie Margolis is one of my more level-headed classmates. She is the kind of person you want to be studying with the night before a test, because she always knows her stuff, but she’s not obnoxious about it. She’s a calming presence in any room. Knowing she will be with me tonight makes me feel a little better about the whole thing.
Gabby runs a hand through her tight black curls, but her hand gets stuck and for a moment, I am seriously scared I’m going to have to take the wheel and steer the car myself while she disentangles her fingers using both hands. But then she gets it under control.
My phone vibrates against my thigh. As I pull it out, I cringe at the sight of my badly chewed fingernails—I would be chewing them right now if there were anything left to chew. The name Cameron Berger is staring back at me from the screen of my phone. Followed by a text message:
Hey.
I thought nothing could make me feel worse right now, but there it is. A text message from my ex-boyfriend, who recently broke up with me in a very humiliating way.
“What is it?” Gabby asks me.
“Cameron,” I say.
She makes a face. Gabby was the one handing me the tissues after our break up, and she even helped me build a little boyfriend bonfire to rid myself of all Cam’s belongings that he left behind at my place. “What does that jerk have to say?”
“He said, ‘Hey.’”
“How dare he!” She lays a hand on the horn, probably startling the guy driving the car in front of us, who is doing absolutely nothing wrong. “I hope you’re not answering him.”
“Of course not.”
“I don’t know why you don’t just block him!”
