What Happened Next - Visitation

[Note: This post continues the story from "What Happened Next - Getting Better." If you haven't read that one, I recommend doing so before proceeding with this one.]

A few weeks later, I get to talk to her.

They've set up a room for us. Two rooms, really, with a thick glass window between. There's a table and a chair on each side, facing the glass. There are also holes in the glass - just enough for us to hear each other, a circle of fifteen dots at eye level. (I've had time to count while I've been waiting for them to bring her in.)

Finally, the door in the other room opens. I lurch to my feet, leaning forward. I watch as my other self shuffles into the room - hair unkempt, trembling nervously, but no longer wearing a straitjacket. The doctor has decided that she's well enough for this trial visitation, provided she's closely monitored. The required two uniformed attendants follow her into the room, close the door, and point her toward the table. She turns to look at it and sees me through the glass. I wave encouragingly.

Slowly, she makes her way to the table on her side of the window, and we sit down simultaneously. At first we just stare at each other. It's like looking in a mirror - except that it shows me a version of my face that's hollowed-out with starvation, and darkened eyes that are deep and haunted. I find myself wondering what she's seeing in my face. I know that I'm smiling, but for some reason I'm not sure if my eyes look any different from hers.

"I've missed you," I finally say.

Disbelievingly, she jerks in a way that scares me for an instant. It's just a twitch, though. I breathe deeply, trying to remember how many times I've begged to be allowed this meeting, rather than the flush of shameful fear I experienced when I was told it was finally going to happen. "I have," I insist. "I haven't felt right without you. I feel like I'm only half-awake."

She eyes me for a moment, then apparently decides to trust me. "I feel like I'm imaginary," she says, quietly. "Like at any moment someone's going to wake up and I'll just disappear."

"You aren't imaginary," I tell her, forcefully. "And you're not crazy, either. I'm going to get you out of here."

She closes her eyes, twitching again as tears start falling down her face. "No," she whispers. "I'll hurt you. Like last time." She starts shaking with the soft beginning of sobs, and I can see the attendants starting to lean forward. I have to stop her crying or this is going to be over before it begins.

"Hey," I interject, energetically, "did I tell you I went on a date last week?"

That catches her off-guard. The rhythm of her misery interrupted, she hesitates. "What?"

"I went on a date last week," I repeat. raising my eyebrows intriguingly. "A blind date."

Success. This completely distracts her. She leans forward with her eyes wide. "No," she says, uncertain. "You didn't."

"I did."

Baffled, her face returns to something sweeter, less shadowed. "Why?" she asks, incredulously.

"It was kind of an accident," I say. And I tell her the story about the guy who asked me out via text - someone who was in my ward, but whom I'd never met before. I told her about how I wasn't sure whether he was asking me out or just trying to fellowship a new member, and that's why I'd agreed to go, but that it became obvious very quickly that it was a date when he pulled out a red rose for me.

"Red?" She crinkles her nose distastefully. "A guy you'd never met brought you a red rose on the first date?"

"Yeah," I say, laughing. "But that was the peak of the interest he showed in me. He spent the next hour and a half talking about himself. I tried to join the conversation a few times, but he bull-dozed right over me. So eventually I just got up and left."

She scoffs, "Do you think he noticed that you left?"

"I guess so," I say, "because he's been texting me again recently."

Her face is indignant. "You're not going to go out with him again, are you?"

"Of course not. You know how much I hate dating. He's lucky I agreed to meet him in the first place."

"Yeah," she agrees. Then we fall silent for a while.

"Sam's coming home soon," I comment.

"Next week," she says. "I remember."

Another pause.

"Oh!" I say, suddenly. "I've had a few job interviews."

She leans away from me slightly. "Oh?" she asks. "Doing what?"

"Well, I applied for a few building supervisor positions - custodial stuff, you know." She relaxes  somewhat. "But managing this time instead of just being a laborer. Also, there's this receptionist job I really, really want. It sounds so cool!" My excitement makes me talk faster, and I don't notice that her face is tightening. "It's like, part receptionist, part office manager, and part security. I think it would be really fun, and I think I'd be good at it!"

"Yeah, sounds fun." Her shoulder twitches. "I'm sure you'll be terrific."

Something in her voice pops my bubble of enthusiasm. "Thanks," I say, uncertain.

She's rubbing a hand up and down her arm now, up and down, over and over without stopping. "It's a good thing I'm in here, then," she says. "You wouldn't want me messing things up like I did the last time."

"Hey!" I object. "That was an accident. Neither one of us saw it coming. We were completely blind-sided." But I can see her agitation is growing, her mouth twitching with pain. Anxiously, I try to distract her again. "You know it's Octoboween, right? A scary movie every night during October?" It's a holiday our mom invented.

My other self nods, a little jerkily. The attendants who have been relaxing in the back corners of the room for a while prick to attention. I start to talk faster.

"We've already watched a bunch of movies," I say. "And I got candy corn!"

"I love candy corn," she says automatically.

"I know," I say. I work to keep our eyes locked together, trying to talk her down from the cliff inside our head. "We've watched The Nightmare Before Christmas, Mars Attacks!, The Woman in Black, and Hocus Pocus."

"I like that one."

"I know," I say, encouragingly. "Tonight we watched one I've never seen before called Mama. It's about these two little girls - sisters. The older one is blonde and has glasses, and the younger one has kind of reddish-brown hair with these cute bangs -"

It happens so quickly that no one is prepared for it.

I hear the sound of shattering glass at the same moment I hear my other self's piercing scream. An instant later I've been pulled out of my seat. Her hand is clenched down on my collar, blood dripping from cuts on her arm, which is still slicing itself open on the jagged hole she has - impossibly - punched through the glass. I look at the blood dripping onto me, then back up at her, frightened.

She's kneeling on the table now, hunched over in agony. Her free hand is pressed against the glass imploringly, and all at once I realize that her frantic shrieking has words to it.

"I'M SORRY!" Her wild eyes look so trapped. "I DON'T WANT ANYONE TO DIE! I SHOULD HAVE SAVED THEM! THEY'RE DYING! WHY AM I HERE? I CAN'T SAVE ANYONE! MY FAMILY . . . MY FRIENDS . . . I CAN'T KEEP THEM HERE! THEY'RE LOST! THEY'RE ALL LOST AND DYING AND I CAN'T SAVE ANYONE!"

The attendants have finally made it across the room and, forcing her arm to be still, have injected her with some sort of sedative. The grip on my shirt relaxes, and one of them gently pulls her arm back through the sharp-toothed hole. She's fallen silent, eyes drooping. She starts to collapse backward and is caught by one of the attendants.

"Sorry about this, Ma'am," the other attendant says, businesslike regret in his voice. "She caught us off-guard." He shakes his head. "Don't know what it was that set her off . . . ." He pauses for a moment, considering. Then he must decide it doesn't matter because he shrugs, collects her limp legs, and assists in carrying my other self (now fully unconscious) out of the room. The door closes behind them.

I just stand there, unmoving. I am completely shaken. There are spatters of blood on my shirt and streaks of tears down my face (Where did those come from?); I think I might be bruised from where my body slammed against the table when she pulled me forward. But all of that is background noise to the shrieks still running through my head. The echoes, the words are what pierce through my skin and get trapped inside me.

I am afraid of myself again. And furious because now I know that the doctor was right.

"Getting better" is not the same thing as being healed.