Freedom of Sketch

Healing Process

Dressed in a tacky reindeer sweater and tight jeans, Ms. Kennedy pops up on the ward during Visiting Hours on a freezing Monday evening and asks for Lizzie and me. She obtains permission from the charge nurse to show us progress photos of Daniel stored on her phone, so a pair of techs herds us into an exclusive corner of the cafeteria for close monitoring. Hypervigiliant, they perch nearby with anxious, fluttering hands as though a phone's presence on the unit is a potential recipe for the end of the world.

Lizzie and I stand behind Ms. Kennedy and watch as she opens her photo gallery. I'm nauseous, unsure if I really want to see the full extent of Daniel's injuries. Even though I remain hesitant, I force myself to keep my eyes open. They're just pictures, I tell myself. I steal a glance at Lizzie. She keeps rubbing her hands together.

"Ah." Ms. Kennedy taps her phone. "Here's the first one." She angles the screen so we can both see the image.

It's of a freshly-broken Daniel, unconscious and surrounded by networks of tubes and wires. Half of his head is shaved, and a stapled surgical wound follows the curve of his skull like a road. His closed eyes hide in the purple shadows of their sockets. A corrugated tube dangles from the side of his swollen lips, and his hands are tied to the bed. "So he wouldn't rip out the breathing tube," explains Ms. Kennedy. I suck air between my teeth, sensing the pain, wondering where Daniel's mind was when the photo was taken.

Ms. Kennedy selects another picture. This time, Daniel appears conscious, though his gaze is fixed on something beyond the camera. The pipe has been traded for a nasal cannula, and the restraints are gone. He wears a pair of earbuds. What was he listening to?

The third photo makes us laugh. Daniel holds up a pale arm, flicking off the photographer. His smile is crooked. The camera flash glances off of whatever ointment they slathered on his wounds, making his skin shine in some places.

"How much longer is he going to be in the hospital?" I say to Ms. Kennedy.

She sweeps her brunette hair behind her shoulders. "He's supposed to be moved from the ICU by the end of the week, and should be out of the hospital in a month or two. After that, his team is going to transfer him to physical and occupational therapy. Then, it's rehab for him. No more drinking, ever."

I nod uncomfortably.

Lizzie picks at a chip in the edge of the table. "That's good," she says absently, her hands moving without her.

Ms.Kennedy: "What about you two?"

Lizzie and I snap our heads up at the same time. "What about us?" I ask, my tone sharper than intended.

"When are you scheduled to leave Circle Valley?"

I suddenly develop a fascination with a snowman cutout and Lizzie slides a cardboard file out of her pocket so she can busy herself with her nails. After some silence, I clear my throat. "Well, there's no set date. It's kind of up to us, and how we're doing."

Lizzie abruptly changes the subject. "What are your Christmas plans, Ms. K?"

"Oh, spend it with Danny, I guess. Santa gave me my present early: my boy's life."

Lizzie and I try not to cringe. Visitation ends, and Ms. Kennedy is led away into the claustrophobic winter landscape. It's December now in the Real World, but the low ceiling of clouds mock us, refusing to produce any snow. Ready for hibernation, the tired trees droop with the weight of icicles as sharp as knives.

Once Ms. Kennedy is gone, the staff herd us into our appropriate therapy groups. Lizzie has a Mindful Eating program, and I'm supposed to go to Anger Management. Everyone dresses in flannel pajamas, fluffy slippers, and oversized sweaters. We create our own warmth.

"When are you scheduled to leave Circle Valley?" she asked.

It was always "when?" It's December. It's been nearly a year since my admission. I've long stopped arguing with my treatment team to let me out, because it just gets us talking in circles: "Let me go/no/but I'm better/not yet you're not/please/no/please/no/please/this discussion is over." It doesn't seem like "when?" anymore. Now it's just a big fat "if".

I sit in Anger Management group, stuck in my own head. Staring at the ceiling and thinking about Daniel, I can feel the circles beneath my eyes growing darker. I missed my senior prom. I would have gone if he had asked me. I touch my hospital ID bracelet and pretend for a fleeting moment that it is a corsage Daniel has tied there.

At least I still have Lizzie, and I'm even growing closer to my roommates. Riley's new medication makes her much easier to speak with, and there's no more chanting during the night. She doesn't babble at the shower head or wear her clothes backward. Her mind is reappearing. We have conversations every day.

We support Molly through her ups and downs. Sometimes she wants to compromise her healing wounds, and the staff make her wear special mittens so she can't scratch them open. She is learning to use words, specifically written ones, to describe how she's feeling and what she's thinking. Still, she craves the language of the blade.

Lizzie's frustration builds as she outgrows many of her outfits. Her therapist requests that she give away several pairs of her size 00 jeans, because "they're reminders from the time you were sick". "Now you want to focus on recovery," Lizzie tells us, mocking her therapist's tone. She mostly wears leggings now.

The Circle Valley staff are glassy-eyed with determination and holiday madness. They feverishly tear down our lingering paper turkeys and cardboard pilgrims, and come out of the Rec Therapy closet armed with Christmas decorations. Jenny tosses a ton of arts 'n crafts junk at us so we can feel important for participating. I cut out snowflakes (under close scrutiny: those "safety" scissors are dangerous) and tape them to the floor-to-ceiling windows in the cafeteria. Tori has me hold a fabric garland still while she struggles to keep it taped to the front of the nurse's desk. Simon wrestles with a vine of flickering rainbow Christmas lights. In order to include everyone, Jenny unearths a plastic menorah and some dreidel posters from storage. The Self-Esteem! Board is transformed into an "All About Kwanzaa!" Board.

In The Lounge, several of us flock to a plastic bin overflowing with more craft supplies. Most of the girls opt for pages torn from magazines and cartoon coloring books so they can wallpaper their doors with them. Others make ornaments out of Popsicle sticks, ribbons, pompoms, and glitter glue.

Arriving with the weepy gray weather is a new tech we nickname Cruella. Mean as nails, she meanders through and around the scattered cliques like a bitter rumor. Her keys jingle like holiday bells, but we ignore her and set our sights on the uncertain horizon: will we start off the new year as free women, or will we once again fall victim to boxed celebrations and courtyard fireworks shows? It's the not knowing that causes the most anxiety.

Determined not to consider another year of imprisonment/hospitalization as a possibility, I work with Bailey on making scarves for the row of half-finished Styrofoam snowmen lining the shallow windowsill. Jenny left us with small squares of felt in a variety of festive patterns. I cut out thin rectangles of fabric the length of my fingers, then snip tiny fringes at the ends.

Lizzie asks Cruella if she can have a strand of blinking Christmas lights to help wind around her new friend's feed pole, but the woman bears down on both girls with her big bosom and frighteningly ugly holiday sweater and declares that lights are a strangulation risk. The new patient mentions that her feeding tube itself is a strangulation risk, so Cruella panics and immediately puts her on Stalker Status, or as the staff say, "Close Visual Observation".

Just as Lizzie's new friend bristles with rage and reaches into the craft bin for a handful of Popsicle sticks or pompoms to throw, Brynn strides in and pops in a DVD: The Nightmare Before Christmas. My mind hopelessly wanders back to Daniel, still confined to a hospital bed. I wonder what kind of decorations he's allowed to have in his room. I should make him something, but I'm not sure what. I ask to be excused to my room, where I sit on my nightstand and exhale a thin film of breath upon my window. I sketch tiny characters in the fog with my fingernail.

 Out of the corner of my eye, I spot a shooting star, slower than usual. Before I can make my wish, there's another, twirling away from a bank of stars showing through the patchy clouds. They're not stars; they're snowflakes, hesitant and shy, uncertain if they want to land on the grounds of a residential treatment center. But they keep coming, born from the sky, six-sided and perfect. Winter's first snowfall.