The drugs are making me woozy. There’s always a dull ache behind my eyes and a bitter, metallic taste in my mouth. The drugs. I’ve lost count of how many times they’ve sedated me. Each time I wake it gets harder and harder to cling to reality. To cling to you. I sleep a lot and when I wake I spend my days in a sort of haze. I can’t get up and stretch my legs or get any fresh air because of the restraints. My mind feels sluggish, thoughts moving like molasses. I can barely think straight. I get told about a lot of things that have happened since I’ve been here. Conversations that I’ve had with my psychologist that I don’t remember. I’m told Cal asks to visit often and I refuse to see him, yet I have no recollection. Nothing feels real anymore.
I try to focus on you. Try to picture your face, conjure the weight of you in my arms and the smell of your skin, but they keep popping pills into my mouth and injecting me with whatever it is that makes me fall asleep when I try to fight back, and each time the image of you becomes less and less clear. I’m questioning everything. My sanity. My memories. Even your existence.
I don’t know how much time has passed. The days bleed into one another, a monotonous blur of medication and therapy sessions. Dr Stewart is understanding and empathetic when she talks to me and I have a vague sense in the back of my mind that I hate it when she talks to me like that, like she’s pitying me, but I lack any real self-awareness. It’s like I’m watching myself through a thick pane of glass. Everything is blurred and muffled.
The only time I’m not restrained is during our sessions. Dr Stewart says I’m making progress. She tells me of how I met Cal, how I instigated our whirlwind romance and insisted we get married and move as quickly and as far away as possible to get away from my parents. Apparently I told her all this the last time I was admitted a few years ago, when the delusions first started.
‘You made progress then, too,’ Dr Stewart says. ‘You accepted reality and you went home. Unfortunately, it happened again.’
She goes on to explain how I burned all my discharge forms in a desperate attempt to pretend it had never happened, so that I wouldn’t have anything reminding me of the truth, so that I could go back to my alternate reality that I’d fashioned for myself. The other woman in the cage doesn’t exist. The woman who fled her abusive husband to come and live in the middle of the Scottish Highlands with Cal: she’s me. I’m her. Except it wasn’t a husband. It was abusive parents. And there was never a cage. No abduction. Cal and I were happy for a long time. I sit stock-still as I listen to Dr Stewart explaining everything that’s wrong with my brain. Sometimes she asks me to confirm or deny facts and I do neither. I don’t even know what the truth is so how could I possibly answer her?
‘What about the letter from Gemma? It was in my rucksack. You should have it.’
‘You wrote that letter. A handwritin’ analyst has confirmed it. It must have been an attempt to prove the delusion to yourself. Same reason you came up with the idea of “Mary Two”. If there was someone else it happened to then you couldnae possibly be makin’ it up.’
The argument dies on my tongue. This is how it goes. Every time I think of something that might help to prove I’m not crazy, both to Dr Stewart and to myself, there’s an explanation.
‘Why would I want to create a reality where I’m being held captive? If I insisted on us getting married and moving away like you say, surely I should have been happy? I got what I wanted?’
Dr Stewart leans back in her chair. ‘It’s one of the great mysteries of the brain. My best guess is that your mind knew it still needed to process trauma, but since you wouldnae allow it to deal with your true issues it invented a new trauma to deal with.’ She pauses to allow her words to sink in. ‘Once you made Cal the enemy in your mind, you had someone to fight against without having to accept who and what you really need to fight against: what happened with your parents.’
‘What did happen with my parents?’
‘You tell me.’ Dr Stewart taps her chart. Her old fingers look like knobbly tree branches. ‘We’ve never been able to get you to tell us. I dinnae think you’ve ever allowed yourself to remember. Not since you’ve been under my care, anyway.’
I fall silent. Once more, like so many times before when I’ve painted that road sign and thought about the people who gave birth to me, I try to picture their faces. But it’s still just smoke. Maybe the doctor is right. Maybe it’s just too painful to think about them. My mind just won’t let me do it.
‘What’s wrong with me?’ I whisper. ‘Why can’t I tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not?’
After God knows how many of these sessions, I’m officially diagnosed.
‘It’s a severe form of post-traumatic stress disorder,’ Dr Stewart says. ‘You’ve created these memories because it’s easier than facing what actually happened to ye.’
My brain is healthy in the traditional way. I wasn’t in a car accident, I didn’t crack my head open, I didn’t fall. There’s no actual damage to my brain at all. But it’s not really healthy. It’s confused and twisted. I wish I could take a saw to my skull and pull it out, inspect it and fiddle with it, make it work the way it’s supposed to. Occasionally I actually consider doing it. The more time I spend with Dr Stewart the more I understand that I do have the capacity to get better. Like she said, I’ve done it before. But I’m terrified that it will happen again, another ‘psychotic break’, as she calls it. Sometimes I can’t even remember what’s wrong with me.
I’m staring out of the small window of my room when Dr Stewart knocks unexpectedly. I turn my head on the pillow to glance her way.
‘We don’t have another session, do we?’
‘Not a usual session, no.’ She moves into the room and undoes my ties. I sit up with a groan, place my feet on the floor and ground myself. It’s always such a relief to stand and stretch. I move tentatively over to the window and resume staring out of it. Dr Stewart sits in her usual chair. After a moment she pats the bed to encourage me over. I stay where I am. I like it here, by the window. I feel less like a prisoner when the outside is just there, on the other side of the glass.
‘It’s time to start talkin’ about your home plan.’
‘My what?’
‘We need to put a plan in place for gettin’ you back home. With your husband.’
Home. The word pierces me. I want to go home so badly. I want to be better, to feel confident in my brain’s ability to not splinter the second I’m back there, without Dr Stewart to ground me in reality. But I’m not sure I’m there yet. I don’t feel ready.
Dr Stewart must see it in my face because she smiles with understanding. ‘It won’t be immediate, dinnae worry. But you are making progress. And we can start to implement the transition, gradually.’
I nod, though my neck is stiff. ‘What do I need to do?’
‘A good step would be to talk to your husband. We could schedule a visit at the end o’ the week. Do you think you can talk to him this time for me?’
A shiver runs down my spine. I gulp down the lump in my throat and force another nod.
‘Good, Mary. Good.’ Dr Stewart beams her approval. ‘You get some rest. I’ll let him know te come.’
She stands and goes to leave the room.
‘You’re not going to do my restraints?’
She stops, glances back at me, smiles. ‘I dinnae think there’s any need, do you? You’re getting better, Mary. You need to start believin’ in yourself.’
And then she’s gone and I’m alone with my thoughts again. I rub my wrists where the restraints should be and look back out the window, trying to focus on the calming effects of staring at nature. The dreary Scottish countryside stretches endlessly before me, the rolling hills and scattered trees a constant reminder that I’ve gone from one form of isolation to another. At least at the cabin I could garden. I could go out and feed the chickens and chat to my robin friend, though thinking about it now, that was probably just another sign of my insanity. I long to feel the wind on my face and the crunch of leaves beneath my feet.
I limp around the small confines of my room, being careful not to put any pressure on my bad foot, my mind swirling with apprehension. The thought of seeing Cal makes my stomach knot. I haven’t spoken a word to my husband since the day I was committed here. The day my world fractured into a myriad of jagged pieces. I know I need to apologise to him. The fact he’s stuck by me all this time while I’ve fallen from reality so far and accused him of such horrors is really quite remarkable. But something inside is stopping me.
As I try to rehearse the conversation in my head I get hot, sweat collecting under the collar of my nightgown, and it feels like it’s strangling me. I rip the papery fabric off over my head and stand hunched over in my underwear, attempting to focus on inhaling and exhaling. Once my body has cooled a touch I stand back up and focus once again on the window. If I concentrate hard on counting the leaves of a nearby tree it seems to do the trick. I can stop myself from going into one of my panic attacks.
I count slowly.
One.
Two.
Three.
I place my hands on my hips, steadying myself.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Wait.
My fingers brush against something, catching on raised edges of skin, sending an icy chill down my spine. I peer down.
There, barely visible but shining ever so slightly purple in the light of the window, is a stretch mark.