With a keen eye fixed on the door where the guard is posted, Bunny waits for Josh to get back from Treatment. She massages her fingers and her left foot jiggles on its own accord. Teacher, too, is at Treatment. Andrea and Jeanette are at Beauty getting their hair curled. Jeanette is getting her eyebrows tweezed, as well. Of all the people here, Josh is the only one whom Bunny could imagine having as a friend in normal life. But she knows that the people here are like the people you meet on vacation, people you meet when your life, your life as you know it, is on hold. They are people for whom there is no place in your life once you get home. They simply don’t fit.
When the door opens, she stands on her tiptoes, like she is about to wave. Except she doesn’t wave because it is Teacher who comes in. Not Josh, and her letdown goes as deep as if Josh were never coming back.
In his mad dash to the kitchen sink, Teacher doesn’t notice Bunny standing near to him. He fills a cup with water, and he guzzles it. Then another, and then one more. Bunny has observed that everyone returns from ECT hysterically thirsty, as if they were as desiccated as a resurrection plant, one like rose of Jericho or liverwort. It’s not the electro-treatment that causes dry mouth. It’s the dry flow of oxygen administered by the anesthesiologist that does it. Plus nothing to eat or drink after midnight the night before. Now that he is sufficiently hydrated, Teacher asks Bunny if she wants to hang out until lunch.
In the living room, three Anorexics are fixated on the television where a man wearing a chef’s hat is teaching Kathie Lee Gifford how to poach salmon.
One thing Bunny appreciates about her fellow campers is they rarely tell you to stop crying. They know that if you could stop crying, you would stop crying. The point is—you can’t. Teacher waits, and soon enough Bunny stops, and what would appear to be out of nowhere, she says, “Electroshock.” As if the word has no meaning, she says, “Electroshock,” as if instead of “electroshock,” she’d said “mailbox.”
“Convulsive,” Teacher corrects her. Then he says, “I don’t like salmon. I like other fish. But not salmon.”
“I start tomorrow,” Bunny tells him, and he asks, “Start what?”
But before she can respond Andrea and Jeanette are back from Beauty. Andrea flips her hair to show how it bounces like hair in a shampoo commercial, which it does, but without the healthy shine. Jeanette looks like she is wearing a bathing cap of tight curls. They both hold their hands out, bent at the wrists the way a dog holds its paws when begging for a biscuit. Jeanette’s fingernails are painted pearly pink. Andrea’s are fuchsia. They chide Bunny for not going to Beauty. But for Bunny, vanity has gone the way of dignity, and there is no dignity to be had in the psycho ward.
No vanity, no dignity; only something like unquenchable thirst.