Jordan stared at me in surprise. But I didn’t have the energy to explain it. Life in the fourteenth century was not a goddamn picnic, which he should definitely know by now.
“Maybe we should head back,” he said quietly.
I nodded, though my heart felt like it was sinking all the way down to my knees. You freaked him out, Hannah. Why’d you have to do that?
But then another little voice piped up. What if you freaked him out because he believes you?
We walked back toward the hospital. When we got close to the doors, he said, “Hannah?”
“What?” My voice came out sharper than I meant it to.
He scuffed his toe into some dirty slush near the curb. “I liked walking with you,” he said.
I felt the sunshine get a little brighter right then.
“I liked it, too,” I said. And then the doors slid open with a rush of hot air, and after that we didn’t say anything else.
As soon as I’d signed myself into the ward, Michaela and Indy pounced. Michaela was crabbing about not being invited, and Indy looked me up and down and demanded, “Did you kiss?”
I took off the borrowed coat and draped it over my arm. It was warm and puffy, and I was hoping I could keep it forever. “That’s so incredibly inappropriate.”
“Do you mean the question—or the deep tongue kiss?” Indy asked.
“Indy, please shut up.” I tried to walk past him but he stepped in front of me, grinning.
“You know I can’t do that,” he said.
“Of course he didn’t kiss her, idiot. He’d get metoo’ed,” Michaela said.
“He’d get fired,” I said. “He’s trying to do a good job here, in case you haven’t noticed. Have some respect.”
“Some what?” Indy said, blinking at us. “I’m not familiar with the term.”
He was joking, but Michaela and I knew what he was talking about. We didn’t necessarily feel respected as patients at Belman. Cared for, yes. Occasionally fussed over, too. But respected as functioning humans capable of decision-making and self-direction? Not so much. We were subject to the Almighty Schedule; we were given drugs we didn’t always want by people who weren’t necessarily sure that they would work; we were locked up like convicts and watched over twenty-four hours a day. And as nice as everyone on staff was, they still looked at us like we were flawed. Like we were broken.
And maybe some of us felt like we were. But we were still people who wanted to be treated with dignity, and there’s nothing dignified about being strapped down to a bed when you’re in the midst of a psychotic episode, which had happened to both me and Indy on more than one occasion.
Michaela held my hand as they walked me down the hall to my room. “Was it nice out there in the real world?” she asked.
“It was until it wasn’t,” I said.
“I guess that’s true about a lot of things,” she said. “Do you want to go do a word search with me? Mitch brought in a whole new book of them.”
I shook my head. “Thanks, but I think I need to lie down.”
I was relieved when I saw that my room was empty. I liked Sophie, but I just wanted to be alone.
I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes. I was thinking about my mother and Conn. I ached to see them again. I needed to make sure they were okay.
Jordan wondered how I could ever want to go back to that world, with all its hunger and darkness and death. I couldn’t make him understand that those people were as real to me as he was.
And in that world, I was only myself: Hannah Dory. Here, I was us.
I am a me who doesn’t know me, and I am a me who knows both of us.
Can you make sense of that? No?
Welcome to the club.
I was resting, breathing deeply, trying to call up the other world, when the air was split by screams.