After Sophie Forrester’s suicide, sadness hangs over the ward like a fog. Or maybe it’s guilt, Jordan thinks. When he makes his way through the locked doors in the morning, he can feel its invisible weight pressing down on him. It almost makes it hard to breathe.
I am a ghost of myself, Sophie’s note had said. I’m sorry about the mess.
The words might as well be burned across Jordan’s retinas. Along with every other Belman employee, he feels like he failed Sophie Forrester. Because they did. They were supposed to take care of her, but she died on their watch.
Two of the ward nurses have asked for a leave of absence, and Dr. Klein is resigning. Jordan will miss the doctor’s frankness, her quiet, chilly competence. But he won’t miss Mitch, who’s being transferred to a different ward on a different floor. Was Mitch the last person to see Sophie alive? Is Mitch any more or less to blame than anyone else? Jordan has no idea, and he’s not about to ask.
There’s no farewell party for Dr. Francine Klein. On Friday she’s in the office, and on Monday she isn’t. An interim medical director takes over her office, a lithe, dark-eyed woman named Dr. Ager. When she calls her first staff meeting, she doesn’t invite Jordan.
All that week, Jordan makes his observations, tries to engage patients in board games in the lounge, and performs his duties as stunned as the rest of the staff. He walks the halls with Andy, talks to Beatrix about the dissociative identity disorder community on TikTok, and helps Sam, a new patient, write a letter to his parents: I forgive you for putting me here, but don’t come visit. He makes Sam cross out or else.
Meanwhile Hannah wanders the halls, talking to herself. Singing to herself. Oblivious to him and everyone else. Not even Michaela or Indy can bring her back.
But then on Friday morning, when Jordan walks into the lounge, still shaking the rain from his hair, she’s eating a breakfast sandwich and calmly talking with Indy.
Jordan hides his surprise—his nearly giddy relief—as he sits down at the table with them. “Good morning, team,” he says, like there’s nothing different at all. As if Hannah isn’t just back from some incomprehensible and indescribable internal journey. “It’s a beautiful day out there.”
“Liar,” Indy says, sounding bored, and Hannah smiles faintly at him. Her hair’s still uncombed and she looks beautiful and feral.
“Belman Psych has the shittiest coffee in the world,” she says. “Have you tried it? It tastes like boiled cardboard.”
“With a dash of vinegar,” Indy says.
“You could microwave the East River and it would taste better.”
“Not the Hudson, though,” Indy says, picking at a hangnail. “That thing rubs up against Jersey for miles. It’s got nasty New Jersey germs.” He shudders dramatically.
Hannah giggles, and Jordan says absolutely nothing about growing up in New Jersey, less than thirty miles from said river. He also says nothing about Sophie. Let them have their banter.
Then Indy looks up at him and says, “Can we help you with something?”
Jordan starts, momentarily taken aback. Then he says, “No, no, I’m just checking in with everyone.”
“You miss us when you’re not here, I know,” Indy says.
Some of you, Jordan thinks. One of you. He pushes back his chair and gets up. “Sure. See you later.”
Hannah finds him after lunch, when he’s coming out of Kevin’s room, having helped him wash off the knives he’d drawn on the door with a Sharpie.
Hannah tugs urgently on his sleeve. “Listen, I have to go back,” she says.
Jordan doesn’t understand. “Back where? To the lounge?”
“To my village,” she says, exasperated.
He clenches his fists, stifling a horrifying urge to take her by the shoulders and shake her. “Why do you need to do that?” You were gone for so long.
“The help I got from the baron wasn’t enough. We need more food. More medicine. The baby died!”
With effort, Jordan unclenches his hands. He says, “Whose baby?”
Hannah looks like she’s about to cry. “Ryia’s. A newborn. She was so perfect, so tiny, with her blue eyes and her red hair.…”
A chill runs north along Jordan’s spine, because he can think of someone else with blue eyes and red hair. Someone else who’s dead. Again he has to resist the urge to grasp Hannah by the shoulders. “What was the baby’s name?” he asks, as gently as he can. Already knowing the answer.
Hannah blinks, and a tear slides down her cheek. “Sophie.”
Frustration and anger well up in him. It’s time to put an end to this goddamn fantasy. “This isn’t about a dead baby from the fourteenth century, Hannah,” he says. “This is about Sophie from the hospital. Sophie Forrester, who was your roommate.”
But it’s like Hannah doesn’t even hear him. Is it that she can’t understand, or that she won’t?
He tells himself that he just has to keep talking. He’s got to make her deal with the present moment. “Sophie killed herself, Hannah. There’s going to be an investigation. Dr. Klein’s gone, and Mitch is, too. The hospital might get sued. And you feel scared and sad. You’re grieving. We all are. But we’re dealing with it, okay? We’re dealing with it here and now.”
But her eyes show zero comprehension. “Sophie caught a fever from her father,” she says. “She died before she even lived.”
So did Sophie Forrester! She was sixteen!
“I’m not saying that your other life isn’t real, but you’re acting like this one isn’t, when it is,” Jordan practically shouts. “I live in it, okay? I’m telling you, it’s real! And someone you cared about here, in this world, felt so hopeless that being dead seemed better to her than living! Can you imagine that pain?”
Hannah sets her jaw in a stubborn line. She turns away, so he’s looking at her in profile. Her high forehead. Her tiny ears, pierced in half a dozen places but without any earrings.
“I don’t want to,” she says. “I won’t.”
He waits a few beats. Then something occurs to him. He says, “Have you ever known someone who killed themselves?”
His voice is much quieter now, but Hannah’s eyes go wide, as if he’s just screamed at her, and her body gives a lurching shudder.
He reaches out to touch her shoulder, gentle now, then stops himself. “Hannah?” he says.
She doesn’t answer him. She seems to collapse into herself, almost like she’s expecting a blow. “Stop,” she whispers. “Stop.”
And in that instant, Jordan understands that Hannah is keeping an awful secret. It’s part of why she’s locked up in Belman. She’s never told anyone, and she never, ever wants to. But suddenly, suddenly he knows what it is.
“Hannah?” he says again. “Has anyone you know—”
“Go away,” she gasps. “Just leave me alone.”
Then she runs down the hall and hangs a right into the quiet room. Slams the door behind her.