Jordan sits in the Columbia cafeteria, eating a soggy grain bowl topped with a rubbery fried egg. In front of him is a large black binder that he carries with him all the time these days. HD, it says in tiny letters on the spine, and inside the binder is everything he knows about Hannah Doe. He flips it open.
She doesn’t know anything about this. The voice of Jordan’s conscience is quiet but insistent. You say you want to help her, but you’re really just helping yourself.
The rational part of him understands that the situation is more complicated than that. He’s desperately trying to find out what happened to Hannah before she came to Belman. He’s certain it will help her. Then, if she can get out, maybe she’ll be able to stay out. But the voice doesn’t go away.
She doesn’t have any idea what you’re doing.
There it is: his weak spot. The one sentence he can’t argue with.
You’re using her.
He glances down. The first page lists all the medications Hannah has taken at one point or another, sometimes multiple at once:
Wellbutrin SR 100 mg PO
Geodon 200 mg PO QHS
Trazodone 150 mg PO QHS
Depakote ER 1500 mg PO QPM
Zyprexa 10 mg PO QAM
Ativan 3 mg PRN
The list of medications goes on and on, Seroquel, Latuda, Invega… PO means by mouth, QHS is at bedtime, BID means twice a day.
He flips to his notes on her behavior.
1/19/23: RNs took Hannah to the quiet room at 10:43 a.m. It took ninety-plus minutes for her to calm down. I didn’t see anyone give her meds but I think they must have. Maybe she took them willingly.
1/24/23: Hannah shared a poem in group therapy. She said it was a sestina about time, but no one knew what a sestina was. Then she yelled that everyone was “a bunch of cretins.” Lulu scolded her.
1/26/23: Hannah didn’t recognize me. Or she didn’t seem to. Maybe she was pretending. Which would be worse—her not recognizing me, or her acting like she didn’t?
The binder began innocently enough—a class assignment on what life in a psychiatric hospital was like. But he quickly had to admit that he primarily cared about Hannah’s life in a psychiatric hospital, and soon after that, he had to acknowledge that he was writing down everything about her because he was hoping that this would actually help him think about her less. He wanted Hannah to live on paper instead of inside his head.
It didn’t work. He keeps thinking that he sees her in the common room of his dorm. Or in a big lecture hall, headphones over her ears, waiting for class to begin. Or once, standing outside a bubble tea place with a boy with locs and a girl wearing a panda backpack. Laughing. Posing for a picture.
It feels a lot like being haunted.
She comes to him in dreams, too. In the one he has most often, Hannah visits his dorm room. She’s dressed in regular clothes—clothes that fit, and shoes with actual laces—and she’s carrying a fat binder and a heavy backpack. She tells him that he missed class that morning, that there was a huge test, and that because he wasn’t there to take it, he’ll fail the whole semester.
It’s a nightmare on the one hand, and wishful thinking on the other. Because in the dream, Hannah’s better. And Dream Jordan knows that it’s all because of him.
So he wakes up in the middle of the night and stares at the ceiling and wonders if he’s a good person—or the worst person he knows.
Because his notes are becoming a case study. In this fat, black binder is the raw material for his Ab Psych thesis, which is turning out to be all about Hannah Doe.
Every interaction with her has become research. Information. A data point. He isn’t just a hospital intern anymore. And he isn’t just Hannah’s friend.
He’s a sleuth and a spy.