"I brought you Mrs. Crow," announces Ruth, sliding onto the couch and squeezing my knee. Ruth is a twitchy, wiggly, skinny-legged person, very beautiful, always in motion, with enormous eyes and spidery eyelashes she frequently bats, to excellent effect. Mrs. Crow, a stuffed crow wearing a skirt and a rainbow ribbon for a belt, is the talisman. Whoever is in trouble, me or Ruth, gets to have Mrs. Crow until she is well.
Nothing fazes Ruth, or Megan, or really any of my friends. They have their own quirks and eccentricities, and, in several cases, their own diagnoses. To them, my madness is just a part of me, something that happens, and they come to see me, and I am useless company, and I sit there, profoundly grateful that they are there but unable to tell them so.
Christi, Ruth's partner, pulls up a chair facing us. Christi is schizophrenic and visits Unit 47 fairly regularly herself. "How's it going?" she asks me, throwing an arm over the back of the chair. She wears a fine hat. I want it.
"Not so good," I answer. "I'm totally confused."
"That'll pass," she says.
"Will it?"
"Always does."
I raise an eyebrow. "Okay," I say. "If you say so."
"So," Ruth says, tucking Mrs. Crow in next to me and handing me my decaf Americano, making sure I have it in both hands before she lets it go, "who's in here?"
I look around the room. "That guy, over there, he's bipolar." They look over at him. "He had a wife and a kid but he doesn't know what he did with them. He hasn't seen them in a while."
"That sucks," Ruth says.
"He says he used to be the CEO of the government." I pause, uncertain. "Does the government have a CEO?"
"I don't think so," says Ruth. "He doesn't really look like a CEO." He wears a pair of loose, dirty gray pants held up with a length of rope, a white eyelet nightgown, and a pair of tennis shoes full of holes. His toes stick out.
"Course, you never know," Christi says. "Maybe he was a CEO before all this."
"Could be," I say. "Exactly. Like that lady over there." I nod toward her, and they look. The woman, who wears a red suit, is sitting at a table, bent toward the paper on which she is scribbling intently. When she gets to the bottom of each page, she lifts it with a flourish and sets it down on one of several piles she has stacked neatly around the table. She lays the page down, straightens its corners, then does it again. She does it several times.
"That's a patient?" Ruth asks.
"Why else would she be in here working?" Christi asks, cracking up. "It's not like this is a library and she came here because it's nice and quiet." As if to punctuate this, a roar comes from behind us, and we turn to see a man standing up in front of several visitors, his arms lifted to the ceiling. "Lord!" he cries. "Will you tell these idiots that I have seen what I have seen, and that I must get out of here so I can spread the word?"
"That's the prophet," I say. "He's been after me all day."
"Is he schizophrenic?" Christi asks.
"Not sure. Could be bipolar," I answer. "Delusions of grandeur."
"Have you ever had those?" Christi asks.
Ruth laughs. I glare at her. "I get mild ones," I say. "But I've never thought I was queen or anything."
"Are you sure about that?" Ruth asks. "Don't you remember that time you thought you could be a Supreme Court justice?"
"But not queen," I say.
"No," she agrees. "Not queen."
Ruth has seen me in all manner of states. She's seen me manic as hell, depressed, confused, sedated, incomprehensible, and everything in between. But she sits there calmly, agreeable, perfectly willing to follow the circuitous meander of my thoughts, or hold my head up when it's lolling, or sit on the floor with me when I'm under a table. I adore her.
"And that guy," I say, pointing to a young man buried in an enormous coat, the hood up, his hands in his pockets, off in a corner by himself. "He hasn't said anything since he got here. I don't know what his deal is. But her, she won't shut up." The woman I'm referring to is perched at the edge of a chair across the table from a catatonic man who's wearing several layers of hospital robes. "She's trying to convince everyone that her suicide attempt was just her following the orders of the Great Spirits, who needed her."
"I don't know. I guess just to help out. She's got a thing about Native American spirituality. She keeps saying she's a Sioux princess."
"I don't think the Sioux have princesses anymore," Christi says.
"Well, she's pretty out of it. Anyway, everybody else is just regular manic or depressed. My roommate hasn't come out of her room since she got here. She's starting to smell."
"You've got to wonder what these people are like when they're out," Ruth says.
Christi and I look at her. She looks back at us.
"Oh," she says. "Like you."
Suddenly my hand stops working and I drop my Americano in my lap. We all stare at it for a minute.
"I'll get paper towels," says Christi, standing up.
"Thanks," I say, trying to sort of back away from the coffee, which has spilled all over my front, my feet, and the couch. I look up at Ruth, bewildered.
"Maybe change the pajamas," she suggests, standing and reaching for my hand. She pulls me off the couch and takes me down the hall to my room. She digs around in the paper bags that hold my clothes and takes out a pair of red ones.
"But I like these," I say.
"But they're all wet," she says, pulling my shirt off over my head.
"But they're my lucky pajamas," I say, standing there.
"These ones are lucky too," she says. "Pants off." She hands me the new pajama pants. I put them on and sit down on the bed and reach for the socks, but get disorganized trying to get them on my feet—something about doing it one at a time isn't working for me—so Ruth does it.
"The socks aren't long enough," I say, upset. "They have to go up to my knees or they aren't right."
She digs around and finds another pair of socks and puts them on me, one foot at a time. Christi appears at the door.
"Time for bed," says Ruth, pulling down the covers and standing there like my mother. I crawl across the bed and get in. She pulls the sheet up to my chin, because she knows I like to be contained. She leans down and kisses my head. Christi does the same.
"When are you coming back?" I ask.
"Wednesday," Ruth says.
I feel very small and warm in my dry pajamas. "Thanks for coming," I say.
"Don't be silly," she says. "Of course we came. Go to sleep."
I nod, and am asleep before they reach the door.