Secret for a Song (3 page)

F
our
days later, as I struggled to the surface of wakefulness, I was aware of
multiple sensations. One: there was a deep ache in a spot on my chest. Two: My
skin hurt. And three: my stomach felt like I’d eaten too much and then got on a
roller coaster ride.

I
sat up and pulled the neck of my sleep shirt down. The area I’d been injecting looked
raw, turgid, and shiny, like an overripe berry. It was slightly swollen, too,
but not as much as I wanted. I pressed my knuckles into it and winced.

 After
I’d grabbed my syringe from my nightstand, I padded into the bathroom and
closed the door. Going through the process of spitting into the syringe and
injecting it, I thought about the weird parallels between my life and that of a
junkie’s.

We
both closed ourselves into the bathroom first thing in the morning, syringe
gripped in our sweaty little hands like it might be the nectar to life we’d
been searching for. We stabbed ourselves willingly for a momentary high, for
that rush that made life less boring, made it more like something we’d been
promised by a steady diet of angst-y teen dramas on TV.

But
I guess that was where the similarities ended. A junkie wanted to stay well and
avoid the pains of withdrawal. I wanted to stay sick, to force my body to its
knees, to make it cry and beg for mercy. If a parent had a chance to choose
between a junkie or me, who would they choose? If I was honest, I knew it’d
hardly be any choice at all. Who wants a fucking nut job who longs to be
cradled in the scabby, rotting arms of disease? Send a junkie to rehab and
she’d get on with her life. Send me to the hospital and I wanted more.

Once
my heart had stopped banging against my chest, once my mind knew my body was
once again besieged with bacteria intent on breaking my immune system’s
barriers, I was free to think about other things.

The
first order of business was taking my temperature. The thermometer screen
turned a bright red, informing me that I was running a hundred-degree fever.
Perfect.

Next
I needed to figure out why my stomach felt so...clench-y. I could tell that it
wasn’t just the need to get sick, there was something else. I let my mind
wander and then the thought struck me, like an arrow to the forehead. I had a
meeting with the hospital administrator this morning, the one Dr. Stone was
going to tell about my “issue.”

I
threw on an old t-shirt and a sweater hoodie over it and slid into my jeans.
After my syringe was safely ensconced in my pocket, I made my way downstairs.
My mother sat in a kitchen chair, poring over the newspaper. From the back, she
looked thin and frail and small, like a child whose parents had abandoned her
in this giant house and strange life. She looked lost. Why couldn’t she see
that I was lost, too? That we could both be everything to each other?

I
cleared my throat and she tossed a glance my way.

“Good
morning, Mum.”

“You
should leave right now if you want to make that meeting on time. Would you like
a ride?”

“No,”
I said, as she expected me to. “I can walk.”

I
grabbed an apple, put on my jacket and boots, and slipped out the door.

Gramercy
Hospital was private and only a short two-block walk from the gates of my
parents’ neighborhood. The architects had designed it to look like an old
Catholic cathedral. I suppose being seen going into a hospital that actually resembled
a hospital would be too tacky for its white-collar patients.

The
double doors slid open and the musty cold air wrapped itself around me. If the
hospital looked like a cathedral from the outside, it looked like an elite day
spa on the inside. They even had New Age Muzak piping from the speakers between
pages. I walked up to the receptionist’s marble-topped desk.

She
smiled at me, her teeth a brilliant white. “Hi there.”

“Hey.
Um, I’m here to see Linda Adams. My name’s Saylor Grayson.”

“Hmm...”
She looked down at the clipboard on her desk and her blond hair fell in a
curtain to the desk. “Ah, you’re the volunteer!” Another grin. “Super. If
you’ll have a seat right there in that chair, I’ll give you a form to fill out.
‘K?”

I
sat down, my head feeling hot and muddled with the fever. I fiddled with the
zipper pull on my jacket. How much did this receptionist—I looked at her name
plate; Betty—know about me and why I was here? She wasn’t casting too many
“discreet” glances my way, which told me that maybe she didn’t know.

“There
you are.” She handed over a translucent pink clipboard and a gold pen. “That’s
just a regular volunteer application that all our volunteers need to fill out,
‘k?”

I
nodded and glanced down. The questions looked pretty standard. Name, age,
emergency contact...my gaze stuttered over one question at the bottom: special
medical conditions. I looked at Betty through the fringe of my eyelashes, but
she’d gone back to tapping away at her keyboard. Gripping the pen tight, I
tried to think rationally. Dr. Stone had said I didn’t have to tell anyone
about the Munchausen except the hospital administrator. Then again, this
paperwork was for the hospital’s administrative purposes, wasn’t it? Was I
supposed to be honest on this piece of paper? I didn’t want to have to ask
Betty. Damn it, where was Linda Adams? Why hadn’t Dr. Stone told me that this
might happen?

My
hand shaking, I wrote “M.S.” in the area that asked about medical conditions
and handed the paperwork back. Betty scanned it, and when her eyes lit upon the
last column, she looked up at me with pity in her eyes.

“My
aunt has M.S.,” she said. “You poor thing.”

A
frisson of pleasure and guilt spread from my scalp to my toes, like warm wax. “Yeah,
it sucks.”

“Well,
let me page Linda and she’ll be right down to get you.”

I
sat in the chair, nursing my lie in secret glee.

Linda
Adams came downstairs to get me a few minutes later. She was a short, squat
African American woman with her braided hair in a bun high up on her head. She
moved with a sort of uneasy grace, as if she used to be much more petite than
she was now. When she offered me her hand, it was smooth and dry, her grip much
surer than her demeanor.

“Welcome,
Saylor.”

“Thanks.”

“Do
you want to talk in my office?”

I
shrugged and got up to follow her, fingering my syringe in my pocket.

Linda’s
office was littered with papers and manila folders. The fluorescent lights and
nasty industrial carpet made it clear that the spa-like quality of the hospital
didn’t extend to its employees’ quarters. Noticing me taking in the details,
Linda smiled a chagrined sort of smile.

“Sorry.
I usually meet volunteers at the café downstairs, but I’m expecting a call
today.”

“No
worries.” I sat in a chair and crossed my ankles under it.

“So,
Betty said you filled out the application. Any questions so far?”

“When
can I start?”

She
smiled. “Eager. I like that. You could start today, if you wanted to. There’s
just one thing I feel I have to mention.” The smile slipped off her face and
she searched my eyes apprehensively. Cleared her throat. “About, ah, your...”

She
was clearly waiting for me to finish the sentence, put her out of her misery.
But I didn’t. I held her gaze. Why? Maybe I just felt like being a bitch. Maybe
it was nice that someone else was feeling the shame of saying the words besides
me for a change.

“Munch—Munchausen?”
She glanced at a note she had on the front of my file.

“Yes?”
I touched the needle point of the syringe, let it sink its fang into my skin.

“Dr.
Stone said you could be allowed downstairs, where we have the support group
meetings, but not into any of the clinical areas. You’ll have a badge that says
‘restricted access.’ Is that okay with you?”

I
shrugged. “Do I have a choice?”

She
smiled a little. “No, unfortunately not. But as long as we’re clear on that, I
think we’re good to go.” The phone on her desk rang. “I do need to get this.
But my secretary Shelly will take you to get your badge done right now.”

As
if she was listening at the door, a thin, reedy-looking white woman in glasses
appeared in the doorway and smiled at me. “Ready?”

T
he
badge process was quick, and the woman manning the counter didn’t ask me or
Shelly why I had restricted access. She chatted to her coworker about her diet the
whole time she was printing it up, handed it over to me—still warm from the
printer—and then turned her back on us.

“Okay,
let’s head to the support group area,” Shelly said, opening the door to the stairway.
“It’s in the basement.”

We
went down one flight of stairs, my nose prickling with the scent of
industrial-strength cleaner and cigarette smoke. Shelly’s soft-soled shoes made
muted shuffling noises, the only sound as we descended into the lowest part of
the building.

When
she opened another door, I walked through and found myself in the most stylish
building basement I’d ever seen. The floors were a luxurious cream-colored tile
and the hallway I was in opened up to meeting rooms with glass walls and
comfortable couches and armchairs. The one to my immediate right even had a
fireplace and wall-to-wall bookshelves. It didn’t seem like there were any
support groups in progress, from what I could see.

Shelly
gestured to the fabric-covered bulletin board on the wall to our left. “See
that pink laminated sheet? It lists all the support groups and meeting times
and days. If there’s a holiday or a group won’t be meeting for some reason,
it’s listed at the bottom.”

I
let my eyes run over the text. “Okay.”

“Any
questions about that?”

“Nope.”

“So
what you’re going to be doing down here, from what Linda said to me, is setting
up the rooms and breaking them down after the members leave. The kitchen is
down this way...”

She
led me to a little kitchenette and showed me the basics of coffee-making and
how to arrange snacks for hungry members. I was so bored I wanted to yawn. If
this was the kind of bullshit I had to do to eventually gain access to clinical
information or apparatus, though, it was worth it.

“I
think I got it.”

Shelly
smiled. “Yeah, it’s not too complicated. The next meeting starts at 1:30 in 1A,
so you can go ahead and get everything ready for that if you want.”

“Great.”

She
stared at me for a moment as I began to gather up snacks. I saw her from the corner
of my eye, saw her studying my profile, but I didn’t turn. Finally, she said,
“Linda said I should stay with you. But she didn’t really say why, except that
you had a disorder of some kind? She didn’t seem to understand it very well
herself.” She laughed a little, maybe to lighten the mood.

My
hands trembled a little as I scooped coffee grounds into the filter. Still not
meeting her eye, I said, “Um, yeah. It’s sort of stupid. My parents have me
seeing a shrink, and he doesn’t think I’m mature enough for my age or
something.” I looked at her then, rolling my eyes to show how annoying I
thought that was. Shelly didn’t look too much older than me. Maybe, just maybe,
I could have her on my side in this whole thing.

“Oh.”
I saw the faint flush of her cheeks as embarrassment took hold. “I’ll just hang
out down here, make sure the rooms are in order,” she said, casually changing
the subject. “Come get me if you need me.”

Once
the serving cart was set up, I walked back toward the bulletin board and
checked to see which group was meeting.
Families and
Friends.
I rolled the cart into room 1A and waited, a sentinel on duty.

When
the people began to arrive, I wondered if I was in the wrong room. These didn’t
look like the
families
of sick people; they looked like the patients
themselves.

First
to arrive were three women, their skin stretched too tight over their delicate bones.
Their hair was greasy and unwashed, pulled into hasty buns or ponytails. There
was also a man who stared off into space and didn’t say much of anything.

One
of the women got a cup of coffee, smiling wanly at me, through me. I could tell
she registered by my shape that I was a person, but wasn’t aware enough to note
anything else about me. She shuffled back to the chair with her hands wrapped
around the Styrofoam cup as if it was her lifeline.

The
leader of the group entered then, a woman in her forties who’d lost a sister
and a child to cystic fibrosis. I knew immediately that she wasn’t a
participant like the others. For one, she looked alive and took up space in the
room. She sat and smiled at everyone, a beaming, encouraging sort of smile that
was in stark contrast to the mood in the room. I wondered how long she’d been
doing this, how long she’d been smiling at everyone as if she didn’t have a
care in the world, and how long she would keep doing it until she broke.

There
was a diabetes support group right after that one. It was an interesting
difference; these people laughed and joked with one another, complained mightily
about their lot in life, and consumed coffee and cookies like there might be a
shortage.  I was irritated by their nonchalance. Seriously? If I had a disease
that could be as dangerous as diabetes, I’d be much more respectful of its
powers. Hypocritical, perhaps, coming from someone like me, but the thing was,
I appreciated disease the way it was meant to be appreciated. I courted it
because I worshipped its awesome power.

After
the group was done and I’d gathered up the cups and plates, I rolled the cart
out into the hallway. Shelly was there, her stance awkward as she smiled at me.
Had she been watching me the entire time?

“All
done?” she asked, her voice a cheery falsetto.

“Yep.”
I continued on to the kitchenette and she followed me. “Great first day.”

“Awesome!
That’s fabulous.” She set a clipboard by me on the counter. “If you could just
sign out so we have a record of you leaving, that’d be great. That’s probably
what we’ll do every time you come here. Just sign in and out so we have that to
show your psychiatrist in case he asks, all right?”

My
cheeks flamed, but I nodded and kept my expression bland. “Sure.”

If
this was the price to get access to the clinical stuff I coveted, it was worth
it. I’d just keep telling myself that. The time would come when they’d slip up,
when they’d step back a bit, when other responsibilities besides my well-being
took precedence. And I’d be ready.