I squeeze her hand. “But it’s a good day, right? That’s what we’re focusing on.”
“A good day,” she agrees, smiling again.
Another good day.
Great.
I need her to have a good day because if she doesn’t, I’m not sure I have enough pieces of myself left to hold us both together.
∞∞∞
The Psychiatric Outpatient Department is a fluorescent hum and the muffled, frantic clicking of keyboards. I lead my mother to a chair before heading to the front desk.
“Morning, Lou,” I slide the insurance card across the desk. “We’re here for the ten-fifteen appointment with Dr. Johnson.”
“Morning, Madison. Room four today.” Lou barely even looks up. We’re regulars.
“Donna? We’re ready for those labs,” a nurse says, appearing in the doorway.
Mom’s hand shoots out, finding mine. Her grip is white-knuckled. She looks at the nurse, then at the hallway. It’s the look of a woman who has been “sent away” enough times to know that doors sometimes lock from the outside.
“I’ll be right here when you get back,” I say. I don’t say it like a platitude. I say it like a contract. “I’m not moving an inch.”
I swore long ago I’d never lie about that. If I have to leave, I tell her. If I stay, I stay. In this building, my presence is the only thing that keeps her tethered to the “good day” version of herself.
She lets go, her fingers trailing off mine as if she’s losing her grip on a liferaft. I watch her walk away, her small frame looking even smaller against the sterile white of the corridor.
“Madison, step into my office for a moment?” Dr. Johnson is standing by his door. He doesn’t wait for an answer. He knows the drill. I follow him in and take the chair. It’s slightly lower than his, making me feel like a student reporting to the principal’s office.
“So,” he begins. “Talk to me. How’s the baseline?”
“She’s been stable,” I say. “Sleep is consistent. Six hours, give or take. She had a dip last week, a few days of ‘the heavy quiet’, but she stayed with the meds. She thinks she’s balanced out now.”
Johnson scribbles a few lines before looking at me over the rim of his glasses.
“And how areyoudoing, Madison?”
The question hits me like a physical blow. My mind flashes to Beckett—to the way he looked in the dark, the way he tasted. I feel a flush creep up my neck.
“Me? Oh, I’m fine.”
“That’s always your answer,” he says, leaning back. “It’s been your answer since you were nineteen.”
Because I’m the one who makes sure the appointments are kept. I’m the one who handles the dumpster fires at work. I’m the one who ensures she doesn’t burn the house down when she’s manic andthat she doesn’t stop eating when she’s depressed.
Instead of all that, I smile and say, “I’m good, truly.”
His returning smile is sad in a way that makes me bristle.
“Looking after someone with Bipolar I isn’t a job you clock out of,” Johnson says, his voice dropping into that maddeningly empathetic tone. “It’s a state of being. It’s hypervigilance. You’re scanning her for symptoms every time she laughs too loudly or sleeps too long. That kind of stress… it does things to a person. It makes you seek out intensity because your baseline is already so high.”
I think of last night. I think of the war I started with the man upstairs just to feel something that wasn’tthisweight.
“I’ve got it handled,” I say, standing. I can’t do the empathy talk today. Not when I can still feel the ghost of Beckett’s hand on my chin. “Thank you, Dr. Johnson.”
He sighs but nods. “Just… try to breathe. You’re allowed to be more than just a caregiver.”
When I walk back into the waiting room, the air feels thinner. I stand near the window, watching the traffic below, feeling the strange, jagged edges of my life trying to knit together.
