The Words We Keep

I spend two weeks in the hospital.

Mending.

Talking.

Making a plan to get better.

An IV in my arm treats the infection from my scab, and the doctors tell me I’ve pushed my heart to the brink with my combination of pills and energy drinks and stress. My family rotates their visits to make sure I’m never alone. Dad brings a Scrabble board. Staci plays meditation music. When I get up to go to the bathroom, she reaches out to steady me.

“I got it,” I say.

She doesn’t take no for an answer, just hooks her arm through mine determinedly. Even though I want to fight it, I lean on her. After, she combs my hair while sitting next to me on the bed.

“I’m sorry about all this,” I say. “If you need to be somewhere else—”

“I need to be right here.” She finishes braiding my hair and smooths back the wispies.

“But you signed up for a husband and got way more than you bargained for.”

“It’s true,” she says, holding the sides of my head lightly so that I’m looking right at her. “Aren’t I lucky?”

When Margot comes, I tell her how sorry I am for yelling at her. She cuddles up in my bed, her little fingers running over the scabs on my arms. Her chewed fingernail beds are spotted with scabs, too. Guilt needles me—I told her to grow up, but now I want to tell her to slow down. Stay little and wear capes and believe in magic for as long as possible.

“I really am sorry,” I add, “about the other night. And I’m sorry I threw your book.”

“I know you are.” Margot smiles. “Nobody’s perfect.”

“Well, for the record, I’m definitely not perfect.”

Margot snuggles in closer. “For the record,” she says. “I never thought you were.”

Alice joins us in bed, and we lie there quietly, puppy-piled like we used to with Mom while she read to us, her words making the dark less scary, making me feel like nothing bad could ever reach us. I didn’t understand then, all wrapped up safe in her arms, that it wasn’t about the words at all.

—

When my infection is better, they move me to a room for people whose bodies are fine but whose brains need work. It’s bare bones—a bed and a chair and a jam-packed therapy schedule.

My counselor’s name is Suzanne. She wears A-line skirts and her hair in a tight bun, and she listens while I talk. She talks, too, about obsessive thoughts and compulsions and why I want to pick my skin. She tells me that what’s happening to me is definitely not all in my head, at least not anymore. She talks about anxiety and how when it gets stuck in the on position, the whole body goes haywire. She talks about rewiring my brain in baby steps. She helps me set goals, for tomorrow, for next week, for next year—for the Lily of tomorrow. We set appointments as far as the eye can see.

My family talks with Suzanne, too. Sometimes we hold hands, in a circle, like we’re saying a prayer. And maybe we are, supplicating a higher power to help us, to heal us, to make us better. We hold on to each other so tight-tight-tight, it almost hurts.

We say the things we’ve held too long. We say all the words—even the sharp ones that sting coming out. We cry. We laugh.

We feel.

And the words I’ve kept are out, free and flying. And slowly, slowly, I can breathe again.

Sam visits, too. She brings me a card with a lollipop on the front that says, I suck so hard.

“You’d be surprised at how few cards there are that say, ‘Hey, sorry about your mental breakdown,’ ” she says.

I laugh, and she laughs, and we feel almost normal. She sits on a chair across from me in the visitors’ lounge. She picks at a loose thread in the sofa.

“I should have been there for you,” she says.

“I should have told you,” I say. “Call it even?”

The anger between us melts away. We make plans for burgers and shakes.

Micah doesn’t come. I’m not allowed to have a phone (or razors or shoelaces or hoodies with strings or anything suicide-enabling), so I can’t text him. The monsters in my head tell me he hates me. That he finally saw the truth of me and decided he was out. Alice tells me he hates hospitals, not me.

“After his dad, you know. I’m sure that’s all it is.”

I want to believe her. But when I close my eyes, I see his face, the fear and the pain as I stood on the cliff where his father stood. How can he forgive me?

A nurse brings me pills every twelve hours. Suzanne says they’ll help me stabilize, help me stick to the plan. Each time I take the little white, round meds, I feel proud—and defeated, all at once.

“Now we’re pill buddies,” Alice says during a visit, clinking her water bottle with my plastic cup. She finally told her doctors about how the medicine makes her disappear. They’re trying something new, and so far, she’s still here.

“Want to hear something sick?” she says. “Sometimes I wish I had, like, I don’t know, cancer instead. I mean, who wishes for cancer?”

“That is sick,” I say. “But I get it. People understand cancer. They show up with casseroles and do bake sale fundraisers and tell you to stay strong.” I hold up my little pill cup. “But no one knows what to say to something like this.”

Alice stares at the pills in her own hand, and then, like she’s just remembered something, she pulls out her phone and taps, taps, taps.

“But sometimes,” she says, turning the screen toward me, “they say something anyway.”

It’s the Underground, and a picture of my locker, covered top to bottom with magnetic strips of poetry, pieces of notebook paper, and brightly colored Post-it notes. GET WELL SOON. HURRY BACK.

My first thought is fear.

“Do—do they know? About the cliff?” I look around my stark psych room. “About where I am?”

“I’m sure the Ridgeline rumor mill has been churning,” Alice says. “But, Lil, look closer.”

She zooms in on the smaller messages:

your words saved me

your voice is stronger than you think

guerrilla poets forever

“I didn’t think anyone even cared,” I say. “That any of it mattered.”

I read the messages again, zeroing in on a small note in the corner of my locker.

you are not alone

“Looks like it mattered to someone.” Alice raises her water bottle into the air. “Cheers to the original G.P.R.H.”

We clink our cups and take our meds, together.

—

By the time I leave, my scabs are healing.

Not gone. But better.

But the work’s not over, Suzanne tells me. “It won’t be easy,” she says on the day my doctors clear me to return to the world. “But it’ll be worth it.”

“And you won’t be doing it alone,” Dad says as he helps me put my personal belongings into a bag. “After all, we may not have our crap together, but together we have a lot of crap.”

Margot laughs. “Dad, that’s not how it goes.”

“Actually.” I jump in. “It’s kind of perfect.”

Dad pumps my hand—once, twice, three times.

Dad and Alice and Staci and Margot escort me out of the hospital. We look ridiculous, my entourage flanking me like a Secret Service detail.

But I don’t mind too much.

Because they know all my secrets, all the words I’ve kept for so long, and they stayed.

Outside the hospital, Margot squeals,

“Micah!”