Page 55 of Score
They start guiltily, turning wary stares into the room where I’m lying down, and then back to each other.
“Please come in.” I wave them inside with my bandaged arm. “You’re making things weird.”
They’re kind enough not to point out there is a certain degree of inherent weirdness when we’re having this conversation in the psych ward.
Aunt Roz and Aunt Grace walk in, holding hands.
“How you feeling?” Aunt Roz asks, taking the seat to the left of my bed, while Aunt Grace takes the one on the right.
“Confused?” I bite my lip and blink back tears, eyes trained on my fingers twisting in the hospital sheets. “Embarrassed.”
“You got nothing to be embarrassed about, honey,” Aunt Grace reassures me.
“I broke into the fine arts building and tried to destroy a priceless piece of art,” I remind them despairingly. “I can’t imagine what Dr. Garrison thinks of me.”
“She thinks you’re a wonderful girl who hit a rough spot,” Aunt Roz says. “She called last night to see how you were doing.”
“That’s really nice of her.” I drop my eyes to the bed. “If she hadn’t shown up and said I needed a hospital, not handcuffs, I might be in jail right now.”
“Nothing but the grace of God,” Aunt Grace says. “We prayed for you that very morning.”
My lips twitch into a tiny involuntary grin. My aunts are the praying-est gays you’ll ever meet. They don’t care that most of the church thinks they won’t see the Pearly Gates. You can’t tell them God doesn’t hear every one of their prayers. They met at vacation Bible school in the eighth grade, and the rest is queer history.
“Dr. Garrison has kept everything very discreet,” Aunt Grace says, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Since no police report was filed, and your privacy is protected at the hospital, everything has been… contained.”
“What about financial aid?” I ask, dread filling the pit of my belly. “Did you talk to them about my tuition?”
“We didn’t.” Aunt Roz’s eyes shift away. “We figured you would be taking some time off anyway, and since the money was all gone and we couldn’t replace it, withdrawing from Finley seemed to be the best decision.”
“Oh my God,” I groan, and drop my head into my hands. “I can’t believe I spent all the money you gave me for tuition. I don’t know what I was thinking. How could I do that?”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Aunt Roz says, squeezing my hand, where it rests on the hospital bed.
“Whose fault was it then?” I ask, tipping my head back into the pillow. “I have to take responsibility for it all. What I did in that bar…”
My throat closes around the words. The aunts are right. Withdrawing is really the only option. I could never go back, could never face Petra and Randi and the guys camped around my table that night, waiting to see which of them would get to fuck me first. Everyone in Top Dog who saw me dancing on tables and buying drinks I couldn’t afford. The cops. Dr. Garrison. And…
There’s no way I can give voice to my biggest regret. In my right mind, I would never have cheated on Monk. He was everything I wanted. The shame of him seeing me that way in the restroom with another man crashes over me like a tsunami. I close my eyes to block out reality and retreat into the darkness behind my eyelids.
“I just don’t understand what’s wrong with me,” I say, emotion thickening my voice and tears slipping from the corners of my eyes.
“Maybe I can help with that,” a white-coated doctor says from the door. She walks in farther to stand by the bed, her eyes kind and steady. “Can we talk for a bit, Verity?”
Her silk press falls in a smooth wave to her shoulders, and her skin is deep brown and unlined. She carries an air of competency, like anything thrown at her will be handled expeditiously. I’m not sure if that’s the case, but I breathe just a bit easier meeting the steadiness of her stare. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen her, but the last few days in here were jumbled and patchy.
“I’m Dr. Simmons.” She sits on the edge of the hospital bed. “I want to talk about what happened and maybe help you understand what’s going on.”
“Please.” I fist the sheet and clench my teeth. “I’ve never felt so out of control the way I did last week, and I’m scared it could happen again.”
The room is silent. Dr. Simmons doesn’t rush to reassure me that it never could. My aunts exchange those looks again.
“Just say it,” I blurt. “What’s wrong with me?”
“We’ve done some evaluations,” Dr. Simmons says. “But I want to do a few more. Assess your mental health, run some blood tests to rule out other possibilities. What happened at Finley sounds like an acute psychosis experience.”
“Wait, you mean like schizophrenia?” My heart slams in my chest as my most secret fears are given voice.
“Not necessarily.” Dr. Simmons’s tone remains calm. “Psychosis can be a symptom in many disorders. I don’t want to jump to any conclusion too quickly. When we see psychosis, especially in Black women, it’s often misdiagnosed as schizophrenia. I want to be very careful figuring this out so we get the right diagnosis, determine the appropriate treatment plan, and hopefully set you up for the best possible outcomes.”
