What She Found in the Woods

There had been many near misses where the meds were concerned. The nurses always put Dr Jacobi’s changes in last because they had no desire to put them in sooner. Once, I even saw them put a change in so late that Dr Jacobi went and got the dose from the locked room herself. Not knowing this, the next shift nurse prepared it a second time. It was only blind luck that Zlata was in the bathroom and that Dr Jacobi happened to come back out front and see the second dose of phenobarbital waiting.

I watched Dr Jacobi carefully in that moment. I wrote it down in my journal – the falling look of terror on her face. A second dose would have killed Zlata. Shit, a second dose would have killed a young hippo. Zlata’s phenobarbital had been grandfathered in from Russia. She was skating the knife as it was.

Dr Jacobi had a history of miscommunication, which is pretty unforgivable in a doctor. No matter how brilliant she was, or how much of her outside life she’d sacrificed to her job, she had done things that endangered patients. She deserved to get fired, and not just because I hated her.

That’s what I told myself. That I was saving people from an eventual catastrophe.

All I had to do was wait for one of the bi-weekly power struggles at the nurse’s station to make my move. Dr Jacobi would swoop in and drag the nurse distributing the meds back to her office to scream at him or her, and a fill-in nurse would stand at the post.

Nothing I was on would kill me if I took twice as much of it. I would tell the fill-in nurse that I hadn’t got my dose yet, even though I had. There was only ever a tiny chance that the fill-in nurse would believe me, but if she did, I’d get my second dose and go straight back to my room so I could drool and babble for the night surveillance cameras. I needed this on tape if I was to get Dr Jacobi fired.

What I didn’t know, had never dreamed, was that the fill-in nurse would assume that everyone on the roster after me had also not received their meds.

She double-dosed half the floor.

I didn’t find out until I woke up two days later. My throat was raw from having my stomach pumped. Zlata had died. Two more patients were in comas, and they were both still in them by the time I left the hospital.

I told anyone who came within ten feet of me that it was my fault. I had done this on purpose to take down Dr Jacobi. To expose her as the emotionally bankrupt egomaniac that she was. I insisted they put me in jail before I killed anyone else.

They had to put me in solitary for a few weeks and pump me full of Zlata’s phenobarbital because I was upsetting the other patients. But no

matter how much I yelled that I was a murderer, I could not legally be considered culpable in any way.

It is the responsibility of the doctors and nurses to administer the drugs properly, no matter what a patient says to get more, or what that patient means to do with them once they’re obtained. We’re just mental patients.

Maybe the rest of the hospital could be considered that way – victims of their own minds – but I knew better about myself. I’ve never been a victim.

The entire nursing staff was fired. Dr Jacobi was arrested for first-degree manslaughter, and it was clear from the onset that she would be convicted. After all, there was precedence for her malpractice. It was all recorded in my journal, which the police copied in less than an hour and returned to me.

But Dr Jacobi didn’t make it to trial. After posting bail, she jumped off the roof of her Brooklyn apartment.

I had settled down by then. I was talking, and not screaming any more. I was allowed back into group therapy and into the common room, although no one ever came near me again. Not that they ever had before, but now instead of avoiding me because they simply mistrusted what I was writing in my journal, they genuinely feared me and my journal. They were right to be afraid. What I’d done was scary. It scared me, so I stopped. I wrote one last time, and then that was it. No more journal.

We got Dr Holt back as group leader, which was nice. I liked her.

1 AND 2 AUGUST

We trudge back to our spot much more slowly than we set out.

We are silent the whole way. When we get back, I see all the stuff Bo took from my pack lying scattered and wet on the ground. I have no idea what to do next.

I actually feel worse now. I’d only entertained the barest spark of hope for such a short amount time, it shouldn’t affect me so to have it snuffed out again.

But still. Losing hope is harder than never having it at all.

‘I should have left you at Mila’s house and tracked her myself,’ Bo growls. He grabs his hair with his hands, like he’s trying to pull all the bad thoughts out. ‘I could have gone twice as fast. I might have been able to make it before the rain started, and . . .’

I step towards him and put my hand on his chest to quiet him. ‘It was never going to end well. She’s gone.’

‘You don’t know that,’ he says, wrapping me against him. ‘Someone could still find her.’

I shake my head. ‘The time when I could have helped her came and went. And I laughed at her. I’m going to have to live with that. Like I’m living with so many other mistakes.’

Bo holds me, but I’m not crying.

‘It’s not your fault she ran away,’ he says.

‘Bo. I’m so far past the point where anyone can make excuses for me any more,’ I say. ‘I should have helped her when she asked. That’s what good people do. You wouldn’t have avoided getting involved because you couldn’t risk getting hurt by a friend again. You’d have just helped her. Like you did with me.’