Coming Undone by Terri White (bill gates books recommendations .TXT) 📕

mind wanders to smoky Irish whiskies warmed in the glass, a crisp, precise lager that dances and bubbles across my tongue, a wine that takes me to the Andalusian mountains and beyond. The shadow of my senses forms a solid shape, takes flight and moves just beyond my touch, my taste, my smell. The doctor sighs once more, harder and heavier this time, and all of the moisture is sucked out of my mouth.

I lick my lips, shake my head a little and focus, continuing to read, though none of the words and sentences are working their way through my eyes into my brain and becoming substance, becoming fact. They sit, instead, just inside my eyeballs, very still, intact but immovable, unknowable.

Though I don’t know what it says, I do know what it means. It means that my plan didn’t work. The one that was going to see me walk straight out of here, only minutes after walking straight in. An hour tops. We were meant to talk, laugh a little, shake hands, then off I’d go, plastic bag containing all my belongings swinging in one hand.

But now, the sun’s pretty much set on Thursday and I know in this moment that I’m now facing the weekend in here, at least. I can’t remember if he says this or if I just know it, instinctively, but it’s a fact. It could, in total, be days, weeks or even months: it definitely won’t be hours.

I look at his brown lace-up shoes, beige chinos, preppy blue starched shirt and black fleece with a high zip that must tickle his chin when he looks down at the floor, at his feet, which I imagine he does a lot. He isn’t like me. Or rather, I’m not like him. He doesn’t see who I am and certainly won’t in the window of time we have together tonight.

My stomach is in my socks – I don’t have shoes – as I submit, pressing the pen against the paper and pulling until my name, or a version of it, appears. I want to throw up but I smile, tighter now, and rest one hand on my belly in a futile attempt to stop it leaping and twisting with the knowledge and awareness of what I’ve just signed on for. I don’t know specifically what awaits me in the coming days or weeks, but I do know that this is the most dire, desperate situation I’ve ever found myself in. And I’ve been in a few. I’ve never felt more trapped; I’ve never been more trapped.

The reality of it travels through my body like urgent news down a wire – pins and needles sprinkle into my fingertips where they burst, tiny fireworks under my nails. Every cliché is coming alive in my body: the room spins; my head swims; I lose feeling in my ankles, my hands; everything out of my immediate eyesight is fizzy and fuzzy and distorted. The room goes cold, while heat floods my head. I can’t believe I’m still standing – I have to touch the desk to my left, just to make sure, in fact, that I am.

The part of me that I’ve only ever got a weak hold on pulls and tugs before breaking off and floating up to the ceiling; she squats in the darkness of the corner, staring at the top of both of our heads. It occurs to me for a second that I might have died and this might be death, the afterlife, or at least the life after. Every feeling in every inch of my body is alien, obscure, beyond my understanding. What other explanation is there?

I gather enough of my mind and my body to ask: ‘So how long will I need to be here?’ as I hand him back the pen and papers, now signed so he can leave. Which he starts to do immediately, shuffling past me as he says, ‘We don’t know. It’s impossible to say. You’ll be able to talk to someone about all of that soon.’ And with that he’s gone, out of the door. The door to the place that I’ve now agreed to call home, so the doctor can return to his.

It’s time to survive. I call her down from the ceiling and send her back into my body. This is how I’ll make it through: I’ll do what I’m told, what I must. What day is it? Thursday. OK. Can it really have been just Saturday that I was told in no uncertain terms that no, I couldn’t go home? It was. How many more days until I could go home? At least three. Probably more. I’ve survived almost six; I can take more. How can I get out? I need somebody to see, or at least agree I don’t belong here. I mean, I don’t belong here. I’m sure everyone says this. But I don’t, truly. I can’t; I just can’t. And if the doctor can’t see that, which, I’m guessing by his attitude he either can’t or won’t, I need to find the person who will. I will be the good little girl, barely causing an eyebrow to raise, while I tick off each day and wait, quietly. I’m not free, but the only way to become so again is to submit, willingly, with a closed throat.

Now it’s just me and the male nurse, who’s been standing silently watching our entire exchange. It’s not the first time he’s witnessed this, clearly. He first takes my obs – blood pressure, temperature and pulse rate – the three-times-a-day ritual to measure my vital signs that I’ll come to know well. He then picks up and empties my plastic bag, the one that had transported my belongings from the hospital downtown. He sorts through them methodically, a sharpened pencil in one hand, itemising them, line by line: laptop, clothes, shoes, toiletries, make-up. Almost everything is a danger to me, because I’m officially a danger to me. I keep