It’s one of the day nurses, Vinnie, who does it, his big hands chapped and methodical. It’s chilly in the Care room and very neat. Paper crinkles beneath me as I settle on the table. I look at the glass jars filled with tall Q-tips, the bottles of alcohol, the neatly labeled drawers. Vinnie has a silver tray all ready with scissors, tweezers, clips, and creams.
He pauses before he begins unpeeling the pads on my arms. “You want someone here? Doc Stinson’s done with Group in fifteen minutes.” He means Casper.
He gives me his special smile, the one where he opens his mouth and bares all his teeth. Each tooth is framed, like a painting or a photograph, in gold. I have a sudden urge to touch one of those shining teeth.
Vinnie laughs. “You like my sweet teeth? It cost a lot to get this smile, but it cost a lot to get this smile, if you know what I mean. You want the doctor or not?”
I shake my head, No.
“Yeah, that’s right. You a tough girl, Davis.”
Carefully, he unwinds the gauze from each arm. He strips the long pads from my left arm. He strips the long pads from my right arm. They make a wet, soft thwack as he tosses them in the metal trash bin. My heart beats a little faster. I don’t look down yet.
Vinnie leans close as he tweezes and clips the stitches. He smells silky and brittle all at once, like hair oil and coffee. I stare at the ceiling lights so hard dark clouds form over my eyes. There is a kidney-shaped stain on one of the panels, the color of butter heated too long in a pan.
“Am I hurting you?” he asks. “I’m doing the best I can, girlfriend.”
There’s the sound of trickling water. Vinnie is washing his hands. I lift my arms up.
They’re pale and puckered from being wrapped up for so long. Turning them over, I look at the red, ropy scars rivering from my wrists to my elbows. I touch them gingerly. Vinnie hums. It’s an upbeat tune, with a lilt.
I’m only another day to him, another hideous girl.
“Okay?” He rubs cream between his palms and holds them up.
Underneath these new scars, I can see the old ones. My scars are like a dam or something. The beaver just keeps pushing new branches and sticks over the old ones.
I nod at Vinnie. The cream has warmed in his hands and feels good against my skin.
The first time I ever cut myself, the best part was after: swabbing the wound with a cotton ball, carefully drying it, inspecting it, this way and that, cradling my arm protectively against my stomach. There, there.
I cut because I can’t deal. It’s as simple as that. The world becomes an ocean, the ocean washes over me, the sound of water is deafening, the water drowns my heart, my panic becomes as large as planets. I need release, I need to hurt myself more than the world can hurt me, and then I can comfort myself.
There, there.
Casper told us, “It’s counterintuitive, yes? That hurting yourself makes you feel better. That somehow you can rid yourself of pain by causing yourself pain.”
The problem is: after.
Like now, what is happening now. More scars, more damage. A vicious circle: more scars = more shame = more pain.
The sound of Vinnie washing his hands in the sink brings me back.
Looking at my skin makes my stomach flip.
He turns. “Round two. You sure you don’t want someone else here?”
I shake my head and he throws me a sheet, tells me to scoot back on the examining table, motions for me to pull down my shorts. I do it quick under the sheet, without breathing, keeping the sheet tight over my plain underwear. My thighs prickle up, goose-pimply from the chilly room.
I don’t think I’m afraid of Vinnie, but I track the movements of his hands carefully, bring my street feeling to the surface, just in case. When I was little and couldn’t sleep, I used to rub the bedsheet between my forefinger and thumb. I do this now with the underwear, the soft pink underwear, brand-new, left on my narrow bed with a little card. There were seven pairs, one for each day of the week. They had no holes, no stains, and they smelled like the plastic wrap they came in, not like funk and piss or period blood. Thinking of the underwear, feeling the clean cotton in my fingers, makes something shift inside me, like the loosening of stones after one is plucked from the pile, a groan, a settling, an exhalation of air—
“Nurse. Ava. Bought. Me. This. Underwear.”
I don’t know why I whisper it. I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know why words have formed now, I don’t know why these words. My voice is scratchy from not being used. I sound like a croaky frog. It’s a long sentence, my first in I don’t know how many days, and I know that he will dutifully log this: C. Davis spoke in a complete sentence while bandages being removed. C. Davis spoke about not having underwear. Patient does not usually volunteer to speak; Selective Mutism.
“That was mighty nice of her. Did you say thank you?”
I shake my head.
When I cut myself in the attic, I was wearing a T-shirt, underwear, and socks and boots. There was so much blood, Evan and Dump didn’t know what to do. They wrapped me in a bedsheet.
“You should thank her.”
I came to Creeley in hospital scrubs and slippers. Nurse Ava found clothes for me. Nurse Ava bought me brand-new underwear.
I should thank her.
The gauze and pads from my thighs look like stained streamers as Vinnie holds them up and lobs them into the bin. He pulls and clips with the tweezers.
It’s the same as my arms: it doesn’t hurt as he removes the stitches, but my skin twinges, prickles, as he pulls the tweezers up and out.
In a rush, it happens again, only this time it’s remembering what it’s like to cut, and cut hard. The way you have to dig the glass in, deeply, right away, to break the skin and then drag, and drag fiercely, to make a river worth drowning in.
Oh, it hurts to make that river. The pain is sharp and bleary all at once; curtains part and shut over your eyes; bull breath from your nostrils.
It fucking hurts, hurts, hurts. But when the blood comes, everything is warmer, and calmer.
Vinnie catches my eye. I’m breathing too fast. He knows what’s happening.
“Done.” He watches me carefully as I sit up. The delicate paper beneath me tears.
Ladders. The scars on my thighs look like the rungs of ladders. Bump, bump, bump as I run my fingers from my knees to the top of my thighs. Vinnie’s creamy hands are very dark against my paleness. It feels nice. When he’s done with my thighs, he motions for me to pull up my shorts and hands me the blue-and-white tub of cream. “You apply this twice a day. That shit’s gonna itch real bad now that it’s out in the air. Gonna feel tight and kinda prickly.”
I hug the tub to my chest. I can still feel his hands on my legs, the gentleness of his fingers on the ugliness of me. I kind of want his hands back, maybe curving around me this time. Maybe just being so light on me that my head could kind of fall against him, and I could stay there awhile, breathing him in, no big deal, heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat, like with my dad. Pressure builds behind my eyes.
I wipe my face, ignoring my trembling hands. Hot. My body is starting to heat up. I feel afraid. Vinnie clears his throat.
“Everybody’s in Crafts, girl. You want me to walk you there?”
“Room.” I hug the warm tub to my chest. “Room.”
Vinnie looks sad. “Okay, baby. Okay.”
—
Louisa is not in our room. They’re all at Crafts, bent over gluey Popsicle sticks, bags of buttons and yarn, reams of glittery star stickers.
My eyes are fierce with water and I bury my head in my pillow so no one hears me. My body is so, so sore from my wounds. I want Ellis, the Ellis who would dab my cuts and steal wine from her dad so we could cry together in her room, sipping from the bottle and listening to our music, watching the solar system night-light rotate and glow on her ceiling. Because when you’re hurt, and someone loves you, they’re supposed to help you, right? When you’re hurt, and someone loves you, they kiss you tenderly, they hold the bottle to your mouth, they stroke your hair with their fingers, right? Casper would be proud of me for my rational thinking.
I’m in a place filled with girls who are filled with longing and I want none of them. I want the one I can’t have, the one who is never coming back.
—
Where do I put them, these dead ones, these live ones, these people who hover about me like ghosts? Ellis once said, “You were too young to lose a dad.”
A little over a year ago, Mikey cried on the phone to me, “She never cut, that wasn’t her thing. Why did she cut? You were right there.” But he was miles and states away at college and didn’t know what had happened between Ellis and me. It was the last time we talked; after that, I was on the street, becoming a ghost myself.
My mother is alive, but she’s a ghost, too, her sunken eyes watching me from a distance, her body very still.
There are so many people who are never coming back.
