Above my head I see a kaleidoscopic display: triangle to oblong to square to itty-bitty bits twirling. Beeootiful, Yaya, flakes of fiery snow.

The doctor questions me: Have you been taking anything you shouldn’t? Could you be pregnant? Last time you ate? Any history of seizures? No, no, can’t remember, and no. He’s an older man, stooped, pot-bellied, brown-blotched skin, hues of yellow. He takes blood samples, rough with the needle, jabbing it in like he wants to hurt me. Or maybe I’m imagining it. He takes my temperature, presses his pudgy fingers into my stomach. ‘Any pain?’ Way off, not even in the right region. How could I say my brain’s just been attacked by a swarm of my own making? I really might end up in the loony bin then.

‘Open wide.’ He sticks a thermometer under my tongue.

He removes it, shakes it, reads. ‘All perfectly normal. Are you eating?’

‘A little. I’m a vegetarian. Not much choice here.’

‘A woman your age needs red meat for a bit of iron, protein, keep your energy up.’

‘I need to see my son.’ My voice is scratched and skipping.

The man recoils. ‘I can arrange for you to see someone.’

‘Can you find out where he is?’

‘I’ll be back to check up on you in a few days. Eat and rest. I’m putting your name at the top of the list to see a counsellor.’ He taps the back of my hand, which is resting on top of the sheets, intended as reassurance perhaps, but experienced more like a ruler, remonstrating. Bold girl.

The voices are building in intensity, issuing conflicting instructions, cancelling each other out: leave, go, find him, make it worse, they won’t let you have him back. Need to prove your sobriety, your ability to stay on the straight and narrow, to think straight, sit up straight. Thoughts all bendy and circuitous. Apply a ruler to level out. I see myself bent over my copybook, intent on drawing that straight line. No amount of application ever made it right. It shot off up to the right, or down to the left, the ruler like a piece on a Ouija board. I was possessed, even then.

Two fitful days pass in the infirmary where I battle with myself not to bust out of the place, but my dizziness is still intense, and anyway, where would I go? ‘How typical, couldn’t go the distance,’ Father would say. The sound of the rain is constant, at times a soft needling, at others a torrential downpour – a soundtrack of deluge. Tommy always worries about Herbie getting wet, and I’m sure he’s outside in it now and Tommy is inconsolable. Hole in me, Yaya.

16

On the second evening in the infirmary, Sister Anne enters with a tray of tea and scones and butter and jam, which she lays out on the bedside table.

‘How are you, Sonya?’

‘Ok now, Sister, thanks. That hasn’t happened in a while.’