After Cheryl said that, Tabitha and I sort of split. Not physically, but mentally. We did our own things. At night, when she’d come home from T.J. Maxx, she would shower and eat in bed and watch Gilmore Girls. I’d usually sit outside and smoke or go for walks until I was tired. That routine started to drag on, but then a few weeks later I started taking Fellis to his appointments, and it saved me, got me away from Tabitha’s and gave me some purpose. His mom, Beth, couldn’t take him. During the summer, she worked at Family Dollar for extra money on top of her teacher’s salary. The only other person who could take him was his aunt Alice, and she did for a little while until her daughter Lily started up at the tribal day care (Lily’s father was a bum, lived up north on some other rez), and Alice got a job as the “secretary to the chief’s secretary” (tribal citizens wondered where our money went), licking envelopes and sealing them shut. When Beth called Tabitha’s place and asked that I take Fellis every other day, I took one look at Tabitha sitting up in bed, plate of Thai Lean Cuisine noodles in her hands, laptop open, and I told Beth no problem, that I’d be there in the morning.

A male nurse passed by as I leaned on the wall. He’d stopped me once before. “You haven’t found the exit yet?”

I pointed to the bathroom.

He kept on walking.

When I’d gone over that first day to pick Fellis up, he was sitting in bed and watching TV, and it reminded me so much of Tabitha that I started to regret my decision. But he looked so beat up. An ashtray crammed with butted cigarettes sat on his lap. His eyes were half shut, his expressions plain and simply devoid of any life, kind of like if you’d put two black dots and a straight line on an orange and called it a face. But after that first ECT treatment I witnessed, Fellis seemed to be more awake, more alive.

The janitor flushed the toilet and let out a groan as he stood. He put the dirty white cloth in his back pocket. When he came out the door, he did a double take at me.

“You from the rez?” he said.

I didn’t look too Native, and so I said, “Yeah, how’d you know?”

“Your shirt says ‘Native Pride.’”

I looked down at my shirt, and the janitor started talking again.

“Is it true what they’re saying in the papers?”

“Depends,” I said. “What are you talking about?”

“The caterpillars.” He squeezed dirty brown water out of the mop and into the yellow bucket.

“Yeah,” I said. “Looks cool with them all there on the road, but it don’t smell that great.”

He was saying something about going to check it out—like the rez needed another visitor—but I quit listening. I slammed the bathroom door shut behind me. With my foot I lifted the toilet seat and accidentally smeared dirt on it.